Please welcome for February 2014 Author of the Month, writer and researcher Richard Dewhurst. Richard J. Dewhurst is the Emmy Award–winning writer of the HBO feature documentary Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. A graduate of NYU with degrees in journalism, film, and television, he…
The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America - Graham Hancock Official Website Menu Home Books Visionary America Before Magicians of the Gods War God Entangled Supernatural Fingerprints of the Gods The Sign and the Seal Talks & Events Explore Bio Galleries Videos Archive Links Our Cloud Host Recommended Reading Blog Articles AOM News Desk Message Board February 2014 AOM: The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America by Richard Dewhurst Published 31st January 2014 | 1 Comment | Articles, Author of the Month Books by Richard Dewhurst The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America: The Missing Skeletons and the Great Smithsonian Cover-Up US - UK - CA JP - DE - ES - FR - IT Please welcome for February 2014 Author of the Month, writer and researcher Richard Dewhurst. Richard J. Dewhurst is the Emmy Award–winning writer of the HBO feature documentary Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. A graduate of NYU with degrees in journalism, film, and television, he has written and edited for the History Channel, the Arts & Entertainment Channel, PBS, Fox Television and Fox Films, ABC News, TNT, Paramount Pictures, and the Miami Herald. His new book The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America, meticulously chronicles the missing giant skeletons of one of the Smithsonian’s greatest cover-ups. Meet Richard this month on the AoM Message Boards http://grahamhancock.com/f/aom/ The eyes of that species of extinct Giant, whose bones fill the Mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara, as ours do now.” – Abraham Lincoln, 1848 OF CONEHEADS AND KINGS In many respects the West Virginia Mounds are key to understanding the true story of the Giants who once ruled America. Not only are the West Virginia mound sites in Charleston, Wheeling and Moundsville, some of the most significant in size and number in United States, but in 1883, the Smithsonian dispatched a team of archaeologists to the South Charleston Mound led by Colonel Morris of the Smithsonian to conduct an extensive dig of the 50 mounds they found there and issue a detailed report. The report shows quite clearly that the team uncovered numerous giants, one of which was 7’6”tall and decorated with six heavy copper bracelets on each wrist and on his shoulder were three large plates of mica. In another mound, they found a circle of ten skeletons surrounding another giant skeleton, as well as underground vaults, various copper and mica ornaments, religious items, pipes and spearheads. Then, at a depth of nine feet, another giant skeleton was found in the remains of a bark coffin and it was noted in their report that this giant had a skull, which was of “the compressed or flat-head type.” In other words, this skeleton exhibited conehead characteristics similar to those found in South America and Egypt. As digs progressed in other parts of the state, archaeologists in Wheeling, WV found another grouping a giants ranging in height from 6’7” to 7’6” and also displaying unusual skull formations with low foreheads that sloped back gradually, “while the back part of the head is very prominent, much more so than the skulls of people living today.” Adjacent to these finds, an eight-mile wall and a hilltop temple were also found in Marshall County on Mount Carbon. And further down the Cheat River in 1774 settlers found what they dubbed “The Giant Town,” with numerous gigantic skeletons the most significant being that of an 8-foot tall male. Click for a larger view THE WHITE GIANTS Extremely ancient human remains have been found throughout New York State and New England that date back to at least 9,000 B.C. In a report from the Syracuse Herald American in 1983, anthropologists from the Buffalo Museum of Science, 1,400 artifacts were dug up from a site called Phoenix Hill. In a county historical report called “A History of Livingston County, New York,” published in 1824, reported that in 1811, an Indian Mound on Mount Morris, rude medals, pipes and articles were uncovered in association with the remains of a giant “of enormous size, the jawbone of which was so large that Adam Holslander placed it, mask-like over his own chin and jaw.” In 1871, a newspaper report from Cayuga NY reports that 200 skeletons were removed from a collapsed mound on the banks of the Grand River. These skeletons were said to be in a perfect state of preservation and that “the men were of gigantic stature, some of them measuring nine feet, very few of them being less than seven feet.” Later the report notes that a lost city was found on a farm in Dunville NY, in association with two tons of charcoal and various implements indicating the site of an ancient forge. Further digging revealed axes, tomahawks, beads and several smoking pipes, some