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NEWS FLASH: The American Anthropological Association Takes a Bold Stand Against the Use of the Term "Redskins"

3/31/2015

Several days ago, the American Anthropological Association (the flagship association of professional anthropologists in the United States) issued the following statement:

"The American Anthropological Association today called on professional and college sports organizations to denounce and abandon the use of American Indian nicknames, logos, and mascots, unless appropriate consultation has taken place with individual tribes and other indigenous stakeholders. The AAA resolution also calls for sports organizations to respect the right of individual tribes to decide how to protect and celebrate their cultural heritage."

My goodness how courageous we've become! After all, the debate about using Native American images and names as mascots for sports teams has only been going on for . . . oh . . . 40 or 50 years now. Way to go, AAA, for staying relevant and positioning us as leaders on this issue.

In case it's not apparent, I'm being sarcastic. When one of my friends posted a story about the AAA announcement on her Facebook page today, I was honestly surprised: I was surprised to learn that the AAA hadn't taken a position on this years ago. Was it really that hard to decide that a professional sports team named the "Redskins" wasn't a great idea? Native Americans have been saying it's a bad idea since before I was born. What took the AAA so long? I just don't get it.

I'm hoping next we'll hear strong yet carefully worded statements from the AAA calling for an end to child labor during the Industrial Revolution and a cessation of Stalin's purges. That would really mark us as effective agents of social change.

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More on the 1915 Photographs of a Megalithic Stone Pulling in Nias, Indonesia

3/28/2015

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Earlier today I wrote this post about some pretty sweet early 20th century photographs from a megalithic stone-pulling ceremony on the island of Nias, Indonesia. I found some additional photos and (I think) figured out a few things that I wanted to pass on. I could be wrong about some of this - if I am please let me know.

First, I'm now 99 percent sure all the photos show the same stone being moved. If you look carefully at the first photo of the stone (A), you'll notice it has been shaped. There is a raised area on the "upstream" end, which itself includes another raised area in the center. The corners of the stone are rounded.

Those same features can be seen on the other stone-pulling photos, convincing me that all the photos are of the same stone. I think all the photos come from a two volume 1917 publication entitled Nias: Ethnographische, geographische en historische aanteekeningen en studien, by E. E. W. Gs. Schroeder. From what I gather, one of the volumes is text while the other is photographs. I don't have access to either at the moment (let me know if you have it?), but I'm guessing all the Nias stone-pulling photos in the previous post come from the volume of photographs.

Second, I found an additional photo of the stone in the village of Bawömataluo on Alain Testart's website. It shows a line of slaughtered pigs in the street near the stone.

Third, I think that the stone shown in the photographs is the horizontal stone on the left in the photo of Bawömataluo below (source). The stone has been smoothed and carved, but notice the two-level raised portion at the end.

The two large horizontal stones and the standing stones behind them are in front of the Omo sebua (chief's house) in the village. The pillar on the right and the stone in front of it can be seen in the photograph (C) that shows the newly-pulled stone and sled. On the left side of photograph C, people are sitting on an existing horizontal stone. On the right side, people are sitting where the new stone will be positioned. To move the new stone into position, it will have to be slid toward the chief's house from where it is "parked" (but it is oriented correctly with the raised portion facing the existing stone.

A panoramic view of Bawömataluo (D) shows the chief's house in relation to the stone that is used for the Hombo Batu (stone jumping) ritual (down the street to the left). In Hombo Batu, young males jump over the stone (which is over 2 m high) in order to prove that they are adults (and/or worthy of being warriors). This is still done today and is apparently a tourist attraction, as it is easy to find numerous photos online. This video has some nice, high quality footage of the village and shows a man jumping over the stone. This video offers an explanation of the tradition and some background on competitive feasting and conflict on Nias.

The Hombo Batu stone in Bawömataluo can be seen to the left in photograph E. The place where the new stone will be positioned can be seen to the right. In photograph E t appears as though there is a thinner slab of stone already resting on the supports where the new stone will be placed.

This whole scenario may be explained completely (perhaps with additional photos) in Schroeder's ethnography or in some other source. I hope I can have a look at it some day.

According to this desciption submitted to UNESCO by The Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Indonesia, the horizonal stones represent males and the vertical stones represent females. Saonigeho (or Siliwu Gere) was the individual who finalized the construction of the chief's house.

