My Forbidden Archaeology class wrapped up at the beginning of last week. Since going through the final projects and getting grades submitted, I've been occupied with prepping for my upcoming field school, finalizing a paper on the minimum size of demographically viable hunter-gatherer populations, and participating in a family-wide wave of coughing, aching, and vomiting. Good times. 

Some of the student projects were pretty interesting, and I plan to put some of them up on the course website eventually. After that I'll weave the website content into the Argumentative Archaeologist site. It might be a while before any of that gets done (don't expect anything before the holidays are over).

In the meantime, I wanted to post a link to a short video that two of the students produced of their interview of Jim Vieira.  I wrote a bit about Vieira's visit here. The students have possession of a lot more footage of Vieira in class, as well as he and discussing such compelling issues as "double rows of teeth." The students have told me that they'll still be working with that footage, and I hope that it happens (both are taking my field school, so I will be able to ask them about it weekly). 

Here is the video they submitted as part of their final project:

As readers of my blog know, I find the topic of "giants" fascinating.  It was a no-brainer to include it as one of the three topical areas to be covered in the inaugural run of Forbidden Archaeology. As I've said before, the main premise of the class is that credible ideas about the human past can withstand scrutiny and challenges, while incorrect ideas can be shown to be incorrect. Forbidden Archaeology is a course in critical thinking, argument, and communication.  How do you know whether a claim about the past is credible or not? My goal is to give the students the confidence, tools, and information they need to understand the history of ideas and critically evaluate claims based on evidence.

Part of the work the students are doing in the course is writing blog posts. The point of the posts is to help students learn to communicate persuasive, insightful, evidence-based arguments through writing. The student blog posts related to "giants" are listed here. I wanted to integrate those posts into a synthesis of what we discussed in the class. 

Our discussion of "giants" began with some background, tracing the origins of western giant mythology through the Bible, Greek and Roman writings, and early European sources. We discussed the somewhat isomorphic narratives found in ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean writings (e.g., Hesiod's Five Ages of Man, the Old Testament, the Book of Enoch, and The Epic of Gilgamesh), noting the parallels in some ancient notions about a past world populated by giant, quasi-supernatural, human-like beings.  One student wrote about the association between giant mythology and cannibalism (the giants often tend to be cannibals).  

I introduced the idea (following Adrienne Mayor and others) that at least some ideas about giants may have been related to ancient peoples finding a way to accommodate into their worldview the remains of large, extinct animals that they would have no doubt encountered from time to time. It's an easy enough mistake to make, especially for people with no formal training in comparative anatomy confronting the remains of Ice Age megafauna in an era before the concept of extinction took hold. 

That human societies use mythology to make sense of the world around them and to shape their views of themselves is not surprising, of course, and I think we can see this sort of thing play out repeatedly through time with respect to "giants." We discussed how giants played into the mythologies of post-Roman Europe in a number of interesting ways. The Historia Britonnum (a "history" of the indigenous people of Britain written around AD 828), for example, borrowed heavily from Roman and Greek mythology. Europeans continued the tradition of interpreting the bones of extinct megafauna as those of human giants, whether wicked or noble. The stone constructions left by the Romans themselves were later regarded as the work of giants from a past age. Interpreting megalithic constructions as the work of giants is common today, despite plenty of positive evidence that normal-sized people can and do move big rocks.

Science began to chip away at the evidence for giants in the 1700's, marked first perhaps by Hans Sloane's argument that some of the bones identified as those of giants actually belonged to elephants. Pushback came in the form of the famous 1735 "list of giants" by Claude-Nicholas Le Cat. Le Cat's address was reprinted in the Encyclopedia Britannica and hopped across the Atlantic at some point in the late 1700's (the earliest American printing I have found so far in a 1765 Maryland newspaper).  Abridged versions of Le Cat's address were printed time and again in American newspapers from the 1840's until the 1890's as the reporting of giant bones ramped up and reached its peak. 

