The Reception of Forbidden Archeology:
An Encounter Between Western Science and a Non-Western Perspective on Human Antiquity


Presented at Kentucky State University Institute of Liberal Studies, Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference: Science and Culture,Frankfort, Kentucky, March 30 -- April 1, 1995.

© 1995 by Michael A. Cremo
Research Associate in History and Philosophy of Science
Bhaktivedanta Institute

9701 Venice Blvd. Suite 5, Los Angeles, CA 90034, USA
Phone: (310) 837-5283  Fax: (310) 837-1056
e-mail: michael.cremo@iskcon.com

In 1993 I published  the book Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race, coauthored with Richard L. Thompson (Cremo & Thompson, 1993). In his foreword, ethnomethodological sociologist Pierce J. Flynn, of California State University at San Marcos, noted:
Forbidden Archeology does not conceal its own positioning on a relativist spectrum of knowledge production. The authors admit to their own sense of place in a knowledge universe with contours derived from personal experience with Vedic philosophy, religious perception, and Indian cosmology. Their intriguing discourse on the 'Evidence for Advanced Culture in Distant Ages' is light years from 'normal' Western science, and yet provokes a cohesion of probative thought. In my view, it is just this openness of subjective positioning that makes Forbidden Archeology an original and important contribution to postmodern scholarly studies now being done in sociology, anthropology, archeology, and the history of science and ideas. The authors' unique perspective provides postmodern scholars with an invaluable parallax view of historical scientific praxis, debate, and development.

In my own introduction to Forbidden Archeology, I noted (Cremo & Thompson, 1993):
Richard Thompson and I are members of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, a branch of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness [ISKCON] that studies the relationship between modern science and the world view expressed in the Vedic literature. This institute was founded by our spiritual master, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who encouraged us to critically examine the prevailing account of human origins and the methods by which it was established. From the Vedic literature, we derive the idea that the human race is of great antiquity. To conduct systematic research into the existing scientific literature on human antiquity, we expressed the Vedic idea in the form of a theory that various humanlike and apelike beings have coexisted for a long time.

To further contextually position myself, I offer that in 1976 I was initiated by Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977) into the Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya branch of Vaishnavism. The lineage of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, of which ISKCON is a modern institutional expression, extends back thousands of years, but the most recent representatives, of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are most important for this paper (see Goswami, S. D., 1980).
In the nineteenth century, India's British rulers offered Western education to Indian intellectuals. Their goal was to create a cadre of English speaking and English thinking Indians to assist them in their program of military, political, economic, religious, and cultural domination. This educational program successfully induced many Indian intellectuals, including Gaudiya Vaishnavas, to abandon their traditional culture and wisdom for Western modes of science and theology.
But in the middle of the  nineteenth century, Kedarnatha Dutta (1838-1914), an English-speaking magistrate in the colonial administration, became interested in Gaudiya Vaishnavism. After his initiation by a Gaudiya Vaishnava guru, he inaugurated a revival of Gaudiya Vaishnavism among the intelligent classes, in Bengal and throughout India.

The central goal of Gaudiya Vaishnavism is cultivation of bhakti, or devotion to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, known by the name Krishna, "the all-attractive one." The bhakti school also incorporates a strong philosophical tradition, grounded in a literal, yet by no means naive, reading of the Vedic and Puranic texts, including their accounts of history and cosmogony.
Kedarnatha Dutta, later known by the title Bhaktivinoda Thakura, communicated Gaudiya Vaishnava teachings not only to his Indian contemporaries but also to the worldwide community of intellectuals. He reached the latter by publishing of several works in English, among them Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu: His Life and Precepts, which appeared in 1896.

In the early twentieth century, Bhaktivinoda Thakura's son Bimala Prasada Dutta, later known as Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura (1874-1936), carried on the work of his father, expanding Gaudiya Vaishnavism in India and sending a few disciples to England and Germany. The European expeditions did not, however, yield any permanent results, and the missionaries returned home.

In 1922, my own spiritual master, then known as Abhay Charan De, met Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura in Calcutta, India. A recent graduate of Scottish Churches College in Calcutta and follower of Gandhi, De was somewhat skeptical of this very traditional guru. But he found himself won over by Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati's sharp intelligence and spiritual purity. At this first meeting, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati requested De to spread the Gaudiya Vaishnava teachings throughout the world, especially in English. In 1933 De became the formal disciple of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, and in 1936, the year of Bhaktisiddhanta's death, he received a letter from him renewing his request that De teach in the West. In 1965, at the age of 69, De, now known as Bhaktivedanta Swami, came to New York City, where a year later he started ISKCON, the institutional vehicle through which the teachings of Gaudiya Vaishnavism were to spread quickly around the world.
Among these teachings were those connected with the origin of life and the universe. To scientifically establish these teachings, Bhaktivedanta Swami in 1975 organized the Bhaktivedanta Institute. Bhaktivedanta Swami envisioned the process of introducing Gaudiya Vaishnava teachings on the origin of life and the universe as one of direct confrontation with prevailing Western scientific ideas, such as Darwinian evolution.

My own involvement in the Bhaktivedanta Institute, as a Western convert to Gaudiya Vaishnavism, can thus be seen in the historical context of the larger cultural interaction between Western science and an Asian Indian knowledge tradition with vastly different views on natural history.
The Vedic and Puranic texts speak of a divine origin and spiritual purpose to life. According to the Puranas, humans have existed on this planet for hundreds of millions of years, and did not evolve from more apelike ancestors. The Puranas do, however, tell of intelligent races of apelike beings who coexisted with humans over vast periods of time.

In the 900 pages of Forbidden Archeology, my coauthor and I documented a great deal of scientifically reported evidence that, consistent with Puranic texts, extends the antiquity of our species millions of years into the past. This evidence was accumulated during eight years of research into the history of archeology and anthropology since the time of Darwin. We also documented how this evidence was systematically suppressed, through a social process of "knowledge filtration," by the adherents of an emerging consensus among Western scientists that humans were a fairly recent production of an evolutionary process.
Using the word archeology in Foucault's sense (Foucault, 1972), Forbidden Archeology is an archeology of archeology. It investigates the formation of archeological discourse over time, illuminating the subjects, objects, situations, themes, and practices of this discourse, including its practices of exclusion and suppression.
The primary goal of this paper is not to convince readers of Forbidden Archeology's picture of extreme human antiquity but to analyze the reception of Forbidden Archeology in various knowledge and discourse communities. Nevertheless, just to give an idea of the kind of evidence advanced in Forbidden Archeology, I shall provide two examples (much abbreviated from Cremo & Thompson, 1993).

