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Examining This Week's Fringe Claims about Pre-Columbian American Religions

1/27/2014

43 Comments

 
Yesterday we had interesting news that genetic research determined that Europeans 7,000 years ago were not white but rather had dark tan or brown skin. This is strong circumstantial evidence that the 12,000-year-old white world-bestriding master race of Ignatius Donnelly, James Churchward, David Childress, and Graham Hancock could not have existed, though, of course it is not conclusive proof. There might have been a pocket of white people in a technologically-advanced island citadel, but it looks less likely now since 5000 BCE is well after the period (c. 10,500-9,500 BCE) when these authors claim the lost civilization/Atlantis/Mu dispersed its white people around the world to found civilization.

I may have more to say about this after I’ve had some time to digest the study. Meanwhile, on to today’s topic.

On Friday and Saturday we had two distinct but unusual claims about the nature of Native Americans societies before the arrival of Columbus. On Ancient Aliens, ancient astronaut theorists informed us that the shaman-priests of Casas Grandes (Paquimé) in Chihuahua, Mexico worshiped beings of light who teleported from another dimension and were mistaken for gods. On America Unearthed, Scott Wolter informed us that Native peoples from the Yucatan to Wisconsin all worshiped flying snakes because a group of Bronze Age Scots came to America around 2000 BCE and told them to. In both cases, the overwhelming but unspoken conclusion is that Native people are subservient to outside forces and require the intervention of non-Native people or beings in order to make spiritual or cultural advances.

Given the context of these juxtaposed assertions about the cultural tutelage of Native peoples to the superiors in Europe or outer space, it’s probably an opportune moment to share a blog post made by Ohio archaeologist Brad Lepper, published yesterday, in which Lepper discusses how ancient astronaut theories are, essentially, racist.

What matters is that there is an underlying racism, or at least ethnocentrism, to the theory. Think about it. Most of the marvelous monuments of antiquity that are said to have required the help of ancient aliens are in non-European countries. The Greeks evidently built the Parthenon on their own. The Romans certainly built the Colosseum (sic) without extraterrestrial assistance. And yet the champions of ancient aliens want you to believe that the Egyptians needed special help to build their pyramids. And those poor savages on Easter Island certainly couldn’t have carved and moved all those gigantic statues on their own.

Similar problems plague fringe history, where Native Americans’ works and beliefs in particular are singled out as obvious derivatives of European, Egyptian, or Atlantean originals. Few fringe writers would walk in to Notre Dame de Paris and declare Jesus just another “derivative” of Krishna, or Gothic architecture an imitation of Hindu temples from India; yet anything in the Americas vaguely resembling something from Europe is suspect.

So I thought I’d do some checking into the academic literature to see what we can learn about light beings in Chihuahua and feathered serpents in America.

The site of Paquimé is fascinating because it combines elements of Mesoamerican culture and Pueblo culture in a way that is rarely seen elsewhere. The architecture is most closely aligned to Pueblo structures such as Casa Grande on the Gila River in Arizona, but a study by Christine S. VanPool called “The Shaman-Priests of the Casas Grandes Region, Chihuahua, Mexico,” published in American Antiquity in 2005 (vol. 68, no. 4) suggests that pottery images can be used to connect the belief system of the Paquimé people to the shamanic cultures of Mesoamerica.

Her analysis is rather lengthy, but the short version is that images found on pots can be organized to document a classic “shaman’s journey,” which involves a (mental) voyage to and from the spirit world in an altered state of consciousness, and thus represents a close alignment to similar shamanic cultures known from Mesoamerican contexts.

By tracing the designs on the smokers, dancers, and macaw-headed humans, a transformation sequence of males smoking, dancing, and metamorphosing into supernatural entities can be observed. These individuals represent shamans who are depicted in various stages of a “classic shamanic journey” traveling to and from the spirit world.

She relates this to known shamanic state leaders in Aztec, Mayan, Olmec, and Moche cultures ad argues that shamanism was an intrinsic element of Mesoamerican chiefdom and state leadership. Thus, the remaining legends of “light people” or “Star Beings” associated with Casas Grandes are the faded recollection of the former power of the shamans, who were once believed to communicate with the spirit world and to be, in a sense, gods themselves. Given that such communication still continues in current shamanic cultures, where extraterrestrials are not present, there is no reason to suspect that these light beings had any more physical reality than the trans-dimensional creatures currently plaguing Graham Hancock’s nightmares and dreamscapes in his ayahuasca-induced shamanic voyages.

This contrasts with the less centralized shamanic culture of the Pueblo peoples, who did not restrict shamanism to only the political elite and did not worship their leaders as deities.

The Paquimé pottery shows shaman-kings transforming into supernatural creatures, which probably accounts for all of the surviving stories of supernatural beings at the ruins. Additionally, the dead were shown as naked, glowing spirits.

The shamans wore headdresses of plumed or horned serpents, something found in art across the desert southwest. In an image on a Ramos Polychrome jar found in the House of the Walk-in-Well, the serpent-shaman is decorated with three pound signs (#), something seen on other Casas Grandes pots, indicating that (a) symbols can evolve independently across time and space or (b) aliens invented Twitter hashtags. Apparently at Casas Grandes the # symbol was used to mark the shaman in his supernatural state.

Picture
"Hashtags" on a Casas Grandes pot at the University of Texas Centennial Museum
The coincidence of the hashtag symbol at both Casas Grandes and on Twitter should serve to cast cold water on the idea that something as omnipresent as a snake could have entered human religious beliefs at only one time and one place.

