Dead Men's Secrets: Tantalising Hints of a Lost Super Race

Rating:
Summary: Tantalising Hints, Indeed
Review: "Dean Men's Secrets" tackles the ancient archaelogical anomalies mentioned by Graham Hancock, Erich Von Daniken and the like. If you've read his books, you know the questions that are being asked. How were the pyramids built? How were stones bigger than any we can lift today with macuhinery carried from quarries across treacherous mountains. Why do so many religions have a story of a worldwide flood? Why are gods in "flying chariots" often mentioned in myths and legends? Is carbon dating really that accurate? Questions like these have sparked the imagination of many.

Daniken pointed the finger at aliens. Jonathan Gray and his think tank of associates come up with a different theory. A very different theory. Gray suggests that there was a worldwide flood, that wiped out all mankind. There was Noah and his ark, and everything that went with it. Not only was the original world population wiped out, but a super civilization with technology beyond our own was as well. They had planes, they had ships, they had machinery, they had electricity. They may even have travelled in space. Post-flood, the descendants of Noah tried to recreate past glories, but whose memory, knowledge and lifespans soon dwindled away. Mankind used to live a lot longer. We are not becoming more intellegent, we are not evolving for the better, says Gray, we are getting worse, in accordance with Newton's second law of thermodynamics rather than Darwin's theory of Evolution. Aliens were not the white giants of lore, we were!

It's a Christian perspective, yes, but the very, very interesting thing is that Jonathan Gray was not a Christian when he started. At the time of writing the book, you can tell he's still trying to make sense of it as much as his readers. With a very enjoyable, easy going writing style, he uses a combination of speculative fiction, stories of his archaeological findings, reasoning and stockpiles of evidence to prove his point - be they survivng artifact anomalies, written descriptions, or interpretation of myth, legend and oral folklore from all around the world. Even if you're not convinced, you'll learn a lot about world cultures on the way. There are some very interesting pieces of myth and folklore out there.

Like the previous reviewer mentioned, the sparse amount of footnotes is a bit frustrating. On almost every footnote there was, I scuffled back to the end of the book to read more, eager to know where this evidence had come from. The important thing is that Gray has gathered the evidence from the many books on ancient anomalies, the archaelogical journals and articles on "the unexplained" and his own findings, and brought them together into an easy to read, easy to flick through book. The evidence tables are very easy on the eye, you can scan through and find the evidence you want. Think of it as a compendium of evidence, a quick reference point. If you are searching for more, the bibliography Gray provides is quite substantial. I must get my hands on some of the books he mentions. There are very few pictures, though thanks to the internet, you can find pics of many of the things Gray mentions. Just punch it in to a search engine, you're sure to find some of it.

I'd recommend this book to those interested in archaeology, Christians looking for some evidence to counter the case for evolution and back up their faith, and to lovers of the unexplained. It's another theory to add to the pot. Very tantalizing hints indeed. It's my favourite book addressing ancient anomalies, and I have read it time and time again.

(There's a companion volume by Gray called "64 Secrets Still Ahead of Us", which further explores the evidence for ancient technology even higher than ours. It doesn't seem to be available on amazon.com, but it's worth tracking down if you enjoyed "Dead Men's Secrets".)

Rating:
Summary: Great information but
Review: First of all, the information is worth 5 stars. (original writtten in the eighties btw)

I heard this author speak on C2C and Rense in 2003 and 2004 and was very impressed with the information he gave, so I looked for his book. At the very least his book clearly proves that there has always been contact between all the continents on the world. But it also proves that ancient men did have (at times and at certain places)knowledge of advanced physics / math and astronomy although the civilizations seemed to be smaller (compared to us, but still big) more concentrated and differently orientated than our massive, overpopulated, consumer-goods, oil based societies. Most of this knowledge was lost during some point in our history, partly through one or more natural disasters and partly through very destructive wars.

This book is not really an easy read because after the first chapters it is just a steady stream of short 'points of comparison'. However, it does a marvelous job in giving people the big picture because he could put a big part of the spectrum in 1 book in this way. That is also why it is so interesting, there are few books, if any that will give you so much information in such a short amount of time.

The reason I give it 4 stars is not because of the information given, but because of the sloppy finishing touch of the book:

For $20,- I would expect:

1. Decent pictures. The pictures are extremely bad.
2. not too many typo's. The first chapters are filled with them. One was particularly annoying: 'Bauche map' was spelled as 'Zauche map'. I was wondering why I couldn't find anything on this map until I found the name 'bauche' further in his book. In the first 2 or 3 chapters you will notice one typo every few pages. Later on till the end of the book it's mostly fine, but somewhere in the middle of the book most of a mentioned 'point of comparison' has just been 'forgotten' to print.
3. complete sources. This is my biggest point of criticism. Every chapter is loaded with short points that are being summed up so you can see them as a whole in a larger context. With many of them I wanted to see the source but for some reason only the first half of the points named are listed in the back of the book in the sources list. When you have 26 points named in a chapter you can only find 1 to 13 back in the book, the rest just isn't there. Since I know some of the sources that were 'forgotten' I know that they are not made-up, so I think it's (again) just the sloppy finishing touch of the book.

So, I absolutely recommend this book because it is one of the best in this area. However, the publisher did a horrible job, high quality information should be put in a high quality book. It's really the worst finishing touch I have seen in a long time.