Customer Reviews

How the Shaman Stole the Moon: In Search of Ancient Prophet- Scientists from Stonehenge to the Grand Canyon

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a trained astronomer and someone who has both taught the subject at the college level and been published in the sub-field of native american astronomy, I was amazed that someone from outside the field could make such a valuable contribution as this book is. It's both technically sound and entertaining to read. The explanations and arguments should be easily graspable by the educated layperson or novice at astronomy. They're plausible without being outlandish.

The book is especially good at giving an appreciation for how difficult it was for early scientists to acquire the basic understandings we now take for granted. Highly recommended to those interested in either prehistoric southwest peoples or the arcane area of the development of non-western timekeeping, calendars, and observational astronomy.

How did ancient peoples accurately depict the arrival of solar eclipses? They didn't have a NASA website, the concept that the earth was round, or the benefit of Copernicus' earth is not the center of the universe concept (not published until the 1500's). The author looks from Stonehenge to the walls of the Grand Canyon to the ancient Mayans to try to think how the ancients thought. It's a sort of how did we know what we knew before we should have known it puzzle. There's a lot about the degrees of the horizon, but it's still an interesting look at our past. If you're interested in native American culture then you'll enjoy the book more. While the author admits the difficulty in proving his ideas, he does outline 13 methods that might have been used and makes many interesting observations about the way things could have been.