This leads us effortlessly into a discussion of the serpent as a cultural symbol because at Casas Grandes, as across Mexico and the desert southwest, the serpent was one of the most important spiritual symbols, representing rebirth and transformation. Across the region, the serpent was believed to come from the underworld (since, obviously, snakes slither on the ground and vanish into holes), and to this day the Hopi believe snakes are messengers to and from the underworld.

But those are plain old everyday serpents. America Unearthed cares instead for feathered serpents, despite the complete and total absence of feathered serpents from Bronze Age European art. Indeed, if anything, the serpent cults of Europe are decidedly below ground affairs, associating serpents, like the snake-god Zeus Melichios, with the underworld or, like the snake-king Cecrops, with the earth itself.

Anyway, it has been known for a very long time that the Mississippians developed a complex and elaborate set of symbols, exchanged from Louisiana to Wisconsin, that bear a resemblance to those of Mesoamerica, though without sharing an identity. In the 1940s, the first academic descriptions of what is now called the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, but then known as the Southern Cult, noted the similarity to Mexican iconography and suggested that it might have been a religious revival—what we now call a cultural revitalization movement—that adapted and adopted elements of Mexican art (though not necessarily the underlying belief system) and spread it throughout the Mississippian lands.

However, the early archaeologists also claimed that Mexican iconography entered the United States during Tristan de Luna’s Spanish expedition of 1559-1561 and that the Mississippian culture dated to only 1600 CE. The advent of radiocarbon dating and other dating methods over the next few decades would prove these claims conclusively false with the recognition that the Mississippians flourished centuries before the Spanish Conquest. But even the archaeologists of the 1940s recognized that there were no Mexican artifacts ever found in the Mississippian lands—a fact that stood until 2002, when a single obsidian scraper found at Spiro Mounds was geologically linked to Mesoamerica.

In 1976, writing in Current Anthropology (vol. 17, no. 3) biologist Balaji Mundkur proposed in “The Cult of the Serpent in the Americas” that New World serpent worship came to America from northeastern Asia at some exceedingly early date as part of a global cult of serpent worship dating back to the dawn of humanity and encoded in primate DNA. He detailed these claims in his 1983 book The Cult of the Serpent. Mundkur saw all of the Americas as part of one single religious tradition, which Mundkur connected to those on the other side of the Bering Sea land bridge. That would be an impressive—and to my mind, unconvincing—amount of cultural continuity over tens of thousands of years and untold changes in culture, language, and circumstance.

For Mundkur, an evolution-induced fear of snakes led to humans making them gods or monsters, but I can’t really trust unconditionally anyone who uses hoax “artifacts” from Erich von Däniken’s Gold of the Gods as evidence, though recognizing them as modern fakes that somehow preserve ideas from earlier cultures. I also can’t quite connect “fear” of snakes to the beneficent role they played in the Near East outside of monotheistic Israel. I think he was probably right that similarities in human minds across time and space led to repeated eruptions of serpent worship, but I’m not sure that one could make the case that snakes are uniquely dangerous, or the only beneficiaries of such neurological events. David Lewis-Williams attributes serpent imagery to the zigzag patterns seen in altered states of consciousness, which early humans probably interpreted as serpents. This makes more sense to me and allows for more interplay between neurology and culture in creating religious expression.

Anyway, such claims could explain the existence of a serpent cult without the movement of Bronze Age Scots across the Atlantic.

But this is getting away from our subject. The Mississippians, around 1200 CE, began using imagery of a serpent with horns, wings, or feathers. This bears a resemblance to Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent. Adrienne Mayor, evaluating North American oral traditions, suggests that the creature originated in Native myths explaining observations of dinosaur skeletons. Since the serpent has been used in Native art for many centuries prior to the Mississippians, many anthropologists and archaeologists now believe that the feathered serpent was an outgrowth of the earlier, non-feathered serpent tradition whereby the feathers or wings were added to symbolize a celestial connection for the serpent. In this reading, the Mexican and Mississippian feathered serpents would have emerged independently from parallel attempts to symbolize a connection between the snake and the sky. Against this is the fact that in most post-Mississippian Native cultures the serpent known as the Great Serpent was an underground or underwater creature, often with horns, who battled the Thunder Bird, a heavenly force. This underwater serpent has a variant, the underwater panther, who is closely associated with a piece of mysterious rock art near Alton, Illinois, as I discussed some time ago, as well as effigy mounds (such as the one in Granville, Ohio).

Most recently, work identifying the Great Serpent with stars in what is for the West the constellation Scorpio provides evidence that Quetzalcoatl and the Great Serpent were independent creations. In this reading, the Great Serpent is underwater during the time when Scorpio is beneath the horizon, but as a sky creature also briefly rises into the sky in the summer, during the time when he battles the Thunder Bird and holds enormous power over the earth. Thus, the feathers or wings are what George E. Lankford, writing in a chapter in F. Kent Reilly III’s and James F. Garber’s Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms (U Texas, 2007) calls a “locative sign” indicating that this serpent in art is meant to be the one that we can find in the sky, not the regular snakes on the ground. He is the Great Serpent during the weeks of his above-ground power. Thus too does the Great Serpent typically have a red eye, which Lankford says likely represents the large red star Antares in Scorpio.

Lankford, an expert in Native American ethnoastronomy, also interprets the Ohio Serpent Mound as the Great Serpent. He reads the “egg” near the serpent’s mouth as its eye—Antares—and two unexplained blobs on either side of the head as “the remnants of some feather locative” that has since eroded and was not restored by F. W. Putnam in the 1880s.

