Civilization One - Alan Butler, Christopher Knight

In my everlasting quest to find the true roots of rise to power I read many books that cover the same territory, once you push back into the darkest shadows of our earliest times, there is only so much you can find to discuss. Urbanization, global politics, industrial power, economics and even warfare are relatively modern phenomena's and as such leaves a lot less to be discussed as we search for mans beginnings. Also the further back in time that ...
...found to work with. The passage of time, weathering, the temporal nature of the materials used and even mans own subsequent activities means that any major additions to the archaeological record are very unlikely. So if there is only a limited amount of tools to work with, how is it that books looking to re-position in time mans personal genesis seem to be hitting the bookshops almost weekly? The reason seems to be that although everyone one is working ... more

In my everlasting quest to find the true roots of rise to power I read many books that cover the same territory, once you push back into the darkest shadows of our earliest times, there is only so much you can find to discuss. Urbanization, global politics, industrial power, economics and even warfare are relatively modern phenomena's and as such leaves a lot less to be discussed as we search for mans beginnings. Also the further back in time that we look, the less evidence there is likely to be found to work with. The passage of time, weathering, the temporal nature of the materials used and even mans own subsequent activities means that any major additions to the archaeological record are very unlikely. So if there is only a limited amount of tools to work with, how is it that books looking to re-position in time mans personal genesis seem to be hitting the bookshops almost weekly? The reason seems to be that although everyone one is working with the same material, what differs is how you interpret that material. One mans notched-carved stick is another mans astrological calendar if you like, it just depends on how you read what is in front of you. So a book in this area seems to sink or swim on new evaluation of the evidence, rather than the evidence itself. So if the measure of a book of this kind is in new interpretation rather than descriptive fact, what makes this one work, if indeed it does?

Before I head off into the text and its arguments, it pays to say a bit about the authors. Christopher Knight is probably best known for his co-authorship of The Hiram Key, a book looking at ritual freemasonry and its origins. But it is a lesser known and less sensational book called Uriel's Machine that acts as a better introduction to this book, dealing as it does with the science of measurement in mans earliest times. Alan Butler brings both the skills of writing and a practical knowledge of engineering to the table as well as being a playwright and dramatist. This combination of practical expertise and a wide range of literary skills would seem to be an excellent combination when putting together a book of this kind.

The book opens by breaching the "great wall of history" as they term it. What they mean by this is that popular mainstream teaching of history has distorted its true nature, a common starting point for many books of this type, but here they manage to explain themselves more eloquently than previous authors have done. Our current understanding of history is based on the work of egocentric Victorian world views, in many ways, a world view that looked out of a white, imperialistic and industrialised empire and viewed the past very much in terms of how much of a contribution towards that creation various cultures had made. Greeks and Egyptians, obviously, were exalted as being the building blocks of the modern world for the splendours that they left behind, but anything further back in time was viewed with the same distain as the native peoples conquered by the red coated colonial armies of the day. What this effectively created was a short view of history. The Egyptian empire was then, and even now, is seen as one of the earliest periods of history when in reality if viewed in the context of a possible 2 million year existence of mankind should be seen as fairly recent. So with the ill placed "great wall" established, we are invited to see what lies on the other side of it.

The starting point of this book is the science of measurement and particularly the Megalithic Yard. Only a reading of 250 page work will explain how their theory works as its not an idea that easily condensed into a brief overview such as this. The main thrust is that ancient monuments, like modern day counter parts are built using the same principles and the most fundamental is a way of reckoning distances. With this in mind the authors claim to have identified what they call the Megalithic yard and many of are ancient monuments and structures across the world are build using round units and proper fractions of this length. In a world where standardised measurement was hard to create, the only feasible way of creating a universal measuring system was to create it from constants such as the movement of heavenly bodies when viewed from great distances against the passage of time. But that is just the beginning, once a basic standard is established it opens up a whole system of measurement that eventually evolved into our modern systems. The hour, minute, second, pound and pint are all much older than we give them credit for and the book also follows these systems through history to chart their evolution and application.

The conclusion of such a standardisation is that only a global community that had a fairly mobile element and easy communication could have left a legacy such as this. And although the book stays mainly on the subject of measuring systems it does span the whole globe in its search and their strong evidence does suggest that they have uncovered evidence of a more organised past than the one that we currently hold to be true. It is a technical sort of book with a certain amount of elementary maths, which needs to be taken on board to fully understand their theory. The reason that it works is because unlike some of the larger wide ranging approaches to the subject that have gone before, this takes a very specific element of the past and shows how it is suggestive of a larger argument and instead of trying to be all things to all people, it is very focused on its corridor of interest. On top of my recommendation with none other than Colin Wilson proclaiming it as "one of the biggest breakthroughs of all time" this may well prove to be a massively important book in its field.

The book is published by Watkins (1-84293-095-8) at £16.99 but I purchased mine from The Ancient and Medieval History Book Club for around £12.00 and I'm sure in second had copies will be available on E-bay and Amazon for a fraction of that.
 

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