2019-06-29
I saw this book recommended as a fringe book on historical dating, but I should have guessed just how fringe it was by the title and cover…
The thing is, Mike Baille is one of the world’s most respected dendrochronologists, and tree-ring dating has become an integral part of modern archaeology. The problem is, while Mike obviously knows his stuff when it comes to trees, his ability to judiciously sort through historical sources just isn’t up to par.
The book started out well enough – Baille has identified a series of intriguing dates in the tree-ring record suggesting sudden and extreme environmental impacts. He then begins to explore the idea that volcanic eruptions may be responsible.
Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there, as each chapter offers diminishing returns. By the end of the book I was desperate to put it down, not least because Baille’s major historical sources end up being Bishop Ussher, Velikovsky, Trotsky’s commentaries on Merlin, and the Bible’s Book of Revelations.
It doesn’t help either that the structure of the book is quite meandering. To quote from one chapter:
“What follows is in no particular order, it is simply a ‘stream of consciousness’ triggered by a few chance finds”.
And he does this a couple of times, undermining the narrative flow of his own argument as it grows increasingly speculative and frankly difficult to support.
I would have rated this book as 2 stars in the end, but I’ll give it 3 on the grounds that there’s a lot of information in here, there’s plenty to think about, and Baille might just be right – though if he is it’s in spite of his arguments, rather than because of them.
Rating: 3/5