It took me all of fifteen minutes to find Lankford’s research. I don’t know about you, but I find that much more interesting than an imaginary cult of Scots preaching the gospel of the serpent across America. It has all the same elements as Wolter’s version: a detective story spanning centuries, serpent symbolism, a widespread cult diffused across time and space, and even what Wolter wrongly calls “archaeastronomy.” It’s even associated with the Alton, Illinois rock art “mystery” (which would make a great opening act), and you could bring in Quetzalcoatl as the red herring that kept the truth hidden for far too long by leading early scholars on a fruitless quest for Mexican connections that weren’t there. The story is just as fascinating as Scott Wolter’s fabrication, and, most likely, true. But it doesn’t involve any Scots or Europeans or white people.

I can’t come up with a reason why America Unearthed would ignore such an interesting and exciting investigation and instead propose that the Scots brought serpent worship to America except for Eurocentrism; as I’ve shown, Lankford’s version has everything you need for a fascinating hour, duplicating nearly all of Wolter’s claims except for having Europeans in America. This either says something about the target audience for America Unearthed, or the show, or the laziness of one or the other or both. My guess? The show thinks the audience wants to hear about Europeans in America, and their research rarely extends beyond Frank Joseph and fringe literature, notorious cesspools of abandoned nineteenth-century Eurocentric claims.

This might sound like another non-issue of little importance, but let me remind you that a poll conducted in 2012 by the National Geographic Channel found that 36% of Americans believe that Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Giza are evidence of extraterrestrial involvement in prehistory. I don’t particularly trust this poll, conducted by “email invitations and online surveys” in conjunction with the now-canceled Chasing UFOs series, but it does begin to suggest the depth of the problem of people, particularly Americans, believing low-evidence, sensational claims about history thanks to cable TV and internet repetition. Every time a fact-free claim about Atlantis, lost white colonizers, or aliens goes out on cable, someone takes it seriously. This is a problem.

Ancient Aliens is a lost cause, but America Unearthed missed an opportunity to say something interesting about serpent myths in pre-Columbian America. As I’ve shown, it can be done. It took me all of fifteen minutes to do it, and I imagine that even on the tight schedule of America Unearthed, fifteen minutes wouldn’t be much more than the time taken to thumb through Ancient American magazine back issues. Even if you don’t believe Lankford’s interpretation, it is founded on vastly more evidence than anything America Unearthed imagined supports the idea of wandering serpent-worshiping Scots converting the Natives to European faiths.

43 Comments
Portal
1/27/2014 02:13:17 am

Christine S. VanPool, Todd L. VanPool, "Signs of the Casas Grandes Shamans", University of Utah Press, 2007

Anthropology professors Christine S. Vanpool and Todd L. Vanpool present Signs of the Casas Grandes Shamans, a scholarly evaluation of artifacts of a religious system that flourished in what is now northern Mexico and the southern United States between AD 1200 and 1450. Casas Grandes, or Paquime, in northern Chihuahua, Mexico was the home of this faith, expressed in stunning polychrome pots with black and red geometric and naturalistic designs, and a cream base. These exceptional pottery artifacts offer insight into Casas Grandes cosmology, revealing a shaman-centric religion. Shamans called to horned serpents to bring rain; dealt with snakes; and raised, sacrificed, and interred macaws as ritual offerings to perpetuate water and fertility. Black-and-white photographs of recovered artifacts and diagrams of ancient artworks illustrate this scholarly evaluation of protohistoric art, culture, symbolism, and faith. Highly recommended especially for anthropology and archaeology shelves.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
1/27/2014 02:22:53 am

Thanks for that. I didn't know she turned the article into a book.

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Portal
1/27/2014 02:53:42 am

Googlebooks lists Christine S. VanPool, "The Symbolism of Casas Grandes", University of New Mexico, 788 pages, 2003.

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Jason Colavito link
1/27/2014 02:55:57 am

That's her doctoral dissertation.

Walt
1/27/2014 05:02:02 am

I think, that while interesting to me and other readers of your blog, it just doesn't fit into AU. The whole theme of the show is essentially "everything academia says is wrong." I get the impression they would present stories they don't even necessarily believe just to fit into the format of the show, which is "unearthing" the opposite of whatever the experts believe. For example, I didn't get the impression SW was very interested in the Denver Airport episode, he was just hosting a show that attempted to "unearth" what the powers that be are trying to hide, according to some people that didn't include him.

So, you've done a better job explaining things, but unfortunately I just don't believe that's the purpose of AA or AU. They're targeting a certain audience. I say that audience is one who wants to think the big important people are wrong, and the little guy knows the truth. You say, at least for AU, that audience wants to believe white people are basically the leaders of the world, and I can't really argue with any of the racial issues you've raised.

You need your own show, called "Investigating Pseudo-science", where you can debunk all of these shows. Add some video and interviews with experts who would love for the truth to be known, and you've got a great show. If it airs on commercial TV though, you're going to have to use the post-commercial recaps that you hate so much.

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Jason Colavito link
1/27/2014 05:09:10 am

It's not that I hate the idea of recaps. I just don't see why we need TWO recaps after each commercial break. Either written or oral will do; two at a time seems excessive.

You're quite right that the overarching theme is promoting anti-elite conspiracies, which implicitly celebrate the "normal" viewer by elevating him (or, less likely, her) above the elites who are "hiding" things. Flattering the audience goes a long way toward ratings.

Matt Mc
1/27/2014 05:27:54 am

Jason, I am still thinking the two recaps are designed two drill into the viewers mind that what is being stated is in fact the correct fact. The simple age old technique of truth through repetition.

