In case you were wondering what explorers, inventors, and U.S. Presidents have in common, I wanted to point you in the direction of a recent post by J. Hutton Pulitzer titled "What do Presidents, Explorers and Inventors Have in Common?"  Pulitzer has answered your question with a list of "elite who happen to of haven been or currently are famous explorers (whether explorers of land, new frontiers or futuristic technology) who also happen to be accomplished inventors."  If you've been following Pulitzer's misadventures, you will probably not be surprised to see that he has placed himself among those elite, brave, creative inventors/explorers who have shaped our world:

"Seems the same school of thought and brain genius that enables one to seek adventure and tackle things others don’t even dream of doing is the same common thread to inventing ideas that change society and lead to a better way of life and productivity."

I'm not sure if Pulitzer counts the capacity for shameless plagiarism among the "brain genius" powers that he feels place him in the upper echelon of human creativity, but this post of his demonstrates it out the wazoo.  As someone who grades a lot of papers and is now unfortunately familiar with Pulitzer's writing style, the cut-and-paste was easy for me to spot.  This post gets a big fat zero for the shameless, intentional use of unattributed content. 

Here is a snippet of Pulitzer's text (I have bolded the portion of it that is his original writing):

"Besides being credited as the “inventor” and “Commander” of our nation, George Washington played a role in establishing the U.S. patent system. But why was he interested in inventing at all? Washington ran into a man named James Rumsey at an inn where both were staying. Rumsey showed Washington a model of his invention: a mechanical boat that could propel itself upstream by grappling on the bottom."

Here is text from the website InventHelp.com: 

"Besides being credited as the "inventor" of our nation, George Washington played a roll in establishing the U.S. patent system. But why was he interested in inventing at all? Washington ran into a man named James Rumsey at an inn where both were staying. Rumsey showed Washington a model of his invention: a mechanical boat that could propel itself upstream by grappling on the bottom."

So . . . yeah . . . add two words at the beginning and call it good, right? Pulitzer goes on to plagiarize sections about Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt from the same site.  Then he cuts and pastes unattributed text from Wikipedia for his section on "modern day examples of this rough and tumble, yet inventive crowd," including lifted descriptions for Richard Branson, Steve Fossett, and Elon Musk.  

Pulitzer inserts himself in the "brain genius" lineup between Branson and Fossett, claiming that he "has accomplished more historic re-discoveries than any historic or modern explorers."

I'm not even sure what that means, but at least it's original writing.

Nowhere in Pulitzer's blog post (or anywhere on the page that I can see) are there any attributions of any sources for his text, not even in the most general way. There is what appears to be some kind of attribution at the beginning ("Original Publication Date November 19, 2013 -Washington, DC – Fun facts in History.  Tom Velasquez   Reprint Rights Granted") but I don't know what it's supposed to refer to.

Unless Pulitzer wants to claim that he wrote or owns the content on Wikipedia or InventHelp.com (no claim of his would surprise me at this point), I suggest that he add some. If he admits that he was intentionally trying to pass off the writing of others as his own and can convince me that he has learned from his mistake, I may let him turn in the assignment for up to half credit.  Otherwise, he gets a straight up "F" and I'll refer the case to the Office of Academic Dishonesty.  That's going to be a tough one to explain to his parents over the Christmas break. And to the World Creative Elite Inventor/Explorer Club Membership Application Board.

I'm pretty happy with what I've learned about the history and origins of modern Young Earth Creationism (YEC) over the last few days.  I didn't really "discover" anything new (the story has been laid out by scholars before), but it feels like I did because my primary question had to do with belief in "giants" rather than changes in ideas about creation in general.  So I was coming at it from a different perspective. And I did most of my reading on a smartphone between bouts of watching kids and eating too much. It's got "win" written all over it. 

Last January, I wrote my first post about what I call the "degeneration doctrine" (the idea that humans have gotten dumber, smaller, and weaker since creation). At the time, I didn't know about the connections between that idea and the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) church. I became aware that there was some connection as I wrote about Ellen G. White, Ben Carson, and Clifford Burdick. Yesterday as I was writing about Kent Hovind's adaptation of Millerite/Adventist prophetic charts, I stumbled upon the missing link between the prophecies of Ellen G. White and modern, non-SDA ideas about degeneration and Bible giants. It turns out that a single person transformed Ellen G. White's 19th century visions of the antediluvian world (which the vast majority of Christians do not accept as relevant to their faith) into a doctrine that has helped fuel a bitter war about science, faith, public policy, and education in this country. There may really be a single person upon whom we can lay much of the blame for YEC as well as the "giants" that come with it. 
​
The name of that person is George McCready Price.

