Science in the twenty-first century does NOT encourage scientists to take risks in their pursuit of “the facts” — particularly when those facts call … - Graham Hancock

Mifsud notes that J. D. Evans had graduated from Cambridge in 1949 and that in the early 1950s he was 'in desperate need of a PhD'. The thesis that the future Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of London chose to develop, influenced by the Italian archaeologist Barnarbo Brea, was that the very first human inhabitants of the previously unpeopled Malta had been immigrants from the Neolithic Stentinello culture of Sicily — a theory that is still part of the conventional academic wisdom about Malta today. In pursuing this thesis, Mifsud suggests, it was not convenient to the young Evans to have to deal with the evidence of the Ghar Dalam teeth that suggested a prior, Palaeolithic, human presence in Malta.
This, then, either as a conscious or unconscious motive, could explain why Evans was so vehement in his attacks on the antiquity of the taurodonts [that could belong to Neanderthals] and so economical with the truth in his published statements about them. He wanted them out of the way — permanently — of his own theory about Malta's first inhabitants.

Berossos compiled his History from the temple archives of Babylon (reputed to have contained "public records" that had been preserved for "over 150,000 years"). He has passed on to us a description of Oannes as a "monster," or a "creature." However, what Berossos has to say is surely more suggestive of a man wearing some sort of fish-costume — in short, some sort of disguise. The monster, Berossos tells us: "had the whole body of a fish, but underneath and attached to the head of the fish there was another head, human, and joined to the tail of the fish, feet like those of a man, and it had a human voice ... At the end of the day, this monster, Oannes, went back to the sea and spent the night. It was amphibious, able to live both on land and in the sea ... Later, other monsters similar to Oannes appeared."
Bearing in mind that the curious containers carried by Oannes and the Apkallu sages are also depicted on one of the megalithic pillars at Göbekli Tepe (and [...] as far afield as ancient Mexico as well), what are we to make of all this? The mystery deepends when we follow the Mesopotamian traditions further. In summary, Oannes and the brotherhood of Apkallu sages are depicted as tutoring mankind for many thousands of years. It is during this long passage of time that the five antediluvian cities arise, the centers of a great civilization, and that kingship is "lowered from heaven." Prior to the first appearance of Oannes, Berossos says, the people of Mesopotamia 'lived in a lawless manner, like the beasts of a field.

I knew that the first Europeans to arrive in Ethiopia had addressed the monarchs of that country as 'Prester John.' This use of the sacred relic as a war palladium – and as an effective one at that – was not, according to Archpriest Solomon [Gabre Selassie, Head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Britain], just something that had happened in Ethiopia's distant past. On the contrary: 'As recently as 1896 when the King of Kings Menelik the Second fought against the Italian aggressors at the battle of Adowa in Tigray region, the priests carried the Ark of the Covenant into the field to confront the invaders. As a result of this, Menelik was very victorious and returned to Addis Abada in great honour.'

I re-read this part of the reply with considerable interest because I knew that Menelik II had indeed been 'very victorious' in 1896. In that year, under the command of General Baratieri, 17,700 Italian troops equipped with heavy artillery and the latest weapons had marched up into the Abyssinian highlands from the Eritrean coastal strip intent on colonizing the whole country. Menelik's forces, though ill prepared and less well armed, had met them at Adowa on the morning of 1 March, winning in less than six hours what one historian had subsequently described as 'the most notable victory of an African over a European army since the time of Hannibal.' In a similar tone, the London Spectator of 7 March 1896 commented: 'The Italians have suffered a great disaster… greater than has ever occurred to white men in Africa.