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The Elephants of Ether: Mormons and the Mastodon Problem

2/27/2015

 
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.

Picture
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:

Picture
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.


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

2/14/2015

 
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.
_______

An Eyewitness to a Giant?  Additional Information on the Conewango Mound

1/6/2015

 
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I recently wrote about the tale of a reported eyewitness account of the discovery of a skeleton of enormous proportions in an earthen mound in New York in 1876.  The story was that Charles Huntington carved a 9’ statue to represent the individual whose giant skeleton he claims he saw as a child in 1876.  According to the documents I found (T. Apoleon Cheney’s “Ancient Monuments in Western York,” published in 1860), however, the excavation that produced the report of a large femur upon which Huntington’s statue was based actually took place before Huntington was born.  The reported 28” femur was fragmentary, causing me to suspect its size had not been accurately estimated.  Some cranial fragments were also reported from the mound.

After writing that piece, it was pointed out to me by Micah Ewers that the reported skull measurements (which I called “normal-sized” in my post) actually suggested a fairly large skull.  He is right, I think, but the problem of course is that the skull was also fragmentary and those reported measurements were based on a reconstruction that we have no way of assessing at this point.

There was some discussion in the comments to the last post about Frederick Larkin’s role in the excavations.  Other than finding and skimming parts of “Ancient Man in America” (1880), I knew nothing much else about Larkin.  Or Cheney for that matter.  Micah also mentioned that Brad Lockwood had done some work on Cheney and Larkin and this very case.  I found Lockwood’s video about this case - here are links:

On Giants, Chapter 4: “Doc” Cheney (part 1)

On Giants, Chapter 4: “Doc” Cheney (part 2)

On Giants, Chapter 4: “Doc” Cheney (part 3)

These videos were produced in 2010.  They contain interesting details related to the story that I was not aware of and are well worth watching if you're interested in this sort of thing or this case in particular.

Lockwood was not aware of the key point of my piece: that the excavation took place in 1859 rather than 1876.  I’m not sure exactly what is going on, but for some reason Lockwood states that “Ancient Monuments in Western New York” contains only illustrations with no text.  The version I found contains text as well as illustrations.  I’m wondering if a “stand-alone” version of the publication (perhaps for wide distribution) consisted solely of drawings, while the version incorporated into the Thirteenth Annual Report of the Regents of the University also included the text?   If so that might explain some of the confusion about when the actual excavation took place.

Lockwood’s video tries to piece together what happened on the assumption that the excavation took place in 1876.  I wonder if the story might be easier to figure out knowing that the excavation actually took place in 1859 and the materials were reportedly donated to “The Historical and Antiquarian collections in the State Cabinet of Natural History.”
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An Eyewitness to a Giant?  Not so Fast, Zimmerman and Vieira

1/1/2015

 
PictureCharles M. Huntington and his statue (1938).
My always-thoughtful wife, having listened to me rattling on about “giants” recently, picked up a copy of the magazine Ancient American (Volume 18, Issue 105) while doing some Christmas shopping last week.  She bought it for me because the cover listed a story titled “Ancient New York Giants.”

The article, by Fritz Zimmerman, is built around the story of a man named Charles Huntington, of East Randolph, New York.  The article states that Mr. Huntington was present as his neighbors excavated a giant skeleton from a local mound in 1876.  Sixty-two years later, Mr. Huntington’s memories and notes from that day inspired him to carve a 9’ statue representing the giant human he saw buried in the mound.

Here are some quotes from Zimmerman's article (emphasis added):

“The model was built life-size according to measurements taken by Mr. Huntington when a mound on the Conewango Road was opened 62 years ago.”

“In 1876, a young man [Charles Huntington] accompanied several of his neighbors in excavating a burial mound that was to leave an indelible impression on him. What he witnessed that day would inspire him 62 years later to carve a replica of the remarkable find.”

“To make sure that the measurements he had were correct, he contacted the Assistant State Geologist in Albany, New York, who confirmed them as accurate.  Mr. Huntington’s motivation was to recreate exactly what he saw so many years ago, using the measurements taken by Mr. Cheney who was present at the dig.”

“The original account of the burial mound was printed in the History of Cattaraugus County, New York in 1879.”

So far so good, right?  Mr. Huntington was present at this mound excavation in 1876, a giant skeleton was unearthed, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Huntington took measurements, the discovery was reported in 1879, and many decades later Mr. Huntington carved a life-size statue of the 9’ tall giant that he had seen. 

