<HTML>I have a question to anyone with the great new FOG to hand.
In the first edition, I was struck by one short passage in particular. In Chapter 46, in the section called "Kick-start," Hancock droned on about an "agricultural experiment" in Egypt in ca. 13,000 BC that ended ("inexplicably," of course) in ca. 10,500 BC.
What struck me most about the passage was two things:
(1) The timeframe was for the very period when the LC should be doing all sorts of great things around the world -- measuring the planet's surface, making the maps that would be passed down to Piri Reis, establishing the cardinal temples, plotting precession, mapping stars, and generally jaunting all about in their great ships from tropical Antartica. So what grand finds attested this brilliant flourishing of global civilization? I quote: "grinding stones and sickle blades" (the latter presumably of stone). Erm, not exactly what one would expect from the great LC. Nevertheless, within one page these extremely modest finds had become "simple but extremely effective" tools. This, of course, would be true of stone age tools going back tens of thousands of years. It's rhetoric, not argument. Oh, I forgot; I suppose a "spiritually based" culture will not leave any physical traces for archaeologists to find. How very convenient.
(2) Even more wonderful was the following rhetorical sleight-of-hand in and around this section. In the space of seven short paragraphs we go from "the early agricultural <i>experiment</i>" to the "palaeolothic agricultural <i>revolution</i>" to "a golden age of agricultural plenty"!!!!!
Marvellous.
Now Mikey Brass informs me that this early agricultural experiment in Egypt has been categorically refuted and that Hancock has known about this refutation for over a year.
So, I ask, has the FOG cleared in this respect? Has the text been altered, has a footnote been added, or has the issue been addressed in the retraction-packed introduction?
Best,
Garrett</HTML>
