16.
THE
ANTIQUITY OF MAN...OR OF WHOMEVER
“From the Vedic literature, we derive the idea that the human race is of great antiquity. For the purpose of conducting 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 long periods of time. ”
Michael A. Cremo663
Any attempt to
summarize the voluminous and well-documented research of Michael A.
Cremo and Richard L. Thompson in one short chapter is doomed to
failure at the outset. Their magisterial work on alternative
paleontology and anthropology, Forbidden
Archeology, runs a little over nine hundred pages. Its
“condensed” version, The Hidden History of the
Human Race, is itself over three hundred.
However, one may
approach their work from the standpoint of the Cosmic War
Hypothesis, and what it implies for their own thesis. Cremo and
Thompson approached their work in the broadest possible sense, as a
“sociological, philosophical, and historical critique of the
scientific method, as applied to the question of human origins and
antiquity.”664 Their basic thesis
is that humanity is of far greater antiquity than the standard
academic models will allow, hence, this places them in direct
conflict with modern evolutionary theory. Again, this is not the
place to examine their critique of that theory; however, as a
result of their extensive review of the archeological evidence in
the literature, oftentimes dating back a century or more, they
conclude that the “facts” of evolutionary theory “turn out to be
networks of arguments and observational claims.”665