The Testimony of the Mounds
Throughout the eastern part of North America are found earthen mounds built centuries before settlers of European descent reached the area. There once were more than 10,000 of these mounds in the state of Ohio alone. Early settlers excavated these mounds, usually without the supervision of archaeologists or scientists of any sort. The human remains frequently turned to dust upon exposure, and the skeletons were not usually measured. Nevertheless, the most frequently noted characteristic of the mound builders was their enormous physical size. Later, in the 1880s and 1890s, the Smithsonian Institution began systematically excavating the mounds and making more measurements.
The reports of giant remains are so numerous and diverse that their general authenticity cannot be challenged. It would not have been possible to coordinate a hoax spanning several generations and multiple geographical locations in a time of limited communication and travel. Moreover, the people who first excavated the mounds, most of whom were farmers, had no motive to lie, no pet theories about pre-history, and no ideological axes to grind—something that cannot be said of the later Smithsonian-controlled excavations, or of twentieth-century Darwinian science.
“Convinced perhaps that the giant race was a well-established aspect of pre-history for the region, the post-Revolutionary War people took it for granted that the larger stature was commonplace enough to take the bones in stride. Only a few scholarly measures were taken toward the preservation of sites and contents, reflecting such an attitude.”[i]
The few who were educated among the pioneers would have been familiar with the classics—formal education in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was heavy on Latin and Greek—and might have been aware of the classical belief that the race was decreasing in size. For whatever reason, the mound excavators often commented on the large stature of those interred in the mounds, but not with as much surprise as we would expect.
These excavations were frequently noted in the records of the counties and townships, which were later incorporated into county and state histories. Here are typical reports:
Of the very early history of the region which now embraces Lake County but little can be written. The Mound Builders had occupied it and passed away, leaving no written language and but little even as tradition. . . . These mounds were quite numerous . . . Excavations . . . have revealed the crumbling bones of a mighty race. Samuel Miller, who has resided in the county since 1835, is authority for the statement that one skeleton which he assisted in unearthing was a trifle more than eight feet in length, the skull being correspondingly large, while many other skeletons measured at least seven feet . . .[ii]
In Seneca Township [Noble County, Ohio] was opened, in 1872, one of the numerous Indian mounds that abound in the neighborhood. This particular one was locally known as the “Bates” Mound. Upon being dug into it was found to contain a few broken pieces of earthenware, a lot of flint-heads and one or two stone implements and the remains of three skeletons, whose size would indicate they measured in life at least eight feet in height. The remarkable feature of these remains was they had double teeth in front as well as in the back of the mouth and in both upper and lower jaws. Upon exposure to the atmosphere the skeletons crumbled back to mother earth.[iii]
In the Brush Creek Township of Muskingum County, Ohio, a mound located on the farm of J.M. Baughman was excavated. The mound was 90 feet long by 60 ft. wide and 11 ft. tall, and located on the summit of a hill. A stone structure was found inside the mound, and in it were discovered the bones of men and women, buried in couples—the length of their skeletons exceeding eight and even nine feet. A document dated March 3, 1880, describing the mound, the excavations, and the contents of the mound was verified by six citizens, all of whom signed a sworn affidavit as to the truthfulness and correctness of the descriptions.[iv]
Where Proctorville now stands was one day part of a well paved city, but I think the greater part of it is now in the Ohio river [sic]. Only a few mounds, there; one of which was near the C. Wilgus mansion and contained a skeleton of a very large person, all double teeth, and sound, in a jaw bone that would go over the jaw with the flesh on, of a large man; the common burying ground was well filled with skeletons at a depth of about 6 feet. Part of the pavement was of boulder stone and part of well preserved brick.[v]
In 1829, when the hotel was built in Chesterville [Morrow County, Ohio], a mound near by was made to furnish the material for the brick. In digging it away, a large human skeleton was found, but no measurements were made. It is related that the jaw-bone was found to fit easily over that of a citizen of the village, who was remarkable for his large jaw. The local physicians examined the cranium and found it proportionately large, with more teeth than the white race of today. The skeleton was taken to Mansfield, and has been lost sight of entirely.[vi]
There are quite a number of mounds, in the township [Vermillion Township, Erie County, Ohio], where the bones, and sometimes the whole skeleton of the human race have been found. The bones and skeletons found are very large, and some of the inhabitants think they must have belonged to a race of beings much larger in size than the Indians found here by the first settlers.[vii]
Here is a batch of similar reports, compiled and posted on the Internet.[viii] In 1876, J.N. DeHart, M.D., found vertebrae “larger than those of the present type” in Wisconsin mounds. In 1877, W.H.R. Lykins uncovered skull bones “of great size and thickness” in mounds of Kansas City area. In 1879, a nine-foot, eight-inch skeleton was excavated from a mound near Brewersville, Sand Creek Township, Jennings County, Indiana.[ix] A mound near Toledo, Ohio, held twenty skeletons, seated and facing east with jaws and teeth “twice as large as those of present day people,” and beside each was a large bowl with “curiously wrought hieroglyphic figures.”[x]
In 1903, Professor S. Farr and a group of Princeton University students came across several burial mounds at Fish Creek, Montana. Upon excavating one, they unearthed the skeleton of a man about nine feet long. Next to him lay the bones of a woman who had been almost as tall.[xi]
The skeleton of a huge man was uncovered at the Beckley farm, Lake Koronis, Minnesota; other giant bones came to light at Moose Island and Pine City, Minnesota.[xii]
Ten skeletons “of both sexes and of gigantic size” were taken from a mound at Warren, Minnesota, in 1883.[xiii]
When two brothers living in Dresbach, Minnesota, decided to enlarge their brick business, they were forced to remove several large mounds. In one mound, they uncovered the bones of “men over eight feet tall.” These remains crumbled when exposed to the air. In La Crescent, Wisconsin, not far from Dresbach, mound excavators reportedly found “bones of men of huge stature.”[xiv]
In the 1880s and 1890s, the Smithsonian began systematically to excavate the North American mounds. Contemporaneous accounts in papers and journals, as well as the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology’s 1894 report on the excavations, indicate that the Smithsonian, too, found unusually large skeletons.