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Normal-Sized People Can Move Big Rocks: A Quick Note on the Megalithic Traditions of Nias, Indonesia

3/28/2015

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This is a quick post to bookmark some information about the megalithic traditions of Nias, Indonesia. Unlike the megalithic traditions of Sumba (Indonesia) and the Naga people (India), the behavior of moving big stones appears to be no longer "living" on Nias. The 2007 publication Megalithic Traditions in Nias Island states that the tradition of moving large stones was alive on Nias until the 1950s (page 10).

The excellent photo above (source), taken around 1915, shows a large stone being moved in the village of Bawomataluo. Searching on "Bawomataluo" turned up the photo below (source), which shows a large stone on a sled in the right portion of the photo.

Based on a Google translation of the caption, this appeared to be a photograph of a celebration related to moving a stone in honor (?) of a person named Saonigeho. Searching on that name turned up the two great photos of stone-pulling below (from the website http://www.geheugenvannederland.nl). Here is the source for the first photo, here is the source for the second.

Based on the size of the rock, its shape, and the details of how the stone is attached to the sled, I'm pretty sure all of these photos are showing the same stone. More work will show whether or not that's correct.

Looking carefully I found another photo that appears to also show the same stone on the sled (source):

Addendum (3/28/2015): I found out a little bit more about the stone, the town, and the original ethnography that I presume the photos are from (see this post).

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The Helenwood Devil Fan Club: And Then There Was One

3/27/2015

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Screenshot from March 27 showing the edited version of the story. Hallelujah.

I wrote a post last weekend showing that a 1921 story about a "horned giant" from Tennessee was actually describing a crappy clay statue. I wrote a subsequent post wondering why the two giant enthusiasts who had embraced the Helenwood Devil as authentic did not, after being made aware that it was just a statue, change their stories about it.

I spoke too soon.

I am happy to report that Kristin Harris has now (literally) stricken the references to the Helenwood Devil from his recent story about a horned race of humans, acknowledging that the "It was a statue, not a giant human skeleton." He also changed the headline.

Harris wrote me an email and asked me to print his response, so I will:

"Dear respected Andrew White PHD,

It was brought to my attention that you wrote an article on my piece on Humans with horns. Or skeletons found with horns. http://www.andywhiteanthropology.com/blog/what-do-giant-enthusiasts-do-when-the-truth-turns-out-to-be-inconvenient-nothing-apparently

First, you should know that I received no such email from you at this address written as mentioned in your article. If you could provide me a copy of this message It would be much appreciated. As an investigator, I claim by no means to be perfect. I always encourage everyone to do their own investigation and find facts for themselves. This way imperfections are corrected and together as a society of individuals who strive for truth in history, we together can come to a conclusion.

I would first like to point out you did not mention the other 3 articles including, valid evidence, connecting credible institutions and scientists, with publications that skeletons have been found with horns. I really appreciate your contributions to the subject because I believe you bring a level of professionalism that some do not understand. However actions like these make me question your motives. If you were working together with a coworker to discover the truth, would you do it laced in ridicule? This is not about me, it’s about a search for truth. We must work together in order to come to a logical conclusion.

There are many people involved who have many different reasons for searching for truth or believing in giants. They are not all scientific. But it is important to listen to everyone, question everything and don’t believe it unless you can prove it with your own research. Not everything can be explained by science, at least not yet. I will properly edit the article by striking through the old information and correcting it to properly portray our conversation.

Thank you for the correction, and again that is why you are an asset to the community.

All I ask is you publish my response in full, as transparency is very important in science and we should questions those you work in compartmentalized working environments.

Keep in touch.

Kristan T. Harris"

I admit that I was a little surprised by this email - I think Harris is only the second person who is interested in this sort of thing who was said "whoops" in response to something I've pointed out (the other being Terje Dahl regarding the "replica" of the Denisovan tooth he vouched for on Search for the Lost Giants). I've written about who-in-the-hell-knows-how-many hoaxes, misrepresentations, and misinterpretations having to do with "giants," and there have been precious few moments where someone has said "hey, you know what, that looks like it was bullshit." So I give Harris credit for that.

