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Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind By Graham Hancock ( The Disinformation Company )
Release Date: 2007-10-01
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $18.95
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Product Description
Less than fifty thousand years ago mankind had no art, no religion, no sophisticated symbolism, no innovative thinking. Then, in a dramatic and electrifying change, described by scientists as "the greatest riddle in human history," all the skills and qualities that we value most highly in ourselves appeared already fully formed, as though bestowed on us by hidden powers. In Supernatural Graham Hancock sets out to investigate this mysterious "before-and-after moment" and to discover the truth about the influences that gave birth to the modern human mind. His quest takes him on a detective journey from the stunningly beautiful painted caves of prehistoric France, Spain, and Italy to rock shelters in the mountains of South Africa, where he finds extraordinary Stone Age art. He uncovers clues that lead him to the depths of the Amazon rainforest to drink the powerful hallucinogen Ayahuasca with shamans, whose paintings contain images of "supernatural beings" identical to the animal-human hybrids depicted in prehistoric caves. Hallucinogens such as mescaline also produce visionary encounters with exactly the same beings. Scientists at the cutting edge of consciousness research have begun to consider the possibility that such hallucinations may be real perceptions of other "dimensions." Could the "supernaturals" first depicted in the painted caves be the ancient teachers of mankind? Could it be that human evolution is not just the "meaningless" process that Darwin identified, but something more purposive and intelligent that we have barely begun to understand? This newly revised edition of Supernatural is now available for the first time as a paperback original. Graham Hancock is the author of the international bestsellers The Sign and The Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, and Heaven's Mirror. His books have sold more than five million copies.
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 Super reading ( aw4tbooks )
Graham Hancock is one of my favorite non-fiction writers, because he has a nose for subjects that really intrigue me. I remember his collaborations with Bauval that really angered the Egyptian authorities and spawned the science of archeo-astronomy. I also remember the work on Mars in which he described the asteroid impact that knocked off half the crust. Thought to be pretty silly at the time, this theory has recently been in the news as a working hypothesis. Maybe someday anthropologists will validate some of the ideas he's brought forth in this book. At any rate, Supernatural is a lot more fun than either Genesis or Darwin.
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Supernatural
The ideas and experiences noted in this book are very intriguing. If I was not familiar with the author, I would not have read beyond the first chapter, but because I have studied his other works, I studied it in it's entirety. I never thought that I could ever view conscious altering substances in quite the way that I now do. Read with an open mind or after reading his other work so that you will go into this material with respect for the author.
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 A bit long winded ( spud256 )
While Graham Hancock again makes a pretty good case for his controversial theories, I found this book somewhat redundant and lacking the appeal of some of his other books that I have read. While I found the illustrations from ancient writings facinating, his drug induced explanations from his "visions" became a little tedious. I thought the book could have been a lot shorter, and had a hard time staying with it after about the first 300 pages or so.
Although Hancock's ideas on the origins of religion in the human animal may be interesting from the anthropological point of view, it seemed to me that he had said all he really had to say long before the book was over.
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 good read ( kaioatey )
Hancock's basic thesis has been well described by other reviewers below. H. champions the popular Lewis-Williams hypothesis that cave art reflects shamanic rituals performed under trance conditions (often induced by hallucinogenics). This hypothesis he connects to his own experiences of having met "alien intelligences" in his own hallucinogenic journeys created by ibogain, ayahuasca and Psilocybe, in which GH encounters Egyptian gods, ancestors, transcendental snakes and weirdly sinister alien types with slit eyes. Hancock then combines these pieces of information into the suggestion that human evolution has been guided since time immemorial (actually, since about 30 000 BC) by discarnate intelligences living in "other dimensions".
To prove this idea, GH goes fishing for corroboration: he finds it in tales of UFO abductees, who claim to have been taken onto alien spacecraft, hoisted with "implants" and forced to nurse alien-hybrid babies (i am not making this up). Then he is struck by the similarity of the fairy lore to UFO abduction tales... again, the idea is that these "alien" creatures have been with humankind from dawn of our consciousness and that they are responsible for its awakening -through trance states induced through dancing, sensory/physical deprivation or hallucinogenics. They may even have messed with our DNA where Hancock approvingly cites Narby's ideas about DNA as a "cosmic serpent".
Like most of Hancock's books, Supernatural is well-written, representing yet another display of a natural storyteller's talent for delaying hapless readers' gratification - all the while leading us along winding roads decorated with sightseeing trinkets represented by UFO abductees, DMT trippers, prehistoric caves, Francis Crick, therianthropes, spirits and San Bushmen from Southern Africa. The book is superbly illustrated with representations of cave art from Europe and Africa and has a great intro into the murky politics of prehistoric art scholarship. However, while pretending at practicing the art of investigative reporting and objective analysis, GH is anything but. This book is all about selective citation, where *only* case studies, theories and ideas that conform to GHs grand hypothesis are cited whereas opposing views literally don't exist, with the exception of those that are easily debunked (i.e., Lewis-Williams' detractors). In other words, this book is an entertaining read, nothing less... and nothing more.
Yet - if you do chance upon it, read it. You'll have a good time.
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 Requires more field study/testing; Author too eager to state his theory is correct ( kingswebe )
I enjoyed entertaining the hypothesis proposed in this book. The author does a very good job reporting research done by others that helps support his hypothesis, although the author tends to provide more "case examples" than is necessary in each sub-argument, making the book longer than necessary. However, the authors of the other work he quotes admit more testing/research is needed to help prove the "realness" of what is seen in their own and research subjects' ethnogenic experiences, and the author's own experiments with ethnogenic substances as reported in the book contain only some similarities to what he is arguing should be dominant staples in everyone's experiences with these substances, as his theory goes. Relatedly, I felt he did not perform enough attempts with each substance, or at least didn't report enough of them, for me to see that the few flashes of similarity he did experience support his main hypothesis. Similarly, I disliked how the book ended on an open-ended note where he had just consumed more substances as another "test," but that's it - book ends - no information about how that experience went.
Ultimately, more testing/research is needed; I hope there is, as there seems to be a strong case for this hypothesis...
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