George McCready Price (1870-1963) was a Seventh-Day Adventist who turned Ellen G. White's visions into structured "scientific" arguments against evolution. This was no small task. White's visions were as voluminous as they were extra-biblical.  Here is a taste from her "1890 Statements Concerning the Flood" (taken from this compilation found on the Ellen G. White Estate website):

"Changes on the Earth’s Surface at the End of the Flood—The entire surface of the earth was changed at the flood. A third dreadful curse rested upon it in consequence of sin. As the water began to subside, the hills and mountains were surrounded by a vast, turbid sea. Everywhere were strewn the dead bodies of men and beasts. The Lord would not permit these to remain to decompose and pollute the air, therefore He made of the earth a vast burial ground. A violent wind which was caused to blow for the purpose of drying up the waters, moved them with great force, in some instances even carrying away the tops of the mountains and heaping up trees, rocks, and earth above the bodies of the dead. By the same means the silver and gold, the choice wood and precious stones, which had enriched and adorned the world before the flood, and which the inhabitants had idolized, were concealed from the sight and search of men, the violent action of the waters piling earth and rocks upon these treasures, and in some cases even forming mountains above them....
    The earth presented an appearance of confusion and desolation impossible to describe. The mountains, once so beautiful in their perfect symmetry, had become broken and irregular. Stones, ledges, and ragged rocks were now scattered upon the surface of the earth. In many places hills and mountains had disappeared, leaving no trace where they once stood; and plains had given place to mountain ranges. These changes were more marked in some places than in others. Where once had been earth’s richest treasures of gold, silver, and precious stones, were seen the heaviest marks of the curse. And upon countries that were not inhabited, and those where there had been the least crime, the curse rested more lightly.
    At this time immense forests were buried. These have since been changed to coal, forming the extensive coal beds that now exist, and also yielding large quantities of oil (Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 107-8).

​To support the details of Ellen White's visions, Price published a series of books resurrecting "flood geology" (the idea that geological features of the Earth, such as rock strata and fossils, can be better explained as the result of a cataclysmic global flood event than as a result of uniform processes of change acting over long periods of time). As far as I can tell, Price's books contain most of the elements and arguments (and misunderstandings, misconceptions, and misrepresentations) found in current discussions of of geology and the fossil record by YEC groups.  You can read some of Price's books for yourself online: Outlines of Modern Christianity and Modern Science (1902); Illogical Geology: The Weakest Point in the Evolutionary Theory (1906); Q.E.D.; Or, New Light on the Doctrine of Creation (1917); God's Two Books: Or Plain Facts about Evolution, Geology, and the Bible (1918); The New Geology (1923).

Ellen White's general ideas about degeneration are clearly expressed and presented by Price as expectations about the fossil record in Illogical Geology:

    "The fossils, regarded as whole, invariably supply us with types larger of their kind and better developed in every way than their nearest modern representatives, whether of plants or animals.
    This fact also is so well known that it needs no proof." (Illogical Geology, pg. 70)

    "And in summing up this matter regarding the size and physical development of species, we must confess that we find in geology no indication of inherent progress upward. Variation there is and variation there has been, even "mutations" and "saltations," but with one voice do the rocks testify that the general results of such variation have not been upward. Rather must we confess as great biological law, that degeneration has marked the history of every living form." (Illogical Geology, pg. 73)

Curiously, despite his inclusion of "every living form," Price only very briefly applies the idea of degeneration directly to humans:  

"But when, in addition to all this, we consider the fact that those human giants of the caves of Western Europe were contemporary with the animals mentioned above, and dis appeared along with them at this same time, while mountain masses in all parts of the world crowded with marine forms of the so-called "older" types positively cannot be separated in time from the others, it becomes as certain as any other ordinary scientific fact, like sunrise or sunset, that our once magnificently stocked world met with some sudden and awful catastrophe in the long ago" (Illogical Geology, pg. 84)

Price's allusion to "human giants" is almost certainly a reference to the remains of Neanderthals, which had been known from western Europe since the late 1820's and identified as a kind of human since the 1850's. In a section titled "Fossil Men," he does go into some discussion of human skeletons that appear to of Pliocene or Miocene age but it is the "modern" qualities of these fossils coupled with their position in supposedly ancient strata (therefore throwing a monkey wrench into the idea that the geological column shows an ordering of different forms of life through time) that is of interest to Price: 

"But in this fact, if it be fact, that Man lived under the wholly strange and different conditions of "Pliocene" or perhaps "Miocene times," is THE VERY STRONGEST POSSlBLE ARGUMENT that can conceive of for the necessity of complete reconstruction of geological theory" (Illogical Geology, pg. 74 [emphasis in original])

If you think about it carefully, this is a sleight of hand by Price (one that is still repeated by YEC proponents today). If we are supposed to have degenerated from antediluvian humans, why should we expect the remains of pre-Flood humans to be of "modern" appearance and size? If those human remains were incorporated into the the rocks in which they are found at the time of the Flood (i.e., as casualties of the Flood), shouldn't they look like pre-Flood people?