The decades-long American fad of giant skeleton reports differs from what happened in Europe earlier, and it remains a fascinating subject to try to understand. The "giant phenomenon" occurred in the context of the appearance of new information technologies (i.e., telegraph and rotary printing press), the forced removal of Native Americans from the eastern U.S., and the debate over the "Mound Builders," among other things.  A couple of students wrote about the historic contexts of ideas about a "giant race" that preceded Native Americans: the "white giant" myth of the Comanche didn't hold up to scrutiny, and early excavations of earthen mounds in Wisconsin found no evidence of giants.

Despite the lack of evidence, the "Mound Builder" myth survives in the public imagination. It is used as a hook in a recent travel piece written for a West Virginia newspaper, for example, and the "Adena giant" narrative is still regularly pressed into service.​  Two students looked at specific cases related to claims of "giant" skeletons in North America: one found that a "missing" giant skull from Texas was neither missing nor giant and another fleshed out the case of "giant skeletons" from Branch County, Michigan.
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The main agendas underlying modern beliefs in giants in the United States are related to two main Christian communities: (1) Young Earth Creationists; and (2) Nephilim enthusiasts. (After teaching this class, I think there is more overlap between these two orientations than I previously recognized). The relationship between Christianity and giants was one of the subjects of an attempted survey about beliefs in giants.

The appeal of giants to the YEC crowd is that the existence of giants would prove evolution to be false and the Bible to be true (that's the rationale, anyway, based on the flawed argument that giants would show that things get smaller over time rather than bigger). The struggle against evolution has compelled Young Earth Creationists to somehow deal with the accumulation of fossil evidence that is consistent with a very long (i.e., six million years) human evolutionary timeline rather than a very short (i.e., six thousand years) Biblical timeline. One student wrote about how creationists have tried to characterize the fragmentary remains of Meganthropus as a giant, and another wrote about the idea that Neanderthals were the Biblical Nephilim. In both of these cases, just as in ancient Britain and the ancient Near East, we see the struggle to somehow reconcile and explain facts of the natural world.

Even after teaching this course, it is still not clear to me exactly what the Nephilim enthusiasts are all about (other than monetizing gullibility).  The Nephilim Whirlpool is an absurd mishmash of giants, religion, mythology, aliens, paranormal, and conspiracy theory that takes Genesis 6.4 as the "Rosetta stone" to understanding the world. One of my goals in talking about it was to illustrate that, in the absence of a mechanism for discriminating between credible and non-credible "evidence," you are compelled to concoct a story that can incorporate, literally, everything. Thus, for example, all of the stories from all mythology, extra-biblical or not, can be accepted literally and scooped up into the Nephilim dragnet.

Another was to show how the absence of evidence (i.e., where are the bones?) is used by Nephilim enthusiasts to support the claim of a "multi-thousand year cover up" rather than the much more parsimonious position that the lack of giant bones suggests a lack of giants.  It's impossible to have a conversation about evidence in that kind of framework.

Although Nephilim theorists exemplify the baloney cannon approach to the human past, they're not alone. Manufactured and misinterpreted "evidence" related to giants is everywhere. One student wrote about Klaus Dona, for example, one wrote about the "giant's armor" at Schloss Ambras, one wrote about the taxidermied giant Kap Dwa, and another wrote about claims connected to the "Balanced Rock" of upstate New York. On the biological side, one student explored claims about Rh negative blood (commonly related to Nephilim heritage) and another asked if there were any known genetic disorders that could have contributed to the often-cited (but never demonstrated) triumvirate of large stature, dental anomalies, and polydactyly. 

When you discard the desire to use evidence to discriminate credible ideas from non-credible ones, you're just throwing it all into a blender and drinking whatever comes out. Is there anything left after we do that to "giants"? In reality, probably not much. That doesn't mean it isn't worth exploring further and still trying to understand why people believe what they believe.  In eastern North America, are you left with anything after you throw out the obvious hoaxes, fabrications, and gross misrepresentations, disregard the "double rows of teeth" mirage, and adjust for some patterned over-estimates of height?  Maybe, and maybe not. Perhaps we're still left with the possibility that relatively tall individuals are over-represented in the earthen mounds of eastern North America. Perhaps the "Adena royalty" hypothesis will still be standing after the dust settles. Or maybe it too, like so many reported "giant" bones, will crumble away when exposed to the air.

