The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age

Rating:
Summary: REAL EYE OPENER
Review: By bringing together evidence from archaeology, ancient history, linguistics and anthropology, the author convincingly demonstrates that the inventions, achievements and discoveries of prehistoric times have all but been edited out of popular accounts of human history. He describes how stone age explorers discovered all the world's land masses, presents strong evidence for writing before 5000BC and for mathematical, medical and astronomical science as well as tool-making and mining long before the Sumerians. Tracing the human story from the cusp of history back to the earliest known artefacts, he shows that the making of rugs, dental drilling and accountancy among others, were all known in the Neolithic. But not only that - the other "ideological wall" placed at about 40 000BC is also being shown up to be highly dubious as many anomalous cases of earlier symbolic and artistic activities are coming to light. I found the section on language of particular interest and would like to refer interested readers to the work of linguists like Dr. Joseph Greenberg (Language In The Americas, Indo-European and its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family), Merritt Ruhlen (On The Origin Of Languages: Studies In Linguistic Taxonomy), Alan Bomhard (Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis ) and Sydney M. Lamb (Sprung From Some Common Source), all available here on amazon.com. Lost Civilisations Of The Stone Age is lavishly illustrated with figures, plates and a map of language families, and there's an extensive bibliography and index. A well-researched, well-written book that sometimes perhaps goes into too much technical detail for the casual reader, but always remains thought-provoking.

Rating:
Summary: A lot of smoke and mirrors
Review: I found many of the insights in this books valuable. Rudgeley does a good job of compiling some information about the stone age into a nice, easily accessible form. He also is successful in showing the fairly obvious idea that "civilization" did not spring forth fully formed like Athena from the forehead of the first Sumerian kings.

However, Rudgeley does so in a style that is uncomfortably Revisionist and misrepresentative. He wastes no time: in the introduction he presents the fallacious idea that fringe books about Atlantis or aliens are mainstream while the widely accepted theories of Marija Gimbutas are fringe. He furthers his misrepresentation by trumping other highly suspect subjects such as Nostratic and others and holding them out like foregone solutions to all the problems if anthropology. His constant attempts to belittle "the mainstream" academic opinion are seriously weakened by his reliance on unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable theories as well as his strange affectation for using ideas that have been mainstream for decades and making them seem new and refreshing seriously mar his ability to present the (admittedly) good ideas the book does possess.

Rating:
Summary: Death to Van Daniken!
Review: I liked the idea behind this book and the first chapter seemed promising but somewhere along the way it faded as its emphasis faded from a book for the general population to one that can only be enjoyed, or understood, by professionals. For some reason many professionals, historians, palaeontologists, and the like, seem to believe that, before writing, that almost nothing of consequence was invented. Instead, these parties feel that there was an "explosion" of knowledge about 5000 years ago. This explosion is sometimes hard to explain.

Enter the UFO freaks. There is a cottage industry of parties, like Erich Van Daniken, that try to explain these matters by stating that this explosion occurred because knowledge was given to man from "supermen" of Atlantis or aliens from outer space. By showing how much of man's knowledge was developed thousands of years ago, the need for aliens dies, because there was no knowledge explosion. Van Daniken is dead. Well, sort of.

I personally have read through some of Van Daniken's work. (It can be a tough go.) To say that his work is focused solely on a "knowledge explosion" is unfair. But, without getting to side tracked, if this book was solely a refutation of Van Daniken's work; it probably would be more interesting, especially is the style and tone of the first chapters flowed throughout the book.

Instead the author goes into explaining, then discrediting, one theory after another for prehistoric skills and events. Every theory is introduced by discussing its author and a little of the research they have done. In this vein, the book is well referenced so a reader looking for sources can find them easily. For me, it was annoying. I don't want to know why everyone else is wrong, I wanted to know what evidence you have for believing or stating what you think is right. Mr. Rudgley, however, is apparently stating things which must be very controversial because he is very slow to state his case. Step by step by step he goes.

While walking so slowing, he often also changes his terms, in a way I found confusing. B.C., for example, means "Before Christ" which was about 2001 years ago. (give to take six years for you purists.) I think most people understand this. What does B.C.E. mean? I think it means "Before the Common Era" which began about 2001 years ago. I think. As such, B.C.E. was always D- U-M-B to me. You don't have to believe in Christ to understand that the calender was based on the year we believe he was born. Yet scientists want to avoid association with religion. Finally, there is B.P., "Before Present." This one really confused me for a while. To understand this term, you would have to know when the author wrote the book. Since, however, the dates go back 50,000 years or so, I guess being of by five or 10 years doesn't matter that much.

