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Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technologies, Extraterrestrial Intervention, and the Suppressed Origins of Civilization | 
 enlarge | Creator: J. Douglas Kenyon
Publisher: Bear & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
Buy Used: $7.95
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Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 14105
Media: Paperback
Pages: 344
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 1591430453
Dewey Decimal Number: 930
EAN: 9781591430452
ASIN: 1591430453
Publication Date: April 10, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Paperback book in good condition - minor shelf and edge wear. Some highlighting.
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Product Description
Challenges the scientific theories on the establishment of civilization and technology
• Contains 42 essays by 17 key thinkers in the fields of alternative science and history, including Christopher Dunn, Frank Joseph, Will Hart, Rand Flem-Ath, and Moira Timmes
• Edited by Atlantis Rising publisher, J. Douglas Kenyon
In Forbidden History writer and editor J. Douglas Kenyon has chosen 42 essays that have appeared in the bimonthly journal Atlantis Rising to provide readers with an overview of the core positions of key thinkers in the field of ancient mysteries and alternative history. The 17 contributors include among others, Rand Flem-Ath, Frank Joseph, Christopher Dunn, and Will Hart, all of whom challenge the scientific establishment to reexamine its underlying premises in understanding ancient civilizations and open up to the possibility of meaningful debate around alternative theories of humanity's true past.
Each of the essays builds upon the work of the other contributors. Kenyon has carefully crafted his vision and selected writings in six areas: Darwinism Under Fire, Earth Changes--Sudden or Gradual, Civilization's Greater Antiquity, Ancestors from Space, Ancient High Tech, and The Search for Lost Origins. He explores the most current ideas in the Atlantis debate, the origins of the Pyramids, and many other controversial themes.
The book serves as an excellent introduction to hitherto suppressed and alternative accounts of history as contributors raise questions about the origins of civilization and humanity, catastrophism, and ancient technology. The collection also includes several articles that introduce, compare, contrast, and complement the theories of other notable authors in these fields, such as Zecharia Sitchin, Paul LaViolette, John Michell, and John Anthony West.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 Excellent starter book for the bewildered April 19, 2005
F. P. Kovacs (Ohio USA)
88 out of 105 found this review helpful
Is history real? Do we even have a rough idea who we are and where we come from? This book is an ideal gift for anyone on your list who thinks Orthodox History is bunk but don't know what to do next. Collected from some excellent articles from New Atlantis Magazine, these essays are nicely arranged to build the case slowly, carefully and wisely. Contributors include Christopher Dunn and Peter Thomkins, and subject ranges from debunking Darwin to the Electric Universe. You've been warned! This is the place to start finding out Henry Ford didn't know the half of it. Bunk? Most of the history we get in school is FICTION! Rounded out with discussions of eclectic goodies available only with difficulty elsewhere, this is a must for any alternative science/history bookshelf.
 linguistic material, at least, is seriously flawed January 4, 2006
Mark Newbrook (Heswall, Wirral, United Kingdom)
75 out of 88 found this review helpful
This book is interesting and in places challenging, but the presentation often appears rather one-sided. Mainstream scholarly counter-arguments are not given sufficient credit or attention. In face of criticisms levelled at the allegedly biased and hidebound approach of mainstream scholarship, this is very disappointing.
My comments here are directed at the linguistic aspects of the material, where my own professional expertise applies. Here, there is a considerable amount of palpable error (see details below). Given this, readers lacking expertise in any specific discipline should treat with caution all novel claims made.
Chapter 10, David Lewis, pages 83-86
To my knowledge, no qualified writers have argued that Sanskrit derives from Proto-Dravidian; it is transparently Indo-European. The only clearly Dravidian elements in Sanskrit are some transferred vocabulary and some aspects of the sound-system.
It is not clear where Dravidian might have been spoken before it was in India. Although it is quite possible that Dravidian is related to Elamite and that its speakers came into India from the north-west, this has not been demonstrated. There is no actual trace of Dravidian outside South Asia.
The linguistic material presented by Churchward, Cerve etc is unverified and implausible. Some of the relevant claims, eg the dramatic claim about links between Greek and Mayan, do not hold up at all.
The view that the Easter Island Script (which itself has no agreed decipherment) and the Indus Valley Script are genuinely related has never been adequately supported.
To my knowledge, no linguistically qualified commentators have linked the Cambay material with the Indus Valley Script.
