I'm a big fan of CreateSpace, and use it for putting out annual collections of print versions of these reviews, among other projects, but (as a former “real” publisher), I realize that there's a bit of a stigma about books coming out from that channel, as they're not “vetted”, and pretty much anybody with a PC can put out their scribblings there. I have, generally speaking, pooh-poohed much of this, but having Brien Foerster's Lost Ancient Technology Of Peru And Bolivia in hand, I can see where much of that criticism is coming from. Now, some would take issue with the subject here, but I specifically bought the book (at full retail, no less) because I was interested in that … but I'm shocked at the lack of editing and design exhibited here. Frankly, I wish that people like the author of this would hire people like me to do editing and lay-out for their books. At various points in reading this I was wondering if he was using one of those voice-to-Kindle programs (as there were a couple of places where sound-alike words appeared, such as “services” appearing instead of the clearly-intended “surfaces” - something that would not have resulted from keyboard input, even with an over-eager spellcheck program running), and at other points wondering if this had been cobbled together via cut-and-paste from a web site (as the text occasionally refers to images that weren't there, or weren't in the “location” indicated). I also suspect that this had been generated for Kindle first and then converted to print – something that would explain the otherwise mystifying (and extremely irritating) lack of page numbers. Aside from these issues, there were also at least a dozen egregious typos that should have been caught by a spellcheck (such as stray extra letters in the middle of common words), as well as “editorial/style” issues of apparently randomly using assorted variations of the spelling on culture or site names. Again, the vast majority of these issues would have been solved by a once-over by an actual editor.
While the subject matter here is fascinating, this is largely a “picture book”, with nearly every page having some image from either the author's explorations at the sites in South America, or pictures obtained from the web (which the author – obviously acclimated to the habitually more “grey area” IP conventions of the Internet – assumes were copyright free because he got them from “free file sharing sites”). I will give Foerster this, however … he's certainly not soaking the readers, as this 200+ page 8.5x11” book is priced at only $9.95, which means he's barely making a profit (a whopping 30¢) on “expanded distribution” bookstore sales, and only clearing two bucks and change via Amazon … I guess if you want professional editing and lay-out you gotta pay more.
Anyway … that bit of kvetching over … to the book itself.
I have been fascinated by the theories of the many authors in the “vanished ancient culture” niche, John Anthony West, Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval, Robert Schoch, Charles Hapgood, Rand Flem-Ath, and others, and this is certainly in that stream – if not theoretically so, at least in presenting a lot of architectural artifacts as being best explained by it. As devoted readers of this space (there are some, aren't there?) know, I've been down to Peru a couple of times, and have been to a few of the sites covered here, so I've seen first-hand some of the amazing stonework that's down there, but nowhere near the extraordinary things that Foerster shows throughout this volume. A prime example is that cover picture, which is looking down a perfectly drilled-out tube cut through extremely hard rock. Today, we'd probably have to use a specially lubricated diamond-tipped corer to replicate this … when the “official timeline” advocates claim these were made (i.e. by the Inca), there was nothing available that would have been able to make that, or any of the assorted inverted corners carved into andesite, basalt, and granite stones in the more megalithic construction phases.
One of the things I don't believe I'd encountered previously that the author injects several places through the book is the “Mohs scale”, which is a ranking of hardness of materials (based on what can scratch what), and most of these megalithic stones are in the 6-7 range on that scale … which is telling when you notice that steel is only a 4-4.5 on that scale, with materials like copper, brass, and bronze (that were typical of Incan tools) being only around a 3 … not likely to be able to be able to make much of an impression at all on these building materials, let alone carve the very complex formations clearly evident at these sites.
And, this, of course, doesn't even begin to address how some of these massive megalithic sites, such as Sachsayhuaman (which I have visited), had blocks, nearly the size of a house and weighing hundreds of tons, that were transported from quarries some 35 miles away to the site – at a time when there were no suitable trees in the region that could be used for rollers (if that was even possible with stones that size). One of the most fascinating things here (that I'd likewise not previously encountered) was the concept of “previous ages” of the Hanan Pacha and the Uran Pacha (leading to our current Ukan Pacha, which is when the Inca were building), which, respectively, did the carving of living rock, and the building with megalithic forms. Using these three modes, Foerster is able to analyze the building phases of most of the ruins he visits, identifying the fairly evident different construction elements that are frequently seen one on top of the other.