It doesn't really matter to me which system of dating time the author used, if he was consistent. This author, however, switches back and forth, even in the same sentences! If you are shaky on the different sytems, it can be distracting. And, the dating system is only one example of how the author would jump around, when explaining things. Combined with other inconsistencies, it was a little lunny.

In this vein he talks about the origins of writing (which he believes may have come from an accounting system developed in thousands of years before Egypt or Babylonia), ancient religions (and the worship of a "goddess"), early surgery, early language and the early use of fire.

There are 19 total chapters in this book. Each chapter is about 20 pages long. So, there are about 14 other topics I have not mentioned. I personally got tired of this book at Chapter 10 and skimmed through the rest of it. I'm saving this book though, for a time when I may want to read those chapters, perhaps when I'm better versed on these topics. If, like me, you only had a course in Archeology 15 years ago, don't try to renew your interest here. I guess, for the experts out there, who want a book that may be controversial, have a good time.

Rating:
Summary: Could have been a contender...
Review: If Rudgley has a point to make, it is that modern human beings have been around for at least 40,000 years, that they have changed very little during that time, and the evidence of this truth is richly evident - more being found every day.

This is one of those books I bought at a bookstore because I liked the cover. I decided to take a chance on it, even though I had no reviews of it to guide me. It did appear to cover topics I had interest in. I'm full of questions in this area: What specifically defines civilization? Is it the existence of cities? Or evidence of the exchange of ideas? And how does one find the evidence of such an esoteric concept in the blinding snowstorm of the past. And there was that cover picture... So I picked it up.

I came away fairly disappointed. I tend to be a visually-oriented person, and I was expecting lots of pictures. I like maps, charts, drawings, and other visual clues. Seeing as how most of what we learn of our past tends to be visual in nature, my expectations were high in this area. However, this was not to be. Instead we get bland - and I mean bland! - text, which fail to drive home the point, when he gets around to making it. I absolutely do not care how many boxes of artifacts were found at a site. Show them to me! In the very beginning there is talk of "Paleolithic" versus "Neolithic", and the author explains that these terms are only widely used to discuss the timeline in Europe and parts of Asia. Why not show me a chart?

There is some good stuff in here. All the photos and drawings that Rudgley did include are worth a gander, and the text does flow and inform at intervals. But as a popular science work, it's boring. And if intended as a scientific treatise, it's, well, in the "stone age" compared to the real work being done.

Though I'm sure Rudgley is right about language, the supporting evidence is not present in the book, (covered in other reviews). I'd have to say that, in summary, Robert Ardrey (African Genesis), or Richard Dawkins could probably have done a better job of popularizing this topic. Rudgley picked too wide a field, displayed too little evidence, and ultimately fails to spin an entertaining yarn.

Rating:
Summary: Still Lost, But At Least Now Looked For
Review: In her survey work "Plato Prehistorian" Mary Settegast briefly discusses Paleolithic runes, apparently an alphabet, which shares signs with the much later Indus Valley script, western Greek, and Runic or Baltic writing. Barry Fell studied the medieval sources which preserve the many kinds of Ogham writing, which is a sort of line writing on either side of a baseline, and concluded that its basis in groups of five or less indicated an origin in a sort of finger spelling. This presupposes the use of an alphabet. We no longer use Ogham, and the alphabet we use today isn't like this runic system. The daunting part of this tidbit is that alphabetic writing must be at least 12,000 years old, nearly three times as old as the known systems of hieroglyphics and cuneiform, and probably 35,000 years old, with no good reason to believe that it isn't much older than that.

Naturally I wanted to check the Rudgley book to see if Settegast is mentioned. She isn't. Rudgley covers some of the same ground, but his entire book pertains to the literacy of supposedly preliterate cultures.

The Upper Paleolithic character set suggests that some form of writing, perhaps even alphabetic writing, has been part of human activity for over 12,000 years. This isn't to say that we'll someday find a library, but at least if we do we won't be caught unawares. There's a discussion of Linear A, and (page 75) there's a quote from Allan Forbes and Thomas Crowder, source of the Magdalenian character set reproduced by Mary Settegast.

Rudgley discusses that the conventional view that writing is relatively recent is really an outgrowth of the idea of progress, by which is meant that humans were stupid primitive cave people for hundreds of thousands of years after they descended from the trees until, in short order, they domesticated animals, perfected irrigation and plant breeding, built the first cities, and invented writing.

Rudgley makes the point (pp 67-68) that Vinca signs were first believed to be derivative of earlier Sumerian, then were derided as random marks after their actual age was discovered. Considering that the Sumerians' best known cities as well as the Tigris and Euphrates bore names that were pre-Sumerian, it shouldn't come as any surprise that someone accomplished something long before they entered the region.

