First let me say, I have gone over several actual text books, too many articles, two massive research projects, and several arguments both on and off line. I’m not a Ph.D on the historicity of Jesus, but I am, at this point, well informed enough to  make an educated decision. If someone out there doesn’t like my conclusions, you can suck it. I’m really tired of this topic and I can safely say, whoever you are, you haven’t done the work I have on this topic. I’m also rather familiar with the arguments made by those in the pseudo-scientific realm, and am sad to say, most of the arguments for a historical Jesus fall well within those arguments.

I can hardly believe I have spent this much time on one topic, it was never my intention. Also, something as minor as to whether or not this guy existed, is not really something I meant to spend so much time on. I thought, “Hey, this will  be a cute series that I’ll make three or four vids for and then go back to other weird things.” But no, everyone has to have an opinion, and very few can back them up.

That being said, I’ve gotten a ton of heat from theists, non-believers, and pagans.  Everyone wants to point out something they think is new or clever. Well it’s not. It all goes back to the same old documents that have been shown to be forgeries or intently misleading. This brings me to a short list of things I will not accept as evidence anymore:

1)     Anything from Josephus

2)     Anything referring to something from Josephus.

3)     The Bible

I’m sure Josephus was a cool guy, and when he wrote down his books, he had no clue duchebags in the future would write all over his stuff in order to have something to point back to in hopes of supporting their religious claims. The best part of this is that we can prove things like the TF are forgeries, and people still want to use it as evidence!

So this will be my brief conclusion to this ill though out project of mine. There is no evidence of a Historical Jesus. Yes there was a guy named Jesus. It was one of the top 10 names of the day, but this guy Jesus, who did all these miracles and lead a religious revolution? He’s not real, he never was real, and he’ll never be real.

But what to do with your faith in a religion whose basic tenets are that Jesus was real? Does it really matter? How important is it to you that this guy was real, despite all the evidence that he was not? I mean, if you want to believe in something, no one can really stop you, just have the decency to realize you believe in something because you want to. There are lots of things in the bible that can’t be proven true, and people go on believing it anyway. Why is this so different?

So in closing, I don’t care if you (whoever you might be) have some obscure piece of evidence, or some buddy of yours with a string of letters after their name who says Jesus was a real dude. I’ve checked most of these people and claims out, and low and behold, they don’t pass the BS test. People who believe in Jesus are exactly like people who believe in Aliens, and frankly the evidence backing both claims are exactly the same. So if you were one of those people who laughed at my videos on Ancient Aliens but got all butt hurt about my Jesus vids, then take a long, long look in a mirror.

This week I wanted to still look way back to the earliest women in the field, back when our field was loosely defined as it was and those who participated had many, many other hats to wear. That’s why I feel Gertrude is an excellent addition to the series. She was an archaeologist focused on biblical archaeology, but she was also a diplomat, King-maker, advocate for the Arabic and Iraq people and specifically for the education of women in those countries.  She was fearless, stubborn, and spectacular. I hope you like her as much as I do.

Gertrude Bell in Iraq, 1909, age 41

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was born 14 July 1868, in Washington Hall, County Durham, England - now known as Dame Margaret Hall [1]. The wealth and influence of her family made her travel and lifestyle possible, but it also seemed to impress upon her a sense of duty. Her mother Mary Sheild Bell, passes away when Gertrude was 3, but at the age of 7 her father remarried a woman named Florence Bell, who seems to have been a great influence on Gertrude, being credited for her independent ideals and belief in the education of women [2].

Gertrude was educated at Queen’s College in London and then later at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. She received  a first class honours degree in two years in modern history [2]. Not long after graduating she began her travels, starting with a trip to Persia with her Uncle, Sir Frank Lascelles, in 1892. She wrote about her travels in her first book, Persian Pictures [3].

Gertrude Bell is best known for her political work, her work in the middle east during World War I, and her love of the Arab people. There are literally volumes of work out there on these, very large, aspects of her life. I really don’t want to take away from how incredibility important her influence and work was, but I do want to focus on her work as an early female archaeologist. Which I found is much easier said than done.

