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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

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