Our Occulted History: Do the Global Elite Conceal Ancient Aliens? (6 page)

“Archaeologists are in a considerable uproar over Hueyatlaco. They refuse even to consider it. I’ve learned from second-hand sources that I’m considered by various members of the profession to be 1) incompetent; 2) a news monger; 3) an opportunist; 4) dishonest; 5) a fool. Obviously, none of these opinions is helping my professional reputation! My only hope to clear my name is to get the Hueyatlaco article into print so that folks can judge the evidence for themselves.” Steen-McIntyre received no reply. Her article was not published, nor was it even returned to her.

Although her group was finally able to present a paper at an anthropological conference in 1975, it was not until 1981 that a paper on Hueyatlaco was published in the scientific journal
Quaternary Research
(Number 16, pp. 1–17).

Sometime later, Steen-McIntyre offered her article to another scientific publication but warned that if the findings were accepted, all anthropology textbooks would require rewriting. The editor responded by stating that while he would consider her article for publication, he believed it would be difficult to obtain objective reviews from most archaeologists. The editor’s reasoning was circular: because everyone knew that
Homo sapiens
evolved in Eurasia between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago, any tools or artifacts dated to 250,000 years ago were impossible, since everyone knew that humans evolved in Eurasia 30,000 to 50,000 years ago.

Cremo and Thompson commented on Virginia Steen-McIntyre’s case, writing that it “opens a rare window into the actual social processes of data suppression in paleoanthropology, processes that involve a great deal of conflict and hurt.” Even Cremo and Thompson faced hardship due to their involvement in the case. “We ourselves once tried to secure permission to reproduce photographs of the Hueyatlaco artifacts in a publication,” they wrote. “We were informed that permission would be denied if we intended to mention the lunatic fringe date of 250,000 years.”

In a 1997 interview intended for
Harper’s
magazine but only published later in the
Midwestern Epigraphic Journal
, Steen-McIntyre was asked why respectable scientists and even governments would resist anything at odds with the current scientific worldview. “Because it’s interwoven with the Theory of Evolution: accept one, you have to accept the other,” she responded, adding that Darwin’s theory is just a theory and “a shaky one at that.”

Steen-McIntyre added, “When the Theory of Evolution is taken to its logical conclusion, the only moral imperative demanded is ‘survival of the fittest.’ I don’t like it, for scientific reasons: it goes against the Second Law of Thermodynamics for one thing. I don’t like it for philosophical and religious reasons. I especially don’t like it because it helped ruin my career. … The archaeologist in charge of the Hueyatlaco dig rejected our geologic dates of a quarter-million years because, according to her belief, modern man, the maker of those tools, had not yet evolved 250,000 years ago. … A classic case of arguing from theory to data, then tossing out the data that don’t fit.”

Steen-McIntyre believed that her data was rejected by a superior due to “a matter of influence on her part and lack of it on mine. She was an anthropologist, a graduate of Radcliffe and Harvard with powerful friends; I was a geologist with a new PhD from the University of Idaho, looking for a job.” That superior was Cynthia Irwin-Williams, who led the initial digs at Hueyatlaco. Though she had argued with Steen-McIntyre and called her “irresponsible,” she has never published a final report on the findings.

SUPPRESSION BY THE SMITHSONIAN

The suppression of the geologists’ data from Mexico may be an unfortunate example of dogma getting in the way of discovery, but what happens when such discoveries are hijacked? Researcher and historian Martin Doutré related a conversation he had with a former National Park Service employee about an incident that took place at Arizona’s Canyon de Chelly National Monument in 1999. “A big washout had occurred in the canyon after torrential rains, and a number of skeletons were exposed at a few sites. All of the Park Service personnel were pressed into service to gather up and box up the newly revealed bones. However, in a somewhat sinister twist, all of the work was overseen by personnel from both the Smithsonian Institution and the FBI. The Parks Service workers were forbidden to bring cameras to the site and were subjected to full body searches by the FBI when arriving in the morning or leaving at night. All of the skeletal remains and artifacts were carefully boxed up and taken away by the Smithsonian Institute. The Park’s Service workers were forced to sign secrecy agreements of non-disclosure of information related to their activities in the canyon.”