engraved with dogs heads. Giant skeletons were also unearthed “the skulls of which are of an enormous size and all manner of shape, some being twice the size of a normal human.” In addition to the human skeletons found in NY State, there is also the famous case of “The Cardiff Giant,” a white alabaster-like statue of an 11-foot man which showed an exposed penis and hieroglyphic inscriptions. This statue caused a world-wide sensation and was exhibited in New York City to thousands of paying customers before it was declared a fake by the NY newspapers, despite the fact that scholars from Harvard and elsewhere insisted that the statue was genuine. THE PEARLY QUEEN AND HER COURT For sheer mind-blowing diversity, the discoveries across the state of Ohio may be the richest and most unusual in the country. Not only are there numerous finds of giants 8-10 feet tall, but there are also related finds that are equally astonishing. Among the most significant are the Cincinnati tablets inscribed with hieroglyphs, textiles that resemble those from Assyria and Babylon, a skull examined by a surgeon in Cincinnati that exhibits evidence of brain surgery that “shows knowledge of practical surgery scarcely excelled at the present day,” as well as evidence of metallurgy, forges, slag, iron and even saws. In a mound in Chillicothe, a metal perforated bird was found, in addition to numerous carved pipes, one even depicting a duck riding on a fish. At the same mound site in Chillicothe dozens of skeletons were found wearing copper masks, while at a related site in the same area at a depth of 14 feet “a massive skeleton was found encased in copper armor.” Even more astonishing, in an excavation for a house in West Hickory, workers exhumed “an enormous iron helmet corroded with rust.” In another dig, performed in 1889 in Southern Ohio, a giant was found buried with the bones of panther and another with 147 bone and shell beads made from Conch and Pyrula shells imported from the Atlantic Ocean was unearthed. As amazing as all these finds are, the discoveries in Newark Ohio deserve special mention. As reported on the Ohio State University website, several incised and engraved stones with writing and hieroglyphs were discovered, including the famous Newark “Holy Stone,” with a condensed version of the Ten Commandments or Decalogue engraved on it in a peculiar form of post-Exilic square Hebrew letters. Also in Newark, the magnificent skeleton of an 8-foot tall Queen bedecked in opulent copper jewelry and pearls was uncovered, while in Centralia another giant was found encased in copper armor, his mouth stuffed with pearls “of immense size.” In addition, in Bainbridge Ohio, four bodies were found wrapped in pearl-covered robes, while in a related find in the area one mound yielded two bushels of pearls containing over 500,000 individual fresh-water pearls, surrounding two giants wearing copper helmets, one provided with a copper nose. In Cartersville, a team from the Smithsonian found a vault with “the skeleton of a giant 7’2.” This skeleton had waist-length jet-black hair. Surrounding this giant, the Smithsonian team found more bodies and noted in their report that “the bodies had been prepared after the manner of mummies and upon the stones that covered the vault were carved inscriptions.” All this evidence was shipped to the Smithsonian and in the report it noted “this is the most interesting collection ever found in America.” COPPER-HELMETED GIANTS RULE There have been a number of intriguing finds in Indiana over the years including the discovery of eight skeletons, one clad in copper armor, buried in a perfect circle. In 1888, the Logan Grey’s, a military group led by A.M. Jones were conducting military exercises on a small island on Eagle Lake near Warsaw, Indiana. Under a flat stone, they discovered a hole that led to the entrance to a secret cave that was twenty-five-feet long, fifteen feet wide and eight feet deep. Inside was the skeleton of a 6’9” giant buried next to a stream that led to what was called a sacred pool. In 1889, near Kewanna, standing stones were found on a mound and underneath another giant was unearthed, while in Whitlock, Indiana another giant was found in association with a group buried in a seating position. One of the largest finds on record was reported in “A History of Jennings County Indiana,” published in 1885, it was reported that in 1881 a nine-foot tall skeleton was unearthed in a local mound, along with the body of a blond-haired child. And finally, in 1912 an enormous jaw was dug up, that had double-rows of teeth (double dentitions), a unique characteristic of some giants discovered in other parts of the country as well. THE GREAT PYRAMID MOUNDS OF ILLINOIS The size and scale of the Cahokia Mound Complex has been compared in scope and grandeur to the Great Pyramid. The site is located at a major confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois Rivers, directly across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis. At its height is was composed of 120 major mounds (of which 80 remain today) and