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Summary: No title, can't think of one
Review: This book is a dictionary, basically. Of all the archaelogical finds which are forgotten, forbidden, ignored. I couldn't get through the entire thing, yet I would recommend it highly, absolutely, as it represents the failure of science to respect, to accept, that which it does not know, that which does not fall into accepted theory. The book is amazing. I read the first third or so, and then just skipped around. As I aforesaid, it is like a dictionary, or a phone book, just listing after listing of archaelogical finds which do not fit into accepted theory.
And, it is very important, as much in content as in intent. We, the public, just tend to accept whatever we are told by science. We don't question. And we should, as Cremo and Thompson have shown.
Quite honestly, most people aren't interested in this stuff. They don't even know that homo sapiens is supposedly on the earth for three and a half million years, and they don't care. But some of us do. There is an archaeology that goes back far longer than this, that represents possible intelligent life on this planet far earlier than even the earliest prototypes of humans existed. And this, combined with the knowledge that we now have of climatic cycles on this planet just has to give us pause for thought. Does it matter? Well, if one considers the survival of the human race something of importance:yes.
Rating:
Summary: An Important Book
Review: This book is a difficult read but the ideas discussed are important and relevant. If you have an interest in archeology, creationism, or the history of human development, you need to read this book.
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Summary: ABBOTT AND COSTELLO DO ARCHEOLOGY!!!
Review: This book isn't just biased, it's bent and twisted! If there is science in here it's hard to find. No prevenance, no proofs but plenty of prejudice!! This book is fiction, read at your own risk!
Rating: 
Summary: Time travel
Review: This book, while interesting, mostly presents individual artifacts rather than evidence for civilization as a whole. While the data is unquestionable, in my opinion, it points not to civilization billions of years ago, but to the existence of time travel in the future.
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Summary: Creationism from left field
Review: This is a large book that begins with the authors exhortations to his "Spiritual Master" the "Divine Grace Swami" blah blah blah. Clearly someone who is a spiritual slave cannot be an independent thinker and in this Cremo does not dissapoint. This book reminds me of two things: First, the tactic used by Conservative Christian talk show hosts who talk over their guests incessantly to cover the trail left by their weak arguements and shallow grasp of facts; Secondly, it reminds me of the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail which covers such a variety of fields that it is impossible to fact check by the layman and therefore extremely popular with those of us missing the seven PhD's necessary to even begin to question the book.
The tactic of flooding the unprepared defense with paperwork is a time honored, and universally despised practice of lawyers with lots of time and money and little regard for the truth. It's one that the authors here use to their advantage with equal facility.
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Summary: Major Joke
Review: This is not a scientific inquiry. It is more of a hoax, a money making project by the authors. Every single "ancient artifact"- ALL OF THEM- were NOT dated. Instead the authors claim that since the artifacts were found in certain layers of rock, then the artifacts must be that old. This is the same as sticking a TV in a 2 billion year old rock sediment, then when someone finds it, they claim the TV must be 2 billion years old. This is how EVERY SINGLE OBJECT IS "DATED".
It is a sad fact that some people believe such nonsense. The authors claim that they found human artifacts in a rock layer 2.8 billion years old, therefore modern man must go back that far. Yet they didnt date the object itself, only the rocks around it. Dont get sucked into this mess, it is a hoax.
