How ‘Primitive’ Really Were Ancient Humans? Lessons From ‘Primitive Technology’

In the media, prehistoric humans are often portrayed as naked savages huddling in caves. This is the image you see even in science journalism.

However, is it possible that ancient peoples had technologies more advanced than we like to acknowledge?

This possibility is part of the story concept of my Biblical fiction series, The Cursed Ground. What if, before the Great Flood of antiquity, the earth had carried a very large population of humans, some of whom had achieved relatively advanced civilizations comparable to the Bronze and Iron Ages, or even to more recent time periods?

This is speculative fiction, so I’m permitted to speculate and ask, What if? So I do.

For this reason, I’m greatly intrigued by a video blog called Primitive Technology. The author is a guy in Australia whose hobby is going into the forest wearing nothing but shorts, and then making amazing things. Using whatever resources he can find in the wild, he gathers and traps food, makes tools, builds structures, and much more. Each of his segments is a beautifully-made video without narration, showing his process for whatever the current project is. The blog also includes a written segment explaining what you’re seeing in the video.

Following Primitive Technology has opened my mind to the possibilities of technologies that could be readily available to humans, even without access to urban environments and manufacturing infrastructure.

Here are some of the blog entries that I have found intriguing:

“Building a Wattle and Daub Hut” — To make a small, serviceable hut, with an external chimney and fireplace, Primitive Technology Guy uses various non-complicated tools and materials: a stone hand-ax, small trees, fire sticks, coil pots, bark. Great demonstrations of these basic technologies. That shelter he built in 2013, but then followed in 2015 with a much more substantial project: “Building a hut with a kiln-fired tiled roof, underfloor heating and mud pile walls.” Especially interesting to see how he fires and places the roof tiles.

As PTG works on these projects, it’s fascinating to watch him make use of basic tools he has made, such as digging sticks, hand axes, a stone axe, stone chisel, and fire sticks, or the ingenious use he makes of raw materials from the woods around him — sticks, vines, bark, clay, leaves, and mud.

“Forge Blower” — My favorite segment, in which PTG uses simple materials like clay and bark to produce a device capable of “supplying forced combustion air required for high temperature furnaces and forges.” In a somewhat related video, we see him “Making Charcoal.” As he points out in his text narrative,

From my research, a natural draft furnace using wood (a kiln) can reach a maximum of 1400 c degrees whereas a natural draft furnace using charcoal can reach 1600 c degrees. Achieving high temperatures is necessary for changing material to obtain better technology (e.g smelting ore into metal).

Part of the takeaway here is that it’s possible to develop processes needed for advanced metallurgy using relatively simple materials.

PTG has made some impressive weapons, such as a “Spear Thrower” and “Bow and Arrow.”

He’s also demonstrated ways to get food in the wild, with all implements made from scratch: “Shrimp Trap” — In which Primitive Technology Guy uses a simple basket-weaved device to trap freshwater shrimp. Then he eats them, of course. Also he plants a “Sweet Potato Patch,” with an enclosing fence to keep out the wallabies.

PTG emphasizes that he doesn’t live this way; it’s his hobby:

Also It should be noted that I don’t live in the wild but just practice this as a hobby. I live in a modern house and eat modern food. I just like to see how people in ancient times built and made things. It is a good hobby that keeps you fit and doesn’t cost anything apart from time and effort.

ARK — 14 November 2016

 

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At last — an authentic photo of a giant skeleton discovered by archaeologists?

Uh, no.

As readers here will already know, you can pretty much assume that any photo showing a giant skeleton unearthed at an archaeology dig is faked.

I ran across this photo at an article on Liberty Voice called “Giant Human Skeletons Discovered in Wisconsin?” Liberty Voice‘s tagline is “Boldly Inclusive,” and I would venture to describe it as a little too bold and a little too inclusive.

This photo is faked. Note how the shadow of the archaeologist is cast to the left, while the shadow of the skeleton is cast in a different direction.

A few years ago, I ran an article here called “Have Archaeologists Found Skeletons of Biblical Giants in Greece?,” which has proven very popular with readers. That article showed that some of the best-known photos of giant skeletons at archaeological digs have been “photoshopped.” That doesn’t mean that giants never existed, but it does caution all of us to avoid being gullible.

