Fingerprints of the Gods is a book first published in 1995 by Graham Hancock, in which he contends that some previously enigmatic ancient but highly-advanced civilization had existed in prehistory, one which served as the common progenitor civilization to all subsequent known ancient historical ones. Supposedly, sometime after the end of the last Ice Age this civilization passed on to its inheritors profound knowledge of such things as astronomy, architecture and mathematics. Most of his claims are based on the idea that mainstream interpretations of archaeological evidence are flawed or incomplete, rather than supplying "new" evidence.

Part of Hancock's argument is towards a reassessment of existing archaeological evidence, which in the introduction to a new edition he outlines as being more important than the theory he uses to link together his conclusions. The book pivots on "fingerprints" of these civilizations, evidence of which Hancock finds in the descriptions of Godmen like Osiris, Thoth, Quetzalcoatl, and Viracocha. These creation myths predate history, and Hancock suggests that in 10,450 B.C., a major poleshift took place, before which Antarctica was further from the South Pole than it is today, and after which it was moved to its present location.

This civilization was supposedly centered around Antarctica, and later survivors initiated the Olmec, Aztec, Maya, and Egyptian cultures. The pole shift hypothesis hinges on Charles Hapgood's theory of Earth Crustal Displacement which has few supporters in the geological community compared to the more accepted model of plate tectonics. Members of the scholarly and scientific community have described the proposals put forward in the book as pseudoscience and pseudoarchaeology.

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