In 1885, the American Antiquarian reported that a large mound near the town of Gasterville (sic, probably Gastonville), Pennsylvania, was opened and examined by a committee of scientists sent out from the Smithsonian. A vault was found which, when opened, revealed a skeleton measuring seven feet two inches. The hair was coarse and jet black and hung to the waist, and the skeleton was wearing a copper crown. The skeleton was remarkably well preserved. Stones covered the floor of the vault, and on the stones were carved inscriptions in an unknown language or hieroglyph. The relics were carefully packed and forwarded to the Smithsonian Institute and were said to be the most interesting collection ever found in the United States. The explorers were going to excavate another mound in Barton County, Pennsylvania.[xv]
The Smithsonian’s official 1894 report states that a seven-foot-long skeleton was found in the Etowah mound, in Bartow County, Georgia:
Grave a, a stone sepulcher, 2½ feet wide, 8 feet long, and 2 feet deep, was formed by placing steatite slabs on edge at the sides and ends, and others across the top. The bottom consisted simply of earth hardened by fire. It contained the remains of a single skeleton, lying on its back, with the head east. The frame was heavy and about seven feet long. The head rested on a thin copper plate ornamented with impressed figures . . .[xvi]
The 1894 report also includes an account of the contents of a mound in Roane County, Tennessee:
Underneath the layer of shells the earth was very dark and appeared to be mixed with vegetable mold to the depth of 1 foot. At the bottom of this, resting on the original surface of the ground, was a very large skeleton lying horizontally at full length. Although very soft, the bones were sufficiently distinct to allow of careful measurement before attempting to remove them. The length from the base of the skull to the bones of the toes was found to be 7 feet 3 inches. It is probable, therefore, that this individual when living was fully 7½ feet high. At the head lay some small pieces of mica and a green substance, probably the oxide of copper, though no ornament or article of copper was discovered.[xvii]
And an account of a the excavation of a mound near Dunleith, Illinois:
No. 5, the largest of the group was carefully examined. Two feet below the surface [of the mound], near the apex, was a skeleton, doubtless an intrusive Indian burial . . . Near the original surface [of the ground], 10 or 12 feet from the center, on the lower side, lying at full length on its back, was one of the largest skeletons discovered by the Bureau agents, the length as proved by actual measurement being between 7 and 8 feet. It was clearly traceable, but crumbled to pieces immediately after removal from the hard earth in which it was encased. . . .[xviii]
And an account of the excavation of a mound in Kanawha County, West Virginia:
[Mound] No. 11 is now 35 by 40 feet at the base and 4 feet high. In the center, 3 feet below the surface, was a vault 8 feet long and 3 feet wide. In the bottom of this, among the decayed fragments of bark wrappings, lay a skeleton fully seven feet long, extended at full length on the back, head west. Lying in a circle above the hips were fifty-two perforated shell disks about an inch in diameter and one-eighth of an inch thick.[xix]
And an account of the excavation of the Great Smith Mound, also in Kanawha County, West Virginia:
At a depth of 14 feet, a rather large human skeleton was found, which was in a partially upright position with the back against a hard clay wall . . . All the bones were badly decayed, except those of the left wrist, which had been preserved by two heavy copper bracelets . . .
* * *
Nineteen feet from the top the bottom of this debris was reached, where, in the remains of a bark coffin, a skeleton measuring 7½ feet in length and 19 inches across the shoulders, was discovered. It lay on the bottom of the vault stretched horizontally on the back, head east, arms by the sides . . . Each wrist was encircled by six heavy copper bracelets . . . Upon the breast was a copper gorget . . . length, 3½ inches; greatest width 3¾ inches . . .[xx]
A number of giant skeletons, not in association with mounds, have also been reported. In some, such as the following account from Ohio, the proximity is so near the mounds that the remains were probably those of mound builders:
In cultivating the soil in the vicinity implements have been found, and in excavating the ground for graves it is said that bones have been exhumed which seemed to have belonged to a race of giants.