In 1880, Harvard University's Peabody Museum published a massive work by J. D. Whitney, State Geologist of California, on the geology of the gold mining regions of California (Whitney 1880). In this book, Whitney catalogued hundreds of artifacts and human skeletal remains found by miners, mining engineers, and mine supervisors deep inside gold mines at dozens of locations. All of the evidence gathered by Whitney indicated that the objects could not have entered from other levels. The gold-bearing gravels from which the objects were taken are, according to modern geological reports, anywhere from 10 to 50 million years old (Slemmons, 1966). Given current doctrine that anatomically modern humans came into existence about 100,000 years ago, the evidence reported by Whitney is quite extraordinary.

Whitney's evidence was dismissed, however, by William H. Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution, who said (Holmes, 1899), "Perhaps if Professor Whitney had fully appreciated the story of human evolution as it is understood today, he would have hesitated to announce the conclusions formulated, notwithstanding the imposing array of testimony with which he was confronted." So here we find a credible report of evidence for extreme human antiquity dismissed principally because it contradicted the emerging scientific consensus that humans evolved fairly recently.

Such "knowledge filtration," with theoretical preconceptions governing the acceptance and rejection of evidence, continues to the present. In 1979, Mary Leakey discovered at Laetoli, Tanzania, a set of footprints indistinguishable from anatomically modern human footprints (Leakey, 1979). These were found in solidified volcanic ash deposits about 3.6 million years old. Fossils of the foot bones of the early hominids of that time do not fit the Laetoli prints. At present, human beings like ourselves are the only creatures known to science that can make prints like those found at Laetoli. Nevertheless, most scientists, because of their theoretical preconceptions, are not prepared to consider that human likes ourselves may have made the Laetoli prints 3.6 million years ago.
Multiply the above two examples a hundred times, and one will get some idea of the quantity of evidence for extreme human antiquity contained in Forbidden Archeology.

Having set the stage for the appearance of Forbidden Archeology, let us place ourselves in the position of its principal author and imagine his feelings as the book began to make its way out into the world of reactive language. How would it be received, especially given his "openness of subjective positioning"? I was, of course, hopeful. In particular, I hoped my book would have some impact on the community of scholars practicing the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK).
With this in mind, I sent a copy of Forbidden Archeology to SSK scholar Michael Mulkay, who replied in a handwritten letter dated May 18, 1993:
I have not yet read your manuscript; nor can I at present see a space in which I would have time to read it. I realise this must be extremely irritating to you, after all your effort and your hope of making an impact. But your potential audience, including me, are all obsessively involved in their own affairs. It takes a long time for academic books to have any effect. Sometimes it takes years for them to be reviewed. What I regard as my two best books met with a profound silence.I hope you do much better than that. But I cannot at this moment comment on your text.

Mainstream Archeology and Anthropology

So were the 900 pages of Forbidden Archeology to be met with the profoundest of academic silences? I contemplated the prospect of no comment on my text in dark and dreary interior monologues worthy of a narrator of a tale by Edgar Allen Poe. Fortunately, the silence was soon broken, not by a tapping at my door but by a review (Marks, 1994) appearing in the January 1994 issue of American Journal for Physical Anthropology (AJPA). Apparently, Forbidden Archeology posed a challenge that could not be ignored.

In a perceptive essay, A. J. Greimas offered a semiotic exploration of a challenge's narrative dimension (Greimas, 1990). "A challenge," he said, "is a confrontation that is perceived as an affront." Forbidden Archeology was certainly perceived as such by Jonathan Marks, book review editor for AJPA.
Arrogating to himself the reviewing of Forbidden Archeology (instead of assigning it to an outside reviewer), Marks (1994) adopted a combative and derisive stance, characterizing the book as "Hindu-oid creationist drivel" and "a veritable cornucupia of dreck."
Why did Marks respond at all? According to Greimas (1990), a challenge consists of a challenging subject inviting a challenged subject to carry out a particular narrative program while at the same time warning the challenged subject "as to his modal insufficiency (his 'not-being-able-to-do') for the carrying out of that program." The sending of Forbidden Archeology to the book review editor of AJPA was consciously intended as just such an invitation for physical anthropologists to carry out their narrative program (of establishing their truth of human evolution)--with the implication they would not be able to do so in the face of the evidence documented in Forbidden Archeology.

A challenge may further be classed (Greimas, 1990) as a "constraining communication." In other words, "When faced with an affirmation of his incompetence, the challenged subject cannot avoid answering because silence would inevitably interpreted as an admission of that incompetence" (Greimas, 1990). Marks obviously felt constrained to respond to Forbidden Archeology, thus accepting its challenge contract and thereby placing the challenged subject (Marks, AJPA, physical anthropology, Western science) and the challenging subject (Cremo, Forbidden Archeology, Bhaktivedanta Institute, Gaudiya Vaishnavism) on an equal subjective footing. As Greimas (1990) noted, "If the challenge is to work properly there must be an objective complicity between the manipulator [i.e. the challenging subject] and the manipulated [i.e. the challenged subject]...It is unthinkable for a knight to challenge a peasant, and the converse is unthinkable also."

Marks's response to the challenge of Forbidden Archeology contained elements of bravado, showing him an able defender of physical anthropology, but also elements of unconscious fear, showing him as a threatened member of an unstable discipline in danger of dismemberment by dark forces within and without.
Regarding the latter, Marks (1994) first alluded to "the Fundamentalist push to get 'creation science' into the classroom." The Christian fundamentalist enemy is apparently alive and kicking, still "pushing" to get into territory physical anthropology regards as its own ("the classroom").

Marks (1994) then admitted that "the rich and varied origins myths of all cultures are alternatives to contemporary evolution." His use of the present tense ("are alternatives") instead of the past tense ("were alternatives") is a reflection that physical anthropology, in the postcolonial era, feels once more threatened by living alternative cosmologies that not long ago were securely categorized as cognitively dead myths. In other words, it is not only the Christian fundamentalists who are enemies, but all alternative cosmologies and (Marks 1994) "all religious-based science, like the present volume" (i. e. Forbidden Archeology).

Marks (1994) also alluded to "goofy popular anthropology" and its literature. These pose a secular, populist threat to modern physical anthropology and archeology (as in the case of the ongoing reports of  Bigfoot and transoceanic diffusionist contacts between North America and the ancient civilizations of Asia, Africa, and Europe).

Of greatest concern to Marks, however, were traitors in the ranks of the academic community itself. Marks (1994) described sociologist Pierce Flynn, who contributed a foreword to Forbidden Archeology, as "a curious personage." He went on to castigate Flynn for "placing this work within postmodern scholarship."
In short, Marks identified Forbidden Archeology, quite correctly in my view, with an array of perceived enemies at the boundaries of his discipline, and within the walls of the disciplinary sanctuary itself. These enemies included fundamentalists, creationists, cultural revivalists, religion-based sciences (especially Hindu-based), populist critiques of science, purveyors of anomalies, and finally, the postmodern academic critics of science in the fields of sociology, history, and philosophy, what to speak of anthropology itself. Later, I shall suggest how we might see archeology and anthropology as disciplinary partners of their perceived enemies, sharing a common discursive domain.

