AW! Epistles
From David Bettinson
Abstract
Wednesday, September 06, 2000
Can I say that the book [Who Lies Sleeping?] is excellent? I’m interested in general books on cosmology/evolutionary vs creationalist etc. kind of thing by people like Stephen Hawkins, Richard Dawkins, Paul Davies, Stephen J Gould and Fred Hoyle. Some of the ideas in your book really made me think blimey. Also there were some things that I was a bit sceptical about, but I think you wrote it with a mind to invoke some arguments.
It’s now two months since I finished the book, and unfortunately I didn’t mark down things which I disagreed with or didn’t understand. The only thing that I do remember being confused by was the lack of evidence for any advanced dinosaur civilization. I think you mention that the surface of the earth will have been churned over a lot in the last 60 million years, but if we can find dinosaur bones, why not houses, cars, guns, or just some objects which have been in some way manufactured?
Thanks for your kind words about "Who Lies Sleeping?" Regarding artefacts of the anthoposaurs: yes 65 million years is a long time for things to last. Much of the surface of the earth has been subducted and revulcanised, metamorphosed, eroded and so on, and the artefacts of civilisation tend to be impermanent. (Note added June: Read the item added last month about the decay of a city.) And though civilisation has itself a marked effect on the surface of the earth, my guess is that technological civilisation never lasts longer than a few hundred years. So when you say: There are bones, why no artefacts? - the bones were produced for 140 million years whereas the artefacts were only made for a few hundred.
Nevertheless it would be surprising if nothing at all had ever been found. I believe they have but have not been recognised for what they are or have been written off as anomalies. Dusty museum and university archives probably have them shoved away in drawers described as unusual natural objects or objects found in displaced strata. The chapter on Oddities in the Rocks was meant to give a flavour of the subject, but by definition there is not much to work on in the public domain. There’s surely a mass of genuine antidiluvian Forteana in those drawers and cabinets if anyone had the right to explore them.
