Scotland's Hidden Sacred Past

Scotland's Hidden Sacred Past
By Freddy Silva
Published in November 2021
343 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 2/5

I’m not sure what the book’s main point is. This book is a haphazard mishmash of facts, myths, and speculations about the history of ancient Scotland. The facts are not well organized, and don’t amount to anything.

History books can be written in one of three ways. The first, and worst, way to write a history book is to argue for something. The second, most reliable, way to tell history is to compile a well organized chronological account of events. The third way to write history - to tell a story - is most difficult but the best if well executed. This book does neither, and is fairly chaotic.

The author speculates about a wide range of possibilities concerning ancient Scotland such as that the standing stones are some sort of ancient hard drive which stores information using vibrations, that the Armenian language is directly related to Scottish, and that giants used to live on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia.

The historiography is sketchy. He draws a lot of radical conclusions from limited evidence, without ever providing plausible alternatives. As anyone who reads my book reviews knows, I am very open to ideas about the Younger Dryas, Atlantis, or visitations by extra-terrestrials - however, I set the bar for evidence very high.  If you are making these bold claims, then you need to at least explore alternatives that are more mainstream.

Finally, the book is full of melodramatic accounts about the author’s misadventures. As someone who has traveled internationally, none of these misadventurers stand out as remarkable or interesting. For example, at one point, he falls in some beachside rocks, scratches himself, and bruises his arm. He then proceeds to write about the incident as if it was a life-and-death struggle for survival. However, he doesn’t go to the hospital. Instead, he has a beer, and takes photos of his arm for Instagram, and proceeds with the adventure. Either he is a big baby and the incident itself is cringy because it wasn’t severe, or the passage is poorly written because it doesn’t do justice to the injuries the author actually sustained.

I’ve read many worse books, and it definitely has its fascinating moments. Despite the positives, I would not recommend this book.