The Liberty Voice article was mostly about the old stories of giant skeletons discovered in connection with the North American mound-builders, which I wrote about at “Did a Race of Giants Live Among the American Mound-Builders?” It’s possible that a race of outsized humans existed in prehistoric North America, but those giants for the most part were described as measuring six to eight feet in height, whereas the skeleton shown here would obviously come up to 25 feet or more. Nevertheless, the Liberty Voice writer says:

It seems that the majority of people just do not believe in this type of thing, because it sounds like complete nonsense. However photographs have been taken to record the finds as the picture with this article shows.

One reason it sounds like nonsense is because people keep reproducing these same faked photos. If you’re wondering how I know that this photo is faked, take a look at the shadow cast by the archaeologist in the original photo. Then look at the shadow cast by the skeleton in the section that was pasted in to create a phony scene. The shadows are cast in nearly opposite directions.

ARK — 1 June 2015

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Did a Race of Giants Live Among the American Mound-Builders?

Artist Marcia K. Moore has created some startling (but speculative) images, based on accounts about North American prehistoric giants.

In recent years, independent investigators have become interested in the claim that remains of gigantic humans have been found in association with some of the North American mound-building cultures. At the same time, self-styled “skeptics” have taken up the task of debunking these claims. (For an overview, see Nina Strochlic’s article in The Daily Beast: “Hunting for a Real-Life Hagrid.”)

I’m fascinated by the topic itself. But I’m also interested in these investigations and the reactions to them, as a cultural phenomenon. Why are people drawn to this idea of giants walking the earth, and why does the idea draw such rabid opposition? I think several phenomena are operating around this issue:

• A long-time interest in giants within human culture.
• A fascination with what I call anomalistics.
• A particular interest in giants among adherents of Bible-based religions, due to the connection with the Genesis account of the Nephilim (see Genesis 6:1-4), a population of “mighty ones” who lived before the global deluge.
• Among materialistic contrarians, a compulsion to contradict anomalistic and supernatural claims, particularly those that might lend credence to the Bible.

Not just a bunch of sensational newspaper accounts

A recent series of articles in Ancient Origins reminded me of the claims of prehistoric North American giants. The articles are written by Jason Jarrell and Sarah Farmer, who are investigating anomalous physical types reportedly found at archaeological sites of the Archaic and Early Woodland cultures of North America. Jarrell and Farmer say that for the past five years they have been undertaking fieldwork and scholarly research around sites in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio. (See their articles here: “The Establishment Has Already Acknowledged A Lost Race of Giants – Part 1” and then “… Part 2.”

Jarrell and Farmer refer to the sensational 19th- and early-20th-century newspaper accounts you usually hear about in connection with the North American giants. However, they also cite a number of scholarly reports from government and institutional investigators, which are harder to dismiss. For example, they quote reports from University of Kentucky researchers William S. Webb and Charles Snow, who examined the Dover mound in Mason County, Kentucky and wrote:

The remains of burial 40 is one of the largest known to Adena; the skull-foot field measurement is 84 inches (7 feet)…

Not only do the Dover people show the results of head shaping (deformation), but they exceed the total Kentucky series in the great width and height of the skull vault!…it is to be noted that the head shaping…has been extreme in these skulls…These people as a group…have the highest skull vaults reported anywhere in the world…

One of the outstanding and un-Indian traits present among the Adena people is their prominent and often bilateral chins…One of the skulls from the Dover Mound, Burial 25…represents a bilateral chin with a width of 52 mm.

But where are the physical remains?

Doctored photo purporting to show archaeologists discovering skeletons of giants.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the investigations of the North American giants is the lack of physical remains available for study, at least today. Some researchers explain this paucity of remains with a claim that they were repatriated under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).

I would add that cultural and natural processes also work against the preservation of human remains. Human bones buried underground usually don’t last very long unless they are intentionally protected somehow. This is particularly so in moist climates. Recoverable remains are inherently rare.

Anomalistic claims and investigations tend to bring out extreme reactions. Some people are willing to believe almost any extraordinary claim. As an example, take a look at the many comments submitted to my article, “Have Archaeologists Found Skeletons of Biblical Giants in Greece?,” in which I showed that some of the popular photos of giant skeletons have been faked. Even so, many readers persist in believing that the photos are authentic. At the other extreme are people who are quick to deny any anomalistic claim. The same article about giant skeletons also attracted some nasty trollish comments from “skeptics” who disparaged anyone who would take seriously the Bible’s accounts about giants.

Is a seven-foot giant really such a big deal?

Robert Pershing Wadlow (1918-1940) suffered from a hormonal disorder and grew to nearly nine feet tall. via Wikimedia.

