Synopses & Reviews
At the end of the Iron Age, the 600-year-old civilization of the Celts stretched from the Black Sea to Scotland. It had produced some of the finest artistic and scientific masterpieces of the ancient world. But in 58 BC, Julius Caesar marched over the Alps, bringing Roman civilization in the form of slavery and genocide. Some Druids (the Celtic intelligentsia) fled to Britain to organize a desperate and ultimately futile resistance there.
While planning a bicycling trip along the Heraklean Way, the ancient route from Portugal to the Alps, Graham Robb made a discovery opening a door to that lost world. Through celestial mathematics, Druids had organized the geography of Europe and Britain into a grid of “solstice lines” — including meridians and latitudes — that determined the placement of towns, temples, roads, and battles, and the pathways of tribal migrations. This amazing book is the story of what Robb found and what it means.
Synopsis
How the scientific and technological genius of the Druids created the earliest known accurate map of the world.
Synopsis
Fifty generations ago the cultural empire of the Celts stretched from the Black Sea to Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. In six hundred years, the Celts had produced some of the finest artistic and scientific masterpieces of the ancient world. In 58 BC, Julius Caesar marched over the Alps, bringing slavery and genocide to western Europe. Within eight years the Celts of what is now France were utterly annihilated, and in another hundred years the Romans had overrun Britain. It is astonishing how little remains of this great civilization.
While planning a bicycling trip along the Heraklean Way, the ancient route from Portugal to the Alps, Graham Robb discovered a door to that forgotten world a beautiful and precise pattern of towns and holy places based on astronomical and geometrical measurements: this was the three-dimensional Middle Earth of the Celts. As coordinates and coincidences revealed themselves across the continent, a map of the Celtic world emerged as a miraculously preserved archival document.
Robb one of the more unusual and appealing historians currently striding the planet (New York Times) here reveals the ancient secrets of the Celts, demonstrates the lasting influence of Druid science, and recharts the exploration of the world and the spread of Christianity. A pioneering history grounded in a real-life historical treasure hunt, The Discovery of Middle Earth offers nothing less than an entirely new understanding of the birth of modern Europe.
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About the Author
Graham Robb is the author of three prize-winning biographies, each one selected as a New York Times Best Book of the Year. His most recent books are The Discovery of France and Parisians. He lives on the Anglo-Scottish border.