Eden in the East : the drowned continent of Southeast Asia

by Stephen Oppenheimer

Paper Book, 1999

Status

Available

Call number

GN635 .S58O66 1999

Publication

London : Phoenix, 1999.

Description

This book completetly changes the established and conventional view of prehistory by relocating the Lost Eden--the world's first civilisation--to Southeast Asia. At the end of the Ice Age, Southeast Asia formed a continent twice the size of India, which included Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Borneo. In Eden in the East, Stephen Oppenheimer puts forward the astonishing argument that here in southeast Asia--rather than in Mesopotamia where it is usually placed--was the lost civilization that fertilized the Great cultures of the Middle East 6,000 years ago. He produces evidence from ethnography, archaeology, oceanography, creation stories, myths, linguistics, and DNA analysis to argue that this founding civilization was destroyed by a catastrophic flood, caused by a rapid rise in the sea level at the end of the last ice age.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member miketroll
remarkably well researched but still little-known thesis. Oppenheimer posits a continent in south-east Asia submerged in the last Ice Age, isolating the modern day island groups of Indonesia and Borneo. This continent (which he calls Sundaland) was perhaps the cradle of Asian
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civilisation.

Oppenheimer presents an astonishing array of evidence - historic, linguistic and genetic - in support of his claim. He also lends strong support to the now orthodox position that Polynesian migrations took place from west to east, not vice versa as claimed by Thor Heyerdahl.
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LibraryThing member rajaratnam
Easy to understand but difficult to accept. Calls on a very wide range of sources from geology, archeology, linguistics, genetics and ancient myths. But where is the physical evidence? Provocative, but not persuasive.

Language

Original publication date

1998

Physical description

560 p.; 20 cm

ISBN

0753806797 / 9780753806791

Barcode

34662000513926

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