The Six Sacred Stones - Book Review

The Six Sacred Stones.
By Matthew Reilly
Pocket Books 2008 (PB)

This is the second book in a series of books by this author, starring soldier for hire Jack West junior. In the first book (Seven Deadly Wonders) Jack led a team of soldiers and historians in finding the Golden Capstone and placing it on the top of the Great Pyramid to prevent a catastophe happening to Earth.


In the Six Sacred Stones, 2 years have passed since that first race to save the world, and now the race is on again. This time the hunt is on for the 6 sacred stones (large square diamonds) and for certain tablets belonging to Thoth the Egyptian God of Knowledge, in order to prevent another major solar event from causing havoc and destruction on or to Earth.

This book only covered half the story - the hunt for the first 2 diamonds and placing them in the right place on the great machine (Earth). The next book (I hope) will be the rollicking adventure of the team finding the last 4 stones and the race against their enemies, to save the world, again.

One of the interesting concepts that came out of this book is the idea that we are NOT the only humans to have inhabited this planet. That there have been numerous other humans before us, but they destroyed themselves (or were destroyed) in some catastrophe, allowing for the human race to rise again.

This actually does make sense. One of the ancient legends we have is of Atlantis being destroyed by a flood. Some people think this is just a story and others beleive it to be based on fact.

What if it was true, and that there were several rises and falls of human civiliastions (epochs) and that each time, the human race was almost wiped out by some world catastrophe and that humans have had to rise up again, over and over for the millions of years since the dinosaurs died out. The current humans species is less than 10,000 years old.

The dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. They were around over 200 million years ago. There are supposedly human footprints mixed in with dinosaur prints in Texas, and the scientists of today say that this is all fake and false and does not fit with "official" history. Well that's true if we still dont know (or refuse to admit) what really happened long before our epoch began.

But what if these anomalies were true. What if those footsteps belonged to humans from the previous epoch. The Antikythera Computer for example. What if it too belong to the previous epoch or maybe even to the people of Atlantis? There are other mysteries as well - such as carvings on the walls of egyptian temples showing (what look like) planes and helicopters flying. There has never been any satisfactory explanation for any of these anomalies.

If the planets evolved millions of years ago - then WHY did it take so long for humans (homo sapiens) to rise up out of the primordial mud to populate the world.

So perhaps if a number of epochs of humans lived, and died and created various civilisations and were all eventually destroyed - between the time of the dinosaurs and now. All this would explain the "forbidden archaeology" and the mysteries that abound on this planet.

Over the past two centuries researchers have found bones and artifacts showing that people like ourselves existed on earth millions of years ago. But the scientific establishment has ignored these remarkable facts because they contradict the dominant views of human origins and antiquity. Forbidden Archaeology.

I am not saying that this is all true. After all this is just a fictional novel. BUT the idea does sound very plausible and most of the facts mentioned above do fit.