A Scottish journalist who is now renowned for a number of bestselling
crank books about
lost civilizations and other weird and wonderful things. He trained in
sociology then started his career by doing serious reportage for serious papers on
poverty,
hunger, and
AIDS, and produced a number of books on them.
The Sign and the Seal (1992) was his first venture into the less respectable fields of speculation, but was not in fact wholly implausible. The Ark of the Covenant is said to be kept in the church of St Mary Zion in Lalibela, in Ethiopia, according to the traditions of both Christians and Jews of Ethiopia. The church is heavily fortified and guarded and only a single monk has access to the inner sanctum. While working on serious journalism in Ethiopia, Hancock got interested in the story, and found evidence from elsewhere (such as the Templars, ah yes, them again) that appeared to confirm its route of passage through Egypt, and where it had been moved during several Muslim invasions of Ethiopia. His theory was not generally accepted but was quite possible. His standard dropped after that.
Fingerprints of the Gods was another screed connecting Egyptian and American ancient civilizations, and Atlantis and a great flood, and secret astronomical knowledge hidden in the Pyramids, and... all that stuff. Its new point is apparently that the famous Piri Reis map, of questionable authenticity, seems to show part of the Antarctic coast (a) before Antarctica was discovered, and (b) before it had acquired its most recent ice sheet. The Nazca lines get connected too somehow.
Keeper of Genesis coauthored with Robert Bauval is about how the alignment of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid and the constellation Orion 12000 years ago...
Heaven's Mirror, coauthored with his wife and photographer Santha Falia, is a glossy examination of all the ancient temples and stuff that point to a lost civilization far older than any wj;hr5;99tjrgfmk 5r4t5;
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Oh I'm sorry, I must fallen asleep with boredom. He got a bit of coverage recently when the BBC science program Horizon made the mistake of paying him any attention at all, and went in with the boots too hard. Hancock complained to the Broadcasting Standards Commission and they adjudicated that Horizon had been unfair to him. Hunh.