Customer Reviews

Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Graham Hancock has been producing various books speculating that an ancient and previously unknown civilization existed in the Paleolithic era for about ten years now. Periodically he changes the proposed location of the civilization, originally thought to be Antarctica in Fingerprints of the Gods and now under the sea in Underworld. Regardless of where Hancock thinks this civilization was to be found, he tells an entertaining story with much that bears thinking about.

All of Hancock's books are part history, part travel guide. One of the more enjoyable aspects of Underworld are all the stories about his various travels and travails as he examines different areas of the world for evidence of ancient cities and buildings. He is always eager and excited to find out more, and lets nothing, not even the ubiquitousness of bureaucracy ( his stories of the red tape involved in getting permission to dive in places like the Persian Gulf are worthy of the old Yes Minister show ) get him down.

Besides the travel stories, Hancock is worth reading because he has come up with an amazing amount of material which at least brings into question the accepted theories about the human past. I hope that his journalistic, rather than academic, credentials will not lead many to dismiss his theories, because they do deserve more study.

Archaeologists have been pushing back the date of humanity's first attempts at agriculture and the civilization that follows it. An inexplicable commonality is seen in agriculture emerging in distant places at nearly the same time. Self-confessed - sorry, self-adulatory - Graham Hancock thinks there's an answer for that chronological similarity. He contends agriculture, and civilization reach even further back in time than evidence found in places like Iran or Turkey suggests. He thinks the legends and mythologies of India, Malta and South America point to a multitude of "Atlantis-like" urbanised cultures that have disappeared from view - under water.

"Underworld" is a collation of ancient legends, old maps, submerged evidence and innovative thinking that gives humanity much deeper roots than previously thought. Hancock dives into the world's offshore depths, trolls through a wealth of mythologies, views unusual and unexplained artefacts and comes up with a challenge to consensus archaeology. Was there a global sprinking of advanced civilizations at the end of the last Ice Age? Did the melting ice caps drown more than the various land bridges that connected the British Isles with Europe, Sri Lanka with India and Alaska with Siberia? If Hancock is correct, and he is not to be dismissed lightly, humanity achieved far greater social complexity during the glacial advances than just living in caves wrapped in bear skins. What appears to be a near simultaneous emergence of agriculture, he argues, is in reality what we see left over from much older societies.

Hancock has made dives in many of the sites revealed by fishermen, archaeologists and others, recording finds on video and still camera and maps. The images are impressive, as are the numbers of potential sites. Utilising computer generated maps of the sea's rise after the Great Meltdown of the glaciers, he shows the logic of his thesis with compelling evidence. He's careful to note where the data seems firm as well as lacking. Where lacking, he urges more scientific attention to these places.

Although he justifiably spends most of the account on locations in India, where in some places the sea has invaded over 700 kilometres since the last Last Glacial Maximum, his relation of Japanese sites makes the most compelling reading. There, some of the longest-lived legends indicate Japan's oldest settlers, the Jomon, preceded the West in the establishment of agriculture and settled communities. Where scholars once held these people were "simple hunter-gatherers", Hancock sees evidence of rice growing nearly twelve thousand years old. Temple styles found today are duplicated in undersea sites, in some places nearby as if the sea simply pushed the people and their culture inland. These people may have followed the "Black Current" across the Pacific to establish settlements along the western coast of South America.

