class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-2824″ />The Indigenous Paleolithic Of The Western Hemisphere
Well, this book kicks off my reading of ancient/revision history. I gotta say, I learned quite a bit, but it wasn’t what I expected to learn.
First of all, let me say this book, published by The University of Nebraska Press, was very expensive as books go. I think I paid around $60.00 for it.
“The Indigenous Paleolithic Of The Western Hemisphere”, by Paulette F.C. Steeves reads like a textbook, and I believe it is the result of her college dissertation.
Steeves is an associate professor of sociology.
This book attempts to dismantle the colonization of archaeology, which has obviously been rigged to favor western and European culture.
Steeves drives home the point that the above statement has been the standard for archaeology and related research, ignoring anything that suggests there was a “pre-Clovis” culture, capable of advanced thinking and tool use.
Much of the standard thought is that there was a migration from east to west through an ice-free corridor during the last ice age, from Siberia, through present day Alaska and Canada, to other areas in North America. Therefore, no existing evidence of human culture is represented earlier than around 10,000 years ago.
After explaining the problem with science ignoring the indigenous past, Steeves begins to provide evidence of human culture that predates the land bridge migration theory. For instance, one site near San Diego dates back as early as 130,000 years. Other locations in South America are just as old, and suggest early ocean travel.
Steeves writes:
“Discussions of the human settlement of island areas support an argument that modern humans as early as 100,000 years ago had developed the knowledge and technological skills required to build watercraft.”
Steeves provides a revelation that really made me think;
“Regarding the “out-of-Africa” theory going back to a single relative, “Eve”, for this theory to prove out would require “The extinction of all archaic hominins outside of Africa and a complete replacement of hominins on a global scale by an exodus of Eve’s descendants migrating out of Africa around 70,000 years ago.”
Such an extinction process is highly unlikely.
Additionally, Steeves provides this startling information:
“Students and faculty are shocked that the currently oldest known most basal form of protoprimates is known from the fossil records of areas we know today as Montana, Wyoming, and Saskatchewan..”
Steeves also provides information that suggests scientists should definitely give attention to the oral traditions of indigenous people. Cloaked in story and metaphor are the clues to the actual history of these people.
The book begins with a necessary scolding of contemporary archaeology, then rolls into some clear evidence of cultures that obviously predate so-called “Clovis” tool use.
“The Indigenous Paleolithic of The Western Hemisphere” is more for scientists and serious students of history, as I wrote previously. I learned quite a bit, just not exactly what I expected to learn.
– John R.Titus – Covert Book Report
1421- The Year China Discovered America
By Gavin Menzies
Let me start by writing that I am well aware that mainstream historians and archaeologists reject this interpretation, but for simple-minded readers like me perhaps, this book makes complete sense. Menzies was a submarine commander and knew ships, currents and winds – all the things needed for sea travel. Menzies had actually been to sea.
“1421- The Year China Discovered America” re-affirms my belief that sea travel was king back in pre-history. That has been proven. Even huge Chinese Junks were capable of harrowing sea travel, let alone fleets with support ships. Menzies describes how China shut down to the outside world while the fleet was at sea for several years. Menzies collected other information, such as huge carved stone pillars, various DNA, foodstuffs, and wreckage.
Much evidence was dated, and sure enough pieces of ships (only built with wood found in China), there was similar language (especially in Indian tribes), customs, etc.
The entire West Coast was visited by Chinese, the Europeans much later.
In an appendix, Menzies offers these clues:
“The whole world was charted by 1423, including major rivers”
China claims the fleets charted the entire world.
China discovered how to calculate latitude.
Twenty-five pieces of evidence, such as:
-Chinese maps and charts which escaped destruction
-Chinese or Asiatic people found by the first European explorers
-Local accounts of the above
-DNA of peoples in the New World: The Chinese connection
..Many, many more, including various artifacts found long ago.
The author describes Chinese sea travel near both north and south pole, as well as very advanced navigation.
Hints are provided that an even earlier civilization had been many, many places and charted the world as was known then. Sea level was much different during the ice age.
Menzies states that Chinese fowl (which are found in the Americas) could not fly to another continent. Other crops such as coconuts, yams, and especially corn, which can only be planted by man, are found all over the world now.
In fact, Menzies speculates that the (now underwater) Bimini Road – may indeed be a causeway for dragging and repairing damaged ships. He claims that it is partly ship ballast, built with a gap in the center to accommodate the keel of a large ship.
There is simply too much evidence of early Chinese exploration to ignore. As I stated above, I realize that mainstream historians and archaeologists do not believe his theory. However, a simple guy like me does. If it doesn’t fit into their books, they will ignore it.