One clarification: I didn't say that I emailed Harris, but wrote that I had commented on his story:

"I made both of the charter members of the Helenwood Devil Fan Club (Harris and GAWM) aware of my post by commenting on their pages."

The image to the left shows my comment. I assumed that commenting on the story itself was the best way to make readers aware that part of the story was inaccurate.

I also commented on the story on the Greater Ancestors World Museum (GAWM) website, but that site remains unchanged (and my comment has not been "approved," so . . . go science!). I know the operator of that site (Chris Lesley) is aware that he is continuing to promote a clay statue as evidence of something having to do with biblical human origins, as he has commented on the original Helenwood Devil post. But he's apparently in no hurry to distance himself or his "scientific model of origins" that is "boldly superior to all previous and existing models globally" from a clay statue built in an abandoned coal mine and carted around the country to liberate the gullible and the curious from their quarters. Other than some blogger who thought the story about the Helenwood Devil described a petrified pterosaur, the GAWM seems to now be the sole supporter of Cruis Sexton's manufactured monster as something relevant to understanding prehistory.

The Helenwood Devil Fan Club now has a membership of one.

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Giraffe-Giraffe Combat: Everybody Wins

3/26/2015

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The last exam I gave my Human Origins classes included the option to get a bonus point by drawing a picture of giraffe-giraffe combat. This isn't quite as dumb as it sounds, as we had watched a short video of giraffes battling it out in class. And that isn't as dumb as it sounds, either. I don't recall exactly how we got there, but at one point we had watched a video of Richard Dawkins dissecting a giraffe neck to follow the path of the recurrent laryngeal nerve. Later on, in the context of our discussion of possible explanations for the emergence of bipedalism, we discussed the idea in this paper that bipedalism is related to fighting.

Anyway, the option to draw giraffe-giraffe combat made it on to the exam as a bonus question. My experience is that many of the students like to draw things - it makes taking the exam a little less painful and it gives them a chance to express their personalities a little bit. I like it because it makes grading less tedious.

There were so many good giraffe drawings that I couldn't pick an outright winner. Thus the award for best depiction of giraffe-giraffe combat will be decided by public vote. Register your choice by number in the comments section below. Some Grand Valley State undergraduate will be very happy, as I have promised the winner a completely non-spectacular prize (probably something from the Salvation Army).

1. "I Am a Giraffe."

2. "Dude, WTF?"

3. "Screw You, Carl!"

4. "My Land."

5. "Epic Combat Game."

6. "Move!"

7. "K.O.'d."

8. "Come At Me Then, Marty."

9. Untitled.

10. "Stop Touching the Remote."

11. "You Dishonor Me."

12. "Wow This Kid Sucks at Drawing."

So much winning.

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What Do Giant Enthusiasts Do When the Truth Turns Out To Be Inconvenient? Nothing, Apparently.

3/24/2015

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A couple of days ago, I wrote a post about the Helenwood Devil (a clay statue manufactured in the 1920s) in reaction to a story by Kristan Harris. Harris' story led with an article about a petrified, horned giant that was "discovered" in Scott County, Tennessee, and exhibited in Helenwood. I think it's pretty clear from the photograph of the "giant" (which I reproduce again for your viewing pleasure) and the associated stories about it that it was a hoax, and probably not the strongest card to play if you want to argue that a "race of humans with horns protruding from their skulls" once roamed the planet. A newspaper account of the Helenwood Devil is also featured on the Greater Ancestors World Museum (GAWM) website.

I made both of the charter members of the Helenwood Devil Fan Club (Harris and GAWM) aware of my post by commenting on their pages. Both have, apparently, chosen to do nothing: the stories still remain exactly like they were two days ago.

What does that mean? Does that mean they stand by the Helenwood Devil as an authentic evidence of the existence of a prehistoric race of horned humans?

I think it does. Putting myself in their places, if I were interested in knowing and presenting accurate information (which I am, and which they claim to be), I would adjust my stance on the Helenwood Devil if I found out that the "giant" I was using as evidence was actually a sculpture.

I presume that Harris would print a retraction of his story if he felt it was no longer accurate. After all, in this video, Harris tells us that newspapers retract stories that they know to be false in order to maintain their credibility. Speaking on the issue of accounts of giants in old newspapers, Harris says:

"Where are the articles calling these things hoaxes? Obviously, as a newspaper, you want to be as credible as possible, and you would retract these things."