Hancock is careful to separate the known from the speculative, and not all of the speculations are his. Scholars in the places he visits are contributers to this innovative idea. So many sites and such commonality of legend add up to a highly plausible notion. Regrettably, even while crediting these researchers with empirical methods, Hancock is a bit too full of himself. Long passages of his problems, illness, fright from daring pilots cruising mountain passes permeate the book. By restricting himself to the scholars, their evidence coupled with his own and other researchers' ideas, he could have made this account less tedious while recounting adventures and exploration. Even the computer-generated maps are often repeated unnecessarily. He raises serious questions which deserve serious study. Hancock makes a compelling introduction, but we await a less self-indulgent approach. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Author and explorer Graham Hancock continues his pursuit of uncovering clues to the past, this time under the sea. Underworld is the narrative of a journey through the Mediterranean, the Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, Bay of Bengal and the Pacific Ocean around Indonesia, Japan and Taiwan in which underwater structures of possible human origin are explored. The government of India has recently authenticated two of Hancock's discoveries off the coast of that country. In both cases, these structures are dated between 9000 and 11 000 years before the current era, which supports the theory of a great flood that submerged vast areas of land at that time. What I really like about Hancock is that he provides the orthodox view at the same time as his own theories. I cannot but agree with his statement, "There's something wrong with the underpinning of history." Hancock has indicated the most likely places for pre-flood civilizations with the help of Dr. Glen Milne of Durham University who is an expert on glaciation-induced changes in the sea level, and taking into account the plethora of flood-myths found amongst all cultures on all continents. Underworld is lavishly illustrated and well served by a thorough index and extensive bibliography. This gripping text will amply reward the reader who enjoyed Hancock's earlier titles like Keepers of Genesis and Fingerprints of the Gods. Hancock deserves credit for stimulating interest in history and archaeology. He was the writer that created interest in those little doors in the light shaft of the great pyramid that was recently in the news. Let's hope something will be revealed behind the second door! In the mean time, I thoroughly enjoy Hancock's speculations.

So we think there were human beings (homo sapiens) around during the most recent ice age. In documentaries, we tend to show these ancestors of ours as bearded, fur-wrapped stalkers of woolly mammoth, staggering around the tundra and pine forests of Europe trying to eke out an existence hand-to-mouth.

Of course, during the most recent ice age, the seas were lower by some hundred meters. And all the land that was exposed 20,000 years ago and is now underwater was low, coastal plain, perfect for agricultural settlement. If you were to look for an ice age civilization -- with ships, and farming, and real constructions -- the place to look would be underwater.

Think of it this way: if the oceans rose a hundred meters today, how much of our modern civilization would it swallow?

And of course, underwater archaeology is only in its infancy.

So this is a Graham Hancock book, a book about looking for tracks of ancient civilizations. It's also a book about diving. _Underworld_ is written in the comfortable travelogue / mystery style of _The Sign and the Seal_ and is very readable, very easy to follow. Hancock traipses around to exotic places like Malta, Japan and India, diving to purported submerged sites of megalithic architecture. Interspersed with this interesting narrative are his musings on literary and other traces that may reflect an ancient, ice age human civilization, now hidden by flood from human eyes.

Hancock, of course, may be wrong. But he may just be onto something, and even if not, he's never dull.

Graham Hancock got my undivided attention with "Fingerprints of the Gods". He has won my continued interest by writing and researching ancient and mysterious civilizations. The "new" location of his research is underwater, off shore in the Meditarranean, India, and Asia, i.e., Taiwan and Japan. He *does* includes some references to fascinating "finds" in the Caribbean, the Bahamas and a recent site discovered near Cuba. His writing style is most engaging and so is the subject matter.

I enjoy his ability to include 1) solid scientific evidence to back up his theories, 2) diaries he kept while exploring underwater sites, 3) a photo journal of monuments and structures (whether natural or man-made is yet to be determined) by his wife, 4) descriptions of what he actually sees, 5) ancient maps of the "old world", and 6) "inundation" computerized maps (scientific but limited) of what the world would have been like *before* the flood which occured after the Ice Age. Graham Hancock does a phenomenal job of describing how he got started in this research and he does a superior investigative report supporting his main theory, that many civilizations/ancient cities were wiped out worldwide due to the floods that occurred approximately 11,000 years ago. He and his wife learned to dive just so they could view first hand, the objects of their theories and research.

