In 1971 Manual Elizalde, a Philippine government minister with a dubious background, discovered a band of twenty-six "Stone Age" rain-forest dwellers living in total isolation. The tribe was soon featured in American newscasts and graced the cover of National Geographic. But after a series of aborted anthropological ventures, the Tasaday Reserve established by Ferdinand Marcos was closed to visitors, and the tribe vanished from public view.

Twelve years later, a Swiss reporter hiked into the area and discovered that the Tasaday were actually farmers whom Elizalde had coerced into dressing in leaves and posing with stone tools. The "anthropological find of the century" had become the "ethnographic hoax of the century." Or maybe not. Robin Hemley tells a story that is more complex than either the hoax proponents or the authenticity advocates might care to admit. It is a gripping and ultimately tragic tale of innocence found, lost, and found again. The author provides an afterword for this Bison Books edition.

The discovery of the supposedly "Stone Age" Tasaday tribe in the Phillippines and the exposure of the anthropological "hoax of the century."

About the Author
Robin Hemley is the author of numerous books, including The Last Studebaker and Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

Reviews
"Hemley, a thoughtful novelist and memoirist, painstakingly unravels a dense snarl of romantic notions, political agendas, scientific rivalries, thorny personalities, and rampant misperceptions to disclose a far stranger tale."--Booklist "Hemley is the rare Westerner who leaves the Tasaday with their enigma--and dignity--intact."--Publishers Weekly "An enthralling, impressive work for general readers and specialists alike."--Library Journal "Besides a terrific story, Invented Eden is a savvy caution: In imagining where we came from, scientists have friends, enemies, agendas, careers, and ulterior motives. Even when the chirpy gauchos of the media pampas argue about such basic stuff as whether humankind began, on the African savanna, pure of heart, telling stories and singing songs (which is what Bruce Chatwin wanted to believe), or as killers of our own kind with a double-knuckled antelope humerus (which is what Robert Ardrey used to insist) they rely on the latest morbid scenario from a desert-crazed ant-eater who has dreamed up our distant past and his future glory on an Ice Age toenail or a tooth. Worry instead about where we're going."--Harper's Magazine



Book Information
ISBN 9780803273634
Author Robin Hemley
Format Paperback
Page Count 346
Imprint Bison Books
Publisher University of Nebraska Press
Weight(grams) 499g