Price was a tireless advocate of Flood geology for decades. His ideas and arguments gained traction with Biblical fundamentalists of other denominations, and in 1938 he and other Adventists formed the Deluge Geology Society (here's an interesting post about it). Members of the Deluge Geology Society (DGS) included Henry M. Morris, an Independent Baptist and one of the founders of the Institute for Creation Research (1972).  What happens next once again brings giants to the forefront of YEC thought and connects the remaining dots between Ellen G. White's visions and the YEC Bible giants of today. The following is from Ronald L Numbers' (1992) book The Creationists:

"In 1943, the DGS began soliciting funds for "ACTUAL EXCAVATION" of reported sites, and . . . the two other society members who formed the Footprint Research Committee--Everet E. Beddoe, (1889-1977), an Adventist minister, and Clifford L. Burdick (b. 1894), a consulting geologist--presented "an extensive field report on fossil human footprints," accompanied by casts and photographs.  Burdick, a graduate of the Seventh Day Baptist Milton College in Wisconsin, had embraced flood geology in the early 1920s, when as a recent convert to Seventh-day Adventism he had enrolled in an Adventist college to prepare for mission service and had there met Price. . . .
    From the beginning the DGS treated the footprint project with a mixture of grandiosity and paranoia, fearful lest competitors steal their thunder or enemies thwart their work. . . .
    Monetary need, however, ultimately overcame the fear of harassment, and in 1945 Allen, in an effort to secure financial backing for the project, publicly revealed the discovery of gigantic fossil footprints of humans far older than allowed by evolution, "thus at a single stroke defeating that theory." (pp 122-123)

I wrote about Burdick's (1950) article "When Giants Roamed the Earth" a few days ago.  That article discussed the main "evidence" and rationale for giants upon which some Young Earth Creationists (such as Carl Baugh and Joe Taylor) still rely.

It appears to me that Young Earth Creationism in the early 20th century was largely limited to Seventh-Day Adventists before it "jumped the track" by virtue of the wider membership of the Deluge Geology Society. Baptists ran with it after that and have retained many of the elements -- such as flood geology, degeneration, and giants -- that were part of Ellen G. White's prophetic visions.  I wonder how many of today's YEC advocates understand that their playbook was more-or-less written by a Seventh-Day Adventist committed to proving that Ellen White was right? It's fairly clear that Kent Hovind does, as he has practically modeled his career after Price's (complete with theatrical monetary wagers and fluffed up credentials) and surrounds himself with Millerite/Adventist regalia. The prophetic/apocalyptic concerns of the SDA church also appear to be present among many of today's believers in pre-Flood giants.

It's interesting that YEC interest in giants in America seems to have been completely divorced from the numerous accounts of "giant" skeletons being excavated from across the United States in the late 19th century. I would hesitate to say that the two weren't related in some way, but I haven't yet run across anything that establishes a direct connection (not from Ellen White, not from Price, etc.).  It may be that there is some overlap in whatever contributed to the content of Ellen White's visions and the contemporary "giant craze." Perhaps, for example, both had something to do with the discussions of giants and degeneration that were present in general Christian publications in the early 1800's (e.g., Bible dictionaries). 

I've been working on understanding the history of the "degeneration doctrine" in American religion and its relevance to Bible giants, focused on tracing ideas about the stature of pre-Flood humans. I've found the idea in Bible dictionaries from the early 1800's and in a handful of places post-dating the mid-1800s, including several associated with the Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) church (the late 19th century writings of Ellen G. White, a 1950 article on giants by Clifford Burdick, and statements by GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson). The degeneracy doctrine clearly has some kind of association with the SDA church.

Kent Hovind, a formerly prominent Young Earth Creationist (YEC), is also a proponent of the degeneracy doctrine, as are associated figures such as Joe Taylor and Carl Baugh. According to his Wikipedia entry, Hovind is an "Independent Baptist" and not a member of the SDA church. So where do his ideas about creation, degeneration, and giants come from? Is Hovind's degeneracy doctrine independent and/or different from Adventist teachings, or is there some relationship?

I might be able to get answers to those questions by simply emailing Hovind.  But that's too easy. I'm an archaeologist, and I like try to explain  things by searching for and interpreting patterns. Archaeology can give you answers that go well beyond what one person may think about his experience. And it's more fun than just asking.

I haven't yet turned up any evidence of a formal connection between Baptists and giants, so I thought maybe Hovind's ideas about degeneration came from earlier in his life - perhaps he was raised in the SDA church?  I wasn't able to find much information online about Hovind's early years (this bio just says he became a Christian at age 16, as does this one). I did find, however, evidence for a significant amount of tension and in-fighting among various flavors of creationists and between the SDA church and other fundamentalist/literalist Christian denominations (see this, this, and this). In fact, it seems that the SDA church is often cast in a negative light in regards to their creationist doctrines. I don't pretend to understand it all, but I don't get the impression that Hovind and many other creationists look favorably upon the SDA church.

But that doesn't mean he didn't get some of his YEC talking points from them. (I'm still learning about the specific role of Adventists and the SDA church in developing what we now know as Young Earth Creationism - more on that later).