As Settegast points out, sealevel was hundreds of feet lower, so "ice age" settlements and perhaps thousands of years of cultural developments have long since vanished. It used to be thought that writing originated in three or four places and diffused outward into the world. Its invention was too recent to have any impact on the Americas, or so it was thought, because the Americas were completely isolated prior to that.

Perhaps most interesting (pp 247-260) is Rudgley's discussion of the dates of artifacts from Japan, a situation which has relevance in the current debate over Clovis-first-and-only.

Also of interest is "The Origin of Language" by Merritt Ruhlen

Rating:
Summary: Opens the doors of perception
Review: Read it and think! That's what this book is about. Forget about reviews by people who quibble with technical issues that are the subject of debates in professional archaeology. This book (like Guns, Germs and Steel-Buy it!) takes the reader on an exploration of one perception of how and when civilization came into being. It is outstanding in its depth and breadth, and allows the reader to come to his or her own conclusions. No one knows what really happened and we probably never will, but Rudgely sure gives us information to ponder.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Ideas that Go Too Far
Review: Richard Rudgley's The Lost Civilations of the Stone Age brings up some very interesting ideas and delves into news ways of looking at the prehistoric past. It is important to view the stone age peoples with more open minds than is usually done and this book could be a good place to begin that examination. The only serious flaw of this book, and it sometimes could be quite grating, was the author's insistence on building up his case by dramatically overemphasing the importance and achievements of these ancestors of ours. Any evidence, however spurious, was included. It felt, at times, that the author felt that unless he proved that the stone age peoples were, in fact, superior to all other peoples that followed he had not fulfilled his mission. The book became a competition instead of simply a way of presenting the facts of the stone age and allowing their own achievements to stand. It was an interesting read, although at times it could be quite frustrating.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Ideas that Go Too Far
Review: Richard Rudgley's The Lost Civilations of the Stone Age brings up some very interesting ideas and delves into news ways of looking at the prehistoric past. It is important to view the stone age peoples with more open minds than is usually done and this book could be a good place to begin that examination. The only serious flaw of this book, and it sometimes could be quite grating, was the author's insistence on building up his case by dramatically overemphasing the importance and achievements of these ancestors of ours. Any evidence, however spurious, was included. It felt, at times, that the author felt that unless he proved that the stone age peoples were, in fact, superior to all other peoples that followed he had not fulfilled his mission. The book became a competition instead of simply a way of presenting the facts of the stone age and allowing their own achievements to stand. It was an interesting read, although at times it could be quite frustrating.

Rating:
Summary: Rudgley relies heavily on linguistics but misuses it
Review: Rudgley's book cannot be taken seriously as an attempt to re-write pre-history. His argument is confused at the outset by his failure to define 'civilisation' and his apparent tacit adoption of an unreasonably wide definition, which makes it very easy for him to claim cheap success. The mainstream ideas he attacks are mostly 'straw men'. Much of his specific 'evidence' is linguistic (or at least involves what are claimed to be early manifestations of written language), but this is discussed within the framework of the highly controversial ideas of Gimbutas. The evidence for anything resembling written language at the relevant dates is, to say the least, tenuous. Rudgley also relies heavily on fringe philological theories. He has in no way demonstrated his case and his scholarship is highly suspect.

Rating:
Summary: Worth reading but not as controversial as it pretends
Review: The best thing you can say about any book is that it seemed worth the time taken to read it. This book passes the test. It told me things about the early use of symbols that I did not know, and told me them in a readable and decently illustrated way (after a slightly pedantic introduction - don't let it put you off). It also achieves its main aim: to prove for those who ever doubted it that the pre-"civilised" world was sometimes capable of accumulating significant bodies of thought and methodology in writing, counting, medical procedures, etc. So far as I know, however, this is not in itself a controversial idea (unlike, for example, a discussion of why pre-"civilised" communities sometimes accumulate pools of ignorance and malevolence...). Irritatingly, the author presents it as such throughout his chapters. Although there is lots of new evidence described here, so far as I can remember the thrust of this book had ceased being controversial by the time I was an undergraduate studying archaeology in Cambridge in the early 1980s! (There was something almost spooky about seeing these old chestnuts presented as millennial thought.) For sure, not everyone will agree with his interpretations of the evidence, but his only truly controversial moments are in deciding what constitutes "writing" and "civilisation". This kind of semantic controversy can be useful, but it needs to be much more clearly defined and argued than is the case in this book. None of this is an argument against buying the book however, as in his useful tour of the evidence the writer gives quite enough qualifications and detail for the reader to make his/her own mind up about the date, likelihood and possible importance of "writing" and other achievements of civilisation in "prehistoric" cultures. Above all, this reader reached the last page...