a city estimated at 40-50,000 people, making it the largest city in the United States until Philadelphia overtook it in the 18th Century. Monk’s Mound is the largest earthwork in the complex and it measures 100 feet tall, with an original base of 1,000 feet. These even measurements in feet have raised the interest of alternative historians, as well as its numerous astronomical alignments that show great similarities to alignments at Stonehenge and Teotihuacan, among numerous significant ancient sites. During excavations south of Monk’s Mound, archaeologists even found a series of wooden post-holes that they called “an American Woodhenge,” which they likened to Stonehenge and Woodhenge in England. In addition, during excavation of Mound 72, a ridge-top burial mound south of Monks Mound, archaeologists found the remains of a man in his 40s buried on a bed of more than 20,000 marine-shell disc beads arranged in the shape of a falcon, with the bird’s head appearing beneath and beside the man’s head, and its wings and tail beneath his arms and legs. Archeologists also recovered more than 250 other skeletons from Mound 72. Scholars believe almost 62 percent of these were sacrificial victims, based on signs of ritual execution and method of burial. Although these were the finds revealed to the public after the official 1922 excavation, a previous unofficial dig at the site un-covered hundreds more skeletons, some giant in nature, which have all disappeared from the historical record. Between 2002 and 2010, a major copper workshop was discovered with forges and annealing methods for hardening copper, which included many examples of highly sophisticated repousse copper plates. In an earlier related find at the site by the Smithsonian two 10×11 inch sandstone tablets were discovered which contained inscriptions in “Roman-like capital letters.” These tablets were shipped to the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. “where they are to be held for scientific investigation.” In 1930 Don Dickson discovered what was described at the time as the largest Neolithic burial site in the world, 90 miles south of Peoria at the intersection of the Illinois River. Working with the University of Chicago, Dickson unearthed 248 of the skeletons, for an open-air museum. The site was estimated to have over three thousand burials, many of them of an unusual and gigantic stature. At its height, the Dickson Mounds Museum attracted 75,000 visitors a year, who were able to view the skeletons en situ as they were uncovered by the archaeologists. In 1990, local Indian tribes had the site closed and the remains re-buried in their tribal cemetery, even though there is no genetic link between the local Indians and the remains of the Mound Builders. TO SAVE THE MOUNDS At the turn of the 20th Century there was a national awareness of the Mound Builder’s and their extensive earthworks that far exceeded contemporary consciousness on the subject. Since the majority of the country still lived an agrarian lifestyle, awareness of the mounds was reinforced by daily contact with the actual sites themselves. Current estimates put the number of known American mounds at well over 100,000. In 1905, Congress was petitioned to save the mound builder sites from destruction. As was noted in the discussion of the Cahokia Mounds, close to half the mounds in that complex were destroyed by farmers and city construction. In the case of Cahokia, it took until the 1964 for that complex to receive official protection as a National Historic Landmark. Similar tales were told across the nation, since the majority of these sites were on private lands and the government offered no compensation for preservation of the mounds. To compound matters, the Mound Builders still have no official standing as an indigenous Native American People, as no official descendents of the Mound Builders have ever been recognized by the courts of the United States. Click for a larger view THE GREAT COPPER KINGDOM When reconstructing the true history of the mound builders in America, there is no more important place than Isle Royal, situated in Lake Superior, just off the Keweenaw Peninsula in northern Michigan. Because of a freak volcanic event that twisted the copper-bearing bedrock above the water line, thus allowing all the sulphur impurities to burn away in the open air, the copper found at Isle Royal is the purest found anywhere in the world. The entire region is scarred by ancient mine pits and trenches up to 20 feet deep. Carbon-dating testing of wood remains found in sockets of copper artifacts indicates that some are at least 5700 years old, while other open digs around the area have been dated to 8-10,000 years old. The most conservative estimates calculate that during a ten thousand year period, over 500,000 tons of copper was taken from the mines. At the other end of the spectrum in “Prehistoric Copper Mining in the Lake Superior Region,” published in 1961, Drier and Du Temple estimated that over 1.5 billion pounds of copper had been mined from the region. Since traditional researchers