And great post today nice to see a whole different approach to the same subject matter

An Over-Educated Grunt
1/27/2014 05:43:52 am

Another reason for the double recap is literacy, or lack thereof. I'll self-identify and say that on a small enough TV, like trying to watch the recent episodes on my tablet, I was glad for the verbal recap. From a distance of six feet, on a twelve-inch-ish screen, the visual recaps are illegible. There are a variety of other factors that would make the flash-blurb visuals useless, from dyslexia to marginal literacy all the way to flat-out illiteracy, all of which television caters to the needs of in a way that print doesn't.

Walt
1/27/2014 05:57:45 am

First, sorry for replying to a comment rather than the article itself.

But, yes, flattering the audience to garner ratings is exactly right. I guess the issue is, do they have a moral obligation to be factual in doing so. I don't believe they do, even though it airs on History, just because it's their show. They created it, they can do almost anything they want, within reason. You, and other experts, believe they do and I can understand that opinion.

As for the two recaps, I guess I tune it out. I watch the show and don't notice it until you point it out. He even recaps in the middle of segments sometimes if the shooting location changes, which I also tune out.

Jason Colavito link
1/27/2014 06:14:15 am

I'd go along with the idea of the two recaps for literacy if they were occurring at the same time, but they take 30 sec. to show the text on screen and then another 30 sec. to say it out loud after the text leaves. It seems like filler to me. Last year, the text and the voice over occurred together, which takes only half the time.

Matt Mc
1/27/2014 06:21:57 am

It could be filler. This year overall the pace seems slower. Although last week did move faster than previous episodes, still lots of downtime but it seemed to flow faster. I still think the multiple recaps are being used to drive the point home but only Committee films knows that.

Also I have found it interesting that this year they seem to be lacking in the film permits. I have noticed that there has been a lot more of flying over a site instead of going to it. I find it hard to believe that this is because they sites wont grant them access, so I factor that into them rushing to complete the episodes and not having the time to adjust the shooting schedule while waiting for filming permits to come in.

An Over-Educated Grunt
1/27/2014 07:09:56 am

Actually, my issue isn't with them spraying woo all over H2. If it were, say, Josh Gates from SyFy, I'd have no problem with it. My problem with it is, as I have said before, that they specifically appeal to Scott Wolter's credentials as a geologist to give credibility to whatever nonsense is on screen this week, and doing so weakens the credibility of every other set of professional credentials, because it makes it look like all of the scientific and technical professions that require professional licensure are open to whatever yahoo wants to spout nonsense about Templars and goddess worship. There's a difference between "I'm Scott Wolter, and I believe that the history of this country is not what we have been told," and "I'm Scott Wolter, I'm a forensic geologist, and I believe that the history of this country is not what we have been told." Tying his professional credibility ties the profession as a whole's credibility, and frankly, the product that AU is selling is not credible.

Basically, if you're going to tie your profession to something, and you want to keep the goodwill of your professional peers, you had better make damn sure you aren't making yourself, and them by extension, look professionally foolish, and Wolter fails that test. THAT is what bugs me about AU.

Martin R
1/27/2014 09:02:29 am

The double recaps are for those who voted for "W" because they liked the idea that they could share a beer with a president who was more like everyday folk. Not the "elitist" type.

yakko
1/27/2014 12:56:57 pm

@ Over-educated Grunt: I started to watch an episode of American Unhinged when it first came on, but the moment I heard that everything I've been told about history is a lie, I turned it off, and forgot about it. Since reading about the show on this blog, though, I thought I might check out an episode, just to be better informed. The one I watched was about the rock wall in - of all places - Rock Wall TX. First. after telling us that he's a forensic geologist, he went, not to the wall itself, but to a "reconstruction", which was clearly man-made and connected to the tourist trade. Then he states that, as a forensic geologist, he's going to examine this structure. He pulls out his jeweler's eyepiece, and there's about five minutes of him looking at this rock, shot from different angles, with stock History Channel music. After this, he declares that, as a forensic geologist, he believes that this is indeed a rock - and did I mention that he's a forensic geologist? It took ten minutes of air time to tell us that a geologist knows a rock when he sees one. Since Jason spoiled the ending for me ( I already knew that he agreed with evil mainstream academic opinion that the "wall" is a natural formation), I sure wasn't going to waste any more time on it. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: it was worse than offensive - it was boring.

The Other J.
1/27/2014 04:22:45 pm

The problem with the "everything academia says is wrong" approach is that they still appeal to academic credentials when it suits their purpose -- Wolter's background as a forensic geologist, Jim Scherz taught civil engineering at the U of Wisconsin, they go to academics in Ireland whenever they want to get a blurb on ogham or the Hill of Tara and then select what they want from the person to manufacture their own blarney.

They'd have more credibility if they didn't attack academia except when it seems helpful. If academia lies to you, then why should we trust them when they bring in academics or appeal to Wolter's academic background?

TartanTart
1/27/2014 03:29:09 am

Preach it, brother!

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titus pullo
1/27/2014 07:16:07 am

So Europeans 7,000 years ago looked like..well Italians..I always knew Romans peopled Europe..heck modern man originated next to the Tiber...of course.

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An Over-Educated Grunt
1/27/2014 07:23:07 am

Commentary more directly related to the blog post...

I don't know that AU would do this theory justice, even assuming that they were willing to do a non-European pre-Columbian contact show. Their general production model is "A - outlandish claim, B - give the audience enough time to go 'wait, wha...?', C - GOTO A."