After Marks's review appeared, I exchanged some letters with Matt Cartmill, editor of the AJPA regarding a rejoinder (I asserted that Marks had misrepresented the substance of the book). But Cartmill declined to allow a rejoinder, saying finally in a letter dated August 30, 1994) , "In short, I still think that Dr. Marks's review, despite its derisive tone (to which you have a right to take exception), was essentially accurate...My decision of May 20 accordingly stands."

All in all, I was pleased with Marks's response to Forbidden Archeology. The provocation had been designed to evoke just such a response, which I anticipated would be tactically useful. And it was. First, Marks's refusal to come to grips with the substance of the book, namely the factual evidence, lent support to the book's theme of knowledge suppression. Second, his derisive name-calling helped get media attention for the popular edition of Forbidden Archeology, titled The Hidden History of the Human Race. Excerpts from Marks's review were prominently featured in the book, and when seen alongside positive reviews, gave the impression of a serious work that was stirring considerable controversy. Third, I envisioned that Marks's remarks would provide material for scholarly papers such as this one. And the main news for this paper is that Marks's review objectifies a cognitive clash between a science informed by Gaudiya Vaishnava teachings and traditional Western science, with the clash manifested in the privileged textual space of Western science itself.

If the pages of a discipline's journals are one locus of privileged discourse, the conferences of a discipline are another. A few months after the AJPA review, the publishing branch of the Bhaktivedanta Institute took a book display table at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Eight physical anthropologists purchased copies of Forbidden Archeology on the spot, and I assume others ordered later from sales materials they took with them.
Also in 1994, Kenneth L. Feder reviewed Forbidden Archeology in Geoarchaeology: An International Journal (Feder 1994). Feder's tone was one of amazement rather than derision .

Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race is not the usual sort of publication reviewed in this or, for that matter, any other archeology or anthropology journal. Neither author is an archeologist or paleoanthropologist; one is a mathematician, the other a writer. So far as I can tell neither has any personal experience with the process of archaeological field work or laboratory analysis.

Nevertheless, Forbidden Archeology rated a four-page review in Geoarcheology, one of the prominent archeology journals.

What was going on here? I submit that Feder and the editors of Geoarchaeology were reacting to Forbidden Archeology in much the same way as some art critics of the 1960s reacted to the Brillo box sculptures of Andy Warhol. The Brillo boxes were not art, it appeared to some critics, but these critics could not help commenting upon them as if they were art (Yau, 1993). And thus the boxes were, after all, art, or as good as art. I suppose it is true, in some sense, that Forbidden Archeology is not real archeology, and that I am not a real archeologist (or historian of archeology). And, for that matter, neither is this paper a "real" paper, and neither am I a "real" scholar. I am an agent of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, with an assigned project of deconstructing a paradigm, and this paper and Forbidden Archeology are part of that project. And yet Forbidden Archeology is reviewed in AJPA and Geoarchaeology, and this paper is read by me at an academic conference on science and culture, just like Warhol's Brillo boxes were displayed in galleries for purchase by collectors rather than stacked in supermarkets for throwing out later.

Perhaps what was so disconcerting about Warhol's Brillo boxes was that their idiosyncratic artificial reality somehow called into question the hitherto naively accepted "natural" supermarket reality of the ubiquitous everyday Brillo boxes, and hence of all everyday public culture "things." The same with Forbidden Archeology. Its intended artificialness, its not quite seamless mimicry of a "genuine" text, called fascinated attention to itself as it simultaneously undermined the natural artifactlike impression of the so-called "real" archeology texts. But there is a difference between Forbidden Archeology and Warhol's Brillo boxes. If you open up a Brillo box, you won't find any Brillo pads, but if you open up Forbidden Archeology you will find archeology, although of an unusual sort.

After all, I am not simply a literary pop artist who delights in producing artificial archeology text surfaces; there is some substantiality to the project. I am a representative of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, and my purpose is to challenge some fundamental concepts of Western science. This did not escape Feder, who wrote: "The book itself represents something perhaps not seen before; we can fairly call it 'Krishna creationism' with no disrespect intended."
Feder (1994), sustaining his mode of amazement, then wrote about this new invasion, this "something perhaps not seen before":

The basic premises of the authors are breathtaking and can be summarized rather briefly:
* The prevailing paradigm of human evolution...is wholly untenable.
* There is what amounts to a passive conspiracy (the authors call it a "knowledge filter") to suppress a huge body of data that contradicts our prevailing paradigm.
* These suppressed data include archaeological evidence in the form of incised bones, lithics, and anatomically modern human skeletal remains that date to well before the commonly accepted appearance of Australopithecus.
* This purported evidence indicates that "beings quite like ourselves have been around as far back as we care to look--in the Pliocene, Miocene, Oligocene, Eocene and beyond (p. 525). The authors cite "humanlike footprints" in Kentucky dating to about 300,000,000 (not a misprint) years ago (p. 456).
* All evidence of human evolution from an apelike ancestor is suspect at best and much of it can be explained as the fossil remains of nonancestral hominids or even extinct apes (some Homo erectus specimens, it is proposed, might represent an extinct species of giant gibbon [p. 465]).
* Some of these nonancestral hominids have survived into the present as indicated by reports of Bigfoot, Yeti, and the like.
* There is evidence of anomalously advanced civilizations extending back millions of years into the past.

I very much appreciated this accurate representation of the "breathtaking" substance of Forbidden Archeology (as compared with Marks's calculated misrepresentation). Feder (1994) further noted:

While decidedly antievolutionary in perspective, this work is not the ordinary variety of antievolutionism in form, content, or style. In distinction to the usual brand of such writing, the authors use original sources and the book is well written. Further, the overall tone of the work is far superior to that exhibited in ordinary creationist literature. Nonetheless, I suspect that creationism is at the root of the authors' argument, albeit of a sort not commonly seen before.

In the above passage, the Brillo box phenomenon again displays itself. The technically convincing imitation of a well written archeology text somewhat disarmed Feder. But like the critics of Warhol, he showed he was not to be fooled by surface appearances and could see what the artist/author was really up to. He knew what was meant. However, I propose the "meaning" lies not so much beneath the surface of the Forbidden Archeology text as in the temporal and spatial continuities and discontinuities of this textual surface with other textual surfaces, not excluding Feder's review and this paper.

Feder (1994) then addressed the Gaudiya Vaishnava element of the Forbidden Archeology text.

When you attempt to deconstruct a well-accepted paradigm, it is reasonable to expect that a new paradigm be suggested in its place. The authors of Forbidden Archeology do not do this, and I would like to suggest a reason for their neglect here. Wishing to appear entirely scientific, the authors hoped to avoid a detailed discussion of their own beliefs (if not through evolution, how? If not within the last four million years, when?) since, I would contend, these are based on a creationist view, but not the kind we are all familiar with.

