We are not the First [antikvár]

Introductionhundreds of intellects, past and present, played a part in this book. The author acted merely as an orchestra conductor. His musicians comprised classic writers, priests of old Egypt, Babylon, India and Mexico, philosophers of ancient Greece and China, scholars of the Middle Ages, and lastly modern scientists. The theme of this composition is the Genesis of Knowledge and its periodic crescendos and diminuendos in history.Three aims are set in this work:To show that in former eras people possessed many scientific notions that we have today.To demonstrate that the technical skills of the men of antiquity and prehistory have been greatly underestimated.To prove that certain advanced ideas of the ancients on science and technology came from an unknown outside source.'Civilization is older than we suppose,' is the principal thesis of this treatise.With the advance of science the concept of the size and age of the universe has been radically changed in the last four hundred years. Farseeing men such as Bruno, Galileo or Darwin defied their narrow-minded contemporaries and argued that the world was greater and more ancient than men had believed.