This “eyewitness” story is also told by Jim Vieira on his blog in March of 2014.  Vieira quotes from an article he wrote for Ancient American:

“Charles Huntington was present when the skeletons were unearthed in 1876 and secured the exact measurements made by Dr. Franklin Larkin and Dr. T. Apoleon Cheney to be the basis for the wooden Mound Builders.”

Vieira, like Zimmerman, presents the story as an open-and-shut case where the recollections and information of multiple, independent witnesses corroborate an eyewitness account of the discovery of a skeleton of enormous proportions.  Vieira closes his post by expressing his frustration that people continue to question the existence of giants even in the face of such overwhelming evidence:

“Does Mr. Huntington strike you as a hoax master? What part of his story seems false? I guess I need to adopt more of a take it or leave it attitude when it comes to this research but for God's sake how can you read all of these reports and not understand that giants in the America's were a reality?”

In his piece, Zimmerman writes:

“Archaeologists would dismiss Mr. Huntington’s wooden model as a fabrication.  I would ask what his motivation would be?  Why would they report the giants in the county history and the newspaper?  Why would the state archaeologists confirm Mr. Huntington’s measurements that he received from Mr. Cheney who was also at the dig?  The preponderance of evidence would suggest that Mr. Huntington was correct in his reproduction.”

Clearly they think they’ve got a good case here.  The “I saw a giant being exhumed” story is becoming entrenched in the modern mythology of giants.

Too bad it’s not true.

The stories put together by Zimmerman and Vieira use the same two sources: the History of Cattaraugus County New York (1879) and an article in the Randolph Register (Zimmerman identifies it as September 21, 1936, but I think it is actually from 1938).  It is the story in the Randolph Register that states that Huntington “witnessed the exhuming of the skeletons of pre-historic mound-builders at the N. E. G. Cowan farm on the Conewango Road.”  The story identifies T. Apolean Cheney as “a Randolph man, who was present at the time the mound was opened.”

T. Apolean Cheney was indeed present when the mound was opened.  He wasn’t just “a Randolph man,” however, he was a civil engineer who was a central figure in New York prehistory in the mid 1800s. And he didn’t open the mound in 1876, but sometime before 1860, the year that “Ancient Monuments in Western New York” was published (available here).

This is the description from “Ancient Monuments in Western New York” (1860) (emphasis added):

    “The Tumulus, represented upon Plate III., from the peculiar construction of the work, and the character of its remains, appears to belong to a class of mounds different from any others embraced in this exploration.  It is located upon the brow of a hill, still covered by ancient forest, and overlooking the valley of the Conewango.  This work has some appearance of being constructed with the ditch and vallum outside of the mound, as in the Druid Barrows, but perhaps more accurately belongs to the class composed of several stages, as the Trocalli of the valley of Anahuac.  The form of the Tumulus is of intermediate character between an ellipse and the parallelogram; the interior mound, at its base, has a major axis of sixty-five feet, while the minor axis is sixty-one feet, with an altitude above the first platform or embankment of ten feet, or an entire elevation of some thirteen feet.  This embankment, with an entrance or gateway upon the east side thirty feet in width, has an entire circumference of one hundred and seventy feet.  As previously remarked, the work itself, as well as the eminence which it commands, and the ravines upon either side, are overshadowed by the dense forest. The remains of a fallen tree, imbedded in the surface of the mound and nearly decomposed, and which, from appearance, had grown upon the apex, measured nearly three feet in diameter, and heavy timber was growing above the rich mold it had formed.  Thus we have some indicia of the age of this work.  The mound, indeed, from the peculiar form of its construction, as well as from the character of its contents, has much resemblance to the Barrows of the earliest Celtic origin, in the Old World.  In making an excavation, eight skeletons, buried in a sitting posture, and at regular intervals of space, so as to form a circle within the mound, [illegible] disinterred.  Some slight appearance yet existed, to show that frame-work had enclosed the dead at the time of interment.  These osteological remains were of very large size, but were so decomposed that they mostly crumbled to dust.  The relics of art here disclosed, were also of a peculiar and interesting character,--amulets, chisels, &c., of elaborate workmanship,--resembling the Mexican and Peruvian antiquities” (pp. 40-41).
. . .
    “In the tumulus at Conewango, the relics of art, together with osteological remains, were of the most interesting character. The several skeletons were very much decayed, crumbling upon exposure to the atmosphere to the atmosphere, but were all of very large size.  A cranium, as well as could be ascertained from the restored fragments, was of the following dimensions:

                Occipito-frontal arch,……………….. 19 inches
                Longitudinal diameter, ……………. 9   “
                Parietal diameter,………………….. 8 1-5 “
                Zygomatic diameter, ……………… 7 2-5 ”
                Facial angle,………………………… 73 degrees

The ethmoid, and both the superior and inferior maxillary bones were wanting.  An Os-femur disclosed here, from accurate measurement, was found to have a length of twenty-eight inches”
(pg. 43).

