Shipping Menu

Resources & Shopping:

HEADLINE NEWS

Greek shipping hit by global financial crisis - The Associated Press
Greek shipping hit by global financial crisis
The Associated Press - 2 hours ago
With orders for 24 new vessels in shipyards in China, Japan and South Korea, the group has the fourth largest order book in Greece, Vafias says. ...

True Religion Apparel, Inc. Q3 2008 (Qtr End 9/30/08) Earnings ... - Seeking Alpha
True Religion Apparel, Inc. Q3 2008 (Qtr End 9/30/08) Earnings ...
Seeking Alpha, NY - 6 hours ago
For holiday our swimwear licensee is shipping bikinis and matching cover-ups with details ranging from embroideries to heritage denim to velvet. ...

Newsfeeds by Google

Shipping Online Store

Shipping Terms Books:
The Zuni Enigma: A Native American People's Possible Japanese Connection

Today's shopping tips: "Be wise in purchasing ..... find best value one"

---

Books

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
List Price: $16.95
Our Price: $9.85
You Save: $ 7.10 ( 42% )
(prices subject to change)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Customer Ratings:

Did a group of thirteenth-century Japanese journey to the American Southwest, there to merge with the people, language, and religion of the Zuni tribe? For many years, anthropologists have understood the Zuni in the American Southwest to occupy a special place in Native American culture and ethnography. Their language, religion, and blood type are startlingly different from all other tribes. Most puzzling, the Zuni appear to have much in common with the people of Japan. Dr. Nancy Yaw Davis examines the evidence underscoring the Zuni enigma, and suggests the circumstances that may have led Japanese on a religious quest-searching for the legendary "middle world" of Buddhism-across the Pacific and to the American Southwest more than seven hundred years ago.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 305
EAN: 9780393322309
ISBN: 0393322300
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2001-12
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
• House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest
• The Book of the Hopi
• 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance
• The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy)


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Would critics of Zuni Enigma exercise consistent standards of proof?
Comment: I am flabbergasted at the number of reviewers who think Davis did not prove her case. And I am thus 'gasted for two reasons. One, she scrupulously avoids asserting that anything she presents is a proof. Two, what she does present, is a level of evidence that I think is about ten times greater than the levels of evidence that are considered "proofs" of many other great modern dogmas. The Clovis-First religion, which is only crumbling now after a human-generation... has stood for those decades upon a depth of evidence that is matched or exceeded in just about any random chapter (perhaps page) of Davis' book.

Maybe a nice "swim" requires a person become acclimated to the water before plunging in. In this case, I wonder how these reviews would have been different had the reviewers read Before Columbus, by the late Cyrus H. Gordon before reading Zuni Enigma. Gordon had the stature, institutional affiliation, and perhaps the gender, to convince an otherwise sceptical person to consider the very linguistic arguments that critics feel so cozy criticising. And concerning linguistic arguments, Gordon was no lightweight. When all is said and done, I think Gordon, Davis, and others going all the way back to Ignatius Donnelly, will end up being proved right in the matters of many of these linguistic contentions.

Beside the need for adaptation to the temperature of these proverbial waters, there is another normalization required in the interests of fairness. Many of the native peoples of the American southwest, and of central America, claim that they arrived here after migration from across the western ocean. If this is their claim, on what basis does one set impossibly high standards of evidence for the proof of that claim? Do we think that the ancestors of these people were incapable of building and sailing a boat across the Pacific? Did these critics similarly object to the claims that an Irish monk sailed a crude boat across the Atlantic in the 6th century? When linguistic and other forms of evidence proves this latter claim correct, will they repent? I doubt it. But I expect to live to see the day when such proof becomes generally accepted.

And if a critic has any standard of evidence that is not met by Davis, I wonder what the critic would do with I.J. Gelb, of the University of Chicago who wrote A Study of Writing, wherein he concludes, on the basis of, ehem, lingustic evidence... that all of the languages well-known to him could be traced back to a Proto-Sumerian pictograph? Would these critics apply the same standards to a male researcher, who was a member of an august institution like the Oriental Institute? I rather suspect not. I think that these sneering double standards masquerade as wisdom when what they really are is smugness and herd instinct.

