James, Peter

Peter James (?- ) graduated in ancient history and archaeology at Birmingham University and engaged in postgraduate research at University College, London.

James came to public attention when, in collaboration with Nick Thorpe,  Nikos Kokkinos, Robert Morkot and John Frankish, he authored Centuries of Darkness ^[346] in which he explored the problems of the chronology of the Mediterranean and Near East in the second millennium BC. It generated much controversy, which continues as the authors’ website^(c)(d) demonstrates.

The following years saw the production of an impressive three-volume work by David Rohl^{[229][230][232]} offering similar ideas on a New Chronology for the region.>Initially, James and Rohl had jointly researched the flaws in Velikovskian chronology for a number of years, which resulted in a paper^(e)  written for the SIS in 1982. Rohl has published this document on his website as he “felt it would be useful to republish the ‘first outing’ of the New Chronology theory here since the original paper is difficult to find. It also serves to put the record straight about when and how the revision of the Third Intermediate Period took shape.”<

Unfortunately the collaboration ended over divergent views regarding the identification of the biblical Shishak, Rohl favouring Ramesses II, while James opted for Ramesses III.

James has also been studying the Atlantis question since the early 1970s. Paul Dunbavin recounts that James had originally favoured Megalithic Britain as Atlantis. Francis Hitching in The World Atlas of Mysteries^[307] notes how James calculated the date of the demise of Atlantis as 3600 BC. He arrives at this by accepting the commonly agreed date for the beginning of Egyptian civilisation of 3100 BC. He then adds the 1,000 years, which Solon was told by the Egyptian priests, was the time that had elapsed between the Atlantean Athenian war and then arbitrarily subtracts 500 years to compensate for an assumed nationalistic exaggeration of Egypt’s antiquity; a habit common to many ancient kingdoms.

However, when he finally published his work on the subject, The Sunken Kingdom ^[047], he controversially offered a site in Anatolia in western Turkey as his preferred location for Atlantis. Unfortunately, he has been unable to obtain permission from the authorities to dig at the site and hopefully substantiate his theory. The book is supported by a website^(a).

A few years earlier, Eberhard Zangger published The Flood From Heaven, in which he also placed Atlantis in western Anatolia, specifically in Troy. James offers a few critical comments including what he considers a major weakness in Zangger’s theory, namely that Troy did not ‘sink beneath the waves in a single day and a night’. ^[p.201]

James was highly vocal in disputing the dendrochronological dating of the Uluburun shipwreck discovered in 1982 off southwestern Turkey. The initial date given was 1315 BC, later revised to 1305 BC but due to a lack of bark on the piece of wood tested a definitive date was impossible. Even if the bark had been attached it would still only have provided the date that the tree had been felled not the date of the shipwreck^(b). Subsequently, the more imprecise radiocarbon dating gave a date of ‘around’ 1300 BC.

James is also co-author, again with Nick Thorpe, of Ancient Inventions ^[757], which is a 672-page tome that offers a fascinating account of the inventive capabilities of ancient civilisations. In this 1994 book, he comments that “Plato’s yarn is largely a work of fiction” ^[p.455], which makes you wonder why, just a year later, he published The Sunken Kingdom!

Seven years later James and Thorpe teamed up again to compile Ancient Mysteries ^[1922], which covers familiar subjects, such as Nazca, Sodom & Gomorrah, the Vinland Map and the Maya.

^(a) https://www.knowledge.co.uk/the-sunken-kingdom/

^(b) https://www.centuries.co.uk/uluburun.pdf

^(c) https://www.centuries.co.uk/replies.htm

^(d) https://www.centuries.co.uk/faq.htm

^(e) David Rohl Official Blog *