Chapter 23, Frank Joseph, pages 174-176
Joseph cites similarities between short words and syllables, with allegedly related meanings, in languages normally regarded as unrelated and as not having experienced important cultural contact, eg the words moai in Okinawa and Easter Island (where the meanings are not in fact close), Japanese torii and German Tor, various words containing the syllable mu. He believes that these similarities are `remarkable' or at least significant, and that they suggest common origin (in Lemuria/Mu) - or maybe in some cases important early contact. However, it is easy to show in linguistic and statistical terms that superficially similar forms such as these are very likely to arise by chance, especially with very short words and single syllables. Indeed, many cases are known where pairs of identical or very similar forms, with genuinely related meanings, are DEMONSTRABLY unconnected and only accidentally similar. Only if the parallelisms are very extensive and/or linguistically systematic is there good evidence of a real connection. Cases such as those presented here do not show any connection. The impressionistic method used in this section was superseded in the mid-19th Century as these facts became clear. It is now used only by authors unfamiliar with what historical linguists have learned.
Joseph's comment about the pronunciation of the names Romulus and Remus is mistaken.
Chapter 25, David Lewis again, pages 184-186
Lewis makes some strange statements about Indian languages. The following corrections are required:
a) So-called root words of Sanskrit do NOT appear `almost universally in the world's major languages'. Only other Indo-European languages share words with Sanskrit, except for the special cases of a) words (etc) transferred within India into Dravidian (notably Malayalam) and other local languages and b) medieval and modern transfers into other languages of cultural words involving Hinduism etc.
b) Even the words shared between Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages do NOT derive from Sanskrit, as Lewis implies. Sanskrit itself, though archaic, is demonstrably NOT as close to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European ancestor language as was believed by European scholars when the relationship of Sanskrit with ancient European languages was first understood (1780s & after). For instance, Greek is demonstrably a better guide to the Proto-Indo-European vowel system than Sanskrit is. (The idea of an Indo-European or Aryan RACE is a 19th Century idea, long abandoned. This is all about LANGUAGES. Of course, ethnic groups TEND to retain their languages over time; but there are many exceptions.)
c) Whether or not there was an `Aryan Invasion' of India, the linguistic evidence therefore suggests (strongly) that Indo-European languages (including early Sanskrit or pre-Sanskrit) were introduced into India from the north-west, rather than the whole Indo-European family initially developing there. (We still do not know which language family is represented by the Indus Valley Script. A recognised solution to this problem would help to date the arrival of Indo-European in India. The main candidates are Indo-European and Dravidian.)
d) Lewis does not specify which `orthodox' scholars ascribe the first known alphabet to India.
e) Apart from Sanskrit transfers into Tamil of words which Sanskrit shares with Greek via Indo-European, there are no known demonstrably significant similarities or shared words between Tamil (Dravidian) on the one hand and Greek, Hebrew, languages of Kamchatka, languages of Polynesia etc on the other. It is easy to show in linguistic and statistical terms that superficially similar forms are very likely to arise by chance in such cases. (On the impressionistic method suggested by these remarks, see above on Joseph's material.) However: some Tamil words and features do appear in Sanskrit; but this is evidently because of contact within India in the last 3500 years. (As noted, Sanskrit has also influenced Dravidian in return.)
Summary: Current mainstream views on ancient India are based on the overall pattern of the evidence, not on `Eurocentrism'. There is, naturally, dispute over many specific points, and mysteries remain (notably the Indus Valley Script). And the whole mainstream viewpoint might in principle be overthrown by evidence. But there is no sign of that happening. For instance, Bryant's generally scholarly book on this theme, endorsing a position fairly close to Lewis', was weak on linguistics. (It should also be noted that Oppenheimer and even his linguist ally Manansala appear to be unfamiliar with historical linguistics; their linguistic points are among their weakest.)
As can be seen, the linguistic material in this book, at least, is seriously flawed.
So-so history. August 20, 2006
Michael Valdivielso (Alexandria, VA USA)
50 out of 68 found this review helpful
Forbidden History edited by J. Douglas Kenyon feels very much like a bunch of people tooting their own horns. Not that some of it wasn't interesting - the questions they ask about prehistory, the origins of civilization and the technologies of the past need to be answered. Yet when whole chapters deal with such subjects as Darwin's missing link between apes and men (which is a creation, a myth, of the media and has nothing to do with Darwinism), aliens breeding with mankind and the lost city of Atlantis (or cities as everybody seems to think it is somewhere else) it is hard to take seriously. One chapter says there is proof that there was no ice age but there really were floods when another chapter uses the ice age as part of their arguments. In other words they embrace facts that help them and dismiss facts that don't - just what they say the other mainstream scientists are doing.
