Did Richard Thornton Find "Lost" Proof of Europeans in the American South Before Columbus?2/23/2016 Most of you will remember Richard Thornton, the conspiracy theorist who appeared in the pilot episode of America Unearthed and has since used that TV appearance to drive his quest to create a revisionist history of precolonial North America. Thornton believes that the Maya had a colony in Georgia, for example, and he claims that the U.S. government has attempted to smear him as a gay sex predator to stop him from revealing the truth. Now Thornton claims that he has new evidence that white people were present in the pre-Columbian American South. The story is a little convoluted, but it seems to begin in early 2015 (March or April, depending on which article you read) when Thornton claims that a box of documents related to a 1734 Creek visit to London was discovered in the library of the Lambeth Palace, the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury. “On June 1, 2015 this author became the first American (or Native American) to see the actual Migration Legend of the Creek People in almost exactly 280 years.” He then said that the documents were being transcribed. Thornton published the full text of one such legend, which he says is a fuller version of texts that had previously been excerpted in early publications like the American Gazetteer.
Perhaps unknown to Thornton, the transcript of the migration legend, recited during a speech in Savannah, Georgia in 1735, has been in print since at least 2004. Then, this week, Thornton announced that there were four migration documents found in the Lambeth Palace box, and that the fourth of these indicates that white people lived in early America during the period of the Creek migration. Thornton says that this document shows a history “very different than what both the history books and most Southeastern Native Americans think their history was.” He strongly implies that this is new information, but as we’ll see, that isn’t the case. According to the text Thornton provides, when the Creek came to the Atlantic coast, “They met white people on the seacoast, who drove them back to their present situation.” While you and I would like consider this text, made from an oral account given in the colonial period, to conflate prehistoric and colonial-era material, Thornton believes it to be a genuine recollection of lost white colonists before 1500 CE. He speculates that these white people were the imaginary Gaelic-speaking white race he mistakenly developed from misunderstood texts a few years ago. But here’s the thing: The text that he tells us came from the Lambeth Palace box of “lost” colonial texts isn’t lost, or unknown, or even absent from the history books. Bill Grantham, for example, gives the complete text verbatim in his 2002 book Creation Myths and Legends of the Creek Indians. And he certainly wasn’t the original source. Indeed, he takes the text from Benjamin Hawkins’s A Sketch of the Creek Country, which was published in Georgia in 1848 from manuscripts in the collection of the Georgia Historical Society. The text in question came from a diary entry Hawkins made during his 1798-1799 tour of Creek territory, where he explains the context of the story. It was told to him by Tus-se-kiah Mic-co in the wake of the 1793 war between the Creeks and Chickasaws. The emphasis on white people in the story he told seems to be a reflection of the Chickasaws’ efforts to get Anglo-Americans in Georgia to join with them to fight the Creeks, which resulted in Georgia providing the Chickasaws with munitions. According to Steven H. Hahn, who studied all the different versions of the migration legend, including the one Thornton claims to have newly discovered, and was writing in 2006, the events Thornton attributes to before 1500 actually refer to the Cussitas’s migration through Georgia in 1691. The long and short of it is that Thornton is worked up over a well-known document and imagines a conspiracy to keep from the history books texts that the history books don’t just reference but also reprint, discuss, and analyze.
21 Comments
Scott Hamilton
2/23/2016 11:56:09 am
It's a completely random and meangless coincidence, but right around the same time this guy was finding the Lambeth Palace box, the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn was finishing up. Unicorn had to do with a conspiracy to hide the Laplace Box, which contained a document revealing that the space colonies were granted more independence than anyone thought. (It's complicated.)
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DaveR
2/23/2016 12:22:05 pm
Yet another academic conspiracy to keep the truth from us all. At least Thornton has the ability, stamina, and moral fortitude to stand up against the vast conspiracy so he alone may bring us the truth.
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Ken
2/23/2016 02:22:30 pm
Yes, and all this in order to save a few bucks which would be required to "rewrite the textbooks...". It would seem to me that if academics knew something none of the rest of us know, they would be trampling each other in a stampede to publish the first paper on the subject.
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DaveR
2/23/2016 02:35:52 pm
Exactly, the drive in academia to publish is so strong anybody with evidence would publish.
Day Late and Dollar Short
2/23/2016 01:14:52 pm
What ever happened to this claim?