Here Feder is being somewhat unfair. The authors were not avoiding anything. The book as conceived would have introduced an alternative paradigm based on Gaudiya Vaishnava texts. But as I said  in the introduction to Forbidden Archeology (Cremo & Thompson, 1993):

Our research program led to results we did not anticipate, and hence a book much larger than originally envisioned. Because of this, we have not been able to develop in this volume our ideas about an alternative to current theories of human origins. We are therefore planning a second volume relating our extensive research results in this area to our Vedic source material.

This book is still in the research and writing stage. But in a paper presented at the World Archaeological Congress 3 (Cremo, 1994) I have outlined in some detail a summary presentation of the Gaudiya Vaishnava account of human origins and antiquity. Furthermore, the relevant source materials are easily available to most readers, many of whom will already know something of Indian cosmology. Feder continued:

The authors are open about their membership in the Bhaktivedanta Institute, which is a branch of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, and the book is dedicated to their "spiritual master," the group's founder. They make a reasonable request regarding their affiliationi with this organization: "That our theoretical outlook is derived from the Vedic literature should not disqualify it" (p. xxxvi). Fair enough, but what is their "theoretical outlook?" Like fundamentalist Christians they avoid talking about the religious content of their perspective, so we can only guess at it.

Again, somewhat unfair. The specific religious content of our perspective was openly acknowledged in the introduction to Forbidden Archeology (Cremo & Thompson, 1993). Although the detailed development of this perspective was postponed to a forthcoming volume, the pointers to the perspective were clear enough to remove it from the realm of guesswork. Feder (1994) himself did not have to look very far to find out about it:

What does Hindu literature say humanity originated and when? According to Hindu cosmology, the cosmos passes through cycles called kalpas, each of which corresponds to 4.32 billion earth years (Basham, 1959). During each kalpa, the universe is created and then absorbed. Each kalpa is divided into 14 manvantaras, each lasting 300,000,000 million years (the age of the Kentucky footprints), and separated by lengthy periods. Within each manvantara the world is created with human beings more or less fully formed, and then destroyed, only to be created once again in the next manvantara.

Yes. And I said essentially the same thing in my above mentioned World Archeological Congress paper (Cremo 1994). Feder (1994) then began to bring his review to a close: "We all know what happens when we mix a literal interpretation of the Judeo-Christian creation my with human paleontology: we get scientific creationism." We also get scientific evolutionism.

The two are more closely related than the partisans of either would care to admit. As I noted in my World Archaeological Congress-3 paper (Cremo 1994), Judeo-Christian cosmology, based on linear vectorial time, "involves a unique act of creation, a unique appearance of the human kind, and a unique history of salvation, culminating in a unique denouement in the form of a last judgement. The drama occurs only once." I went on to say (Cremo 1994):

Modern historical sciences share the basic Judeo-Christian assumptions about time and humanity. The universe we inhabit is a unique occurrence. Humans have arisen once on this planet. The history of our species is regarded as a unique though unpredestined evolutionary pathway. The future pathway of our species is also unique. Although this pathway is officially unpredictable, the myths of science project a possible overcoming of death by evolving, space-traveling humans  . . . One is tempted to propose that the modern human evolutionary account is a Judeo-Christian heterodoxy, which covertly retains fundamental structures of Judeo-Christian cosmology, salvation history, and eschatology while overtly dispensing with the Biblical account of divine intervention in the origin of species, including our own."
But let us get back to Feder's final words:

It seems we now know what happens when we mix a literal interpretation of the Hindu myth of creation with human paleontology; we get the antievolutionary Krishna creationism of Forbidden Archeology, where human beings do not evolve and where the fossil evidence for anatomically modern humans dates as far back as the beginning of the current manvantara (Feder, 1994).

Of course, I did not invent the fossil evidence showing that anatomically modern humans existed "as far back as the beginning of the current manvantara." Abundant examples are present in the archeological literature of the past 150 years. Forbidden Archeology merely displayed that evidence and demonstrated how it was unfairly set aside by misapplication of evidential standards.

If I were a scholar trying to make a career in the modern university system, a review like Feder's would be disheartening. But I am not trying to advance an academic career for myself. I stand outside that system. Indeed, I am part of another system. And my goal is to engage the system to which Feder belongs in a textual exchange with the system to which I belong. And in that sense Forbidden Archeology can be called successful. In the priviliged textual space of Western science we see the intrusion of alien texts, not as passive objects of study but as vital resisting and aggressing entities. There has been a change in the discursive field. A new vortex has formed. The texts of Gaudiya Vaishnava cosmology, mediated by an array of convincingly contoured archeological textuality (Forbidden Archeology), have become displayed in a new textual space, a space that must now configure itself differently. Forbidden Archeology is not a random event, a ripple that will soon fade, but the foreshock of a tectonic movement of cultures. Transnationalism and multiculturalism are not merely concepts entertained by departmental chairs and university administrators; they are brute objective realities.

These realities are reflected in the responses to Forbidden Archeology in AJPA and Geoarchaeology. Reviews and brief notices of Forbidden Archeology have also appeared in L'Homme (35, 173-174), Journal of Field Archeology (21. 112), Antiquity (67, 904), and Ethology, Ecology, and Evolution (6, 461). Another full review is forthcoming in L'Anthropologie.

Responses from individual scholars are also illuminating. In a letter to me dated November 26, 1993 K. N. Prasad, former president of the Archaeological Society of India, praised Forbidden Archeology as "an excellent reference book, which will act as a catalyst for further research on a subject of immense interest." An important audience for Forbidden Archeology, which is an open defense of the reality of India's Puranic literature, is the English-educated elite represented by Prasad. It may be recalled that Forbidden Archeology traces its own lineage to Bhaktivinoda Thakura, the English-educated magistrate who in the late nineteenth century initiated an effort to reclaim the Indian intelligentsia from its immersion in nascent Western modernity.

Bhaktivinoda Thakura, as we have seen, also initiated an approach on behalf of Gaudiya Vaishnavism to the Western intelligentsia itself. Forbidden Archeology is part of that ongoing approach. William W. Howells, one of the major architects of the current paradigm of human evolution, wrote to me on August 10, 1993: "Thank you for sending me a copy of Forbidden Archeology, which represents much careful effort in critically assembling published materials. I have given it a good examination ....To have modern human beings ...appearing...at a time when even simple primates did not exist as possible ancestors...would be devastating to the whole theory of evolution, which has been pretty robust up to now....The suggested hypothesis would demand a kind of process which could not possibly be accommodated to the evolutionary theory as we know it, and I should think it requires an explanation of that aspect. It also would give the Scientific Creationists some problems as well! Thank you again for letting me see the book. I look forward to viewing its impact." I sent Forbidden Archeology to Howells, conscious of its relation to the project begun in the last century by Bhaktivinoda Thakura.

