Inspiration for Fantasy novels?!

Believe it or not, reading about the statues on Easter Island in Thor Heyerdahl's 1950s book, "Aku-Aku" was the beginning of a journey that ended in the writing of my first Fantasy Novel, "Rhuna, Keeper of Wisdom."

And here's the man to whom I dedicated that first book:

Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian Anthropologist and Adventurer/Explorer knew he was onto something big and special when he discovered megalithic stone statues hidden in the tropical jungles of remote Pacific Islands when he was there to study biology.  He changed subjects and began studying anthropology, travelling the world in search of more mysterious stone statues.

The most famous ones are on Easter Island, of course.  All 887 of them.  That's right:  almost 900 of them, all the same, and all with tall bodies buried more than halfway in the ground.  They would have been a terrifying and awe-inspiring sight in ancient times (and still a bit creepy now that some have been fully restored!)

Reading about the mysteries and unanswered questions around these statues, as well as their similarity to many other big stone statues around the world (especially South America) really got the wheels in my head spinning, and before I knew it, I was also hooked on this mystery.

Not only did I end up reading all of Heyerdahl's books, but I even went to Tonga to see some of those megaliths myself.  Here:

While searching for answers to these mysteries, I read many New Age books as well, and one day I realized I had all the ideas and material for a solid novel in the Fantasy genre.  Fantasy only in the sense that some of the things my characters do to create those megalithic structures is not based on scientific fact, but the rest of the story is about real people and real places.

Even though I can't travel and explore like I used to, I am still venturing far afield in my mind as I write more books in the series, and the more I delve into all these ancient mysteries, the more material I find to use in my books!  (Check them all out! Rhuna, Keeper of Wisdom - Kindle is FREE! Rhuna: Crossroads and Rhuna, The Star Child.)

Advanced Technology of Ancient Civilizations

I know, I know...you keep hearing about Ancient Aliens or Ancient Astronauts that came and built the pyramids in Egypt and all that...well, I'm not talking about that at all here - just the facts!  Well, at least to begin with.

So first of all, have a good look at these pictures:

See how exact the stones in this ancient Inca wall in Peru are placed together?  They say that you can't even put a sharp razor blade between them!  And that's without mortar or anything to bond them together!  Imagine how difficult it would be to get a hard block of stone that even, level and smooth, let alone the right angle to fit perfectly alongside another block!

And what about this:

They could also do perfectly smooth curves!  Not just in corners of rooms, but when sculpting those giant stone statues!

Some modern-day engineers have had a closer look at the remarkable workmanship of Ancient Egypt and other impressive ancient ruins, and have concluded that getting the curves, angles and symmetry so exactly right is almost impossible, even with today's technology and know-how!

One of the books detailing these things is Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt: Advanced Engineering in the Temples of the Pharaohs by Christopher Dunn.  Reading it will convince you that Ancient Egyptians had knowledge and skills above and beyond ours today!

When I discovered these fascinating things, I knew I had to incorporate it into my writing - and in fact, this advanced technology of the ancient world is a fundamental theme of my Rhuna Fantasy book series, and since it's Fantasy, I'm allowed to theorize all I want as to how, why, who and where (but it's not aliens!).

Amazing Reed Boats of the Ancients

This is a reed boat.  You may or may not have seen pictures of them, because even though they have been around for thousands of years, they aren't exactly common knowledge. 

The reed boats I'm talking about are the ones made from the reeds growing along the shores of Lake Titicaca on the border of Bolivia and Peru in South America.   Apparently, they are so super-buoyant, strong and stable, that people in that area have been making them the same way for literally thousands of years!  That's pretty amazing in itself, I think.

But there's more...

Quite a lot of historians and anthropologists have reason to believe that ancient civilizations built larger versions of this kayak-type reed boat to cross vast oceans, not just Lake Titicaca.  They were built with cabins on top, long rudders and oar-like poles to navigate, and probably also with sails, so it's quite feasible that they could have crossed a sea or even ocean.

If you've been around for a while, you've probably heard of Thor Heyerdahl and his famous expeditions to prove that people in ancient times really could have crossed oceans with such reed boats.  For The Tigris Expedition, he built a reed boat in the style of these ancient ones to cross an ocean, but the book about his first and most famous expedition, called Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft  is still a #1 best seller!

Reading it some 20 years ago started a long process that resulted in my first book, "Rhuna, Keeper of Wisdom", using many ideas from Thor Heyerdahl's books and related subjects. 

Heyerdahl believed that many people on Pacific islands had Caucasian ancestors because records show fair-skinned, red-haired people living on some of those islands, such as Easter Island, when Europeans and other explorers like Captain Cook first arrived there. 

And since fair-skinned and red-haired mummies have been found in Peru, Heyerdahl wanted to prove that an advanced civilization from South America could have crossed the Pacific Ocean to settle the Pacific islands.  Those white-skinned races then mixed with the Malayans who came from Asia, and their descendants are today's Polynesians.

Rhuna, the heroine of my series, is Polynesian.  Her father is a fair-skinned, blue-eyed man from South America, and her mother a brown-skinned native living on Easter Island.  She leaves her isolated island home on a reed boat, and eventually ends up in South America.

So, do you think combining history, or at least theories about mankind's past, with fiction and fantasy is a good idea?!