America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization

Until very recently there was almost universal agreement amongst scientists that human beings first entered the Americas from Siberia around 13,000 years ago by walking into Alaska across the Bering landbridge. Over the next two thousand years their descendants supposedly spread out through Central and South America reaching the southern tip of Chile by about 11,000 years ago. Meanwhile the Ice Age ended, sea level rose, the Bering landbridge was submerged and the Americas were isolated from the rest of the world. Largely on account of this consensus there has not been a single serious attempt in modern scholarship to investigate the possibility that the Americas might have played an important part in the still incomplete story of human origins, or in the equally incomplete story of the origins of civilization. Thanks to scientific advances, and to archaeological and geological discoveries made in the past five years, we now know that the Americas were populated by humans for tens of thousands of years before the previously accepted date. Deeply puzzling and hitherto unsuspected genetic connections have also emerged - for example linking Native Americans both with Australian Aborigines and with Western Europeans. The quiet revolution in scholarship that has demonstrated that humans were present in the Americas for at least 50,000 years before we were previously taught they had arrived, also requires us to seek answers to another pressing question : what were these 'lost Americans' doing during all the opaque and hitherto unexplored millennia when they were not supposed to be in the 'New World' at all? Now we know that scientists missed the evidence of the earlier human presence entirely until the discoveries of the last five years or so forced them to rethink their model, it becomes legitimate to ask - what else has been missed? In particular, is it possible that missing pages in the story of the origins of civilization might await discovery in North America - the very last place, until now, that archaeologists have thought to look? ...

Hancock's book is an absorbing big-picture analysis as well as a cautionary tale.

Préface
Could shattering secrets about the deep past of humanity await discovery in North America?

Auteur

As East Africa correspondent of The Economis*t in the early eighties Graham Hancock began to write a series of highly acclaimed books on economics, politics and foreign aid. His life took a whole new turn when he became fascinated by rumours that the Ark of the Covenant is real artefact, hidden somewhere in northern Africa. The story of his detective work, tracking it down to its supposed final resting place became the international bestseller *The Sign and the Seal (now in production as a feature film.) More bestsellers in the field of 'alternative history' followed, including Fingerprints of the Gods, Keeper of Genesis (the latter co-authored with Robert Bauval) and Heaven's Mirror. In Supernatural he described his experiences journeying to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs amongst tribes people for whom they represent a gateway into supernatural realms. His ideas on exploring new dimensions in consciousness became the subject of his controversial TED talks.
Graham Hancock's books have been translated into twenty-seven languages and have sold over nine million copies worldwide. His public lectures and broadcasts, including two major TV series for Channel 4, Quest for the Lost Civilisation, and Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age, have further established his reputation as an unconventional thinker who raises controversial questions about humanity`s past.