Davis herself, did some of her early studies at the University of Chicago. Many scientific heroes originated there. Harlan Bretz and M. King Hubbert come to mind these days. That the University of Chicago is an academic Olympus goes without saying. But when Davis turned up the first hints of these linguistic similarities between Zuni and Japanese in 1960, one of her advisors at UofC is alleged to have recommended that she not waste her time on this subject. In spite of the Olympian stature of UofC, I cannot help wondering who that Bozo was who thus advised her? What has he done that compares in its potential significance (and ultimate correctness I should add) to Davis's work? Even if one sets the bar so high that one can honestly claim they are not convinced of Davis' theory today, on what basis could one have felt so justified back then? What great paradigm shift was underway then, toward which Davis should have been steered for her sake and for ours? I dunno. It looks like a dead mind advising a living one. Please keep such advisors away from the students...

Women in the sciences. I did not go looking for this, but here is another rather angry thought. Perfectly good science rejected, seemingly because it does not bow to modern dogma. Nancy Yaw Davis is not alone. I would name many other women but for fear of making them guilty by association, and life is hard enough...

I admit that what one will take as proof is necessarily highly subjective. But it ought to be, at least, consistent, and I therefore wonder what facts of pre-history are conceeded by those who criticise a book like this. Any dolt can criticise, and the hyper-critic can seem smart when in the company of the perceptually-deprived majority. But it takes real smarts to see proof, or the suggestion thereof, BEFORE everyone else in the academic field has made up their minds.

I therefore propose a test. Like the old Turing Test, I propose to separate researchers into two camps. Those who accept Zuni Enigma as extremely valuable research that has either proved it's thesis or has come darn close to it, and those who don't. My prediction is this. The latter group will occupy all the tenured positions when, in a decade or so, hard-core genetic tests, and other types of evidence prove Davis to have been right all along. Whereupon anyone who points out that she was right and they were wrong, will be kicking the establishment in the shin and will therefore be seen as undeserving of tenure.(So who will dare present that eventual proof? Outsiders who did not know that they were not supposed to publish such things, in Journals patrolled by editors who, hopefully, will not know that there are toes in danger of crushing.)

And so it goes. Thank goodness that Davis got her book published. And thank goodness that Amazon.com assures that just about anyone can get their hands on a copy. This topic is too important to fall into the shadows.

