Customer Reviews

Mysteries of the Ancient World

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So, why am I disappointed?

I was hoping for an theme-based work that looked at different mysterious objects, behaviors and cultures of the ancient world across the world and made comparisons and connections between them.

Instead, this book is a series of unrelated articles that have the look and feel of the National Geographic style. Don't get me wrong - I like the National Geographic style but the book as a whole lacks flow and feels more like a copy of the magazine than a special book. It is not an integrated work and leaves out plenty of big mysteries (Great Zimbabwe, Nazca Lines, Petra, the Olmecs) in favor of smaller mysteries such as the Etruscans and Catal Huyuk.

Topics include:

Etruscans
Ice age cave paintings
Stonehenge and related Megaliths
Minoan civilization
Mycenaean civilization
Catal Huyuk & Jericho
Easter Island, South Pacific Ocean
Ancient Egypt
Ancient India

When I got this book I was expecting it to contain so much more than it did. Basically what the reader gets is the same information about the pyramids, Stonehenge, and Easter Island that can be found in just about any other book. There is no new information in it, but it does have some great pictures and photos.

I admit that the book may seem to some as going over old ground, but this book is compiling the main artifacts from nine separate points on a global scale that occurred up to 75,000 years ago!
The similarities of each of these cultures should spell-bound any thought provoking individual. How, before the creation of the wheel, the water vessels, and written languages, let alone possible verbal skills did they do almost the same form of functions?
Each society worshiped the female deities, a mother goddess rendition and they were thousands of miles away from one another.
Each early civilization used the swirl work of art to depict the unseen energy field, the universal powers that worked for or against their efforts of life.
Each culture adhered to utilizing stone, from pebble sized on up to several tons to depicted spiritualness and forms of entertainment.
This book summarizes the similarities, through scientific impossible tasks with modern day head scratching to the known reasonings of long ago. While the scientist speculate, we should observe the wonderment of how societies in the beginning maintained a delicate balance with nature that steered clear of catastrophic proportions- like the ones our sciences today claim we are experiencing and have contributed to during our civilized societies of today.
The photography is the best that can be viewed on the ancient artifacts that should have long but crumbled from 75,000 years ago. When several books claim that the so called artifact is made of gold, this book had no need to explain it, from the professionally done photography, you will see for yourself that the piece is non other than gold, pure quartz crystal, or even marble versus granite stone. Wait until you see the obsidian mirror that ancient Catal Huyuk women had once used 8,000 years ago (pg 50), it's a polished beauty that will outlast many more civilizations yet to come!