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What is the Purpose of "Ancient American" Magazine?

6/21/2016

 
I'll break the suspense and answer the question right away with a quote from page five of the latest issue:

"The purpose of Ancient American is to describe the true prehistory of the American continent, regardless of presently fashionable belief systems, and provide a public forum for certified experts and non-professionals alike to freely express their views without fear or favor."
My experience with Ancient American has been limited. My wife bought me an issue about a year and a half ago that had a cover story about a "giant skeleton" from New York (I wrote about it here), and I bought another issue last spring while I was trying to track down the story of the "oxhide ingot" from Michigan. 

I bought the latest issue (111) this morning because it has the "Roman sword" on the cover and an article titled "The Cursed Oak Island Artifacts" by J. Hutton Pulitzer. I skimmed through the article and didn't see anything about the sword. If you can't get enough of Pulitzer's sour grapes "tech-mogul-turned-explorer-turned-warrior-for-truth" puffery, then by all means you should spend your own $4.95 to read about the latitudes and longitudes of where he takes phone calls from important people who think he's awesome. Otherwise, save your money.
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The cover of the new issue of "Ancient American" magazine. The story in this issue doesn't talk about the sword.
As I flipped through the rest of the pdf, I couldn't help but wonder about the audience for this publication. The first "news" piece in this issue ("Traces Of A 9,000-Year-Old Lost Unknown Civilization Discovered in Lake Huron, Michigan") is a word-for-word reprinting of a piece that has been available free online at the Message To Eagle website since August of 2014. Well, it's not quite word-for-word, as the printed copy that was cut-and-pasted into the magazine includes one of the photo captions out-of-place in the text and the phrase "Lake Huron lost civilization" (presumably a page header) inserted into the narrative twice.  My colleagues at Michigan who are doing this work may be surprised to learn that they're uncovering a "lost, unknown civilization" rather than the remains hunting blinds for driving caribou.

Reading on in this issue, you'll find a story about a rock from Michigan that was somehow determined by Wayne May (the publisher) to be an idol of a human head dating to the period 1000 BC - AD 400, Pulitzer's piece, an article about bison that was also reprinted straight from content that's freely accessible online, a review of the almost-forty-year-old Brad Steiger book Worlds Before Our Own by former Nazi Frank Joseph, a misleading article about the Kennewick Man controversy, some advertisements for books . . . finally there are a few pieces which may actually contain some content related to original scholarship.  Since I paid my $4.95, I'll actually read through those and see if there's anything I'm interested in writing about.

Ancient American has been in print since 1993. As far as I can tell, much of the content has been directed at promoting just about anything that fits within a hyper-diffusionist paradigm: everyone, everywhere, all the time. The great irony in how the magazine bills itself (quoted above) is that it's really impossible to both "describe the true prehistory" and allow all ideas equal weight "without fear or favor."  Not all ideas about prehistory can be "true," of course, so how do you separate the credible from the non-credible within some kind of "safe space" where we all pledge not to think critically?  You can't. An unwillingness to try to falsify anything means you have to accept everything and somehow fit it all into a narrative. When you're mired only on the induction side of the inductive-deductive process (trying to concoct a story to explain the "facts" that you've got in front you), you really run into a problem if you have no means or desire to winnow out good pieces of evidence from the garbage (see this post for an expanded discussion).  So paint me a picture of the "true prehistory" of North America that incorporates everyone's bad ideas, misinterpretations, and fraudulent artifacts. I'd like to see that.

The stated purpose of Ancient American makes me wonder if the magazine would be amenable to a Fake Hercules Sword article written by me?  Or perhaps a point-counterpoint where Pulitzer and I can discuss the key issues around the sword(s).  If you really want to get beyond "fashionable belief systems," you might want to try embracing the self-correcting nature of science. It tends to produce some pretty good results if you let it.

And you may also want to invest in some additional proofreading.
Gina Torresso
6/21/2016 10:12:58 am

Pulitzers article is not what the title promised., surprising.

I'snt Ancient America one of those kid magazine that you buy in elementary school, from the book store? Right next to the "Highlights" Magazine?

Bob Jase
6/21/2016 04:50:00 pm

I enjoyed AA back when it first started, the speculative stuff was fun. And then they did a series on the Burrow's Cave crap and I haven't looked at it since.

Doug Weller link
6/23/2016 06:10:39 am

AA is owned by Mormon Wayne May. http://www.ldsarchaeology.com/
It used to be edited by the child molester and Nazi Frank Joseph, still listed as a contributor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Collin
He's also a major supporter of Burrows Cave.

Scott Hamilton
6/24/2016 06:14:05 pm

The Mormon part is what's important. Mormonism has had a fetish for archeology going back to Joseph Smith's pre-prophet (and pre-profit) career as a "money digger" and his alleged translations of genuine Egyptian papyri he bought from curio collectors. The point is to prove that any Old World people were in the Americas before Columbus. They use the fringe writer formula of "prove established science/history wrong, therefore my pet theory MUST be true." Any evidence of pre-Columbian contact is therefore proof that the Book of Mormon is true, no matter whether it contradicts the Book of Mormon too.

HEDFla
8/15/2016 02:14:25 pm

I have been a fan of this magazine for a number of years, especially since it is the only one that seems to talk about America's pre-history with room for laymen opinion. Having just returned from their sponsored conference in Illinois, I have to confess that as a WASP with northern Atlantic roots, I was dismayed to find I was one of only about 6 non-mormons attending. Some of the presenters were blatantly clear about their agenda. Others, were using this platform to put forth their theories with the sincere hope of creating dialogue about what they are finding. Obviously there were peoples here BEFORE Columbus and it is sad that the incoming “civilized” Europeans ran roughshod over what was here and dismissed it as coincidence. You don't have to be a licensed archaeologist to find an OOP item and give some thought to how it got there. Somewhere, in all this magazine's rhetoric, is truth. I will continue to subscribe until a more secular focused venue is published.

Normandie Kent
1/2/2017 06:53:47 pm

It's seems these people only want to honor " Americas ancient ancestors" when they think they are not the Ancient ancestors of the modern Native Americans. Then they want to appropriate them (even though they are Native Americans) and turn them into something they're not, like white people. These people are going out of their way to cut off access to these Native American ancestors, to their Native American descendants.

Marla
12/17/2017 07:54:30 pm

I read the magazine, but I take everything in it with a grain of salt. I like reading about anthropology and archaeology, but have zero formal education or experience in the field. Even to someone like me, it's very obvious that the reporting is questionable. I got online tonight to see what other people say about the magazine because I just read the latest issue cover to cover and I'm still not sure what it is exactly I read lol


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