This is the later description from History of Cattaraugus County, New York (1879) (available here):

    “About two miles south of the village of Rutledge, in the Connewango, on lot No. 45, at a point about sixty rods east of Connewango Creek and near the residence of Norman E. G. Cowen, there was discovered by the first pioneers of this section a sepulchral mound, nearly circular in form, and having an entire circumference of one hundred and seventy feet.  The height of the mound was about twelve feet.  Mr. Cheney spoke of this work as “having some appearance of being constructed with the ditch or vallum outside of the mound, as in the Druid Barrows, but perhaps more accurately belongs to the class composed of several stages, as the Trocalli of the vally of Anuhuac.”  At the time of its discovery the site was surrounded by the primitive forest, and upon the tumulus there were growing several large trees, among them being a hemlock two feet in diameter, and a maple and beech each eighteen inches in diameter.
    “Within the mound there was discovered nine human skeletons, which had been buried in a sitting posture, and at regular intervals of space, in the form of a circle, and facing towards a common centre.  There was some slight appearance that a frame-work had inclosed the dead at the time of their interment.  The skeletons were so far decayed as to crumble upon exposure to the atmosphere, but were all of very large size.  An os femur (the largest found here) was twenty-eight inches in length.  The dimensions of the cranium were (as nearly as could be ascertained from the restored fragments) as follows: occipito-frontal arch, 19 inches; longitudinal diameter, 9 inches; parietal diameter, 8 ½ inches; facial angle, 73 degrees. There were also found here several interesting relics of ancient art,--among these being very perfect arrow- and spear-heads, a small triangular perforated stone, of which the surface was painted and glazed, chisels amulets, and other articles of quite elaborate workmanship,--thought by some to resemble the Mexican and Peruvian antiquities”
(pg. 12).

I think we can all agree that these passages are describing the same excavations at the same earthwork with the same results.  The 1879 account quotes directly from the 1860 account, provides the same cranial measurements, and mentions the same 28” femur.  In fact, prior to the description of the earthwork given above, the History of Cattaraugus County, New York specifies “Ancient Monuments in Western New York” as the source of the information (see page 11).

So the excavations at the Cowen farm reported in the 1879 History of Cattaraugus County took place in the 1850s, not the 1870s. 

This presents a slight problem for the “I saw a giant being exhumed” story, because Charles M. Huntington wasn’t born until 1864.  Here is a census record from 1940. Here is a listing from the local cemetery. 

It’s pretty safe to say Charles M. Huntington wasn’t at the excavation in the 1850s that is described in the 1879 History of Cattaraugus County, New York. 

What really happened here?  The most charitable reading is that Charles Huntington actually was present at a later (1876) excavation that took place at the earthwork.  This might explain why the 1860 account states there were eight skeletons while the 1879 account specifies nine.  An article in the Times Herald (Olean, New York), dated May 12, 1938, states:

    “For years Mr. Cowen would not permit the mound to be disturbed until hunters, digging for game, found a shin bone and a jaw bone.
    Scientists were then notified and the entire skeleton removed.  Mr. Huntington was present and took notes on the measurements as the bones were removed.  The skeleton was removed to Buffalo but reportedly disintegrated within twenty-five years so that the only evidence of its existence are the measurements taken by Mr. Huntington, which also are on file at Buffalo and at Washington."
    Before starting to create his statues of wood, Mr. Huntington checked with authorities at both Buffalo and Washington and found that the measurements he had taken as a boy were accurate.
    The man stood nine feet in height, had a shin bone twenty-eight inches in length, a foot fourteen inches long and measured thirty-five inches across his shoulders.”


Maybe someone re-opened the mound in 1876, when Huntington was 12-years-old? Even if Huntington was present at an excavation that took place during his lifetime (i.e., 1876), however, his “measurements” were reported decades earlier.  The 28” length of the “shin bone” (called an “os-femur, or bone between the ankle and knee” in the newspaper account that Zimmerman and Vieira rely on) matches exactly the length of the femur reported by Cheney in 1860.  I think the most likely story is that Huntington got “his” measurements from either the 1860 or 1879 accounts (they are the same, after all) and then those measurements were later “verified” by someone else looking at the same published account.  A later article in the Randolph Register (November 14, 1984, available here) provides an account of the creation of the statues that supports this idea:

“As a young boy in 1876 Mr. Huntington watched as the Cowen Indian Mound in Randolph was opened.  One bone found was exceptionally large.  In 1938 Mr. Huntington created a statue of a man based on this large bone.  He figured his height to be about nine feet.”