In reality, the claim that the prehistoric peoples of North American included a race of oversized humans doesn’t seem that extraordinary. For the most part, the newspaper and scholarly accounts describe remains between six and eight feet in height. This is well within the known human range. What’s called gigantism today is generally seen as a rare hormonal disorder, but it does show that a large human frame is physically possible. There’s no reason to think that extraordinary size couldn’t be passed along genetically and appear within a clan or even a wider population. In fact, this appears to have been the case among some Canaanite groups mentioned in the Bible — see the accounts about the Rephaim at 1 Samuel 17:4-7, 2 Samuel 21:16-22, and 1 Chronicles 20:4-8.

While a seven- or eight-foot human isn’t such an extraordinary idea, literature and popular culture have often propagated the idea that the giants mentioned in historical accounts were 20 feet tall, 50 feet tall, or greater. As I’ve pointed out before, humans of such sizes are almost certainly impossible due to the ‘engineering’ challenges involved — see “Could Giant Humans Exist?”

It sounds to me as if enough written accounts exist to suggest that a race of giants could have lived among the ancient inhabitants of North America. It’s certainly worth investigating further, but it’s sure to be controversial. That’s the nature of anomalistics.

ARK — 24 May 2015

 

 

 

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Images of the Nephilim and Sunder – A Proto-Elamite Deity

Proto-Elamite statuette of a “horned deity.” Credit: Camocon, via Wikimedia Commons.

How did today’s culture develop its images of the Nephilim (called “Sunder” in my fiction series The Cursed Ground), that is, the race of super-human “mighty ones” referred to in the Bible account at Genesis 6:4? Some Bible accounts, such as the King James Version, call these creatures “giants.” In my stories, they appear as giants, but only in the sense of larger-than-normal hybrid offspring of angelic “sages” with human women.

Echoes of these characters appear in human stories and legends, particularly in Greek myths, which often feature giant half-gods with violent natures. I’m interested in these mythological images, especially as they relate to the historical-fiction tales I’m writing.

One such image came to my attention during a recent tour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The tour guide for Oasis Group Tours stopped briefly at a small statuette in the Met’s “Gallery 402 – The Rise of Civilization: The Ancient Near East ca. 8000–3000 B.C.” The statuette he showed us is similar to the one pictured here, but I’m not sure whether it is actually the same figurine.

The Met’s profile of this exhibit calls it a “Striding figure with ibex horns, a raptor skin draped around the shoulders, and upturned boots.” The Met identifies the figurine as Proto-Elamite, and the detail that our tour guide pointed out is that the copper-alloy sculpture is dated to about 3000 BCE. If the museum’s dating of this object is correct, he said, that would place it before the time of the great deluge of Noah’s day, which occurred in 2370 BCE, according to the Bible’s internal chronology.

That makes the connection to the Nephilim, because the Met’s description identifies the figure as a deity or hero:

This solid-cast sculpture is one of a pair of nearly identical images of a hero or a demon wearing the upturned boots associated with highland regions, his power enhanced by the mighty horns of the ibex on his head and the body and wings of a bird of prey draped around his shoulders.

If the sculpture was created before the Flood, then it was fashioned by an artist who could have known first-hand what the Nephilim and their materialized-angel fathers looked like. That would fit with the enhanced musculature of this figure and other characteristics mentioned in the description:

… the triple belt and beard that define divine beings and royalty … [the] blending of human and animal forms to visualize the supernatural world and perhaps to express shamanistic beliefs …

The Elamites are identified as Semitic in the Bible account at Genesis 10:22, but they could have become mixed in with descendants of Japheth, who were known for their mythological depictions of “mighty ones.”

I intend to post more articles about legends, historical accounts, and other depictions that could related to the pre-flood world, but I thought this image was particularly striking and noteworthy. Some related articles I’ve written include:

• Nephilim: Good Guys, Bad Guys? Humans, Something Else?
• In Search of Manu: Is the Name of Noah Widely Preserved in Human Languages?
• Ovid’s Account of the Deluge From Indo-European Mythology

ARK — 22 May 2015

 

 

 

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Awesome Indies Gives Approval to ‘The Cursed Ground’ Fiction Series

I’m proud to let readers know that the first two books in my historical series The Cursed Ground have been approved by Awesome Indies and listed on their site. Awesome Indies is a volunteer organization dedicated to reviewing and evaluating the works of independent authors. Awesome Indies Approved (AIA) books are “independently published books that meet, or improve on, the standard of books published by major mainstream publishers and their imprints,” according to the organization.