I really enjoyed this book, and learned a lot. I believe the theory to be valid.
Columbus is not the true discoverer of America, that came years later, and not the Vikings, but the Chinese.
This review will dovetail with several similar books on pre-history.
There is a sister website that has updated information: https://www.gavinmenzies.net/
-John R.Titus – Covert Book Report
America B.C.
By Barry Fell
To begin with, I realize this series of books I am reading makes paid scientists like archaeologists and historians crazy. It just doesn’t fit in their books. But, as I have said, like politics realizing the power of podcasts and amateurs, novice people are picking up the pieces. This is the era of the citizen-journalist.
Like amateurs, Barry Fell (a noted biologist and oceanographer) used unorthodox methods to develop his theory of ancient people colonizing the U.S.
Author Fell used linguistics and coded language carved into rock, both in Europe and the Eastern United States. Mainstream archaeologists hate this stuff, but amateurs get the job done. From my reading, this lunkhead believes the data that is presented.
As stated, Fell relies on linguistics, which he mostly learned in Europe, and also readable carvings in special stones, both in Europe and the U.S.
This appears to be a highly unorthodox method, does not fit into history books anywhere, but has the ring of truth. Fell examines various words in Native American language that are almost exactly the same as words in European, Asian or African languages. Author Fell also claims that Egyptian Hieroglyphic symbols were used by Micmac tribes in the Eastern U.S.
“America B.C.” Also suggests that Iberic, Basque and Celtic language and building styles are evident in the U.S. As well as Europe.
In fact, Fell claims that “The Libyan language .. is basically Egyptian combined combined with the Anatolian roots introduced by the Sea Peoples who invaded Libya .. “
Fell writes “The Polynesian people, like the Libyans themselves, are descended from the Anatolian Sea Peoples who invaded the Mediterranean around 1400 B.C.
“It also explains the occurrence of Greek words in Polynesian tongues.”
Fell weaves quite a tale about the peopling of America, which was touched by Asians, Egyptians, Basque and Celtic, Iberic, and Libyan.
The author really shines when he deciphers ancient Druid etchings in the United States, only found to be slightly different in that the language uses no vowels, which also pins a date on it.
This is quite a story that dovetails nicely with others I am studying. The problem occurs when mainstream historians and archaeologists brand these books as “racist”, because they suggest Euro-types were here well before Columbus, and unrelated to later tribes. The tribes themselves see this as a challenge to their sovereignty.
Sample chapters include:
-America’s Oldest Archives
-The Celts In America
-The Libyans of Zuni
-The Druids of New England
-The Egyptian Presence
-The Algonquins
Hopefully, politics will wane and the truth will remain. There are way too many stone anomalies in both Europe and the U.S. that simply can’t be made by glaciers or random plow etchings.
-John R.Titus
-Covert Book Report
Graham Hancock; America Before
Well, I have listened to Graham Hancock and Russell Carlson on Rogan’s show in the past, I skimmed a copy of Hancock’s “Fingerprints Of The Gods”, but I read deeply Hancock’s book “America Before – The Key To Earth’s Lost Civilization.”
I dutifully annotated the pages and bookmarked them. There is a lot there to consider. For these reasons, I consider myself a slow reader.
But Hancock, who is receiving major flack from other mainstream scientists, has cracked the code – in my opinion.
Hancock (and backed by other science) suggests that a comet broke up during the Ice Age, some 12,000 years ago and hit the ice sheet.
He suggests, with evidence, that it immediately melted the North American ice sheet and created both a firestorm and a flood. These floods are recorded in oral stories and even written records from the past.
Hancock also suggests that after several thousand years of an extended dusty ice age, an advanced civilization traveled the world to see who was left, bring knowledge, and transmit survival techniques.
He provides solid evidence that there was indeed an advanced civilization that seeded the world with a culture – form ancient Egypt to the ancient Americas who pre-positioned survivors among hunter-gatherer groups, in hopes that they could revisit them and supply them with knowledge.
This, of course, supposes that the early, knowledgeable group had a plan, and it seems they did.
Hancock suggests, with evidence, that the previous society, (which has been nearly confirmed by Robert Schock and others) shared culture with the entire world, mapped the Ice Age oceans, and set their plan in motion.
They knew that the comet was coming soon. Celestial markings show that.
I may have further knowledge to persue later about this. But for now:
Hancock suggests an advanced seafaring society populated scholars among hunter-gatherer civilizations.
