Lost Tribes, Sunken Continents,
and Ancient Astronauts
On the Wild Side of
Midwestern Archaeology
Larry Zimmerman
Department of Anthropology/Museum Studies
IUPUI
Why Search Elsewhere
When
The Midwest has it all?
Atlantis
UFOs
Why People Believe Weird Things
•Fun
•Fantasy and escapism
•The truth is too simple
•Mistrust of science
•Poor science education
•“Received” wisdom
Purposes of this lecture:
1. To show some examples of fantastic
archaeology in the Midwest
2. To provide some tools for examining fantastic
claims
3. To have some fun
The Mound Builders
The Archaeology of a Myth
The Core belief: Indians could not have
built the mounds and other amazing
earthworks, therefore someone else
must have.
Who? Almost anyone—Irish,
Scandinavians, Libyans, Tartars, Lost
Tribes of Israel, and many others
Why? Lack of reliable data, theological
modes of explanation, non-existence of a
tradition of scientific thought, a
continuing sense of wonder at the exotic
nature of the New World
The Result?
Wild speculation
A European (i.e., white)
History of America?
There was an apparent need
for an heroic past that would
resemble that of Europe.
The reasons are complex:
•The colonists were in one
sense a "people without a
history"
•Those living in Europe thought
that something must be wrong
with the environment here to
cause such revolutions
•Needed a "white" history to
claim the land - a precursor to
Manifest Destiny
A Case from Iowa, 1877
The Davenport Conspiracy
Jacob Gass
Goodbye to the Mound Builders
Or was it?
Mound Builder Survivals
In cult
archaeology
In science
Kennewick & the
“Solutrean Connection”
In religion
Hyper-Diffusionists
Ignatius Donnelly and Atlantis, 1882
Graham Hancock’s
Lost Civilization
at 12,500 BP
Barry Fell and Epigraphy
The Problem of Hoaxes
Hoaxes thrived from the late 1800s onward.
•Social contexts similar to Mound Builder Myth
Piltdown Man, 1912
Cardiff Giant, 1868 :
An Iowa Connection
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
David Hannum
Grave Creek Stone
1838, Ohio River
The Pre-Columbian explorers really
must have been “stoned.”
Bat Creek Stone
discovered in 1885 in
Smithsonian archaeological
dig in Tennessee. Hebrew
writing dates to 135 AD.
In 1860 David Wyrick found a stone box
and tablet with the Ten Commandments in
Hebrew in a Newark, Ohio, burial mound
One of many recent
“discoveries” from
Burrows Cave, Illinois
The Saga of Burrows Cave―Olney, Illinois
A cache of
Mauritanian coins
from the cave
A Mauritanian warship
The
Crucifixion
The scarification of this man
identifies him as Senegalese.
One of the relatively few marble slabs removed from
the Illinois site portrays either a Mauritanian ruler or
high priest of the 1st Century A.D.
Hoax or not?
The Kensington Runestone
Olaf Ohman, 1898
Not Olaf Ohman, 2003
“2nd Minn. Runestone a hoax, say carvers”
AVM stone inscription
On and on and on…
The Kensington Runestone
Approaching a Research Question Holistically
Alice Beck Kehoe
2005
“This is a very interesting and informative review of both the Kensington Runestone and the
process of archaeological (and historical) inquiry. In true Kehoe style, it is not only well written
and organized, but also provocative. Although the artifact has long ago been discounted and
forgotten by most archaeologists, Kehoe argues convincingly that it deserves a second look.” —
George Nicholas, Simon Fraser University
“Kehoe challenges readers to evaluate their own attachment to taken-for-granted paradigms. An
ideal, fittingly controversial topic for critical thinking.” — Guy Gibbon, University of Minnesota
“Larry Zimmerman for once didn’t see eye to eye with me, but we had good discussions; maybe
seeing the argument laid out here will satisfy him.” From the acknowledgements.
They really got around!
They really got around!
Kensington Runestone - April 24th, 1362
Heavener Runestone - November 11th, 1012
Poteau Runestone - November 11th 1017
Shawnee Runestone - November 24th, 1024
Tulsa Runestone - December 2nd, 1022
Why won’t such controversies go away?
Too many people have too much of
their identity wrapped up in whether
a stone is real or a hoax.
Just how many Vikings came?
This book says there are now
fewer than 42 Viking settlements
in Chickasaw, Howard, and
Mitchell Counties in Iowa and
Mower County in Minnesota.
Mooring stone?
Apparently, quite a few!
Map of the grave of 12 Vikings found by
dowsing near Spring Grove, MN
Prince Madoc: The Founder of
Clark County Indiana
A fortification against hostile Indians?
Welsh armor
from a grave?
…and progenitor of the
Mandan Indians of the
Missouri River
Based on the painter George Catlin’s comments:
•The Mandans spoke Welsh (he didn’t know Welsh!)
•They used a boat which was know as the Welsh Coracle
•Many of the Mandans had blond hair and blue eyes
Coracle or “bull boat”
DAR Plaque at Mobile Bay
Do people in Indiana take Madoc seriously?