I grabbed the image at the left from one of Hovind's YouTube videos. It's the poster in the background that's interesting.  That and other similar posters are for sale on Hovind's website.

What's notable about the poster is that it is adapted from the prophetic charts used by the Millerites in the 1840s and later Adventist denominations (including Seventh-Day Adventists) that grew out of the Millerite movement after the Great Disappointment of 1844. Prophetic charts (you can see images of several in the collections of the Aurora University library) were used as visual aids to spread the message of the Millerites and the Adventists as they traveled across the county. The following is a quote from a 2012 lecture by Susan L. Palmer titled "Unraveling Adventist Prophecy: The History and Meaning of the Millerite Charts" (available here): 

"Millerite preachers used these charts to illustrate the complicated chronologies, calculations, biblical symbolism, and prophesies fulfilled that had led to Miller’s conclusions about the second coming of Christ. The most famous and popular chart of the time, the “1843 Chart” . . . measured about three by five feet, but others were larger, as they were to be used as a visual tool in large halls; the great, traveling, Millerite tent; and even in the open air, where they were sometimes hung on trees. . . . 
    . . . Even when traveling, a preacher would sometimes hang a chart while on a boat or ship (or in some other conveyance or public space). The arresting, often frightening images on a chart would invariably draw a crowd, thus affording a preacher yet another opportunity to spread the message of Christ’s imminent return."

Modern beliefs about the existence of giants in the past are multi-faceted.  As I touched on in the section introducing topics on The Argumentative Archaeologist site, I think there are three main threads: the "corrupt seed" giants (aka Nephilim); the "lost race" of giants (frequently associated with a resurgence of the Mound Builder Myth); and the "Bible giants" of Young Earth Creationism. There is some overlap in these threads, especially with what constitutes evidence.

've been trying to understand the history, development, and modern configuration of what I call the "degeneration doctrine" (the idea that the human career has been marked by "degeneration" from the bigger, better, smarter original state of creation).  Presidential candidate Ben Carson espouses the idea, as does Kent Hovind. I've found the idea all over the mid-19th century writings of Seventh-Day Adventist prophet Ellen G. White and in Bible dictionaries from the early 1800s.

As I was constructing The Argumentative Archaeologist, I came across a lot of interesting material relevant to Young Earth Creationist (YEC) claims about giants (there is a special fascination with supposed fossil footprints), and I became aware of a 1950 article by Clifford L. Burdick titled "When Giants Roamed the Earth."  The article,* in the Seventh-Day Adventist publication Signs of the Times (Volume 77, Number 28, pp. 8-9), clearly lays out the degeneracy doctrine as it is related to giant humans:

    "No wonder Methuselah lived so long. The rich soil was watered by gentle mists, that did not cut ravines and gullies and wash the forming soil into the ocean.
    With a withering earth we see a withering humanity. Not only has man decreased in stature from a magnificent specimen ten or twelve feet tall, to an average today of less than six feet, but his average life has shortened from many centuries to little more than half a century. Where do we find any human evolution here?"

The physical evidence that Burdick offers for giants includes several purported giant human footprints (some of which, I believe, I already have entries for under "Anomalous Footprints" although the names may differ - I'll do some cross-checking later).  The footprints of "giants" (some of which have been shown to be fabrications) are continue to be displayed in the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas.

The last section of Burdick's article is worth reproducing, as it nicely ties together many of the elements that are still a part of YEC arguments about giants:

    "The conclusions from these remarkable discoveries are crystal clear, but have far-reaching repercussions:
    1. Degeneration, not evolution has been the fate of the human race.
    2. Finding human tracks and dinosaur tracks in the same formation prove them contemporaneous, rather than separated by from 6o,000,000 to 120,000,000 years, thus collapsing the geological age theory.
    3. Evolution has always leaned on the geological age theory for its main support; therefore with the collapse of the geological age theory, the generalization of organic evolution also collapses." 

My investigation into the degeneracy doctrine and Bible giants in Industrial America is revealing a strong connection to the Seventh-Day Adventist church: I do not think it is coincidental that Ellen G. White was a Seventh-Day Adventist, Burdick's article appeared in a Seventh-Day Adventist publication, and Ben Carson was raised as a Seventh-Day Adventist.  I haven't yet looked at if/how the degeneracy doctrine appears in other indigenous American religious movements, but I will not be surprised if it turns out to be rather limited outside of the Seventh-Day Adventist church and related movements. That's interesting.

*I owe a special thanks to Irna Osmanovic (Le Site d'Irna) for finding a copy of the Burdick article online for me.  Thanks Irna!

About a month ago, I found a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk while I was walking to work and listening to Hutton Pulitzer interview Jim Scherz.  While I didn't learn a whole lot from that interview, the twenty bucks was nice. I spent it on "Giants on Record," the new book by Jim Vieira and Hugh Newman. That was not a great investment.

