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Title: The First Americans : In Pursuit of Archaeology's Greatest Mystery by James Adovasio, Jake Page ISBN: 0-375-75704-X Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 17 June, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.62 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: fascinating look at American prehistory
Comment: This is an excellent book that covers much of the prehistory of America. I don't think Adovasio is any more critical of his critics than they are of him. He gives excellent review of carbon dating, the Ice Ages, genetic dating and so on. He discusses how a belief in a biblical "global flood" shaped geology in the early years. He should have detailed more how people turned to a local flood interpretation as Earth's antiquity became apparent, in order to combat the young-earthers who have spent the past fifty years trying to revive the global flood theory (see Hugh Ross' "The Genesis Question" for a detailed discussion on the flood and why a literal translation of the Bible requires an old Earth).
Adovasio does blindly accept too much of Darwinian evolution. For example, he claims it is "clear" (p. 85) that we and the apes share a common ancestor. This is untrue, as shown by genetics, and Adovasio leaves this out when he discusses genetic dating techniques. These techniques, and other discoveries, have shown we aren't related to Neanderthals, yet Adovasio claims (p. 86-87) that "no one can yet say for certain" if they were related or interbred with humans.
In any case the book is a fascinating look at American prehistory. It seems America was settled by different groups at different times much longer ago than originally thought.
Rating: 1
Summary: Waste of time
Comment: Buy Ken Tankersley's In Search of Age Age Americans instead. Informative and pleasant to read.
This book rehashes the history of American archaeology then castigates the author's perceived enemies unfairly. Both Vance and Tankersley have stated that people were in NA before Clovis. They just have doubts about the author's dating at Meadowcroft.
Rating: 4
Summary: An Academic Slugfest
Comment: I am of two minds about "The First Americans." On the one hand, it is a well-written and interesting history about what scientists know (or think they know) about how and when the Americas were populated. Based on his own extensive work at the Meadowcroft rock shelter in Pennsvlvania and on the work of Tom Dillehay at Monte Verde in South America, Professor Adovasio argues passionately that the Americas were populated much earlier than 11,000 years ago, which is the approximate date usually given for the appearance of Clovis culture.
But Professor Adovasio's passion is what gives me pause. Although I suspect that he is probably right in rejecting the "Clovis bar," I have the definite feeling that I am only getting one side of a complex story.
I also found the book's numerous ad hominem attacks to be off putting--while complaining about the personal invective that has been directed at him and other advocates of pre-Clovis populations in the Americas, Professor Adovasio repeatedly slams his bete noir Vance Haynes and his allies. At one point, the author announces that "the sad fact is that the evidence is not going to make any difference to Vance, a man who, as one of his colleagues said, is now an example of someone whose mind has snapped shut, never to open again" (p. 262).
That sort of statement makes Adovasio sound somewhat hypocritical, although I suppose he would argue that his opponents have given him plenty of reasons to retaliate in kind. In any event the condition of Vance Haynes' mind is of little interest to me--Professor Adovasio and his supporters either win on the merits or they don't, and the book would have been more convincing if it had stuck to the facts without trying to make the reader dislike the "other side" as much as the authors obviously do.
"The First Americans" is worth reading, and I generally enjoyed it. But I'm still looking for a more balanced discussion of this fascinating subject.
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Title: In Search of Ice Age Americans by Douglas Preston, Kenneth B. Tankersley ISBN: 1586850210 Publisher: Gibbs Smith Publisher Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory by Thomas D. Dillehay ISBN: 0465076696 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 19 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: The First Americans: The Pleistocene Colonizations of the New World (Wattis Symposium Series in Anthropology) by Nina G. Jablonski, Paul L. and Phyllis Wattis Foundation Endowment Symposium 1999 Califo ISBN: 0940228505 Publisher: California Acad of Sciences Pub. Date: July, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Lost World : Rewriting Prehistory---How New Science Is Tracing America's Ice Age Mariners by Tom Koppel ISBN: 0743453573 Publisher: Atria Books Pub. Date: 24 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Bones, Boats, and Bison: Archeology and the First Colonization of Western North America by E. James Dixon ISBN: 0826321380 Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: January, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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