In a follow-up e-mail, the former Park Service employee offered further details of the find. She said in one grave was a “male, approximately seven-foot in height, [with] six fingers and six toes … the teeth were like human, except they had no canine (eye) teeth, and [had] extra-large molars and incisors. The skull was large—heavy jaw [with a] long, large cranium. Large eye sockets. Finger bones [were] extra-long, but small hands. Buried with beautiful pottery and baskets of fine weave—never seen anything similar. A necklace of fiber and feathers. He looked rather fresh for 6,000 years old, as the Smith [Smithsonian] people claimed. Clean bones- but not brittle … ” Her description is especially interesting in light of a biblical passage, II Samuel 21:18–22, telling of giants related to Goliath with six fingers and toes.

Some believe the Smithsonian has a huge underground warehouse in New York City, filled with thousands of skeletons, objects, and information that might prove embarrassing to conventional history.

“It’s appalling that the American people are so blatantly denied access to very important archaeological evidence, which would quickly clarify mysteries related to long-term regional history,” said Doutré. “Whereas North American archaeology has been stagnated or has gone backwards for 130 years, all of the essential evidence is in the hands of the authorities to rectify that abysmal situation, but is kept permanently under wraps and beyond the reach of the socially-engineered American public.”

The late Vine Deloria, an activist historian and author of the 1969 book
Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto
, also charged the Smithsonian with suppression of valuable historical information. “It’s probably better that so few of the ruins and remains were tied in with the Smithsonian because they give good reason to believe the ending of the Indiana Jones movie—a great warehouse where the real secrets of earth history are buried,” he wrote. “Modern day archaeology and anthropology have nearly sealed the door on our imaginations, broadly interpreting the North American past as devoid of anything unusual in the way of great cultures characterized by a people of unusual demeanor. The great interloper of ancient burial grounds, the nineteenth century Smithsonian Institution, created a one-way portal, through which uncounted bones have been spirited. This door and the contents of its vault are virtually sealed off to anyone but government officials. Among these bones may lay answers not even sought by these officials concerning the deep past.”

British scientist James Smithson first founded the Smithsonian Institution and then bequeathed it to the United States despite having never visited there. Since the U.S. Government started funding and administrating the Smithsonian in 1836, the institution has been involved in several disputes over odd discoveries. In the early 1800s, pioneers moving into the Ohio and Mississippi valleys discovered vast numbers of abandoned earthworks, generally termed
mounds
. The pioneers attributed these mounds to a sophisticated race of long-vanished builders. In 1848, the new Smithsonian Institution drew attention to the mystery of the mounds’ creation in its first published book
Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley
. The book’s authors concluded that the builders could not have been the ancestors of the supposedly savage Native American groups still living in those regions.

According to David Hatcher Childress, an author and a world-traveling researcher on ancient cities and cultures, the contents of many ancient mounds and pyramids of the Midwest show that an ancient and sophisticated culture once populated the Mississippi River watershed. Not only had this culture been in contact with Europe and other areas, but, according to Childress, many mounds revealed burials of giants seven to eight feet tall, dressed in full armor, sometimes buried with huge treasures.

This was not the only time oddly large bodies have been found or that amazing discoveries have been proverbially swept under the rug by the Smithsonian. Certain reports say that in the 1880s, skulls with horns protruding from them were pulled from a burial mound at Sayre, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, by a group of antiquarians. The odd horned skulls were part of skeletons measuring seven feet tall. It was estimated that the bodies had been buried around AD 1200. According to this account, the bones were sent to the American Investigating Museum in Philadelphia, where like so many finds that question conventional anthropology, they were stolen and never seen again.

In 1924, a paleontologist discovered skeletons of red-haired giants in the Lovelock Cave of Nevada, confirming Indian legends that a race of red-haired giants lived there about fifteen thousand years ago. According to legend, the giants were already in the area when the first Indians arrived. These giants were reputed to be vicious and unapproachable cannibals. During ensuing wars, the giants were decimated and finally cornered in the cave. When they refused to surrender, the Indians filled the entrance with brush and set it afire. The giants who tried to escape were shot with arrows and the others suffocated in the cave.

