Francis O'Joseph

Some interesting quotes...

“What child won't want a little dinosaur as a pet? A little patented animal for their own. InGen will sell millions of them. And InGen will engineer them so that these pet dinosaurs can only eat InGen pet food...“

“The idea of living creatures being numbered like software, being subject to updates and revisions, troubled Grant. He could not exactly say why—it was too new a thought—but he was instinctively uneasy about it. They were, after all, living creatures.”

“Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something. They conveniently define such considerations as pointless. If they don't do it, someone else will. Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first.”

As with Fingerprints of the Gods and Supernatural, which are among my all-time favourite books, Graham Hancock has managed once again to arouse awe and wonder at the mysteries of our past.
Yet, I won't dwell on the reasons that make this such a great book since there are already so many reviews that do that quite thoroughly, and I advise the reader to take a look at them. Instead, I'd like to focus on an aspect that Graham doesn't seem to have taken into consideration—which hasn't prevented me from leaving five well-warned stars.

From the old myths and legends about these magicians—or sages—of the Gods mentioned throughout the book, it seems to be taken for granted that they were benign beings who brought civilization to mankind, save them from their primitive state, and taught them arts, sciences and agriculture. The catastrophes that occurred afterwards, especially the one Graham focuses on which occurred during the Younger Dryas, were only the punishment for having strayed from the right path.
Now, considering what has been going on in the world lately, with all these billionaire “philanthropists” and NGOs claiming to be saving us from climate change, diseases, poverty, etc, but whose real intentions have become rather suspicious—to say the least—my point is, Are we sure that these magicians of the Gods were nothing but a very ancient version of Bill Gates?
According to Graham, the magicians may have built their megaliths to warn us of a future impact, yet later on he admits that if another cataclysm occurred today the only people who could survive it would be the few tribes of hunter-gatherers remained, since they would know how to fend for themselves in the wild without the technologies of the “civilised” man.

I admit that the mystery behind the construction of the well-known huge megalithic structures is indeed quite fascinating, especially because it makes us wonder how their creators, who are supposed to have been little more than savages, could have built them.
But my point is, why bother in the first place if the only peoples who could make it through would be the pigmies and the like? Why do we always have to take for granted that the ability to build huge structures and know sciences is a sign of superiority, as opposed to living a humble life connected to mother nature, as “primitive” hunter-gatherers do? Isn't that actually even more technological?

It's also interesting to note that the prophet Enoch, as mentioned in Magicians, criticizes the Nephilims for teaching mankind evil arts, such as eye make-up. Graham belittles Enoch as a rather bigot shaman who didn't want to adapt to the more advanced way of the so-called “giants”, whom he thinks were simply more technologically advanced people rather than fantastic beings. But could Enoch have been right after all?

We also have another couple of significant episodes from the Bible—these ones not mentioned in Magicians—that makes me wonder whether the technology of agriculture was actually a good thing at all.
The first is in Genesis 3:19 where God basically curses mankind with agriculture after Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit (He says to them, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread”).
The second is when God favours the offering of an animal from Abel rather than some plants from Cain. This might suggest that God preferred humans to be hunter-gatherers rather than farmers.

I'm not claiming that the magicians were bad, mind you. These are just random thoughts that popped into my mind while reading this book, and I don't have a clear opinion on all this myself. But perhaps we should consider this avenue as well.

Just WOW.

“These are the forgeries of jealousy.
And never, since the middle summer's spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By pavèd fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or in the beachèd margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have sucked up from the sea
Contagious fogs, which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents.
The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard.
The fold stands empty in the drownèd field,
And crows are fatted with the murrain flock.
The nine-men's-morris is filled up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable.
The human mortals want their winter here.
No night is now with hymn or carol blessed.
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound.
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazèd world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension.
We are their parents and original.”

~Titania (Act II, Scene 1)