The first two books of The Cursed Ground, The Child-Stealers and Children of the Keeper are now both available on Kindle eBooks. I’m currently working on Book 3 of the series, The Safeguard, which I expect to release in September 2015.

ARK — 12 May 2015

 

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‘Children of the Keeper,’ Book 2 of ‘The Cursed Ground,’ Was Released Today

I’m very happy to let readers know that Children of the Keeper, Book 2 of my historical fiction saga, The Cursed Ground, was released today on Amazon Kindle eBooks. This new book follows Book 1 in the series, The Child-Stealers. I’ve written Children of the Keeper as a standalone story, and I’m told that it reads quite well that way.

I’ve been categorizing The Cursed Ground series as historical fiction, but in truth the story is a crossover from historical into Biblical fiction and even contains elements of what you might call historical fantasy. As far as age category, the story appeals to both adult and young-adult readers. The story is set in the ancient world before the Biblical great deluge. Recently I wrote a blog entry here explaining my approach to world-building for this series: “The Ancient World of ‘The Cursed Ground.’”

I hope you’ll consider reading both of the books I’ve written so far in this series. Here’s the Amazon description of Children of the Keeper, to give you an idea of the story:

Temper and her brother, Victor, serve as captains on the Keeper’s Guard, the rough-and-tumble security squad that patrols the city ruled by her grandfather, the Keeper of Wit.

Today just isn’t her day.

As soon as she comes on duty, Temper chases a thief through the filthy alleys of the city, only to fall on her face in the mud as the criminal escapes. Then somebody pelts her with sheep’s dung at the marketplace. And on top of that, she has to confront a band of hecklers harassing a harmless troupe of entertainers in the city center. Maybe such struggles are to be expected among the unruly Borne, a rebellious race long ostracized from the rest of the human family.

But darker conflicts are stirring in the city of Wit. Power-hungry conspirators are plotting to wrest the city away from the family of the Keeper, goaded on by his ancient enemy, the Plainspeaker.

As if that weren’t enough, Temper and her fellow patrollers discover that outsiders from the enemy race of the Put have entered the city and are promoting their religion: The ancient fellowship known as Friends of the Becomer. And, surprisingly, some of the Borne are listening to these foreign fanatics.

Temper is an expert at chasing criminals, at stick-fighting, and at breaking heads, but place too many conflicts in front of a hothead like her, and trouble is bound to erupt.

“The Cursed Ground” historical-fantasy saga brings to life a long-gone era when humans lived for hundreds of years and all spoke the same language. This series tells the story of a group of defenders who struggle to protect their communities from the growing violence in the world around them. Meanwhile, a small brotherhood is charged with carrying an unpopular message to humankind: The Creator has declared that this violent world will soon come to an end.

Children of the Keeper is available for $1.99 on Amazon’s Kindle eBook store.

ARK — 5 May 2015

 

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‘The Child Stealers’ Featured on The Choosy Bookworm

I just had a note today from The Choosy Bookworm that they’re featuring The Child-Stealers today on their site. The Child-Stealers is Book 1 of my historical-fantasy saga The Cursed Ground. Book 2, Children of the Keeper, is scheduled for release on May 5.

Here’s where to see Choosy’s page for The Child-Stealers: http://choosybookworm.com/product/the-child-stealers/

ARK — 29 April 2015

 

 

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The Ancient World of ‘The Cursed Ground’

Since publishing Book 1 of The Cursed Ground, I’ve started to get questions from readers about the world the story is set in. I like to let the story tell itself, so I avoid including a lot of backstory in the narrative. But for those who are interested, I thought I would set out some of the very broad concepts behind the fictional world I’m using.

Just to note, I’m releasing The Cursed Ground as a series of five shorter books. Book 1, The Child-Stealers, is already on the market, and Book 2, Children of the Keeper, is slated for release on May 5, 2015.

In terms of genre, I conceive of The Cursed Ground as historical fiction. However, the book might fit better in the market category of historical fantasy. I don’t use magic or the uncanny (much) in the story, but I admit to speculative elements, simply because the historical period I’m dealing with is understood only in general terms.