Likewise with the GAWM, which makes the claim that it utilizes "a scientific model of origins" that is "boldly superior to all previous and existing models globally." Science is built on falsification: leaving the Helenwood Devil on the GAWM site signals acceptance of a crappy statue that some guy built from clay in an abandoned coal mine as evidence supporting whatever it is the GAWM is boldy exploring.

The Helenwood Devil.

Screenshot of Harris' story from this morning: the Helenwood Devil still gets the nod as authentic and important.

Screenshot of GAMW page from this morning: a vote of confidence in the authenticity of the Helenwood Devil.

The choices that Harris and GAWM have made (to do nothing) signal that they apparently still believe in the Helenwood Devil. It will be interesting to see if the Helenwood Devil Fan Club attracts any more members.

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"Giantologists: There's One Born Every Minute" or "The Helenwood Devil: An Obvious Fraud"

3/22/2015

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The clay statue of the "giant with horns" built by Cruis Sexton in the 1920s still has cachet among giantologists.

Okay, so I couldn't resist another post related to giants today. This one, like my last one, isn't going to contain any ground-breaking analysis. Rather I'm just going to relay the results of some simple fact-checking.

Kristan Harris posted this silly story today with the headline "Human Skeleton with Horns Discovered by Coal Miners Underneath Knoxville, TN." After an introductory paragraph that asks the pressing question of whether a race of horned humans once roamed the planet, Harris transcribes a 1921 article from the Bismarck Tribune about a petrified 6'4" giant allegedly found in a coal mine in Scott County, Tennessee. The alert observer will immediately note that, contrary to the headline of Harris' story, the horned being was "petrified" rather than a skeleton, and it was found in Helenwood (Scott County), not Knoxville (Knox County). But those are trivial details when we're talking about the Devil walking the Earth. So let's move on.

When I read the Bismark Tribune story, my first thought was "Hey, this is in the 1920s - surely there's a photo of this thing somewhere." It took me a few minutes, but I found one. It is on a National Park Service website for the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area along with the story of how Cruis Sexton built the "Devil of Scott County" out of clay and charged people money to see it. You can find other tellings of the story by Googling "Helenwood Devil" or "Devil of Scott County." This was an obvious hoax that was used to bilk the gullible.

And it's still fooling the gullible today. The story has its own page on the Greater Ancestors World Museum website (without the photo of the clay statue but with the photo that gets passed around as the purported horned skull from Sayre, Pennsylvania, apparently just as an illustration of what a horned skull would look like). Maybe since I have now made the giantology community aware of this photo and the story that goes with it (it took me a couple of minutes with my phone while I was watching two kids - not exactly serious scholarship), the GAWM can make a replica of the "horned giant" to go along with its replica of the imaginary skull with three rows of teeth.

Addendum 1 (3/23/2015): I found this article from the August 11, 1921, edition of The Topeka State Journal. In this article, it appears as though Cruise Sexton was trying to pass off his creation as a prehistoric statue rather than the preserved body of "prehistoric giant:"

"Sexton believes the object may be an image of an old tribe of Indians or cliff dwellers."

So there you go. Even the guy who built knew it wasn't good enough to pass off as actual human remains. But the giantologists of today have promoted it, sight unseen, to a fact of prehistory that they say should upend everything we've been taught. Good luck making that argument.

Addendum 2 (3/25/2015): This website about Scott County history reproduces the following article from the Somerset Journal (September 9, 1921), describing the visit of the Helenwood Devil to a fair in Somerset, Kentucky:

"There was exhibited last week at the Somerset Fair an object that attracted several thousand people into a small tent. They each paid 25 cents admission fee. Some came out and said the whole thing was a fake, while others said they would not have missed it for a dollar. Anyway, it was the biggest drawing card at the fair. The object that is attracting so much attention was found by Crusie Sexton while digging for coal near Helenwood, Tenn. It has the appearance of a petrified form, about five feet, ten inches long, large head with horns, large nose and ears, wings reaching to ankles and teeth showing. The arms are long and slender and are crossed over the body. The hands have extra long fingers and the ankles are enlarged. Mr. Sexton, who made the find, was in the city this week and made an affidavit that he found the object in the ground about five feet below the surface. He dug it up and removed it to Helenwood where it created such excitement that he put it in a box and charged admission. IT is said that the sum of $25,000.00 has been offered for it. It is owned by Mr. J.C. Pemberton of Oneida, Tenn., now. The form is now reposing in a box with iron bands around it, four pad locks on the box, nails driven in the lid and a guard standing watch. A professor from an eastern university says it is some ancient idol of an early race. Anyway, whatever it is, the owners bid fair to get rich."