I purchased the book because I was mostly interested in seeing what Vieira and Newman had to say about "double rows of teeth." That strange phrase (repeated by Vieira ad nauseam in his writings, online videos, and episodes of Search for the Lost Giants) is one of pillars of Vieira's belief in a "lost race" of giants.  I was curious to see if my own work on the phrase, which I know that Vieira has seen, has had any effect.

Based on Chapter 7 ("Double Rows of Teeth"), the answer to that appears to be an unqualified "no."

Following a brief preamble where they discuss the mention of "numerous rows of teeth" in the Talmud (see this post by Jason Colavito for more on that), Vieria and Newman move on to the now time-honored giantologist tradition of recycling old newspaper accounts as evidence.  While there were a few accounts that I hadn't seen before, many were familiar (including several that I have discussed directly).

In the majority of cases, the language in the accounts presented by Vieira and Newman is clearly referring to the presence of "double teeth" (molars) or "double teeth all around" (the appearance of a mouth filled with molars), not multiple layers of teeth.  I have written extensively about 19th century linguistic idioms associated with teeth, but they apparently chose to just ignore all that and throw a bunch more baloney at the wall in the hopes that something would stick.

Oh well . . . let's go through them in order:

•  "all of them are double" (1856): this is clearly a reference to teeth looking like "double teeth" (molars);
• "The teeth are all in their places, and all of them are double" (1870): another reference to the teeth looking like molars;
• "Each had double teeth in front as well as in the back part of the jaw" (1893) molars again (note how the writer is pointing out what is unusual - double teeth in the back are expected, of course);
• "The teeth were still sound, and double all around" (1878): there's that pesky idiom again that actually means "molars all around";
• "the teeth were described as 'double all around'" (1881): just describing teeth that appeared to be molars because of their wear (I discussed this particular case in this post);
• "all double teeth" (1892): again, referring to molar-like wear (I discussed this particular case in this post);
• "one jaw had evident signs of a third set" (1875): I've already written about this one, and I think there's good reason to suppose that this account, from Florida, is actually describing the germination of a "third set" of teeth following the permanent teeth (which would be the "second set");
• "A set of almost round double teeth" (1900): again, this is referring to "double teeth" (molars), not "double rows of teeth";
• "double teeth in front as well as in the back of mouth and in both upper and lower jaws" (1872): very similar to the 1893 phrase above (and also covered in this post);
• "two rows of teeth in the front upper jaw" (1912): while this one actually appears to be describing multiple layers of teeth, it is almost certainly a case of a reporter misunderstanding a phrase like "double teeth in front" (this is the Ellensburg case - I've written about it here);
• "the full number of teeth, and double all around" (1880): this one even specifies the "full number of teeth," making it plain that "double is describing the kind of teeth, not the number;
• "double teeth all around" (1895): molars again (this is the Deerfield account that is part of Vieira's arrival story - I've written about it here)
• "entire rows of double teeth" (1854): again, teeth that look like molars because of wear;
• "row of double teeth in each jaw" (1854): same old, same old . . . ;
• "a full set of double teeth, all around" (1849): an individual that still has all his teeth, highly worn so that they appear to be molars;
• "two distinct rows of teeth in the massive jaw" (1902): this could well be referring to an individual the the normal rows of teeth (one on each side) in the mandible;
• "the teeth are double both front and back" (1912): similar to the 1872 and 1893 accounts above;
• [some report from 1819 that doesn't even mention teeth];
• "skulls with double rows of teeth" (1862): I would bet dollars to donuts that this is simply describing skulls with full sets of teeth, as the phrase "double rows of teeth" was commonly used in the late 19th century to describe living people, some creatures, and inanimate objects with opposed rows of teeth;
• "An unusual feature was a complete double row of teeth on both upper and lower jaws" (1908): while this one really does sound like writer is trying to describe a dental oddity, the late date suggests we shouldn't rule out a miscommunication error with someone using the phrase "double teeth all around," which was waning in use by the early 1900s.
• "The jaws of each were filled with double rows of teeth" (1870): the simplest explanation here is, like the 1862 account above, just a description of a mouth filled with teeth;
• "two had 'double teeth' in front" (1890): this is clearly describing the kind of teeth (double teeth, or molars) rather than the number of teeth, even putting the idiomatic phrase within quotation marks;
• "the teeth, which were all double, were perfect" (1907): again, I would bet this is referring to the kind of teeth (teeth that look like molars) rather than the number;
• "one row of double teeth all around" (1822): again, description of kind of teeth, not number - it even says "one row";
• "the upper jaw had double teeth all around" (1821): same old, same old . . . again;
• "while the teeth were double in front as well as behind" (1906): this is very similar to the 1872 and 1893 accounts above.

Then the authors go through several accounts of Euroamerican colonists with similarly described teeth, and then rehash the conversation with dental anthropologist Shara Bailey that they showed us on Search for the Lost Giants.