They shared similar orientation of the Pyramids in ancient Egypt as well as the Mound cultures in the ancient Americas (including and perhaps more importantly South America) with celestial events. Very clearly this is reported to be true.
Hancock cites many, many other studies that support his position.
To be fair, I suggest that Robert Schock, an expert on Egyptology, suggests that it was not a comet that broke apart and hit the earth, it was huge solar flare that did the damage. Either way, the Earth was nearly destroyed. – John R, Titus – Covert book report
Forgotten Civilization
Robert Schoch in “Forgotten Civilization” provides world-wide evidence of massive solar flares from the Sun, in the form of Gamma rays and Plasma rained fire down on the Earth, pounding it and forcing humans underground. Schoch suggests there was a “Dark Age” that lasted some 6,000 years.
Schoch’s accounts, where he compares remote places such as Easter Island with ancient structures in Egypt, like the Sphinx, which he claims is much older than estimated and contains a “Hall of Records” hidden in the paw.
Schoch provides studies of scientific evidence that the catastrophe that ended the Ice Age and began thousands of years of dark age (huge solar plasma discharges) essentially would wreck the Earth as bad as a comet strike.
Both authors get pretty esoteric at times, perhaps Schoch even more than Hancock. The assumption is that much of the massive construction and ancient astrology may have involved lost technology, perhaps involving sound waves or even para-psychological techniques, such as telepathy and psychokinesis.
All good food for thought. Both men could be correct. We do know the Earth has suffered many, many forces of destruction. Most of the revealed information is the result of recent, modern discoveries, and stuff keeps coming.
After reading both books together, I believe I have a pretty good concept of what may have happened in ancient times, and indeed what could happen again in the future. Both Hancock and Schoch predict that the Earth is due for another big disaster, one that simply can not be stopped.
-John R.Titus – Covert Book Report
“The Dawn Of Everything”
In my recent study of ancient civilizations, I bought this huge book – “The Dawn Of Everything – A New History Of Humanity”, by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
This was a completely different type of read for me; Graeber and Wengrow are anthropologists and archaeologists, and write as such. I don’t know a lot about Wengrow, but Graeber (who passed in 2020)
was a founder of the “Occupy” movement, and a prolific writer.
Graeber’s Wikipedia page is quoted here:
“In November 2011, Rolling Stone credited Graeber with giving the Occupy Wall Street movement its theme: “We are the 99 percent”. Graeber wrote in The Democracy Project that the slogan “was a collective creation”.
Graeber argued that the Occupy Wall Street movement’s lack of recognition of the legitimacy of either existing political institutions or the legal structure, its embrace of non-hierarchical consensus decision-making and of prefigurative politics made it a fundamentally anarchist project.”
In this sense, “The Dawn Of Everything” might just be Graeber’s “Homage” to the “Occupy” movement.
The book essentially begins with a comparison of early European philosophy, especially as it related to the sociology of indigenous people in the Americas. For instance, it opens with a comparison of Jacques Rousseau’s theories about the believed equality of “The Noble Savage” – up to the introduction of agriculture – compared to Thomas Hobbes’s theory that the “original state of nature was in no sense innocent; it must instead have been “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.
The authors proceed to state classic analysis of ancient civilizations, and then tear that analysis down, introducing new evidence, concepts and ideas. For instance, they introduce the concept of “play agriculture”, in which primitive cultures dabbled with organized agriculture only seasonally if at all.
The authors also give much credit to women, who innovated weaving and sewing and were the primary drivers of processing food, leading to agriculture.
The authors touch on other civilizations that I have read about, the hidden and unexplained structures such as Gobekli Tepe and other neolithic sites, without attempting to decode exactly what they were.
They do not however, pull any punches as to the level of violence and possible cannibalism in such societies.
This is somewhat of a quest to determine when equality began, more to say it may have never existed.
The book is massive, but don’t let that turn you away. Though written by social scientists, it reads well and provides much food-for-thought. If you are looking for a broad perspective on the history of humanity, this might be your book. However, it is plainly that – a broad perspective. The book jumps around quite a bit but seemingly always circles back to the Rousseau-Hobbes dialectic.
-John R. Titus – Covert Book Report
None of these books, in my opinion, demean the indigenous populations and suggest a “White” Supremacy. In fact, they celebrate indigenous ingenuity. The more I looked at the subject of Ancient America, the more books I found on the subject.
Honorable Mention goes to
-”The First Americans”, by Adovisio and Page
“Popol Vuh” – The early history of South America
“Indigenous Continent” by Hamalainen
And the wonderful
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Native American Mounds & Earthworks – by G. L. Little
