Whee ! Gods, flying machines, spacemen, landing strips marked out in stone on Salisbury plain and on Peruvian plateaux, mysteriously non-rusty iron pillars in India which look like Victorian electric batteries, unexplained things in coal beds which might be evidence of dinosaur technology, the ancient Israelites building the world’s most powerful capacitor according to YHWH’s instructions (relayed from his spaceship) in the form of the Ark of the Covenant – Erich von Daniken territory !
Trouble is when you read it, it’s all a load of “what if” and “if this then that” and “it could have been that”. Which, a couple of people down the line, then gets reported as “it was” and “it is” and “it happened”. Nowadays you don’t even need to convince a gullible publisher like von Daniken did, you just put it on a web site !
Have you come across the one yet where Venus was Earth’s twin planet and some improbable things happened to it so it spun away taking the ancient technologists with it but magically leaving Earth unchanged in our own orbit ?
Sorry Cliffy I don’t mean to dis your interests. Used to believe this stuff when I was a teenager, it’s nice and romantic to imagine it and we all know there is lots of knowledge that gets lost/suppressed/whatever because it doesn’t suit the leaders of the time. But eventually you have to say to yourself “hang on a minute – why did millions of spark plugs survive but not the cars themselves ?”
I don’t believe we know everything either and I try to keep an open mind. But I like to keep it in perspective with other things we know too. I’ll try to remember long enough 😉 to have a look if my mum kept those books, there are some good tales in there to discuss !
BTW I’ve seen that iron pillar, it’s impressive work for the 5th century but still just a decorated iron pillar !