* * *
This land at one time belonged to a Mr. Peleg Sweet, who was a man of large size and full features; and it is narrated that at one time he, in digging, came upon a skull and jaw which were of such size that the skull would cover his head and the jaw could be easily slipped over his face, as though the head of a giant were enveloping his . . .[xxi]
Here is a report of a very unusual prehistoric graveyard in Ohio:
The graves were distinguished by slight depressions in the surface of the earth, disposed in straight rows, which, with intervening spaces or valleys, covered the entire area. The number of these graves has been estimated to be between two and three thousand. Aaron Wright, Esq., in 1800, made a careful examination of these depressions, and found them invariably to contain human bones blackened with time, which upon exposure to the air soon crumbled to dust. Some of these bones were of unusual size, and evidently belonged to a race allied to giants. Skulls were taken from these mounds, the cavities of which were of sufficient capacity to admit the head of an ordinary man, and jaw-bones [sic] that might be fitted over the face with equal facility. The bones of the upper and lower extremities were of corresponding size.[xxii]
Here is another report from Ohio of large skeletons accidentally excavated during the digging of a cellar:
In digging the cellar of the house, nine human skeletons were found, and, like such specimens from other ancient mounds of the country, they showed that the Mound Builders were men of large stature. The skeletons were not found lying in such a manner as would indicate any arrangement of the bodies on the part of the entombers. In describing the tomb, Mr. Albert Harris said: “It looked as if the bodies had been dumped into a ditch. Some of them were buried deeper than others, the lower one being about seven feet below the surface.” When the skeletons were found, Mr. Harris was twenty years of age, yet he states that he could put one of the skulls over his head, and let it rest upon his shoulders, while wearing a fur cap at the same time. The large size of all the bones was remarked, and the teeth were described as “double all the way round.”[xxiii]
From a History of Marion County, Ohio:
Evidence for the occupation of this region before the appearance of the red man and the white race is to be found in almost every part of the county, as well as through the northwest [midwest] generally. In removing the gravel bluffs, which are numerous and deep, for the construction and repair of roads, and in excavating cellars, hundreds of human skeletons, some of them of giant form, have been found. A citizen of Marion County estimates that there were about as many human skeletons in the knolls of Marion County as there are white inhabitants at present![xxiv]
From a history of the Marion County, West Virginia:
She said also that three skeletons were found at the mouth of the Paw Paw Creek many years later, while Nim (Nimrod) Satterfield was justice of the peace. Jim Dean and some men were digging for a bridge foundation and found these bones at the lower end of the old buffalo wallow. She thought it was Dr. Kidwell, of Fairmont, who examined them and said they were very old, perhaps thousands of years old. She said that when the skeletons were exposed to the weather for a few days, their bones turned black and began to crumble, that Squire Satterfield had them buried in the Joliffe graveyard (Rivesville). All these skeletons, she said, were measured, and found to be about eight feet long.[xxv]
From the Historical Collections of Virginia:
On the Wappatomaka have been found numerous Indian relics, among which was a highly finished pipe, representing a snake coiled around the bowl. There was also discovered the under jaw-bone of a human being (says Kercheval) of great size, which contained eight jaw-teeth in each side, of enormous size; and, what is more remarkable the teeth stood transversely in the jaw-bone. It would pass over any man’s face with entire ease.[xxvi]
In his book, The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, author John Haywood describes “very large” bones in stone graves found in Williamson County, Tennessee, in 1821. In White County, Tennessee, an “ancient fortification” contained skeletons of gigantic stature averaging at least seven feet in length.[xxvii]
In the Toronto, Ontario, Daily Telegraph of August 23, 1871, appeared a story regarding an excavation on the farm of one Daniel Fredenburg in the Township of South Cayuga, Haldimand County, Ontario. Rev. Nathaniel Wardell, Orin Wardell, and Daniel Fredenburg were digging at Fredenburg’s farm on the banks of the Grand River:
When they got to five or six feet below the surface, a strange sight met them. Piled in layers, one upon top of the other, some two hundred skeletons of human beings nearly perfect—around the neck of each one being a string of beads. These skeletons are those of men of gigantic stature, some of them measuring nine feet, very few of them being less than seven feet. Some of the thigh bones were found to be at least a foot longer than those at present known, and one of the skulls being examined completely covered the head of an ordinary person. These skeletons are supposed to belong to those of a race of people anterior to the Indians.[xxviii]
Back to Ellen White
After reviewing this material, we can understand the context of Ellen White’s statement to the effect that bones are found in the earth showing that in ancient times men were much larger than now. While this statement seems odd to us today, White’s nineteenth-century readers would have found nothing odd about it. Giant bones were being found all over the United States during much of the nineteenth century. It was as current as the day’s newspaper headlines.
