earth’s forbidden secrets

Another book review. Back to basics.
Have you ever started a new book expecting to be hooked given its description, and wound up tossing it; or, started a new book expecting to be disappointed, given its description, and wound up enthusiastic about it even after you’d finished? Maxwell Igan’s Earth’s Forbidden Secrets, Part One, an examination of “canonized” history versus physical evidence, definitely falls under the latter.

I do confess to having an abnormal obsession with ancient world history, which also means I have the proverbial collection of articles, movies, documentaries, and of course, books. However, once you read a dozen books that all share nearly the same information you stop expecting any of them to present an original, creative, enlightening point-of-view. But one day, after fruitless searches for something new at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, eBay, you stumble onto something free, and its content is on the nose.

Since I’m in the business of writing I’m always looking for fallacies in established fact, or unconventional theories to lay the foundation for a new piece of fiction. That said, this book is probably not for mainstream archaeologists, anthropologists, or historians, all of whom subscribe to mainstream ideas. Igan makes this point, citing that closed minds have been bolted shut before all of this information for years, and the difference between having a doctorate in the field and not having one is the difference between being taken seriously or being laughed out of town.

Seemingly small facts such as the origin of the banana will interest any who didn’t previously know the world’s most widespread and nutritious “herb” does not make seeds, despite that all vegetables, fruits, and herbs with the exception of those that have been genetically modified, do indeed make seeds; that is how they are grown, from seeds. Thus, how did the banana get here, how did it thrive for thousands of years without any intervention until humans came along and learned to cultivate its root? The storyteller in me is sprinting on its hamster wheel, spinning possible scenarios that can answer those questions, which is why I liked this book. The “out-of-place artifacts” Igan mentions, too, are interesting. These “Ooparts”, such as the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull, raise valid questions and theories and certainly inspire a great deal of fantasy and action-adventure titles like Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones.

Fascinating fodder for fiction aside, if you’re interested in ancient history, if certain “facts” or artifacts bug you and raise more questions, then this book is a good starting place. The author encourages readers to research all the topics he brings to light, and doing so will start you on a long endeavor that I haven’t quite recovered from yet.

Some of the author’s points have been raised before of course, such as information on the Antikythera device found in Greek waters, and on the Temple of Jupiter in Baalbek, and plenty on the Mayans—therefore, little in the book can be considered mind-blowing. Nevertheless Igan toiled to rally readership into reopening old investigations, and aims at new audiences to take up curiosity now that we have the techno-social means to seek answers, i.e., the Internet and social media.

Despite the grandiose claims of his text including “secrets”—which it does not if you have been interested in these topics for awhile—the author has a healthy skepticism exercised by his unwillingness to use the word conspiracy as an accusation, or jump to cartoon-like conclusions, which he does point out is the recipe for sounding crazy. However, one is encouraged to question the shunning of certain ideas by scholars, professors, and historians, especially where physical evidence points to the truth, rather than blindly believing what is widely taught and accepted. Some quick examples:

• Brain surgery was performed with evident success during the Neolithic era, as evidenced by ancient skulls found with finely prepared animal bones surgically installed. The bodies had accepted the “donor” bone fragments as further evidenced by a regrowth of human bone tissue over the animal bone. This insinuates the patients lived for quite some time after the surgery. According to the textbooks we read in our modern surgery class (and our professor), trepanning, or cranial surgery, had never been performed until the medieval era, and every attempt was basically manslaughter. Yet physical evidence exists that one should think would encourage revisions to medical history.
• A fossilized human shoeprint—shoe, not foot—from over 300 million years ago was found, insinuating that cavemen had some pretty modern-looking shoes, or there's some other, weirder explanation. . . .

The editing of Earth’s Forbidden Secrets isn’t spotless, which should be expected—and accepted—for writers releasing works independent of publishing houses with paid editors. If one can surmount this, then it’s an enveloping read. The matter is among my most-loved, that history is rewritten as it’s written, and that substantial evidence is often shunned by the very people who disseminate the facts. Maxwell Igan throws nearly everything in the fridge into the soup and bridges events and phenomena without ranting or being patronizing that the majority of us are more concerned with the present instead of yada, yada, yada. But there’s a lesson in that too: Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.

This book, therefore, is a call to pay attention to what is taught, but also to resist believing that what is taught is showing you the whole picture. There are mysteries all around us, namely us, and we choose to close our eyes, cover the ears and duck when anything fantastically unheard of that requires the use of imagination crosses our path; that is, whenever strange evidence stares us straight in the eye as indisputable fact.

Igan writes with an optimistic spirit that relies heavily on scholars to take their education for what it was worth—an initiation into a clique of thought that allows them to constantly pursue more knowledge. Igan encourages us to not settle into what we’ve learned and rave madly that it is fact for all eternity. If nothing more or less, Earth’s Forbidden Secrets, Part One is a call to join the discussion rather than storm against it or ignore it.