And finally a few words from Richard Leakey's letter to me of November 6, 1993: "Your book is pure humbug and does not deserve to be taken seriously by anyone but a fool. Sadly there are some, but that's part of selection and there is nothing that can be done." These words, like those of Jonathan Marks (1994), were reproduced on the cover and in the front matter of the popular edition of Forbidden Archeology, inspiring sales and media coverage.

All in all, Forbidden Archeology, inspired by Gaudiya Vaishnava teachings on human origins and antiquity, seems to have created a minor sensation within mainstream archeology and anthropology. But that is only part of the story. Indeed, we have only begun to trace the impact of Forbidden Archeology.

History, Sociology, and Philosophy

Let us now turn from mainstream science to mainstream science studies--the history, sociology, and philosophy of science.
On November 12, 1993, David Oldroyd of the School of Science and Technology Studies at the University of New South Wales in Australia wrote to the Bhaktivedanta Institute:

     I have been sent a copy of your publication by M. A. Cremo and R. L. Thompson, Forbidden Archeology, and have been asked to write an essay review of the book for the journal Social Studies of Science.
     I have already read the book and have found it exceedingly interesting. However, in order to write a satisfactory review of the book, I should like to know more of its provenance. Could you, therefore, please send me some information about your Institute....
     I am myself a historian of science, and my special interest is in the history of geology. Fairly recently, I have been taking more interest in the history of paleoanthropology. I have two students who are also interested in the book.
     While I would not, at this stage, wish you to think that I am proposing to offer a ringing endorsement of Forbidden Archeology, I think I can fairly say that I shall be able to give it wide notice through a review in a prestigious journal like Social Studies of Science. And I think that it should be possible for me to say quite a lot about the implications of the book for studies in the sociology of science and the sociology of knowledge. I do think the book deserves serious consideration.

The promised review has not yet come out. But I did receive a letter (November 12, 1993) from one of Oldroyd's graduate students, Jo Wodak, who was about to begin her thesis:

I would like to base this on your book, Forbidden Archeology, as a case study of the social processes that determine what is "acceptable" within the current paradigm for the "science" of palaeo-archaeology. . . . I have spent part of the last semester reviewing the debate on the origin of modern humans. . . . So I have some familiarity with the field, but I am amazed that I have not come across even a whisper of the material upon which your argument is based! But I have come across enough examples of the suppression of unorthodox views in other sciences to have no doubt about the veracity of your research.

Wodak's readiness to accept the possibility of substantial suppression of controversial evidence and unorthodox views is welcome. From the standpoint of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, Forbidden Archeology's deconstruction of modern science involves two issues. The first is the origin and antiquity of the human species. The second is the process by which knowledge of the first issue may best be obtained. In this regard, Forbidden Archeology is essentially an argument for the epistemic superiority of received transcendental knowledge to empirically manufactured knowledge. Exposing the shortcomings of the latter increases the viability of the former (the sacred texts of Gaudiya Vaishnavism).

In December of 1994 I attended the World Archaeological Congress-3 in New Delhi, India, where I presented my paper (Cremo, 1994) titled "Puranic Time and the Archeological Record." Several Indian archeologists and anthropologists congratulated me on the paper and requested copies. They found the image of a Western convert to Gaudiya Vaishnavism presenting such a paper at a major scientific gathering intriguing. While standing in one of the lobbies of the Taj Palace Hotel between sessions, I was approached by Tim Murray, an archeologist from La Trobe University in Australia. "Oh, so you're Cremo," he said. He had recognized my name on my badge, and announced to me that he had recently written a review of Forbidden Archeology for British Journal for the History of Science (BJHS). Murray told me that he teaches history of archeology and that he had recommended Forbidden Archeology to his graduate students. He told them that if one was going to make a case for extreme human antiquity, Forbidden Archeology was the way to do it. I have not yet seen the BJHS review.

At the 1994 annual meeting of the History of Science Society (HSS), A. Bowdoin Van Riper, an authority on history of human antiquity investigations, requested from a Bhaktivedanta Institute publishing representative a review copy of Forbidden Archeology. Van Riper said he sometimes reviewed books for Isis, the journal of the HSS. The representative told Van Riper that he was not authorized to give away a free copy. When informed of this later, I personally sent a copy of Forbidden Archeology to Van Riper, who replied on January 5, 1995: "The premise is audacious, to say the least, and intriguing to me if only for that reason." I am hopeful he will review the book for Isis.

There is also a chance for a review of Forbidden Archeology in Bulletin of the History of Archaeology.
On September 28, 1994, Henry H. Bauer, book review editor for Journal of Scientific Exploration, wrote to our publishing branch requesting a copy of Forbidden Archeology. Bauer stated:

We review books on the nature of science and books that describe current scientific knowledge as well as works on unorthodox scientific claims. With respect to the latter, the Journal contains material that seeks to "advance the study . . . of any aspect of anomalous phenomena, including. . . 1) Phenomena outside the current paradigms of one or more of the sciences such as the physical, psychological, biological, or earth sciences. 2) Phenomena within scientific paradigms but at variance with current scientific knowledge. 3) The scientific methods used to study anomalous phenomena. 4) The . . . impact of anomalous phenomena on science and society.

I am eagerly looking forward to the reviews of Forbidden Archeology in Social Studies of Science, British Journal for the History of Science, and Journal of Scientific Exploration. Until they come out, it is difficult to guage the impact the book is having in the science studies community. It is interesting that Forbidden Archeology is being treated as both a science text and a science studies text.

Religion Studies

From the beginning, I thought the acknowledged Gaudiya Vaishnava foundation of Forbidden Archeology would draw the attention of religion scholars.  A review is forthcoming in Science & Religion News. published by the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science.

Early in 1994, Mikael Rothstein of the Institute for the History of Religion at the University of Copenhagen wrote a major article about Forbidden Archeology for publication in Politiken, Denmark's largest and most influential newspaper (Rothstein, 1994). In a letter to me dated February 2, 1994, Rothstein said:

The text refers to your points through examples and compares your message to that of the evolutionists at Darwin's time in order to demonstrate how the positions have changed. Today the creationists deliver the provoking news. Previously this was the function of the evolutionists. The article acknowledges your solid argumentation, which is often more than hard to refute, but I do not present any judgement as to whether you are right in your conclusions. . . . However, I find the book amazing in many ways and hopefully I have made my modest contribution to get it sold.. . . For the record: The article is placed in the specific science-section of the paper, and it is entitled (as you may understand after all) "Forbidden Archeology." The subtitle reads: "Religious scientists provoke the theory of evolution." "Religious" because I mention your affiliation with ISKCON and state that you have a religious interest in your otherwise scholarly enterprise.

