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Title: Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of the Southeast Asia by Stephen Oppenheimer ISBN: 0-7538-0679-7 Publisher: Trafalgar Square Publishing Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.62 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Well Researched Tome but incomplete.
Comment: Can be heavy going in the detail, but is the product of a 'Good Analytical Mind'. I really enjoyed the introduction to Religious & Folkloric Analysis, and to Linguistics, & Genetics (a fast growing symbiosis).
Another book in this growing category is 'Genes - People and languages' by Luigi Lica Cavalli-Sforza ISBN: 0140296026.
A classic analysis. It makes one realise we are on the brink of discoveries regarding early human history similar to the unfolding of the age of the dinosaur in the last century.
This book layed the foundation and blazed the trail for 'Underworld Flooded Kingdoms' by Graham Hancock ISBN: 0718144007 (USA - 1400046122 ).
Lounes Chikhi, from University College London (UCL), UK, and colleagues looked for markers by analysing mutations (errors) on Y chromosomesstudied rare mutations called unique event polymorphisms (UEPs). These are not thought to have occurred more than once in recent human history.
However I feel that the book is missing some intermediate stages and can be viewed, with valid reasons, as focused only on the South Asia region.
the main focus of the book is the region east of indonesia, including Micronesia and Polynesia.
The early Polynesian and related groups traded and travelled the Pacific from Madagascar in the West to Easter island in the East.
For a reference see 'Man Across the Sea (Univ. of Texas 1971) by Riley, Kelley, Pennington and Randa.
Latin America:-
Recognising that the Polynesians got to Rapa Nui (Easter island), only 2,000 from Chile (where the nearest other Polynesian island is 1,500 mile east), there is little analysis and mention is made of Latin America.
In Rapa Nui per folklore is said to have been populated by long & short eared peoples (one group from the East and the other from the West).
With the Humboldt current from Peru & Chile would have brought this island within a week or two sailing.
A more inclusive reference would have included a section on Inca (Peruvian & Chilean) contacts.
Witness the late Palaeolithic remains and rock art found by Dr. Walter Neves (Univ. of Sao Paulo) and Marcello Caosta Souza in the Serra da Capivara, Pedra Furada and Lagoa Santa, Belo Horizonte and in Tierra del Fuego again by Walter Neves.
Africa & Australia:-
However, it has no reference to the cradle of human-kind, Africa nor to Australia ?
Both ancient and habitable continents covering the period in question, late Palaeolithic, witness 'Australian' rock-art specialist Grahame Walsh.
We know from recent finds in Southern Africa and lately on the Congo river that there many settlements existed here. I believe this is a serious shortcoming. We know for example that towns and later settlements existed along the coasts of Africa during Roman times.
Why not provide any reference to the region around Madagascar on the African coast ?
And what archaeological discoveries await the Ivory Coast, the Canary islanders and the Congo river delta ?
Unanswered Questions & Puzzles :-
With all this navigation, the study of the astronomy etc how come little is or no written record has been found ?
Is it, as explained in the book, the joining up of the cycles of agriculture with astronomy with power and religion and control ?
Thus have we missed important sources of ancient knowledge ?
For instance to date there is no translation of the Rapa Nui 'Rongo-Rongo' tablets and their similarity to Indus Valley tablets.
What treasure throve of hidden knowledge lies with the Basque fisherman (who since time began knew the coast of Canada and Iceland).
As human markers are being identified that help unravel these ancient migrations, See Mapping Human history, 'Discover the past thro Genes' by Olson Steve and Mapping Human History by Prof Steven Rose ISBN 08706667979 and 7 Daughters of Eve by Sykes Bryan ISBN: 0593047575
When will similar markers be found for domesticated animals, such as pigs, dogs, goats etc or fruit, rice, cereals, sugar cane and sweat potatoes.
In Conclusion:-
I cannot help but think that this unique book has instigated a whole new area that we will be viewing in documentaries in the not too distant future, when the rest of the world catches up.
Naoise O'H
Rating: 4
Summary: It Ought to Be True... It Also Ought to Be Easier to Read
Comment: The beginning of human civilization as you learned it in school goes like this:
Human beings (homo sapiens) have been around for some 100,000 years, give or take. Until about six or seven thousand years ago, after the end of the most recent ice age, humans were a bunch of wandering hunter-gatherers. They made some great cave paintings, but other than that and a few gnawed bones, they made nothing and left nothing behind. Then, when the ice age ended, they spontaneously dropped their fur cloaks, stopped hunting woolly mammoths and invented agriculture, the wheel, cuneiform, beer, and everything else that makes up civilization.
The problem with this picture, of course, is that the ice age didn't cover the entire earth with ice -- just some of the parts we live on now. And because there was so much more ice, there was less water, and sea levels were some 100-odd meters lower than at present.
So all the best land, the fertile, coastal land, during the ice age -- the era immediately preceeding the first great civilizations of the near easy -- is now underwater.
In _Eden in the East_, Oppenheimer focuses on the great Sunda Shelf in southeast Asia, which in the last ice age was a continent-sized land mass (now sometimes called "Sundaland"). His thesis is that the great civilizations of the near east did not spring whole cloth from the soil, but were founded, or informed, or guided, by refugees from the east, refugees fleeing the great destruction of their homeland with the submergence of the Sunda Shelf.
He argues for his thesis on the basis of genetic, linguistic and mythological studies, all appearing to show a diffusion of culture and people from some prehistoric Sundaland home. The arguments are varied and interesting, maybe even compelling. Certainly they are worth reading.
But they are also very difficult to read. This is a dense book, almost five hundred pages in the edition I have and written in a fairly dry, scholarly tone. So read it, but be warned.
If you're interested in the argument that human prehistory is to be sought in the lands that sank beneath the waves at the end of the last ice age, check out Graham Hancock's book _Underworld_ (already published here in the UK and coming to America soon). Hancock does not focus exclusively on Sundaland, but his arguments and evidences are complementary to those adduced by Oppenheimer. Hancock is less scholarly and more chronological in his approach; _Underworld_ is all first person and very readable.
Rating: 4
Summary: Mixed Bag
Comment: Mr Oppenheimer's book has some interesting ideas in prehistory of SE Asia and counter againist an entrenched European centric view of civilzation and shows some good evdiance in that Prehistoric South East Asians may have been more advanced than we previsoly suspect. However Mr Oppenheimer is not an archeologist or a scienist who does work in these fields and some of his theories seem way out of there. For instance in SE Asia there is an division of people who are lighter skinned and have mongoliod charasctces and must have shared an common recent ansectry with the Chinese and Nergiod looking people who look like Australian aborigines, which must told an recent story of invaders from the North.
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Title: The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa by Stephen Oppenheimer ISBN: 0786711922 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers Pub. Date: July, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes ISBN: 0393323145 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey by Spencer Wells ISBN: 069111532X Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Mapping Human History : Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins by Steve Olson ISBN: 0618352104 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Origin of Language : Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue by Merritt Ruhlen ISBN: 0471159638 Publisher: Wiley Pub. Date: August, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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