Initially, I was impressed that this was a 700+ page book. I found the first three parts of the book fascinating reading, fairly easy to get through. However, by part 4, I was tired and slowing down. When I got to part 5, I had to force myself to finish the book. I am glad I did *not* give up. It was very much worth learning about stone monuments found near islands owned by Japan. The monuments are either natural, man-made, or both - as of yet, the "experts" are uncertain. Most astonishing are Graham Hancock's use of "inundation maps", maps developed by computers, from scientific data fed into them, such as, how high the water levels rose after the ice melted, etc. Today's computerized maps are compared to existing ancient maps, such as, "the 1424 Pizzagano chart", the results are quite similar. For this alone, Graham Hancock deserves recognition by the scientific community and serious consideration for his theories. This is a highly recommended book, although in all honesty, it becomes tedious reading about half-way through. However, it is well worth finishing once you get started. I hope the US Public Broadcasting System (PBS) buys the "Underwater" UK TV film series of Graham Hancock's dives and searches - to view them would be awesome. Erika Borsos (erikab93)

This book is great and eye-opening. Everything in it makes incredible sense. Like most ancient civilisations, it makes sense that the most technologically and societtally advanced cultures were located on the shoreline. This is where the most trade would happen, where the most advancements would be necessary and where the development of advanced economics and languages would be prevalent. The book tracks the global idea of Atlantis and makes it clear why everyone claims this ancient civilisation as their own. They are global because every area of the world experienced a significant de-evolution nine thousand years ago and as the stories of these civilisations grew, the history became myth and legend. The world changed nine thousand years ago, and like so many civilisations speak about, we all had to start over again.

The book itself would be an incredible 300 page book, but the book decides to dwell in some mundane intracacies, possibly in an attempt to gain legitimacy for a non-peer editted document, but there are things to gain from every section, even if it does get repetitive at times.

I believe this is a far more important book than most people realize. While the author suffers from a lack of editing and brevity, he more than makes up for it in his subject selection and hands-on detective work. I read the entire book and it was a detailed, highly convincing argument that mankind has done a really slipshod job of investigating our history in terms of looking at the oceans of the world.

I thought the photographs in the book were fantastic and my only complaint is that there weren't more of them! Especially interesting were the underwater photos of Yonaguni which I find almost impossible to believe could be natural phenomena. I wish Mr. Hancock had also put together a DVD release of this material as I think that the actual pictures tell a story that the written word itself can hardly match. The author does actually mention the difficulty of underwater photography in the various locations he travels and this is part of the importance of the book; that is, that we need advances in our ability to image places we are investigating in order to tell the story to the public and thereby capture both imagination and funding in order to continue exploring the hidden history of mankind.

Those who gave this book bad reviews are ignoring the fact that, to my knowledge, modern history has absolutely no explanation at all for formations like Yonaguni, if it is indeed man-made. The author's book is, as far as I can tell, one of the only attempts to provide any kind of real explanation for this. Yonaguni is an anomaly whose only other explanation (that it is a natural formation) is almost impossible to believe.

With some additional editing, etc., in a second edition, this book could easily rate five stars. And the subject matter is important enough that it needs to.

I love this book - the way it makes such a clear and thorough case for the existence of advanced ancient pre-historic, pre-flood, ice age civilizations - ones that were capable of engineering (large cities and temples), agriculture, mathematics, astronomy, global oceanic navagations and cartography long before we thought possible. This is an amazingly interesting and important subject and I thank Hancock for doing so much detective work, synthetic thinking, and having a willingness to question and stay open minded. Many of his critics may know more about aspects of this research but they clearly don't keep as open or curious a mind as he does. And they obviously don't care or dare to put the puzzle pieces together. He may be wrong about some (or many) of the details, but that doesn't change the big picture that emerges.