In March of 1907, Bell journeyed to the Ottoman Empire to work with the archaeologist Sir William M. Ramsey [4].  Ramsey was a  a Scottish archaeologist and New Testament scholar who became the foremost scholar of Asia Minor in his day [4]. Although a book was written about their work together, The Thousand and One Churches, little is available to the lay person about their work.

Not long after this Gertrude traveled Mesopotamia in 1909 [4]. She studied the Hittite city of Carchemish and mapped the ruin of Ukhaidir. She consulted with the two archaeologists on site, C. L. Woolley and T. E. Lawrence [4]. Not long after, the war broke out and her attentions were drawn elsewhere.

I picked Gertrude to be the second woman in my series for two reasons, one being chorological order, and the other is that she seems like such a vibrant, willful, and adventurous woman. Like most independent women of her time, she never married in order to preserve her personal freedom. However, she was very much against women’s right to vote. She was fiercely intelligent and advocated for the education of Arab women. She is even credited with influence the selection of the first king of Iraq. She is such a powerful figure that once I started reading up on her, I couldn’t stop.

I know this article was a little light on actual archaeology, but I think Gertrude is an excellent addition to the series. I encourage you to continue to look into her and see just what a single woman can do.

Resources:

[1] 1996 Wallach, Janet.

Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1996, p. 6

[2] 2000 O’Brien, Rosemary, ed.

Gertrude Bell: The Arabian Diaries, 1913-1914. USA: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Print.

[3] “Gertrude Bell and the Birth of Iraq”. Webcache.googleusercontent.com. 2011-11-15. Retrieved 2011-12-06. Accessed 1/11/12

[4] 2010 Wikipedia

Gertrude Bell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Bell#cite_note-Gertrude_Bell_and_the_Birth_of_Iraq-5 Accessed 1/11/12

Since it’s a new year, I thought the best way to start was to present a woman who was the first and best in her field. Mary Anning, Fossil Hunter, Geologist, Naturalist. Provider of rare fossils to the great minds of her day, and the first person to discover the ichthyosaur and the plesiosaur.

Mary Anning

Mary Anning was born in 1799 to Richard and Mary (Molly) Anning on the southern shores of Great Britain. The cliffs at Lyme Regis, not far from her home, were rich in spectacular fossils from the seas of the Jurassic period and these fossils provided a supplementary income for the Anning family. Richard Anning spent his free time hunting fossils in these cliffs until his death in 1810[1]. He often took his children with him to look, but it was Mary, not her brother, who proved to be adept at fossil hunting.

Molly Anning took over the family business of selling fossils after her husband’s death, but the business provided little money despite the importance of the discoveries. That is, until the 1820’s when the professional fossil collector Lt.-Col. Thomas Birch met and befriended the family and was impressed by their contributions to the scientific community. He decided to hold an auction of some of his own collection and donated the money to the Anning family. He felt that the Annings should not live in such “considerable difficulty” considering that they have “found almost all the fine things, which have been submitted to scientific investigation…” [1].

By this time, Mary had established herself as the keen eye and accomplished anatomist of the family, and began taking charge of the family fossil business [1]. Mary received no formal schooling outside of some provided by her church. However she studied and read anything she could get her hands on, hand copying some manuscripts at times in such detail that it was difficult to pick the original form the copy. Thorough her own studies she became very well versed in the anatomy of fish and birds, performing her own dissections, and discussing with some of the great minds of her time [6].