White does not seem to have been concerned that she would not be believed regarding the declining stature of mankind. Rather, her concern was that people would take the fact of ancient giants as evidence that the world is older than biblical chronology allows:
Because the bones of human beings and of animals found in the earth, are much larger than those of men and animals now living, or that have existed for many generations past, some conclude that the world is older than we have any scriptural record of . . .[xxix]
It was this type of misinterpretation that Mrs. White sought to forestall. But the idea that people would deny that giants had lived in the past seems not to have occurred to her.
The Darwinian Knowledge Filter
Reports of giant human bones seem odd to us today because the filter of Darwinian science has screened out the true facts. Scientists who specialize in human prehistory are not looking for evidence that today’s humans devolved from a much larger race. They are looking for evidence that the three-foot-tall Australopithecine evolved into the six-foot-tall man. The evolutionary paradigm is smaller to larger, so Darwinists (with one historical exception we will discuss later) are not interested in the evidence showing that the human species evolved from larger to smaller.
“To the evolutionist, there is but one primary fact in the universe: evolution. Everything else is just data. . . . Good data is that which supports evolution. Bad data is that which does not fit evolution, and it is to be discarded.”[xxx]
To Darwinian scientists, all evidence of giant prehistoric human beings is simply bad, irrelevant data, and they have discarded it—If they were ever even cognizant of it. Remember Thomas Kuhn’s observation that phenomena that do not fit the paradigm “are often not seen at all.”[xxxi]
What Has the Smithsonian Hidden?
Intentional suppression may also have played a role. Many mound excavations were undertaken by the Smithsonian Institution, and the artifacts uncovered from many non-Smithsonian digs were ultimately sent to the Smithsonian. There have been allegations that the Smithsonian has been “losing” these artifacts. Recall the scene at the end of the motion picture “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” in which the Ark of the Covenant is crated up and anonymously “stored” in an incredibly vast government warehouse.[xxxii] Such a waylaying of artifacts is not unprecedented. The Vatican has long been accused of refusing access to controversial artifacts and documents that might damage the Roman church’s credibility or cast doubt on its official claims.
Footnote 32 (xxxii), below, contains an extensive discussion of how the Americans of the 18th and most of the 19th Centuries believed that the mounds were built by a race of giants far more advanced than the native Americans that were living here at the time, but that belief was gradually put aside, with the Smithsonian as the enforcer of the new theory that they were all built by Indians, the Adena culture of Ohio (circa 1,000 B.C. to A.D. 200) followed by the Hopewell culture (ca 200 B.C. to A.D.700) which gave way to the Mississippian culture starting ca A.D. 700.
Twentieth Century Reports
The twentieth century also saw many reports of discoveries of unusually large skeletal remains. A report of a 1916 mound excavation, in Sayre, Pennsylvania, appeared in The New York Times:
In the mound uncovered were found the bones of sixty-eight men . . . The average height of these men was seven feet, while many were much taller. Further evidence of their gigantic size was found in large celts or axes hewed from stone and buried in the grave. On some of the skulls, two inches above the perfectly formed forehead, were protuberances of bone.[xxxiii]
That the mound builders were a large people has not escaped the notice of more recent researchers. William S. Webb and Charles E. Snow described the Adena type of mound builders as having a large, round skull, a prominent forehead bordered below by sizable brow ridges, a jutting chin, and massive bones. “The Adena folk were unusually tall and powerfully built; women over six feet tall and men apparently approaching heights of seven feet have been discovered.”[xxxiv]
Some non-mound related remains have been reported in the western United States. In 1911, several red-haired mummies ranging from six and a half feet to eight feet tall were discovered in a cave in Lovelock, Nevada.[xxxv] In February and June of 1931, two large skeletons were found in the Humboldt lakebed near Lovelock, Nevada. The first of these measured eight and a half feet tall and appeared to have been wrapped in a gum-covered fabric in the Egyptian manner. The second skeleton was almost ten feet long.[xxxvi] A seven-foot, seven-inch skeleton was found on the Friedman ranch, near Lovelock, Nevada, in 1939.[xxxvii]
In 1965, a skeleton measuring eight feet, nine inches was found buried under a rock ledge along the Holly Creek in east-central Kentucky.[xxxviii]
Conclusion
It seems likely that the post-Flood dispersion included the Americas, that those advanced people of taller stature could easily have come here by watercraft, and not only by the hypothetical land bridge across the Bering Strait that may have emerged as a result of lower Ice Age sea levels. It is likely that these taller people originally explored and settled in the Western Hemisphere, but were cut off from the center of post-Flood civilization, which was in Sumer, and never developed large cities or large population centers in North America.
