UFO UpDates Mailing List
From: Bob Tidwell <bob.t@mindspring.com>
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1998 12:40:54 -0700
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 04:47:35 -0400
Subject: PHENOMENON - Issue #6 - Part 1
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PHENOMENON
E-Mail Newsletter A Forum for the
# 6 - Part 1 Strangeness Around us
April 18, 1998
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In This Issue
~~~ Part 1 ~~~
*** Quote of the Week
*** Editor's Notes for Part 1
*** Archeological Coverups?
~~~ Part 2 ~~~
*** Editor's Notes for Part 2
*** The PHOENIX GAZETTE Article
*** Newsletter Guidelines
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-------------------
Quote of the Week
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The only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain.
Pliny the Elder - "Historia Naturalis"
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---------------------------
Editor's Notes for Part 1
---------------------------
Welcome to issue number 6.
I will be departing from some of my regular formats in the next
few issues, in order to address several topics that have been
discussed over the net in the past couple of weeks. The biggest
issue making the rounds at the moment, is whether or not the
"face on Mars" is an artificial structure, or just a quirk of
Martian nature. It appears that supporters and non-supporters
have already drawn their battle lines, without taking the time to
fully understand what the battle is about in the first place.
First, let's look at how archeology is suppressed on this world.
Then we have to decide if this same Government can be believed
concerning archeology on another world.
As always, I also respect your opinions, and would like to hear
them. Just drop us an E-Mail at:
bob.t@mindspring.com
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Archeological Coverups?
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by David Hatcher Childress
Most of us are familiar with the last scene in the popular
Indiana Jones archeological adventure film RAIDERS OF THE LOST
ARK in which an important historical artefact, the Ark of the
Covenant from the Temple in Jerusalem, is locked in a crate and
put in a giant warehouse, never to be seen again, thus ensuring
that no history books will have to be rewritten and no history
professor will have to revise the lecture that he has been giving
for the last forty years.
While the film was fiction, the scene in which an important
ancient relic is buried in a warehouse is uncomfortably close to
reality for many researchers. To those who investigate
allegations of archaeological cover-ups, there are disturbing
indications that the most important archaeological institute in
the UnitedmStates, the Smithsonian Institute, an independent
federal agency, has been actively suppressing some of the most
interesting and important archaeological discoveries made in the
Americas.
The Vatican has been long accused of keeping artefacts and
ancient books in their vast cellars, without allowing the outside
world access to them. These secret treasures, often of a
controversial historical or religious nature, are allegedly
suppressed by the Catholic Church because they might damage the
church's credibility, or perhaps cast their official texts in
doubt. Sadly, there is overwhelming evidence that something very
similar is happening with the Smithsonian Institution.
The cover-up and alleged suppression of archaeological evidence
began in late 1881 when John Wesley Powell, the geologist famous
for exploring the Grand Canyon, appointed Cyrus Thomas as the
director of the Eastern Mound Division of the Smithsonian
Institution's Bureau of Ethnology.
When Thomas came to the Bureau of Ethnology he was a "pronounced
believer in the existence of a race of Mound Builders, distinct
from the American Indians."
However, John Wesley Powell, the director of the Bureau of
Ethnology, a very sympathetic man toward the American Indians,
had lived with the peaceful Winnebago Indians of Wisconsin for
many years as a youth and felt that American Indians were
unfairly thought of as primitive and savage.
The Smithsonian began to promote the idea that Native Americans,
at that time being exterminated in the Indian Wars, were
descended from advanced civilisations and were worthy of respect
and protection.
They also began a program of suppressing any archaeological
evidence that lent credence to the school of thought known as
Diffusionism, a school which believes that throughout history
there has been widespread dispersion of culture and civilisation
via contact by ship and major trade routes.
The Smithsonian opted for the opposite school, known as
Isolationism. Isolationism holds that most civilisations are
isolated from each other and that there has been very little
contact between them, especially those that are separated by
bodies of water. In this intellectual war that started in the
1880s, it was held that even contact between the civilisations
of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys were rare, and certainly
these civilisations did not have any contact with such advanced
cultures as the Mayas, Toltecs, or Aztecs in Mexico and Central
America. By Old World standards this is an extreme, and even
ridiculous idea, considering that the river system reached to
the Gulf of Mexico and these civilisations were as close as the
opposite shore of the gulf. It was like saying that cultures in
the Black Sea area could not have had contact with the
Mediterranean.
