> Skip to content
  • Published: 15 November 2001
  • ISBN: 9780345434883
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 672
  • RRP: $54.99

Ancient Mysteries

Discover the latest intriguiging, Scientifically sound explanations to Age-old puzzles



For centuries, philosophers, scientists, and charlatans have attempted to decipher the baffling mysteries of our past, from Stonehenge to the lost continent of Atlantis. Today, however, DNA testing, radiocarbon dating, and other cutting-edge investigative tools, together with a healthy dose of common sense, are guiding us closer to the truth. Now historian Peter James and archaeologist Nick Thorpe tackle these age-old conundrums, presenting the latest information from the scientific community–and the most startling challenges to traditional explanations of mysteries such as:

• The rise and fall of the Maya
• A lost cache of Dead Sea Scrolls
• The curse of Tutankhamun
• The devastation of Sodom and Gomorrah
• The Nazca Lines and the Vinland Map
• The existence of Robin Hood

These true mystery stories twist and turn like a good whodunit, as James and Thorpe present the evidence for and against the expert theories, shedding new light on humankind’s age-old struggle to make sense of the past. Ancient Mysteries will entertain and enlighten, delight the curious and inform the serious.

  • Published: 15 November 2001
  • ISBN: 9780345434883
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 672
  • RRP: $54.99

About the authors

Peter James

Peter James graduated in ancient history and archaeology at Birmingham University and is now engaged in postgraduate research at University College, London. He is the editor of the periodical Studies in Ancient Chronology, and has contirbuted articles to New Scientist and Current Archaeology.

I.J. Thorpe graduated at Reading University and received his PhD on prehistoric Britain from London University. He is currently directing fieldwork projects in Cumbria and Denmark, and has published papers on prehistoric astronomy, burial papers and chronology.

Nikos Kokkinos graduated at the Institute of Archaeology, London, and is now Dorothea Gray Senior Scholar at St Hugh's College, Oxford. He was a contributor to Chronological Studies for Jack Finegan (1989) and is the author of Jesus the Galilean (in Greek, 1980).

Robert Morkot graduated in ancient history and Egyptology at University College, London. He is the G. A. Wainwright Research Fellow in Near Eastern Archaeology at Oxford Unirsity and is currently preparing the excavation reports of Sesibi (Egypt Exploration Society) and Faras (Oxford University).

John Frankish, Aegean archaeologist, graduated at Liverpool Univeristy before taking up research studies at University College, London, and the British School at Athens. Between 1987 and 1989 he received a scholarship from the Greek goverment for fieldwork in Crete.