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Summary: A Book in the Realm of Pseudoscience
Review: Wade Tarzia published an extensive review of this book in _Creation/Evolution_ 34:13-25, 1994 (National Center for Science Education), also available on-line at "Doug's Archaeology Pages" website. Here are some key extracts from that review:
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...Despite all this hard work, I think the book falls short of a scientific work primarily (but not entirely) because (1) its arguments abandon the testing of simpler hypothesis before the more complex and sensationalistic ones, and (2) the use of so many outdated sources is inadequate for a book that seeks to overturn the well-established paradigm of human evolution -- scholars must not work in isolation, especially today, when multi-disciplinary approaches are needed to remain on the cutting edge of knowledge. However, for researchers studying the growth, folklore, and rhetoric of pseudo-science, the book is useful as 'field' data. ... Forbidden Archaeology [is also] ... a well-written example of pseudoscience -- its looks like the real thing, a phenomena discussed in Williams (1991, 15) [ _Fantastic Archaeology_; see also K. Feder's _Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries_ ] ... Mass of Details -- The mass of details with attached analyses would require book-length responses from specialized reviewers to confirm or critique. This style is a common diversionary tactic in pseudoscience. Since the authors have not aired their arguments previously through professional journals, as many scholars do before writing such a huge synthesis of material, the task of validation becomes a career itself. Such a style burdens an analysis with long leaps between broad assumptions (i.e., scientific cover-up) to the detailed evidence (i.e., minutiae of strata and dating from obscure sites) -- all on the same page. ... Use of Old Sources -- Quotations of the 19th-/early 20th- century material are copious -- comprising, I would guess, at least 25 percent of the book. ... I do not indict the sincerity and ground-breaking of 19th century scholars. However, because knowledge seems to accumulate and research techniques seem to improve, assuming a blanket equivalency of research level between 19th and 20th century science is just going too far. Rusting Occam's Razor -- A major flaw of Forbidden Archaeology is its quick leaps toward sensational hypotheses (see in general Williams 1991, 11-27). Sensational ideas are not intrinsically bad -- plate tectonics was pretty astonishing at one point (Williams 1991, 132), but also true. However, the cautious investigator hopes that less sensational, or simpler, hypotheses are first proposed and well tested before more complex or less likely explanations are considered. ... Missed Evidence -- While presenting a voluminous amount of detail, sometimes Forbidden Archaeology has missed important points. For example, the book discusses the Timlin site in New York, where researchers reported finds of ancient eolithic tools dated to 70,000 YBP (p. 354). Yet Forbidden Archaeology does not mention the responses to these claims by several professionals, which casts the nature of these finds in doubt (Cole and Godfrey 1977; Cole, Funk, Godfrey, and Starna 1978; Funk 1977, Starna 1977; a reply to the criticisms is in Raemsch 1978). I found it interesting that a student created similar "eoliths" by rattling the same source material in a garbage can (Funk 1977, 543); the simple experiment has much to say about eoliths! ... Acceptance of Poor Evidence -- ... Similarly, when the book documents a claim for a modern-type human skeleton (reported in a geology journal of 1862) in a coal deposit 90 feet deep, we learn the authors wrote the Geological Survey to date the coal to about 286 million years (p. 454). But we are not treated to a contextual discussion of the bones -- how they were found, who found them, what was the site like, and how these allegedly 286 million year old bones came out of the earth with only a loose black coating that was easily scraped away to reveal nice white bone, etc. The impression left is that, if a tabloid reported Jimmy Hoffa's corpse was found in Triassic deposits, then the authors would no doubt perform rigorous research to date those deposits and then include the data in their next book. ... Faulty View of Science Process -- One of the most striking themes of Forbidden Archaeology is the notion that scientists are slaves to tradition, which slows down or stops the adoption of new ideas. Yet, scientists have often overturned paradigms in the face of a social tradition that penalized them for it. Galileo pushed his 'wild' views of a heliocentric solar system until threatened by state-officiated torture. Modern cosmology is another example, a branch of knowledge under such motion and revision that I suspect astronomers are giants among coffee drinkers. Similarly, paleoarchaeology is revised often in the face of new evidence (see Tuttle 1988 for a feel for the controversy). The "knowledge filter" would have to be impossibly acrobatic to span all this change. ... Conclusion -- ...This book, and other creationist texts that use similar techniques, is most useful as ethnographic data in studies of comparative religion, cult movements, popular movements, anti-science, fantastic archaeology, rhetoric, folklore -- the book can be studied in any of these fields. With its emphasis on "secrets" and "hidden history" and "cover-up," the book participates in the popular genre of the conspiracy, akin to popular beliefs about the Kennedy assassination and crashed alien spaceships kept in guarded Air Force hangars ... I see Forbidden Archaeology fantasizing about a past open-mindedness to legitimize a vast restructuring of our present understanding -- without good evidence.