Here’s a bit of the big picture. The Cursed Ground takes place on the Earth, but at a remote time period when:

• Humans commonly live for hundreds of years.
• Cultural memory is very stable, because the long human life-span allows considerable overlap among generations.
• All humans speak the same language (well, almost all — you’ll have to keep reading to get to that).
• The names of people and places all have an understandable meaning, because of the common language and durable cultural memory. For that reason, all names in the story have a meaning in English, since that’s the language I’m writing in.
• The human population is expanding rapidly into many millions.
• Human civilization and technology have reached a level of development much higher than the modern world might expect.
• The world is becoming increasingly violent and unstable.
• The world is facing a major extinction event, but no human knows it.

A writer of speculative fiction must undertake a considerable task of world-building. In conceiving the world of The Cursed Ground, here are some of my assumptions about how the story fits into our understanding of the human past:

• The story is broadly based on the account given in the Biblical book of Genesis.
• Genesis is taken as an accurate historical and cosmological account, but not necessarily in the way that is often presented by religions of the world.
• The story assumes a very old Earth, but a relatively young human race.
• The conventional academic historical chronology is assumed to be accurate only back to about the mid-second millennium before the common era (BCE).
• The methods used to date all kinds of objects that researchers dig up from the ground are probably only accurate back to about 4,000 years before the present (BP). The older an object is, the greater the likelihood that the ascribed date is off, perhaps by orders of magnitude.
• During the early history of humankind, rainfall did occur on the Earth. This is a detail that matters, as many Bible readers take the view that it had never rained before the global flood. In the world of The Cursed Ground, Genesis 2:5,6 refers to a much earlier phase before the appearance of humans.

Here are some other articles I’ve written that might shed light on these various assumptions:

• Writer of Genesis: Moses or Someone Else?
• Why the Majority Is Usually Wrong
• What Would We Be Like if We Lived for Hundreds of Years?
• How Much Does Archaeology Really Reveal?
• How Much Do We Really Know About Human History?
• The Way Things Are, the Way Things Were, and What Is True

I recognize that many of the assumptions I’ve mentioned here could spark controversy. I don’t mind discussing my rationales, but in the end I’m writing a story, so I don’t intend to get into ideological arguments with people who disagree with the way I’ve built the world of The Cursed Ground. It’s fiction, after all.

ARK — 24 April 2015

 

 

 

 

 

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Writer of Genesis: Moses or Someone Else?

Rembrandt: Moses With the Ten Commandments. Via Wikimedia Commons.

The question of who wrote Genesis has long been disputed among the erudites of religion and academia. I have a particular interest in the issue as a fiction writer, because the first installments of my Edhai fiction series are all set during the time period covered by the Bible book of Genesis, particularly the very earliest history recounted in Gen 1-11, from the creation of the first humans up to the time of Abraham.

Traditionally, Judaism and Christianity have asserted that Genesis was written by the Hebrew prophet Moses during the mid-second-millennium B.C.E. However, over the last couple hundred years, mainstream academia and many religious scholars adopted an idea called the documentary hypothesis (DH). According to this idea, the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) is actually a compilation of various original documents written between the early- and mid-first millennium B.C.E. There are various versions of the DH, but the classic version identifies four key sources for the Pentateuch:

•  J, the Jahwist source — Prefers the personal name of God (YHWH, JHVH; Yahweh or Jehovah), particularly before Exodus chapter 3.
• E, the Elohist source — Prefers the generic title “Elohim,” particularly before Exodus 3.
• D, the Deuteronomist source — A purported later source that starts with the book of Deuteronomy and continues with other Bible books, such as Joshua and Judges
• P, the Priestly source — Concerned with ritual and formalism and prefers the title Elohim in referring to God.

At Wikiversity, you can see a helpful text of the King James Bible, with the purported sources highlighted in different colors. Reviewing that overlay, I can see that the portion of Genesis I’m writing about, chapters 1 through 11, is attributed primarily to the Priestly and Jahwist sources, with ‘additions by a redactor’ inserted in some portions, supposedly to provide transitional language that ties the various original documents together to make a whole.

For a basic overview of the documentary hypothesis, see the lesson on “Source Criticism” maintained by theology professor Ronald A. Simkins, but written, I think, by Ralph W. Klein.

Fundamentally, the documentary hypothesis is based on analysis of the content of the Bible, rather than on a rigorous historical investigation. If different portions of the text exhibit different styles or different interests, those portions are attributed to different sources. If the investigators believe they have uncovered contradictions or anachronisms, those problems are attributed to the diversity of author sources.

Chart of sources according to the Documentary Hypothesis. Vadym Zhuravlov, via Wikimedia Commons.