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DaveR
2/23/2016 03:56:11 pm
Obviously the Smithsonian moved in and with virtually unlimited government funding removed all traces of this evidence and moved it to an ultra-secure facility in the Midwest know as "The Warehouse." That's where they have all of the evidence of white people colonizing America, Roman artifacts predating the Viking settlement, and bones of white, red headed giants that were removed from the so called native American mounds.
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Only Me
2/23/2016 06:52:28 pm
I know which warehouse you're talking about. I think it's numbered "13". Allegedly, there's also extraterrestrial technology there. I've heard they have a football that will travel the circumference of Earth, regardless of which direction it's thrown, and will unerringly return to the thrower.
Jonathan Feinstein
2/23/2016 08:14:38 pm
Well, yes, but then it turned out that football was underinflated...
DaveR
2/24/2016 10:21:47 am
I think if we look more closely at the so called underinflated ball we would discover it's inflated with the gaseous form of Unobtanium, which we all know has a lower density.
Denise
2/25/2016 04:19:05 pm
Yes when I saw that claim I reported it to the State Archaeologist of Georgia (we're friends) he had no idea about the statues, but he is now aware of the claim, and is on the look out. See my message below regarding the most recent exploit of Richard Thornton in Georgia.
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titus pullo
2/24/2016 08:39:46 am
Does anyone see an analogy with whites giving "munitions" to various native tribes in their fights with other tribes to further each interests? Sound a little like the modern Middle East doesn't it? I mean look at Syria with all the sides many of which are armed by the west and fighting other western armed factions and some factions turn against their western benefactors. Unintended consequences tend to occur when you arm your "friends" with at the time are "high tech" weapons....
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causticacrostic
2/24/2016 10:50:00 am
Not too modern. The British and French supplied the Arabs against the Ottomans during WWI. The Sykes–Picot Agreement is often looked at as part of the beginning of the turmoil in the Middle East.
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DaveR
2/24/2016 11:29:27 am
The British were arming the Afghan tribes either indirectly through the Eat India Company, or directly through the British Occupation Army in the 1800s.
Bob Jase
2/24/2016 12:38:27 pm
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Mike Morgan
2/25/2016 01:31:22 am
Well said, Bob. I believe you posted this same comment on one of Andy's blogs a while ago. :>)
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Bob Jase
2/25/2016 10:54:01 am
Some things need repeating.
Denise
2/25/2016 04:12:58 pm
Well Richard Thornton is REALLY at it again in Georgia. As many of you know, he has caused all sorts of problems for us historical types here in Georgia. With statements of Fort Caroline being in Georgia, when historical documents clearly place it on the St. Johns River (only major river flowing north into the Atlantic), that a heap of stone near Atlanta is actually the site of a combined refuge colony of the survivors of BOTH Roanoke and Ft. Caroline (at the same time). On a personal note, he has called my husband who works at a Georgia State Park demanding to see the Iberian-Celtic artifacts supposedly found on state land (a place first thought to be mission, turned out to be a sugar mill, then turned into a boy's camp). Then actually showed up at my husband's park during an event, looked at the new round native hut the park was re-constructing, to declare that the natives of the area never had round huts (Le Moyne, anyone?).
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J
7/5/2019 11:31:21 pm
I support Thornton. If you're hated by many then you must be doing something right. Explain the Iron crosses found that predated Columbus.......the timbers in a cave that predated Columbus...... truth hurts and would get rid of a large amount of jobs for govern. workers. I can understand why you would be upset, living a lie must become exhausting. They forced control over those who lived the land before them and continue to force control on all today. Say it with me... BAAAAH
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Andrea Bradford
10/13/2019 07:32:46 am
In doing any research, claims of many types should be considered. The ice bridge which crossed the Atlantic thousands of years ago would account for some of your artifacts and the people who made them.
Mik
8/17/2023 01:15:05 pm
Bro not iron crosses. Cross shapes represent the 4 logs of the sacred fire. This is not difficult
Joe
3/4/2018 10:42:51 am
Big friggin deal. It seems the Spanish did have a small settlement on A spell island well before the English date in our history books. So Thornton didn't know the legend had resurfaced a few years prior. Big deal. Question is why does this hack horror writer/pissy skeptic have his panties in a wad over it?
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