On a vaguely related note to the entire "if I don't know how it works, it must be aliens/magic" problem that drives shows like AA, the college of engineering where I went to school sporadically offered a class for all engineering majors that was sort-of experimental archaeology, where they'd take a given big public works project from history and try to execute it in period materials or close enough substitutes to teach students that ancient engineers weren't stupid, and it wasn't aliens. For that matter, I knew an art history professor in the college of architecture whose graduate students, every semester, had to build a pointed arch out of styrofoam, to demonstrate that the people working in their field hundreds of years ago weren't idiots. The problem is that these are all very much elective lessons, everyone there was already part of the choir when the preaching started, they just moved closer to the pulpit as a result. The truth of how these things happened - throw enough money and meat at a problem, and it can be fixed - is a whole lot less sexy than being told by George the Troll Doll that it was aliens.

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Walt
1/27/2014 09:26:30 am

I don't think they'd do it justice on any show. I've seen the Serpent Mound covered twice now on History, AU and AA. If I'm remembering correctly, the AATs suggested that it was built on the edge of a meteorite impact crater to summon the sky gods. It was obviously intended for that purpose because it was meant to be viewed from above, just like the Nazca Lines. It's probably a serpent because aliens fly in "flying dragons" and that spot was chosen because birds would circle it endlessly.

Jason's blog has presented a better story than any of the shows on History, so far.

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The Other J.
1/27/2014 04:25:25 pm

You should work up an America Unearthed flowchart.

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RLewis
1/27/2014 07:44:43 am

From what (very) little I know about evolution, I would have thought it would have taken much longer for a "white race" to emerge. I could only find references to the earliest existing portraits (of white Europeans) going back about 1,000 years. Seems like a short period.

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The Other J.
1/27/2014 04:38:48 pm

Gaaagh! I hate myself for not having the link to this article anymore -- I read it on the BBC maybe 6 or 7 years ago, had it bookmarked, but in one of their upgrades the page disappeared.

Anyway.

Step One: Lighter pigmentation results from a mutation that allows for more exposure to the sun to create more Vitamin D in the skin. Vitamin D breaks down into two hormones that are necessary for bone development and neural function. When you're in a less sunny environment, those who couldn't make more Vitamin D or get it from their diet developed more problems (like rickets), and didn't survive long enough to pass on enough of their genes. Those who had developed a mutation for less pigment in their skin were able to create more Vitamin D, and were thus healthier and lived longer to pass on their genes -- along with their mutation for lighter pigmentation. One question, though, has been how quickly this can occur. Does it take thousands of years or generations?

Step Two: The study reported in the BBC article I can no longer find was about an ethnic population in southern India whose DNA linked them directly to another population in northern India. Except they looked very, very different; the northern Indian cousins were far lighter than the southern Indian migrants, but the migrant population came from that northern population and were originally lighter. As they migrated to a more equatorial region, they did the reverse of the lighter-pigment-gene-mutation selection and their population began to select for darker pigmentation. But the take-away was this population's superficial skin tone changed relatively quickly, in a matter of generations, not millennia.

Step Three: So it seems if the climactic conditions are right, gene selection for skin pigmentation can occur fairly rapidly. It seems skin tone is just a biological hack, nothing more.

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Paul Cargile
1/28/2014 12:05:43 am

Biological hack, or biological upgrade?

The Other J.
1/28/2014 04:52:03 am

I'd say "hack," because the change in skin pigmentation one way or the other is just an adaptation, not an overall improvement. And as with the Indian example, it can go both ways; hard to say that either group is "upgraded" when they're basically the same people.

Harry
1/28/2014 10:42:49 pm

Another possible explanation for the darker pigmentation of the southern group is many generations of intermarriage with their darker neighbors, unless it has a long history of endogamy (marriage only within the group). Such intermarriage might entirely account for the change in pigmentation.

The Other J.
1/31/2014 10:45:21 am

Harry, that intermarriage question is one of the variables the study controlled for. I really wish I could find it, because intermarrying with other populations is something that occurred to me way back when. But I don't know what happened to the article so I can't say anything more.

Gunn Sinclair link
1/27/2014 08:03:13 am

Another great review (except for the usual Wolter misconceptions), and a good introduction into Native Americans' past history. This is a treat for me, as I've always been interested in Native American history. I'd like to examine one point, though, if you don't mind.

Jason said: "Since the serpent has been used in Native art for many centuries prior to the Mississippians, many anthropologists and archaeologists now believe that the feathered serpent was an outgrowth of the earlier, non-feathered serpent tradition whereby the feathers or wings were added to symbolize a celestial connection for the serpent. In this reading, the Mexican and Mississippian feathered serpents would have emerged independently from parallel attempts to symbolize a connection between the snake and the sky."

I can't help looking at the odds of this happening, actually, not happening...that both cultures would develop appendages to the snake simultaneously and for the same reason.

If even a single trade item traveled from Mexico to the Mississippi area, or the other way around, that shows cultural exchange. We don't need to see proof of this cultural exchange, anyway, as trade routes were certainly established, though very loosely in places. If items can travel, so can religious ideas: hence, the possibility of the multicultural winged or feathered snakes being shared, knowingly, by the two or more cultures...not springing up independently, as you suggest.

Basically, this is what Wolter was saying, about spreading shamanistic or priestly information and ideas back and forth between America and Scotland...which I agree, is an absurd idea, given the totality of circumstances. But the notion isn't that preposterous when you consider the concept of priestly exchange much closer to home. Logic and odds says to me that MOST LIKELY the Mexicans and Mississippians were in some kind of cultural exchange contact. Just speculation, I guess, until and unless there is determinant truth to back up the speculation.

