Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEWS Eden in the East. Stephen Oppenheimer. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998. 560 pp.; photographs, diagrams, maps, figures, tables. Hardcover. $35.00. Reviewed by A. S. BAER, Oregon State University, Corvallis The author, a pediatrician, has written this tween 15,000 and 8000 B.P., causing Hoa book on historical geography as a general binhians or other people to flee to India ist. He is not averse to making superwaves and elsewhere. Ancestors of today's Orang out of specialists' findings in putting forth Asli, the indigenous people of the Malay his grand theory of prehistory with a sian peninsula, were an early fleeing group. Southeast Asian focus. As he sees it, his Second, about 10,000 B.P., the sea level rise views are akin to those of Wilhelm Sol was slower, with large river deltas forming heim and William Meachem, not those of and providing fertile sites for agriculture. Peter Bellwood (see references in Bellwood But the 8000 B.P. surge was a superflood, 1997). with supertsunamis and a sea transgression To take an academic approach, one 5 m above today's level, drowning most might ask what problem the author set out lowland Neolithic sites occupied from to solve and what are his methodology, his 10,000 to 5000 B.P. (p. 20). Third, because results, and his conclusion. The problem he of this superflood, the last major emigration discusses is the postglacial inundation of the began from Sundaland, with Austronesians Sunda Shelf and its consequences. As his heading to the Pacific and rice cultivation tale unfolds, he hypothesizes that a rise in heading to India, while China, India, and sea level and, indeed, "floods," on the shelf Egypt remained Neolithic. Oppenheimer after the last glacial maximum led South thus posits a "wave of advance" of South east Asians to disperse by sea and land to as east Asian culture, including the idea of it far away as Mesopotamia, if not farther. To being "the epicenter of language dispersal support his idea he considers archaeologi since the last Ice Age" (p. 122, but see cal, linguistic, genetic, and artistic informa Sims-Williams 1998 for cautions about tion, as well as personal travel notes. He "thinking big"). finds among the various specialist disci Although there is more to this book than plines tessera here and there and fits hydrology, I can comment on only a few them into his mosaic picture of postglacial of its aspects here. For example, the author Southeast Asia. We hear little about pieces has rice cultivation, Austro-Asiatic lan that do not fit his model well, though some guages, megaliths, bronze, and so forth pieces that were used fit better than others. moving to India after the postulated third The loose fitters may fall out of the picture flood (pp. 83-86). This idea is based in as more information is considered or comes large part on rice being cultivated in south to light. ern Thailand c. 9000 B.P. (where small Important parts of this model are pre groups of Orang Asli still live). However, sented in the first half of the book. First, the relevant report does not mention Sundaland was flooded in three surges be- whether the rice grains, found associated with pottery there, were cultivated forms. Asiatl Perspectives, Vol. 38, No.2, © 1999 by University of Moreover, though this date is said to pre Hawai'i Press. date rice cultivation in China, wild rice BOOK REVIEWS 257 collection is now dated to 13,000 B.P. in to say about prehistoric health or epide China and rice cultivation to around miology. Nor does he emphasize demogra 11,000 B.P. (Pringle 1998). Even if rice was phy. It is worth mentioning that in bad cultivated in Thailand in 9000 B.P., which times, from whatever cause, health suffers. then led to its cultivation in India a thou This can be especially critical in small sand years later, as the book supposes, one populations, such as those under discussion. might ask: Why then did it take so long for If indeed postflood Sundaland survivors this technology to travel to nearby Borneo? dispersed to India, they would surely have Cultivated rice has now been dated in met up with new diseases or new strains of Borneo to 4000 B.P. (Bellwood 1997). old ones (which many epidemiologists have Would it take five times longer for rice discussed). The resulting ill health in such a technology to move to Borneo than to relict group may have precluded successful India? In related matters, the supposedly dispersal. The author's implication of size close "ancestral form" of DNA attributed to able migration is thus curious. the Orang Asli (p. 194) was also found Grand models need plausibility and de in Malays and Taiwan Chinese (not ab