The conflict with mainstream archeology is not so great. The Adena culture, which even mainstream archeologists and anthropologists admit had many females of six feet and males of seven feet, is dated to 1,000 BC. The Hebrew conquest of Canaan is dated to about 1,500 BC and David’s later fight with Goliath at about 1,000 BC. I would conclude that humans of from seven to nine feet persisted for some 1,500 years after the Flood in various isolated areas, including North America.
NOTES:
[i]. Hamilton, Ross, “A Tradition of Giants.” On the Internet.
[ii]. Hamilton, Ross, “Holocaust of Giants: The Great Smithsonian Cover-up,” quoting Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Lake County, edited by Newton Bateman, LL.D. and Paul Selby, A.M. (1902).
[iii]. Hamilton, Ross, “A Tradition of Giants,” quoting, Historical Collections of Ohio in Two Volumes, (1888), pp. 350, 351.
[iv]. Hamilton, “A Tradition of Giants.” See also,Joe Taylor, Fossil Facts and Fantasies (Crosbyton, TX: Mt. Blanco Publishing, 1999), p. 67, citing Scientific American, August 14, 1880. This may be the same dig reportedly presided over by a Dr. Everhart near Zanesville, Ohio, as reported in American Antiquarian, 3:61 (1880).
[v]. Hamilton, “A Tradition of Giants,” quoting Ironton Register—a small Ohio River town newspaper, dated May 5th, 1892.
[vi]. Hamilton, “A Tradition of Giants,” quoting History of Morrow County and Ohio (1880).
[vii]. Hamilton, “A Tradition of Giants,” quoting Firelands Pioneer (1858).
[viii]. See, e.g., http://www.biblefacts.org/myth/giant2.html.
[ix]. Indianapolis News, Nov. 10, 1975.
[x]. Dobbins, Ron G., NEARA (New England Antiquities Research Association) Journal, v. 13, Fall 1978, citing Chicago Record, Oct. 24, 1895.
[xi] Quayle, Steve, Genesis 6 Giants, citing Norvill, Roy, Giants: The Vanished Race of Mighty Men, (Aquarian Press, 1979) pp. 82-83.
[xii]. St. Paul Globe, Aug. 12, 1896. See also Steiger, Brad, Worlds Before Our Own (New York: Berkeley Books, 1978), p. 54.
[xiii]. St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 23, 1883.
[xiv]. Steiger, Brad, Worlds Before Our Own (New York: Berkeley Books, 1978), p. 54.
[xv]. American Antiquarian, 7:52 (1885). See also Corliss, William R., Ancient Man: A Handbook of Puzzling Artifacts (Glen Arm, MD: The Sourcebook Project, 1978).
[xvi]. Hamilton, “Holocaust of Giants,” quoting Cyrus Thomas, 12th Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1890-1891 (1894).
[xvii]. Ibid.
[xviii]. Ibid.
[xix]. Ibid.
[xx]. Ibid. Another account of this excavation appears in the journal American Antiquarian, 6:133 (1884) (“A skeleton 7 feet 6 inches long was found in a massive stone structure that was likened to a temple chamber within a mound in Kanawha County, West Virginia, in 1884.”).
[xxi]. Hamilton, “A Tradition of Giants,” quoting A History of Ashtabula County, (Ohio, 1878).
[xxii]. Ibid.
[xxiii]. Hamilton, “A Tradition of Giants,” quoting The History of Medina County, (Ohio, 1881).
[xxiv]. Hamilton, “Holocaust of Giants: The Great Smithsonian Cover-up,” quoting The History of Marion County, Ohio (1883).
[xxv]. Hamilton, “Holocaust of Giants,” quoting Lough, Glenn D., Now and Long Ago: A History of the Marion County [West Virginia] Area (1967[reprint, McClain Printing Company, 1991]).
[xxvi]. Hamilton, “A Tradition of Giants,” quoting Historical Collections of Virginia, 1845.
[xxvii]. Haywood, John, “The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee.”
[xxviii] Ancient American, Volume 6, Issue 41, p. 9. Originally published in The Daily Telegraph (Toronto, Ontario), Wednesday, August 23, 1871, page 1., as reported by Steve Quayle in “Niagara’s Ancient Cemetery of Giants” http://stevequayle.com/Giants/N.Am/Niagara.html. Other researchers have tracked down, through McGill University, a 19th century plat of Cayuga Township, showing several tracts owned by members of the “Fradenburgh” family, including Daniel A. Fradenburgh, at exactly the location indicated in the story. See, e.g., http://s8int.com/giants12.html.
[xxix]. Ellen G. White, Spiritual Gifts (Battle Creek, Mich.: Steam Press of the Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1864), vol. 3, pp. 90-96. Reprinted in Signs of the Times, 5:90, March 20, 1879, and in Spirit of Prophecy (Battle Creek, Mich.: Review and Herald, 1884), vol. 4, pp. 85-89.
[xxx]. Lubenow, Marvin L., Bones of Contention (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1992), p. 57.
[xxxi]. Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970), p. 24.
