Talk:Stephen Oppenheimer

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Contents 1 When was book published 2 Relationship to Oxford 3 Differing titles for same book 4 Suggestion to merge page with The Real Eve 5 Eden in the East 6 "The Real Eve:-Modern Man's Journey Out Of Africa" speaks true! 7 "The Origins of the British"

[edit] When was book published

Is there anybody who can tell me that when this Genology report or the book was published ? Also, I want e-mail no. of Mr. Stephen Oppenheimer who is author of this report / book.

WIN 06:36, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Relationship to Oxford

Me too. I do not find this individual on the list of Green College fellows, nor anywhere else at Oxford. The article does not meet wiki biographical standards, and in fact appears to be an advertisment.

LinguisticDemographer 16:13, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

The article does not say he is a fellow of Green College. Membership of the common room in Greens is not restricted to fellows. [1]. The book "Out of Eden" states he is a member of Greens College in the publishers short cover biography. By doing a google search I see he has had articles published by several journals including Nature. There seems no good reason to impugn the integrity of the man so I will remove the citation request since it appears to be based on a false assumption. GoldenMeadows 00:38, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Any graduate or former fellow of an Oxbridge college continues to be a member of that college for life. In other words, membership of a college is not an academic affiliation and proves nothing about the academic respectability of one's current work. It's hard to see how this information is anything other than misleading in the context of the current article (or indeed in a publisher's bio) since people will assume it is an actual affiliation, which clearly it is not. Mhardcastle 09:36, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Differing titles for same book

I was under the impression that "Out of Eden" and "The Real Eve" were the same book under different titles. T@nn 02:04, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Doing a google seems to indicate that "The Real Eve" is the U.S title of the book "Out of Eden".

So it's just a different edition of the same book. I see that the article now indicates that. T@nn 08:04, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion to merge page with The Real Eve

The book "The Real Eve" or "Out of Eden" had a documentary based upon it, also called "The Real Eve". There a wikipedia entry for the documentary, but that does not indicate the connection between it and the book. The documentary entry is a stub anyway, so I'm suggesting merging the two articles. T@nn 08:13, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we should do that. Stephen Oppenheimer has a fairly wide research agenda (e.g. the origins of the British stuff described on this page), and his writing on mtDNA Eve includes a synthesis of work by lots of other people (see Mitochondrial Eve. I do however agree that if the documentary is based on Oppenheimer's book then there should be references both ways. Cheers, Ngio 08:51, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Eden in the East

I don't understand why an editor reverted my description of Eden in the East with a description that is completely inaccurate:

In his book "Eden in the East", Oppenheimer hypothesizes that Eurasians have South Asian origins, with the founding population of Caucasoids (Western Eurasians) originating in northwest India, while the founding population of Mongoloids (Eastern Eurasians) originated in northeast India/Nepal. Caucasoids spread north and west into Central Asia, West Asia, North Africa and Europe, as well as south into southern India and Sri Lanka, while Mongoloids spread north and east into Siberia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Polynesia, the Americas and Greenland.

The population movements described above happened at an earlier time:about 80,000-15,000 years before present. Eden of the East covers the period 14,000-7,000 years before present. At first I thought that the editor who inserted this had inadvertently characterized Oppenheimer's later book. But it's also not a completely accurate characterization of that book. TimidGuy 10:49, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I see now what the problem was. It stemmed from an earlier confusion between two similarly named books: Out of Eden and Eden in the East. The description above was a vestige of this conflation. Someone came in and corrected the confusion regarding the titles of the various books, but the description of Out of Eden was inadvertently retained as the description of Eden in the East. I had put in a correct description of Eden in the East and, inexplicably, an editor reverted back to the earlier incorrect description. Now that I've reverted to my correct description, I do hope he'll leave it intact. TimidGuy 11:36, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "The Real Eve:-Modern Man's Journey Out Of Africa" speaks true!

I both saw the Discovery Channel's documentary of The Real Eve and have and read the book with the above title. I'm a Caucasian, peach-colored skin, male who believes this book because IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE! Homo Sapien humans originated in Africa, after evolving from apes there, spread to different continents, where over thousands of years, the melanin in their bodies made their skin change color according to the amount of sunlight hitting that area of the Earth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.30.129.10 (talk) 11:18, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Although the purpose of this page is not to chat about Oppenheimer's works, I must say that I agree -- I'm really impressed with the range of disciplines that he marshals in order to support his hypotheses. He's a real polymath. TimidGuy (talk) 15:01, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "The Origins of the British"

Oppenheimer is brilliant in assessing the pre-Roman constitution of the peoples of Britain, and concludes that Germanic as well as Celtic peoples inhabited the island and possibly non-Indo-European Picts. However it is a pity that he follows Colin Renfrew's idea that Indo-European was spread in the Neolithic. His genetic arguments to match that idea are weak as a consequence and he tries to fit a 6000BC date on everything. David Anthony's book The Horse, The Wheel and language compellingly states that Indo-European was spread by Kurgans starting around 3300BC. This is a real shame as I believe that with Oppenheimer's brilliant knowledge of DNA he could have made a better match to that date, when drawing up DNA spread maps. As a consequence, about half the book has to be read by ignoring his bias against Kurganisation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.3.191.166 (talk) 08:22, 4 June 2008 (UTC)