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Two More Clues as to What Passes for "Evidence" and "Research" in the Land of Giantology

3/22/2015

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I won't have much time to write about giants over the next couple of weeks, but I wanted to pass on two things that I think illustrate something important about what constitute "evidence" and "research" among those who enthusiastically and uncritically promote the existence of giants.

The first is a Photoshopped image that is making the rounds on the internet. A friend of mine told me that it was posted to the REAL GIANTS Facebook page in connection with (yet another) reposting of the story of the supposed horned skull excavated in Sayre, Pennsylvania, in the 1880s. The modified image is shown next to the original below. In case someone from the REAL GIANTS page is having difficulty telling which one is real, I have labeled them.

A catalog number is visible on the drilled artifact in the lower right corner, suggesting the original photo was of a display in a museum. The modified image says "Worth 1000" (a site that runs image manipulation contests), which is a giveaway to anyone who cares to take a single second to think about what he or she is looking at. How this meets the standards of "scientific, serious research" that REAL GIANTS purports to be about is beyond me. But, anyway, keep up the good work over there and let us know when you get it all figured out!

The second example comes from the experience that Jason Colavito wrote about in his blog post entitled "Outraged Gigantologist Accuses Me of Lies, Asks Readers to Send Me Hate Mail." Apparently someone compiling old newspaper stories about giants felt that Jason's own transcription of some old newspaper stories on his webpage constituted theft. You can read the story yourself.

The thing that's interesting to me about the giantologist's reaction to Jason's compilation is that it makes visible the idea (also expressed in this interview with another aspiring giantologist) that the simple act of collecting old newspaper clippings constitutes "research." Here's a definition of "research" that pops up online:

"The systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions."

Notice that research involves something beyond collecting primary data. Cutting and pasting newspaper articles is not, by itself, research, and no-one who understands what "research" actually is would claim it to be so.

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Two Radiocarbon Dates from the Clark's Point Site (12-Cl-3), Clark County, Indiana

3/20/2015

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Excavation at the Clark's Point site (12-Cl-3) in the Fall of 2002.

Anyone who's done archaeology for a significant length of time has a pile of "things I'm going to finish someday." My experience teaching at Grand Valley this year along with my anticipation of moving outside of the Midwest over the summer has spurred me to be realistic about the things in that pile. I'm just not going to ever have the time and energy to pursue everything that I'd like to. So in the interests of looking ahead, I'm going through my filing cabinet of unfinished projects and trying to make available things that might be of use to someone else. I started with this stalled research on fetal head molding in Pleistocene humans. Now it's a couple of radiocarbon dates from an excavation that's over 10 years old. It's academic spring cleaning in the age of the internet.

The Clark's Point site (12-Cl-3) is a Late Archaic habitation site situated on a terrace overlooking the Falls of the Ohio. While I was working for the IPFW Archaeology Survey in 2002, we did a small excavation on the site in cooperation with the Clarksville Historical Society and the Falls of the Ohio Archaeological Society. My technical report of that excavation is available on my Academia.edu page (the report is here).

The site is called "Clark's Point" because it was the site of a house occupied by George Rogers Clark. The main prehistoric component of the site (and the reason I was interested in the excavation) is Late Archaic in age. The purpose of the excavation was to dig a footer for a chimney that was to be constructed on a cabin that now sits on the site. That excavation extended into Late Archaic midden deposits, allowing us to collect controlled samples of artifacts and other materials and expose a profile.

