I hope visitors to this message board are having a good look at the thread called "Rubbish" (below, somehwere).

I'm enormously grateful to Garrett Fagan for making some really stimulating input into the discussion. I'm sorry that he's decided to stop posting messages and although I know that he's extremely busy I hope that he will join us again from time to time. He is an orthodox historian with a first-class mind, a combative attitude and a great debating style. I only wish that other academics who believe my work is rubbish would also post comments on this site.

In the event that any do, however, maybe the way to move forward is not only to focus attacks on me personally, and to revile specific aspects of my work -- which is fine, by the way -- but also to explore certain areas of contention constructively.

Let's get a discussion going about carbon-dating for example, which Garrett has already touched on in relation to Tiahuanaco. As is well known I am unwilling to accept C-14 (which only measures the age of organic materials) as the final arbiter for dating megalithic sites. I think other factors like geology, astronomical alignments, etc, etc, do need to be taken into account as well.

Or another topic. Does anybody here have views and anything to con tribute on the last Ice Age? I've been doing a lot of research into the meltdown (which mainly occurred between 17,000 years ago and 8000 years ago)and almost all of the latest evidence seems to point to a series of violently cataclysmic events during this period, including global superfloods and large-scale volcanism and earthquakes. Is it really so silly, as my orthodox critics allege, to wonder whether important evidence about the human story may could have been "mislaid" during these disruptions.

What about the geology of the Sphinx? We keep hearing from our critics that Professor Robert Schoch's dating of the Sphinx on the basis of precipitation-induced weathering is a maverick opinion and that most geologists don't support it. OK let's hear from some of those geologists and hopefully from Schoch as well -- or from John West who first realised that geology could hold the key to the true age of the Sphinx.

But most of all let's hear about the opinions, ideas and research of visitors to this site on all of these matters and many more...

I have to apologise in advance that my own appearance on this Message Board is likely to be patchy for some time to come. This is because I am in the middle of "Underworld" -- by far the biggest writing challenge I have ever faced. I'm 50 years old now and my physical stamina isn't everything it once was. I'll do my best to contribute small items from time but hope, under the circumstances, that any sustained absences or non-reply to specific points will be forgiven.

All the best, Graham