Among the 25 accounts that Vieira and Newman reproduce to highlight the "mystery" of double rows of teeth, I see very little that can't be explained by what I've already written.  If you're really interested "double rows of teeth," go read through some of those posts.  If what Vieira and Newman have presented is the best evidence for something strange going on . . . I don't think there's a whole lot more to say on what the original writers were actually attempting to convey with their descriptions. I think we can mark this one "case closed."

Vieira and Newman cement the case for their own intentional analytical blindness with the second to last paragraph in the chapter:

"After looking carefully at all the possibilities, the phenomenon of double rows of teeth could either be: 1) Literally two sets of teeth (double) 2) molars and premolars in the front of the mouth resembling 'double' teeth - an unusal anomaly in itself; 3) supernumerary teeth that are just occasional 'extra' teeth in the mouth, that could be seen as double sets of teeth, but not 'full sets.' 4) teeth so worn down that only the two roots exist that resemble two separate teeth."

Well, no, not really.  They completely miss the explanations that I've been writing about and exploring since last November when I first saw them on TV (this was my first post on the matter).  This is especially ironic given the tone set by Ross Hamilton in his foreword, depicting Vieira and Newman as courageous visionaries who are daring to explore topics that mainstream "academically controlled archaeologists" ignore. Well, I suppose I'm one of those "academically controlled archaeologists" and I've put quite a bit of effort into exploring those same topics. I've used historical, linguistic, and quantitative research to construct what I think is the most reasonable explanation to date for the "double rows of teeth" phenomenon, and these authors chose to ignore all that work in order to preserve the mystery for their book. That's a joke, right?

So this was $20 down the tubes . . . easy come, easy go, I guess. Given what I got for my money, I decided to share the misery and I sent my copy of the book to Jason Colavito.  He's begun reviewing it chapter by chapter on his website. 

If you’re like me, there’s always some part of your brain that is thinking about hunter-gatherers.  Sometimes when I’m at work the percentage can get as high as 95 percent.  Most of the time it’s lower, of course, but it never gets down to zero. I’m always on duty.

Yes, I just said that with a straight face. And yet I'm a surprisingly poor poker player.

And not only does this initial "horizon" emerge in the context of what by all appearances are very thinly distributed, highly mobile hunter-gatherer populations, but projectile points styles seem to change in lockstep across this same region of North America for at least some time after.  How can we explain this?  Although lithic raw material data suggest that Kirk groups were highly mobile (e.g., see this paper) the area of the "horizon" is much too large for it to be the product of a single group of people: the hunter-gatherers discarding Kirk points in Ontario are not the same individuals as those discarding Kirk points in Florida.

But that doesn't mean they weren't part of the same society.  We can define a "society" as a population defined by the existence of social ties among and between groups and individuals.  Ethnographic hunter-gatherers have numerous mechanisms for creating and maintaining social ties (e.g., marriage, exchange, group flux, periodic aggregation), and there is no reason to suspect that all of those same behaviors were not utilized to knit together the social fabric of early Holocene hunter-gatherers in the Eastern Woodlands.  Maintaining social ties that extend beyond "over the horizon" may be especially important to high mobility hunter-gatherers operating at low population densities, as such ties allow local populations to gather information about large areas of the landscape.

I'm about to get on airplane for some holiday travel. I'm hoping to spend much of the coming week not doing much work, but I've been working hard over the last few weeks to finish a "beta" (i.e., mostly complete) version of The Argumentative Archaeologist website. It's done!  Go have a look!  Please spread the word.

I don't have time to write much about it now, so I'm just going to paste in the content from the About page:

The Argumentative Archaeologist is a website that organizes and compiles links to fact-based information and analysis related to fantastic claims about the human past.  While not all "fringe" (i.e., non-mainstream) claims have been shown to be untrue, many have (some of them over, and over, and over again . . .).  The goal of this site is to provide road maps to information that will help you both identify what's BS and understand the history and context of some of the many claims about the past that can be shown to be false.  They can't all be true, right?.

Who Are the Intended Audiences?

This site was conceived and designed with three main audiences in mind:

• The Public. Almost by definition, most "fringe" ideas come from outside the professional archaeological community.  The marketing and selling of those ideas, not surprisingly, are largely targeted to audiences that are also outside of the professional archaeological community ("bypassing the mainstream" is a common part of the pitch). The "fringe" community has done a good job of exploiting traditional print and television media as well as utilizing the internet to uncritically spread sensational claims about the past.  While many of those "fringe" claims can easily be shown to be false, the voices of the few individuals and organizations that have made a concerted effort to address the factual basis of those claims are often drowned out the megaphones that the "fringe" community has built for itself.  This site is an attempt to assemble links to openly available, critical analysis of "fringe" claims into one central location to make it easier for interested members of the public to get the other side of the story. It wasn't aliens - see for yourself!