I thought the Mississippians emerged from the Gulf of Mexico, originally? How much of their culture did they bring with them, and how much did their ideas change over the ensuing Mound Building years? Now I'm curious about the first-stage artifacts, I guess from around the Gulf? One has to wonder, too, what kind of ties, if any, the earliest Mound Builders kept with their own ancestors. Hopefully, new DNA studies may explain some of these mysteries...studies of the deceased, when (if) morally and ethically possible under particular circumstances.

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yakko
1/27/2014 11:23:04 am

Yesterday my first comments were "held for moderation" by way of a Captcha, and never appeared, but comments I made later went through OK. Now today, a comment I tried to make here is again "held for moderation", although comments made by others at the same time did show up. How exactly does this work? I don't want to waste time writing a comment that just disappears down a rabbit hole.

Reply
yakko
1/27/2014 11:25:05 am

And now it works again, after six attempts at submission today. Maybe I should only try to comment after about 8 pm local time. :-)

Reply
Jason Colavito link
1/27/2014 11:47:42 am

For whatever reason, the "smart moderation" software reads your comments as spam. I have no idea why. It's not anything I have control over.

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yakko
1/27/2014 12:20:41 pm

Hoo boy! I thought it might be something like that. Just you wait until all this "smart" technology runs the whole world! I'm constantly cursing at my relatively new car when it keeps trying to do things for me I don't want it to do. Now they're talking about self-driving cars, that will probably drive you where you don't want to go. Wait a minute, didn't the Egyptians already have those? :-)

The problem may be due to the proxy I use. I have the same trouble with anything Google - sometimes it works, sometimes it asks for a Captcha, and sometimes it blocks me completely. Strangely, though, Google Images works just fine every time.

Anyway, I'm the kind of person who can't help putting my two cents in when I can, but if I have to sit quietly and read, that's fine, too.

Shane Sullivan
1/27/2014 11:36:03 am

So if I understand this and yesterday's review, the snake: universal archetype, and not the symbol of a penis cult.

Jung: 1
Freud: 0

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The Other J.
1/27/2014 04:41:58 pm

Have you seen Zardoz? If not, you should see Zardoz. And not just for Sean Connery in a diaper.

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J.A. Dickey
1/27/2014 06:06:02 pm

if the "egg" is not a fruit but an orb, are we looking at an
icon for a solar or lunar eclipse? we have a big "snake" in
the act of swallowing the sun or the moon! its a thought!

Reply
J.A. Dickey
1/27/2014 06:47:31 pm

http://anthropology.net/2007/07/04/rotherwas-ribbon-a-bronze-age-site-unique-in-europe/

this article goes into a most curious Bronze Age site

Harry
1/27/2014 12:25:08 pm

Jason, far be it from me to defend Aryan master race fantasies, but I think it is a mistake to draw general conclusions about prehistoric European ethnography from one genome from one spot in Spain. For all we know, the individual in question might have been part of a late wave of invasion from North Africa or the tests that determined the genome's composition might be flawed, in spite of peer review.

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Jason Colavito link
1/27/2014 12:27:37 pm

You're right. We have no idea how widespread the genetics of this fellow were shared. It's only one data point, and more are needed to draw firm conclusions; it suggests but does not prove.

Reply
The Other J.
1/27/2014 04:57:53 pm

I'm really looking forward to seeing more data points. It's no secret here that Ireland's my thing -- it's what I studied, I lived there, etc. The latest DNA testing has definitively linked people from southern and western Ireland and parts of Wales to a migratory population out of northern Spain that arrived in post-ice-age southern Britain through France, and the first people to ever arrive in Ireland made it there around 8,000 BCE.

That's about a 3,000 year gap between that migratory population and the La Braña man, but it'd be interesting to see if more data points and DNA testing can show if the La Braña man is part of a population that migrated anywhere else, and if he's connected to the population that settled in Wales and southern Ireland.

Plus it'd be one more arrow to puncture the Black Irish myth as a result of randy Portuguese sailors visiting Cork. We know their ancestors came from northern Spain, and if there's a DNA link, now we also know what their ancestors may have looked like.

yakko
1/27/2014 12:33:19 pm

Space aliens gave us Twitter? Well, that explains a lot! I'm sure it's all tied to the Freemason/Illuminati/Jewish/Papist/Liberal/Socialist/Reptilian plot to keep us sheeple occupied with banalities while the elite secretly does all the important stuff to keep us enslaved. BTW, who's running the world today? I've lost track lately. For my part, I don't care who's running the world this time, so long as it continues to run, and I can keep watching my soap operas and game shows. Baaaaaaaaa!

You mentioned in passing something that's been on my mind for a while. As I usually express it: how is it that space aliens or a lost culture with advanced tech built Machu Pichu, but not the great cathedrals of Europe? Many of those cathedrals were built at about the same time as Machu Pichu, which is not nearly as old as people seem to think. And then there's the Hagia Sofia and, as the quote from Brad Lepper mentions, the great public works of the Greeks and Romans, which nobody seems to doubt were built by the cultures that the evil mainstream academics say they were.

(Note: this is the comment I tried to post this morning. I'll get this all figured out, just you watch!)

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Paul J.
1/27/2014 03:02:31 pm

"...all worshiped flying snakes because as group of Bronze Age Scots came to America...." Should read "a group". Otherwise, fascinating post as always!

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Jason Colavito link
1/28/2014 12:47:33 pm

I fixed it. Thanks.

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The Other J.
1/27/2014 04:16:24 pm

Thanks for this. I really want to see Lankford's show on History now. The diffusion of astrological symbols across different Native American cultures has the potential to be fascinating, and for most people, entirely novel.

