Is nothing sacred, even Tarzan?
Coming to a bookstore near you on September 18. I can hardly not wait:
LOS ANGELES, CA–(Marketwire – Jul 10, 2012) – When it comes to writing groundbreaking historical fiction, Robin Maxwell (www.robinmaxwell.com) isn’t one to monkey around. Acclaimed for her “electrifying prose,” (Publishers Weekly), the bestselling author relishes exposing the shocking secrets of history’s most iconic figures: Henry VIII’s impotence, “Virgin” Queen Elizabeth I’s bastard son, and Leonardo da Vinci hoaxing the Shroud of Turin. The genre-jumping JANE: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan is no exception.
Authorized by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate and the first of the Tarzan series in 100 years to be written by a woman, it peers between the vines to retell the legendary classic through Jane’s eyes. The Cambridge-educated paleoanthropologist — on a quest for Darwin’s “missing link” in human evolution — finds herself stranded far from civilization in an African Eden, circa 1905, with a majestic, nearly-naked wildman who believes he is an ape. Her greatest discovery is not a pile of ancient bones, but romance, high adventure and primordial sexual instincts.
“Finally an honest portrayal of the only woman of whom I have been really, really jealous,” says Jane Goodall of Maxwell’s novel. Reading the Tarzan books as a girl, the world’s foremost primatologist felt she’d have made a better mate for the ape-man than ERB’s Jane. “What a wonderful idea to write this book. Now I am jealous all over again!”
To better understand Robin Maxwell we need to go back to an interview with her that I mentioned in this blog back in February 2009. See Author Interview with Robin Maxwell of Signora da Vinci
. . . Like most people, I knew Leonardo was an amazing artist, anatomist and inventor (I’d been to one of the exhibits that display the inventions — flying machines and hydraulic systems to name a few) — that he’d created and that modern engineers executed. But I’d had no idea that he was a brilliant philosopher, an atheist who first and foremost worshipped nature; a vegetarian (at a time when such a thing was considered heretical); at different times in his life bisexual, homosexual and asexual; that he was publicly and excruciatingly tried for the crime of "sodomy"; and that he was probably a prime mover behind the Shroud of Turin hoax.
And now, Tarzan.
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Is the Shroud real? Probably.
The Shroud of Turin may be the real burial cloth of Jesus. The carbon dating, once seemingly proving it was a medieval fake, is now widely thought of as suspect and meaningless. Even the famous Atheist Richard Dawkins admits it is controversial. Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory, thinks more testing is needed. So do many other scientists and archeologists. This is because there are significant scientific and non-religious reasons to doubt the validity of the tests. Chemical analysis, all nicely peer-reviewed in scientific journals and subsequently confirmed by numerous chemists, shows that samples tested are chemically unlike the whole cloth. It was probably a mixture of older threads and newer threads woven into the cloth as part of a medieval repair. Recent robust statistical studies add weight to this theory. Philip Ball, the former physical science editor for Nature when the carbon dating results were published, recently wrote: “It’s fair to say that, despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of Turin is murkier than ever.” If we wish to be scientific we must admit we do not know how old the cloth is. But if the newer thread is about half of what was tested – and some evidence suggests that – it is possible that the cloth is from the time of Christ.
No one has a good idea how front and back images of a crucified man came to be on the cloth. Yes, it is possible to create images that look similar. But no one has created images that match the chemistry, peculiar superficiality and profoundly mysterious three-dimensional information content of the images on the Shroud. Again, this is all published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
We simply do not have enough reliable information to arrive at a scientifically rigorous conclusion. Years ago, as a skeptic of the Shroud, I came to realize that while I might believe it was a fake, I could not know so from the facts. Now, as someone who believes it is the real burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, I similarly realize that a leap of faith over unanswered questions is essential.
My name is Dan Porter. Please email me at DanielRobertPorter@gmail.com
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