I also agree with many other reviewers that Hancock needs a better editor, someone willing to condense and simplify and keep him from repeating his line of inquiry from various different angles (which in a perverse way works by showing the way he approached the subject and had insight unfold). He has potential to be a great writer given an even greater editor! Part of the problem is he is brilliant and in his long winded way weaves a fascinating, even spell binding story. I think all his books would benefit from re-edited future editions which condense the good and revise/remove his more questionable theories.... (this appears to be what was done with the 2nd edition of SUPERNATURAL, where something like 8 chapters of academic detail was condensed into one. I found that book a delight and a breeze to read.)

I am a fan of Graham Hancock, having fallen in love with his books on ancient civilizations. I was so eager to read UNDERWORLD that I sent away to Amazon.uk for it. What I received was an 800-page tome that stirred the mind as well as put me to sleep.

To summarize, Hancock theorizes that the end of the Great Ice Age ended with vast areas of precious real estate innundated by seawater. These often were coastal cities settled by civilized members of the Indus, Japanese, Maya and other cultural groups. The theory makes a great deal of sense, especially in light of the amazing findings a Russian submarine research vehicle has been finding off the coast of Cuba.

Surely, all combined, the vast, lost areas of Africa, South Ameerica, Asia and other continents could more than make up for a lost Atlantis. So, Hancock dives, searching for a lost civilization that all that traditional archeologists have ignored.

This is fine work, until Hancock gets bogged down with incredible details. We slog through a boring discussion of whether molars on Malta were Neolithic or not. We meander around India, never quite getting to the bottom of what lay between Ceylon and the mainland. Hancock swims over the famous Bimini Road in the Bahamas only to leave undecided whether the formation is natural or man-made.

To make matters worse, the usually fine photographs by Hancock's wife Santha Faiia are so murky and indistinct that it's impossible to make up one's own mind.

Hancock's done an impressive bit of scholarship here. And I'm glad he's dropped his previous pet notion that Antarctica was Atlantis that somehow "slipped" to the bottom of the planet. I only wish the book weren't so mired in trivia and digression. A good editor could have trimmed this book by more than half and produced an exciting, revealing work of nonfiction.

Before all the Graham Hancock fans out there get twerked off at me for the low 2 star rating on this book...hear me out.

Go back and read my 5 star Fingerprints of the Gods review and you will see that I consider Hancock a genius of sorts.

The man is brilliant.....too brilliant. But in Fingerprints Graham clearly latches on to Einstiens theory of Earth Crust Displacement as researched by Charles Hapgood. but in Underworld that seems blown by the wayside. His work here and his conclusions seems like a book that someone who is writing a version of history that relegates Fingerprints to the sidelines would write; only problem is...both books were written by the same man.

There is a really fascinating book within the pages of this mass patience warping accumulation of information.

Hancock just over did it this time.

Here is what I mean: In Fingerprints of the Gods you can do a neat trick...just pick up the book and open it to any section on any page and you can start reading and be totally fascinated by the subject.

Fingerprints is that good. Almost every sentence is riveting!!!

Underworld is at times as boring as a government information manual.

Huge sections of information about Hindu gods blah...blah...blah...TOO MUCH Graham....

There are sections of Underworld (if you are willing to look for them) that are just mind boggling in what they present and propose...but you will have to approach the book as if it were a raw manuscript and you were a tireless editor.

Perhaps Hancock is a big and powerful man in publishing now and no one is willing stop and say...."Hey Graham lets just put half of this in the woodstove and heat the house for a few days!"

Hancock is one smart puppy...no doubt...and I suppose there is no crime in going through life knowing more than you need to...but there is something that seems vaguely sadistic about making folks listen to everything you know or can find out about.

In Fingerprints, Hancock seems at times impatient and indignant with the arrogance of the establishment and their often ludicrous assumptions and declarations.

Yet in Underworld, there is a definite and distasteful undercurrent of Hancock's own arrogance....a side of him that is not complimentary to the theories and information he is trying to present.

Drunks babble on in this manner a lot, and intellectual drunks are the worse...but if Hancock was sober when he handed this megalithic manuscript in....then perhaps it was some cowardly Editor who in a drunken stupor said, "Hey....looks fine like it is!"