For the past few weeks, I've been reviewing chapters from Frank Joseph’s new alternative history anthology, Lost Worlds of Ancient America (New Page Books, 2012). This is my review of Chapters 41 through 45. That means I'm finally done, and not a moment too soon! As we move into the final set of chapters, I’ve learned a few things from Lost Worlds of Ancient America. I learned that alternative archaeologists of 2012 have much less respect for facts than either Graham Hancock in the 1990s or even Ignatius Donnelly in the 1880s. Donnelly, at least, didn’t make things up out of whole cloth. I also learned that as long as a writer has the right ideology—that ancient America was ruled by a white Aryan master race—that author can write pretty much anything for Ancient American magazine, including articles whose only evidence comes from fictional poems and novels. Lastly, I learned that editor Frank Joseph, the former neo-Nazi, is still obsessed with Aryan supermen and swastikas.
1 Comment
I'm reviewing chapters from Frank Joseph’s new alternative history anthology, Lost Worlds of Ancient America (New Page Books, 2012). This is my review of Chapters 36 through 40. That means I'm just 5 chapters from being done with this horrible book! With Part IV, we transition to supposedly convincing evidence of “Foreigners in Prehistoric America,” which of course raises the question of what the previous three sections were supposed to be. The distinction seems somewhat arbitrary to me. If I were editing this… well, I wouldn’t have allowed in anything that lacked facts and evidence. But that’s not the point. If I were designing the book, I’d probably have arranged the material geographically to at least give the illusion that there was a wide-ranging survey of the ancient Americas going on here.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be reviewing chapters from Frank Joseph’s new alternative history anthology, Lost Worlds of Ancient America (New Page Books, 2012). This is my review of Chapters 31 through 35. First up is Chapter 31, Frank Joseph’s article about aircraft in the Andes, based on the claim that the Nazca Lines can only be seen from the air. So can a football gridiron, but that’s hardly its purpose. Think about this: Catholic churches are traditionally in the shape of a cross. Does this mean that medieval people had airplanes to view the crosses from the sky? No, it does not. Symbolic constructions do not need to be viewed to be useful. Thus, the speculation about whether the Nasca people (the “s” spelling is used for the people, the “z” for the place) had hot air balloons is irrelevant until an actual hot air balloon or its remains can be found at a Nasca site. And that hasn’t happened yet.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be reviewing chapters from Frank Joseph’s new alternative history anthology, Lost Worlds of Ancient America (New Page Books, 2012). This is my review of Chapters 25 through 30. (I apologize if this post loads slowly. There are a lot of pictures.) I’m starting to get fed up with Ancient American writers’ penchant for fake evidence. In Chapter 25, a Japanese scientist reports on the “connection” between Japanese dragon iconography and the so-called “piasu of Alton, Illinois,” which Nobuhiru Yoshida admits he had never heard of before an alternative historian sent him a drawing of the supposedly ancient rock art image of a dragon. Checking Frank Joseph’s other work, I find that this image is in fact a “re-creation” of an original—which, I suppose must have existed at some point since it is reported in an 1887 book, The Piasa, by Perry A. Armstrong and in earlier French travelers’ diaries. However, Armstrong’s description shows that the recreation can’t be accurate since the colors of the recreation (white, black, red, and gold) do not match those described (“but three colors were used”—red, black, and green). But—importantly—in 1887 these paisu (there were two) were already long-gone, and the only early traveler’s description, by Marquette in 1653, includes none of the imagery (such as bat-like wings) found in the recreation. This is because the drawing was probably the common Mississippian "underwater panther" image. The Alton images had been long-eroded when Marquette visited, and the last remnants were destroyed in 1856 when the rock on which they were carved was used to build the Illinois state prison at Alton. The drawing used by Joseph and Yoshida was a Victorian engraving commissioned to illustrate Armstrong’s book based on elderly residents’ memories of what the eroded outlines once looked like. IT IS NOT DRAWN FROM A REAL ARTIFACT. IT IS A VICTORIAN ARTIST’S IMAGINARY VERSION, SO YOU CAN’T BASE CLAIMS OF IDENTITY ON IT.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be reviewing chapters from Frank Joseph’s new alternative history anthology, Lost Worlds of Ancient America (New Page Books, 2012). This is my review of Chapters 19 through 24. If I’ve learned anything from the first 18 chapters of Lost Worlds of Ancient America, it’s that most Ancient American magazine articles follow the same pattern:
For the next few weeks, I’ll be reviewing chapters from Frank Joseph’s new alternative history anthology, Lost Worlds of Ancient America (New Page Books, 2012). This is my review of Chapters 14 through 18.
