We all have a mental picture of ancient Egypt, but is it the right one? How much do we really know about this once great civilization?In this absorbing introduction, Ian Shaw, one of the foremost authorities on Ancient Egypt, describes how our current ideas about Egypt are based not only on the thrilling discoveries made by early Egyptologists but also on fascinating new kinds of evidence produced by modern scientific and linguistic analyses. He also explores the changing influences on our responses to these finds, by examining the impact of Egyptology on various aspects of popular culture such as literature, cinema, opera, and contemporary art. He considers all aspects of ancient Egyptian culture, from tombs and mummies to the discovery of artifacts and the decipherment of hieroglyphs, and from despotic pharaohs to animal-headed gods. From the general reader interested in Ancient Egypt, to students and teachers of ancient history and archaeology, to museum-goers, this Very Short Introduction will not disappoint.

    As much as 7,000 years older than the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge, its strange buildings and rings of T-shaped monoliths--built with stones weighing from 10 to 15 tons--show a level of sophistication and artistic achievement unmatched until the rise of the great civilizations of the ancient world, Sumer, Egypt, and Babylon. Chronicling his travels to Göbekli Tepe and surrounding sites, Andrew Collins details the layout, architecture, and exquisite relief carvings of ice age animals and human forms found at this 12,000-year-old megalithic complex, now recognized as the oldest stone architecture in the world. He explores how it was built as a reaction to a global cataclysm--the Great Flood in the Bible--and explains how it served as a gateway and map to the sky-world, the place of first creation, reached via a bright star in the constellation of Cygnus. He reveals those behind its construction as the Watchers of the Book of Enoch and the Anunnaki gods of Sumerian tradition. Unveiling Göbekli Tepe’s foundational role in the rise of civilization, Collins shows how it is connected to humanity’s creation in the Garden of Eden and the secrets Adam passed to his son Seth, the founder of an angelic race called the Sethites. In his search for Adam’s legendary Cave of Treasures, the author discovers the Garden of Eden and the remains of the Tree of Life--in the same sacred region where Göbekli Tepe is being uncovered today.

    Stories from Ancient Canaan is the first to offer a one-volume translation of all four. This accessible book teaches the principal Canaanite religious literature, and will be useful to students of the history of religion, of the Bible, and of comparative literature.

    This is a vividly told, dramatic and enlightening account of the oral history, legends and battles of a people whose past stretches back many hundred of years. The Sea Kingdoms is a story of great tragedies, ancient myths and spectacular beauty.

    He reveals 20-million-year-old quartzite tools discovered in the remains of extinct fauna in Argentina and other evidence of ancient pre-human cultures from which we are not descended. He traces the genesis of modern human civilization to Indonesia and the Central Pacific 75,000 years ago, launched by a catastrophic volcanic eruption that abruptly reduced humanity from two million to a few thousand individuals worldwide.Further investigating the evolutionary branches of humanity, he explores the mounting biological evidence supporting the aquatic ape theory--that our ancestors spent one or more evolutionary phases in water--and shows how these aquatic phases of humanity fall neatly into place within his revised timeline of ancient history. Examining the profound similarities of megaliths around the world, including Nabta Playa, Gobekli Tepe, Stonehenge, New Hampshire’s Mystery Hill, and the Japanese Oyu circles, the author explains how these precisely placed monuments of quartz were built specifically to produce altered states of consciousness, revealing the spiritual and technological sophistication of their Neolithic builders--a transoceanic civilization fractured by the cataclysmic effects of comets.Tying in his extensive research into Atlantis and Lemuria, Joseph provides a 20-million-year timeline of the rise and fall of ancient civilizations, both human and pre-human, the evolutionary stages of humanity, and the catastrophes and resulting climate changes that triggered them all--events that our relatively young civilization may soon experience.