Reply
J.A Dickey
1/27/2014 05:27:22 pm

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2013/03/on-the-reptilians-and-the-persistence-of-myth.html

In March of last year Jason was apt & correct about how
ideas flow back and forth between science fiction & fringe
claims. I want to add that "V" is an indirect "rip-off" of Gene
Roddenberry's Earth Final Conflict, in that a superior alien
species has a First Contact moment with Earth and brings
gifts in a very suspect way. EFC's Taelons are complex beings,
unlike "V" and its obligatory reptoids. The initial script for EFC
was near to complete by 1975 and many studios had rejected
it,, Majel Roddenberry decided to produce the series in the 90s
The Trek community is thrilled at the time. It went 5 seasons. I
liked EFC and was often at the www.philosophysphere.com!!!

Admittedly i see Clovis as an epoch or phase, not an
absolute barrier, and a 50,000 B.C date or a 200,000 B.C
date would not surprise me, but I am into C.Jung to the
degree where snakes are very much an universal icon
and not proof of a global network of fanatics extraordinaire.

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    • Television Reviews >
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    • Collection: Ancient Alien Fraud >
      • Chariots of the Gods at 50
      • Secret History of Ancient Astronauts
      • Of Atlantis and Aliens
      • Aliens and Ancient Texts
      • Profiles in Ancient Astronautics >
        • Erich von Däniken
        • Robert Temple
        • Giorgio Tsoukalos
        • David Childress
      • Blunders in the Sky
      • The Case of the False Quotes
      • Alternative Authors' Quote Fraud
      • David Childress & the Aliens
      • Faking Ancient Art in Uzbekistan
      • Intimations of Persecution
      • Zecharia Sitchin's World
      • Jesus' Alien Ancestors?
      • Extraterrestrial Evolution?
    • Collection: Skeptic Magazine >
      • America Before Review
      • Native American Discovery of Europe
      • Interview: Scott Sigler
      • Golden Fleeced
      • Oh the Horror
      • Discovery of America
      • Supernatural Television
      • Review of Civilization One
      • Who Lost the Middle Ages
      • Charioteer of the Gods
    • Collection: Ancient History >
      • Prehistoric Nuclear War
      • The China Syndrome
      • Atlantis, Mu, and the Maya
      • Easter Island Exposed
      • Who Built the Sphinx?
      • Who Built the Great Pyramid?
      • Archaeological Cover Up?
    • Collection: The Lovecraft Legacy >
      • Pauwels, Bergier, and Lovecraft
      • Lovecraft in Bergier
      • Lovecraft and Scientology
    • Collection: UFOs >
      • Alien Abduction at the Outer Limits
      • Aliens and Anal Probes
      • Ultra-Terrestrials and UFOs
      • Rebels, Queers, and Aliens
    • Scholomance: The Devil's School
    • Prehistory of Chupacabra
    • The Templars, the Holy Grail, & Henry Sinclair
    • Magicians of the Gods Review
    • The Curse of the Pharaohs
    • The Antediluvian Pyramid Myth
    • Whitewashing American Prehistory
    • James Dean's Cursed Porsche
  • The Library
    • Ancient Mysteries >
      • Ancient Texts >
        • Mesopotamian Texts >
          • Atrahasis Epic
          • Epic of Gilgamesh
          • Kutha Creation Legend
          • Babylonian Creation Myth
          • Descent of Ishtar
          • Berossus
          • Comparison of Antediluvian Histories
        • Egyptian Texts >
          • The Shipwrecked Sailor
          • Dream Stela of Thutmose IV
          • The Papyrus of Ani
          • Classical Accounts of the Pyramids
          • Inventory Stela
          • Manetho
          • Eratosthenes' King List
          • The Story of Setna
          • Leon of Pella
          • Diodorus on Egyptian History
          • On Isis and Osiris
          • Famine Stela
          • Old Egyptian Chronicle
          • The Book of Sothis
          • Horapollo
          • Al-Maqrizi's King List
        • Teshub and the Dragon
        • Hermetica >
          • The Three Hermeses
          • Kore Kosmou
          • Corpus Hermeticum
          • The Asclepius
          • The Emerald Tablet
          • Hermetic Fragments
          • Prologue to the Kyranides
          • The Secret of Creation
          • Ancient Alphabets Explained
          • Prologue to Ibn Umayl's Silvery Water
          • Book of the 24 Philosophers
          • Aurora of the Philosophers
        • Hesiod's Theogony
        • Periplus of Hanno
        • Ctesias' Indica
        • Sanchuniathon
        • Sima Qian
        • Syncellus's Enoch Fragments
        • The Book of Enoch
        • Slavonic Enoch
        • Sepher Yetzirah
        • Tacitus' Germania
        • De Dea Syria
        • Aelian's Various Histories
        • Julius Africanus' Chronography
        • Eusebius' Chronicle
        • Chinese Accounts of Rome
        • Ancient Chinese Automaton
        • The Orphic Argonautica
        • Fragments of Panodorus
        • Annianus on the Watchers
        • The Watchers and Antediluvian Wisdom
      • Medieval Texts >
        • Medieval Legends of Ancient Egypt >
          • Medieval Pyramid Lore
          • John Malalas on Ancient Egypt
          • Fragments of Abenephius
          • Akhbar al-zaman
          • Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah
          • Murtada ibn al-‘Afif
          • Al-Maqrizi on the Pyramids
          • Al-Suyuti on the Pyramids
        • The Hunt for Noah's Ark
        • Isidore of Seville
        • Book of Liang: Fusang
        • Agobard on Magonia
        • Book of Thousands
        • Voyage of Saint Brendan
        • Power of Art and of Nature
        • Travels of Sir John Mandeville
        • Yazidi Revelation and Black Book
        • Al-Biruni on the Great Flood
        • Voyage of the Zeno Brothers
        • The Kensington Runestone (Hoax)
        • Islamic Discovery of America
        • The Aztec Creation Myth
      • Lost Civilizations >
        • Atlantis >
          • Plato's Atlantis Dialogues >
            • Timaeus
            • Critias
          • Fragments on Atlantis
          • Panchaea: The Other Atlantis