Four more student blog posts from our discussion of giants are now live:

• Large Adena Skeletons as a "Unique Physical Type" (by Juan Perez)
• Building with Big Stones: Ethnographic and Experimental Evidence (by GratefulGirl22)
• The Schloss Ambras Castle Giant (by Drayson Labrom)
• Neanderthals as Nephilim? (by Shaggy)

Please have a look, see what you think, and comment on the posts if you have something to say. I've instructed the students to check on their posts periodically (i.e., at least once a day) and respond to comments if appropriate. All the completed posts related to giants are listed here.  The homepage of the course website is here. A synopsis of what we've been doing every day is here.

My online friend and fellow #Swordgate warrior Pablo Benavente suggested that posting some of the blogs in the Ancient Origins Group on Facebook  would be a good way to get people engaged in reading and discussing the posts. In terms of pure numbers, all indications are that he's write:  the two student blog posts that have been shared there so far ("Building with Big Stones: Ethnographic and Experimental Evidence" and "Neanderthals as Nephilim?") have garnered far more "likes" (200 and 191, respectively, as of this writing) than the other posts that I've shared in my skeptically-oriented groups and on Twitter. There are long discussions going on both of those posts, but they're happening on Facebook (in a closed group) rather than on the blog post itself. Based on skimming the comments, it looks to me like many people engaged in the discussion may not have even bothered to read the original post: they're just reacting to the headline and to the other comments.

That's an interesting pattern that I've noticed before. I'm not sure exactly what it's telling us about how/why people communicate about these ideas online, but I'm sure it's telling us something. The "Neanderthals as Nephilim?" post has been shared 16 times from the Ancient Origins Group alone, and the discussion on the post there is currently up to 93 comments. And yet there is not a single comment on the original blog post. Interesting.  

An important part of my Forbidden Archaeology class this semester is teaching students to independently understand, evaluate, and communicate about claims concerning the human past. The topical subject matter of the course is, obviously, focused on so-called "fringe" claims that fall outside of what mainstream archaeologists typically spend energy considering but are strongly represented in popular media. The students should come out of the class having a general understanding of the tools and processes we use to learn about the past and discriminate credible from non-credible explanations.

Each student will be writing three blog posts. The topics of the posts for the "giants" section, in general, are concerned with understanding or evaluating claims, evidence, or context related to historic or contemporary ideas about giants. I tried to assign topics that would encourage students do a little online digging and, hopefully, contribute something new to the discussion.

Effective communication in a blog post is not the same as effective communication in a term paper. This is the first time that many of these students have written in this kind of format, and it is my first time working simultaneously with twenty different individuals writing about twenty different topics. Ideally the process will get smoother and faster as the course continues.

Here are the first of the "giants" posts to go live:
 

• Klaus Dona's Travelling Giant Show (by Kate)
• The Missing Morhiss Giant: Not Missing and Not Giant (by Wendy Dollar)
• Kap Dwa: The (Real?) Story Behind the Two-Headed Giant (by Tucker Kovalchek)
• Giant Mound Builders in Wisconsin…Eh (by Judy in Disguise)
• Giants: What Do People Think? (by Fred C)

Please feel free to leave comments for the students: it's in their job description to interact with people about their posts (as long as it stays constructive).

Well, that was fun!

And because I know that it's sometimes hard to reliably detect the presence/absence of sarcasm in the written word, I'll clarify and say that I'm not being sarcastic: Jim Vieira's visit to my Forbidden Archaeology class was legitimately fun. 

Those of you who followed this blog prior to the #Swordgate debacle know that I spent a lot of my writing energy in 2014 and 2015 discussing issues related to "giants." It's a topic that has interested me since I stumbled across accounts of "giant skeletons with a double row of teeth" in the nineteenth century county histories of Indiana while preparing CRM reports in the early 1990's. The story of my arrival to the topic is not that different from Vieira's (he came across the stories by accident, also). I had recently become aware of the online newspaper archives of the Library of Congress and was working on the "double rows of teeth" issue when Search for the Lost Giants aired. It was strange for me to watch that program, because I found myself hoping that I didn't get scooped on my linguistic solution to the strange dental descriptions but also wishing that their intense focus on the topic would help dispel some of the bizarre claims about "double rows of teeth" that have been around at least since Brad Steiger's 1978 book World's Before Our Own.