[xxxii]. Native American author and professor of law emeritus, Vine Deloria, writes:
“It’s probably better that so few of the ruins and remains were tied in with the Smithsonian because they give good reason to believe the ending of the Indiana Jones movie—a great warehouse where the real secrets of earth history are buried.”
“Modern-day archaeology and anthropology have nearly sealed the door on our imaginations, broadly interpreting the North American past as devoid of anything unusual in the way of great cultures characterized by a people of unusual demeanor. The great interloper of ancient burial grounds, the nineteenth century Smithsonian Institution, created a one-way portal, through which uncounted bones have been spirited. This door and the contents of its vault are virtually sealed off to any but government officials. Among these bones may lie answers not even sought by these officials concerning the deep past.” Ross Hamilton, “Holocaust of Giants: The Great Smithsonian Cover-up.” See also David Hatcher Childress, “Archaeological Cover-ups?” NEXUS New Times magazine, vol. 2 no. 13 (April-May 1993).
The first controversy the Smithsonian became embroiled in was the Mound-builder controversy. Modern authorities attribute the mounds to the ancestors of the Native Americans who were occupying North America when European settlers arrived. Archeologists currently believe that the first mound building culture was the Adena people of Ohio (circa 1,000 B.C. to A.D. 200), which was followed by the Hopewell culture (ca 200 B.C. to A.D.700), which gave way to the Mississippian (ca A.D. 700). This view is in marked contrast to the views of the early white settlers, who, when they broke open the mounds, found evidence of physical and cultural characteristics entirely different from those possessed by the native tribes. The Indians of the mound area were semi-nomadic peoples, few in number and limited in ambition. They seemed incapable of the sustained effort needed to quarry tons of earth and shape it into symmetrical mounds, and they did not have oral traditions about the construction of the mounds.
Accordingly, the European settlers attributed the mounds to a different race of people, one that had come before the “Indians.” Thomas Jefferson, for example, who excavated mounds in a careful, scientific manner that was far ahead of its time, concluded that Native Americans were wholly incapable of constructing these monuments. Almost everyone else agreed. The following are typical quotes:
“It is sometimes difficult to distinguish the places of sepulture raised by the Mound-Builders from the more modern graves of the Indians. The tombs of the former were in general larger than those of the latter, and were used as receptacles for a greater number of bodies, and contained relics of art, evincing a higher degree of civilization than that attained by the Indians. The ancient earth-works of the Mound-Builders have occasionally been appropriated as burial places by the Indians, but the skeletons of the latter may be distinguished from the osteological remains of the former by their greater stature.”—Ross Hamilton, “A Tradition of Giants,” quoting History of Logan County, Illinois (1886).
“Over the face of the country, throughout Ohio and the adjoining States, the extinct race of giant men who disputed their daily food with a race of monster animals, extinct like themselves, have written a mystic record of their existence in hieroglyphics perhaps uninterpretable, yet everlasting and indestructible save by some vast cataclysm. . . . And this dead race of giants who fought with hairy mammoths and enormous cave bears, and perhaps that mastodon whose colossal bones to-day dwarf into comparative delicacy the elephant's rugged skeleton . . . who were they? It is at least generally recognized that they were not Indians.”—Lefcadio Hearn, “The Mound Builders,” The [Cincinnati, Ohio] Commercial, April 24, 1876. On the web at http://www.trussel.com/prehist/mound.htm.
In 1848, Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis published a book, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, in which they described, mapped, and surveyed many of the mounds in Ohio. This treatise was well researched, and Squier and Davis also concluded that a lost race had erected the mounds.
In 1881, John Wesley Powell, the geologist famous for exploring the Grand Canyon, appointed Cyrus Thomas director of the Eastern Mound Division of the Smithsonian’s Bureau of Ethnology. When Thomas, who had a background in entomology and botany, 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.” Powell was Thomas’ boss, however, and Powell was very sympathetic toward the American Indians, who at that time were being defeated in the last of the Indian Wars of the American frontier. Powell 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. Under Powell’s leadership, the Smithsonian began to promote the idea that Americans Indians were descended from advanced civilizations and were worthy of respect and protection. The changing of opinion on who built the mounds began in 1894, when Cyrus Thomas announced his conclusion that the mounds had been built by the American Indians. Thomas, C., Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology (1894, repr. 1985).
In support of the Smithsonian’s view, there is eyewitness testimony that Indians built some of the mounds. In 1540-1542, Hernando de Soto, traveling through the territory that would become the Southeastern U.S., observed Creek Indians living in fortified towns with lofty mounds and plazas. In the 1560s, French colonists in what is now northeastern Florida observed Indians building mounds. In the 1600s and 1700s, French explorers observed heavily populated Natchez Indian villages in Mississippi, complete with mounds. By the time the white settlers of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century reached these areas, however, the native populations had been decimated by disease. See, e.g., Charles C. Mann, “1491,” The Atlantic Monthly, 289(3) (March, 2002). Their civilization had declined considerably from their highest levels, and they probably could not have duplicated the efforts of their ancestors in building the mounds.
