In This Issue . . . p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 16.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color: #4d4d4d} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 16.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color: #4d4d4d; background-color: #ffffff} span.s1 {font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff} span.s2 {font-kerning: none} span.s3 {font: 12.0px Times; font-kerning: none; color: #000000} LIVING FOR CENTURIES? Should Ancient Tales of Extreme Longevity Be Taken Seriously? BY WILLIAM B. STOECKER THE SPHINX BREAKS ITS SILENCE Hieorglyphs Say She Was the Lioness Mehit Who Guarded an Ancient Archive BY ROBERT M. SCHOCH, Ph.D. THE TRIALS OF THE SHROUD Science vs. Faith--Why the Jury Is Still Out BY MICHAEL E. TYMN ANCIENT HIGH TECHNOLOGY Debunking the Myth of 'Primitive' Ancestors BY FRANK JOSEPH THE BIRTH OF A TEMPLAR NATION How the Knights Templar Created Europe's First Nation-State and a Refuge for the Grail BY FREDDY SILVA ALTERNATIVE NEWS NEANDERTHAL MULTIPLICATION AMERICA'S CHEROKEE ROOTS RETURN TO THE 'HALL OF RECORDS'? NEW SCIENTIFIC SCRUTINY FOR ANCIENT 'GIANTS' NANO HEALING FROM COSTA RICA TO BOSNIA, STONE SPHERES YET UNEXPLAINED CAREERS BECKON FOR ASPIRING PLANETARY PROTECTORS IAPETUS FINGERED AS 'DEATH STAR'? IS THE UNIVERSE CONSCIOUS? VINDICATION FOR EASTER ISLAND PEOPLE There Was No 'Ecocide' Here, but its History Still Baffles the Experts BY MARTIN RUGGLES REVISITING THE MAYAN CALENDAR 2012 Is History Now, but Carl Johan Calleman Is Still Looking for Secrets BY ROBERT MENDEL MASONIC SINGAPORE The Esoteric Beginnings of the World's Richest City BY STEPHEN V. O'ROURKE THE ASTRONOMERS OF SKARA BRAE How Much Do We Owe These Neolithic Geniuses? BY STEVEN SORA SPACE TRAVEL OF THE MIND The Case of Camile Flammarion--Ahead of His Time, and Then Some BY JOHN CHAMBERS MOROCCO HOMO SAPIENS--A SMALL STEP FORWARD? BY MICHAEL CREMO THE MYTHIC CODE Understanding the Signs and Symbols of Astrology BY JULIE LOAR PUBLISHER'S LETTER EYE-OPENING ANCIENT WISDOM BY J. DOUGLAS KENYON

In this ebook edition: THE TEOTIHUACAN REVELATIONS Astonishing New Evidence for Advanced Ancient Civilization in Mexico BY JONATHON PERRIN WAS COLUMBUS ON A SECRET MISSION? To Prove the Earth Was Round... or Something Else? BY WILLIAM B. STOECKER ALTERNATIVE HISTORY KNIGHTS TEMPLAR IN TENNESSEE? Cracking the Mystery of the Melungeon People BY STEVEN SORA SECRET SCIENCE INVISIBLE WARFARE Did the Allied Powers of WWII Get Help from Other Dimensions? BY MARCIA DIEHL ALTERNATIVE ARCHAEOLOGY RELICS FROM THE ICE AGE? Are Malta‘s Temples Thousands of Years Older than Conventional Archaeologists Acknowledge? BY ROBERT SCHOCH, Ph.D. LOST HISTORY FIGHTING BROTHERS American vs. English Freemasons BY STEPHEN V. O‘ROURKE ANCIENT MYSTERIES MEGALITHIC TECH Understanding the Standing Stones & Circles of a Lost Science BY CHARLES SHAHAR ANCIENT SCIENCE THE LOST ROBOTS Uncovering the Forgotten Achievements of Ancient Inventors BY FRANK JOSEPH ANCIENT MYSTERIES MA‘MUN‘S PASSAGE Did the Caliph Know Something about the Great Pyramid that Egyptologists Still Don‘t? BY RALPH ELLIS & MARK FOSTER HOLISTIC HEALTH CAN MIND HEAL MATTER? Surprisingly, the Evidence Is Clear BY MITCH HOROWITZ THE FORBIDDEN ARCHAEOLOGIST THE MOULIN QUIGNON MYSTERY DEEPENS BY MICHAEL A. CREMO ASTROLOGY NABTA PLAYA Is This the Ancient Source of Egyptian Cosmology? BY JULIE LOAR PUBLISHER‘S LETTER COULD BIG SCIENCE BE ON TRIAL? BY J. DOUGLAS KENYON

