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Summary: Don't Get Me Wrong...
Review: It's not that I believe Thompson and Cremo... It would be amazing if two non-scientists, professors working outside their fields of expertise, and hardly leaving their offices, could amass credible evidence for the existence of modern humans two million, five million, even 400 million years ago! I mean, what's the point of getting one's hands dirty when we can just compile all sorts of rumors into one huge book? Still, it does make me wonder about science, in general. I've often wondered how paleontologists can, on the basis of bone fragments, a couple of teeth, etc., hypothesize so much about early hominids (hominoids?) And how do we know, for example, how old stone tools are? Aren't there scientific assumptions that scientists make that are useful but not necessarily accurate? Aren't there paradigms or conventional wisdom "prejudices" that don't allow us to treat seriously unusual work like this? Remember how Galileo was treated? Remember what scientists and doctors first thought about germs? How about the continental drift theory? Don't forget the idea that large parts of this planet were once covered by glaciers was thought insane. So many of our "truths" change or are adjusted. Just recently, cosmologists revised their estimates of the universe's age by billion of years! In the Atlantic Monthly, the cover article notes how the arrival of humans in North and South America may have occurred thousands of years earlier that previously thought and that Africans, Asians, and Europeans may have reached the continents several times before Chris Columbus. Again, I'm not saying this book makes a convincing argument for anyone not already a believer, but it does make one wonder about all the things we know that "ain't necessarily so."
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Summary: Soporific monologue in the cadence of a children's story.
Review: I tried to listen to the audio tape while driving to work, however the monotone, drone style of the reader made it very difficult to pay attention. The tone is that of a school teacher reading to a fairy tale to young children. This might be an excellent tape as a sleeping aid. The usual theme is repeated again and again. It goes like this: someone found a tool or skeleton that is much older than current accepted theory, however no one will pay any attention to it. This is repeated over and over. Perhaps at the end it all ties in together to an alternate theory with explanations why the scienctific community will not listen to them, however I couldn't make it past the first tape.
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Summary: Academic Reviews of Forbidden Archeology
Review: Forbidden Archeology is an extremely controversial book that has attracted a great deal of attention in the acacemic world. As might be expected, its anti-Darwinian thesis has provoked many negative reviews. But even those who disagree with the book's conclusions have recognized it as a genuine scholarly contribution to the debate on human origins."Michael Cremo, a research associate in history and philosophy of science, and Richard Thompson, a mathematician, challenge the dominant views of human origins and antiquity. This volume combines a vast amount of both accepted and controversial evidence from the archeological record with sociological, philosophical, and historical critiques of the scientific method to challenge existing views and expose the suppression of information concerning history and human origins." Journal of Field Archeology, vol. 21., 1994, p. 112. "I have no doubt that there will be some who will read this book and profit from it. Certainly it provides the historian of archeology with a useful compendium of case studies in the history and sociology of scientific knowledge, which can be used to foster debate within archeology about how to describe the epistemology of one's discipline." British Journal for the History of Science, vol. 28, 1995, p. 379. "It must be acknowledged that Forbidden Archeology brings to attention many interesting issues that have not received much consideration from historians; and the authors' detailed examination of the early literature [on archeology] is certainly stimulating and raises questions of considerable interest, both historically and from the perspective of practitioners of sociology of scientific knowledge." Social Studies of Science, vol. 26, no. 1, 1996, p. 196. "While decidedly antievolutionary in perspective, this work is not the ordinary variety of anti-evolutionism in form, content, or style. In distinction to the usual brand of such writing, the authors use original sources and the book is well written." Gearchaeology, vol. 94, no. 4, 1994, p. 338. "M. Cremo and R. Thompson have willfully written a provocative work that raises the problem of the influence of the dominant ideas of a time period on scientific research. These ideas can compel the researchers to orient their analyses according to the conceptions that are permitted by the scientific community. . . . The documentary richness of this work is not to be ignored." L'Anthropologie, vol. 99, no. 1, 1995, p. 159 "This is a catalogue and discussion of numerous Precambrian to Pleistocene fossils and artifacts accepted by some as evidence of anatomically modern humans. . . . The descriptions and extensive bibliography of obscure references will be very useful to a 'main-stream' scientist." Journal of Geological Education, vol. 43, 1995, p. 193 "Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson are to be congratulated on spending eight years producing the only definitive, precise, exhaustive, and complete record of practically all the fossil finds of man, regardless of whether they fit the established scientific theories or not. To say that the research is painstaking is a wild understatement. No other book of this magnitude and calibre exists. It should be compulsory reading for every first year biology, archeology, and anthropology student--and many others, too." Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, August 1994, p. 28. "Forbidden Archeology takes the current conventions of decoding to their extreme. The authors find modern Homo sapiens to be continuous contemporaries of the apelike creatures from whom evolutionary biologists usually trace human descent . . . . Forbidden Archeology reads surprisingly well for what is basically an 828-page critical catalogue of two centuries of archeological evidence doubted or spurned by Western scientists." Journal of Unconventional History, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 75-76.
