ALSO RECEIVED

WE LEAF THROUGH A SMALL SELECTION OF THE DOZENS OF BOOKS THAT HAVE ARRIVED AT FORTEAN TOWERS IN RECENT MONTHS...

The Memory Code Lynne Kelly Atlantic Books 2016 Hb, 318pp, illus, notes, ind, £17.99, ISBN 9781782399056

Have you ever wondered about the kind of imagination and memory our ancient ancestors must have had? Dr Kelly certainly has, beginning with her study of Australian Aboriginals who could name all the stars in their sky, the plants and animals in their landscape and the uses to which they could be put. Non-literate the ancients may have been, but they had prodigious memories while we struggle to remember a short poem.

Kelly’s thesis is that, across the globe, these ancestors interacted with their environments, using systems of mnemonics that have been long forgotten yet are available to all of us. Before the advent of print, or even writing, the structures and contents of songs and stories, for example, can be used to encode elaborate knowledge or entire epics. However, most of the book is given over to exploring the idea of “memory spaces”; i.e. the creation of physical or environmental aids and the methods of using them, whether these be lengths of knotted string; totem poles and ‘fetish’ objects; megaliths; tombs; cave paintings; landscape lines and images; magical symbols and rituals; statuary of all kinds; even the geomantic components of farming or house building.

Here is a fascinating idea, well explained and explored with such enthusiasm as makes for smooth and edifying reading.

Cover-Up at Roswell Donald R Schmitt New Page Books 2017 Pb, 233pp, illus, notes, bib, ind, $16.99, ISBN 9780253024565

Schmitt, a former head of Special Investigations at the Hynek Center for UFO Studies, believes that the passage of 70 years since the notorious ‘crashed UFO’ incident at Roswell, New Mexico, is sufficient distance to allow for a comprehensive overview of what really happened and what was thought to have happened. Wading, with some diligence, through more than 100 statements from investigators, witnesses, military and Intelligence personnel, medical staff and many others caught up in the affair, Schmitt assesses the relative degrees of reliability of their ‘evidence’. From it he constructs a fairly detailed ‘timeline’ of the key events, and summarises in a chapter containing answers to the 20 most-asked questions.

He seems certain that ‘bodies’ were recovered, but undecided about their nature. He calls the event an ‘anomaly’ but refrains from defining it; suggesting instead that while the evidence confirms there was a cover-up, it was of the military embarrassment at not knowing what this invasion of US sovereign airspace was.

Impossible Truths Erich von Däniken Watkins Media 2018 Hb, 208pp, illus, bib, ind, £14.99, ISBN 9781786780836

While the subject is essentially the same drum that von Däniken was banging 50 years ago, it is interesting to see here how his exposition has matured since. He still adheres to the idea that ‘flying machines’, for example, are a feature of the sacred texts of most cultures because they are a memory of alien intervention. Put that to one side for the moment as he homes in on a handful of cases that stand out above all the rest of his material, specifically examples of exceptional materials engineering and monumental construction that challenge our ideas about the technological abilities of ancient civilisations. Chief of these are the gigantic precision-carved blocks of diorite at Tiahuanaco, in the Bolivian Highlands. This granitic, igneous rock is exceptionally hard and difficult to work (even with today’s high-speed milling machines), making the production of parallel edges, sharp corners, recesses and regular geometric forms an almost impossible challenge to primitive tools. Yet somehow, these tightlyfitted diorite blocks – which were already seriously ancient when the Spaniards found them in the 16th century – have been crafted into complex Lego-like forms with orthogonal planes and edges as evidenced by modern photos and technical drawings made in 1892. It is good to read vonD’s review of the whole ‘ancient astronaut’ thesis and how it fared over the years. More interesting, though, is his review of the recent but lesswell-known discoveries of cities and monuments in the Jungles of South America, and his further research in the Nazca region, with many new photographs and ‘expert’ witness statements. These remain marvellously mysterious, without dragging in the alien engineers.

Michael’s Mission John Steed Self-published via Amazon 2015 £43.89 (355pp) ISBN 9781508828129 Michael’s Legacy John Steed Self-published via Amazon 2016 £32.68 (313pp) ISBN 9781537105352

John Steed has created a sprawling alternative history of the world and its civilisations using a novel method: he traces images from detailed geographical maps on which he detects patterns and complete scenes. However, these extraordinary volumes go far beyond the pioneering works of Alfred Watkins, Katherine Maltwood, Mary Caine, Nigel Pennick and others, whom Steed says inspired him to study ‘terrestrial zodiacs’, pictograms and ancient landscape art.

The first of these largeformat books ( Mission, with many line drawings) claims to be the autobiography of the Archangel Michael – from “49,600 years ago until his death at Machu Picchu sometime before Christ” – who, with a small team (based in Somerset’s Cheddar Gorge) experiment with eugenics to create humanoids to found civilisations all over the globe. The second book ( Legacy, which has colour illustrations) piles on the global examples of map tracings and explanations. The sheer quantity of these “picture chronicles” – which he finds wherever he looks – is, Steed argues, self-evident proof that he is onto something; that, and the curious way that place-names in nearly all languages become logograms comprised of Celtic Gaelic radicals. His resulting theories are often provocative (some might call them disturbing) such as the Garden of Eden scenario in which Michael persuades his wife to mate with Adam, a tame ape; or that the Atlanteans were a CelticJewish tribe. While Steed has piled his undoubted enthusiasm into pages of detailed explanations, he can still leave his reader baffled. Even when compared to the works of other denizens of the inherently eccentric world of outsider art, these volumes are strange and unclassifiable… and expensive.

Sky Critters Anthony Milne Empiricus Books/Janus Publishing, 2016 Pb, 272pp, illus, refs, ind, £13.95, ISBN 9781857568615

Milne’s title is more than just a nod to Trevor Constable’s suggestion that UFOs may be forms of living organic energy. He starts from the twin observations (derived ultimately from John Keel’s ideas about ‘interdimensional entities’) : that many authentic observations of UFOs seem to have nothing to do with aliens piloting physical craft, and that UFOs tend to have a “spooky, surreal, even ghostly nature”. Even if you don’t buy into Milne’s conclusion about a “cosmic intelligence” and “living UFOs”, do read it for his coolly reasoned, wide-ranging overview of UFO phenomena. It is a critique of the materialist ideology behind modern science’s woefully inadequate response to the accumulated canon of well-documented observations of aerial anomalies, many of them made by rational and critical scientific observers and investigators.