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Comedic Tension over the Fraudulent Hebrew "Mound Builder" Artifacts of the Late 1800's

10/29/2016

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I've spent the last several hours doing my prep for Monday's Forbidden Archaeology class. Following an introduction to the topic of pre-Columbian transoceanic contact last week (mostly an overview of the historic, political, social, and scientific debate about the "mound builders"), we'll be jumping in by discussing two classic cases of inscribed stones: the Newark Holy Stones (1860) and the Bat Creek Stone (1889).

It's been fun reviewing these two cases. In my opinion, neither is strong evidence for anything "real" other than late 1800's hoaxery. Their historic contexts are interesting, as are the differences in the motivations of the hoaxers. Both the Newark Holy Stones and the Bat Creek Stone still have their share of fans, but apparently there's some tension over what exactly the stones mean. ​
PictureThe Keystone (image source: http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs116/1103480314797/archive/1110560269463.html).
Brad Lepper and Jeff Gill have written extensively about the Newark Holy Stones, a pair of stone artifacts inscribed with Hebrew lettering purportedly "discovered" in southern Ohio earthen mounds. Lepper argues that the stones were created in attempt to show that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were related to Old World peoples as known in the Bible, thereby undermining the polygenist framework that was being used to justify slavery. After the first stone (the Keystone) "found" by David Wyrick didn't pass the sniff test of those who examined it, he miraculously found another soon after (the Decalogue Stone).Thousands of person-hours of careful excavation on Ohio Mound by people other than Wyrick has failed to produce any more ancient Hebrew artifacts. Brad Lepper, however, did succeed in finding an illustration that may have been the source of design that Wyrick used for the Decalogue Stone. 

To me, the most interesting thing about the Newark case is that the hoaxer (presumably Wyrick) was apparently attempted to "humanize" Native American populations by bringing them into a Biblical framework, rather than de-legitimize them by providing evidence that others built the mounds.​

PictureThe Bat Creek Stone.
The tale of the Bat Creek Stone is, in some ways, even stranger. The Tennessee stone, described as engraved with "letters of the Cherokee alphabet) appeared in the famed Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1894). Cyrus Thomas argued that the Cherokee were responsible for building the mounds of Tennessee and North Carolina, and Robert Mainfort and Mary Kwas argue in this 2004 paper that the man who "found" the stone was probably trying to make his boss happy. Mainfort and Kwas suggest that Thomas realized the stone was a fake after it had been published, explaining why no-one really talked about it for the next 70 years. The Bat Creek Stone was resurrected from obscurity when Henriette Mertz realized the engraving looked like a Semetic alphabet if you turned it over. In the early 1970's, Cyrus Gordon confirmed that the engraving was Paleo-Hebrew, and the Bat Creek Stone was back. Mainfort and Kwas found an 1870 illustration that likely served as a source for the inscription, but, of course, that hasn't convinced everyone. 
 
The original contexts of these two cases appear to be quite different. In one, the artifacts were apparently planted to produce evidence that Native Americans were tied to the history of the Old World. In the other, the artifact was apparently produced to attempt to tie the construction of mounds to a specific Native American group.

Both cases were discussed in the (2010) documentary Lost Civilizations of North America (you can watch the tralier here and read a 2011 critique by Brad Lepper et al. here). Conservative political commentator, conspiracy theorist, and Mormon Glenn Beck took up the cause of the Newark Holy Stones and the Bat Creek Stone in this 2010 rant. The stones were taken up on America Unearthed in 2013 and 2014 and, not surprisingly, accepted as authentic with no reservations. That garnered some high fives in 2012 from various Mormon organizations searching for evidence of ancient Israelite migrations to the New World. Apparently, however, America Unearthed left the Mormons hanging by not embracing the authority of The Book of Mormon or even acknowledging it exists. This 2015 "America Revealed" spoof video is worth watching for several reasons.

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"Forbidden Archaeology" (ANTH 291): A Nearly Complete Syllabus

8/17/2016

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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!

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Happy Thanksgiving, Critical Thinkers: "The Argumentative Archaeologist"

11/21/2015

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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 (aawhite@mailbox.sc.edu).​

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! 

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Frank Joseph's Nazi Past is Part of the Puzzle

9/21/2015

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PictureFrank Joseph back when he was Frank Collin, founder of the National Socialist Party of America.
Frank Joseph, author of The Lost Colonies of Ancient America and an affiliate of Ancient American magazine, was born as Francis Joseph Collin. Collin founded the National Socialist Party of America in 1970, an organization perhaps most famous for its involvement in a Supreme Court case over the right to march in the majority Jewish community of Skokie, Illinois (and being subsequently spoofed in The Blues Brothers movie). Collin later went to prison for having sex with minors, was released in the mid-1980s, changed his name to Frank Joseph, and began writing books about various Old World peoples visiting the Americas before Columbus.

I didn't uncover any of this information myself.  The basic outline of the Frank Collin/Joseph story can be found in many places online, including on Wikipedia, in this piece by R. D. Flavin, and in this post by Jason Colavito. 

I'm bringing it up because I think Frank Joseph's Nazi past is relevant to his writings about ancient North America.

