Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia Paperback – July 1, 1999

Well written, interesting book,
writing is clear with a truthful ring to it.
Recommended to anyone interested in a take on a different prehistoric past from what is commonly believed.

This is a brilliantly interesting book! Lots of information and ideas well presented. It presents a theory concerning the movement of people into the Pacific area after the Ice Age. It is scholarly non fiction with good scientific basis.

I enjoyed reading this book and feel that the author made a good case for his premise if not a compelling one.

I was troubled by the use of references which are obviously false for example:

Page 247 (17) "Noah, who altogether reigned for 1565 years or 86400 weeks"
I cannot believe that anyone lived this long there has to be an error in the translation of this myth.
The number 86,400 is the number of seconds in a day ( the sumerians divided the solar day into 24 hours, 60 minutes, and 60 seconds)
while this number is well known to those who compute the trajectories of deep space probes It is not a commonly use number
and there is no reason I can think of the relate this number to years or weeks.

Page 250 paragraph 3 "the ten kings ruled for 432,000 years (that is 86,400X 5, five years being 60 months)

There is more of this nonsense with numbers which should have been examined. for example sumerian time periods also contained fractions of years which would have essentially reduced the total by a factor of ten...950 year would have become 95

It is possible that scribes could have misread ancient texts which used numbering systems that were no longer in use.

THESE NUMBER DON'T MAKE SENSE

Roland Boucher

excellent book

Interesting premise which is painstakingly researched and documented. Oppenheimer makes a very cogent argument which if true will completely rewrite history!

Stephen Oppenheimer is the first author to treat this subject in an extensive manner using both scientific evidence and comparative mythology. He brings together a wide range of complimentary fields to support his theory on the rise of Southeast Asian during the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods. A must read for those interested in new historical perspectives.

The detail and erudition of the research and the exposition of findings are outstanding. The future of continuing research will add to our understanding of our origins.

I can start by saying that this was one of the most difficult books I have ever read. It is thick, dense and full of conceptual data that are hard to reconcile. I feel I will need to read it again at some point to try and make better sense of it. But at close to 500 pages that won't happen soon. I am hoping his theories will appear in a more readable book.

If you've ever read Thor Heyerdahl's Kon Tiki, he refutes it and suggest the opposite. If you have come to the conclusion that biblical frames of thought, such as Cain and Abel, were unique to the west, think again. If you thought Southeast Asia is and has always been a backwater region, wrong. The latter aspect, that ideas have flowed from east to west and particularly from Southeast Asia, rather than focusing on India or China, is the best part of his message in this book. He really, and I mean really, made me think a lot about what I have learned about the origins of civilization in the past. This book preceded most of the books in recent years that focus on Asia's past greatness so it seems less caught up in all that. Of course, he probably wrote it while Southeast Asia was on its dramatic rise in the mid 1990s, soon to fall precipitously.

He is a doctor so his field studies of sickle cell anemia (known as resistant to malaria) in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere in Southeast Asia triggered his ideas. Further his use of archaeological evidence, linguistics and mythical comparison provide provocative, if often difficult to follow, ideas on how the people, technology and ideas of Southeast Asia have fit into the history of Western thought and traditions.

His main thesis concerns the rising and lowering of sea levels that took place in three stages starting 15,000 years ago, again 11,500 years ago with the last most dramatic impact coming about 7,000 years ago. Southeast Asia and its shallow Sunda shelf, now underwater but not in the past, is thought by him to have been the homeland 'Sundaland' for the peoples of a relatively advanced civilization at the time. After the flooding, these people spread east and west over time, through the Harappan civilization of India to the Middle East and early western civilization, and through the islands of Melanesia and Polynesia. Because it is in my opinion, such an original idea, it is hard to take all of what he suggests.

The book is full of illustrations and graphics that support his arguments. Ideas like the geographical use of blowpipes are used to suggest cultural and linguistic diffusion but also a very active trading network in the region over 5000 years ago. The earliest evidence of rice cultivation, on the Malay peninsula, in southern Thailand is used to support his theories on the flow of ideas from South to North and East to West rather than the other way around. The diversity of myth its conceptual similarities internationally like the tree of life, warring brothers and fruit/animal motifs support the idea that Southeast Asia was not only a recipient but an active participant, sometimes appearing as the originator of many stories. He does a great job, with all his knowledge and experience in the region, of supporting his theories with local examples and stories which he has assiduously collected over the years.

In two years of graduate study on Southeast Asia, we never discussed any of these ideas. Are they preposterous? They certainly don't seem so to me, even though I am hardly an expert in any of the disciplines he uses. It makes me want to hear more from others about his conclusions before either reading it again to try and understand it better and to continue following his line of thought. It is really a great contribution because it is one of the few books I have read, of the more sweeping conceptual sort, that really gives Southeast Asia a strong role in shaping the world throughout history. This is important for a region long considered only a place to take natural resources without really giving anything valuable back.