refuse to analyze European copper for its probable Michigan signature, no one has been able to account for where all this copper ended up. That it was traded and used extensively across the United States by the Mound Builders there is no question. But this is no way can account for the magnitude of copper taken out of these unique mines. What researchers have determined is a continuous history mining activity that begun in 8,000 B.C. and then abruptly ended around 1500 B.C., contemporaneous with the volcanic explosion on Cretan Thera (Santorini). Since rock-cut pictures of Cretan trading vessels have been found in the area, this lends credence to the Cretan connection in North America at a very early date. In addition, researchers have also determined that copper mining activity resumed again around 900 A.D. This date corresponds perfectly with related evidence of a Viking presence in the area around that same date. The Iowa Mastodon Pipe and Ancient Hieroglyphs On the scale of highly-anomalous out of place artifacts (OOPs), the Iowa Mastdon and Mammoth pipes have to be ranked right up at the very top. What are we to make of these undeniably authentic artifacts? Then, when you add the Davenport Stela to the mix, things get even stranger. The stele was found in an Indian Mound in 1877 and according to Harvard Professor Barry Fell, the stela contains writing in Egyptian, Iberian-Punic and Libyan. The Smithsonian, of course, says the three stela’s are fake. What the Smithsonian cannot say is fake are the over 100 skeletons that institution found in Poplar Bluff, including a chief who measured seven feet eight inches tall. Then there are the discoveries of the Iowa Archaeological Survey in association with the WPA, who uncovered 35 houses averaging 30 square feet, or the 75 foot temple mound that was found adjacent to the houses, or the eleven skeletons found buried in a circle with another chief in the center, this one 7’5” tall or the double-toothed giant exhibited in 1900 in a Williamsburg store window. All in all, Iowa is one strange state and the finds there are some of the most unusual found anywhere in the United States. America’s Nasca and the Pictoral Mounds of the Giants As was the case with Michigan’s copper mines, the most unique aspect of Wisconsin’s Mound Building culture, is not the plethora of giants unearted in the area, but the amazing animal effigy mounds that covered the state like a blanket of woodland imagery. It has been estimated that in one county alone in Wisconsin, there were originally over 10,000 effigy mounds. It is no exagaration to say that Wisconsin was an ancient version of the Nazca plateau in South America, which is famous world-wide for the thousands of animal images cut into the bedrock there. The images that covered Wisconsin were endless and covered the gamut from human forms, to snakes, lizards, foxes, rabbits, fish and mammoths. Unfortunately no official attempt has ever been made to save these from destruction and at this point in time the vast majority of mounds that once blanketed the state have been destroyed. On the more traditional front, archaelogists have uncovered evidence of advanced culture and mining activities in the state, dating back to at least 9,000 B.C. At sites like Oconto and Osceola, copper artifacts including spears, arrow-points, knives, adzes, gouges, fishhooks and harpoons have been found in association with textiles, drilled beads and even bone flutes that can still be played. In one notable case, it was reported that an 8-foot tall giant was unearthed near Pelican Lake, while in another report from Westport, giant burials were found in association with ten-pound axes and an eight-foot high wall, which was 15-feet thick and ran across a river embankment for 1500 feet. It was noted that the wall was made from hard red bricks, some of an immense size. In the woods nearby the shore, a mound was opened which contained a giant buried with several rolls of textiles and a finely-finished grooved stone axe. The Lost Kingdom of the Red-Haired, Blue-Eyed Indians The Mandan Indians are generally found in North Dakota and since their first contact with French explorers in 1738, this blond and red-haired, blue-eyed tribe has been the source of intense speculation as to their European origins. In 1796, the Mandan were visited by the Welsh explorer John Evans, who was hoping to find proof that their language contained Welsh words. Evans had arrived in St. Louis 2 years prior, and after being imprisoned for a year, was hired by Spanish authorities to lead an expedition to chart the upper Missouri. Evans spent the winter of 1796–97 with the Mandan but found no evidence of any Welsh influence. In July 1797 he wrote to Dr. Samuel Jones, "Thus having explored and charted the Missurie for 1,800 miles and by my Communications with the Indians this side of the Pacific Ocean from 35 to 49 degrees of Latitude, I am able to inform you that there is no such People as the Welsh Indians.” In 1804, Lewis and Clark spent time visiting with the trib… truncated (16,658 more characters in archive)