It was April 2005. Not long after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that devastated most countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. I was sitting on a Singapore Airlines flight taxiing towards the runway at Singapore Changi airport. I can’t remember where I was heading. I used to travel a lot those days for work - so much so that my colleagues in Singapore joked that, instead of renting an apartment, I should simply check in to a hotel when I am in Singapore.
I had in my hands a copy of the National Geographic. On its cover was an illustration of Homo floresiensis, the hottest paleontological discovery at the time.
I don’t have that magazine anymore. A pity. I did find the cover image on Abe Books when I was looking for it while creating this page.
The articles inside also discussed tsunamis and their devastating effects, of course. That got me thinking about catastrophes - earthquakes, tsunamis.
The plane was taxiing slowly towards the runway, and there were several other aircraft waiting in queue. Thunder clouds were gathering on the horizon.
Another article that caught my eye was one about the first necropolis of the Egyptian civilization, Abydos. There was a discussion on whether the bodies discovered in the tombs could have been human sacrifices. Typical, I thought, that we always attribute anything we don’t understand about ancient civilizations to religious practices.
Catastrophes, ancient civilizations, interpretation of artefacts as pertaining to religion, while on a plane. The idea coalesced immediately. I took me 20 years before I had the time to turn it in to a book.
Abe Books had a photo of that exact article on their website. Coincidence? Yeah, of course. How could they know I wrote a book 20 years later because of this exact article?