Beginning in 1911, the cave was worked for its bat guano to be used in making gunpowder, and most of the remains were destroyed. But an expedition in 1924 did recover the mummified remains of two giants—a female six and a half feet tall and a male more than eight feet tall. Reportedly, artifacts from the cave, but not the mummies, may be viewed at a small natural history museum in Winnemucca, Nevada.

How strongly are we to believe that races before our own were actually much larger than we are today, especially when supporting evidence has been wiped from textbooks? Another episode illustrates Smithsonian suppression of historical artifacts. The late naturalist and author Ivan T. Sanderson told of an incident during World War II on the Aleutian island of Shemya in which engineers building an airstrip uncovered the remains of gigantic humans. One cranium measured almost twenty-four inches from base to crown, compared to the normal eight inches. Oddly, all the skulls showed evidence of trepanning (poking holes in the skull with crude tools to release evil spirits). The remains were reportedly sent to the Smithsonian, which, despite the seeming importance of such a find, never released any further information. Sanderson asked, “Is it that these people cannot face rewriting all the textbooks?”

The Smithsonian has been involved in several other controversies over eyebrow-raising discoveries, such as the objects found in 1944 by German hardware merchant Waldemar Julsrud at Acámbaro, Mexico, located about 175 miles northwest of Mexico City. In 1923, Waldemar was a codiscoverer of an archaeological site first thought to be of the Tarascan culture. This discovery brought worldwide attention after it was found to actually be a whole new Indian culture—the Chupicauro civilization, which flourished in Mexico about a thousand years before the Tarascans.

Julsrud’s 1944 find consisted of more than thirty-three thousand ceramic and stone objects, including statues and obsidian knives. The amazing aspect of the statuary was the fact that the carvings depicted humans in association with large reptiles resembling dinosaurs. Along with other weird creatures, there were representations of Sumerian and Egyptian motifs, as well as bearded Caucasians, Africans, and Polynesians.

Although radiocarbon and thermoluminescence testing indicated that the objects could be dated as far back as 6,500 years, Smithsonian officials quickly proclaimed the entire episode a hoax. In recent years, when researcher John H. Tierney filed a Freedom of Information Act request, it was learned that all of the Julsrud case files at the Smithsonian were missing.

Dennis Swift, on his website Dinosaursandman.com, has written of visiting Acámbaro. He noted, “Waldemar, in print [his book was published in 1947], theorized that the colossal collection of ceramic and stone artifacts had been buried by a people who had experienced catastrophes. He conjectured that there had been a period of catastrophes that had changed the face of the earth, and that there must have been ancient civilizations wiped out by the catastrophes. His most radical suggestion that clashed violently with scientists was that man had existed contemporaneously with the dinosaurs. Although there was sound evidence that Julsrud was on to something of major scientific importance, he was ridiculed by the authorities when his book was published.”

In 1955, Charles Hapgood, then professor of history and anthropology at Keene State College of the University of New Hampshire and author of
Earth’s Shifting Crust
and
Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings
, spent several months in Acámbaro studying the Julsrud collection. To eliminate the possibility the collection was merely a modern hoax, Hapgood located a house that had been built at the same location in 1930.

According to Dennis Swift, “They found a house directly over the site owned by the Chief of Police and asked permission to dig beneath the floor of his house. Permission was granted, and they dug a six-foot-deep pit beneath the hard concrete floor of the living room, unearthing dozens of the controversial objects. Since the house had been built twenty-five years previously, it exonerated Julsrud, eliminated the hoax theory, and negated [two reports alleging fakery] at all the important points.”

One enduring mystery—or conspiracy—stems from reports of the discovery of ancient Egyptian artifacts in the north end of the Grand Canyon at the beginning of the last century. According to a front-page article in the
Phoenix Gazette
of April 5, 1909, an expedition funded by the Smithsonian Institution had begun work following the discovery of a “great underground citadel” in a cave “some 42 miles up the [Colorado] river from the El Tovar Crystal canyon.”