Title: Architects of the Underworld
Unriddling Atlantis, Anomalies of Mars, and the Mystery of the Sphinx
Author: Bruce Rux
Publisher: Frog, Ltd. Berkley, California

Summary:

Aliens have been visiting the Earth from Mars and beyond since the dawn of time. Seeking to disarm dictatorships and avert environmental disaster, aliens have played a role in human politics since before they raised us from apes and gave it to us. Alien abductions and cattle mutilations have been part of an ongoing grassroots campaign to turn the tide of human development.

Author Bruce Rux implicates everyone from Atlanteans to Fairy Folk, from Jesus to Santa Claus. Rux asserts that all cultures share the same mythological history, and when carefully read those histories reveal the truth about the nature of our universe. The book details evidence of alien intervention in recent history and 'reveals' historical and mythological evidence of their involvement in our past.

This is of course bollocks.

Thoughts:

History is mostly unknown. Looking back 100 years our knowledge of daily events is limited; being certain of events that occured 5000 years ago is absolutely impossible.

Most people assume that the development of our culture is linear, at no time in our history have we known as much as we do. Our scientific and engineering skills are at their peak. Or are they?

If our civilization were to fall into ruin, 5000 years from now all that would probably remain would be the few monumental stone structures we have constructed. Our cheaper contructions (suburban homes, automobiles) would long have rusted and decayed to nothing. Planned obsolescene and low quality mass production will ensure that little of our culture will exist 5000 years from now. The fact that we don't see signs of technological advancement from a prior age is by no means proof that such a culture did not exist. I am not sugguesting that such a society did exist, only that there is very little we can know about our world 5000 years ago.

All that remains of history from that time is mythology, and the study of mythology is one of the few ways we can understand a culture so far in the past. Mythology does hint at great revelations that might tell us something about where we are and how we got here.

It is certainly worth studying why so many creation mythologies include a Noah-like character escaping a cataclysmic flood and becoming the seed of the next generation. Are we all survivors of the fall of Atlantis, or is eveything in the Bible absolute truth?

This being said, Rux's theory is by no means convincing. Some of the parallels he draws between different mythologies are so weak they are almost humourous. The recurrence of the color red or the use of the sun as a symbol for god does not inextricably link two mythologies together. Rux jumps back and forth between mythological systems so quickly that it is impossible not to get lost. I kept expecting the author to 'reveal' the astonishing reoccurence of the letter 'a' in myth cycles the world over. The author's 'enhancements' of martian surface photographs to reveal images of egyptian gods are laughable.

If UFO's really are aliens,it seems plausible that stories of divine intervention and fairy folk encounters probably do represent early alien visitation. Rux's theory of long term alien involvement in our history is so loosely put together that it seems foolish to propose it in the first place.

Given how little we know about our distant past I am willing to take myth as history; it tells us as much about the time and the human condition as anything we are likely to learn. This book should be taken in the same light, as mythology rather than expose.