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Summary: Creationism: The Hindu View (the true title of this book)
Review: When a big square package, weighing over 3.5kg, arrived in my pigeon-hole, a number of thoughts flitted across my mind. Which student hates me enough to send me a letter bomb? Will the postman sue me because of his hernia? After the package, when unwrapped, proved to contain a 914 page book, I felt like the Prince Regent on being presented by Edward Gibbon with a copy of his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire": "Another great damn thick square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon?". And then that final, heart rending, cry, "Why me?". There is a letter from the senior author, Michael Cremo, accompanying the book. "Because your work, or that of your colleagues, is discussed in my new book Forbidden Archeology, I am sending you an advance copy." Can this be conspiracy theory as applied to archaeology by someone who feels that The Truth has been suppressed by The Establishment? It can. The letterhead is "Bhaktivedanta Institute, San Diego". Can this be a representative of that other fundamentalism, the Hindu variety? It can. Remind ourselves what fundamentalist Hindus believe. Like fundamentalist Christians and Jews, they dismiss evolution. Unlike the latter, who believe the world has existed only six to ten thousand years, fundamentalist Hindus believe it has been going for billions and billions of years - far more than geology allows, in fact. And human beings, and indeed all living creatures, have been here all along. But in the event, it is going to make little difference; an apologia will consist of a recital of long-forgotten (long-suppressed, in their view) "evidence" of humans coeval with trilobites and dinosaurs, and arguments that supposed ape/human intermediates really aren't that at all. But this time we get nearly a thousand pages! Gish, Bowden and Lubenow, the Christian creationists, can't raise even half of this between them. The difference is that Cremo and Thompson have read much, much more of the original literature than the other creationists, and their survey is correspondingly more complete. Yet I can't really say that their understanding is much greater, for all that; their tone of argument is as perverse, they are just as biased. The fossil and archaeological evidence for human and cultural evolution is not all of consistently high quality. In the nineteenth centure, human remains and artefacts were usually found by accident and by amateurs; they would be dug up, removed from context, and presented with a flourish to the nearest "expert". Controlled excavation was not a widely practised are; photography of a find in situ was an unusual occurrence. The finds' stratigraphy was often vague in the extreme; those re-examining their significance in later times had to rely on the fading memories of untrained workmen who had been enlisted by the finder. This state of affairs improved as archaeology and palaeontology developed, and contextual information came to be recognised as crucial. Today, accidental discoveries are rarities; usually specimens turn up because someone has an idea where to look, given the prevailing geology and landscape, and an excavation is mounted with all kinds of specialists - geomorphologists, geochemists, taphonomists, above all photographers - riding along to ensure that everything about the site and its contents is recorded. Cremo and Thompson seem not to understand this; they seem to want to accord equal value to all finds. One of many, many "out-of-context" human fossils which they discuss is the Foxhall jaw, a specimen of modern Homo sapiens discovered in 1855 and commonly ascribed at the time to the Late Pliocene, when (as we now believe) the human lineage was represented by just a bunch of near-apes called the australopithecines. The jaw was found by workmen, one of whom sold it to Dr. Collyer, a passing American physician, for the price of a glass of beer, and Collyer showed it to the luminaries of the day - Owen, Prestwich, Huxley, Busk - who expressed a variety of opinions, that it could or could not have come from the site and level claimed for it, and so that it could or could not be an example of "Pliocene Man". The jaw not long afterwards disappeared. The authors quote the palaeoanthropologists Boule and Vallois in 1947: "It requires a total lack of critical sense to pay any heed to such a piece of evidence as this", and I can only agree; but, oddly, Cremo and Thompson disagree. Their