Excellent

Jika premis atau hipotesa buku ini benar, maka sejarah dunia harus diubah beserta turunannya, antropologi dll. Dan jika Atlantis ada di Asia Tenggara, sebagiannya di Indonesia, oh banyak mitos agama akan runtuh .. buku bagus yang harus dibaca dan kelak akan jadi sangat penting di antara tahun 2030-2050 ke atas saat trend antropologi sains politik ekonomi lingkungan dll mengarah ke Indonesia. buku yang harus dimiliki bersama dengan Atlantis: The Continent Finally Found dari Arysio Santos

I wanna read this book so much , but i have no enough money to buy the book :-( do you all wanna borrow me ?

This is kind of academic. But I was reading more for the subject matter: about the possibility of a South East Asian continent that was the original cradle of civilisation, before it was drowned by rising water levels at the end of the last ice age. The first part of the book which deals with data on the flooding is a bit of a long haul. The second part which dealt with comparisons of similar folklore between various cultures to see where the original story came from is much more interesting for me. I'd recommend this to anyone with a keen interest in South East Asian indigenous cultures or pre-colonial history.

This book sets out to prove an almost impossible thesis: that the drowned civilization of Sundaland contributed towards the civilizational milestones of Mesopotamia (and then towards the rest of the world) after their land had been engulfed by floods.

The scope of the book is gigantic, and most of the time are filled with jargon and technicalities that are so specific that it is almost hard to grasp by those who are not acquainted with hard geology or linguistics.

Oppenheimer tried to prove that there are three post-glacial floodings in the last 12,000 years ago that submerge the continent of Sundaland. Sundaland is one of many continental shelves that stood too level with the sea, thus exposing it to the mercy of Nature. But he has to prove that the rising sea level is severe, or drastic enough that it will propel its inhabitants to embark on an exodus out from their homeland. He also has to prove the sophistication of the civilization of Sundaland, that they offer enough attractive technology and cultural achievements that the people of the West emulate them.

In the outset, Oppenheimer insists on how the flood myths around the world are actually historiographical, instead of just mythical. Mythos is how people of the ancient tried to limit the delimited human experience. Even in our daily life, such reasoning provides some meaning to our daily tribulations. Also in the Mesopotamians annals, were recorded on “amphibious sages from the East” that taught them the civilizational mettles. According to Oppenheimer, the people of the Sundaland are those sages from the East.

Using geological analysis, Oppenheimer able to identify three post-glacial flooding for the past 12,000 years ago. Each of these flooding are associated with the dismantlement of mega ice caps, releasing hundreds of thousands of cubic kilometers of water, instantaneously increasing the world sea water level. Looking directly to today’s situation as in Jakarta, where the sea level is dangerously creeping to the level of the barrier erected throughout the coast, reminds us hauntingly on the suspense felt by the people of Sundaland at that time.

But reverse back to 100,000 years ago. Elsewhere in the review of the other book, we have summarized on the Out-of-Africa theory, the theory of migration of modern humans. And the modern humans reached Sundaland around 60,000 years ago, serving as a stopping-hub, just like in India 80,000 years ago. When the population blooming in India has almost been wiped up by the ashes of Mount Toba, it was the people living in Sundaland that filled up the vacant spots, as evidenced by genetic studies. It was also from Sundaland, where the ancients crossed to Australia through the Lesser Sundas, and towards China, Beringia and then onwards to America. The 9-bp deletion in our genome, ubiquitous in the people of Southeast Asia and the Native Americans indicate such relation quite starkly.

Oppenheimer is also a believer of the stay-at-home hypothesis on the origins of the people of Southeast Asia, instead of out-of-Taiwan, or out-of-Yunnan hypothesis. He believed that the Austronesian people originated in the Moluccas, in the heart of Southeast Asia instead of from Yunnan. Linguistically, the total devoid of basic Malayo-Polynesian vocabulary in the Formosan Aboriginal showed quite a high degree of improbability of them being the entire ancestor of the Austronesians. Archaeologically, the presence of rice remains in the Sakai Cave of Thailand a full 3000 years prior of any earliest record of rice-cultivation in China also showed the less probability of them being the ancestor. Genetically, the presence of all three variants of 9-bp deletion (the so-called Asian grandmother, mother and daughter) are highly concentrated in central Southeast Asia instead of Taiwan at its fringes.

The second part of the book focuses on the prevalence of flood myths in Southeast Asia and its relation to the rest of the world. In short, Oppenheimer tried to relate the dispersal of flood myths throughout the world with the migration of the Sundaland people post glacial floods.

kemarin sore nemu di perpus, katanya sih baru dateng. Langsung dipinjem, dan entah kapan selesainya. Tebel banget, apalagi abis sakit gini, agak2 nggak yakin kalo selesai, tapi..err dicoba dulu deh :p

Oppenheimer advances the thesis that rapid sea level rise about 8000 years ago forced people living on the Sunda Shelf in southeast Asia (then an extensive area of dry land) to migrate east and west, bringing much of their culture with them. The geology, genetics, and linguistics he rallies in support seem sound. When he gets to mythology, though, his ground becomes much shakier. He claims evidence to suggest that themes common to the Middle East and Europe (pretty much everything in Genesis 1-8, and a little more) originated in Sunda. But mostly his argument is that when a theme occurs in Sunda, it originated there, and there was a physical inspiration for it; when the same theme occurs elsewhere, it came via diffusion. In a couple places, he buttresses his case with statistical correlations of motifs occurring together, but those statistics are weakened by selective interpretation of the myths (e.g., any mention of vegetation becomes a tree) and by omission of South American myths (perhaps unknown to him at the time) which include several of the same motifs. His case is strong enough to merit further study, particularly regarding an early settlement of Polynesia, and the myths he discusses are interesting in themselves. But the section on spread of myths must remain in the "wild speculation" category at least until reliable methods are found to determine how and where myths spread.

A most excellent book. Read Bruce Kenyon's book Into Africa before you make your mind up.

seems interesting.

"Ingatlah, kurangnya bukti prasejarah dari teknologi majulah yang menjadi dasar ejekan para pendukung orang bijak pada zaman prasejarah." -hlm. 447

Akhirnya bisa menyelesaikan buku tebal ini dalam waktu kurang lebih dua mingguan, di sela-sela aktivitas yang mulai memadat.

Buku ini dibagi menjadi dua bagian yang mana bagian pertama akan berfokus pada asal-usul penyebaran beberapa benua-benua yang kita kenal sekarang ini, dan teori-teori yang mendukung mengenai apa yang menyebabkan terpecahnya benua-benua tersebut.

Sementara di bagian kedua adalah lanjutan penyebaran benua tersebut di mana sejarah umat manusia mulai bermunculan, alias teori penciptaan. Well, di bagian kedua ini juga menyelipkan banyak sekali cerita rakyat, dongeng, mitos, bahkan pendekatan dari berbagai macam kitab mengenai teori penciptaan alam semesta dan manusia.

Buku ini juga sedikit banyak mengingatkanku dengan buku Charles Darwin yang sudah kubaca juga di bulan ini. Isinya tuh kayak saling berkesinambungan.

Sayangnya buku ini banyak banget typo bahkan sepertinya layoutnya tidak diatur dulu. Well, editornya pun kayaknya kelabakan mau ngedit buku 814 halaman ini. Dimaklumi.

I translated it :D

okay