Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries, Brian Haughton [books you need to read .TXT] 📗

into the creation of this unquestionably great scientific achievement. While such sophisticated devices have been known in the West since the Spanish Conquest, 500 years ago, another pre-Industrial Age computer was found just two years ago in northern Germany. Dated to the Late Bronze Age (circa 1500 B.C.), the Nebra Disc is an astronomical clock of sophisticated capabilities and workmanship, far in advance of anything from the same time and place. Its mere existence implies that a higher level of material society flourished in a region far beyond the cultural orbit of the

Greco-Roman World than previously imagined. It predates-by more than 14 centuries-a comparable instrument hauled up in a fisherman's net around the turn of the 20th century off the Greek island of Antikythera. The device is a complex intermeshing of intricate gears that historians formerly believed would not have been possible until the European Renaissance. Apparently, the Classical World had its own Leonardo da Vinci, who fashioned an efficient astronomical computer small enough to be carried aboard ships for purposes of celestial navigation.

Earlier still, another disc has been found in the Cretan city of Phaestos, and is 200 years older than the Nebra device. While not as complicated as the German, Greek, or Mayan versions, the Minoan plate of baked clay was impressed with tiny images made by movable type, almost 30 centuries before Johannes Gutenberg's press was up and running. Haughton shows that our ancestors' technology was far more elevated that mainstream scholars would have us believe. Hidden History's description of these anomalous finds is succinct and lucid, and readers will search in vain for another book in which these examples of unexpectedly high technology are brought together in the same volume. Its inquiry ranges far beyond typical scientific accomplishments to visit "Mysterious Places"-including Easter Island, with its gaunt colossi; a preColumbian city in the Grand Canyon; and the oldest building on Earth, the enormous, quartz-fronted burial mound of Ireland's Newgrange, 30 miles north of Dublin.

The "Mysterious People" visited are King Arthur, keeper of the Holy Grail; the Amazons, who carried women's liberation on the edge of their swords; Indonesia's race of extinct, quick-witted dwarves; and the historical facts behind the fabled figures of Robin Hood, the Queen of Sheba, and Pharaoh Tutankhamun. The fate of ancient Egypt's most famous monarch is particularly up-to-date, as Brian Haughton cites the latest CAT scan of the royal mummy. Did King Tut die of an accident that allowed his aged successor, a commoner, to usurp the

throne? Or was covert assassination the cause? Nowhere else has such a broad collection of diverse information about ancient wonders been assembled. Haughton's obvious preference for credibility over theory combines with his powers of clear, concise presentation to make Hidden History not merely a rehash of already familiar material, but a freshly comprehensive encyclopedia of the strange and the intriguing, which will be sought out by anyone fascinated with the remote past for many years to come.

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IntroducIion

One of the numerous legacies of our ancient past is a bewildering variety of mysteries. Some are genuinely puzzling, while others are more easily solved with a little research. Mysterious places, such as Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid, may be famous throughout the world, but how much do we really know about their construction, purpose, and the people who built them? Strange artifacts, sometimes of unknown origin and purpose, or of inexplicably advanced manufacture can provide us with a fascinating glimpse into the often amazingly sophisticated cultures of the ancient world. And then there are the people themselves. Modern techniques such as DNA studies and Oxygen Isotope Analysis (performed on tooth enamel to locate a person's origins) are shedding fascinating new light on the enigmatic peoples of ancient history. Intriguingly, while solving one puzzle, modern scientific techniques have sometimes created others. For example, chemical analysis of the aristocrat buried close to Stonehenge 4,200 years ago shows that he was probably born in Switzerland. Which poses the question: What was he doing so far from home?

A person's interpretation of the past often depends on what he or she wants from history. If the study of ancient

mysteries is approached with an agenda in mind, or a belief to be proved, the odds are that some kind of evidence to fit the theory will be found. On rare occasions, such as the 19th century excavations by Heinrich Schliemann at the supposed site of Troy, this approach can yield spectacular-if not entirely accurate-results.

Unfortunately, evidence for a pet theory is usually obtained by ignoring conflicting data, or taking an individual artifact, person, or even place out of its original context. Let's imagine a situation where, for example, you wanted to prove that Ireland had been invaded by the Romans, even though the vast majority of archaeologists and historians are convinced it never was. There are a fair amount of Roman finds in the country, some from sealed archaeological contexts, which you could use to support your case. But if these Roman objects are looked at in greater detail and their original contexts examined, then it becomes apparent that the artifacts are of the portable variety: pottery, coins, and jewelry. Roman objects in Ireland are usually found at religious sites, such as the huge burial mound at Newgrange, north of Dublin, which were already thousands of years old by the Roman period. This would indicate that, rather than signifying a Roman invasion, the objects were the result of religious offerings by pilgrims, probably visiting from Britain. A cursory glance at the artifacts in isolation could never have arrived at this conclusion.

Of course, one must always be careful to distinguish between genuine and spurious mysteries, and for this reason a few puzzles of the spurious category have been included in this book. It is surprising how many apparently inexplicable mysteries (especially those relating to unusual objects) prove on closer examination to have prosaic explanations. With the proliferation of Websites dedicated to ancient mysteries, secret societies, and out-of-place artifacts, stories are fabricated entirely on