When the contents of many ancient mounds and pyramids of the
Midwest were examined, it was shown that the history of the
Mississippi River Valleys was that of an ancient and
sophisticated culture that had been in contact with Europe and
other areas. Not only that, the contents of many mounds revealed
burials of huge men, sometimes seven or eight feet tall, in full
armour with swords and sometimes huge treasures.
For instance, when Spiro Mound in Oklahoma was excavated in the
1930's, a tall man in full armour was discovered along with a pot
of thousands of pearls and other artefacts, the largest such
treasure so far documented. The whereabouts of the man in armour
is unknown and it is quite likely that it eventually was taken to
the Smithsonian Institution.
In a private conversation with a well-known historical researcher
(who shall remain nameless), I was told that a former employee of
the Smithsonian, who was dismissed for defending the view of
diffusionism in the Americas (i.e. the heresy that other ancient
civilisations may have visited the shores of North and South
America during the many millenia before Columbus), alleged that
the Smithsonian at one time had actually taken a barge full of
unusual artefacts out into the Atlantic and dumped them in the
ocean.
Though the idea of the Smithsonian' covering up a valuable
archaeological find is difficult to accept for some, there is,
sadly, a great deal of evidence to suggest that the Smithsonian
Institution has knowingly covered up and 'lost' important
archaeological relics. The STONEWATCH NEWSLETTER of the
Gungywamp Society in Connecticut, which researches megalithic
sites in New England, had a curious story in their Winter 1992
issue about stone coffins discovered in 1892 in Alabama which
were sent to the Smithsonian Institution and then 'lost'.
According to the newsletter, researcher Frederick J. Pohl wrote
an intriguing letter in 1950 to the late Dr.T.C. Lethbridge, a
British archaeologist.
The letter from Pohl stated, "A professor of geology sent me a
reprint (of the) Smithsonian Institution, THE CRUMF BURIAL CAVE
by Frank Burns, US Geological Survey, from the report of the US
National Museum for 1892, pp 451-454, 1984. In the Crumf Cave,
southern branch of the Warrior River, in Murphy's Valley, Blount
County, Alabama, accessible from Mobile Bay by river, were
coffins of wood hollowed out by fire, aided by stone or copper
chisels. Either of these coffins were taken to the Smithsonian.
They were about 7.5 feet long, 14" to 18" wide, 6" to 7" deep.
Lids open.
I wrote recently to the Smithsonian, and received a reply March
11th from F.M. Setzler, Head Curator of Department of
Anthropology (He said) 'We have not been able to find the
specimens in our collections, though records show that they were
received."
David Barron, President of the Gungywamp Society was eventually
told by the Smithsonian in 1992 that the coffins were actually
wooden troughs and that they could not be viewed anyway
because they were housed in an asbestos-contaminated
warehouse. This warehouse was to be closed for the next ten years
and no one was allowed in except the Smithsonian personnel!
Ivan T. Sanderson, a well-known zoologist and frequent guest on
Johnny Carson's TONIGHT SHOW in the 1960s (usually with an exotic
animal with a pangolin or a lemur), once related a curious story
about a letter he received regarding an engineer who was
stationed on the Aleutian island of Shemya during World War II.
While building an airstrip, his crew bulldozed a group of hills
and discovered under several sedimentary layers what appeared to
be human remains. The Alaskan mound was in fact a graveyard of
gigantic human remains, consisting of crania and long leg bones.
The crania measured from 22 to 24 inches from base to crown.
Since an adult skull normally measures about eight inches from
back to front, such a large crania would imply an immense size
for a normally proportioned human. Furthermore, every skull was
said to have been neatly trepanned (a process of cutting a hole
in the upper portion of the skull).
