Posted on 02/02/2006 4:16:59 PM PST by blam
I confess, I lean heavily in that direction myself. Especially after reading, Eden In The East by Stepehen Oppenheimer.
Synopsis
At the end of the Ice Age, Southeast Asia formed a continent twice the size of India. The South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand and the Java Sea, which were all dry, formed the connecting parts of the continent. Geologically, this half-sunken continent is the Sunda shelf of Sundaland. In Eden in the East Stephen Oppenheimer puts forward the astonishing argument that here in Southeast Asia was the cradle of civilisation that fertilised the great cultures of China, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Crete six thousand years ago. He produces evidence from ethnography, archaeology, oceanography, from Creation stories, myths and sagas, and from linguistics and DNA analysis, to argue that this founder-civilisation was destroyed by the catastrophic flood, caused by a rapid rise in sea level at the end of the last Ice Age.
From the Author
Eden in the East'overturns conventional ideas of the origins of western civilization in Mesopotamia. In this book I place Southeast Asia for the first time as the key to the first roots of civilisation. At the same time I provide scientific explanations for numerous, and previously unexplained, cultural links between early Eastern and Western cultures. Notable among these links are the hundreds of myths of a great flood which forced people into boats and left only a few survivors. I can now identify this flood as the dramatic rise in sea level at the end of the ice age that suddenly inundated vast areas of Eurasia. In other words the Biblical Flood really did occur. It had its most disastrous effects, however, in the continent of Southeast Asia - now a lost and half-sunken Eden.
As the Ice Age ended, there were three catastrophic and rapid rises in sea level. The last of these, which finished shortly before the start of civilization in Mesopotamia, may have been the one that was remembered. These three floods drowned the coastal cultures and all the flat continental shelves of Southeast Asia. As the sea rolled in, there was a mass emigration from the sinking continent. These flood-driven refugees, carried their domestic animals with them in large ocean-going canoes in all directions. The networks of sea trade, created by their settlements around the Indian Ocean, fertilized the Neolithic cultures of China, India, Mesopotamia and Egypt.
The Southeast Asian contributions to the building of the first cities in Mesopotamia may not have been solely technological. While they may have brought the new ideas and skills of megalithic construction cereal domestication, sea-faring, astronomy, navigation, trade and commerce, they may also have introduced the tools to harness and control the labour of the farmers and artisans. These included magic, religion, and concepts of state, kingship and social hierarchy.
The evidence:
While most alternative prehistories are based more on speculation than fact, I have found some very solid evidence; and have built on the work of specialists in many fields in addition to my own research, to support a comprehensive new picture.
The most solid facts come from oceanographic research of the last decade. It now appears that the great rise in sea level after the last ice age, known about for many years, was not gradual; three sudden ice-melts, the last of which was only 8000 years ago, had catastrophic effects on tropical coasts with flat continental shelves. Rapid land loss was compounded by superwaves, set off by cracks in the earth s crust as the weight of ice shifted to the seas.
Archaeology holds the most accurately dated clues to the past. I have devoted two chapters to archaeological evidence found on coasts and in caves throughout the Indo-Pacific region. All of the technological 'firsts' which signalled man's emergence from the long Palaeolithic era towards the end of the Ice Age come from the Pacific Rim islands. These include evidence of deliberate long-distance sailing and grinding of cereal flour in the Solomon islands from 30,000 years ago. The world's first pots, 12,500 years old, come from Japan. The first evidence that swamps were drained for agriculture comes from the New Guinea Highlands 9,000 years ago.
These snapshots hint at a much older history to the discovery of Neolithic skills in the East. The better archaeological preservation of the later stages of human development in Mesopotamia and Egypt, however, has given rise to the view that civilization started in the West.
I review the evidence of the spoken word in the two linguistic chapters. Experts in the history of language now recognise that Southeast Asia not Europe or West Asia was the centre of language dispersal at the end of the Ice Age. The ancestral language of the Micronesians and Polynesians did not come out of China, as has been recently assumed, but further south over 8000 years ago out of the drowning islands of Indonesia. As the Flood engulfed Indo- China and separated Sumatra from Malaysia the ancestral languages of the Khmers, whose descendants built Angkor Wat, moved west into India.
The most dramatic new findings in this book come out of my own research field. I have published more than 25 scientific papers on the genetic prehistory of the Indo-Pacific region over the past 15 years. Building on my initial work, in Eden in the East I have shown that genetic disorders can be used as people-markers revealing a new view of prehistoric migrations in the Indo-Pacific region. My latest finding, made in collaboration with the Oxford Institute of Molecular Medicine, was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics in October 1998. This paper arose directly out of my research for Eden in the East. It provides compelling evidence that Polynesians and other argonauts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans originated in eastern Indonesia back in the Ice Age rather than in China, as previously thought. This finding alone forces the realisation that the Polynesians' skills of sailing, navigation, astronomy and agriculture had their origins, back in Indonesia, during the Ice Age.
Another objective tool that I use to explore ancient East-West cultural influence in the last part of the book is comparative mythology. Uniquely shared folklore shows that counterparts and originals for nearly every Middle Eastern and European mythological archetype, including the Flood, can be found in the islands of eastern Indonesia and the southwest Pacific. Southeast Asia is revealed as the original Garden of Eden and the Flood as the force which drove people from Paradise.
My multidisciplinary approach to prehistoric enquiry has been recognised in the academic fields of linguistics and comparative folklore. I have been invited to present papers on my work on prehistory at international linguistic meetings. This year I contributed a chapter to a book on Flood myths in the Moluccas published by the Department of Languages and Cultures of Southeast Asia and Oceania, Leiden University (Netherlands).