The people at the Falls of the Ohio
Interpretive Center certainly seem to.
Perhaps the location of the Welsh
warrior at the rear end of the
mammoth is entirely appropriate.
Does all of this start to
seem familiar?
…and by the way, the Romans got to
the Falls of the Ohio too.
Claudius II (left, 268 AD), Maximinus I (right, 312 AD)
Roman coins found at the Falls of the Ohio in 1963,
purportedly part of a cache left by Roman explorers
There were giants in the earth
in those days… (Gen.6:1-4)
George W. Hill, M.D., dug out a skeleton "of unusual size" in a
mound of Ashland County, Ohio. In 1879, a nine-foot, eight-inch
skeleton was excavated from a mound near Brewersville, Indiana.
The bones, which were stored in a grain mill, were swept away in
the 1937 Flood (Indianapolis News, Nov 10, 1975).
Could this be the
remains of one?
Photo is a 2004 Web hoax
Ancient Astronauts?
In his books Erich von Däniken suggests that many of
the earth’s monuments were built by ancient astronauts.
“Looking into his past, we should not be too surprised to find that his rather broad
criterion of truthfulness has, at times, brought him into conflict with the law. A
court in his native Switzerland found Von Däniken guilty of embezzlement, forgery,
and fraud, sentencing him to three and a half years in prison” (Ref: New York Times
Book Review). “A court psychiatrist called him a pathological liar” (Ref. Playboy).
Von Däniken’s Swiss Mystery Park
Themenpavillons
Vimana
Orient
Maya
MegaStones
Contact
Nazca
Challenge
MegaStones – a time machine for the high priests?
From the
MegaStones
Pavillion, a
Stonehenge
lightshow.
On the Salisbury Plains of southwest England, one finds
Stonehenge, a cult worship site that was built thousands of
years ago. Is Stonehenge a megalithic time machine that
reaches not only into the past but also far into the future?
Ancient Astronauts:
An industry in itself
Ancient Astronauts and The
Pyramids of Rock Lake,Wisconsin
Could Wisconsin’s pyramids have been built by ancestors
of the occupants of this UFO (left) reported in in West
Central Minnesota, November, 2003, as suggested
initially by Fate magazine writer Frank Joseph?.
Mutual UFO
Network of
Indiana logo
Maybe this UFO photographed over Indiana made
the crop circles near Ft. Wayne…
…or the ones near Wausau, Wisconsin.
After all,
both places
are in the
The Minnesota Iceman
Artist Lee Krystek’s conception of the Iceman
The tour trucks
A juvenile
Bigfoot?
Frank Hansen and the Iceman
”[I]f
there is a Barnum Award, my
vote would go to Frank D. Hansen.”
Anthropologist John Napier, 1972
Bigfoot and Other Critters
Mike Quast and Bigfoot
sightings in Minnesota
A few of the reported monsters in the Midwest
Illinois:The Hardin Monster, Murphysboro Mud
Monster,
Indiana: The Beast of Busco (Churubusco), The
Crawfordsville Monster
Wisconsin: The Lake Koshkonong Monster, Long
Lake, Elkhart Lake, Lake Geneva, Lake Kegonsa,
Lake Michigan, Oconomowoc Lake, Pewaukee Lake,
Red Cedar Lake,Rock Lake, Lake Superior, Sturgeon
Lakes, Mendota and Monona in Madison
Yep, even right here in good ol’ Indiana.
30 reported Bigfoot sightings just since 1997, the majority in southern Indiana
Sound? Bigfoot “talk”
from near Akron, OH
Whats’ the Harm?
Many diminish human abilities & accomplishments.
They deprive people of knowledge about their real history.
They draw funding away from scientific research.
Belief in pseudoscientific ideas about “harmless” notions
supports belief in pseudoscientific belief about harmful
notions, such as false medical claims.
Other than that, not much.
Recognizing Pseudoscientific Claims
about the Past
Sometimes you can read a book by its cover!
Are real scientists talking about it?
Be a skeptic…
…but have the good sense to recognize when a
belief or belief system about the past is
profoundly important to an individual or culture.
Unfortunately, some archaeologists don’t.
"Traditional knowledge" has produced flat earths, geocentricism,
mice spontaneously generated out of piles of rubbish, women arising
from men's ribs, talking ravens, polygenesis, the superiority or
inferiority of this group or that, and the historically latest "first
people" of the Black Hills upwelling from holes in the ground.
Science, by its very nature, must challenge, not "respect" or
"acknowledge as valid," such folk renditions of the past.
Ronald Mason (SAA Bulletin)
A Skeptic’s Tools
Always keep an open mind, but use these tools:
Irrefutable hypothesis
Argument by authority
Appeal to myth
Argument by spurious similarity
Heresy does not equal correctness
Occam's razor
Extraordinary claims demand
extraordinary proof
Good old common sense
http://www.skeptic.com
http://www.csicop.org/si/
Satan’s Corpse in South Dakota?
Some good places for more information
on cult archaeology
Diversity in Archaeology
The Skeptics Society