Hamlet's Mill - Giorgio de Santillana, Hertha von Dechen

Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth Ever since the Greeks coined the language we commonly use for scientific description, mythology & science have developed separately. But what came before the Greeks? What if we could prove that all myths have one common origin in a celestial cosmology? What if the gods, the places they lived & what they did are but ciphers for celestial activity, a language for the perpetuation of complex astronomical data? Drawing on scientific data, historical & literary sources, the authors argue that our myths are the remains of a preliterate astronomy, an exacting science whose power & accuracy were suppressed & then forgotten by an emergent Greco-Roman world view. This fascinating book throws into doubt the self-congratulatory assumptions of Western science about the unfolding development & transmission of knowledge. This is a truly seminal & original thesis, a book that should be read by anyone interested in science, myth & the interactions between the two.