Joseph's (2014) book The Lost Colonies of Ancient America was reviewed by Larry Zimmerman in a recent section of American Antiquity (2015, Vol. 80:615-629) devoted to addressing popular works of pseudoarchaeology.  Zimmerman writes that Joseph

"assures readers, of course, [that unlike academic archaeology] his book has no such preconceived notions and allows for available evidence to lead where it will."

Brad Lepper wrote a short piece about Zimmerman's review for yesterday's Columbus Dispatch, highlighting Josephs' mischaracterization of how archaeologists evaluate evidence as well as the racism that underlies the nineteenth century "Moundbuilder" myth that remains important to the claims of American hyperdiffusionists today.

Neither Zimmerman nor Lepper mentioned Joseph's past as one of America's leading Nazis.  It may be that the pages of American Antiquity and the Columbus Dispatch aren't really the place to bring it up, and that's fine.  But I think it's an important part of the story and I'm not under any editorial constraints, so I'm bringing it up: Joseph's Nazi past is relevant to understanding his ideas about pre-Columbian transoceanic contacts.  I'll briefly explain why.

Lepper is correct when he writes that

"Opinions, mainstream or otherwise, don’t count for much in science. Evidence is what’s important."

It is for that very reason that I'm bringing "fringe" theorists into the class I'm planning for next fall. Ideas can come from wherever they come from, but in a scientific framework it is evidence that lets us determine whether those ideas can withstand scrutiny.  Ideas can be tested and refined through evidence-based falsification, allowing us to build an understanding in which we can have some confidence.  That's how it works.

I've found that many "fringe" writers operating outside of a scientific framework (i.e., where ideas are not subject to testing) tend to use evidence differently, often marshaling only those pieces that seem to fit into the puzzle they're imagining themselves putting together.  They think they already know what the answer is and are focused on presenting the evidence that supports that answer. Contrary bits and pieces that are inconvenient to the narrative they're assembling are ignored.  This is not generally going to produce a story about the past that is credible.

Evidence matters, but so does how you use it.  When there's no mechanism for testing an idea, the origin of the idea becomes more important because it guides what evidence you choose to include.

According to Jason Colavito's post about Joseph, Joseph's defenders claim that there is no connection between the man's Nazi past and his current assertions about the roles of Old World peoples in New World prehistory.  Really?  If you understand the history of the "Moundbuilder" myth, you may legitimately ask why some "fringe" authors are so reluctant to let it go.  Systematic, evidence-based inquiry (i.e., actual archaeology) long ago proved to most people's satisfaction that the "Moundbuilder" idea was not correct, no matter what contributed to its origin or popularity.  I can tell you that those that are still holding on to fantasies about some lost white race of "Moundbuilders" aren't arriving at that point through a careful consideration of the evidence. 

I have not read any of Joseph's books.  Based on Zimmerman's review, I doubt I will find much of interest in them.  If I ever do read The Lost Colonies of Ancient America, however, I'll do it with Joseph's Nazi past in mind.  That past is relevant to understanding what "evidence" he chooses to accept and present, and what evidence he chooses to ignore. 

In cases like this, where evidence is chosen to support rather than test an idea, the source of the idea does indeed matter.   

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The Elephants of Ether: Mormons and the Mastodon Problem

2/27/2015

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One of the interesting things about doing “research by blog” is that you can get almost instant, unanticipated contributions of information from anyone who reads what you’ve posted.  As a result of this post exploring two examples of the idea that “Mound Builders” and mastodons co-existed, I became aware of the interest that Mormons have taken in mastodons.  As soon as I wrote the post, Jason Colavito and Brad Lepper each made me aware of the 1839 story Behemoth: A Legend of the Mound Builders by Cornelius Matthews.  Behemoth told the tale of the quest of a pre-Native American race (the "Mound-Builders") to slay a giant mastodon. From there I was led to mentions of elephants in the Book of Mormon (BOM) through this site.

The BOM mentions elephants in the following passages from Ether (9:16-19), referring to the experience of the Jaredites entering the New World around 2500 BC:

“And the Lord began again to take the curse from off the land, and the house of Emer did prosper exceedingly under the reign of Emer; and in the space of sixty and two years they had become exceedingly strong, insomuch that they became exceedingly rich—Having all manner of fruit, and of grain, and of silks, and of fine linen, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious things; And also all manner of cattle, of oxen, and cows, and of sheep, and of swine, and of goats, and also many other kinds of animals which were useful for the food of man. And they also had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and cureloms and cumoms; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants and cureloms and cumoms.”

The clear statement about the existence of elephants in the New World at 2500 BC is one of many details in the BOM that critics have questioned and Mormons have defended.  As data and scholarly opinions have changed, the Mormon argument has also changed. In the mid 1800s, the idea that mastodons had co-existed with the “Mound Builders” in eastern North America was not uncommon.  Currently, however, you would be hard-pressed to find a single non-Mormon scholar who thinks that mastodons survived until anywhere near 2500 BC (a more reasonable estimate would be about 9500 BC).  As an archaeologist who works in the Eastern Woodlands, I can tell you that I am not aware of any serious, recent scholarly work that tries to understand the role of mastodons in middle or late Holocene (i.e., post-8000 BC) Native American cultures.  Why?  Because there is no good evidence that they existed that late into prehistory.

That change in scientific opinion about the timing of mastodon extinction was the result of accumulated paleontological and archaeological knowledge and the development of radiometric dating techniques that allow chronology to be understood in absolute terms (i.e., in terms of real calendar dates).  The current Mormon argument for elephants at 2500 BC hinges on just a handful of anomalously late mastodon radiocarbon dates that were obtained in the early decades of radiocarbon dating, before the effects of sample contamination were understood and before procedures were developed to mitigate those effects.  By continuing to rely on those dates, Mormon apologists and scholars are clinging to 60-year-old "facts" that they must know are probably in error.

I will discuss the radiocarbon dates further below.  But first let’s put the story of mastodons, Mormons, and “Mound Builders” in America in some historical context.  Why?  Because it’s interesting!
PictureIllustration of the Peale mastodon.
The first and perhaps the most famous early encounter between science, religion, and mastodons in America was Cotton Mather’s (early 1700s) interpretation of mastodon bones unearthed in New York as the remains of an Antediluvian giant. African slaves in South Carolina, familiar with the anatomy of elephants, correctly identified mammoth teeth unearthed in 1725 as those of an elephant rather than a human giant (see this post by Adrienne Mayor). As more and more fossils were discovered, naturalists refined their understanding of mastodons, mammoths, and their relationships to living elephants.  The American mastodon (Mammut americanum) was formally named and described as a taxon in the 1790s.  The Peale mastodon, a relatively complete skeleton from New York, was excavated, illustrated, and displayed in 1801.  As encapsulated in this article, the large mastodons, with all their implications of power and size, became a part of the emerging identity of the young United States. 

The idea that species could go extinct was still relatively new in the late 1700s. (The absence of the idea of extinction was an important component of why the bones of extinct animals had so often been interpreted as the remains of ancient giants - what else could they be?).  The idea of extinction was apparently not one that Thomas Jefferson subscribed to.  Consequently, he was convinced that mammoths and mastodons should still be alive in the western part of the continent.  In Notes of the State of Virginia (1785:55), Jefferson wrote:

“The bones of the mammoth, which have been found in America, are as large as those found in the old world. It may be asked, why I insert the mammoth, as if it still existed?  I ask in return why I should omit it, as if it did not exist?  Such is the economy of Nature, that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct; of her having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken. To add to this, the traditionary testimony of the Indians, that this animal still exists in the Northern and Western parts of America, would be adding the light of a taper to that of the meridian sun.  Those parts still remain in their aboriginal state, unexplored and undisturbed by us, or by others for us.  He may as well exist there now, as he did formerly, where we find his bones.”

Notice also Jefferson's plea for recognition of the vigor and size of the North American fauna, of which the mammoth and mastodon were a part.  He fully expected that living examples could be found and add to the argument for the grandeur of a young nation.  As President of the United States, Jefferson instructed Lewis and Clark to look for mastodons and mammoths during their Corps of Discovery Expedition (1804-1806).  After they found none, he ordered excavations at the productive fossil site of Big Bone Lick in Kentucky in 1807 (see A Discourse on the Character and Services of Thomas Jefferson by Samuel Latham Mitchill, 1826, pages 29-30), retrieving mastodon fossils to send to Europe.

More than just a scientific curiosity, mastodons and mammoths were participants in American culture in the early 1800s.  The earliest use of the term “mastodon” that I located in a newspaper dates to 1810. 
Several mastodons were unearthed in New York in the 1810s and 1820s, and those finds were reported in newspapers.  The data below show a rapid increase in the appearance of "mastodon" in books (many of them scientific/technical) in the 1820s.  Newspapers from this time period also contain numerous advertisements for living elephants exhibited by traveling circuses.  My point is that knowledge of both living elephants and their extinct relatives was being widely disseminated when the BOM was published in 1830.  Extinct elephants were becoming part of an emerging American identity.

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Google Ngram results for "mastodon."
PictureIllustration of the Wisconsin "Elephant Mound" from MacLean's "Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man" (1880).
As the possibility that the animals could still be alive somewhere on the continent evaporated with continued Euroamerican exploration of the American west and more widespread acceptance of the idea of extinction, the debate in the mid-1800s shifted to whether humans and extinct elephants had ever co-existed.  Were mastodons and mammoths Antediluvian beasts that had perished in the Flood, or did prehistoric peoples in North America interact with them? As described by John Patterson MacLean in his book Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man (1880, pages 74-82), evidence that humans and mastodons had overlapped in time included mastodon bones associated with projectile points, mastodon bones that had been burned, mastodon bones associated with pottery, engravings of elephants on Mayan stonework, the presence of mastodon remains stratigraphically above sediments containing basketry, the “Elephant Mound” in Wisconsin, and Native American oral traditions that described elephant-like creatures.  

In the same year as MacLean’s book, Frederick Larkin’s Ancient Man in America was published, describing his theory that the “Mound Builders” had domesticated the mastodon as a beast of burden and for warfare.  Larkin also used the elephant-shaped effigy mound in Wisconsin as evidence.  A few years later (1885), Charles Putnam published his volume on the elephant pipes of Iowa, widely thought to be fraudulent.

Mormons embraced the array of evidence in the late 1800s that seemed to support the contemporaneity of humans and mastodons in the New World.  The 1908 Book of Mormon Talks, written by Hyrum O. Smith, addresses the 1857 critique of Mormonism offered by John Hyde’s Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs:

“Papa.--We certainly can not blamed for considering this as conclusive evidence in favor of the Book of Mormon account, and rejecting the dogmatic statement of Mr. Hyde that “the elephant is not a native of America and never was its inhabitant.” We have not only found that the elephant was here, but that other large animals of the elephant or mastodon species were here, and that they were here at the same time that man was.  These larger animals that are called “cureloms and cumoms” in the Book of Mormon were evidently of the mastodon or elephant type for which there were not names in English, hence their names were transferred to the book just as the Jaredites called them.  There is one more point which we wish to establish before we leave this subject.  You will notice that the last part of the quotation which Harry has read from Ether says, “And there were elephants, and cureloms, and cumoms; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants, and cureloms and cumoms.”  This certainly signifies that they used these large animals for beasts of burden, and strange to say, we have something to sustain this statement also.  Ethel, you may read from page 75 of the Archaeological Committee’s report the opinion of Mr. Frederick Larkin, M.D.:” (pages 141-142)

In the book, Ethel goes on to read Larkin’s self-proclaimed “visionary” statement about the domestication of the mastodon by the “Mound Builders.”  Papa gladly accepts Larkin’s conclusion, but chides him for claiming something as “new” which of course had been revealed in an inspired way decades earlier in the BOM.

In the early 1900s, then, the defense of the elephants of Ether was based on a constellation of data points (Central American engravings, apparent associations of mastodons with human tools, fraudulent pipes, an amorphous earthen mound that looks like an elephant if you squint) that suggested the contemporaneity between elephants and the complex societies of the Americas.  Larkin’s statement about the domestication of the mastodon was welcomed because the language of the BOM “certainly signifies that they used these large animals for beasts of burden.”

Investigations at the Folsom site in the 1920s cemented the case for all interested parties that humans and extinct Pleistocene animals had co-existed in North America.  Excavations at Blackwater Draw in the early 1930s conclusively demonstrated an association between mammoth bones and distinctive Clovis projectile points. The debate about the co-existence of humans and extinct proboscideans was over.

The advent of radiocarbon dating in the early 1950s changed the game of understanding time in prehistoric North America, allowing the ages of organic remains to be estimated in absolute terms (i.e., in calendar years).  Almost immediately, the archaeological chronology of North America lengthened significantly as archaeologists were able, for the first time, to understand how much time was really represented by the remains they could observe. Paleontology benefited also, as many fossil remains could be directly dated.

Radiocarbon dates initially seemed to provide support for the idea that mastodons had survived late into prehistory, consistent with the statement in the Book of Ether.  As Mormon publications and websites are fond of pointing out, radiocarbon age estimates from mastodons include several mid-Holocene dates that suggest mastodons and the Jaredites could have overlapped.  A 2012 paper by John Sorenson in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture (volume 1, page 99) reads:

“Mastodon remains have been dated by radiocarbon to around 5000 BC in Florida, around the Great Lakes to 4000 BC, in the Mississippi Valley to near 3300 BC, perhaps to near 100 BC near St. Petersburg, Florida (“low terminal [C-14] dates for the mastodon indicate . . . lingering survival in isolated areas”), and at sites in Alaska and Utah dating around 5000 BC.  In the Book of Mormon, mention of elephants occurs in a single verse, in the Jaredite account (“There were elephants,” Ether 9:19), dated in the third millennium BC, after which the record is silent (indicating spot extinction?).”

The website "Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon" repeats some of those dates, as does this website.

As someone who works on Paleoindian period archaeology in eastern North America, I was surprised to see the suggestion that radiocarbon dates indicated the survival of the mastodon into the mid-Holocene.  The youngest radiocarbon dates for mastodon of which I was aware are around 10,000-9500 BC (see Woodman and Athfeld 2009).  And I've never heard of a single mastodon bone being recovered from a context that suggested any interaction with Archaic peoples.  

Fortunately, Sorenson’s paper provides some references so we can have a look at these purportedly late dates. Here are the radiocarbon dates I could find that apparently form the basis of the Mormon claim of a late survival of mastodons in eastern North America:

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I was unable to find the 1975 Wenner-Grenn report that Sorensen references for the claim of mastodons in the Great Lakes at 4000 BC (related to the work of Warren Wittry), but I wonder if that date isn’t related to M-347 above (a 4000 BC mastodon date from Lapeer County, Michigan, reported by Crane and Griffin in 1959).

I was also unable to find a specific date associated with the mastodon from Devil’s Den, Florida, and couldn't find a copy of Martin and Webb (1974) online.  Kurten and Anderson (1980:365) reference “unpublished C-14 data” from Martin and Webb (1974) and give an age range of 8000-7000 BP (i.e., about 5000 BC, uncalibrated).

For the other dates, a few things are worth noting. The M-138 date (the “Richmond Mastodon” from Noble County, Indiana) is from charcoal, not the mastodon itself.  The association between the charcoal and the mastodon is highly suspect, as the excavation that produced both the mastodon and the charcoal was actually performed in the 1930s (see Williams 1957:365, 368).  The excavators thought that the charcoal and some corner-notched projectile points were associated with the mastodon, but it seems more likely they they are actually from a later Late Archaic component that was not directly associated with the mastodon remains.  Williams (1957: 368) states that there was a second radiocarbon date from the site that was about twice as old.

The M-67 and M-347 dates, obtained in the 1950s from tusk material, could easily have been contaminated by more recent organic matter (see below).  They are most likely far too young.

The L-211 date, like the M-138 date, was apparently obtained from charcoal recovered from an excavation decades earlier.  Further, the deposits were unconsolidated and may have contained a jumble of redeposited material (in other words, the charcoal may have had nothing to do with the mastodon bones) (Hester 1960:65).

The alert reader will notice that four out of the five dates in the table above are in the very early years of radiocabon dating (the 1950s), and the fifth is from the 1970s.  Why does that matter?  Because, as in all science, there have been developments in the methods, practice, and theory of radiocarbon dating since it was first operationalized in 1947.  Radiocarbon dating is incredibly important tool for understanding the past, and considerable effort has gone into improving it.  One aspect of improving the reliability and accuracy of radiocarbon dating was dealing with problems of sample contamination.  Early on, it was realized that radiocarbon dates on bone were often far too young because the samples were often contaminated with more recent carbon.

Here is a summary of the history of advancements in radiocarbon dating bone.  Here is another.

The evolution of thought in the scholarly literature about the extinction of mastodons is connected to developments in radiocarbon dating and the refinement of techniques for removing contamination.  The 1957 paper by Williams referenced above, often cited by Mormons, argues for the presence of mastodons in eastern North America after 8000 BC, with extinction around 5000 BC.  Because of a lack of archaeological associations between mastodon remains and the Archaic peoples with whom they would have been contemporary, however, Williams discussed the possibility of a problem with dating techniques.  In other words, the late dates appeared somewhat anomalous even in 1957 because there was no good direct evidence of interactions between mastodons and the Archaic peoples that would have shared the continent with them between 8000 and 5000 BC.  All of the radiocarbon dates on bone that Williams utilized would have been subject to contamination by younger carbon, resulting in age estimates that skewed too young.

A 1968 paper by A.
Dreimanis summarized 28 available radiocarbon dates for mastodons, throwing out many of the early dates and suggesting that extinction was underway by 10,000 years ago. Dreimanis did not throw out the dates arbitrarily, but because of issues of contamination that were becoming better understood and unclear relationships between what was dated (e.g., plant material) and the target of the date (the mastodon).  The paper by Hester (1960) also discusses some of the same problematic dates.  By the 1960s, it was recognized that contamination by recent humic acids may make dates on bone collagen too young.  Bone samples were especially susceptible to contamination by more recent organic materials, complete removal of which was difficult for the sample sizes that were required.

The advent of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating in the 1980s allowed smaller samples to be used to produce age estimates, permitting improved pretreatment procedures to remove contaminants from bone prior to dating (see this 1992 paper). This improved both the accuracy and precision of radiocarbon dates on bone, which are now typically performed only on collagen (protein) extracted from the bone, rather than the mineral component (hydroxyapatite).  Here is an explanation on the Beta Analytic website.  

In the present (the early 21st century) all scientists that I’m aware of support the idea that mastodon extinction was associated with the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. The young (e.g., 8000-1000 BC) dates obtained from mastodons in the first decades of radiocarbon dating have not been duplicated (with the possible exception of very recent date from another Michigan mastodon) since procedures for removing contaminants were refined. Now a “young” date on a mastodon is one that post-dates 10,500 RCYBP (as above). There are good reasons why scientists don’t use those anomalous dates from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s: they are not discarded simply because they don’t fit our expectations, but because there are logical, well-understood reasons to strongly suspect they don’t reflect the actual age of the bones. And those dates exist in a vacuum of other compelling evidence to suggest that populations of mastodons really survived that long into the Holocene.

So while radiocarbon dating and science have continued to move forward and refine our understanding of the demise of the mastodons, the Mormons seem to prefer to stop time during the early days of radiocarbon dating, when anomalously young dates on bone were not uncommon.  Based on what we know now, those anomalously young dates are probably attributable to either contamination, context/association problems, or both.  They are embraced by Mormons not because they are good science, but because they remain the "best fit" to the Jaredite time period.  No-one else takes those dates seriously, and it isn't because they're trying to undermine the BOM.  It's because there isn't any reason to take them seriously:  they are probably mistakes.  

As the scientific evidence against a 2500 BC population of mastodons in eastern North America mounted, the Mormon interpretation of the elephants of Ether also changed.  Gone now is any argument that humans had domesticated mastodons, as so confidently asserted by Hyrum O. Smith in 1908. Again from the website "Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon:"

“Moroni then lists the animals that were "useful unto man," including horses, asses, and the elephants, cureloms, and cumoms. But it is very interesting that there is a difference in the way they are listed. They "had horses and asses," implying possession of domesticated animals, but "there were elephants, cureloms, and cumoms" (Ether 9:19). This hints that these last mentioned animals existed in the land and were useful to them, but were not domesticated.”

Many Mormon websites also cite as support for the late survival of mastodons evidence of the co-existence of humans and mastodons.  Co-existence and late (i.e., 2500 BC) co-existence are not the same thing.  The fact that humans and mastodons co-existed has zero bearing on the argument of when they coexisted.  There is abundant evidence that humans and mastodons did interact in North America during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and that fact is not in dispute. What is in dispute in the late survival of those creatures claimed by Mormons.  Of that there is no good evidence.  Once radiocarbon data allowed prehistoric time in eastern North America to be unfurled, it became clear that there was a large time gap between the heyday of the mastodons the purported arrival of the Jaredites.  That time gap grew as radiocarbon dating procedures improved to deal with the systematic error produced by contamination problems.

Continuing to uncritically employ a handful of young radiocarbon dates from the early decades of radiocarbon dating as support for the claim of elephants at 2500 BC is intellectually dishonest.  Last time I checked, AMS dates were about $600 each (I also seem to recall that the price has recently dropped).  If Mormons want to continue to use radiocarbon dating to evaluate the historical accuracy of the Book of Ether, I suggest that they have those “late surviving” mastodons re-dated.  If they agree to pay for it, I would be happy to help attempt to locate the remains wherever they are curated and try to secure permission to have samples dated.  It would be a nice way to resolve the ambiguity.  We can publish the results.  If there really were mastodons tromping around in the woodlands of Archaic eastern North America, I would like to know about it and so would a lot of other people.  It's a win-win.
___________

References for unlinked literature:

Crane, H. R. 1956.  University of Michigan Radiocarbon Dates I. Science 124(3224): 664-672.

Crane, H. R., and J. B. Griffin. 1959.  University of Michigan Radiocarbon Dates IV. American Journal of Science Radiocarbon Supplement 1: 173-198.

Hester, Jim J.  1960.  Late Pleistocene Extinction and Radiocarbon Dating.  American Antiquity 26(1):58-77.

Kurten, B., and E. Anderson. 1980.  Pleistocene Mammals of North America.  New York: Columbia University Press.

Martin, R. A., and S. D. Webb. 1974.  Late Pleistocene Mammals from the Devil's Den Fauna, Levy County.  In Webb, S.D. (editor): Pleistocene Mammals of Florida, pp. 114-145.  Gainesville: University Presses of Florida.

Williams, Stephen. 1957. The Island 35 Mastodon: Its Bearing on the Age of Archaic Cultures in the East.  American Antiquity 22:359-372.


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Mastodons, "Mound Builders," and the Willful Flattening of Time

2/14/2015

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Picture
Giants, “Mound Builders,” and mastodons have been entangled with one another in several strange ways since at least the mid-1800s. In a previous post, I wrote about one well-documented instance of a mastodon skeleton being misinterpreted and misrepresented as that of a giant human. Another example is discussion of the often-repeated quote from Abraham Lincoln about "that extinct species of giant," which often centers on whether the reference to "giant" was intended to refer to the bones of dead mastodons and mammoths or to the bones of dead human giants. 

In this post, I’m going to discuss two more instances – one historical and one current – where mastodons and “Mound Builders” are mingled. 

The historical one (the ideas of Frederick Larkin) illustrates some of the imaginative thinking that flourished in the 19th century in a relative vacuum of temporal control over archaeological and paleontological information.  The current one (the ideas of Joe Taylor) illustrates the willful disregard of almost everything we’ve learned about time in the past century. Both relate to the question of who built the
mounds, enclosures, and other earthen monuments of eastern North America.

That question was answered long ago: it was indigenous Native Americans.  This was established to the satisfaction of most scholars with the publication of the Bureau of American Ethnology’s (BAE) Annual Report of 1894.  While our understanding about how, when, and why these earthworks were constructed has been significantly refined over the last century, no direct evidence has surfaced which suggests that the main conclusion of the BAE report was incorrect.  The earthworks of eastern North America were built by and for Native American societies.

The notion that Native Americans could not have built the large and/or complex earthen structures dotting the landscape has a long history in this country that continues to this day.  The 19th century question of the identity of the “Mound Builders” had a distinct racial component, with many Euroamerican observers unwilling to accept the idea that earthworks were built by the ancestors of the indigenous peoples that they had recently exterminated or forcibly removed from the region. 

I suspect that, once I have my database assembled and cleaned up, I will be able to demonstrate a connection between the frequency of reporting of “giant” skeletons from the earthworks of eastern North America and the historical trajectory of the “Mound Builder” controversy.  Many (though not all) of those 19th and early 20th century newspaper accounts of large skeletons employ the language of race and make explicit statements about the identity of the skeletons that can be understood in the context of the debate about the existence of a pre-Native American people/race/civilization that built the earthworks.

The current resurgent interest in giants is clearly connected to a revitalization of the myth of the “Mound Builder.” The articulation between current “research” on giants and the “Mound Builder” myth is made obvious through the "Stone Builders, Mound Builders and the Giants of North America" website of Jim and Bill Vieira and the content of their program Search for the Lost Giants.  Here is a blog post by archaeologist Stephen Mrozowski explaining his view of what that program is about.

More about that later. Let’s get to the mastodon connections.

The American mastodon (Mammut americanum) was a cousin of the elephant that lived in North America for several million years during the Pliocene and Pleistocene.  Mastodons became extinct as modern environments emerged after the last Ice Age: the youngest mastodon I am aware of dates to about 10,700 BC.  Environmental change and human predation probably contributed to the demise of the species, though the relative importance of these factors is a subject of a debate. 

What did mastodons have to do with "Mound Builders?"  In reality, nothing.

PictureAn illustration from Frederick Larkin's "Ancient Man in America" (1880).
Frederick Larkin’s Domesticated Mastodons

Our first case comes from the 19th century. 

Frederick Larkin, a consort of T. Apoleon Cheney in the exploration of various earthworks in New York (including the Conewango Mound), thought that the “Mound Builders” of eastern North America had used domesticated mastodons in their construction activities.  He did not believe in giants.  Like many giant enthusiasts (and ancient alien theorists), however, he didn’t think the earthworks could have been built by normal humans.  In his sole publication, Ancient Man in America (1880), Larkin wrote:

“My theory that the pre-historic races used, to some extent, the great American elephant, or mastodon, I believe is new and no doubt will be considered visionary by many readers and more especially by prominent archaeologists.  Finding the form of an elephant engraved upon a copper relic some six inches long and four wide, in a mound on the Red House Creek, in the year 1854 and represented in harness with a sort of breast-collar with tugs reaching past the hips, first led me to adopt that theory.  That the great beast was contemporary with the mound builders is conceded by all, and also that his bones and those of his master are crumbling together in the ground.” (preface)

“From the shores of Lake Superior we can trace this people to Wisconsin, where we find some singular earthworks: six effigies of animals, six parallelograms, one circle, and one effigy of the human figure.  These tumuli extend for the distance of half a mile along the trail.  What the animals represent in effigy is difficult to determine.  Many at the present time suppose that the mastodon is one, and that he was a favorite animal and perhaps used as a beast of burden.  That the mastodon was contemporary with the mound-builders is now an undisputed fact.  It is a wonder, and has been since the great mounds have been discovered, how such immense works could have been built by human hands.  To me it is not difficult to believe that those people tamed that monster of the forest and made him a willing slave to their superior intellectual power. If such was the case, we can imagine that tremendous teams have been driven to and fro in the vicinity of their great works, tearing up trees by the roots, or marching with armies into the field of battle amidst showers of poisoned arrows.” (page 3)

Later in the volume, Larkin further explained the rationale for his conclusion:

    “I have heretofore suggested that the ancient Mound Builders were contemporary with the mastodon and that in all probability they tamed and used that powerful beast to haul heavy burdens.  As I stand almost alone, in relation to that theory, I will give my evidence for such a belief. It is a fact admitted by all familiar with pre-historic discoveries that the bones of the mastodon and those of the Mound Builders are found in the same localities, and in about the same state of preservation; also in and around their great works, stones are frequently discovered with animals engraved upon them which are supposed to represent that animal.  The copper relic, formerly referred to, found on the Allegany River with the form of an elephant engraved upon it, represented in harness, first attracted my attention to that subject.  If the ancient people in North America tamed that great beast it is very likely that the inhabitants of South America done the same thing.” (pg 141)

“When we consider the magnificent works built by these ancient people it looks impossible that they could have been built by no other than human labor.  The great mound at Cahokia, Illinois, is estimated to cover twenty millions of cubic feet of earth, which was all brought from a distance.  Now, it would take one thousand men nearly twenty years to perform the labor which was bestowed upon building of that one tumulus, and when we consider that that is but one of about sixty other structures by which it is surrounded, one thousand men could not have performed the great labor in the days and years allotted to human life.” (pg. 143)

Given what was known about the paleontology, geology, and human prehistory of eastern North America in 1880, we should cut Larkin some slack.  The idea that global cooling cycles (i.e., Ice Ages) had occurred and affected the environment was relatively new, and estimates for the age of the Earth varied from the short (i.e., ~6000 year) time frames supplied through biblical calculations to ages in the tens to hundreds of millions of years calculated based on the Earth’s temperature (Thomson) and the size of the sun (von Helmholtz). Radiometric dating techniques allowing the ages of geological deposits, Pleistocene fauna, and archaeological deposits to be estimated in absolute terms were still decades away.  In other words, assuming that humans and mastodons were contemporary in eastern North America was not such a crazy thought – it was in fact correct.  But we now know that mastodons went extinct thousands of years before the earliest known North American mounds were built (about 3500 BC or so).

