Author uses written records of artifacts and sites long destroyed to show that modern archeology is only a set of theories and these missing parts were discarded for not fitting into the accepted picture of history. ( )

This book was written by a lawyer (Cremo) and a mathematician (Thompson) who are both Hare Krishnas. As such, they are intelligent people who know how to write an argument, but they both have preconceived notions they're trying to support and lack the training and impartiality to understand their topic.

They do cite academic works that seem to throw into question current archaeological models. However, they either don't know or don't care that there are reasons why these academic works have been discredited. A good example is the amino acid racemization dating of some southern California human skeletons. A series of papers by Jeffrey Bada and his colleagues seemed to show that modern humans lived in southern California more than 40,000 years ago. Cremo and Thompson present this at face value. But Bada himself (and I've talked to his wife about this) admits that these dates are wrong. They are calibrated according to poor radiocarbon dates given to him by labs at UCLA. If Cremo and Thompson knew the field or researched better, they would know that this had been discredited. Of course no credible archaeologists write about such things -- why write about what has been refuted for decades?

Other evidence relied upon are things like 19th century semi-scholarly journals which report on artifacts that are now lost. Interesting for the history of science, but not very reliable.

In short, this is a very exciting book, and it does raise questions one might want answered -- but it would be foolish to trust Cremo and Thompson to write the final word. ( )

This is a bit drab at times but still an interesting and compelling book. Definitely, thought provoking! ( )

The authors’ central theme is simple:

1.Conventional wisdom puts human civilisation at around 5-6,000 years old; before that we all lived in caves.

2.VAST archeological evidence to the contrary is ignored and suppressed by the academic establishment. Man has been around on Earth for aeons!!

The very length of this 900-page reference work is instrumental in proving the point: this is not a crank hypothesis; the authors are playing properly by the established rules of scientific investigation in presenting facts in detail, complete with source references. The facts deserve proper consideration by the scientific community.

That understood, for the general reader this book is for enjoyable dipping and browsing. It is also a significant element in the current paradigm shift in our perspective on human history. Increasingly, archeological research takes place on the sea bed. Real lost cities are being found under water, the victims of rising sea levels as the last Ice Age ended. ( )

Too long, but extensively detailed and cited. It is practically ignored by creationists and evolutionists alike, which is a crying shame. (That should be an object lesson on dogmatisms of all stripes).

Update - 8/14/2007 -
One of the contentions in this book is that the homo erectus is in reality far more apelike than human. Most depictions of them show a semi-human face and a modern-looking body, Cremo and Thompson say this is incorrect. Recent news articles have born this out as now folks are saying that erectus was more ape-like than previously thought.

Hmm. ( )