Mary passed away in 1847 from breast cancer. She remained unmarried, but admired among her male peers in the geological community. Upon hearing of her cancer, the Geological Society members raised money to help with her expenses, and the newly created Dorset County Museum made her an honorary member. When she died she was buried at St. Michael’s, the local parish church.In 1850, Members of the Geological Society contributed a stained-glass window to the church in her memory. It bares an inscription reading: [5]

“This window is sacred to the memory of Mary Anning of this parish, who died 9 March AD 1847 and is erected by the vicar and some members of the Geological Society of London in commemoration of her usefulness in furthering the science of geology, as also of her benevolence of heart and integrity of life.”[5]

Mary Anning's Window at St. Michael

The president of the Geological Society, Henry De la Beche, wrote the first eulogy ever written for a woman by the Society. He read and published the eulogy in the Society’s quarterly transactions. This was an honor normally only given to fellows of the society and they didn’t began admitting women until 1904 [5]. The eulogy began:

“I cannot close this notice of our losses by death without advertising to that of one, who though not placed among even the easier classes of society, but one who had to earn her daily bread by her labour, yet contributed by her talents and untiring researches in no small degree to our knowledge of the great Enalio-Saurians, and other forms of organic life entombed in the vicinity of Lyme Regis …” [5]

Mary Anning has been credited with the first discovery of ichthyosaur fossils which she found when she was 10 or 12 years old. However, her most important find was the discovery of the first plesiosaur. This discovery allowed Mary to become a legitimate and respected fossilists in the eyes of the scientific community[1].

Still, the majority of Mary’s finds were not credited to her. Which unfortunately lead to the scientific community to forget about her and her family until recently [1]. Several books have recently been published about Mary Anning including The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman whose Discoveries Changed the World by  Shelley Emling, and Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier among the most recent.

Mary’s gender and her lack of social status also contributed to her lack of recognition. Many scientists of the day could not believe that a woman of low status and no formal education could have the knowledge and skills that she did [1]. In 1824, Lady Harriet Sivester, wrote in her diary after visiting Mary Anning:

“. . . the extraordinary thing in this young woman is that she has made herself so thoroughly acquainted with the science that the moment she finds any bones she knows to what tribe they belong. She fixes the bones on a frame with cement and then makes drawings and has them engraved. . . It is certainly a wonderful instance of divine favour – that this poor, ignorant girl should be so blessed, for by reading and application she has arrived to that degree of knowledge as to be in the habit of writing and talking with professors and other clever men on the subject, and they all acknowledge that she understands more of the science than anyone else in this kingdom [1].”

High praise, but “divine favor” is used to explain how such a woman could possibly be so knowledgeable. Taking away from her hard work and hard won knowledge and skill.

In 2005, Mary Anning was awarded two honors, she was named by the Royal Society as “the third most influential female scientist in British history.” They created a list named “The Royal Society’s list of the top ten women in British history who have had the most influence on science” to celebrate the Society’s 350th anniversary and its commitment to the advancement of women in science [2]. The Society’s mentions:

 “Anning’s gender and social class prevented her from fully participating in the scientific community of early 19th century Britain, and she did not always receive full credit for her contributions…Her observations also played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilized faeces.” [2]

Also she was made by the Natural History Museum an added personality for reenactment, alongside scientists such as Carl Linnaeus, Dorothea Bate, and William Smith [4].

Mary’s discoveries became key pieces of evidence for a number of important developing ideas such as Extinction which was not thought possible until the early 1820. Before then, it was believed by the scientific community that animals did not become extinct, that unseen forms of life were merely still living somewhere in an unexplored region of the earth. Mary’s numerous discoveries of strange creatures helped this idea to fall to the wayside [6].

With the discovery of such creatures as The ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and pterosaur,  along with the first dinosaur fossils discovered by Gideon Mantell and William Buckland showed that creatures very different from those living today had indeed lived and died. These fossils also helped support the idea that there had been an “Age of Reptiles” when reptiles had been the dominate form of animal life [6].

Mary’s discoveries played a key role in the development of Geohistorical Analysis within geology that sought to understand the history of the earth by using evidence from fossils to reconstruct extinct organisms and the environments they lived in; this discipline eventually came to be called Paleontology [6].

Mary Anning contributed much in her short life, and she defiantly left her mark on the world. She has been called the First Paleontologist and the Heroine of Lyme Regis. She made her mark on the world and helped develop revolutionary ideas. It’s time she comes out of the shadows and allowed the recognition she deserves.

References

[1] Mary Anning (1799-1847).  http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/anning.html UC Berkly. Accessed Jan 2, 2012.

[2] 2003 Hudston, Jonathan.

“Lyme Regis fossil hunter Mary Anning acclaimed as top British scientist – and secret inspiration for John Fowles.” Real West Dorset Blog. http://www.realwestdorset.co.uk/wordpress/03/2010/lyme-regis-fossil-hunter-mary-anning-acclaimed-influential-woman-scientist-royal-society-secret-inspiration-john-fowles-french-lieutenants-woman/ Accessed Jan 2, 2012.

[3] 2001 McGowan, Christopher

The Dragon Seekers, Persus Publishing, ISBN 978-0-7382-0282-2

[4] 2005. National History Museum.

Marry Anning Sessions. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/education/school-activities/gallery-characters/mary-anning-session/index.html. Accessed Jan 2, 2012.

[5] 1995 Torrens, Hugh

“Mary Anning (1799–1847) of Lyme; ‘The Greatest Fossilist the World Ever Knew’”, The British Journal for the History of Science 25 (3): 257–284,JSTOR 4027645

[6] 2009 Emling, Shelley

The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman whose Discoveries Changed the World, Palgrove Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-230-61156-6-

Still, our modern celebration was based on a simple harvest feast held in 1621 [1]. According to Kathleen Curtin of the Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum, it’s true that English Colonists and the Wampanoag tribe did get together for a three day festival celebrating their first harvest. There was food, diplomacy, and military exercises [1]. This wasn’t a “Thanksgiving” of any sort but a normal harvest occasion [1]. Though there was a military agreement and trade relations between the two cultures they were still very different; they had no common language or worldview [1]. It wasn’t until 1841 that this particular feast became known as ‘The First Thanksgiving’ [1].

So, enough about actual history you say? What was on the menue that first harvest feast?

According to Curtin, it probalby wasn’t Croissants and pie. The Colonists didn’t have acesss to bakeing ovens and their acess to grains was even more doubtful [1]. But that didn’t stop them from cooking up a fine supper. Curtin says they would often have several meat dishes, roast pork, chicken, small birds, and they probably boiled their Turkeys. Add to that losts of stewed veggies and you’ve got a meal. One thing we are certain they had, The Three Sistsers – Corn, Beans, and Squash [2]. 

The Wampanoag tribe had access to these for hundreds of years before the arrival of the Colonists, and we know a minor amount of exchange occurred between them [2]. It’s not unreasonable to assume that the Wampanoag either brought the foods with them, or the Colonists prepared the dishes themselves for the feast. Curtin even provides a wonderful stewed pumpkin recipe, guaranteed to produce “Urin and Wind” [1]. 

So, If this year you are looking to make a more ‘traditonal’ Thanksgiving dinner, forgo all grains, stew your veggies, boil your Turkey and don’t forget the Three Sisters!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

[1]  Archaeological Institute of America
       2006 “Thanksgiving at Plimoth Plantation: Kathleen Curtin.” www.archaeology.org/online/interviews/curtin.html. Acessed Nov. 24 2011

[2]  The State Museum of Pennsylvania/Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
       2009 “Thanksgiving Staples: The Three Sisters”. http://twipa.blogspot.com/2009/11/thanksgiving-staples-three-sisters.html. Acessed Nov. 24 2011

Bones Don’t Lie – Bones Abroad: What to see in Rome

My freind is in Rome doing a bit of sight seeing, and while she’s at it she posted about all the cool things she saw, Including this gem :

Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini

Remington Carriage Museum, Cardston, Alberta

My Friend @Elfshot went to the Remington Carriage Museum and showed his age just a bit.

Archy goes to the Creation Expo.

I went to the Creation Expo and got a bit more then I barged for.

We found a new way to view the Dead Sea Scrolls

The scrolls have been digitized in a way that you can move a viewer over the different pieces of the scroll and it will translate the passages as you move over them.

800-year-old remains of witch discovered in a graveyard in Tuscany, Italy

I’m trying to dig up some great Halloween flavored posts for the October month, this one was great!