The mounds are evidence of the decline of Native American culture, which is a pattern of civilization predicted by the Adventist model of history but contrary to Darwinism. For example, many mounds contained copper artifacts, and there are prehistoric copper mines in Michigan. See, e.g., Noorbergen, Secrets of the Lost Races, pp. 55-156. But the Indians of the eighteenth and nineteenth century were not engaged in mining and working metals. Their technology had gone backward.
Another controversy on which the Smithsonian has weighed in is the Diffusionist/Isolationist controversy. There are two schools of thought regarding the pre-history of North America. One school is known as “Diffusionism,” which believes that throughout history there has been widespread dispersion of culture, including contact between the Old World and the New. The Smithsonian placed the weight of its authority behind the opposite school, “Isolationism,” which holds that the various civilizations have been isolated from each other, especially those that are separated by oceans. The isolationists held that even contact between the civilizations of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys were rare, and certainly these civilizations did not have any contact with such advanced cultures as the Mayas or Aztecs in Mexico and Central America. Clarence Moore, who excavated numerous mound sites in the South between 1892-1916, rejected isolationism and believed the southern Mound Builders were heavily influenced by the Central American civilizations.
The current isolationist viewpoint is the “Clovis” model, in which wanderers from Northeast Asia traversed the Bering straits from Siberia to Alaska across a land bridge that existed during the Ice Age, fanned out across the Great Plains, into the Southwest and eventually the East, diversifying into the numerous Native American tribes that greeted the white settlers. Stone spear points found in association with Ice Age fauna in Clovis, New Mexico, in the 1930s were dated at 11,000 years ago and hailed as evidence of the oldest human settlement in the New World.
Some have suggested that after the Smithsonian committed to the isolationist viewpoint, it began to suppress archaeological evidence that lent credence to diffusionism, as well as evidence that pointed away from the view that the mounds were of Indian origin:
“Concealing evidence that conflicts with accepted theory is common scientific skullduggery. For years the Smithsonian Institution has been accused of hiding in storage vaults things it doesn't like. In 1968 two Neanderthal-like skulls with low foreheads and large brows were found in Minnesota. As for dating, University of Minnesota scientists said they were reluctant to destroy any of the material, although carbon-14 testing only requires the burning of one gram of bone. They were sent to the Smithsonian. Later Dr. Lawrence Angel, curator of physical anthropology at the institution, said he had no record of the skulls there, although he was sure they were not lost. We have a right to wonder whether some professional scientists mightn't find a really early date for the bones distressing.”—Vincent H. Gaddis, American Indian Myths and Mysteries (Radnor PA: Chilton Book Co., 1977), pp. 11, 12, citing “Skullduggery, Scientific Style,” Pursuit 5(4):89 (October 1972).
Mainstream science denies that any Neanderthal remains have been found in North or South America, yet we have this report from Lefcadio Hearn, cited above:
“Perhaps the best preserved skull yet found in an American mound was discovered at Kenton, Illinois. . . . The frontal bones are strangely abnormal, the superciliary arches stand out in enormous ridges, . . . All the frontal bones are prodigiously thick and strong.”
The thick brow ridges are, of course, the most prominent feature that separates the Neanderthals from modern humans, and the Neanderthals were also very “robust,” which means thick boned and strong. David Hatcher Childress reports a third-hand story that a former employee of the Smithsonian, who was dismissed for defending diffusionism, alleged that the Smithsonian had once taken a barge full of unusual artifacts out into the Atlantic and dumped them into the ocean.
Another possible cover-up concerns an April 5, 1909 story in the Arizona Gazette, the evening edition of the Phoenix Gazette, describing a Smithsonian-led expedition to a cave in the Grand Canyon that contained several mummies and oriental artifacts. http://www.spiritofmaat.com/archive/nov2/prns/gazette.htm. http://www.crystalinks.com/gc_egyptconnection.html. http://www.think-aboutit.com/Misc/Grandcanyon.html. Unless the story was a belated April fool’s joke, a spectacular archaeological site has simply disappeared down the “memory hole.” “I believe that the discerning reader will see” writes Childress, “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 artifacts, and evidence that tends to disprove the official dogma that is now the history of North America.”
It is worth noting that the Smithsonian is a quasi-governmental institution that receives 90 percent of its funding from the United States federal government. And it is, like most major modern museums of natural history, devoted to promoting Darwinism. In 1976, the Smithsonian completed a $463,000 Hall of Evolution. See, e.g., Ching, Katherine, “Suing the Smithsonian, Origins 5(2):99, 100 (1978).
The Internet abounds with stories of official suppression of archeological sites and artifacts. These sites include stories that the Smithsonian has suppressed discoveries of giant human remains. American-New Zealander Martin Doutré tells the following story:
A friend of mine, in recent years, had a long talk with a New Zealand girl called Lisa Kerr. She’d done extensive traveling, like many young New Zealanders, who head out on their traditional OE (overseas excursion).
