Paul V Caetano

Great Overview, 21. Juli 2000

The authors provide a stimulating introduction to urbanism in the Precolumbian Andes. The only problem with this book was that it left me wanting more. Since the book covers the entire history of the Ancient Andes, it cannot devote much space to any specific city or civilization. Nevertheless, there is still more than enough to enthrall. At the start of each chapter on a civilization, there is always a short description of what life would have been like for some inhabitants of a city of that civilization. This provides some extra colour to the book though some technical readers might not appreciate it. My favourite portion was on Tiwanaku, the largest city of the altiplano around… Mehr dazu

An Intriguing History, 21. Juli 2000

I very much enjoyed this book. It presented the history, archaeology and architecture of Tikal in a clear fashion. Harrison wove the various threads of evidence together skillfully without getting bogged down in details. After an introduction to the site and its environment he proceeds in a chronologic order telling the history of this ancient city. He takes two breaks in his story to describe the city's architecture. Because there is dispute in the field of epigraphy you cannot take this book as the last word, but that is the nature of writing about something which is an intense subject of research. I must also say that I found some of Harrison's assertions about architectural… Mehr dazu

Interesting but utterly unconvincing, 21. Juni 2000

Fischer claims to have deciphered two of the remaining undeciphered ancient scripts. However, while he might have sacrificed a lot in his efforts, the results are not convincing. The Phaestos disk has been the subject of many decipherment attempts. The Phaestos disk homepage alone lists 39 such endeavours. Fischer's methods are more scientific than most of the others, but ultimately not much more persuasive. The glaring flaw in his method is that he does not have enough checks to eliminate bad assumptions. With a text as short as the Phaestos Disk, if you make enough assumptions you can get a legible text in whatever language you want. That is exactly what is presented in… Mehr dazu