The Politiken article also mentions my affiliation with the Bhaktivedanta Institute, and identifies my spiritual commitment to Vaishnavism. The article resulted in inquiries from one of Denmark's largest publishers about translation rights for Forbidden Archeology.

Out of the Mainstream

Up to now, we have been looking at reactions to Forbidden Archeology from mainstream scholars and journals. Now let us move out of the mainstream. As we do, you will notice a change in climate, as we encounter some unqualified endorsements of Forbidden Archeology.

In the fall 1994 issue of Journal of Unconventional History, Forbidden Archeology was one of several books discussed in a review essay by Hillel Schwarz:
Forbidden Archeology takes the current conventions of decoding to their extreme. The authors find modern homo sapiens to be continuous contemporaries of the apelike creatures from whom evolutionary biologists usually trace human descent or bifurcation, thus confirming those Vedic sources that presume the nearly illimitable antiquity of the human race--all toward the implicit end of preparing us for that impending transformation of global consciousness at which Bhaktivedanta brochures regularly hint. . . . Despite its unhidden religious partisanship, the book deserves a reckoning in this review for its embrace of a global humanity distinct from other primates. . . . Meditating upon our uniqueness (I am here supplying the missing links of the thesis) we may come to realize that what can change (awaken) humanity is no mere biochemical exfoliation but a work of the spirit, in touch with (and devoted to) the ancient, perfect, perfectly sufficient, unchanging wisdom of the Vedic masters (Schwarz, 1994).

William Corliss is the publisher of several "sourcebooks" of well documeted anomalous evidence in different fields of science. Most university libraries have copies. Corliss also sells books by other authors, which he lists in a supplement to his newsletter. In Science Frontiers Book Supplement number 89 (September-October 1993), Corliss prominently featured Forbidden Archeology:

Forbidden Archeology has so much to offer anomalists that it is difficult to know where to start. One's first impression is that of a massive volume bearing a high price tag. Believe me, Forbidden Archeology is a great bargain, not only on a cents-per-page basis but in its systematic collection of data challenging the currently accepted and passionately defended scenario of human evolution. . . . Here are fat chapters on incised bones, eoliths, crude tools, and skeletal remains--all properly documented and detailed, but directly contradicting the textbooks and museum exhibits. . . .The salient theme of this huge book is that human culture is much older than claimed (Corliss, 1993).

I liked having Forbidden Archeology in Corliss's catalog. I knew it might generate some sales to university libraries. But more importantly, Corliss was a pipeline to thousands of readers who were deeply interested in the whole subject of anomalous evidence. This audience (the serious scientific anomaly community) was quite prepared to accept that whole areas of science were completely wrong and that evidence was being unfairly suppressed. But this audience was also interested in good documentation for such claims.

Forbidden Archeology has also been reviewed in Fortean Times (Moore, 1993), a journal dedicated to the study of "Fortean phenomena" (extreme scientific anomalies), in FATE (Swann, 1994), a popular magazine featuring accounts of the paranormal, and in the journals and newsletters of societies focusing on anomalous archeological discoveries and evidence for pre-Columbian contacts between the Americas and the Old World (e. g. Hunt, 1993). Needless to say, the reviews are positive.

In Forbidden Archeology, I documented the work of scientists who held positions in mainstream science institutions but who had reported on anomalous archeological discoveries. Some of these scientists, as expected, were very pleased with Forbidden Archeology. Virginia Steen-McIntyre, a geologist, had reported a date of over 250,000 years for the Hueyatlaco site near Puebla, Mexico. Thereafter, her career trajectory took a sharp turn downwards. About Forbidden Archeology, she said in a letter dated October 30, 1993:

What an eye-opener! I didn't realize how many sites and how much data are out there that don't fit modern concepts of human evolution. Somewhere down the line the god of the Vedas and the God of the Bible will clash . . . . But until then the servants of both can agree on one thing--human evolution is for the birds!. . . I'm doing my bit getting the publicity out for your book. Have ordered a copy for the local library. . . . I'm also sending the book review that appeared in Sept./Oct. Science Frontiers Book Supplement to various friends and colleagues (almost 50 so far). I predict the book will become an underground classic. Whether it will break into the mainstream media is questionable--the Illuminati are tightly in control there.

Forbidden Archeology, like a robot surveyor on Mars, was sending back signals to me as it mapped a complex cognitive domain. I am reporting in this paper primarily the preliminary basic mappings of that terrain, but this snippet from Virginia Steen-McIntyre provides a higher resolution look at the mapping process in a confined space. Observe the connections--the copy to the public library, the link with the Corliss newsletter book supplement, the mailing to friends and colleagues (working in geology, archeology, and anthropology), the pointer to other discourse communities (the conspiracy theorists), and reference to the metarelationships among Vedas, Bible, and Science. I shall return to this theme later--Forbidden Archeology as robot mapper of alien discourse terrains, prober of new channels and portals of complex border crossing connectivity. For those concerned about the future of scholarly life on this planet, take note--this is where we are heading.
New Age

In International Journal of Alternative and Complemetary Medicine (IJACM), John Davidson (1994) reviewed Forbidden Archeology, saying:
Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson are . . . to be congratulated on spending eight years producing the only definitive, precise, exhaustive and complete record of practically all the fossil finds of man, regardless of whether they fit the established scientific theories or not. To say that research is painstaking is a wild understatement. No other book of this magnitude and caliber exists. It should be compulsory reading for every first year biology, archaeology and anthropology student--and many others, too!

IJACM can fairly be placed within or on the borders of the New Age scientific discourse community. The same is true of the Adventures Unlimited 1994 Catalog, which featured Forbidden Archeology.in its new book section, with a blurb describing Forbidden Archeology as "a thick (nearly 1000 page) scholarly work that confronts traditional science and archaeology with overwhelming evidence of advanced and ancient civilizations." The catalog cover has these additional subtitles: "Inside...Ancient Wisdom, Lost Cities, Anti-Gravity, Tesla Technology, Secret Societies, Free Energy Science, Exotic Travel...and more!" and "Frontiers in Travel. Archaeology, Science & History." As an author with pretensions to academic respectability, am I embarrassed to find my book in such company? No. I simply notice that Forbidden Archeology has mapped both American Journal of Physical Anthropology and Adventures Unlimited 1994 Catalog as part of its discursive domain. And in addition to simply noting the mapping, I will offer a suggestion that the easy mobility of the exploratory text called Forbidden Archeology through the different regions of its domain points to the disintegration of what one might call the Enlightenment Consensus. The Enlightment Consensus was marked by orogenic episodes that cut an existing domain of discourse (in which Newton could write both his Principia and his Alchemy) into noncommunicating domains of science and "pseudoscience." All that is now changing, perhaps faster than we can accurately measure.

