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I am currently reading this book. I read an earlier one called "Civilization One" by the same authors. I call this "crankism." I don't mean that to be insulting. There is a difference between a crank and a kook. A kook is just a nutjob who tries to force their insane ideas on others and, when they succeed, the results are disastrous. Marjorie Taylor Green is a kook. A crank in contrast is someone whose ideas are "out there" but they are interesting and merit discussion. Even if you don't buy their conclusions, you learn a lot by studying up on their ideas.
Cranks are generally harmless but kooks are dangerous. As an example, Gavin Menzies is a crank who posits that the Chinese circumnavigated and mapped the earth in 1428. It's an interesting idea and he introduces you to various features of the earth that may have been left behind by this Chinese voyage. Even if you don't believe that this voyage took place, you learn about these strange anomalous features as well as the odd maps used by European explorers that had places on them that weren't supposedly discovered yet and so on. By the time you're done reading, you're not so sure the voyage didn't really happen and even if it didn't, there's a lot of stuff that still has to be explained because conventional histories don't even account for them. A kook, the other hand, calls the coronavirus "kung-flu" at rallies, gets wild applause, and then nutjobs are going out into the streets attacking anyone who looks Chinese because "you brought this virus here." One celebrates the Chinese for their inventive genius, the other condemns them for something they had no control over.
Cranks often garner a dedicated audience but their ideas stay confined among that audience and no one gets hurt. Kooks try to forced their ideas on the mainstream or try to legislate them into our lives where they are not wanted and people don't react to that very well. It would be folly for people to put Menzies' 1428 voyage into history texts--at least yet. Some people have no interest in 1428 and they have a choice to remain ignorant of it. Nobody is going to legislate it into their lives. If someday the voyage is proven to have taken place then, fine, we'll put it in the history books. Until then, keep in its designated corner where people who choose to debate it can do so without bothering anyone else.
"Who Built the Moon" is book for the crankists. I must say, just reading the introductory matter is an education in how the moon orbits, how the phases work and how ancient peoples both regarded it and tracked its movements. It's worth reading just for that. But Knight and Butler take it further:
-How is it possible, they ask, that the moon should mimic the sun's movements so precisely and in reverse, no less? If you think about it, it shouldn't be possible.
-Not only does it mimic the sun in reverse, its disc is the same size as the sun's to observers on the ground. Why is the moon so big in relation to the earth? No other moon in the solar system is a quarter the size of the planet it orbits. They are tiny in comparison--1/80th the size. How did this happen?
-Why is it that the moon vibrates like a gong when struck? No other celestial body we know of does this that we know of. It should be impossible UNLESS the moon is hollow! But if it is hollow, it can't be natural.
-Where exactly did the moon come from? It seems to be exactly the age of the earth BUT its rocks are older than any found on earth. Earth is about 4.5 billion years old but the oldest rocks we have are about 3.5 billion years old but moon rocks are 4.5 billion years old. Why the billion-year difference?
-One thing we notice of the moon's composition is that it is the same stuff we find in the earth's crust but not in the mantle or core. It's as though something hit the earth and blew off part of its crust to form the moon. That's interesting to posit because it explains something about the earth that we have observed on no other planet: continental drift. All other planets' land is locked in place but the earth's land is sliding around the surface of the planet. Did this happen because something struck the earth removing a huge amount of the crust producing huge gaps? One thing we notice is that if we were to take the moon's mass and distribute it over the earth, it would be enough to eliminate the drift and fill in the oceans. Is this how our oceans formed?
And I'm just about a quarter of the way through the book. The authors also discuss how ancient societies created the megalithic yard and why. They uncover some queer information about where Stonehenge and Avebury are located where they are even though it must be coincidence and yet it cannot be. They point out that Thomas Jefferson devised his own measuring system that has astonishing results for calculating the size of the earth. Where did he get it? Where did Jonathan Swift get his information found in "Gulliver's Travels" that Mars has two moons (150 years before we knew Mars had moons at all), gave their approximate distances from the planet and their periodicity where the inner moon revolves around Mars twice in a day (something not predicted by celestial mechanics). Were there ancient sources of knowledge available back then to the intelligentsia? If so, what happened to it? Where did it come from? Who discovered it and how? How old is it?
"Who Built the Moon" and "Civilization One" are both thought-provoking and worthy of discussion. These are big, complex books and not written for sensationalism. I've barely touched on anything presented in these books, barely skimmed it. These are works where you can suspend your skepticism without suspending your intelligence in the process and that is the most valuable thing about crankism--it allows us to discard our hardened beliefs for something different, something worth thinking about. Always being certain about the things we have no real certainty of is inherently unhealthly. So set your mind free for a little bit. Let the skeptics have their little laugh. Spring-cleaning for the brain.
I've ordered these on Kindle but you can get them in hard book form too. It doesn't matter how you do it, just do it.