I obtained two AMS radiocarbon dates from deposits at the site after the initial report was written. It was always my intention to do a more thorough analysis of the midden and its contents and publish a paper with the radiocarbon dates. I would still like to do that at some point, but there isn't any sense in sitting on the radiocarbon dates any longer. The IPFW Archaeology Survey no longer exists (I do not actually know where the collections are at this point), and I need to move on. Anyway, here are the dates:

The dates do not overlap at their 2-sigma range, and give some idea of the amount of time depth in the midden. The younger date (Beta-213841) is from nutshell recovered from a flotation sample from the upper portion of the midden (Zone D). The older date (Beta-213842) is from nutshell recovered from a charcoal-rich layer that seemed to mark the base of the midden. The locations of the samples are shown in the figures below. Further description of the sediments and cultural materials in the midden deposits can be found in the technical report (link above).

Please let me know if you make use of these dates. I hope to continue working on the Late Archaic of the Ohio Valley at some point in the future.

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My Theory of Normal-Sized Pharaohs but Super Small Everyone Else

3/17/2015

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Ancient artwork, especially from Egypt and Mesopotamia, is often claimed by giant enthusiasts to show enormous humans and normal-sized humans side by side. Here is one website claiming that artwork supports the notion of giant ancient Egyptians. Here is another. Here is one about Sumer. Here is another Sumer one. You get the idea.

Skeptics point out that differences in size were used to indicate differences in importance, power, or status: that’s why the pharaohs and the kings are shown significantly larger than those around them. Here's a pretty simple explanation from this website:

"The stratified sizes of god and human, king and subject, tomb owner and servant, parent and child or husband and wife are usually symbolic of relative status and power within Egyptian compositions. This is particularly clear in scenes recorded on temple walls and in other settings which show the Egyptian king at a much larger scale than his enemies, heightening the hierarchical effect of the representation by emphasizing the helplessness of the enemy and the king's superhuman stature."

Well, sure, that makes total sense. But it's also far too boring. We want giants, and we want them now. Even better if they're also aliens.

So let's ignore the pesky "symbolism" aspect for now and keep insisting that the size differences in the artwork were really meant to be taken literally. It turns out we still have a problem: the physical remains of many of those individuals depicted as "giants" are not giant at all. Because we're looking at depictions of known individuals, we can in some cases examine the actual remains of those individuals and see if they're gigantic (they're not). So if the differences in the sizes of the individuals in these pictures are to be take literally, we’re going to have to come up with a different explanation. I think I’ve figured it out: the rulers were normal-sized, but everyone else back then was super small.

I’ll give you the example of Rameses II. I think you'll agree that this explanation is just as plausible as giants.

Ramesses II (1303-1213 BC) is regarded as one of the most powerful pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Among his many exploits, he led military campaigns into Nubia and the Levant to expand Egypt’s control and secure its borders. Perhaps his most famous adventure was the clash with the Hittite Empire at the Battle of Kadesh (1274 BC), billed as the largest chariot battle ever fought.

Depictions of Ramesses in the Battle of Kadesh, as well as in many other battles, show him in his chariot towering above the enemy. The illustration above, from Ramesses' temple in Thebes, shows the siege of Dapur. Notice that Ramesses is so large compared to his enemies that all he really needs to do is just drive over them. There really is no need to use ladders to scale the walls of the city, either, as Ramesses could just walk up to them and kick them over. (That's Ramesses holding the captives by the hair in the image at the beginning of the post, also - an image often used by giant enthusiasts to demonstrate the large size of the pharaohs).

Ramesses' mummified body was discovered in 1881. It is currently on display in the Cairo Museum (here is a video).

Unfortunately for the giant enthusiasts, Ramesses was about 5'7" rather than 30' (or even 12' tall). We don't have to guess - we can just get out a tape measure.

That's a bummer for the giant enthusiasts, but great news for the super small people enthusiasts. Because if Ramesses was about 6' (we can round up - he was a pharaoh, after all), everyone around him appears to have been less than 3' tall. If we disregard the possibility that any attempt was made to depict distance in the mural shown above, we may even conclude that there are some 1' tall people shown in that artwork.

The really good researchers out there will be able to find other examples of artwork depicting normal-sized pharaohs and tiny people. Like his son, Seti I was about 5'7". The 1834 volume A History of Egyptian Mummies (published before Darwin and before the Smithsonian, notice) didn't list any mummies taller than 5'6".

I'm sure there is more to be considered here, but I think my super small people theory is looking pretty good. Unless, of course, we want to go back to the boring idea that artistic traditions include regularities for communicating ideas, and relative size was used in ancient Egypt to communicate relative status or power. I know it's boring, but is it really that crazy?

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