Burial site believed linked to Vikings is centuries older

Where a Viking Site is re-dated to pre-viking times. ( I do love my Vikings)

Food archaeologist gives new life to nearly extinct grains, veggies

Where we learn how cool archaeology really is!

and lastly,

Project Eliseg

Which “is a collaborative archaeological research project investigating one of Britain’s most enigmatic early medieval monuments: The Pillar of Eliseg, near Llangollen, in north-east Wales.”

They did a great job of using video and blog site to keep the public informed on their projects progress.

I suppose I should disclose here that I had no clue what creationist taught before going to this. I was interested to see what they offered as evidence, and I brought along some of my past research in anticipation of what I thought would be the evidence. Man was I wrong.

So after getting lost trying to find the place, I found a seat beside Louise (who wrote her own account here) and Nathan. They had sat through most of the opening sermon by a gentleman I later found out was one of the founders of the Creationist movement, Dr. John Whitcomb.

Dr. Whitcomb was a decent speaker, I won’t begrudge him that. He knew his bible, but it was more like sitting in church again then being at a conference or expo. All I really took away from this was the group’s desperate need to be special and important and to be rewarded with fame, glory, and riches in life and in death (things he said). The big thing that I noticed when he talked was that he jumped around the whole bible, picking and choosing single lines and re-weaving them together to make points. Everything was way out of context.

After the sermon, because I refuse to call it anything else, there was a few rousing hymnals and then the speaker I had come to see, Dr. Willie Dye Ph.D, Ph.D, Ph.D, Ph.D, Ph.D, Th.D, M.D, D.D, D.D. (no really, that’s how his name is on his business card). I admit I was pleasantly surprised to see that he was black, mainly because blacks are massively underrepresented in the field of archaeology. I can count on one hand the number of African Americans I have worked with, and it’s always been a sore point to me. Also, I mention this because it is relevant later on.

The title of his lecture was “Separation of the Nations as Understood Through Biblical Archaeology”. I have no idea what that means. Dr. Dye opened with a bible verse and then began to talk about how the whole world was going to hell because America took the teaching of the bible out of schools in 1963. To back that up, he showed a series of slides with astronomical figures on them. Things like violence was up 995% since 1963, teen sex is up 1000%, unmarried couples living together up 530%, SAT scores have dropped 80 points, Teen pregnancy up anywhere from 300% to 553% depending on the age bracket. None of this is cite sourced, and when pressed later he couldn’t really provide any. He basically admitted to making them up, and then tired to claim they were listed on a website somewhere.

Next, he bemoaned the loss of new converts to the church. Basically, his argument broke down to “Since we can’t preach to children in school, they learn to think critically, and then they don’t believe in god.” He also made this weird blanket claim that all single parents are by nature godless, and so in order to save their children, men need to convert. I’m not really sure what this has to do with archaeology, but I don’t have a string of letters after my name either.

Finally he seemed to segway and mentioned a man named F. A. Filby who did some research and found that at some point, every continent had been underwater. This caught me a bit off guard because it was the first true thing he’d said but it seemed out of place. Fortunately, he didn’t give me long to wonder because he told us that this was evidence that the world had experienced a global flood.

First, Dr. Dye is correct, every land mass in the world has been under water at some point. Also, given enough time, every land mass in the world will be underwater again, with or without our help. This does not mean that they were all under water simultaneously, nor does the geological record support that. I’m not sure who F.A. Filby is, but he apparently has no clue how tectonic plates work or stratigraphy for that matter. Still, this was enough for Dr. Dye.

Next he went on about giant fossilized cockroaches and dragon flies with wingspans like football fields. Oh and he was involved in digging them up. Then he talked about this idea about an Ice canopy that once surrounded the earth and when God used the heat from the Thermonuclear core of the earth to melt it, that caused the great flood, killed all the bad people, and created an atmosphere for Noah and his descendants to live in. Cause before that everything was giant, except maybe humans, and apparently didn’t need air to breath. I have a great video by the Creationist Debunker Thunderf00t to show you here that is much better at explaining why this is crazy. 