I went at the issue of "double rows of teeth" pretty hard in my blog after that original post, gathering documentary evidence (primarily in the form of newspaper accounts and dictionary entries) to demonstrate how changes in the popularity of a combination of linguistic idioms explains most of the cases of "double rows of teeth." I used specific examples to illustrate my case, including several that Vieira had discussed repeatedly. I admit to being frustrated that my ideas about "double rows of teeth," which I felt constituted a well-researched, relatively elegant, and original solution to an interesting riddle seemed to go unacknowledged by Vieira. That frustration came through in my last post on the subject.

Vieira and I talked about all that and a lot more during his visit to Columbia. Some of those conversations were private and some were in front of the class. We more-or-less beat to death numerous inter-connected issues related to the topic of "giants" over the course of three days. We talked about the nature of science, the nature of evidence, the many and varied motivations and psychologies of the "fringe" world, the relationships between the "fringe" and "mainstream," strategies for communication, human anatomy, the price of tea in China, etc. In my opinion, there really wasn't much of substance about which we had significant disagreement (including "double rows of teeth"). One sticking point was my contention, in which I remain firm, that the New England Patriots are, in fact, evil cheaters. That's part of my belief system and I'm not budging. I think we did tentatively agree, however, that all New York City professional sports teams suck, and also that the Dallas Cowboys suck, have always sucked, and will suck until the end of time. I may be embellishing that a little bit.

A couple of the students in Forbidden Archaeology collected video of Vieira (totalling about six hours, including both class sessions, a one-on-one interview with him, and Vieira and me discussing various issues related to giants) for their final project. They've got control of all that footage for now. It will be really interesting to see what they produce from it. Vieira and I agreed that we both need to give their project the green light before it will be made public. I'll keep you posted on that.

In the meantime, here's a short clip of Vieira in class yesterday. I don't remember the exact question to which he was responding, but his answer speaks for itself.

If you've been following the progress of Forbidden Archaeology this semester, you know that the next few classes we'll be bringing our focused discussion of giants to an end (I say "focused" because ideas about giants also play into the upcoming sections on Ice Age civilization and pre-Columbian transoceanic contact). We've talked about the ancient origins of giant mythologies, shreds of which are found in some of the world's earliest known written documents. We've talked about the giant mythologies of post-Roman Europe and the early engagement of science with the physical "evidence" for giants. We talked about how European ideas about giants were transplanted to the United States in the late 1700's and how those ideas apparently changed to fit the social, political, and archaeological circumstances that were present in the young United States. We discussed current ideas about giants connected to Young Earth Creationism, and we dipped our toes in the Nephilim Whirlpool just long enough to see that it is, frankly, ridiculous. On Friday, we circled back around to the question of an "ancient race of giants in North America."

We're now into the fourth week of the semester here at the University of South Carolina. As usual I've been writing for this blog less than I'd like (I have several unfinished draft posts and ideas for several more, and there's currently a backlog of Fake Hercules Swords). A good chunk of my time/energy is going into the Forbidden Archaeology class (you can follow along on the course website if you like -- I've been writing short synopses, and student-produced content will begin to appear a few weeks from now). Much of the remainder has gone into pushing forward the inter-locking components of my research agenda. This is a brief update about those pieces.

Small-Scale Archaeological Data

At the beginning of the summer I spent a little time in the field doing some preliminary excavation work at a site that contains (minimally) an intact Archaic component buried about 1.9 meters below the surface (see this quick summary).  Based on the general pattern here in the Carolina Piedmont and a couple of projectile points recovered from the slump at the base of the profile, my guess is that buried cultural zone dates to the Middle Archaic period (i.e., about 8000-5000 years ago).​

My daughter washed some of the artifacts from the site over the summer, and I've now got an undergraduate student working on finishing up the washing before moving on to cataloging and labeling. Once the lithics are labeled we'll be able to spread everything out and start fitting the quartz chipping debris back together. Because I piece-plotted the large majority of the lithic debris, fitting it back together will help us understand how the deposit was created. I'm hoping we can get some good insights into the very small-scale behaviors that created the lithic deposit (i.e.,perhaps the excavated portion of the deposit was created by just one or two people over the course of less than an hour).

