Citadels of Mystery

by L. Sprague de Camp, Catherine Crook de Camp, Catherine C. de Camp

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345032152
• ISBN13: 9780345032157
• Release Date: January 1973
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

L. Sprague de Camp wrote a classic here

For me only my copies of Toynbee and Churchill will be as good a future reference for me as this. I had in the past researched Atlantis, Pyramids and Stonehenge: he says much what is on the web as "modern" research results and he said it as much as 60 years ago in the first publishing. This book has gone through many editions, now. What the author does is to try to plant science into ancient history. As an of fiction he is a well respected fantasy writer, as an historian, he is just as good.

Important book though already getting old

The subject is crucial : twelve enigmas of old human history from the pyramids to the Mayas, from Stonehenge to the Incas, from Atlantis to Nan Matol. The method is interesting : to cover all the « debates » on each one, but also to collect all the available data and sound historical and archaeological facts. Then to consider that there is absolutely no racial limitation in man's creativity, no geographical and climatic unfavorable conditions for man's inventiveness and imagination. The book seems to clearly criticize those who see the hand of some extra-terrestrials or gods of some kind in these old archaeological realizations, as being in fact racist against the « whole » human race, or as being European-centered, hence racist against all men who are not European caucasoids, and even at times a narrower category like nordic or aryan European caucasoids. At the same time the book overuses the terms of « primitive » and « barbarians ». It is not because some do not know how to write that they are more barbaric than those who know. Writing is a bad criterion, especially since we know today the Celts used the Ogham alphabet, and this after twenty centuries of belief that they could not write : one more myth that goes down the chute. It is not because a group of men practice human sacrifice and cannibalism that they are more barbaric than those who practice the death penalty in full stadiums or in front of TV cameras, than those who practice torture in some war prison in Baghdad, or some unknown dark hole. The question of civilization and barbarity is very relative and the borderline is very fuzzy, if there is any. The book would have been more modern if these words had been avoided. These people who erected these monuments were highly civilized for their times. And what's more, who is more barbaric between the Celts burning convicted criminals in some ritualistic ceremony (death penalty) and the Romans forcing gladiators to fight to the death in a circus, gladiators who were in no way criminals but just slaves who had this way --and only this way - a chance to maybe save their lives, at least for a while ? Civilization is at times so barbaric. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris Dauphine, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne