I don’t usually delve into the world of government conspiracies because it is, for the most part, beyond my remit. However, I make exceptions for government conspiracies involving ancient history. That’s why I was interested to see that Nick Redfern, a fixture on Ancient Aliens and its ilk, has a new book out that claims that the military and intelligence services of the US government investigated various alternative history claims including Noah’s Ark, ancient nuclear warfare, and UFO levitation technology used to build the Pyramids. I have not yet read Redfern’s Pyramids and the Pentagon, but I have looked at some of the claims he and his press agent have been making about it.
0 Comments
One of the most important books making the rounds of conservative circles this spring is Robert Spencer’s Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins. This book purports to be a popular discussion of a scholarly debate about whether the Prophet of Islam is a historical figure or a mythic one. The author never quite states but clearly wants his audience to believe that denying the historicity of Muhammad negates the value of Islam.
This is actually a very interesting question: How can we prove whether a given personage actually existed? How can we distinguish between a man to whom legends accrued and a myth to whom bits of history became attached? How would we distinguish, in crude terms, between Alexander the Great (the former) and King Arthur (the latter)? If you read a “fact” in an alternative history book, you can be fairly certain of one thing: It won’t be true. In They Came before Columbus (1976) Ivan Van Sertima, for whom evidence exists solely as grist for polemic, claimed that the ancient Mexican and Egyptian calendars were substantively similar because a scholar, the Abbé Hervas, had written that
Van Sertima declines to note that the Abbé Hervas lived in the eighteenth century, and his discussion was a private letter sent to the cleric Francesco Saverio Clavigero (also known as Francisco Javier Clavijero Echegaray) and published in 1780 in The History of Mexico (p. 466, 1787 English trans.). He acknowledges this obliquely in the end notes (citing the 1804 edition), but does not mention the fact in the body text. One of the oldest werewolf stories in all literature comes to us from ancient Greece and relates to the shrine of Lykaian Zeus in Arcadia, where rumor had it human sacrifices occurred. Some form of the tale must be exceedingly old, since it is referenced obliquely in Hesiod, as preserved in the fragments of Pseudo-Eratosthenes' Catasterismi.
The classic version of the story is preserved in Hyginus, the Roman mythographer, and concerns the fate of a king named Lykaon, whose name was taken to be related to the Greek word for wolf, lykos. A few months ago I wrote a post about the widespread alternative history claim that the Greek Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus (412-485 CE) claimed that the pyramids of Egypt were flat-topped and used as astronomical observatories for recording the transit of Sirius. As I wrote then, this claim does not appear in the alleged source, Proclus’ commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. I thought I’d revisit this weird little claim and follow it from its origins down to the present day, mostly to show that alternative history writers don’t bother to check sources when they can just copy things.
A few weeks back, I wrote about Francisco López de Gómara, the Spanish historian who was the first to propose that the Americas were the same as Plato's Atlantis. When I wrote my original blog post, I explained that I had been unable to find an English translation of Gómara's work, the Historia general da las Indias (1552). Fortunately, I discovered that there is an English translation of the relevant chapter, ch. 220! Unfortunately, it was done in 1555 and is difficult to read. I've now adapted that translation with modern spelling and have fully annotated it to explicate Gómara's astonishingly rich allusions to ancient literature. Gómara was quite possibly the early modern father of alternative history. In addition to the passage on Atlantis, he also had this whopper from chapter 10, in which he states that the Indians who arrived in Germany in 60 BCE (whom I discussed recently) were in fact Inuit from Labrador who had "deceived" the Romans by having dark skin like people from India:
Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) was the founder of the modern discipline of geology through his advocacy of the principle of uniformitarianism, and he was a close friend of Charles Darwin. Lyell originally rejected evolution in favor of creationism, but in 1863 he reversed his views, though still allowing for divine origins for the human soul. His remarks about archaeology in his Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863) retain their value in light of today’s alternative archaeology and ancient astronaut claims. from Geological Evidences (1863) It has sometimes happened that one nation has been conquered by another less civilized though more warlike, or that, during social and political revolutions, people have retrograded in knowledge. In such cases, the traditions of earlier ages, or of some higher and more educated caste which has been destroyed, may give rise to the notion of degeneracy from a primeval state of superior intelligence, or of science supernaturally communicated. But had the original stock of mankind been really endowed with such superior intellectual powers, and with inspired knowledge, and had possessed the same improvable nature as their posterity, the point of advancement which they would have reached ere this would have been immeasurably higher. We cannot ascertain at present the limits, whether of the beginning or the end, of the first stone period, when Man coexisted with the extinct mammalia, but that it was of great duration we cannot doubt. During those ages there would have been time for progress of which we can scarcely form a conception, and very different would have been the character of the works of art which we should now be endeavoring to interpret,—those relics which we are now disinterring from the old gravel-pits of St. Acheul, or from the Liége caves. In them, or in the upraised bed of the Mediterranean, on the south coast of Sardinia, instead of the rudest pottery or flint tools, so irregular in form as to cause the unpractised eye to doubt whether they afford unmistakable evidence of design, we should now be finding sculptured forms, surpassing in beauty the master-pieces of Phidias or Praxiteles; lines of buried railways or electric telegraphs, from which the best engineers of our day might gain invaluable hints; astronomical instruments and microscopes of more advanced construction than any known in Europe, and other indications of perfection in the arts and sciences, such as the nineteenth century has not yet witnessed. Still farther would the triumphs of inventive genius be found to have been carried, when the later deposits, now assigned to the ages of bronze and iron, were formed. Vainly should we be straining our imaginations to guess the possible uses and meaning of such relics,—machines, perhaps, for navigating the air or exploring the depths of the ocean, or for calculating arithmetical problems, beyond the wants or even the conception of living mathematicians. In 1883, the Rev. Joseph Cook published Advanced Thought in Europe, Asia, Australia, etc., a weird little volume that “dissented” from “orthodoxy” on a variety of cultural subjects. The Harvard-trained Cook was a famous American orator in his day, and a thinker on the question of the relationship between science and religion. His conclusion was that, through careful backward reasoning, science could be used to prove the claims of religion. It therefore is of little surprise that he found the same “proof” for the lost continent of Atlantis. His discussion follows, reproduced with the original (and unusual) second person narration. As he explained, “when I say ‘you’ I mean myself.” Despite Cook’s fame in his day, his work did not survive him in the public’s mind, and his speculations have largely faded into obscurity.
In the comments section of my blog, longtime advocate of the authenticity of the Bat Creek inscription J. Huston McCulloch takes me to task for failing to address several points about the inscription in my earlier review of a chapter from Lost Worlds of Ancient America in which geologist Scott Wolter attempted to analyze the stone, found in 1889, which supposedly contains an ancient Hebrew text. In my review, I discussed earlier scholars’ work pointing to the close similarity between the Bat Creek inscription and a reconstructed paleo-Hebrew text appearing in an 1868 Masonic text, Robert Macoy's General History, Cyclopedia and Dictionary of Freemasonry.
Yesterday I gave an overview of the new anthology Lost Worlds of Ancient America edited by convicted sex offender and former Neo-Nazi Frank Collin, writing as “Frank Joseph.” Today I will review the second chapter of the book, covering the alleged discovery of Roman artifacts in the United States. The chapter is divided into two sections, the first by Mormon hyper-diffusionist Wayne May, who has a vested interest in proving prehistoric trans-oceanic contact in order to provide support for the Book of Mormon.
|
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
|