When the archaeology faculty met to discuss the classes we'd be offering in the spring semester, I pitched the idea of running a one-day-per-week field school at the site. Assuming I can get sufficient enrollment numbers, that looks like it's going to happen. The site is within driving distance of Columbia, so we'll be commuting every Friday (leaving campus at 8:00 and returning by 4:00). The course will be listed as ANTH 322/722. It's sand, it's three dimensional, and it's pretty complicated -- it's going to be a fun excavation. I'll be looking to hire a graduate student to assist me on Fridays, and I'll be applying for grant monies to cover the costs of the field assistant's wages, transportation, and other costs associated with putting a crew in the field. 

Large-Scale Archaeological Data

Some parts of my quest to assemble several different large-scale datasets are creeping along, some are moving forward nicely, and some are still on pause.

Complex Systems Theory and Computer Modeling

Complex systems theory is what will make it possible to bridge the small and large scales of data that I'm collecting. Last year, I invested some effort into transferring my latest computer model (FN3_D_V3) into Repast Simphony and getting it working. I also started building a brand new, simpler model to look at equifinality issues associated with interpreting patterns of lithic transport (specifically to address the question of whether or not we can differentiate patterns of transport produced via group mobility, personal mobility between groups, and exchange).  

As it currently sits, the FN3_D_V3 model is mainly demographic, lacking a spatial component. Over the summer I used it to produce data relevant to understanding the minimum viable population (MVP) size of human groups. Those data, which I'm currently in the process of analyzing, suggest to me that the "magic number of 500" is probably much too large: I have yet to find evidence in my data that human populations limited to about 150 people are not demographically viable over spans of several hundred years even under constrained marriage rules. But I've just started the analysis, so we'll see. I submitted a paper on this topic years ago with a much cruder model and didn't have the stomach to attempt to use that model to address the reviewers' comments. I'm hoping to utilize much of the background and structure of that earlier paper and produce a new draft for submission quickly. I also plan to put the FN3_D_V3 code online here and at OpenABM.org once I get it cleaned up a bit. I also discuss this model in a paper in a new edited volume titled Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analysis in Archaeological Computational Modeling (edited by Marieka Brouwer Burg, Hans Peeters, and William Lovis). 

It will be a relatively simple thing to use the FN3_D_V3 model in its non-spatial configuration to produce new data relevant to the Middle Paleolithic mortality issue I discussed at the SAA meetings a couple of years ago. I'm also going to be working toward putting the guts of the demographic model into a spatial context. That's going to take some time.

And now the semester really begins. This is the first full week of classes and at some point I'm going to have to get my act together and start leaving myself time to pack a lunch in the morning.

The website that we'll build during the Forbidden Archaeology course is up and running here. That site is where the student blog posts and projects will go, though there is still quite a bit of time before those will begin being added. I created a section of the site called "Synopsis of Activities" which I plan to use to post a blurb about each day's class. I'm not planning on writing a blog post every time the class meets, but it will be helpful, I think, to provide a summary about what's going on both for our benefit here and for yours. Who actually ever reads the syllabus, anyway?

Jim Vieira has made his arrangements for air travel, and as far as I know everything is moving along as scheduled for his visit. I'm looking forward to meeting with Vieira and I think it will be a lot of fun to have him interact with the class. He and I have never met before and have only spoken on the phone once. If I understand our email exchanges accurately, his visit will involve at least some consumption of malt liquor and, possibly, heckling a Trump rally if we're able. While I'm not yet sure about all that, I do at least know what time I'm supposed to pick him up at the airport. 

I've cashed out the now-irrelevant Scott Wolter travel fund. With the blessing of those that donated, I'll roll that money over into the fund I set up to support Vieira's travel. Vieira is paying for his own air travel and I've got the hotel covered on my end (through a very generous local gift), but I'll still need to feed him something, I'm expecting, and there will probably be some other out-of-pocket expenses.

This morning was the first meeting of my Forbidden Archaeology course. I had the students (n = 18 in attendance today) anonymously fill out simple "pre-course" questionnaires to help me gauge something about their level of familiarity with the various non-mainstream claims about the past that we'll be discussing. It was one of the first things I did other than turn on the lights and make sure I was in the right classroom. In other words, my blathering didn't influence them at all. Here are some of the results.

They're Not Watching What's on The History Channel

Each student described his/her familiarity with four television programs (America Unearthed, Ancient Aliens, Search for the Lost Giants, and the classic In Search Of . . .) using an ordinal scale going from "I've never heard of it" to "I've seen every episode." Ancient Aliens was the clear winner in terms of familiarity, with over half of the students reporting that they'd seen at least one episode. Several students had heard of America Unearthed and Search for the Lost Giants, but only a few reported actually watching an episode. Almost as many students reported familiarity with In Search Of . . . (which ended production in 1982) as with Search for the Lost Giants. 

It's pretty clear that the students in the class aren't watching what's on The History Channel. These results are consistent with informal polls I've taken in my classes in the past. Asking for a show of hands of "who has watched this?" and "who knows about this show?" has produced little positive evidence that these programs are penetrating into traditional college-age markets. I just don't think people in their twenties are paying much attention to them. 

Most of Them Have Heard of Atlantis, but . . .

I gave the students a list of some things that we'll be discussing over the course of the semester, asking them to simply circle the ones they were familiar with. Not surprisingly, Atlantis was familiar to most of the class. Downhill from there, the majority of the students had heard of the Knights Templar (not necessarily in connection with current "fringe" claims about them, however) and the "Mound Builders." Recognition of terms connected to giants was at less than fifty percent. A smattering of students had heard of some of the terms associated with current claims for pre-Columbian transoceanic contact. Lemuria and OOPArt struck out completely.

So that's where we're starting. It doesn't look like this group of students has paid a lot of attention to the stuff on TV, and most of them are not familiar with many of the basic ideas and things we'll be discussing. I'll be interested to find out what they find compelling (or not, as the case may be) about engaging with the various claims we'll be talking about.

Next week we'll be talking about science vs. pseudoscience, how archaeology can be done as a science, and what constitutes archaeological evidence. And I'll be giving them a whirlwind 45 minute tour of the "mainstream" view of human prehistory and history, from hominin origins 5-7 million years ago to the Industrial Revolution.

My Forbidden Archaeology class will have its first meeting this Friday morning. As usual, I've waited until almost the last minute to attempt to finalize the syllabus. But that attempt has now been made, and I still have a day to spare. Go me. 

As anyone who has ever created a syllabus from scratch knows, there comes a point when the rubber meets the road and you have to cease thinking vaguely and start nailing down the specifics. I've still got a few more nails to drive in (you'll notice some "TBA's" in the day-by-day readings, and I'm still working on a couple of additions to the guest list), but this is more or less what we'll be driving this semester. Yes, I know I'm mixing metaphors. It's been a long day. One of my kids woke me up at 2:30 and then again at 3:30 and I wasn't able to get back to sleep afterwards. 

I got several offers of guest participation that I won't be able to fully capitalize this time around. If you emailed me about the class and I haven't gotten back to you yet, I sincerely apologize. As I've mentioned before, the students will be writing several blog posts. I hope that several of you that I was not able to include as formal "guests" of the class will perhaps be willing to work with one or more students individually. I'll be in touch!

Finally, I'm sure some of you out there will, for whatever reasons, be unhappy with what the students will be reading. And I'm sure some of you will tell me about it. Keep in mind that I did not chose readings to provide "answers." I chose them to illustrate points, show contrasts, spark questions, and provoke arguments. While we will be discussing and dissecting some of the readings quite closely in class, others are there simply for background. I'll learn a lot about what works well and what doesn't as I get to know the students and we work our way through the course.  

Stay tuned!