Why did I choose to write a book that relies on human civilizational history as evidenced by statues and monuments in my seventh book? To answer this question, I would like to go back almost 40 years, to when I began travelling to different parts of the world.
Being an avid reader of human civilizational history and very interested in learning about different cultures, I collected as much information as I could on the histories and cultures of the lands I visited during my travels, as well as on the cultures of the lands that I could not visit but wanted to visit. A few years ago, while I reviewed my travel notes and photos, what struck me most was that those various statues and monuments, created throughout history, contained a wealth of information on human civilizational history and the roles played by leadership and the climate changes that occurred during those time periods. With this revelation, I decided to conduct further research on this subject and was pleasantly surprised that many statues and monuments revealed human progress throughout history. Therefore, instead of depending solely on numerous ancient historical records, which could be biased towards the winners who recorded those events, I decided to use appropriate information from both historical records and the evidence provided by the statues and monuments themselves.
During the process of studying various statues and monuments, I found a wealth of information based on numerous sources, such as archeologists’ digs and investigations, information obtained from writings, paintings, and carvings on the walls of the monuments, architectural features, construction technology details, types of construction materials used and their mining and transportation techniques, artifacts found in surrounding areas, and tools used during those times. Information on infrastructures, such as roads, canals, and other water control systems, and numerous other evidence, is then analyzed by scientists to evaluate the technological advances made by the societies of those time periods. Some examples of various technologies used by scientists to uncover the advances made during those periods are: evaluating data from deep ice coring and soil coring to interpret past climate changes; ground penetration radar technology to find information buried deep below the ground surface without digging; and radiocarbon dating to provide a timeline of different cultures. Then, with the recent developments in empirical science and technology, evaluation tools, such as laser technology, microbiology, virology, space technology, remote sensing, and other technologies, were utilized to understand past and present civilizations.
Evidence collected using many techniques, some of them mentioned above, could then be evaluated to understand the culture and the way of life of the people living during the time periods when these statues and monuments were created. This book attempts to present the evidence-based roles played by changes in climate and the influence of leadership on humanity’s lives and its history of progress. Put simply, these statues and monuments mutely tell us what humanity has endured throughout the ages. Thus, their telling of the civilizational progress story is the history of humans advancing from primitive stages to the more developed societies like those of the present time. This is expressed by comparing progress in arts, technologies, social organizations, and the conditions of civil liberties as they were 40,000 years ago, at different time periods since then, and finally all the way to present times. Knowing our past through the statues and monuments is like the scenario in the movie “Back to the Future” – going back to our past to learn about the present and fix the future. Without uttering a word, they reveal to us the ups and downs of past human society advancements; hopefully, we can learn from those episodes and move forward towards our continued progress. If we don’t, they also tell us what is in store for our future, i.e., “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”