Lisa, amongst several jobs she got around the world, worked for a while with the New Mexico Park’s Department. During her term of employment there was a big “washout” in one of the Park regions and I’m assuming it was up in Pueblo country around Taos. The flash flood scoured out embankments and in doing so a large number of anomalous skeletons were exposed. Lisa and her colleagues were assigned the task of gathering up the remains and placing them into crates. Also in attendance at the site were Smithsonian Institute officials and FBI agents.
Each day as Lisa and the other Park’s Department employees went onto the site, they were searched for cameras. Similarly they were searched as they left the site each day to make sure they weren’t removing artifacts. They were also obliged to sign “secrecy documents” ensuring that they would never divulge details of their participation in this undertaking.
The reason for this degree of secrecy stems from the fact that the skeletons were of people who were about 8 feet tall. They had six fingers on each hand and six toes per foot. They also had a strange, double row arrangement of teeth.
The crates containing the recovered remains, at the termination of work, were taken away by the Smithsonian officials and, undoubtedly, will never be seen again. Strangely enough, there is a report of two similar skulls having been found in New Zealand's far north around the beginning of the 20th century. Lisa later had official "hassles" when trying to come home to New Zealand and was severely grilled by US government functionaries as she attempted to depart from the US. http://www.viewzone.com/oklahoma.southend.html.
The same site tells of an ancient wall made of very peculiar cell-like stones. This site was subsequently covered with a bulldozer. http://www.viewzone.com/sender.html.
[xxxiii]. Hamilton, Ross, personal communication with the author, citing The New York Times, July 14, 1916.
[xxxiv]. Silverberg, Robert, Mound Builders of Ancient America (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1968), citing William S. Webb and Charles E. Snow, The Dover Mound (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1959).
[xxxv]. Shuker, Karl P.N., Unexplained: An Illustrated Guide to the World’s Natural and Paranormal Mysteries (Collingdale, PA: DIANE Publishing Co., 1998). (“In 1911, several mummified remains of mysterious red-haired humans ranging from 2-2.5 meters [6 ½ to over 8 feet] tall were disinterred in Lovelock Cave, 112 Kilometers [70 miles] northeast of Reno, Nevada, by a guano mining operation. These substantiated the local Paiute Indians’ legends of such people, which they called the Si-Te-Cahs. Yet scientists proved oddly reluctant to investigate these remains and eventually most of the bones were simply discarded by the miners. Various locals salvaged what was left, only to have most of it be destroyed when the shed the bones were kept in caught fire and burned to the ground. However, one of the Lovelock skulls, almost 1 foot tall, is preserved with some related bones and artifacts at the Humboldt County Museum in Winnemucca, Nevada, and various Lovelock artifacts are also held at the Nevada State Historical Society’s museum in Reno.”)
[xxxvi]. Lovelock Review-Miner, June 19, 1931.
[xxxvii]. Lovelock Review-Miner, Sept. 29, 1939. Interestingly, there is a recent report of a giant from the Lovelock cave area. In her recent book Bones: Discovering the First Americans (New York: Carroll & Graff, 2001), Elaine Dewar writes of the Paiute oral tradition that they struggled for generations against a people they called the “Red-Haired Giants.” But anthropologists who have been studying remains from the area had not found any giant remains. Then one day Sheila Brooks walked in and told Amy Dansie, “Amy, call your mother, we’ve got a giant.” That is all that Dewar wrote; the dimensions of the skeleton Brooks described as a giant are not mentioned. Bones, supra, at pp. 200, 201.
[xxxviii]. Henson, Michael Paul, Tragedy at Devil’s Hollow and other Haunting Tales from Kentucky (Bowling Green, KY: Cockerel Corp, 1984). See Chad Armint, “Giant Amerinds.” (Armint writes, “There is, however, one intriguing tale from a Kentucky folklore book written by Michael Paul Henson [1984]. Henson relates how he actually examined a body dug out from under a large rock ledge along Holly Creek in east-central Kentucky. In 1965, a landowner, Kenneth White, was building cattle stalls under the ledge when he found a ‘perfectly preserved skeleton’ which measured 8 feet, 9 inches in length when reassembled. He states ‘the arms were extremely long and the hands were large. By comparison, the feet were very small.’ The skull was ‘30 inches in circumference. The eye and nose sockets were slits rather than cavities, and the area where the jaw bone hinges to the skull was solid bone. It would seem that the person could not have opened his mouth.’ A powdery white substance covered the skeleton, but no tools, weapons, or other human implements were found with the bones. The body was buried approximately five feet underground. Henson and the farmer assumed the skeleton to be a large, deformed Indian. Unfortunately, White reburied the bones rather than taking them to a university for examination. Henson died in 1995, and any further notes he may have had on this fascinating story are unavailable. We do not have exact locality for this report, but Holly Creek appears to be run through both Wolfe and Breathitt Counties in Kentucky.”)