• Educators. College courses that engage with the history, context, and evidence associated with "fringe" claims about the past are becoming increasingly common. I know several people that teach them, and I myself am planning on teaching one in the Fall Semester of 2016. While traditional textbooks are available that cover many facets of pseudo-archaeology, I feel that much of the real work that is being to address and understand "fringe" claims as they emerge and develop is being done online in formats such as blogs.  Blogs can and have been used to address many different aspects of "fringe" claims with a timeliness and forthrightness that would be impossible in the context of a traditional textbook. I hope that people teaching courses on pseudo-archaeology find this site useful in terms of both the kinds of information it presents and the organization of that information.

• Researchers (Both Kinds). I hope the links compiled on this site will help those of you out there interested in performing research on many different facets of pseudo-archaeology: where do these claims come from? why are they popular? what do we know about artifact x or site y? I know that I have learned several things I did not know just through the process of initial construction of the site (and that is without actually reading in detail the large majority of the content to which this site links). While many claims have been addressed repeatedly and are fairly well understood, many have not and are not. I think it would also be of great benefit to "fringe" researchers to make an effort to understand the arguments against their claims.  I know that may be difficult when you really, really, really want something to be true . . . but if you want your ideas to be taken seriously you will have to someday address an evidence-based critique.  I'm not optimistic that will happen (evaluating the willingness to actually test an idea is one of the key ways to discriminate between archaeology and pseudo-archaeology), but it would be nice. Maybe try not just repeating the same dumb, incorrect thing that someone else already said? Just an idea.​​

How Do You Choose the Content?

The content in this site was not chosen to give "equal time" to skeptical and "fringe" voices.  As mentioned above, the "fringe" side of the equation has developed a powerful set of tools to communicate its various messages: it does not require any assistance.  This site is intended to serve as a counterpoint to "fringe" claims, providing links to critical analyses of components of those claims, links to critical reviews of "fringe" media, and a structure that lets the user explore and understand how various components of "fringe" claims are inter-connected.

During the initial construction of this site (October-November 2015), I mined the blogs of several of the major skeptical online voices of which I am aware: Jason Colavito, ArchyFantasies, Bad Archaeology, Glen Kuban, Skeptoid, Le Site d'Irna, Michael Heiser, Ancient Aliens Debunked, Hot Cup of Joe, and my own website (Andy White Anthropology). This site does not link to all posts on those websites, of course, but it links to many that are related to the topics of interest here. My plan is to monitor those sites and add links to new posts (and new topics) as they become available. I would love to hear about articles, posts, and other skeptical sites of which I am unaware (please use the Suggestion Box).​

Why Do You Present the Content the Way You Do?

The work of critically evaluating "fringe" claims about the human past is being done by very few individuals.  I hope that this site brings attention (and web traffic) to their efforts.  My guess is that most of us who take the time to investigate and write something about the nonsense that's being sold as knowledge aren't making any money by doing so (in stark contrast to the "fringe" side, which has a large commercial component). Credit should go where credit is due: write an email and thank your favorite skeptic for his or her hard work.

I have used block quotes to introduce many of the topics, artifacts, and sites for which I have created entries. Many of those quotes are from Wikipedia.  I chose to do this not because it is the best source of information, but because it probably reflects a reasonable consensus view.  And it's designed to be "open."  I've attributed the textual quotes that I use, and I've attributed the sources of images that I use by linking to my sources.  I have added internal links (i.e., links pointing to other pages within this website) and indicated those changes with the designation [links added]. I do not believe that I am violating any copyrights or other prohibitions by presenting the material the way I do. If you disagree, please let me know via email ([email protected]).​

What Do I Do Now?

Begin your search for information by Topic, by Person, by Geographical Area, by Title of a book, film, or television program, by Meme or Image, or Alphabetically. ​Please use the Suggestion Box to offer topics or links to information, and please sign the Guestbook.

​Enjoy! 

This is just a very quick post to point you in the direction of a blog post today by Jason Colavito, writing about a new Ancient Aliens "guide" for kids 8-12 years of age, endorsed by the History Channel.  The description of the book is as follows:

"Spanning history, from the earliest of human civilizations to the modern period, this book exposes evidence of the presence of extraterrestrials in some of our most triumphant and devastating moments."

You've got to be kidding me. Let me look into my crystal ball and predict that this will someday qualify as a significant datapoint in the narrative arc of our dumbification as a nation.

Another mention of The Solutrean popped up in my news feed this morning, announcing that Australian actor Kodi Smit-McPhee is nearing a deal to star in the "Ice Age-set survival thriller:"

"Smit-McPhee will play a young man who must cross miles of dangerous, weather-whipped territory to reunite with his tribe."

In a previous post, I wondered if that "dangerous territory" included the New World. Today's stories aren't any more specific than the original ones, but do mention that the story is "set 20,000 years ago in Europe."

In another previous post, I discussed the results of recent genetic analyses that suggested Paleolithic hunter-gatherers in Europe (including Solutrean peoples) were relatively dark-skinned compared to western Europeans today.  