    A month later their corpses were found, maimed and broken by eldritch forces. This incident has provoked wild speculation among even the most skeptical crowds, stimulated discussion among every conspiracy theorist in Russia, and haunted the imagination of many a hiker for half a century. Recently, the mystery of so-called "Dyatlov Pass" has undergone a renaissance of interest and has gained international publicity and coverage in the news, Hollywood, and literature. This book provides, in an easy-to-read format, comprehensive, bias-free coverage of the incident--complete with medical autopsy reports, excerpts from legal proceedings connected with the deaths of the hikers, and testimonies from the first responders who found the bodies. In short, this book contains everything one needs to join the ranks of thousands of people trying to uncover the secrets of the Dyatlov Pass.

    Now two distinguished geophysicists have discovered a catastrophic event that changed history, a gigantic flood 7,600 years ago in what is today the Black Sea. Using sound waves and coring devices to probe the sea floor, William Ryan and Walter Pitman revealed clear evidence that this inland body of water had once been a vast freshwater lake lying hundreds of feet below the level of the world's rising oceans. Sophisticated dating techniques confirmed that 7,600 years ago the mounting seas had burst through the narrow Bosporus valley, and the salt water of the Mediterranean had poured into the lake with unimaginable force, racing over beaches and up rivers, destroying or chasing all life before it. The rim of the lake, which had served as an oasis, a Garden of Eden for farms and villages in a vast region of semi-desert, became a sea of death. The people fled, dispersing their languages, genes, and memories.

    During his reign he conquered the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the largest empire that had ever existed, leading his army from Greece to Pakistan, and from the Libyan desert to the steppes of Central Asia. His meteoric career, as leader of an alliance of Greek cities, Pharaoh of Egypt, and King of Persia, had a profound effect on the world he moved through. Even in his lifetime his achievements became legendary and in the centuries that following his story was told and retold throughout Europe and the East. Greek became the language of power in the Eastern Mediterranean and much of the Near East, as powerful Macedonian dynasts carved up Alexander's empire into kingdoms of their own, underlaying the flourishing Hellenistic civilization that emerged after his death.But what do we really know about Alexander? In this Very Short Introduction, Hugh Bowden goes behind the usual historical accounts of Alexander's life and career. Instead, he focuses on the evidence from Alexander's own time -- letters from officials in Afghanistan, Babylonian diaries, records from Egyptian temples -- to try and understand how Alexander appeared to those who encountered him. In doing so he also demonstrates the profound influence the legends of his life have had on our historical understanding and the controversy they continue to generate worldwide.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

    The fascinating story of how a harsh terrain that resembled modern Antarctica has been transformed gradually into the forests, grasslands, and wetlands we know today.

    This groundbreaking work shatters many of the myths of America centuries ago.

    Archaeologist Timothy Taylor paints a dramatic and startling picture of our sexual evolution as he follows human sexuality from its origins four million years ago to modern times to answer our most titillating questions about this endlessly fascinating andpowerful subject.Taylor draws on recent archaeological discoveries such as skeletons of Amazon women, golden penis sheaths, the charred remains of aphrodisiac herbs, and awealth of prehistoric erotic art to trace practices such as contraception, homosexuality, transsexuality, prostitution, sadomasochism, and bestiality back to their ancient origins. He makes the startling claim that although humans have used contraceptives from the very earliest times to separate sex from reproduction, techniques to maximize population growth were developed only when farming began--a revolution involving control of animals' sex lives, widespread oppression of women, and an attitude to nature that continues to have devastating ecological consequences. He draws the radical conclusion that theevolution of our species has been shaped not only by the survival of the fittest but by the very sexual choices our ancestors made. And he links ancient sexuality with our own in a contemporary survey of artificial insemination, surrogate pregnancies, drag queens, brothels, pornography, and the spectre of racial dominance.How has human sexuality changed--and how has it remained the same--over the span of millions of years? How did the ideas of eroticism, ecstasy, immortality, and beauty become linked to sex? Taylor explores these questions and sets out to prove that our sexual behavior is and has always been a matterof choice rather than something genetically determined.  He eloquently and accessibly explains how our sexual politics--issues of gender and power,control and exploitation--are not new but are deeply rooted in our prehistory.Surely one of the most illuminating and controversial books on human sexuality ever written, The Prehistory of Sex invites readers to become voyeurs into the bizarre--and so far hidden--prehistoric sexual world.