However, many of the adherents of the documentary hypothesis take things much further than the mere assertion that the Pentateuch is based on multiple documents. They employ complicated explanations to attribute those sources to particular time periods and to various religious and political elements within the nation of Israel, often with conflicting aims and agendas. In the conventional view, none of the four DH sources dates back before about 950 B.C.E., which would rule out any association with the historical Moses, about 500 years before then. In fact, many scholars claim that Moses never existed, or at least that he wasn’t anything like the personage portrayed in the Bible. Such extreme views are in turn used to convince students and the public that the Bible is fictional, and to prop up the materialist-atheistic bias that controls much of academia today.

For many of us, these assertions are too extreme and speculative to be given much credence. Back into antiquity, Moses has been recognized by historians and by Jewish and Christian authorities as an historical character and the writer of the Pentateuch. In his history The Antiquities of the Jews (Book 1, Chapter 1), the first-century Roman Jewish historian Josephus frankly attributes the Genesis creation account to the literal Moses, including in his summary of that account such comments as “… but Moses said it was one day…,” “Accordingly Moses says,” and “Moreover, Moses, after the seventh day was over, begins to talk philosophically …”

All of this is not to say that there is no room for a nuanced understanding of the sources of Genesis. It’s possible that Moses himself might have been working from pre-existing written or oral sources in producing some parts of the Genesis account. Chapters 7 and 8 read almost like a mariner’s log or journal. Could Moses have been in possession of Noah’s account of his survival of the great flood? Possibly. Some portions of Genesis read as if they could have come from previous documents. For example, Genesis 5 starts with “This is the book of Adam’s history.” Genesis 6:9 starts Noah’s story with “This is the history of Noah.”

Some scholars suggest that certain issues with the text of Moses’ writings might be explained by the work of later copyists. In Creation and Chaos, Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke writes,

[O]thers have not been persuaded by these [Documentary] arguments and would still trace the basic unity of the Pentateuch back to Moses without denying that the text was modernized in the course of its transmission according to the common Near Eastern scribal practices.

The point here is that I find no good reason to discount the existence of Moses or his writership of the Pentateuch. The Genesis account, including the first eleven chapters, are a legitimate source on which to base a storytelling project, which can reasonably considered historical fiction.

ARK, 23 February 2015

 

 

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A. Roy King’s ‘The Child-Stealers’ Has Gone Live on Amazon

My story The Child-Stealers has gone live on Amazon, so readers can now purchase it in ebook form for Kindle for only $.99 US. The Child-Stealers is the novella-length first episode of a longer novel, The Cursed Ground, an historical-fiction story set in the ancient world.

To purchase the novel for your Kindle or Kindle reading app on your tablet or mobile phone, please head over to the book’s Amazon order page at:

http://www.amazon.com/Cursed-Ground-Child-Stealers-Edhai-ebook/dp/B00PXIKE4G

In about another week, I will be releasing The Child Stealers in other formats (such as EPUB and PDF) through the Smashwords site.

The Child-Stealers has already garnered some great reviews from early readers. Here are a few excerpts:

“Give yourself enough time to read it in one sitting — as a novella, it’s do-able, and once you start it, you won’t want to put it down. And by the time you’re finished, you’ll have some questions you’ll want King to answer in book two.” — Stephen B. White

“[W]e get to the first key moment of crisis and its aftermath before we can catch our breath. A mark of a good page turner…. Will I read the remaining sections of the book as King publishes them? You bet, because he has me truly wanting to know what has become of characters I came to care for.” — Dr. Grover B. Proctor, Jr.

“Overall a better than average effort from a new author …, who is writing to entertain you with a thoughtful, interesting story, not to listen to himself describing scenery or yammer on about the ideal societies. I’d buy the next installment after reading this one. A worthwhile read for the price.” — David Sims

My long game here is to produce a series of historical novels based on Biblical settings, but with the focus on storytelling rather than religious themes. This A. Roy King blog serves as a way to connect with readers and to share some of the research and thinking that goes into the writing. I also publish an email newsletter, “News and Updates From A. Roy King.” The newsletter is the best way to keep informed of new episodes of The Cursed Ground as they are released. I also use it to let readers know about new articles I’ve written and news about historical and archaeological discoveries that relate to the ancient times I’m writing about. To sign up for the newsletter, please follow this link to the subscription form:

http://eepurl.com/2U3Uf

ARK — 20 January 2015

 

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