Pyramid Quest: Secrets of the Great Pyramid and the Dawn of Civilization.

2005. 384p. The Egyptologist acclaimed for re-dating the Great Sphinx atGiza sets his sights on one of the true mysteries of antiquity: the GreatPyramid of Giza. What is the Great Pyramid of Giza? Ask that basicquestion of a traditional Egyptologist, and you get the basic, traditionalanswer: a fancy tombstone for a self-important pharaoh of the Old Kingdom.This, Egyptologists argue, is the sole finding based on the data, and theonly deduction supported by science. By implication, anyone who dissentsfrom this point of view is unscientific and woolly-minded-a believer inmagic and ghosts. Indeed, some of the unconventional ideas about the GreatPyramid do have a spectacularly fabulous ring to them. Yet from beneaththe obvious terms of this controversy, a deeper, more significant questionarises: how is it that the Great Pyramid exercises such a gripping hold onthe human psyche- adding cryptic grace to the back of the one-dollar billand framing myriad claims of New Age "pyramid power"? In Pyramid Quest,Robert M. Schoch and Robert Aquinas McNally use the rigorous intellectualanalysis of scientific inquiry to investigate what we know about the GreatPyramid, and develop a stunning hypothesis: This ancient monument is thestrongest proof yet that civilization began thousands of years earlierthan is generally thought, extending far back into a little-known time. Intracing that story, we come to understand not only the Great Pyramid butalso our own origins as civilized beings.…