Hey Guys any good recommendations?
I don't know if this will hold your interest as it isn't mainstream and presents an alternative "history". I am halfway through this interesting book - Fingerprints of the Gods - The Quest Continues by Graham Hancock. Being a long-time lover of conspiracy and alternate theories, I find the book totally engrossing.
I will attempt a synopsis of the questions it raises (and tries to answer):
1) whether the oldest known written cuneiform (baked) clay tablets of the Sumerians (dated at about 5000 years old) are really the oldest written records of human history?
2) who were the earliest inhabitants of central and south America? Why are there so many large, pre-Aztec (meaning well before Europeans discovered the new world in the 16th century AD and later brought in people of African descent) rock statues in Mexico depicting peoples of negroid facial features? Who were the gods Quetzalcoatl in central America and Viracocha in the Andean range? why are they depicted as bearded and tall Caucasian civilisers? Where did the pre-Aztec/Mayan civilisations who were said to have built the numerous pyramids manage to transport rocks so large across great distances from their quarries? And what tools did they use to cut them to such precision? why are there so many parallel but independent mythologies across south American civilsations and Sumerian/Egyptian ones? What is meant by the various suns/era - a.k.a. yug in Hindu mythologies (like the fifth sun that ended in a whimper on 23 December 2012)? Why were the Mayans/Aztecs so obsessed with accurately measuring time? And how did they get to be so accurate?
3) who was Piri Reis, the Turkish Admiral? Where, in 1513 AD, did he get the information or knowledge to draw an accurate map of the Antarctic landmass shorn of its mile-thick snow cover?
4) why are there great flood myths, all of them essentially saying the same thing, spread right across every nook and corner of the world, including primitive societies in the Amazonian and Andean forests, Australian aborigines, China, Japan, most of Europe, and north America (about 500 at last count)?
5) the importance of the earth's precession of the equinoxes and how it affects literally everything on earth including the cycle of seasons, and how it is used as a primary astronomical "metronome" as it goes through its cycle once every 25776 years.
6) Did the last ice age that ended around 11000-12000 years ago wiped out distant but highly developed civilisations that thrived before this event?
Questions, questions