In fact, the habit of flattening the skull of an infant and
forcing it to grow in an elongated shape was a practice used by
ancient Peruvians, the Mayas, and the Flathead Indians of
Montana. Sanderson tried to gather further proof, eventually
receiving a letter from another member of the unit who
confirmed the report. The letters both indicated that the
Smithsonian Institution had collected the remains, yet nothing
else was heard. Sanderson seemed convinced that the Smithsonian
Institution had received the bizarre relics, but wondered why
they would not release the data. He asks, "...is it that these
people cannot face rewriting all the textbooks?"
In 1944 an accidental discovery of an even more controversial
nature was made by Waldemar Julsrud at Acambaro, Mexico.
Acambaro is in the state of Guanajuato, 175 miles northwest of
Mexico City. The strange archaeological site there yielded over
33,500 objects of ceramic; stone, including jade; and knives of
obsidian (sharper than steel and still used today in heart
surgery). Jalsrud, a prominent local German merchant, also found
statues ranging from less than an inch to six feet in length
depicting great reptiles, some of them in ACTIVE ASSOCIATION with
humans - generally eating them, but in some bizarre statuettes an
erotic association was indicated. To observers many of these
creatures resembled dinosaurs.
Jalsrud crammed this collection into twelve rooms of his expanded
house. There startling representations of Negroes, Orientals, and
bearded Caucasians were included as were motifs of Egyptians,
Sumerian and other ancient non-hemispheric civilisations, as well
as portrayals of Bigfoot and aquatic monsterlike creatures,
weird human-animal mixtures, and a host of other inexplicable
creations. Teeth from an extinct Ice Age horse, the skeleton of a
mammoth, and a number of human skulls were found at the same
site as the ceramic artefacts.
Radio-carbon dating in the laboratories of the University of
Pennsylvania and additional tests using the thermoluminescence
method of dating pottery were performed to determine the age of
the objects. Results indicated the objects were made about 6,500
years ago, around 4,500 BC. A team of experts at another
university, shown Jalrud's half-dozen samples but unaware of
their origin, ruled out the possibility that they could have been
modern reproductions. However, they fell silent when told of
their controversial source.
In 1952, in an effort to debunk this weird collection which was
gaining a certain amount of fame, American archaeologist Charles
C. DiPeso claimed to have minutely examined the then 32,000
pieces within not more than four hours spent at the home of
Julsrud. In a forthcoming book, long delayed by continuing
developments in his investigation, archaeological investigator
John H. Tierney, who has lectured on the case for decades, points
out that to have done that DiPeso would have had to have
inspected 133 pieces per minute steadily for four hours, whereas
in actuality, it would have required weeks merely to have
separated the massive jumble of exhibits and arranged them
properly for a valid evaluation.
Tierney, who collaborated with the later Professor Hapgood, the
late William N. Russell, and others in the investigation,
charges that the Smithsonian Institution and other archaeological
authorities conducted a campaign of disinformation against the
discoveries. The Smithsonian had, early in the controversy,
dismissed the entire Acambaro collection as an elaborate hoax.
Also, utilising the Freedom of Information Act, Tierney
discovered that practically the entirety of the Smithsonian's
Julsrud case files are missing.
After two expeditions to the site in 1955 and 1968, Professor
Charles Hapgood, a professor of history and anthropology at the
University of New Hampshire, recorded the results of his 18-year
investigation of Acambaro in a privately printed book entitled
MYSTERY IN ACAMBARO. Hapgood was initially an open-minded
skeptic concerning the collection but became a believer after his
first visit in 1955, at which time he witnessed some of the
figures being excavated and even dictated to the diggers where he
wanted them to dig.
Adding to the mind-boggling aspects of this controversy is the
fact that the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia,
through the late Director of PreHispanic Monuments, Dr. Eduardo
Noguera, (who, as head of an official investigating team at the
site, issued a report which Tierney will be publishing), admitted
"the apparent scientific legality with which these objects were
found." Despite evidence of their own eyes, however, officials
declared that because of the objects 'fantastic' nature, they had
to have been a hoax played on Julsrud!
A disappointed but ever-hopeful Julsrud died. His house was sold
and the collection put in storage. The collection is not
currently open to the public.
