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Jim Vieira and the Androgynous Fish Gods

10/17/2019

7 Comments

 
As promised, Jim Vieira visited Columbia earlier this week to participate in my Forbidden Archaeology (ANTH 227) class. I gave him the floor on Monday to talk to the class about whatever he wanted to. The students were required to write a short (2-3 page) summary/critique of his presentation and prepare several written questions for Wednesday's class. I tried to mostly stay out of the way.

Overall, I think the whole thing went pretty well. Vieira's presentation gave them plenty to chew on, including things we had discussed in class (Atlantis claims, the nature of science, the Younger Dryas Impact hypothesis, the nature of myths, the cross-cultural comparison of iconography) and things we hadn't (androgynous fish gods, quantum theory, ayahuasa, Linus the cat), and they asked some good questions. I videotaped the whole thing if you're interested. There's only one camera and Vieira is the only one with a microphone, but you can still get a pretty good idea of how it went down.
The main goal of this course is for the students to come out of it with some skills evaluating claims about the human past: how do you determine if an explanation is credible or not? how do you evaluate evidence that's offered or bring new evidence to bear? can you derive expectations from a claim that you can compare to what you can observe in the world? what assumptions are embedded in a claim and are those assumptions reasonable? given two different explanations, can you determine which one is more credible? how?  These questions all have to do with the nature of archaeology as, ultimately, a material science.

As I tell my students and anyone else who will listen, the key to being in the scientific loop is having/finding/using some mechanism to evaluate whether your ideas make sense or not. As long as you're doing science, it ultimately doesn't matter where an idea originates: an idea that comes to you in a dream may be right or wrong -- the trick is knowing how to figure out which it is. In most cases, the stories we tell about the human past are linked to things that happened in the material world and therefore are accessible through archaeology. Whatever the real story is, it ultimately has to be consistent with all the material evidence that's available. Misinterpreting evidence, ignoring evidence contrary to your story, and using fake evidence are all tickets to getting the story wrong.

It is my experience that many on the "alternative" side are so invested in the stories that they're selling that they are unwilling to change their stories as new evidence is produced, old interpretations are shown to be incorrect, and some "evidence" is shown to be fraudulent. Generally, those are not people that are wiling to have a conversation about evidence. 

​Jim Vieira is not one of those people. He and I land in different places on any number of subjects, but we have yet to find a topic that we can't discuss. Outside of class, he and I spent a lot of time talking about a wide range of subjects connected to the ancient past. The conversations were always easy and almost always entertaining, and Jim and I both think that there would be outside interest in listening to that kind of communication between a professional archaeologist and someone coming from the "alternative" side of things. I proposed that we do an occasional YouTube program something along the lines of "The Mystery Hour with Andy and Jim." Hopefully we can make that happen in some form.

And here are some photos from our hike in Congaree National Park: a water moccasin along the trail and Jim using his supernatural fish god powers to levitate an acorn. I will not share with you the esoteric life coaching I received during this three hour adventure. You're welcome.
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7 Comments
Bob Jase
10/18/2019 05:37:59 am

Now are the fish gods cousins of the nephilim or are they Ickes' reptoids?

Reply
Paul
10/18/2019 02:11:36 pm

Did not watch the entire video, almost seems like an apologetic version of pseudoscience/history. Certainly some homeotherapys work, but many don't. Most medicines offered to the public work, some don't. But the age old idiom that time changes all holds, we, or most of us, do not hold the same beliefs or use the same treatments as 100 or 1000 years ago. Also, humanity has a short memory. Pseudohistorians and pseudoscience folks practice cognitive dissonance at it's finest. A quote by Lee McIntyre mostly fits, "The real enemy of truth is not ignorance, doubt, or even disbelief. It is false knowledge." Or perhaps one could add, knowledge twisted beyond regonition. Incrementalism and cataclysmic theories are both sides of the same coin, but are on the same coin. Final recommencation? Don't drink the Kool Aid.

Reply
K. Atkins
10/19/2019 06:01:40 am

Very few things in life are certain. But one thing that you can be certain of is that at least a couple students got baked before attending this presentation.

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David L Ulrich
10/19/2019 04:38:04 pm

I'm really glad you had the time to spend with Jim. He is a very remarkable guy with wide range of experience. Although I at this time no longer accept the label of "fringe", I do.understand what his message is. All.is good. When artifacts are presented, there are always contradictions. For one, did the Roman Empire know iatitude and longitude. Yes they did. We have the Antikythera mechanism. Archaeologists have no explanation of how the gears are made. Neither does anybody else. Jim has tried to show his rock structures. Explanations and construction are still out there. But then, aren't the alignments fascinating which begs the explanation of why the colonialists cared about the pagan beliefs of the equinoxes and solstices. These are my thoughts and mine alone.

Reply
Arnold Van Gennep
10/20/2019 07:02:21 am

Christianity incorporated many pagan beliefs and commemorations in relation to celestial events and the changing seasons.

Reply
google speed test ptcl link
10/24/2019 11:48:32 am

helped me a lot ptcl speed test!

Reply
Anthony
11/14/2019 08:38:05 pm

At 1:40:46 Mr. Viera betrays the identity of his seven headed beast by showing a figure with the head of a Menorah. He's taking celestial symbolism literally. The symbolism behind the seven headed beast and the Menorah is the same. Seven celestial spheres.

Reply



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