37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Needed more editing, February 4, 2001
This review is from: Buried Alive: The Startling Untold Story About Neanderthal Man (Paperback)
This was like two different books. The first 14 chapters (64 pages) were so dramatic and so well written that I could not put the book down. Dr. Cuozzo tells of his 1979 trip to the Museum of Man in Paris to do radiographic research on neandertal skulls. He discovered that the jaw of one specimen was not properly seated in its joint. When it was, the skull had a decidedly human, non-apelike cast. This is how Dr. Cuozzo x-rayed it. His agreement with the museum required him to submit duplicate x-rays to the museum, which he did when his work there, but not his trip to France, was completed. What happened next is the stuff of spy novels, and Ian Fleming could not have told it better than Dr. Cuozzo has in this book.
Unfortunately, the book then bogs down in a welter of technical detail. Eventually it becomes almost unreadable. After the first 14 chapters, it probably was not advisable to try to tell the story in chronological order. Dr. Cuozzo probably should have backed off and taken a more explanatory, and less breathless, approach to relating his main thesis. In any case, the book needed strong editorial direction in order to be more useful to lay people unschooled in disciplines such as orthodontics and forensic science. That level of editorial input was not available at Master Books, in Green Forest, Arkansas.
Dr. Cuozzo has done some important and valuable work, work that dovetails nicely with recent research indicating that the neandertals are, indeed, genetically related to modern humans. See, e.g., an article in the Feb. 2 issue of "Science" by Milford H. Wolpoff, David W. Frayer, and Keith Hunley.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
134 of 166 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A new theory about an Old Man., May 21, 1999
This review is from: Buried Alive: The Startling Untold Story About Neanderthal Man (Paperback)
The first part of this book reads like pages out of Indiana Jones' diary, only this is no fantasy, but fact. The following chapter titles give some idea of the flavour:
"The Chase" - author's van tearing recklessly through the streets of Paris with two sports cars in hot pursuit.
"Bathroom Doors to the Rescue" - attempted break-in to the author's hotel room in the middle of the night.
"Some Chilling News" - of a murder?
"Ancestor Meeting Followed by Bullets" - fired at the author's van.
What's the meaning of this cloak-and-dagger stuff?
Dr. Jack Cuozzo, an orthodontist of many years' experience, is the only creationist scientist to have gained access to original Neandertal fossil material for detailed study. This was before the museum authorities realised his creationist world-view - after that the doors were closed to him. These are the rules the evolutionist establishment (though not all evolutionist individuals) play by: deny creationists access to the research material where possible, and deny them the opportunity to publish the results of their research, then tell the world they are only armchair scientists. The physicist Robert Gentry was a victim of this discrimination (read about his experiences in "Creation's Tiny Mystery"), as well as the author of this book, whose work exposed the heavy bias of evolutionist anthropologists in reporting their research, even to the extent of doctoring the evidence. Is the secular scientific establishment pursuing an agenda to con the unsuspecting public into evolutionary beliefs? Many will shrug off such a conspiracy theory, but read this book before making up your mind.
The main text is divided into 33 short chapters spanning 257 pages, followed by 46 pages of research notes for those who wish to pursue the technical details, followed by references and index. Cuozzo shows with many examples how evolutionist presuppositions always overrule factual data whenever the two are in conflict, whether it is to do with fossil morphology or fossil dating. His main thesis is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Neandertal children matured far more slowly than their modern counterparts, Neandertal longevity greatly exceeded that of modern humans, and it is their advanced ages which gave rise to their distinctive skull morphology. Moreover, their longevity is due to their superior physiology. Cuozzo's conclusion is that throughout history man has been devolving, not evolving, and he backs this up with detailed fossil measurements and calculations.
Did the scientific establishment receive the author's fresh findings with objective, emotionally-detached interest?
The American Association of Orthodontists invited him, in a cordial letter, to present his research at a regional meeting. Unfortunately he had to provide the meeting's chairman with an abstract of his paper beforehand, which is standard practice. He was relegated to the final session on the final day, at 5.00pm, which was the time when refreshments were served. There was no sign to indicate where his talk was, as there were for all the other speakers. As a result only seven people turned up to hear him. His talk was also disturbed by the noise in the hallway during refreshment time. On another occasion when Cuozzo gave a lecture at Penn State University, an anthropology professor took the microphone out of the his hand while the students surrounded the podium and shouted him down. As Cuozzo beat a retreat towards the exit, one student tried to ask him a question, but someone grabbed the questioner from behind by the neck and told him not to ask any questions because "He's just a preacher anyway."
"Buried Alive" contains high drama and incidents of human interest, and is packed with educational value. It has something for everyone, and is good value for money.
Professor W. R. Thompson wrote the following comment in his Introduction to the 1956 reprint of "The Origin of Species": "The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity. ... This situation, where scientific men rally to the defence of a doctrine they are unable to define scientifically, much less demonstrate with scientific rigour, attempting to maintain its credit with the public by the suppression of criticism and the elimination of difficulties, is abnormal and undesirable in science."
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
124 of 155 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gripping, fascinating expose of fraud by a courageous scient, April 15, 1999
This review is from: Buried Alive: The Startling Untold Story About Neanderthal Man (Paperback)
How many books on human fossils begin with a dangerous high speed chase through the streets of Paris, complete with mysterious pursuers in sports cars? (If you don't believe me, read chapter one.) What are gripping descriptions of a drive-by shooting and a bizarre murder of an innocent scientist doing in a book on the dull topic of ancient fossil remains? What is this, Indiana Jones Meets James Bond?
I had read several of Dr. Cuozzo's technical and popular papers on the subject of human origins, and had high expectations for this book. It exceeds them. What I was not expecting was the ferocity and tactics of evolutionists seeking to suppress the evidence Dr. Cuozzo presents.
This is more than a dry book of science. It reveals the all too human side of paleoanthropology. When the famous British scientist, Lord Zuckerman, doubted whether there was much science to be found in the field of human fossil research he was hinting at the degree to which evolutionism, philosophic beliefs and assumptions distort what the public is taught about the evidence.
This book is the stuff of which Kuhnian scientific revolutions are made. A poorer explanation of the place of Neanderthal in the human family tree has been replaced by a superior one. Moreover, Cuozzo's findings of degeneration from Neanderthal to modern man mesh well with everything we know from empirical evolutionary biology. (C.f. Dr. Lee Spetner's book, Not by Chance) We are not evolving up from a primordial soup, but rather down from the Garden of Eden.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
