Review by New York Times Review
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, I was part of a team excavating an ancient Greek temple on the beautiful island of Paros. For nearly a thousand years, worshipers at this spot had built walls, knocked them down, dug holes and burned offerings to their gods, leaving behind baffling, ambiguous remains. One day, as I was staring at the dirt in a heat-induced daze, a younger student commented how hard it was to make sense of it all. I could only agree, but as we chatted, I realized - to my deep embarrassment - that we were talking about entirely different things. I was obsessing over the technicalities of decoding this complex deposit, while he wanted to know what it had felt like to stand there 2,500 years earlier, sacrificing to alien gods. I had allowed the intricacies of archaeological methods to blind my imagination. Graham Robb, already well known as a biographer and expert on all things French, has not fallen into this trap. His engaging new book, "The Discovery of Middle Earth," which combines travelogue and historical detective story, is the work of a man to whom the past is vividly present. As he was planning a cycling trip in southern France, he tells us, he began hearing "the comprehensible whisperings of a vanished civilization." Poring over maps, he concluded that 2,000 years before anyone could even measure longitude, the druids - the priests of the ancient Celts - had mapped Western Europe with accurate lines based on the sun's movements. This "immense work of art," Robb suggests, made possible "one of the most ingenious and effective federal systems ever devised," shaping everything in Celtic life. "Whenever the site of a battle was chosen by the Celts," Robb says, "it lay somewhere on the solar network," and only "the unostentatious cleverness of the druids has made it possible to go on believing that the Romans . . . were a technically superior civilization." This is historical revisionism on a grand scale. But is it true? Sadly, no. I say "sadly" because (perhaps overcompensating for my myopia on Paros) I would like nothing more than to believe Robb that "a journey along a druidic pathway . . . will be ... a chance to meet some of the gods and other ancient creatures who still inhabit Middle Earth." But I cannot. Robb's reference to Middle Earth speaks to the basic problem. It is not that Robb unduly distorts or ignores the facts of Celtic archaeology; he is widely read and even more widely traveled, having cycled, he tells us, more than 15,000 miles through France. Rather, the difficulty is that Robb approaches these facts in such an undisciplined way. For most readers, the words "Middle Earth" immediately evoke J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," set in a fantasy world of the same name. But Hobbit aficionados will be sorely disappointed; other than a throwaway reference or two hinting that druidic landscapes had something to do with the medieval sagas that inspired Tolkien, Robb makes no attempt to connect "The Discovery of Middle Earth" and the Middle Earth where the War of the Ring was fought. "Sooner or later," Robb tells us, "a traveler on the meridian enters a realm of meditative unease in which either everything or nothing is significant," but this is precisely why academics invented scholarly disciplines. As the word suggests, disciplines - history, linguistics, archaeology and the like - exist to discipline thought, trapping it within rigid rules of methods, evidence and logic, which dispel the muddle brought on by Robb's meditative unease. These disciplines certainly have their problems, and at their worst can lead to embarrassing episodes like mine on Paros, when academics lose sight of the forest for the trees. At their best, though, they can lead to the truth. Robb's story is fascinating, but discipline doesn't seem to concern him very much. "The Discovery of Middle Earth" is certainly not as free-and-easy with reality as Erich von Däniken's "Chariots of the Gods" (which describes how aliens came to earth in ancient times) or Gavin Menzies' "1421" and "1434" (which describe how 15th-century Chinese fleets crossed the whole world's oceans and started the Italian Renaissance), but it still has more in common with them than with conventional history. All too often, Robb's impressive-looking maps showing how many places fall on druidical meridian lines depend on the author giving himself the benefit of enormous amounts of doubt. He opens the book, for instance, by arguing that Hannibal followed one of the druids' lines when he marched his elephants into Italy in 218 B.C. The fact is, though, that we just do not know what route Hannibal took. Within 50 years of his death, historians were already arguing over where, in a 100-mile span of possible passes, he had crossed the Alps. Napoleon himself, who campaigned through these very mountains, weighed in; but the debate remains unsettled. Robb, however, shows little hesitation about going with whatever works and ignoring what doesn't. From the three or four possible sites for the home of the Parisii tribe, he picks the one that falls closest to a meridian. He also rejects the most popular scholarly suggestions for where the Ambiani built their capital and Julius Caesar fought one of his most important battles in favor of less-popular locations that are closer to his lines. Similarly, pointing out that "no single place has emerged as the favorite" for the location of Mons Graupius, where Rome fought its northernmost battle, Robb puts it where two of his lines intersect. When a professional archaeologist comes up with a theory, he or she normally tests it partly through lateral thinking, asking what we would expect to find if the theory were true. Robb argues that the druids were master mapmakers, measuring out Europe and marking it with their grid. The Romans were also master mapmakers; Roman archaeologists regularly dig up milestones and bronze surveying instruments; sometimes they even excavate maps, scratched on stone or metal. So why do Celtic archaeologists never dig up such things? If we are to believe him, Robb needs to explain this. Robb concedes several times that almost any straight line drawn across Europe would run through multiple significant sites, but to be convincing, he needs to show that no other set of lines would produce maps as impressive as his own. Instead, he does something very different. "Every city swarms with coincidence," he says near the end of the book. As well as running through Celtic holy sites, he notes, one druidic meridian also bisects not only the restaurant where he discussed "The Discovery of Middle Earth" with his editor but also the left-luggage office where he put his bicycle after pedaling through France. "At the Euston Road entrance to the British Library," he confesses, "a voice proclaimed the 'druid network' to be nothing but a huge and complex system of personal reference, a testament, not to the druids' genius, but to the ruthless ingenuity of the unconscious mind." Are we to conclude from this that the preceding 300 pages are just Robb's joke on the reader (which I have now spoiled by giving away the punch line)? Robb gives us a good story, full of humor and memorable observations, but I was looking for more. I like to think my experience on Paros taught me not to let technicalities smother my imagination, but "The Discovery of Middle Earth" suggests that Robb needs to learn not to let imagination ride roughshod over technicalities. While this book is a tale well told, it is probably not true; and while there may be readers who do not look for truth in their history books, and are satisfied simply with a good read (or even with a good joke), I am not one of them. IAN MORRIS'S latest book, "War! What Is It Good For? Conflict and the Progress of Civilization From Primates to Robots," will be published in April.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 24, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