Also some of what they say just sounds wrong or slightly off, like there was no proofreading. Example, a quote from page 9, from the chapter Darwin's Demise:
We have all learned that fish changed into amphibians, amphibians became reptiles, reptiles evolved into birds and birds changed into animals.
I guess birds were a form of rock before they became animals, eh? I will point out again, that many of the subjects they bring up are interesting and they do point out flaws in many of the theories dealing with the pyramids, prehistoric man and past civilizations. But the theories they hold up as replacements need to be polished and worked on more. Or, as with the old theories that don't fit, tossed out.
Comments from a contributor to the book, David S. Lewis January 11, 2007
David S. Lewis
40 out of 42 found this review helpful
I am a writer whose articles appear in this book, one who has investigated alternative scholarship, drawn on various sources, and found that prevalent theories and mindsets often distort what may be the truth regarding history and science. That is what this book is about. It attempts to open the door to a new understanding of the past, and in so doing to better understand who we are, where we come from, and our potential. This often requires unraveling the tangled ball of string that is accepted as historical fact, etymological fact, scientific fact, etc.
I do not have the previous reviewer's specific training in languages and etymology, only a fascination for the subject, and a lifelong sense that something was amiss in this field (Perhaps that is a good thing, for established mind sets may be part of the problem, the perpetuation of distortions by those, who, are often prevented from taking seriously anything that threatens the established way of thinking).
In my research for several articles included in this book, I found, among other things, that standard tenets of history and prehistory ought to be seriously questioned, and that the perpetuation of misinformation through academia is inherent to the institutional and psychological nature of academia itself (which, in turn, is often a product of the human ego and its processes, a state of affairs that often derails a genuine quest for truth).
The ancient history of India is a case in point (as told in this book). That history seems to have been rewritten by Europeans. It should be understood that the Indo-European language is not really a language or anything historical (the language from which, we are to believe, the great family of other languages derive). This "language" is an assumption, a theory, based on the fact that there are great similarities in the roots words of many varied languages across the globe. Indo-European is an invention to try to account for this, a device that runs hand in hand with the alleged Aryan Invasion of India (which reduces the antiquity of India and her languages by several thousand years as compared to tradition). For the sake of simplicity, the story goes like this, as espoused now by various sources: Both the Indo european "language" and the Aryan Invasion were invented, and contrary to the indigenous "nonacademic" history of India as told for millennia. Evidence now shows, though, that India's extreme antiquity as expressed in her mythology is probable, given the discovery of an ancient city (dated to 8000 years ago), now submerged, off the western coast, and satellite images that show the path of the "mythical" Saraswati river. These developments validate that which is written in India's ancient texts, the tradition of a timelessly old India held as a common understanding in her past, from generation to generation. These are developments similar to the archeological discovery of Troy, taking what was deemed fiction by scholars into the realm of actual history.
Furthermore, traditions exist, and perhaps ignored geologic evidence, that what we call India was once a more vast continent, the land, perhaps, of the great rishis whence the vedas and traditions of southern India derive. This book, and Atlantis Rising magazine, tries to unravel the series of untruths piled upon one another regarding the past, and to debunk some of academia's sacred tenets. It is certainly not Christian creationism (as a previous reviewer strangely suggested) merely because it points out the glaring problems in evolutionary theory. The problem in seeing things that way is simple mindedness, as if we have but two choices, Biblical creationism or Darwinism.
(Another reviewer complains, by the way, that one part of the book discredits Ice Age theory, while another uses it to support a point. Keep in mind that the chapters in this book are written by various authors, not a single author. That reviewer's complaint would only be valid if one author had done this. Contained in the book are various points of view with a coherent theme as expressed in various articles, not that of one individual.)
The previous reviewer, who takes issue with the proposition that the languages of India predate those of the rest of the world's languages (as evidence of that land and people's profound antiquity), might look into the ancient traditions and the modern evidence that supports them (and my effort is not the first to do this). Don't expect to find such material in a textbook though. You won't, just as you won't find other "anomalous" evidence in your textbooks that throw monkey wrenches into widely accepted theories. That's the whole point of the book, and Atlantis Rising magazine. Instead, start all over, from the beginning, setting aside what you were taught to believe were indisputable facts.
Absolutely fascinating March 26, 2006
J. Reicherts (MN,USA)
20 out of 26 found this review helpful
Once I started reading this book, I could hardly put it down. I really enjoyed the wide range of alternative historical topics from several different authors/researchers. I would highly reccomend this book to anyone be they serious researcher or just someone who is curious.
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