opinion has nothing to do with the obvious fact that the whole case for the specimen's Pliocene origin was based on hearsay and supposition, and because the fossil has since disappeared, but because the stratigraphic provenances of other, nowadays widely accepted, fossils - "Java Man" and the Heidelberg jaw - were likewise based on flimsy evidence, and the original "Peking Man" fossils have likewise disappeared! One has only to turn to their accounts of these fossils, and to read between the lines, to see why these other fossils are today taken seriously whereas Foxhall is not: other "Java Man" and Heidelberg-like fossils are known, whose stratigraphy has been exhaustively studied; excellent photographs, radiographs and casts survive of the lost "Peking Man" fossils, and others exactly like them have turned up since. But the same sort of non-evidence (Galley Hill, Clichy, Castenedolo, Calaveras, all Homo sapiens fossils briefly famous in their day because their finders thought they were Miocene, Pliocene or whatever) is taken seriously by the authors, who then completely miss the point when they imply, or claim boldly, that the evidence for the australopithecines, habilines and so on is also somehow flimsy. There is an Appendix on the dating of fossils, mainly radiocarbon; Potassium-Argon dating is given the hatchet job in the main text (section 11.6.5). Devastating "exposure" of the alleged deficiencies of radiometric dating is obligatory in all creationist texts on fossils, and this one is no different. There they all are: the 160 million to 2.96 billion year dates for Hawaiian lava flows known to be less than 200 years old; the supposed "cover-up" of discrepant dates; the arguments over the correct date of the KBS Tuff at Koobi Fora, whether it was laid down 2.6, 2.4 or 1.88 million years ago. It is as if Cremo and Thompson think that an invention, as soon as it is made, either works or it doesn't; of course, the understanding of new methodologies - potassium-argon dating like any other - improves as its practitioners make mistakes (and, alas, are often embarrassed enough about their mistakes to keep quiet about them) and learn from them. Potassium-argon dating and its now more generally used successor, the Argon/Argon method, are by now rather well understood. It is understood, for example, that mineral erupted from a volcano will release its store of radiogenic argon, resetting the "clock", only if it reaches a high enough temperature, and that the lava from deep-sea eruptions is chilled and does not usually reach this temperature; so that if you measure argon in an undersea lava flow (say, for the sake of argument, in Hawaii) you will be measuring what has been stored up over millions and millions of years, not just what has accumulated since the eruption. It is understood, too, that tuffs are volcanic products brought down by water and deposited alongside other, much older sediments; so that if you simply pick up some grains from a tuff (say, for the sake of argument, at Koobi Fora) you are very likely to get some very ancient ones along with your recent volcanic ejecta, and unless you clean the smaple very carefully you will get anomalously high readings because of this mixture. This all seems very obvious nowadays, but the earlier practitioners of the method had to learn it the hard way. And in the main it is not suppressed: their errors are in the literature for all to see, and for creationists to point out with a delighted "see, it doesn't work!". Now, palaeoanthropology is a speciality of mine, but archaeology is not, so I showed the book to a couple of colleagues whose speciality it is. Dr. Andrée Rosenfeld was not highly delighted, but offered some comments on the book's long, long, discussion of Eoliths. These are (no, were) supposed stone tools from extremely ancient deposits, believed in by many archaeologists in earlier generations but now universally discounted. "The problem", Andrée explained, "lies in their selective emphasis and choice of language; have they not heard of semiotics? For example, on p 106 they quote an early objector to eoliths, Worthington Smith in 1892, and totally misunderstand its significance; eoliths can be extracted from any gravel from any period, whether with or without other artefacts, and with any range of patina - eoliths in fact only ocur, as far as I am aware, in gravel or similar deposits." That is to say, in any deposit with lots of small stones in it, you are going to find some stones that by chance
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