In 1995, a British journalist published a book called 'Fingerprints of the Gods'. The main assertion of the book was that there had been far older civilizations, boasting far greater technological and cultural developments, than traditional historians acknowledged. Many other writers had proposed such a theory, as they have since, but Han$#@!, a very talented writer, took great pains to make his rather massive book a model of scholarly inquiry and reasonableness. In other words, not your usual "kook" theorizing.
I remember thinking at the time that the book was unfortunately named, as many people remember a book from 1968 called 'Chariots of the Gods' by a Swiss hotel manager named Erich von Daniken, who wrote a number of sequels, all of which advanced the "ancient astronaut" concept. Han$#@! is most definitely not von Daniken. Many critics have labeled Han$#@! a proponent of "pseudo-history" or "pseudo-archeology", but even if one is skeptical of his claims he is still a gifted writer, and his books are fascinating.
Han$#@! has since published several more books along the same lines, including studies and speculations about the Great Sphinx and another about the history and legends surrounding the Ark of the Covenant. Back in 2002, I think it was, he wrote a huge book called 'Underworld', focusing on strange, in some cases unexplained, archeological phenomena beneath the Earth's oceans.
Anyway, I was happy to hear that he is going to be doing a book signing in the Phoenix area this coming Wednesday, and I'm planning to haul my bag o' books down there for autographs and meet the gentleman, along with picking up his new book, 'Magicians of the Gods', of course.