Were an atlas of the Celtic world before the Roman conquests ever created, it could derive from the information amassed in this volume. The author of a prior geographical investigation, The Discovery of France (2007), Robb remarks that this one begins with a scholar's hypothesis that Celtic settlements, sacred places, and roads were sited on abstract lines based on summer and winter solstices. Off and running after explaining one such line, named for the classical hero Hercules, Robb proceeds to delineate scores of lines at whose intersections archaeological evidence of Celtic habitation has been excavated in modern France and Britain. Dozens of diagrammatic maps visualize Robb's somewhat complex accounts of Celtic cartography, which developed in the course of Celtic migrations. When one of these reached Rome in 387 BCE, Celts entered a written history that Robb taps for his narratives of Celtic resistance and defeat in Rome's invasions of Gaul and Britannia. Assiduous research into the obscurities of an ancient culture, including its Druids, Robb's opus should lure readers interested in the Celtic domains.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Presenting one of the most astonishing, significant discoveries in recent memory, Robb, winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and Ondaatje Award for The Discovery of France, upends nearly everything we believe about the history-or, as he calls it, "protohistory"-of early Europe and its barbarous Celtic tribes and semimythical Druids. Popularly dismissed as superstitious, wizarding hermits, Robb demonstrates how the Druids were perhaps the most intellectually advanced thinkers of their age: scientists and mathematicians who, through an intimate knowledge of "solstice lines," organized their towns and cities to mirror the paths of their Sun god, in turn creating "the earliest accurate map of the world." In his characteristically approachable yet erudite manner, Robb examines how this network came to be and also how it vanished, trampled over by a belligerent Rome, which has previously received credit for civilizing Europe-though in Robb's account, Caesar, at the helm, appears dim, unwitting, and frankly lucky, and the (often literally) deeply buried Celtic beliefs and innovations seem more relevant in modern Europe than previously assumed. Like the vast and intricate geographical latticework that Robb has uncovered, the book unfurls its secrets in an eerie, magnificent way-a remarkable, mesmerizing, and bottomless work. 50 illus. Agent: Gill Coleridge, Rogers Coleridge & White (U.K.). (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Robb's (Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris) premise is that the protohistoric Celts of Northern Europe were pioneers in many cultural innovations, not least in their keen grasp of celestial movements. He posits that Druids, the equivalent of academics among the Celts, structured their entire society-towns, temples, tribal relocations, and battle sites-on this knowledge. Robb argues that traces of their civilization still remain, e.g., in the etymology of place names, in modern road locations, and in ancient earthworks. (The middle earth of the title indicates a site equidistant from two sites situated along solar paths.) Ironically, their rational grasp of solar happenings led to the Celts' downfall: in some of their crucial battles-as recorded in Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars-they had numerical superiority, but their solar reckonings led them to stage battles in less than advantageous spots. The Celts as a culture eventually assumed a submissive relationship to the Romans; hence, few primary sources regarding their literary and scientific prowess remain. Archaeological investigations show that many of their great works were built over by the Romans and subsequent cultures. Robb's writing is deft and his accounts of his own explorations lend a certain underpinning and charm to the complex narrative. -VERDICT This will appeal to specialists but could be too detailed for the general reader, who may grow frustrated by the somewhat cryptic information regarding solstice lines. [See Prepub Alert, 5/20/13.]-Brian Renvall, Mesalands Community Coll., Tucumcari, NM (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
When planning a bicycle route through the Alps of central Europe, Robb (The Discovery of France, 2007, etc.) discovered a sophisticated ancient Celtic landscape that called for nothing short of a revision of ancient history. The author is a refreshing new voice in a canon of outdated, barbaric perceptions of an ingeniously advanced society and endlessly recycled quotes from Tacitus, Caesar or Cicero. "Tribes who used perishable materials where Romans used stone, and who recorded their histories in nothing more durable then brain tissue, are unlikely to be seen as sophisticated precursors of the modern world," writes the author. However, through use of celestial mathematics, etymology, geometry, mapping and a charming measure of common sense, Robb reveals a clear picture of a culture that has been buried by the Roman conquest. He shatters the misconception that Rome built the first roads in Gaul and Britain, describing the well-maintained long-distance routes used by the Celts to move around their territories. They demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of astronomy and celestial movements, and they made mathematically inspired art. They also created one of the most prestigious universities in the ancient world (12 centuries before the Sorbonne) and laid out their cities, towns and sacred places via a series of meticulously ordered geometric and astronomical lines, imposing an intriguingly spiritual map on a very real terrestrial landscape. The dizzying array of tribal and place names--not frequently enough given modern geographical reference--and the occasionally tedious explanations of the mathematical/geometrical calculations may be necessary, but they are the weakest links in this otherwise gripping text. Some readers will also wonder if the title itself is a play to win readership from Tolkien fans, most of whom would find the book too dry for their tastes. Flaws aside, Robb has broken significant new ground in this deep, fastidiously researched exploration into the ingenuity of the ancient Celtic people.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