If anyone can spare the dime, I suggest that they use this website to procure an old, worn copy of Gordon's Before Columbus. It makes a wonderful primer to this subject.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Japanese/Zuni origins
Comment: I believe the premise Ms. Davis puts forward stands a good possibility of being proven someday. Unfortunately, this book doesn't prove it. Only after reading the book several times did I become convinced there's probably some solid fact behind the Zuni origin she proposes.
One of the problems with the book in my view is the temptation Ms. Davis indulges to become an apologist for the Native American past. This leads her into directions she needn't have followed with time better spent supporting her own premises. Her attempts to find unlikely possibilities to explain evidence of NA cannibalism are one example. The fact is we humans have such things in our history. All of us. There's no reason, nor any excuse for attempting to mitigate such facts, nor to apologize for them.
The Zunis are a strange people. I've read some of the other reviews suggesting Zunis look the 'same as other Indians in the southwest', which I'd disagree with. The various tribes, including Zunis don't look the same as one another. People who live in this area can usually tell a Zuni or a Navajo (or Acoma, Laguna, Mescalero) from one another from a distance. To suggest the tribes look alike is probably a matter most southwesterners would find objectionable. I'd say Zunis look more like Japanese than, say, Mescaleros do, or than Navajos do.
In any case I think the Davis book is worth reading because of the interesting premise. I wish she'd had the time to pursue the matter further than she did.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An intriguing historical theory, not fully proved
Comment: This book develops Davis' theory that some Japanese, possibily motivated by a religious quest, migrated to North America and interbred with Native Americans, producing the people known today as the Zuni. She describes many points of physical and cultural similarity between the Zuni and the Japanese, though she does not provide direct evidence for a voyage across the Pacific. While Davis does not fully prove her case, her anthropological detective work has opened up some interesting leads. Some of this material may seem dry and technical to non-anthropologists. The book is well illustrated in black and white.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting theory for an open mind
Comment: I disagree with my fellow Zunis that the contents of the book couldn't have been possible or suggest discrediting it. The fact that the book is titled "Zuni Enigma" is correct in the true sense of the word enigma. It raises many more questions than can be answered and the author states this intention up front. She makes the plea that all these questions require further study. Whether you call it a theory or a hypothesis, it is to her credit that she recognized something that no one else had and now it is up to the experts in their respective fields to confirm or disprove her theory. As she mentioned, it took her over 40 years of gathering evidence and consulting before she wrote the book. I don't think anyone could accuse her of rushing to get the book out.
I can see how someone can be threatened by the mere mention of a connection to another culture such as the Japanese. Maybe it is a reaction to typical anthropological ideas where a Native American culture couldn't possibly have original or distinct ideas. This may be one reason that the typical Zuni would jump to conclusions about the author's intentions. I heard the radio talk show in Albuquerque, NM when the author was interviewed along with our governor and councilman. I felt ashamed as a Zuni how close minded and rude they were to Nancy Yaw Davis. She was very cordial to them and didn't get upset despite their behavior. She kept repeating that the material needed further study.
It seemed to me that the councilman only saw what he wanted to see and took several comparisons to words out of context. He seemed offended and thought that the book was about the Zuni's coming from Japan. It was a very uncharacteristically Zuni reaction. It is a part of our culture to treat everyone with respect and not to "hurt another's heart" whoever they might be.
The one aspect of the language that we might never know is the actual pronunciation of "old Zuni" words. Since Zuni is not a written language, it has changed throughout the years and some of the proposed identical words might have been more so in antiquity. One observation that stood out for me was the word "hai!" when listening to one another, to signify "I hear you, I understand, go on." As anyone who might have seen the "Shogun" series on TV, that was a Japanese response with the same meaning. The word might not be used with the younger people, but I remember hearing it a lot as I was growing up. The Zuni language is like no other surrounding Pueblo language or like any other in the world. I found the following observations compelling for this reason. Basic Zuni and Japanese syntax are both subject-object-verb. Both languages primarily alter words with suffixes, not with prefixes or internally. Japanese and Zuni employ 22 phonemes, and 17 are the same. All the vowels and 12 out of 16 consonants are identical.
I agree with the author about the uniqueness of our Zuni people and the rich heritage we still possess. I would recommend the book more for the respectful and appreciative explanation of our society in the first few chapters. I don't fully agree with the physical theories she introduces without the forensic investigations that can be conducted with modern technologies. If any contact was made in antiquity with the Japanese, both cultures might have benefited and contributed equally.
Again, the evidence shown in the book wasn't meant to be conclusive. It was meant to present a hypothesis that required further study. The only outright mistake I found was "Halona Itiwanna" being referred to as the middle place. Halona is across the river from the current location of Itiwanna. Halowa means to dream or make a mistake. Therefore, "Halona Itiwanna" means mistaken middle place. The true middle place is just called "Itiwanna."
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like anyone has continued with her work. I hope to travel to Japan someday and see for myself.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting Thesis but Sketchy Evidence
Comment: The author suggests that medieval Japanese sea-goers arrived just in time to join the Zuni Native Americans in their search for the center of the world. The Japanese, according to the author, were also on a search for the Western Paradise of the Jodo Shu and Shin-Shu Buddhists. Somehow these two searches became one and the Japanese group over time became part of the Zuni genetic and cultural heritage. Davis points to linguistic, genetic and cultural parallels between the Zuni and the Japanese, reconsiders ancient stories of the Zuni, and presents some dubious artifacts as evidence for her claims. I found myself wishing for more evidence more clearly presented. Still, the thesis is intriguing enough to warrant four stars.

---

NOTE: All online transactions are processed at Amazon.com's secure server,
using the latest technology on internet's secure transactions.
More on: Value Added Tax (VAT), Value Chain Management, Vendee, Vendor, Vessel, Volume Charge, Voyage, Voyage Charter, Voyage Number, Waiver Clause, War Risk, Warsaw Convention, Waste Logistics, Waybill, Weight Charge, Wharf, Wharfage, Yard, Yaw, Yawl Yield Management, York-Antwerp Rules, Zodiac, Zone Improvement Plan.