Fingerprints of the Gods

Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization is a 1995 pseudoarcheology book by British writer Graham Hancock, which contends that an advanced civilization existed in prehistory, one which served as the common progenitor civilization to all subsequent known ancient historical ones. The author proposes that sometime around the end of the last ice age this civilization ended in cataclysm, but passed on to its inheritors profound knowledge of such things as astronomy, architecture and mathematics. Hancock's views are based on the idea that mainstream interpretations of archaeological evidence are flawed or incomplete. His book has been compared to Ignatius Donnelly's Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882). The book was followed by Magicians of the Gods. Hancock argues for a civilisation centered on Antarctica (which lay farther from the South Pole than today) that supposedly left evidence (the "fingerprints" of the title) in Ancient Egypt and American civilisations such as the Olmec, Aztec and Maya. Hancock discusses: creation myths describing deities like: Osiris, Thoth (Egypt) Quetzalcoatl (Mesoamerica) Viracocha (Andes) a range of archaeological sites such as Tiwanaku in Bolivia. Tiwanaku was a planned city which, according to UNESCO, reached its peak between 400 AD and 900 AD, but is assigned an earlier date by Hancock. Tiwanaku is also featured in other works of "alternative archaeology", including Von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods?. Von Däniken suggested that it provides evidence of an extraterrestrial civilisation, whereas Hancock does not argue for "ancient astronauts"; he proposes Atlantis as the origin of a lost civilisation. Hancock suggests that in 10,450 BC, a major pole shift took place. Before then, Antarctica lay farther from the South Pole than today, and after then, it shifted to its present location. The pole-shift hypothesis hinges on Charles Hapgood's theory of Earth Crustal Displacement. Hapgood had a fascination with the story of Atlantis and suggested that crustal displacement may have caused its destruction.