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Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology

Average customer rating:

Just What the Teacher Required
Great history book
Practical Application of the Principle
Okay, Why Did it Work?
I was looking for info on the Moundbuilders

Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology
Kenneth L. Feder
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 076742722X

Book Description

Ancient astronauts? Atlantis? Psychic archaeology? Committed to the scientific investigation of human antiquity, this indispensable supplementary text uses interesting archaeological hoaxes, myths, and mysteries to show how we can truly know things about the past through science.

Customer Reviews:

Just What the Teacher Required.......2007-05-17

This fascinating book helps explore the world of archaeological mystery and the pseudoscience behind the myths that make it into popular culture. A must read for new students to the field of archeology.

Great history book.......2007-01-25

This was one of my college textbooks. It's a great overview of the scientific method. It covers many of the famous anthropology "claims" such as who really settled North America, including reasons why people make their various claims. It also does a nice job debunking most of those claims, but largely gives the reader a sense of how to apply critical thinking to make up their own mind.

Practical Application of the Principle.......2006-09-19

This reviewer wholeheartedly agrees with Prof. Feder's principle that scholarly research needs to ignore beliefs and follow the evidence to wherever it leads. Unfortunately, Feder provides ample examples of the violation of that principle himself. He consistently puts his 'scientific' beliefs ahead of sound research. A couple of instances should suffice to illustrate the paradox in his thinking.

One of his suppositions is that Altantis is mythological. Yet, the real physical, geological evidence demonstrates that there was a large island in the middle of the North Atlantic about 12,000 years ago. The flora and fauna at the bottom of the Atlantic proves that. There is no evidence one way or the other as to whether the island was inhabited at that time. Other geological evidence shows that a large asteroid (about 4 miles in diameter) collided with the earth about 11,200 years ago (more than half a million circular and oval craters in North America alone, dated by means of erosion analysis to about 10-12,000 year ago; a mass extinction event at that time which destroyed over half the large animal species in North America; ice core data that dates a vast and sudden climate change to that point in time; diminution of all surviving large animal species owing to damage to the ozone layer by the impact, estimated at a 7/8 loss of it; the shift of the axis of the earth to its present location ('Ice Age' is a 19th century scientific myth. The only places that glaciers form is in mountains and at polar icecaps, neither of which are in northeastern North America, the supposed epicenter of the last so-called ice age.); etc.) Therefore, an objective researcher would have to withhold judgment as to whether Atlantis existed where and when Plato indicated.

In conjunction with the potentially false belief that Atlantis is a myth is the science 'dogma' drilled into the heads of geologists in contradiction to the actual evidence. The most blatant form of this is in their belief toward what are called 'eratics.' These are large boulders in the middle of fields with no apparent explanation for how they got there. At colleges everywhere, geology departments feed their students the line that glaciers moved them there from hundreds of miles away. However, geologists who actually do research under glaciers maintain that glaciers are completely incapable of moving boulders four inches let alone four hundred miles. The ice crushes them into rubble in place underneath. Only liquid water can move such large objects to the current locations. Yet some 'scientists' want to avoid having to admit that, because the implication is that a worldwide Deluge occurred in the not too distant past.

A second example is his belief with regard to the Shroud of Turin. Many scientists, because of the religious implications, steadfastly want to believe that it is not genuine despite the scientific evidence which contradicts their belief. Ultimately, they rely upon the four independently done carbon-14 tests, each of which concurred that the cloth dates to the Middle Ages. However, they ignore the scientific fact that each sample was tainted with a bioplastic coating, that none of the four facilities bothered to clean it off before testing and thus all produced an erroneous and artificially young dating for the material. Some of these True Believers in what is actually pseudo-scientific mythology hang their hats on the claim that the image on the cloth was painted during the Medieval Era. The science fact is that the 1978 STURP science research team found that the image could not have been created by paint because that substance seaps into the fibrils of the material and they conclusively proved that the image is only a surface radiation burn of some unknown type. Nor can the 'scientists' explain how 27 different kinds of pollen were found in the weave of the cloth, which could only have gotten there at the time of manufacture. The only place on earth where all 27 pollens exist is the vicinity of Jerusalem.

