  We present a new cosmological model, based on the holographic principle,
which shares many of the virtues of inflation. The very earliest semiclassical
era of the universe is dominated by a dense gas of black holes, with equation
of state $p=\rho$. Fluctuations lead to an instability to a phase with a dilute
gas of black holes, which later decays via Hawking radiation to a radiation
dominated universe. The quantum fluctuations of the initial state give rise to
a scale invariant spectrum of density perturbations, for a range of scales. We
point out a problem, that appears to prevent the range of scales predicted by
the model from coinciding with the range where such a spectrum has been
observed. We speculate that this may be related to our field theoretic
treatment of fluctuations in the highly holographic $p=\rho$ background. The
monopole problem is solved in a manner completely different from inflationary
models, and a relic density of highly charged extremal black monopoles is
predicted. We discuss the nature of the entropy and flatness problems in our
model.