With Chapter 14, we begin a new section, “Sites,” though I am at a loss as to how it differs from the previous section, “Physical Proof.” In this chapter Zena Halpern, a longtime alternative researcher with an MA in History, presents a rock from the Catskills in upstate New York on which is scrawled a triangle atop which is a slightly curved line from which six straight lines jut up. It looks to me like a crude drawing of a deer or moose head with antlers, but according to Halpern it must be a Bronze Age Jewish menorah on the basis of…it sort of looks like one if you squint. She claims a seventh projection emerges from apex of the triangle, but this is not readily apparent in the photograph provided. Most of the rest of the article is irrelevant speculation about whether the ancient Canaanite goddess Asherah was the inspiration for the triangle-shape of the “menorah” base. Following this we get some unsupported claims from Barry Fell about a “medieval Jewish community” in Arizona—with no evidence other than some ambiguous petroglyphs—and claims that we should accept the Catskill stone because of other, similar stones such as those of Bat Creek—stones scholars already established as hoaxes. No evidence is presented to establish the age of the Catskill stone. We are expected to accept it as Bronze Age on the basis of Zena Halpern said so. Well, that’s not good enough. For the next few weeks, I’ll be reviewing chapters from Frank Joseph’s new alternative history anthology, Lost Worlds of Ancient America (New Page Books, 2012). This is my review of Chapters 8 through 13.
Chapter 8 begins with a refreshing change of pace. Author Archie Eschborn, for whom no Frank Joseph gives no biographical information, tells us that the alternative theory that Florida was the Garden of Eden is not true. How big of him! In looking up Eschborn, I see that he was the former VP of sales for Revcor, Inc. and died in 2008 of pancreatic cancer. According to his obituary, he advocated for the presence of ancient stone ruins at the bottom of Rock Lake in Wisconsin. For the next few weeks, I’ll be reviewing chapters from Frank Joseph’s new alternative history anthology, Lost Worlds of Ancient America (New Page Books, 2012). This is my review of Chapters 6 and 7.
Chapter 6 begins with a non sequitur from editor Frank Joseph, who argues that the late David Allen Deal (who died in 2008) was eminently qualified to determine the authenticity of alleged prehistoric stone and clay inscriptions because he had previously studied how Native American cultures used astrology. No, I don’t understand the connection either. I have no idea how to review this. There. I said it. This is so stupid that I am at a complete and total loss to make coherent sense out of the stupidity in this episode, not the least of which is the simultaneous claims that dinosaurs were killed off by aliens 65 million years ago but were also alive to walk with humans at some unspecified more recent date. This is the episode that told us that the aliens negotiated with fish, and it is the episode relying for evidence on at least three long-debunked claims as though they were real.
I am continuing to review the 45 articles comprising the anthology The Lost Worlds of Ancient America (New Page Books, 2012). This is my review of Chapter 5.
Chapter 5 returns to the book’s overwhelming obsession with the swastika in its early chapters, which seems to be a remnant of editor Frank Joseph’s Neo-Nazi past. Here John J. White, in a poorly-proofread chapter (seriously—it’s missing letters out of the middle of words), makes a silly claim that the swastika in all times and places can be traced back to an exceedingly ancient ur-religion of the Earth Mother Goddess and Earth Father God. This is warmed over nineteenth century theorizing (e.g., Frazer’s Golden Bough), and it ignores the obvious, which is that the swastika is an exceedingly simple figure to draw and was likely hit upon independently in many different cultures. This is made even more likely since White uses examples of “Swastikas” (which he always capitalizes) that are not right-angled hooked crosses but rather swirls, curls, and sundry other shapes. By this rationale, a child's pinwheel is also a crypto-swastika. |
AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
Enter your email below to subscribe to my newsletter for updates on my latest projects, blog posts, and activities, and subscribe to Culture & Curiosities, my Substack newsletter.
Categories
All
Terms & ConditionsPlease read all applicable terms and conditions before posting a comment on this blog. Posting a comment constitutes your agreement to abide by the terms and conditions linked herein.
Archives
April 2024
|