Professor Feder is guilty of what he decries. He does correctly identify many hoaxes and beliefs unsupported by sound academic research such as Piltdown Man and creationism. However, he also needs to set aside his own beliefs and follow the evidence to wherever it leads rather than suppress or ignore real evidence that contradicts his beliefs.

Okay, Why Did it Work?.......2006-05-26

One can't blame Kenneth Feder for wanting to write this book. In the first chapter, he states his reasoning: In the late 1960s he subscribed to a book club lured by the cheap price of four books. One was on psychic sciences, one on yoga, one on the black arts, and one on magic. Claims in these books based on physics, biology, psychology, and history seemed reasonable to Feder because he thought that he did not have "the knowledge to assess them intelligently." But archaeology ... that was another matter. Feder is a professional archaeologist who weighs in this book.

I like the 1st chapter which is on epistemology. Feder probably could have waxed eloquent on epistemology, why we know what we know. Instead he tells the story of two maternity wards in the Vienna General Hospital. In Ward 1, the mortality rate for women was five times the rate of that in Ward 2. In 1848 Ignaz Sammelweis tackled the problem. Was Ward 1 more crowded? Was birth position a factor? Were the student doctors in Ward 1 too rough? Did the appearance of the hospital priest pose a psychological factor? Sammelweis tested all of these hypotheses and came up with zilch. It was something of a stroke of luck when Sammelweis lost a male doctor friend of his who had the same symptoms as the women in Ward 1. Bacteria was totally unknown in the 1840s. Yet Sammelweis determined that the same "cadaveric material" that existed in dead bodies made its way via student doctors from autopsies to women in Ward 1.

The Cardiff Giant was a money magnet from the beginning. Just after Stub Newell "discovered" the giant, he got a license to display it and within three weeks raked in $7,000 at 50 cents a look. Cousin George Hull eventually confessed, but by then P T Barnum had made a copy of the giant. The Piltdown Man was a hoax that filled a national need. The Germans had their Neanderthal. The French had their Cro-Magnon. The English needed evidence that humanity had initially developed with in its borders. Piltdown was a smashing success capturing the attention of the likes of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. It rewrote paleological history from 1912 to 1949 when a new scientific test measuring fluorine showed that Piltdown Man's claim to age was a bit pretentious.

Who discovered America? Really the ancestors of the American Indians did. Whether it was Columbus or Lief Erikson is a moot point. For 300 years, European thinkers speculated on from which of the three sons of Noah the Indians were descended. After the Indians, who came next? There's no evidence St Brendan, the Chinese (looking for Fusang), Prince Madoc and the Welsh, nor Africans came to the New World. Barry Fell is given several pages by Feder. Fans of Fell need not read this book. In contrast the archaeological evidence for the Vikings is far more extensive.

Did the Indians learn to build the numerous Indian mounds in the US from the ancient civilization of Atlantis? Plato's Timaeus dialogue has Socrates asking his students to speculate. Critias speculates about a time and place which had not been heard of for 9300 years and which would not be heard of again for another 300 years. But in 1882 Ignatius Donnelley would write a book about Atlantis that would explain Indian mounds and compare such things as the pyramids of Egypt with those of the New World. His idea caught the imagination of folks like Edgar Cayce.

Von Daniken. Von Daniken has had to make lame claims that the Egyptians did not have the tools to make the pyramids. Archaeologists have shown that they did. Psychic archaeology?
Harmonics? Feder goes there, but pardon me if I do not.

I agree with Feder throughout most of his book. But in one instance I disagree. I can find a water line with a coat hanger. I was once in San Antonio trying to get a water license in a class taught by a PHD from Texas A&M. When he pulled out his rod, I shook my head. I could not believe it. He handed me the rod and it worked. Feder, okay, why did it work?

I was looking for info on the Moundbuilders.......2004-11-23

but I got much more. It is a book I will use for reference often.

The Mystery of the Cardiff Giant (Cover-to-Cover Informational Books)

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The Mystery of the Cardiff Giant (Cover-to-Cover Informational Books)
Pat Perrin , and Wim Coleman
Manufacturer: Perfection Learning
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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ASIN: 0756913470

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