Barbara and Dennis Tedlock, editors of American Anthropologist, have noted (Tedlock & Tedlock, 1995):

New Age titles in bookstores outnumber anthropological ones,and the kinds of titles we once disliked seeing in the same section with anthropology or archaeology now occupy whole sections of their own--the shamanism, goddess worship, and New Age sections. These shifts reflect social and cultural developments that are well under way not only in this country but all over the world--north or south, east or west. The urban participants in the New Age and related movements have lines of communication that reach into the remotest deserts, jungles, and mountains of our own traditional field research. In some ways these developments look like a privatization of the educational tasks we once saw as our own.

Nonmainstream Religion

In the realm of nonmainstream religion, Forbidden Archeology has found its way into many unusual spaces. In a letter to me dated June 28, 1993, Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), a Christian fundamentalist organization, wrote that he found Forbidden Archeology "quite interesting and perhaps useful to us." In 1994, I visited the ICR in Santee, California, and spoke with Gish, who purchased copies of Forbidden Archeology for the ICR library and research staff.
During 1994, I appeared on fundamentalist Christian radio and television programs, which were, of course, favorable to the antievolution message of Forbidden Archeology. This was true despite the displays of sectarian feeling Christian fundamentalists sometimes manifest in relation to Asian religions, especially those popularly labeled as "new religions."

Siegried Scherer, a microbiologist at a German university and also a young-earth Christian creationist, contributed a jacket blurb for Forbidden Archeology even though aware of the Gaudiya Vaishnava backgrounds of the authors.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is a worldwide Hindu religious and cultural organization. It is generally seen as conservative, even fundamentalist. On August 2, 1993, Kishor Ruperelia, general secretary of the VHP in the United Kingdom, faxed this message to Back to Godhead, the bimonthly magazine of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON):

I have just received the May/June 1993 issue (Vol. 27, No. 3) of the magazine Back to Godhead, and I am writing with reference to the condensed form article on the book Forbidden Archeology, written by ISKCON researchers Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson. . . . Having read the article, I consider it very important that a meeting be held between the authors of the book and some of the Indian scholars who are in the USA at present to participate in a world conference organized by the VHP of America under style of "Global Vision 2000" to take place in Washington DC on Aug 6th  7th & 8th. . . . Inspired by the Vedic writings and encouraged by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the scholarly authors have made a tremendous and painstaking effort to compile and compare umpteen evidences to make archeological scholars rethink about the predominant paradigm on human origin and antiquity.

Of course, this is just the sort of reaction one might expect from a conservative, traditionalist Hindu cultural and religious organization such as the VHP. Less expected would be the extremely favorable review of Forbidden Archeology by Islamic scholar Salim-ur-rahman that appeared in a Pakistani newspaper. Here is an excerpt:
Forbidden Archeology is a serious and thought-provoking book, reminding us that the history of the human race may be far more older than we are led to imagine. . .

In a way, this all ties up with the remarks attributed to the Holy Prophet (PBUH), Hadhrat Ali and Imam Iafar Sadiq in which they said that the Adam we are descended from was preceded by numerous Adams and their progeny.

Forbidden Archeology possesses a remarkable capacity for border crossing--here we find literalist followers of Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam (not always the best of friends in some situations) according a respectful welcome to a text with Gaudiya Vaishnava foundations. And it does not stop there.

Libraries and Media

By having a librarian do an online computer search, I have learned that dozens of university libraries have acquired Forbidden Archeology even though the Bhaktivedanta Institute publishing branch has not yet made a systematic approach to them (we have been waiting for some of the forthcoming reviews in academic journals to actually come forth). There have also been some spontaneous requests for inspection copies by university teaching professors, and a search of sales reports from our book trade distributor shows a good number of orders from university bookstores.

Internationally, several publishers have been expressing interest in Forbidden Archeology and its popular version The Hidden History of the Human Race. A German edition of Forbidden Archeology is already in print and selling well. A Mexican publisher has recently acquired Spanish translations rights to Hidden History. Inquiries have also been received from Indian, Russian, Slovenian, Indonesian, Dutch, Japanese, French, Belgian, Danish, and Swedish publishers. For example, Monique Oosterhof of the Dutch firm Arena wrote on June 14, 1994:

We are very interested in the book The Hidden History of the Human Race by Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson. If the Dutch rights are still free, could you please send us a copy of the book? Thank you in advance.

Arena is one of the leading Dutch publishers. We publish international literature of high level: Benoit Groult, Viktor Jerofejev, Charles Johnson, Shere Hite, Eduardo Mendoza, Laura Esquivel, Helen Zahavi, Bernice Rubens, Meir Shalev, Klaus Mann, Carmen Martin Gaite, Harold Brodkey, Joan Didion, Kaye Gibbons etc.
During the fall and winter of 1994, I went on an author's tour to promote Hidden History in the United States. I was guest on over 60 radio and television shows, ranging from the sensationalistic Sightings television show produced by Paramount to the high brow Thinking Allowed, which airs on 80 PBS television stations nationwide. Surprisingly, I found the hosts receptive to the basic message that Western science was not telling the truth about human origins. This was also true of the people who called in on the talk radio shows. Even more surprisingly, I found a great deal of interest in the Gaudiya Vaishnava alternative to the current theory of human evolution. In terms of domain mapping, I found the nationally syndicated radio talk shows of Laura Lee, Art Bell, and Bob Hieronimus to be quite significant. Each host focuses exclusively on scientific anomalies, ranging from UFOs and crop circles to archeological mysteries of the kind found in Forbidden Archeology.
As another illustration of the connectivity manifested by Forbidden Archeology in its exploratory domain mapping, I offer the following. Forbidden Archeology was very positively reviewed in the Hazelton Standard-Speaker, a Pennsylvania newspaper (Conrad, 1993). The title of the article, which featured a large blowup of the cover of Forbidden Archeology, was "New book claims man existed on earth long before the apes." On December 18, 1994, Laura Cortner, executive producer of Hieronimus & Co.: 21st Century Media Source, wrote:

We are very interested in reviewing a copy of your book Forbidden Archeology which we read about in an article by Ed Conrad in the Hazelton (PA) Standard-Speaker, 11/17/93. We have long been interested in doing a special program on the subject of archeological finds that challenge the earliest recorded history of humans for quite some time, and we are encouraged to learn of an academic book with authors we could interview on the radio.

Our programs are designed to educate our listeners on a wide variety of subjects that are usually not covered in the major media, and we know your book will be of interest to them.