          • Eumalos on Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Gómara on Atlantis
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • Atlantis and the Sea Peoples
          • W. Scott-Elliot >
            • The Story of Atlantis
            • The Lost Lemuria
          • The Lost Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Africa
          • How I Found Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Termier on Atlantis
          • The Critias and Minoan Crete
          • Rebuttal to Termier
          • Further Responses to Termier
          • Flinders Petrie on Atlantis
        • Lost Cities >
          • Miscellaneous Lost Cities
          • The Seven Cities
          • The Lost City of Paititi
          • Manuscript 512
          • The Idolatrous City of Iximaya (Hoax)
          • The 1885 Moberly Lost City Hoax
          • The Elephants of Paredon (Hoax)
        • OOPARTs
        • Oronteus Finaeus Antarctica Map
        • Caucasians in Panama
        • Jefferson's Excavation
        • Fictitious Discoveries in America
        • Against Diffusionism
        • Tunnels Under Peru
        • The Parahyba Inscription (Hoax)
        • Mound Builders
        • Gunung Padang
        • Tales of Enchanted Islands
        • The 1907 Ancient World Map Hoax
        • The 1909 Grand Canyon Hoax
        • The Interglacial Period
        • Solving Oak Island
      • Religious Conspiracies >
        • Pantera, Father of Jesus?
        • Toledot Yeshu
        • Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay on Cathars
        • Testimony of Jean de Châlons
        • Rosslyn Chapel and the 'Prentice's Pillar
        • The Many Wives of Jesus
        • Templar Infiltration of Labor
        • Louis Martin & the Holy Bloodline
        • The Life of St. Issa (Hoax)
        • On the Person of Jesus Christ
      • Giants in the Earth >
        • Fossil Origins of Myths >
          • Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephants
          • Fossil Elephants
          • Fossil Bones of Teutobochus
          • Fossil Mammoths and Giants
          • Giants' Bones Dug Out of the Earth
          • Fossils and the Supernatural
          • Fossils, Myth, and Pseudo-History
          • Man During the Stone Age
          • Fossil Bones and Giants
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
        • Fragments on Giants
        • Manichaean Book of Giants
        • Geoffrey on British Giants
        • Alfonso X's Hermetic History of Giants
        • Boccaccio and the Fossil 'Giant'
        • Book of Howth
        • Purchas His Pilgrimage
        • Edmond Temple's 1827 Giant Investigation
        • The Giants of Sardinia
        • Giants and the Sons of God
        • The Magnetism of Evil
        • Tertiary Giants
        • Smithsonian Giant Reports
        • Early American Giants
        • The Giant of Coahuila
        • Jewish Encyclopedia on Giants
        • Index of Giants
        • Newspaper Accounts of Giants
        • Lanier's A Book of Giants
      • Science and History >
        • Halley on Noah's Comet
        • The Newport Tower
        • Iron: The Stone from Heaven
        • Ararat and the Ark
        • Pyramid Facts and Fancies
        • Argonauts before Homer
        • The Deluge
        • Crown Prince Rudolf on the Pyramids
        • Old Mythology in New Apparel
        • Blavatsky on Dinosaurs
        • Teddy Roosevelt on Bigfoot
        • Devil Worship in France
        • Maspero's Review of Akhbar al-zaman
        • The Holy Grail as Lucifer's Crown Jewel
        • The Mutinous Sea
        • The Rock Wall of Rockwall
        • Fabulous Zoology
        • The Origins of Talos
        • Mexican Mythology
        • Chinese Pyramids
        • Maqrizi's Names of the Pharaohs
      • Extreme History >
        • Roman Empire Hoax
        • American Antiquities
        • American Cataclysms
        • England, the Remnant of Judah
        • Historical Chronology of the Mexicans
        • Maspero on the Predynastic Sphinx
        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
        • Fortean Society and Columbus
        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
        • The Skyfort Document
        • Whirling Wheels
        • Denver Ancient Astronaut Lecture
        • Soviet Search for Lemuria
        • Visitors from Outer Space
        • Unidentified Flying Objects (Abstract)
        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
        • Ancient Astronaut Society Telegram
        • Noah's Ark Cables
        • The Von Daniken Letter
        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
        • UFOs in Ancient China
        • CIA Report on Noah's Ark
        • CIA Noah's Ark Memos
        • Congressional Ancient Aliens Testimony
        • Ancient Astronaut and Nibiru Email
        • Congressional Ancient Mars Hearing
        • House UFO Hearing
      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
        • Premodern UFO Sightings
        • The Moon Hoax
        • Inhabitants of Other Planets
        • Blavatsky on Ancient Astronauts
        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
      • Interdimensional Flying Saucers
      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
      • Sublime and Beautiful
      • Voltaire on Vampires
      • Demonology and Witchcraft
      • Thaumaturgia
      • Bulgarian Vampires
      • Religion and Evolution
      • Transylvanian Superstitions
      • Defining a Zombie
      • Dread of the Supernatural
      • Vampires
      • Werewolves and Vampires and Ghouls
      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
      • King Solomon's Mines
      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
      • Sredni Vashtar
      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
      • The Corpse on the Grating
      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
      • James Dean's Scrapbook
      • James Dean's Love Letters
      • The Amazing James Dean Hoax!
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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