The following is an excerpt from the chapter:

As life in the industrialized world becomes faster with an ever increasing dependency on machines we have come to expect more to be achieved in less time. Take the act of recording events. Electronic word processing allows for rapid input and correction, more so than a typewriter and bottle of correction fluid, but as for the need to repeatedly dip a quill into an inkwell or, worse still, chisel each character on a stone tablet – no wonder scriptures are few and far between.

Safe in the knowledge that man’s ingenuity will make life in the future easier than it is in the present, it follows that the effort involved in any project undertaken in the past increases the farther back in history we go. Remove the historical element from any ancient wonder and it becomes no more or less incredible than more recent achievements, such as skyscrapers, dams and bridges. Yet when attempts to cut and move stones using what we presume to be the technology of the period fail, archeologists and historians continue to present their version of events as “the truth”, dismissing outright any suggestion that advanced technology or supernatural forces were to hand. Perhaps what’s more difficult for the authorities to come to terms with in an age when even the smallest effort comes at a high price is that an entire population could be motivated to achieve so much for such little reward.