Perhaps the most amazing suppression of all is the excavation of
an Egyptian tomb by the Smithsonian itself in Arizona. A lengthy
front page story of the PHOENIX GAZETTE on 5 April 1909, gave a
highly detailed report of the discovery and excavation of a
rock-cut vault by an expedition led by a Professor S.A. Jordan of
the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian, however, claims to have
absolutely no knowledge of the discovery or its discoverers.
The World Explorers Club decided to check on this story by
calling the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., though we felt there
was little chance of getting any real information. After speaking
briefly to an operator, we were transferred to a Smithsonian
staff archaeologist, and a woman's voice came on the phone and
identified herself.
I told her that I was investigating a story from a 1909 Phoenix
newspaper article about the Smithsonian Institution's having
excavated rock-cut vaults in the Grand Canyon where Egyptian
artefacts had been discovered, and whether the Smithsonian
Institution could give me any more information on the subject.
"Well, the first thing I can tell you, before we go any further,"
she said, "is that no Egyptian artefacts of any kind have ever
been found in North or South America. Therefore, I can tell you
that the Smithsonian Institute has never been involved in any
such excavations." She was quite helpful and polite but, in the
end, knew nothing. Neither she nor anyone else with whom I spoke
could find any record of the discovery or either G.E. Kinkaid and
Professor S.A. Jordan.
While it cannot be discounted that the entire story is an
elaborate newspaper hoax, the fact that it was on the front page,
named the prestigious Smithsonian Institution, and gave a highly
detailed story that went on or several pages, lends a great deal
to its credibility. It is hard to believe such a story could have
come out of thin air.
Is the Smithsonian Institution covering up an archaeological
discovery of immense importance? If this story is true it would
radically change the current view that there was no transoceanic
contact in pre-Columbian times, and that all American Indians, on
both continents, are descended from Ice Age explorers who came
across the Bering Strait. (Any information on G.E. Kinkaid and
Professor S.A. Jordan, or their alleged discoveries, that readers
may have would be greatly appreciated.....write to Childress at
the World Explorers Club [address at end of article]
Is the idea that ancient Egyptians came to the Arizona area in
the ancient past so objectionable and preposterous that it must
be covered up? Perhaps the Smithsonian Institution is more
interested in maintaining the status quo than rocking the boat
with astonishing new discoveries that overturn previously
accepted academic teachings.
Historian and linguist Carl Hart, editor of WORLD EXPLORER, then
obtained a hiker's map of the Grand Canyon from a bookstore in
Chicago. Poring over the map, we were amazed to see that much of
the area on the north side of the canyon has Egyptian names. The
area around Ninety-four Mile Creek and Trinity Creek had areas
(rock formations, apparently) with names like Tower of Set, Tower
of Ra, Horus Temple, Osiris Temple, and Isis Temple. In the
Haunted Canyon area were such names as the Cheops Pyramid, the
Buddha Cloister, Buddha Temple, Manu Temple and Shiva Temple. Was
there any relationship between these places and the alleged
Egyptian discoveries in the Grand Canyon?
We called a state archaeologist at the Grand Canyon, and were
told that the early explorers had just liked Egyptian and Hindu
names, but that it was true that this area was off limits to
hikers or other visitors, "because of dangerous caves."
Indeed, this entire area with the Egyptian and Hindu place names
in the Grand Canyon is a forbidden zone - no one is allowed into
this large area.
We could only conclude that this was the area where the vaults
were located. Yet today, this area is curiously off-limits to
all hikers and even, in large part, park personnel.
I believe that the discerning reader will see that if only a
small part of the "Smithsoniangate" evidence is true, then our
most hallowed archaeological institution has been actively
involved in suppressing evidence for advanced American cultures,
evidence for ancient voyages of various cultures to North
America, evidence for anomalistic giants and other oddball
artefacts, and evidence that tends to disprove the official dogma
that is now the history of North America.
The Smithsonian's Board of Regents still refuses to open its
meetings to the news media or the public. If Americans were ever
allowed inside the 'nation's attic', as the Smithsonian has been
called, what skeletons might they find?
World Explorers Club
403 Kemp Street
Kempton, Illinois 60946-0074 USA
Tel : (815) 253-6390
FAX : (815) 253-6300
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~~~ End of Part 1 ~~~
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