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Economist • The Paris Review • Toronto Star • GQ • The Times Literary Supplement • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD “The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”—Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times “Riveting. . . . Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.”—The Economist “Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the ‘eerily banal language of climatology’ in favor of lush, rolling prose.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “The book has potential to be this generation’s Silent Spring.”—The Washington Post “The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. . . . I encourage people to read this book.”—Alan Weisman, The New York Review of Books

Delving into the deeply enigmatic nature of Artificial Intelligence (AI), AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable explores the various reasons why the field is so challenging. Written by one of the founders of the field of AI safety, this book addresses some of the most fascinating questions facing humanity, including the nature of intelligence, consciousness, values and knowledge. Moving from a broad introduction to the core problems, such as the unpredictability of AI outcomes or the difficulty in explaining AI decisions, this book arrives at more complex questions of ownership and control, conducting an in-depth analysis of potential hazards and unintentional consequences. The book then concludes with philosophical and existential considerations, probing into questions of AI personhood, consciousness, and the distinction between human intelligence and artificial general intelligence (AGI). Bridging the gap between technical intricacies and philosophical musings, AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable appeals to both AI experts and enthusiasts looking for a comprehensive understanding of the field, whilst also being written for a general audience with minimal technical jargon.

Alchemies of Blood and Afro-Diasporic Fiction focuses on the resurgence of biological racism in 21st-century public discourse, the ontological and material turns in the academy that have occurred over the same time period, and how Afro-diasporic fiction has responded to both with alternative visions of bloodlines, kinship, and community. In thinking through conceptions of race, ethnicity, and materiality at work within both humanities research and popular culture, Nicole Simek asks how the figure of alchemy – that semi-scientific, semi-mystical search for gold and the elixir of long life – can help scholars address the epistemological and affective investments in blood, bloodlines, and genetics marking both academic and mainstream discourses. To answer this question, Simek examines neo-plantation and Afrofuturist narratives, Afropessimist interventions, museums and public memory projects, and direct-to-consumer genetic testing services in the French Caribbean and the United States. This comparative approach to cultural production helps pinpoint and better understand the intersections and divergences between scholarship trends and troubling features of a broader Zeitgeist.

Women are now central to many science fiction films--but that has not always been the case. Female characters, from their token presence (or absence) in the silent pictures of the early 20th century to their roles as assistants, pulp princesses and sexy robots, and eventually as scientists, soldiers and academics, have often struggled to be seen and heard in a genre traditionally regarded as of men, by men and for men. Surveying more than 650 films across 120 years, the author charts the highs and lows of women's visibility in science fiction's cinematic history through the effects of two world wars, social and cultural upheavals and advances in film technology.

The story of Atlas and Heracles Atlas knows how it feels to carry the weight of the world; but why, he asks himself, does it have to be carried at all? In Weight — visionary and inventive, yet completely believable and relevant to the questions we ask ourselves every day — Winterson’s skill in turning the familiar on its head to show us a different truth is put to stunning effect. When I was asked to choose a myth to write about, I realized I had chosen already. The story of Atlas holding up the world was in my mind before the telephone call had ended. If the call had not come, perhaps I would never have written the story, but when the call did come, that story was waiting to be written. Rewritten. The recurring language motif of Weight is “I want to tell the story again.” My work is full of Cover Versions. I like to take stories we think we know and record them differently. In the retelling comes a new emphasis or bias, and the new arrangement of the key elements demands that fresh material be injected into the existing text. Weight moves far away from the simple story of Atlas’s punishment and his temporary relief when Hercules takes the world off his shoulders. I wanted to explore loneliness, isolation, responsibility, burden, and freedom too, because my version has a very particular end not found elsewhere. —from Jeanette Winterson’s Foreword to Weight