Huntington had the reported 28” measurement from the femur and created a statue based on that single dimension.  One might guess that Huntington calculated a 9’ height for his statue by multiplying the reported length of the femur (28”) by 4, which seems to have been a common practice for estimating stature. In fact, I wonder if the statue doesn’t actually measure 9’4” (112”), which would be exactly 4x the femur length.  The measurement of 35” “across his shoulders” can be obtained by dividing a height of 112” by 3.2, suggesting the shoulder measurement may have been calculated using a simple proportional ratio rather than measured from a skeleton as implied by the “eyewitness” version of the story told by Zimmerman and Vieira.

It is interesting to note that while the reported femur length (28”) and facial angle (73 degrees) are part of the story, the cranial measurements reported in both 1860 and 1879 are not.  Why not? That’s easy: they’re from a normal-sized skull.

To me, reliance on the memory of an individual that was not yet alive at the time an event occurred seriously weakens the strength of an “eyewitness” story.  Sarcasm aside, this is a fair answer to the “what is wrong with this story” question posed by both Vieira and Zimmerman.  If your argument that the eastern United States was “the ancient land of the Biblical Nephilim” rests on the reported recollections of a man who was not yet born, I think you should be prepared to temper your exasperation that no-one believes you.

But what of the 28” femur? Other than the measurement and the statement that the skeletons were “all of a very large size,” no other details were provided in the main narratives of the 1860 and 1879 accounts.  Two pieces of information are relevant to evaluating whether this femur (which would indeed be consistent with an individual over 8’ in height) was as large as reported. Both suggest that it was not as large as reported.

First, the femur was described in the “Donations” section of the 1860 report in which Cheney’s “Ancient Monuments in Western New York” appeared:

“5. FRAGMENTS OF THE OS FEMUR, superior and lower extremities, from the Conewango mound.”

In other words, the whole femur was not recovered: they were missing the shaft and did not have a complete bone to measure!  This casts some serious doubt on what the length of the original bone really was. If the bone was from a robust individual, the proximal and distal sections were likely large, prompting an overestimation of the original length of the bone.  There is no way to "accurately" measure the length of a bone that was missing part of the shaft.

The second piece of information relevant to understanding the supposed “giant” femur comes from Dr. Frederick Larkin, a medical doctor who was a part of Cheney’s explorations in New York.  In his book Ancient Man in America (1880, available here) written two years after Cheney’s death, he gives his opinion of the “giant” skeletons that were described (emphasis added):

“It is stated in a paper written by Dr. Cheney, in 1859, that the skeletons found in the mounds at Cassadaga were those of giants, and that one in particular measured seven feet and five inches.  I suppose he got that information from some persons who saw then at the time they were exhumed, and their organ of marvelousness greatly exalted.  That the Mound-Builders were a trifle larger than the present type, is very probable; but that they were giants eight and ten feet high is all fabulous.  I have seen many skeletons from mounds in different states, but have seen none that will much exceed the present people now living.  At the Centennial, in one of the annex buildings, was a large amount of fragments of skeletons from the ancient tombs in West Virginia, Missouri, Ohio, and the Mississippi valley, and I saw none that would exceed the Indian tribes of America” (pg. 44).

So let’s review:

  • Charles Huntington was not alive when the reported 28” femur was excavated, and therefore could not have been an eyewitness. His statue was based on a reported measurement from a single bone, not a firsthand observation of a "giant" skeleton.

  • The purportedly 28" femur was not complete, missing part (perhaps most) of the shaft.  The reported 28” length was an estimate based on the two end fragments. It was likely an overestimate.

  • The person with experience in anatomy who saw some of the “giant” skeletons reported from New York and other states clearly said they were nothing of the sort.  Dr. Larkin saw no “giants,” and he said so after Cheney's death.

There’s your simple answer to why people don’t believe these stories: they shouldn’t.  A little bit of digging demonstrates major holes in this story. It would never hold up in court, and it does not hold up as evidence for a claim as fantastic as the discovery of a human larger than any living person on record.

Contrary to what Zimmerman and Vieira assert, the preponderance of the evidence suggests that this story is baloney.  I have asked it before, and I will ask it again: where is the scholarship on the side of the giantologists putting forward these claims?  Have I missed something?  Did no-one bother to check the attribution of the source of the excavation story in the 1879 volume? It’s written right there.  I just don’t get it.

Maybe I'll submit a piece to Ancient American and see if it gets published.



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