rive further strength by leading to testable origines, p. 207). The "9-bp deletion" has predictions. Two testable predictions in arisen more than once (Martinson 1996), this book are that underwater archaeology and "Jeni" (p. 196) is a false name. Colo will reveal floodplain Sundaland settle nial-era exonyms such as Negrito (p. 125) ments (see also Anderson 1997) and that are often misleading. myths (including Biblical accounts) will Passing from the west of Southeast Asia support the model. eastward, the author takes up the saga of The second half of the book, on the Austronesian speakers heading toward the geographic extent of myths, is presented to Pacific. Based on genetic evidence of a cer support the author's flood-and-flee model. tain DNA trait (the "Polynesian motif"), It is open to various interpretations. Given the book claims the homeland for Aus that West Malaysia is a core area for the tronesians going to the Pacific was in the book's thesis of biocultural emigration Sabah-Sulawesi-Maluku area "since the from Sundaland after the last glacial maxi end of the Ice Age" (p. 160), rather than in mum, its myths merit more scrutiny than Taiwan and its environs later, as Bellwood's the book provides. People in West Malay model has detailed (Melton et al. 1998). sia still remember the great flood and use it Oppenheimer's claim is based on data from as a time marker. One said, "My family few populations and on a very small piece moved here long ago, before the great of human DNA. Genetic analysis of Asia flood." Another said, "I was born the year Pacific peoples is still in its infancy, with of the great flood." This great flood was in many interesting indigenous groups never 1926. Lesser floods have occurred since having been surveyed. For example, the then. In 1967 about 20 percent of the state genetics of sea people (Orang Laut), who of Kelantan flooded, and in 1971 about 20 may have been eastward dispersers, is vir percent of Pahang flooded (Sooryanarayana tually unknown. We need a lot more re 1995). Up to 63 cm of rain has been re gional data about a lot more DNA before corded in one day. Floods, thunder, and robust scenarios can emerge. related phenomena are understandably no Although the author regards Southeast strangers to the myths of the Orang Asli of Asia as the center of the world in post Malaysia. glacial prehistory (p. 123), some people The creation story of the Temiar group will clearly disagree. For instance, some of Orang Asli contains a flood and a geneticists find the colonization of the woman creator dreaming two fruits into a Americas originating from the region of brother-sister pair who committed incest Lake Baikal, not from Southeast Asia (Benjamin 1967). The Semai group cre (Karafet et al. 1999). In addition, although ation story has a flood and a man mating trained as a physician, the author has little with a woman arriving from heaven-no ASIAN PERSPECTIVES . 38(2) FALL 1999 incest here (Juli Edo in press). Other BELLWOOD, P. mythic elements mentioned in Oppen 1997 Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archi heimer's book as aboriginal to the area pelago, 2d ed. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. do not occur in these Orang Asli myths. That is, there is no naga, lake, "word," BENJAMIN, G. 1967 Temiar religion. Ph.D. diss., Univer earth/sky dichotomy, land raiser, parricide, sity of Cambridge. body parts for the cosmos, creative wind, JULI EDO "seven," or cosmic egg. The Orang Asli in press Stories of migration from native speakers of Aslian (Austro-Asiatic) lan resources: The Semai oral tradition. guages do not conform to the idea of fur Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association Bulle nishing numerous mythic elements to the tin 19. world (p. 322), despite the author's thesis KARAFET, T., S. ZEGURA, O. POSUKH, L. OSI that their ancestors diffused afar some POVA, A. BERGEN, J. LONG, D. GOLDMAN, W. 10,000 or more years ago. Nor are Orang KLITZ, S. HARIHARA, P. DE KNIJFF, V. WIEBE, R. GRIFFITHS, A. TEMPLETON, AND M. HAMMER Asli myths affiicted with a "quest for im 1999 Ancestral Asian source(s) of New mortality" or a "Cain and Abel," as dis World Y -chromosome founder hap cussed in later chapters. And, among other lotypes. American Journal of Human problems, "Mantras" (p. 386) are not Genetics 64 : 817 -831. Aslian speakers, and Aslian groups were in MARTINSON, J. contact with outsiders long before "the last 1996 Molecular perspectives on the colo couple of hundred years" (p. 399). All in nisation of the Pacific, in Molecular Biology and Human Diversity: 171- all, myths may not function as the mag 195, ed. A. Boyce and C.

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