    Taking into account the latest research and academic controversies over the historical identity of the Celts, the atlas deals separately with the Continental Celts (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Anatolia), the Atlantic Celts (Britain and Ireland) and the Modern Celts and the current state of Celtic culture.

    They may wonder how, when and where did writing evolve? Do alphabets function better than hieroglyphs? And are we today, in the computer age, moving towards a universal language of signs and symbols?

    When they accurately predicted the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI one full year in advance, even naming the very month and year he would step down, global shockwaves raised compelling questions regarding why the Vatican has an advanced telescope perched atop Mt. Graham in Arizona (USA) where the Jesuits admit they are monitoring something approaching Earth. Authors Horn and Putnam visited the mountain and spoke with the astronomers. After their second report was published in Exo-Vaticana, the pope s top astronomer took to the airwaves (and on the Vatican Observatory website) in an attempt to explain the role that he and other church astronomers are playing in regard to the LUCIFER device on Mt. Graham, as well as their developing doctrines concerning extraterrestrial life and the impact it may soon have on planet Earth s religions (Christianity in particular). Then, in the third book by Horn and Putnam, On the Path of the Immortals, the authors set out with cameras and field investigators to unearth their most astonishing discovery yet: Mt. Graham is a portal the Native Americans who fought the Vatican and NASA told them a gateway to another dimension. And, as the Vatican knows and the authors uncovered, it is not the only one. Even then, they had no idea what secrets the Vatican was shielding until now... FOR THEIR LAST ENTRY INTO THE 4-YEAR INVESTIGATION, THE FINAL ROMAN EMPEROR, THE ISLAMIC ANTICHRIST, AND THE VATICAN S LAST CRUSADE REVEALS... *Tom Horn s greatest prediction yet (this will shake the foundations of the world!) *The WMD that ISIS will use, and how it will lead to an Apocalypse *Petrus Romanus, Albert Pike, the Islamic State, and the coming Armageddon *Pope Francis becomes the Destroyer (or shall there be another?)... *The Last Crusade Agenda, hidden in plain sight *The prophecy of the Last Roman Emperor in the Vatican vaults *The prophecy of the Cumaean Sibyl on the Muslim s Mahdi *Giants, a hidden Vatican doorway, and the coming Battle for the Cosmic Mountain *Why many Christians, Muslims, and Jews will accept the Last Emperor as Messiah *Preparations by the Occult Elite and their Visions of the Final Roman Emperor

    For centuries the Western tradition has traced its beginnings back to ancient Israel, but recently some historians and archaeologists have questioned the reality of Israel as it is described in biblical literature. In Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? William Dever explores the continuing controversies regarding the true nature of ancient Israel and presents the archaeological evidence for assessing the accuracy of the well-known Bible stories. Confronting the range of current scholarly interpretations seriously and dispassionately, Dever rejects both the revisionists who characterize biblical literature as "pious propaganda" and the conservatives who are afraid to even question its factuality. Attempting to break through this impasse, Dever draws on thirty years of archaeological fieldwork in the Near East, amassing a wide range of hard evidence for his own compelling view of the development of Israelite history. In his search for the actual circumstances of Israel's emergence in Canaan, Dever reevaluates the Exodus-Conquest traditions in the books of Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, and 1 & 2 Samuel in the light of well-documented archaeological evidence from the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. Among this important evidence are some 300 small agricultural villages recently discovered in the heartland of what would later become the biblical nation of Israel. According to Dever, the authentic ancestors of the "Israelite peoples" were most likely Canaanites -- together with some pastoral nomads and small groups of Semitic slaves escaping from Egypt -- who, through the long cultural and socioeconomic struggles recounted in the book of Judges, managed to forge a new agrarian, communitarian, and monotheistic society. Written in an engaging, accessible style and featuring fifty photographs that help bring the archaeological record to life, this book provides an authoritative statement on the origins of ancient Israel and promises to reinvigorate discussion about the historicity of the biblical tradition.