It is geographically not possible for Indians to have come from Indonesia. You may be right on the others though...makes sense.
IMO, the migration would have been the other way round, from India to South East Asia and Australia (considering the fact that Indonesia is a bunch of islands in the middle of nowhere).
It wasn't that way during the Ice Age. There was a land area there (Sundaland) that was twice the size of present day India. Also, it was nice and warm and humans, of all sorts, must have thrived while the Neanderthals over in Europe were taking a 'beating'.
This thread may interest you.
I saw your other post (with the details) after I sent my previous reply, blam. VERY interesting stuff indeed.....
" Some claim Hakka as "pure" Han people. But pure Han really does not exist. Recent archaeological studies have shown that China had multiple centers of civilization, developed rather independently of each other. Yangshao ‹Âèî (Henan), Banpo ”¼š± (Shaanxi), Hongshan gŽR (Liaoning) , Liangzhu —Ç (Jiangsu/Zhejiang), Sanxingdui ŽO¯‘Í (Sichuan), Longshan —´ŽR (Shandong) all eventually merged into the Han culture.
Han people are thus the integrated composite of several different tribes. In a way, the definition of Han is just as difficult as the definition of American. Hakkas as Han cannot be ethnically pure. Hakka have been at the interface of ethnic conflicts for many dynasties. Genetically speaking, some Hakka people have clearly inherited some non-Han features such as wavy hair and high nose bridge. Hakka must have incorporated these features from the different ethnicities along the migration path through out the 2000 years of history.
The characteristic of Hakkas can only be recognized by the dialect and the adamant preservation of ancient Chinese custom."
Shortly before the organization of the Red Guard the Red Chinese hierarchy began discussing the "Period of Warring States". Then the Guard was released to kill enemies of the state.
No wonder the Chinese prefer to forget this happened!
Indeed
Take this Journey Of Mankind and notice what happened to India 74,000 years ago.
I have seen that article before. I am convinced that Ainus were Samurais. I know during WWII I saw American propaganda which tells what a Japanese person looks like. One way to tell someone was Japanese was Ainu features, especially the generals and admirals. I would not be surprised if Japan's Shinto priests are Ainus. Mt. Fuji, Hokkaido, and Sapporo are Ainu words. I think Ainu is related to Polynesian language. Ainus are seen as downtrodden and poor, but turns out they were not. In fact, they likely ruled Japan and had a profound influence. I have read that before Japanese people of today came, Ainus fought each other within tribes. It would not surprise me if some Ainus collaborated with the invading Japanese and killed other Ainus. Ainus were mercernaries for Japan when they invaded Korea. I suspect these Ainus became samurais eventually, especially in feudal Japan.
I forgot, I think Sumerian could be related to Ainus too. In Iraq, I have seen Marsh Arabs or M'adans and their culture looks very similar to Sumerian/Polynesian/Ainus. My guess is Ainu had a worldwide presence and possibly they had a huge empire we don't know of.
Sometimes I think I have Hakka in me. I am Korean by the way. I like to have my genes tested.
I have seen Samis before. They kinda look Asian, but not really. I guess they mixed with them.
For instance Sako rifles,
They are all related languages ~ to a degree brought to their present speakers through the instrumentality of the Mongol Empire (or, in the case of the Japanese, the 6th century Korean invasion).
Sa'ami, on the other hand, has a large Uralic-Altaic vocabulary, but the 9 current Sa'ami languages have a grammar much more consistent with Sumerian and the Dravidian languages of Southern India.
They "look" vaguely Asiatic simply because "white folks" looked like that before breeding with non-European peoples to their South.
This is again, a ridiculous statement. They weren't much crueler than say, the Romans did with defeated soldiers. Your claims is just plain stupid and have no historical basis.
Have you even BEEN to China and just LOOK at the different "Han" Chinese from one region to the next? That along will show just how ignorant you are.
Just an amateur opinion, not to be taken for more than that.
My dna says I'm likely Sa'ami, but they said it was of Finnish descent on my mother's side. Too strange as her mother was Cherokee.
I think we are still waiting on the far older Chinese civilization to catch up with that level of humanity and justice.
But, to go further, there's a period in Roman history called "The Social Wars". For the most part Rome rose to ascendancy on the Italian peninsula by "merging" with defeated states ~ I don't think even the blindest China apologist would argue any such thing happened in China during the Period of Warring States.
As a brief, I pretty much follow the sort of time-line and opinions about events expressed in this website: http://www.san.beck.org/3-13-Summary.html#2 ~ which is a very, very common timeline.
The Qin emperor was definitely into genocide ~ both BEFORE he became the first emperior, and after he formed his empire.
This is the one period in ancient times that has a death toll due to war anywhere near that regularly experienced in the twentieth century.
They moved West. They then relocated East all the way to the Carolinas in the late 1500 to early 1600 period.
This sort of movement was fairly typical in North America since local climates can change abruptly and make life intolerable. (You have undoubtedly visited Europe and discovered they don't really have weather reports).
Anyway, the Spanish had a fort in South Carolina where they held prisoners of war seized in their Mediterranean wars with the Turkish empire.
It was common for the prisoners to escape to the Cherokee, and sometimes beyond. It was a common belief that Turkish was spoken on the American East Coast back then since every tribe had a Turkish speaking former POW.
The POWs actually came from everywhere the Turks held territory. That included the Balkans, portions of Southern Poland, Ukraine, etc. It is conceivable that more than one silly Sa'ami, on a Finnish or Swedish boat, sailed up the Volga too far, and right into the hands of the Turks.
So, yes, you could very well have a Cherokee ancestor who had a forebear who was a Sa'ami.
Another possibility here is that a Sa'ami serving on a whaling boat simply jumped ship and ran off with the Cherokee.
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