"Escaping from Eden" by Paul Wallis (2020)

"Though I had only ever read Genesis as a creation account, understanding the Clovis event made me consider for the first time that what we have in the pages of Genesis 1 may be not a creation account at all, but a story of recovery"

I was familiar with Paul Wallis because of his youtube channel, where he discusses theories about Alien civilisations, parallel universe, esoteric knowledge and world mysteries in general - he is a engaging speaker with honest, open face so I have listened him carefully for a while before finally dived in this book. At one point he admits that sometime in his youth he was intrigued with writing by Erich von Däniken and sure, in a way all the modern readers of this type of books are Däniken's children, he broke the ice and took the criticism like a champ, just to have generations and generations continuing his work. So if you are reading this, dear reader, you are probably already interested in theories about Alien influence on life on Earth - Paul Wallis is preaching to the choir here. 

Each of these books - from Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin, to Hancock and now Wallis are written by dreamers and enthusiasts - they are perhaps not 100% perfect but each of these authors comes with another grain of idea, another spark of imagination worth pondering. Wallis discusses a lot the mythology and religion of humans around the globe, going about bi-polar nature of Yahweh and how it make much more sense to think of beings rather than one being. What stopped me in the tracks was his idea that perhaps the explosion of Clovis comet (that almost erased life on Earth) was what human race remembers in the oldest mythology and religion - and the subsequent recovery from that dangerous times is actually the beginning of the oldest creation stories. Of course, Wallis tributes this recovery to Alien influence and help from outside, which makes sense if you are looking at the old scripts and think of "creator". 

The rest is more or less stirring the pot of interesting theories but it all goes back to Däniken - he should really be more recognised and celebrated, instead of being ridiculed as a famously misguided amateur. After all, it all started with him. Wallis himself has a serious background in religion (he is a Theological Educator in Australia) so towards the end he gets a little bit lost in long-winded discussion about the Bible - this might sound interesting to him but its in fact a bit complicated for layman like me who is not entirely familiar with every chapter and page. I read it with biggest pleasure in a week so this obviously appealed to me and I'm glad it relighted my passion for reading.