| Michael A. Cremo | |
|---|---|
Michael A. Cremo |
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| Born | July 15, 1948 Schenectady, New York |
| Residence | Los Angeles, CA |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Author, editor |
| Religion | Gaudiya Vaishnavism |
| Website | |
| www.MCremo.com | |
Michael A. Cremo (born July 15, 1948, Schenectady, New York), also known as Drutakarma Dasa, is an American Hindu creationist whose work argues that modern humans have lived on the earth for billions of years.[1] Cremo's book, Forbidden Archeology, has attracted attention from Hindu creationists and paranormalists,[2] but has been criticized by scholars for ignorance of basic archeology.[3][4] Scholars of the mainstream archaeological and paleoanthropological communities have described his work as pseudoscience.[5][6] Cremo identifies himself as a "Vedic creationist."[7][8]
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Cremo's father, Salvatore Cremo, was a United States military intelligence officer. Michael Cremo lived with his family in Germany, where he went to high school. They spent several summers travelling throughout Europe. He attended George Washington University from 1966 to 1968, then served in the United States Navy.[9]
Cremo is a member of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and the Bhaktivedanta Institute. He has written several books and articles about Hindu spirituality under the name Drutakarma Dasa. He has also been a contributing editor to the magazine Back to Godhead and a bhakti yoga teacher. Cremo told Contemporary Authors that he decided to devote his life to Krishna in the early 1970s, after receiving a copy of the Bhagavad Gita at a Grateful Dead concert.[9] In the end of 1990s he authored a paper on the official ISKCON statement on capital punishment.[10] His work on "Puranic Time and the Archaeological Record" was published in ISKCON Communications Journal[11] and Time and Archaeology.[12]
In 1993 Cremo co-wrote Forbidden Archeology with Richard L. Thompson. The book claims that humans have lived on the earth for millions, or billions, of years, and that the scientific establishment has suppressed the fossil evidence of extreme human antiquity.[9] He speaks about a knowledge filter (confirmation bias) as the cause of this suppression.
Cremo continues this theme in Forbidden Archeology's Impact (1998) and Human Devolution (2003). Cremo identifies as a "Vedic archeologist", since he believes his findings support the story of humanity described in the Vedas.[2] The Indian magazine Frontline called Cremo and Thompson "the intellectual force driving Vedic creationism in America".[13]
Cremo's work has attracted attention from Hindu creationists and paranormalists.[2] He has been a frequent guest on the late-night talk radio show Coast to Coast AM, which specialises in the paranormal and conspiracy theories.[14] His books provided much of the content for the widely criticized 1996 NBC special The Mysterious Origins of Man.[15]
Forbidden Archeology has been criticized for failing to test simpler hypotheses before proceeding to propose more complex ones (a violation of Occam's razor); and for cherry picking outdated evidence (often from the 19th and early 20th centuries) that supports the authors' position, while ignoring or ridiculing more recent information that refutes or challenges their claims.[16] Tom Morrow of the National Center for Science Education noted that Cremo's "specimens no longer exist" and called his work pseudoscience.[1]
His book Human Devolution, which like Forbidden Archeology claims that modern man has existed for millions of years, attempts to prove this by citing "every possible research into the paranormal ever conducted anywhere to 'prove' the truth of holist Vedic cosmology which proposes the presence of a spiritual element in all matter (which takes different forms, thereby explaining the theory of 'devolution')."[17]
In recent years, Cremo has organized a number of conferences where ISKCON associated academics exchanged views and experiences.[18] In March 2009, Cremo appeared in a History Channel television series called Ancient Aliens, and in 2010 a mini series of the same name.[19]