At this point there's no way of knowing what The Solutrean will bring to the table. I would love to see a film about Paleolithic Europe that made a real effort to get the details right and present a vision of the past that is as accurate as it is compelling (i.e., more like The Black Robe and less like 10,000 BC).   I'm hoping The Solutrean is not a film just about a bunch of people who look like modern, white Europeans doing brave things.  Filming is scheduled to start soon.

As usual, I have many more ideas for things to write about than I have time to write.  There's a backlog of material related to giants and plenty of other stuff I'd like to write about related to my research plans in the Southeast, interesting things about South Carolina, teaching, etc.  This post is just to mention a few things relevant to previous posts.

Haplogroup X2a

Based on the metrics I have access to (Facebook likes/shares, Twitter data, and the page view metrics that Weebly provides), the post I wrote on the new paper by Jennifer Raff and Deborah Bolnick was one of the more popular things I've written recently. I think the paper is very nice, and I'm glad for anything I can do to encourage people to read it.  Yesterday, Raff wrote a post addressing some questions about the paper.  I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this topic (professional or otherwise). When I looked at where my post was posted on Facebook, I was a little dismayed by some of the comments.  It is evident (and interesting) that a lot of people react to the headline and the image without even reading the content.  Anyway, I encourage you to read the original paper and Raff's answers to common questions.

Hutton Pulitzer Claims He Made Me Famous, Threatens to "Out" Professional Archaeologists

My posts about the various silly activities and statements by Hutton Pulitzer (there's a listing here) appear to be gaining a fan base. A post from September titled "The Philyaw Follies, Fall 2015 Edition" attracted Pulitzer as well as several individuals who he has apparently tangled with online before.  And I've been getting emails from some Pulitzer detractors. 

Among other strange things, Pulitzer made the following comment on my blog:

"Hey Andy, yes saw this and me calling you the "4A" made you quite famous. LOL, but yes archaeologists tend to not let themselves be interviewed. We did in fact offer you a spot to go on record with Wayne May, but yes you did decline. However, some of our new recordings are outing people like you and University coverups."

While I will eagerly await whatever "outing" he's talking about, I won't be holding my breath. If there's one thing that I can confidently identify as part of Pulitzer's M.O., it's the lack of follow-up to his grandiose statements. Anyway, his comments on my blog are worth reading, as are the comments of readers on Jason Colavito's post about a recent interview between Pulitzer and Scott Wolter.

Which brings us to the next tidbit.

Scott Wolter Is Still Participating In My Class

My plans for teaching a class about "fringe" ideas in archaeology (working title: "Forbidden Archaeology") in the Fall of 2016 are moving forward. The paperwork is currently working its way up the various steps in the chain.  I just got here, so the process is somewhat mysterious to me.  But I don't have any reason at this point to think that I won't be able to teach the course.

As I wrote in this post, Scott Wolter responded to my open invitation for "fringe" theorists to step up to the plate and participate in my class. An alert reader emailed me the other day to point my attention to Wolter's blog, where someone had made a comment about my website and Wolter had replied with something like "Who is Andy White?"  The reader questioned if Wolter would still be participating in the class.

The answer to that is "yes."  I had a cordial email exchange with Wolter and the plans for his participation in the class are still on.

I'm still looking for one or two more who like to be involved - I'd love to have a person talk abut giants and a person to make a case for any aspect of claims related to Ice Age civilization.  Send me an email if you're interested: [email protected].

Boycotting Discovery and the History Channel?

I think many of my readers will agree that the overall quality of programming on The Discovery Channel and The History Channel has gone downhill in recent years. I don't have anything new to say about why that's a bad thing, but I wanted to direct your attention to a blog post by Gordon Bonnet at Skeptophilia calling for a boycott. Here is a bit of what he says:

"Look, it's not that I'm against speculation.  Sometimes people doggedly pursuing ideas that everyone has thought ridiculous has paid off in the end.  But there is nothing to be gained by formerly reputable channels airing fiction passed off as truth, and fantasy passed off as documentary.  In the end, it makes everyone's job harder, from lowly science teachers like myself who are trying to get kids to learn how to sort fact from bullshit, to the honest researchers who would like to investigate fringe claims and do so in a rational, evidence-based manner.

So it's time to turn off The History Channel and Discovery.  They've been veering off course for a while, but it's getting worse, and it's time to send a message.  Stop watching this garbage, and better yet, send a letter or an email to them telling them you're doing so.  It's time to get some good science and history programming back on the air."

Yeah . . . believe it or not there is a distinction to be made between programs honestly investigating ideas at the "fringe" and programs presenting outright fantasy that is disguised as documentary.  It's the turn toward that second kind of programming that irks a lot of us, I think.  Mermaids, anyone?  

I really think there has to be a way for media to tap into the public's interest in the human past (and a spectrum of ideas about it) without resorting to just making things up.