Everybody loves a good apocalypse meme. That's why the 2012 one is so popular right now. The millennium came and went without even a harrowing Y2K glitch, so we have to hitch our self-destruction and self-loathing onto another upcoming event. 2012 just happens to be that event.

A while back I finished reading Daniel Pinchbeck's 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. Though I have mixed feeling about the book, the cultural examination was fascinating, and I wanted to learn more. While shopping at a local Borders store, I found a book entitled In Search of Quetzalcoatl purporting to know the true identity of this god that is reaching back into popular culture - this "white" god. I bought it.

It took me a while to pick up the book the first time, and about midway through I put it down. I almost succumbed to Timothy Ferriss' rule of if a book isn't interesting you, stop reading it. I fought off that inclination and continued reading it several months after first putting it down.

It wasn't that Pierre Honore's book wasn't interested. It was that it was written very academically, but not very much too the point. I can deal with academic dryness. But early on Honore professes to know the identity of the white god Quetzalcoatl and then spends the remainder of the book painstakingly drawing comparisons throughout central and South America to show links between all of these civilizations. It isn't until the end that he presents us with his hypothesis, and the comparative research really only shows links between these early American civilizations. It doesn't necessarily support his conclusion.

The book is well researched. Honore does an excellent job of gathering his research and laying it out on the table. I thoroughly enjoyed his hypothesis and believe that it is a valid argument. There are a few problems with it, however.

First, it's published by Adventures Unlimited Press. I have nothing against this publishing company. In fact, they publish a lot of books that I would find myself reading. I love the strange, mysterious and supernatural. But when you place advertisements in Honore's book for other books on Atlantis, Lemuria, UFO's, time travel and anti-gravity, it loses a bit of its academic appeal. It draws into question the research in a guilty by association way.

The next problem is that Honore relies too heavily on the notion that two civilizations couldn't possibly come up with the same thing independently, so therefore there must be a link. Although this may be used to come up with a valid argument on paper, it is not a sound premise, and draws into question some of the more vague links.

Finally, Honore's concluding chapter tells us of his experiences searching for these specific rock carvings that he had read about. It's a first person account of him retracing a previous author's steps into the jungle, bearing hardships, and ultimately finding his prize. The problem is Honore came back with nothing. No photographs. No etchings. No rocks. He claimed that the rocks were under water, so he couldn't get any pictures of them. He claimed that the water sub-sided every ten years. Honore's book was written in 1961. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there has been no additional findings to support this.

And what was Honore's conclusion? Who was the white god Quetzalcoatl? Honore hypothesized that the South American cultures were directly linked to expeditions from Crete - the island in Greece - and that these civilizations owe a lot to the Minoan civilization of the Old World. He presents evidence of white Indians in South America, as well as depictions of bearded men in carvings and other artistic endeavors. Honore's hypothesis is definitely thought provoking, and as I stated early, his book is well researched. The possibility exists that his hypothesis is true, but this book gives little hard evidence beyond similarities to sway one's skepticism.

As an interesting side note, while I'm reading Honore's book and it's references to the Pontic Migration of Robert Heine-Geldern, I was also reading the essay "Ocean Origins of Indian Civilization" by N.S. Rajaram, which appears in the Disinformation anthology Underground!, and which refutes any European or Aryan influence on Indian (Southeast Asia) culture and civilization. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll every pinpoint the origins and migrations of humankind.