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Oohm,
Since taking Shakespeare 202 with Thelma Johnson ( a long time ago) I have also observed that when it comes to politicians, especially those of the academic persuasion, it seems to be construed as a sign of weakness for one to preface a new idea by saying something like "it appears as if it may be true that" X is right, even if the presenter things this would be more accurate.
All too commonly those fraught with a sort of intellectual form of penis envy drop the former and simply say "X is right", which not only has the effect of deluding the reader but is, in fact, tantamount to deception. Why this is done escapes me, but I think it has something to do with sounding tough. Semantical accuracy is sacfificed in the name of bravado, and John Q Public is usually led down a merry trail that culminates in a factual dead-end, or a cul-de-sac at best. At the end of the day and for no good reason, this poor trusting person is left thinking that if we were a Tarot Card, he'd have to be The Fool.
When I read FOG, I read it more than once and very carefully. Unfortunately I don't have my copy at hand, but nowhere at any point did Graham Hancock ever say that the pyramids were built around 12.5 thousand years ago. He suggested that this may be true, and for what appeared to be very good reason. As such, Martin Stower's allegation that he did say otherwise is wrong, and indicative of illiteracy on his part, or deceit.
Given the potentially libelous nature of this matter, I would like to invite all concerned parties, be they currently somewhere in Timbuktu, an internet cafe on the Isle of Ko Samui or the ivory towers of suburban England to prove to me, us, verbatim, that Graham ever said this, without prefacing it by a plausibility qualifier.
Once I was told by a friend of mine that you couldn't use qualifiers in the context of such weighty discussions, as if this went againt some sort of academic hardass code of conduct. The implicit notion was that introducing something as a hypothesis was the equivalent of presenting it as a theory, so trying to create such a distinction by saying "it seems" etc was beside the point: either way the presenter would or should stand accused of having said something he claimed to be fact. This line of thinking is utterly absurd.
If I could count all of the time I've spent in retrospect sorting out the mess that this erroneous nondistinction has created, I would need, not a clock, but a calendar, and if reincarnation is actually true, perhaps something more akin to Stonehenge...
Again, on this point I would like to invite anyone, but especially Martin to cite the relevant passage and show us exactly what Graham said on this point.
Oopsy! by the way, there was a typo above, in the third paragraph.
Actually, I meant to say...
"AS I RECALL, nowhere at any point did Graham Hancock ever say that the pyramids were built around 12.5 thousand years ago. I BELIEVE THAT he suggested that this may be true, and for what appeared to be very good reason. As such, Martin Stower's allegation that he did say this COULD BE wrong, and POSSIBLY indicative of illiteracy on his part, or deceit IF HE KNEW BETTER."
That changes things considerably, doesn't it. My apologies to all if the original version of this paragraph in any way misrepresented the positions of the concerned parties.
PS - By the way, I've just gotten an email from Peter regarding the alleged forgery issue, which has nothing to do with Graham but of Howard Vyse. I recall this name and the related matter rather vaguely, but can somebody tell how Vyse fits into not only the historical question, but Graham's usage of Vyse in Fingerprints of the Gods?</HTML>