Shortly thereafter, I was guest for two hours on the Bob Hieronimus radio show. I returned to the show for another appearance later in 1994. At the request of the show, copies of the abridged version of Forbidden Archeology were provided to the show for distribution to other guests appearing on the show. On February 7, 1995, Laura Cortner wrote to me:

Enclosed is the latest letter of praise we have received from one of our recent guests on 21st Century Radio to whom we have presented a copy [an English zoologist who specializes in "living fossils"]. Thank you very much for supplying us with extra copies to continue this type of promotion. In the last month we have also sent copies to two of the creators of Howdy Doody, and to Peter Occhiogrosso, author of The Joy of Sects: A Spiritual Guide to the World's Religions (Doubleday).
Tracking Forbidden Archeology can be quite dizzying, as it moves from the pages of American Journal of Physical Anthropology to the Hazelton Standard-Speaker to the airwaves of 21st Century Radio and then into the hands of an English zoologist and the creators of Howdy Doody.

Cyberspace

Forbidden Archeology has also invaded cyberspace. Not long ago, a friend told me that the introduction to Forbidden Archeology, complete with a color image of the book cover, had appeared on somebody's home page on the World Wide Web (WWW). Net surfers can check it out at:
http://zeta.cs.adfa.oz.au/Spirit/Veda/Forbidden-Archeology/forbidden-arch.html

A search through the WWW detected the presence of Forbidden Archeology in several online bookstores. Forbidden Archeology has also been responsible for some searing flame wars on discussion groups such as talk.origins. I participated under my Gaudiya Vaishnava initiation name Druta Karma. Anomalous human skeletal remains found in deposits over 2 million years old at Castenedolo, Italy, in the late nineteenth century were one of the hotter topics. At one point, my chief opponent posted this text (name deleted):

Subject: Re: Castenedolo (Help!)
Organization: HAC -- Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
    I have spent the last two days trying to find out as much as I could about the Castenedolo finds. The result is disappointing. I found only one reference that even mentioned Castenedolo, and that was a reference given by Mr. Karma....Mr. Karma's post seems impressive, and I am (I admit) not easy to impress....Basically, I've reached a dead-end. I can't comment on the finds much, but I do have some questions. It seems that Mr. Karma has effectively dealt with my objections. I currently consider Mr. Karma's Castenedolo post unchallenged on talk.origins. Anyone else willing to give it a try?

Conclusion

It's time to interrupt the transmissions from Forbidden Archeology as it continues to map a new terrain of discourse. The preliminary mapping illuminates an ongoing process of global cultural realignment and transition, wherein Western science finds itself retreating, somewhat unwillingly, from its previous position of self-proclaimed epistemic superiority and coming into an intellectual world-space where it finds itself just one of many knowledge traditions.

The responses to Forbidden Archeology from within the network of modern science show a degree of resistance to this developing reality and a hope that the system as it is, perhaps with some adjustments, will survive intact.

But, as one can see, the expanding topology of the terrain mapped by Forbidden Archeology reaches far beyond artificial interdisciplinary realignments within the modern university system. The familiar unities are dissolving. As foreseen by Foucault (1972, p. 39): "one is forced to advance beyond familiar territory, far from the certainties to which one is accustomed, towards a yet uncharted land and unforeseeable conclusion."

Specifically, Forbidden Archeology charts the domain of the discourse of human origins and antiquity. One can no longer hope that this will remain the inalienable property of a certain discipline, such as archeology or anthropology. Neither can salvation be found in forging new interdisciplinary links with other fragmenting disciplines. One cannot even be certain that disciplines such as anthropology can avoid marginalization, a possibility much discussed among anthropologists themselves.

The map generated by Forbidden Archeology points to the emergence of a diverse multipolar global intellectual constellation from which may emerge a new academic consensus on human origins. Those participating most effectively in this process will be those who have mastered the techniques of complex boundary crossings, able to move freely with open minds, through scientific disciplines such as anthropology and archeology, the science studies branches of history, philosophy, and sociology, the academic study of religion, the populist purveyors of scientific anomalies, the range of New Age interests, and the whole world of religion-based sciences and cosmologies of traditional spiritual cultures, such as Gaudiya Vaishnavism.

References
Basham, A. L. (1959). The wonder that was India. New York, NY: Grove Press.
Conrad, E. (1993). New book claims man existed on earth long before the apes. Hazelton [PA]Standard-Speaker, November 17.
Corliss, W. (1993) Forbidden archeology. Science Frontiers Book Supplement, 89, 1.
Cremo, M. A. (1994). Puranic Time and the Archeological Record. Theme Papers: Concepts of Time. World Archaeological Congress-3, New Delhi, December         4-11, 1994. Bound volume of precirculated papers, issued on behalf of the Academic Committee of WAC-3.
Cremo, M. A., & Thompson, R. L. (1993). Forbidden archeology: The hidden history of the human race. San Diego, CA: Bhaktivedanta Institute.
Davidson, J. (1994) Fascination over fossil finds. International Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, August, 28.
Feder, K. L. (1994). Review of Forbidden archeology: The hidden history of the human race. Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson, 1993, Govardhan Hill     Pub., San Diego. Geoarchaeology: An International Journal, 9, 337-340.
Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. New Yor)k, NY: Pantheon.
    Goswami, S. D. (1980) Srula Prabhupada-lilamrta, A Biography of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder-Acarya of the                
    International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Volume 1. A Lifetime in Preparation, India 1896-1965.. Los Angeles, CA: Bhaktivedanta Book Trust.
Greimas, A. J. (1990). Narrative semiotics and cognitive discourses. London, UK: Pinter.
Holmes, W. H. (1899). Review of the evidence relating to auriferous gravel man in California. Smithsonian Institution Annual Report 1898-1899, 419-472.
Hunt, J. (1993). Antiquity of modern humans: Re-evaluation. Louisiana Mounds Society Newsletter, 64, 2-3.
Leakey, M. (1979) Footprints in the ashes of time. National Geographic, 155, 446-457.
Marks, J. (1994). Review of Forbidden archeology: The hidden history of the human race, by Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson. 1993. San Diego:    
    Bhaktivedanta Institute. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 93, 140-141.
Moore, S. (1993). Forbidden archeology: The hidden history of the human race, by Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson. Fortean Times, 72, 59.
Rothstein, M. (1994). Forbudt arkaeologi. Politiken, January 31, section 3, page 1.
Schwarz, H. (1994). Earth born, sky driven: Book review. Journal of Unconventional History, 6, 68-76.
Slemmons, D. B. (1966). Cenozoic volcanism of the central Sierra Nevada, California. Bulletin of the California Division of Mines and Geology, 190, 199-208.
Salim-ur-rahman (199?) Spanner in the works. (I have only a xerox copy of this review of Forbidden Archeology from an English-language Pakistani newspaper,    
    which I received by mail. The name of the paper and date of publication were not on the xerox.)
Swann, I. (1994). Forbidden archeology: The hidden history of the human race. Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson. Fate, January, 106-107.
Tedlock, B., & Tedlock, D. (1995). From the editors. American Anthropologist, 97, 8-9.
Whitney, J. D. (1880). The auriferous gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California. Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology Memoir 6(1).
Yau, J. (1993). In the realm of appearances: The art of Andy Warhol. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco.

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