John Robb, reviewing it in Nature summarised it thus:Writing, surgery, drug use, monument building, detailed environmental knowledge, sophisticated artworks, technologies such as mining and smelting, language, musical instruments, tools fashioned with aesthetic sense as well as utilitarian function – all arose far earlier than either archaeologists have generally acknowledged or the public has imagined.
But throughout the book we find clear exposition, a refreshing straightforwardness about the complexity of the archaeological record, a willingness to explore many sides of an issue, and a zest for discovery that makes it a page-turner.He takes Rudgley to task over his excessive extension of the meanings of the word "civilization" and his tendency to sweeping statements, treating all early societies alike and representing the exceptional as typical.
Prehistoric people did many weird and wonderful things; the way to read this book is as an entertaining and enlightening account of prehistory’s greatest hits.
Rudgley spends much of the book emphasising the dark and violent side of Odin, according to Independent reviewer David V. Barrett, "committing the ultimate sin of any anthropologist or historian, back-projecting from highly selective examples of unpleasantness today and photo-fitting them to a distorted image from the mythological past".
Barrett concludes that Rudgely's book is "a catalogue of racist individuals and organisations whose only connection with Odin, through very dubious links, is by assertion rather than argument.
The legend of King Arthur, the mysticism of the Druids, and warriors such as Boudica and Vercingetorix are covered as the programme attempts to unpick the facts from the fiction, about an ethnic group that were ultimately crushed by the might of Rome's legions.
Rudgley moved to London in the early 1980s and worked as a shop assistant in WHSmith in Notting Hill, and later as a hotel porter in Holland Park, later showing interest in a number of modern Pagan groups, but never becoming a member of any single organisation.