Of course, one has to be willing to accept the possibility that there was an advanced global culture that existed more that twelve thousand years ago, which left its mark in very ancient, highly precise and/or massive constructions that can still be found in places like Peru and Bolivia, as well as examples such as the Osireion at Abydos in Egypt, or the thousand-ton megaliths found at the Baalbek complex in Lebanon. This culture would have thrived before the end of the last ice age, and was destroyed in a world-wide catastrophe likely caused by a major “solar proton event” with accompanying coronal mass ejection.
The author doesn't get too deep into that particular line of thought (the originators of the Hanan-Uran-Ukan Pacha model have some serious woo-woo in there – claiming that gravity was less in the distant past, etc.), but it is, in its broad strokes, quite a plausible frame for noting the different construction styles encountered. As impressive a culture that the Inca were (much of the terracing, etc. seen all over the region were indisputably Incan engineering projects), they had nothing that could produce the sort of stone work that is seen all over the place (and identified as Uran Pacha construction). There is also the theory that these ancient cultures had a technology for making stone “soft” so that it could be easily carved, and then re-solidified – which, as bizarre as it may sound, would go a long way to explaining the “how” of some of the amazing walls in Cuzco and elsewhere.
Once setting up a basis (to varying extents) of these theories, Foerster walks the reader through a couple of dozen sites across Peru and Bolivia, most of which he has visited, some he's just reporting via others' accounts. In a number of the pictures (and, again, this is very much a “picture book”, as most pages are at least a third dedicated to an image, and there are lots of pages with just a picture and caption) an engineer by the name of Chris Dunn is shown measuring surfaces, checking angles, and determining geophysical alignments … he has a couple of books out based on his research in Egypt, as this has only been out a couple of years, I wonder if he's working on a volume dealing with the “Incan” ruins.
They eventually end up at Tiwanaku and Puma Punku (familiar to all who watch the History Channel on cable), and, to their credit, don't launch into the whole “ancient alien” thing about it being a spaceport or something ... but they do note that it, like many of the other sites discussed, does appear to have been violently destroyed at some point in the distant past – in a way that would be hard to explain by the technology of the past couple of thousand years being involved.
Is Lost Ancient Technology Of Peru And Bolivia good book? That depends. I really love this “ancient advanced culture” genre, and do appreciate that the author only dips his toe into “the deep end” of that niche. His photos (and those he appropriates), although all B&W, are mostly quite illuminating, and he generally does a good job of putting them in context … however, the “editing” thing comes up here as well, there's one point (I'd mention the page numbers, but there aren't any) where he repeats the same image on facing pages, as well as sticking in a 2/3rds-page-large image of the cover of his Machu Picchu book twice when discussing that site (I'm hardly one to talk about pimping out one's books, but, really, an “other books by the author” page in the back would have sufficed), which, needless to say, does not add anything to the information content.
Of course, as noted above, he has this very reasonably priced, so the deficiencies in the editing and design of the book (which would be a weekend project for somebody who “does books” to fix) are easier to let slide than if it came at a heftier cost. It's a shame, however, as most of what is wrong with this could easily be rectified. Of course, as a “book guy” and editor, the stuff that I found irritating here might fly totally under the radar for most readers. I suspect that (the egregious typos aside) the Kindle version reads a lot better, as I'm guessing that this project started on that side of the digital/deadtree divide. Because of the way this was published, I'm not sure you'd have much luck finding it in bookstores (although he mentions that it's available in the gift stores near a number of the sites), so the $9.95 cover price through the on-line big boys looks like your best bet (there are copies kicking around the used channels, but with shipping they'd be more than free shipping “retail”). Aside from the numerous editorial caveats expressed above, I quite enjoyed reading/viewing this, but, then again, in general I've “been there, done that, got the t-shirt”, so my enthusiasm for it might be on the high side due to familiarity/interest. As Dennis Miller would have it, “your mileage may vary”, but it's something that's likely worth looking into if you share my appreciation of the subject.
