by StephenOppenheimer (Author)
At the end of the Ice Age, Southeast Asia formed a continent twice the size of India. The South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand and the Java Sea, which were all dry, formed the connecting parts of the continent. Geologically, this half-sunken continent is the Sunda shelf of Sundaland. In Eden in the East Stephen Oppenheimer puts forward the astonishing argument that here in Southeast Asia was the cradle of civilisation that fertilised the great cultures of China, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Crete six thousand years ago. He produces evidence from ethnography, archaeology, oceanography, from Creation stories, myths and sagas, and from linguistics and DNA analysis, to argue that this founder-civilisation was destroyed by the catastrophic flood, caused by a rapid rise in sea level at the end of the last Ice Age.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 575
Edition: New e.
Publisher: Phoenix
Published: 01 Jul 1999
ISBN 10: 0753806797
ISBN 13: 9780753806791
Book Overview: An astonishing book that completely revolutionises the established view of prehistory A groundbreaking, and highly accessible book which will appeal to the same market as Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods Eden in the East places Southeast Asia for the first time at the centre of the origins of culture and civilisation Stephen Oppenheimer is a respected professor and author of numerous articles for The Lancet and Nature 'Perfect for those who love to rummage through world mythology for shrouded links between distant places ... We need more books like this one in the neglected arena of comparative archaeology that are as effective in showing us that we not only create the landscapes (and 'seascapes') that we inhabit but that we are also created by them' Current Anthropology