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Summary: Pushing back the Timeline
Review: When I was at college in the 1970s, we undergraduate anthro majors would kick around the currently known "facts" we were being taught. Not having fully absorbed the approved dogma, we all came to the same conclusion -- the timeline of human development is too compressed. It does not allow enough time for the physical and social changes that had to occur for humans to develop from "proto-ape" to modern man. We felt that a 2 million mark was the absolute minimum required, and would have prefered 10 million, but even we weren't that daring. Today, I see news articles about discoveries that push the approved timeline further and further back. By reviewing evidence that has been labeled anomalous, Cremo and Thompson provide future researchers with the thought-provoking material that will lead to a better understanding of man's development. Human beings have been human --and little changed -- for a very long time.
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Summary: A Complete Reevaluation of Archaeological Record is Needed!
Review: Wading through the tremendous detail of Cremo's work one is struck at first by the speculative nature of many of his assertions. Could humanity be as old as Cremo claims, coexisting with dinosaurs? This conclusion seems unlikely, but much of what Cremo presents demonstrably proves that archaeology has selectively ignored evidence that that not been made to fit into their dogmatic and linear theory of man's emergence.
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Summary: The most ignorant book ever written about "human origins."
Review: The authors set out to "prove" their Vedic scriptures, and came up with a great many "just so" stories to "explain" how their beliefs are "supported" by actual science--- but that scientists are conspiring, for evil and economic reasons, to keep hidden from humanity. To put it bluntly, the authors lack even the most basic understanding of how science is done; how archeology is done; how a valid argument is formulated; how to avoid false analogies; how to avoid self-fulfilling "discoveries;" how to... well, the list seems nearly endless. Rather than present a valid case for their beliefs, the reader is given bold, baseless assertions and then left wanting for the evidence that would convince any reasoning, thinking person. In fact, the book appears to have been written for people who cannot reason, or refuse to reason: the baseless assertions are so blatently absurd it seems likly to me that ONLY THOSE WHO ALREADY BELIEVE will accept the book as worth reading. The majority of readers, who still have their critical thinking abilities functioning, will reject the book in total as the work of crank paradoxers. The book belongs in the trash with the morning coffee grounds; it does not belong on anyone's book shelf.
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Summary: Interesting Premise: Lack of Hard Evidence
Review: Like UFO's, ESP, or Psychic Network commercials, the authors' idea is certainly far more interesting than current scientific theories. The "evidence" supporting their arguments having either disappeared or been discounted by the dominant paradigm, the authors rely on what amounts to little more than hearsay. Of course it's all lies, but they're interesting lies. And isn't that more important than the truth?
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Summary: Excellent resource; dry reading but worth the effort
Review: I almost gave up on reading this book, but I'm glad I didn't. Part I was definitely dry reading except for the Sheguiandah, Canada section which was interesting enough to make me forget about the writing style. Part II of the book was much easier to read. Bits of humor did make it through the writing style (grown men throwing elephant dung at one another; goldminers and artifacts in poker games; erstwhile poets!?!). The appendices and bibliography are very informative. Chapters 9 and 10 (Peking Man and Cryptozoology) made the purchase of the book worth while for me. I found one error (p.320, l.6 at the end of the line - "there" should be "their"). On the whole, I give the book 3 stars and recommend it. A tremendous undertaking, well done. My commendations to the authors.
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Summary: I've seen no-star ratings before but don't know how to do it
Review: Be thankful for the process of social evolution, for it will eventually weed out the likes of Cremo from our society. I predict that within 100 years it will be impossible to get a book such as Forbidden Archeology published. I mean, would anyone publish a book attempting to still prove that Galileo was wrong?
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Summary: a brave attempt to expose hypocrisy
Review: the authors have worked untiringly and have accumulated a vast evidence in one single place to show this world that science has been kept at bay against existing norms . The authors have clearly exposed the hypocrisy of current leaders of archaeology and those myopic persons who neither have the patience nor the guts to face the truth. Such anathema for scientific facts will spell doom for the scientific community and the progress for science itself. we need more daring authors like these to come forward and show the world the truth.
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