Editorial Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews
In an exhaustively researched and creatively argued reassessment of mankind's origins, British physician Oppenheimer, an expert in tropical pediatrics, contends that the now-submerged area of Southeast Asia was the cradle of ancient civilization. From time to time, scholars from various disciplines have argued for the existence of a vastly old ``founder civilization.'' Among the most famous was Charles Hapgood, who based his theory of a lost seafaring civilization on his analysis of the famous 16th-century ``Piri Re'is'' maps of the Antarctic land mass. In this tradition, Oppenheimer blends evidence from geology, genetics, linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology to argue persuasively that such a civilization existed on a submerged land mass in Southeast Asia, which geologists call the Sunda shelf. Pointing to geological evidence for the submersion of the shelf by abrupt rises in the sea level about 8,000 years ago, Oppenheimer contends that the coastal cultures of Southeast Asia were drowned by a great flood, reflected in flood mythologies scattered from the ancient Middle East (such as the biblical story of Noah) to Australia and the Americas. According to the author, tantalizing archaeological evidence exists of settlements under a ``silt curtain'' left by the sea floods in drowned coastal regions from Southeast Asia to the Middle East, while linguistic markers indicate that languages spread from Southeast Asia to Australia and the Pacific. The shared flood story is one striking example of similar Eurasian myths according to the author; the ancient Middle East and Asia share other myth typologies, conspicuously including creation and Cain and Abel myths, which point to common origins in a progenitor culture. Absorbing, meticulously researched, limpidly written, and authoritative: should be regarded as a groundbreaking study of the remote past of Southeast Asia, and of civilization itself.
In my view, there is no doubt that the Utnapishtim story preserves an oral tradition of Noah--you don't have too much difficulty with that because Noah and his family who all had first hand knowledge lived long after the flood.
The difficulty is presented by Gilgamesh himself. Who was he?
Noah lived 350 years after the flood. His son Shem, was still alive at the age of 446; Noah's grandson Arphaxad was 346 years old at the time of his grandfather's death.
Falstich has the Post Flood Summarian King's List starting less than 100 years after the flood but the first king is in Kish; the Sumarian's are united under the King in Urak about 75 years later so in Falstich's timeline, Gilgamesh would fall somewhere between 100 and 175 years after the flood.
Assuming 25 year generations (birth of the father to birth of the son), Gilgamesh could have been four or five generations removed from Noah and might well have located his great-great-great grandfather to have received the account denominated Utnapishtim.
Sure the Utnapishtim story is a little off the precise account in Genesis which Moses received from God but Noah was old; Gilgamesh was writing with a chisel, not a word processer.
Hapgood's analysis is intesting but speculative. The Summerian King's list (prior to the flood) has Summer in the same area. Other descriptions such as the rivers out of Eden; Eve's tomb in Mecca; and other artificats that predate the flood imply a common location.
The stories in Southeast Asia and the Pacific presumably migrated there with the population expansion. No doubt though that the flood is in the common history of ancient man--and the flood is not some local flood in the Black Sea.
Some years ago when I was in Turkey I visited the Naval Museum. It had some displays about Reis and his work, including some of his maps. I asked if I could see the famous Piri Reis map of the "new world." I was told it wasn't there in the Museum, but was in the former Imperial Palace. Some time later I toured the Palace, and asked if I could see the map. I was told it wasn't there, it was in the Naval Museum.
I hope the Turkish bureaucracy hasn't lost the thing.