Better than Hipparchus.......................................................................................252
Times of decay...................................................................................................253
Dogs, uncles and revenge ..................................................................................258
Scientists with something to say.........................................................................260
Chapter 32 ............................................................................................................262
A message in the bottle of time..........................................................................263
Mill of pain.........................................................................................................264
Part VI .......................................................................................................................267
Chapter 33 ............................................................................................................268
Inexplicable precision ........................................................................................269
Black hole in history...........................................................................................271
Ships in the desert .............................................................................................272
Chapter 34 ............................................................................................................274
Time and motion................................................................................................274
Rampant stupidity..............................................................................................276
The guardian and the vision ...............................................................................278
Under Egyptian skies..........................................................................................279
Thinking like giants ...........................................................................................281
Chapter 35 ............................................................................................................283
Trivializing the mystery......................................................................................284
The cupboard was bare ......................................................................................286
Bottlenecks in the well-shaft...............................................................................290
Not like other tombs ..........................................................................................291
A certain smell ... ...............................................................................................292
Overview............................................................................................................295
Chapter 36 ............................................................................................................297
A singular oppression ... ....................................................................................297
The moving finger writes and having writ it moves on ........................................300
Pandora’s Box ....................................................................................................303
Chapter 37 ............................................................................................................305
The Beacon ........................................................................................................305
7
Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS
Mind games of the pyramid builders ..................................................................307
Unknown dark distance......................................................................................309
The Queen’s Chamber........................................................................................312
Instrument .........................................................................................................313
Chapter 38 ............................................................................................................316
Antechamber .....................................................................................................317
Stone enigmas ...................................................................................................319
Ceremony of the sarcophagus ............................................................................322
The game-master ...............................................................................................324
Chapter 39 ............................................................................................................328
Temple of the giants ..........................................................................................329
Lord of Rostau ...................................................................................................332
Vastly, remotely, fabulously ancient ...................................................................333
Whose Sphinx is it anyway? ................................................................................335
Part VII ......................................................................................................................339
Chapter 40 ............................................................................................................340
Bauval’s Stars and West’s Stones ........................................................................341
The way of the jackal .........................................................................................345
Chapter 41 ............................................................................................................347
Connections and similarities ..............................................................................349
Gift of the Gods? ................................................................................................350
Chapter 42 ............................................................................................................354
Broken images of a lost technology?...................................................................355
Repositories of a lost science?............................................................................356
The train of the Sun and the dweller in Sirius......................................................359
Millions of years and the movements of the stars ...............................................361
Copies, or translations?......................................................................................363
Last records of the First Time?............................................................................364
Chapter 43 ............................................................................................................367
Records of prehistory .........................................................................................367
Gods, Demigods and Spirits of the Dead ............................................................369
Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus.........................................................................370
The Turin Papyrus and the Palermo Stone...........................................................372
Chapter 44 ............................................................................................................375
Breath of the divine serpent ...............................................................................376
Osiris and the Lords of Eternity .......
...................................................................378
Serene stability ..................................................................................................381
Chapter 45 ............................................................................................................383
Atef Crown.........................................................................................................383
Seventeen centuries of kings ..............................................................................385
Hypogeum .........................................................................................................385
The most ancient stone building in Egypt ...........................................................387
Frankfort’s facts.................................................................................................391
Setting sail across seas of sand and time............................................................393
Chapter 46 ............................................................................................................397
Kick-start ...........................................................................................................398
Climate Change..................................................................................................399
Unseen connections?..........................................................................................400
‘Where is the rest of this civilization?’.................................................................400
Chapter 47 ............................................................................................................402
John West...........................................................................................................402
Robert Schoch’s geology: Unriddling the Sphinx.................................................404
Legendary civilizations .......................................................................................407
Magellan and the first dinosaur bone .................................................................408
The problem of transmission..............................................................................410
8
Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS
Second opinion ..................................................................................................411
Chapter 48 ............................................................................................................413
Geodetic marker ................................................................................................414
Doing things by degrees ....................................................................................416
The Pyramid/Earth ratio .....................................................................................417
Matching fingerprints? .......................................................................................419
Navigators in the Boat of Millions of Years..........................................................420
The signature of a distant date...........................................................................423
Chapter 49 ............................................................................................................425
The Orion Mystery..............................................................................................426
The First Time....................................................................................................428
The platform......................................................................................................430
The cult .............................................................................................................431
The machine ......................................................................................................434
The second signature.........................................................................................436
Forcing the question ..........................................................................................440
Part VIII......................................................................................................................441
Chapter 50 ............................................................................................................442
Geophysical impossibilities ................................................................................442
Library angels ....................................................................................................444
The missing piece of the puzzle .........................................................................444
Gravitational influences......................................................................................447
The lost continent ..............................................................................................448
Chapter 51 ............................................................................................................450
A lifeless polar desert.........................................................................................452
Exhibit 1 ............................................................................................................453
Exhibit 2 ............................................................................................................454
Exhibit 3 ............................................................................................................455
Exhibit 4 ............................................................................................................455
Exhibit 5 ............................................................................................................455
Exhibit 6 ............................................................................................................455
Exhibit 7 ............................................................................................................455
Exhibit 8 ............................................................................................................456
Exhibit 9 ............................................................................................................456
The icy executioner............................................................................................458
Mars and earth...................................................................................................460
Memories of the polar dawn?..............................................................................461
An epoch of turmoil and darkness......................................................................462
Exhibit 11 ..........................................................................................................463
Exhibit 12 ..........................................................................................................463
Exhibit 13 ..........................................................................................................464
Exhibit 14 ..........................................................................................................464
Chapter 52 ............................................................................................................466
For the benefit of future generations of mankind ...............................................468
More than just Kilroy was here ...........................................................................470
The civiliz
ers......................................................................................................472
Transmitting the essence ...................................................................................473
An urgent mission..............................................................................................475
Walking in the last days......................................................................................479
The end of the world..........................................................................................480
At the millstone grinding ...................................................................................482
Selected Bibliography.................................................................................................483
9
Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS
Acknowledgements
Fingerprints of the Gods could not have been written without the
generous, warm-hearted and sustaining love of my partner Santha Faiia—
who always gives more than she takes and who enriches the lives of
everyone around her with creativity, kindness and imagination. All the
photographs in the book are her work.
I am also grateful for the support and encouragement of our six
children—Gabrielle, Leila, Luke, Ravi, Sean and Shanti—each one of whom
I feel privileged to know.
My parents, Donald and Muriel Hancock, have been incredibly helpful,
active and involved through this and many other difficult times and
projects. Together with my uncle James Macaulay they have also patiently
read the drafts of the evolving manuscript, offering a wealth of positive
suggestions. Thanks, too, to my oldest and closest friend, Peter Marshall,
with whom I have weathered many storms, and to Rob Gardner, Joseph
and Sherry Jahoda, Roel Oostra, Joseph and Laura Schor, Niven Sinclair,
Colin Skinner and Clem Vallance, all of whom gave me good advice.
In 1992 I suddenly found that I had a friend in Lansing, Michigan. His
name is Ed Ponist and he got in touch with me soon after the publication