Biography

A lifelong question finally answered — or at least properly asked

G. David Cobb was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on a sunny morning in early 1962, and first educated in one of the city's better church schools — where he was taught that God created everything in six days and rested on the seventh. He has always found this a very bold claim for a single week's work… even for God.

He came from a family of storytellers. His mother was a schoolteacher, so there were always books around, and his grandfather had a gift for improvisation — spinning elaborate, entirely original adventures for Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit that had nothing to do with the printed versions and everything to do with keeping a small boy entertained. One of his earliest memories is sitting on the potty under his grandfather's supervision, listening to one of those stories, with a piece of paper and a crayon in hand, 'writing' his own version. He was, by any reasonable measure, an author before he was toilet-trained.

His interest in archaeology began around the same time. A large fossil — dense with ancient seashells — served as a doorstop in his grandmother's home. She had retrieved it from the roadside on a family camping trip some years earlier. To most people it was a convenient doorstop. To a curious boy in Auckland, it was evidence that the world had once been very different from the one he was standing in. He never quite stopped thinking about that either.

His later education moved to the much more secular state sector, where he found the official answers marginally less certain and seldom satisfying either. He holds no formal academic qualifications in history, archaeology, or any of the subjects this book addresses. His degree, by his own description, from the University of Life — was earned the hard way, over six decades of moving through the world with his eyes open and his scepticism intact.

His working life has been varied. He built and ran a retail and wholesale import business trading in mostly Asian goods and artifacts at what he cheerfully describes as the very tail end of the hippy trail. He has travelled extensively — a habit that has never quite left him. The last twenty-five years have been devoted to business and commercial property consultancy, helping clients navigate the finer points of deals, disputes, and decisions that matter.

He raised a foster son from the age of two, more or less on his own, who is now a man grown with a son of his own — his son and grandson, to all intents and purposes. In recent years he has devoted considerable time to what he calls selectively targeted philanthropy: helping the people he likes navigate business, property, and the finer points of not needing a lawyer, through a combination of experience, stubbornness, and carefully worded advice.

Somewhere along the way, a sigil was given to him via unusual channels. Upon reflection, he noticed it carried strong connotations toward the written word. Given that one of his earliest memories involves a crayon and a piece of paper, this did not entirely surprise him — but did, in part, motivate him to write this book.

He wrote Ancient Lies because the official story of where we came from and what we were doing for over three hundred millennia has always struck him as, to use a technical term, a bit far-fetched. And because after a lifetime of reading everything he could find on the subject, he had something to say about it.

He currently lives in Wellington, New Zealand and, amongst other things, is contemplating the next book in the series.