ANTH question

The Piltdown Hoax

• “Found” by an amateur scientist (Charles Dawson)

• Supported by a committee of scientists

What was at play • Nationalism

• Reputation

• Confirmation bias

• 40 years until debunked

• Science eventually self-corrected!

The Wild Side of North American

Archaeology

Native (North) Americans

1. Who visited America (besides Columbus)?

2. Who built the big mounds??

Main points

•How do we detect foreigners/visitors?

•Native American achievements have a long history

The “Discovery” of America

Columbus (1451-1506)

What Europeans saw

1. Different people

2. Different animals

3. Different plants

Early Biblical

Explanations

Geography and Biblical Theory:

Jose de Acosta, 1590

•People and animals came over

after “the great flood”

•If they migrated it means both

worlds are connected

•Most likely place – NE Asia

Bering Strait discovered in 1850!

The First Peoples

Visitors Before Columbus

How do we identify cultures in the

archaeological record?

Hernando de Soto, 1539-1543 C.E.

Gavin Menzies: Chinese in 1421

Gavin Menzies

Former submarine commander (UK)

2002

Admiral Zheng He (AD 1371-1433)

Menzies’ Chinese Voyages

Menzies’ “Evidence”

•Chinese left their artistic

influence in Native American

cultures (Mexico)

Menzies’ “Evidence”

•Chinese left jade artifacts, and

jade is not found in the Americas

What does the Archaeology say?

Menzies’ Chinese Voyages

Actual Chinese Voyages

The “Evidence”

•Voyages in 1421-1423 – The Aztec were the largest group in Mesoamerica

The “Evidence”

•There are jade sources in Mesoamerica

The “Evidence”

•Artifacts are cherry picked

Maya jade mask

AD 680

Olmec jade art

1500 BC

Tlatilco art

1200-400 BC

The Latest from Menzies

•New book out in 2013 – The Chinese discovered America

in 40,000 BC and again in 1417

•He found a map “from 1417”

Lessons to keep in mind

1. It’s easy to invent, hard to present evidence – What should be there if outsiders were somewhere?

2. It’s easy to make comparisons, hard to contextualize – Context is everything in archaeology and anthropology

What’s the harm?

1. “Discovery” of new lands is a bad term

What’s the harm?

1. Saying achievements, art, technology are not local

implies locals are not “advanced” enough = racism

2. Who benefits from these claims of “visitors”?

A Quick Tale:

Vikings in the New World

Viking Sagas

Stories and histories common in Scandinavian societies

Vikings (8th – 11th centuries AD)

Eirik Thorvaldsson (“Erik the Red”): AD 985-986 Settled Greenland

Known settlements in

Greenland

Bjarni Herjolfsson (AD 985-986)

“Spotted a new land out

west”

Leif Eriksson (AD 1000)

Travels west, establishes a

base camp from where to

explore

Thorvald Eriksson (AD 1000-1022)

“Skraelings” (They who wear pelts)

Continues exploring, meets…

Thorfinn Karlsefni (AD 1022)

Norse Presence: Archaeological Data

• Maine – Norse penny pendant, Norse flint

• Ellesmere Island – armor, rivets, plane, balance

• Baffin Island – arctic hare fur, technique

• Viking sites – Native American culture

L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland

Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad

https://www.youtube.com/watc

h?v=gn1SUV5vaI4&t=247s

Visitors and “Visitors”

Before Columbus

• People carry stuff and leave it behind

• Stuff will tell us who was there and when

• Norse arrived in Newfoundland, ~ AD 1022

• No unequivocal evidence for many groups

The Mysterious Moundbuilders

Where does the mystery come from?

Where does the mystery come from?

•Native Americans in the 1700-1800s

The Mysterious Moundbuilders

1. Native Americans too “primitive”

2. Mounds are older than Native Americans

3. Native Americans don’t build mounds

4. Stone tablets with Old World writing

5. Metallurgy is “too sophisticated”

Five Components of the

Moundbuilder Myth:

“Indians too primitive”

“Mounds are older than Indians”

Vicomte de Chateaubriand

(1801)

Rev. Manasseh Cutler (1786)

“Stone Tablets”

Grave Creek Stone, WV

Newark Decalogue, OH Newark Keystone, OH

“Indians don’t build mounds”

“Metal technology too sophisticated”

Previous Theories

Vikings

Egyptians

Atlantis

Eden

Early Archaeology

Thomas Jefferson, 1784

Caleb Atwater, 1820

“Made by Hindoos”

Squier and Davis, 1848

Ephraim Squire

Edwin Davis

• Excavated ~200 mounds

• Made by more advanced cultures in

Mesoamerica and South America

BAE: Powell and Thomas

John Wesley Powell

(1834-1902)

Cyrus Thomas

(1829-1910)

•Funding for solving the “moundbuilder myth”

•Excavated ~2000 mounds in 21 states

•Report contradicted all previous arguments

FALSE: “Indians too primitive”

Hernando de Soto

(1496-1542)

• 5000-6000 people per town

• “Miles of cultivated fields”

FALSE: “Mounds are older than Indians”

Some mounds are actually very recent

Newark Decalogue, OH

Grave Creek Stone, WV

Newark Keystone, OH

FALSE: “Stone Tablets”

“Terribly executed hoaxes”

FALSE: “Indians don’t build mounds”

Hernando de Soto (1496-1542)

Eyewitness accounts of mound building

FALSE: “Metal technology is too sophisticated”

Rationale for Mystery:

“Comforting the Conquerors”

Credo consolans

The Moundbuilders

• Native Americans built the mounds

• Traditions extend as far back as 5,500 B.P.

Watson Brake, LA

The Moundbuilders

•Local cultures and traditions

• Agricultural revolutions

Sunflower Marsh elder

Amaranth

The Moundbuilders

•Large and extensive trade networks

Cahokia, IL

Class Project 4

Other “visitors” and Foreigners

•Pick one other supposed “visitor” to the Americas

•Research and describe the claim made and

evidence presented

•Has this claim been depicted in the media?

•What do archaeologists say?

•Who benefits and who is harmed by this claim?