PictureA cast of the Burning Tree mastodon on display at the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum. Joe Taylor says the mastodon was skinned by giant humans associated with "Mound Builders."
Joe Taylor’s Amazing Fifteen Foot Mound-Building Mastodon Skinners

Speaking in 2012, Joe Taylor (promoter of the 47” femur) deserves much less slack than Larkin for his ridiculous statement about the relationships between mastodons and “Mound Builders.”  In this interview (about 24:00 minutes in), Taylor says the following:

“I’ve got the Burning Tree mastodon here that was skinned.  I’ve got the skeleton – a cast of it – and I lived with that thing for five months so I know it pretty well. That thing was skinned. If you figure an elephant hide weighs around 2000 pounds, you have to do some tall explaining to say why would the Indians as we know them have skinned that thing.  But if you know that Ohio, at Newark, where this mastodon came from, was called the Mound City . . . and if you know that in some of those mounds in Ohio there were men ten feet tall found, and others nine feet tall, now you begin to see that well, maybe if there were tribes of these men that were ten, twelve feet tall, and like the Pawnee said they were fifteen feet tall,  well a half dozen or so of those guys could look at this mastodon who’s been injured and standing over there in a pool, well they’d just wait till he died and skin him.  A man twelve to fifteen feet tall could actually utilize an elephant hide for armor or clothes or whatever. So I think the Burning Tree mastodon indicates that there giant men living in Ohio.”

So there you have it: according to Joe Taylor, giant Mound Builders skinned the Burning Tree mastodon.  The alert listener will notice that the giants in Taylor’s story grew from ten feet to fifteen feet tall in less than two minutes.  We’re lucky it was a short segment of the interview: if it had gone on for ten more minutes they would have broken the 60 foot threshold and someone would have to make a new version of that chart that’s all over the internet comparing the different skeleton sizes.

Taylor is correct that there is evidence of butchery on the Burning Tree mastodon.  Everything else he says, however, is wrong. The authors of the analysis (Fisher et al. 1994:51) make the following conclusion:

“. . .  the Burning Tree mastodon died elsewhere and was disarticulated and to some extent defleshed before being transported to and submerged in the pond.  The patterning of marks on the bones indicates a deliberate strategy of carcass reduction involving symmetrical treatment of paired anatomical regions.  The occurrence of bones in three discrete concentrations composed of anatomically unrelated units indicates intentional emplacement. The excellent preservation of bone, the presence of articulated skeletal units, and the presence of a section of the mastodon’s intestine containing viable enteric bacteria indicate that the carcass units were submerged in the pond shortly after the death of the mastodon.  This constellation of factors is most parsimoniously explained by Paleoindian butchery and subaqueous caching of the mastodon’s carcass.”

The mastodon didn’t die in the pond – disarticulated parts of it were dragged there after death.  And it wasn’t just skinned – it was butchered.  The Burning Tree mastodon is securely dated to around 11,400 BC, many thousands of years too early to have anything to do with the Woodland period cultures that constructed the earthworks in the same vicinity.  Elephants were butchered by Paleoindians (and possibly earlier peoples) in eastern North America, and were also butchered in other parts of the world during the Pleistocene.  The idea that only giant humans could butcher an elephant is silly.  Here is a video showing a bunch of modern people using knives to butcher an elephant carcass.  None of the persons appears to be a giant. They do use a tractor at one point to turn the carcass over, but I’m sure that there are ways to process the entire carcass that don’t require an internal combustion engine.

I’m not sure how Taylor justifies completely ignoring the dating of the Burning Tree mastodon – maybe it’s because he believes the earth is only 6000 years old and therefore all information from radiocarbon dating is meaningless?  The Mt. Blanco website states that the presence of living bacteria in the stomach contents of the mastodon means it couldn't be as old as the radiocarbon dates indicate.  I'm not a bacteria specialist, but apparently being in a state of dormancy for a few thousand (or million) years is not a big deal for bacteria.

For whatever reason, Taylor seems to be willfully embracing the fundamental lack of temporal information that handicapped Larkin.  In Larkin’s case, the lack of temporal control was due to an actual lack of information, causing him to equate proximity in space with equivalence in time.  In Taylor’s case, however, there is no excuse.  You have to squeeze your eyes shut really hard these days to make the same mistake Larkin did. 

Taylor’s interpretation of the Burning Tree mastodon is illuminating for just that reason.  There is a determined blindness at the core of the entire revitalization of the “Mound Builder” myth. In order to presume that there was such a thing as a single “Mound Builder” race or culture, you have to disregard a century of scientific archaeology and consciously flatten time in a way that hasn’t been remotely defensible since the dawn of radiocarbon dating in the 1950s. It is reasonable to ask why so many giantologists seem so willing to put those blinders on and so resolved to resuscitate an inherently racist idea that was discredited over a hundred years ago.

_______

Fisher, Daniel C., Bradley T. Lepper, and Paul E. Hooge.  1994.  "Evidence for Butchery of the Burning Tree Mastodon." In The First Discovery of America, edited by William S. Dancey, pp. 43-57.  The Ohio Archaeological Council, Columbus, Ohio.
_______

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