Then he rambled for a bit and I really didn’t follow much of it, but he did touch on “kinds” and that AIDS came from men having sex with monkeys. He also drug up a unique form of Afrocentrisum where he managed to link black people to Noah’s cursed son Ham, and that all our great thinkers are white, and all black people are good for is athletics and music. This is apparently what he was talking about with the whole “Division of Labor” thing. He kind of broke down around here, and it became a tad overwhelming.

What I did manage to get was that until the Tower of Babble fell, the world was one super continent known as Pangaea (which is a real thing, just not like this). Pangaea was the land that got flooded, it was the same land that was settled by eight individuals, and those eight individuals went fourth, had litters of babies, and repopulated the world and created all the cultures on it.

So to be clear, every complex culture that ever existed on the planet were well established BEFORE Pangaea broke up. Then man built the Tower of Babble, and the act of destroying the tower is what caused the tectonic plates to separate and shift into their current states. I really can’t begin to explain why this is crazy! However, here is a handy link to show you how the whole Pangaea thing really works and how though tectonic drift, our planet had several series of continents before the set we have now. I’m not even going to go into the impossible genetics of getting 6+ billion individuals out of 8.

When his lecture was over there was time for Q&A and Louise asked him for the sources of his statistics, and kind of not really got an answer from him. I asked him to confirm for me that he said complex culture and society existed before Pangaea broke up. I got a mini-sermon on God and man and good and evil, but no real answer. I’m not sure if he’s not sure, or if he didn’t understand me, or if he knew I had caught his lie and was challenging him with it. I really think it was the second, I don’t think this ‘Archaeologist’ knew what the terms ‘complex culture and society’ meant.

Before going to this, I had in my head all these great debates and “gotcha” moments I was going to have, but the more Dr. Dye spoke, the more it became clear to me that it didn’t matter. I could sit there all day and point out how what he is saying is not only wrong, but impossible, and it wouldn’t change a damn thing. It was depressing, and frankly scary. It made me want to reach more people with my blog and channel. I can’t help Dr. Dye. Ph.D, Ph.D, Ph.D, Ph.D, Ph.D, Th.D, M.D, D.D, D.D. But I might be able to reach one of the 40 people that came to hear him talk. Here’s to trying.

In the 1960’s the Ingstad’s discovered a Norse settlement that dated to ca.1000 AD at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland in Canada [1]. A local inhabitant, George Decker, led them to a group of overgrown bumps and ridges that looked as if they might be building remains [3]. These later turned out to be the remains of the settlement. This is perhaps the most famous discovery of her career as it confirmed that the old Norse saga’s were true and the Vikings had found America, 500 years before Christopher Columbus [1].

Anne Stine Ingstad led an international team of archaeologists from Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and the United States in the excavation of the site for seven to eight years [3]. The excavation revealed the remains of an early 11th century Norse settlement, including sod houses, a forge, cooking pits and boathouses [1]. The overgrown ridges were the lower courses of the walls of eight buildings [3]. The walls and roofs were sod, laid over a supporting frame, the same kind as those used in Iceland and Greenland just before and after the year 1000 CE [3]. Long narrow fireplaces in the middle of the floor served for heating, lighting and cooking [3].

Also of interest was the discovery that not all of the inhabitants had been men. Items such as spindle whorls and knitting needles were tools used by women [3]. Even a small whetstone, used to sharpen needles and small scissors, found near the spindle whorl spoke of the presence of women [3]. The settlement is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a National Historic Site of Canada.

For her efforts she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in 1969 from Memorial University, St. John’s, Newfoundland. She received a second in 1992 from the University of Bergen. She was awarded the title of Commander of the Order of St. Olav, which is awarded to individuals as a reward for remarkable accomplishments on behalf of the country and humanity, and was a member of the Academy in Oslo.

In the 1970’s she turned her attention to analyzing the textiles from the Kaupang and Oseberg excavations. The Oseberg grave chamber contained the largest collection of textiles and tools that had been found in a single grave [2]. The collection consisted of fragmented tapestries and other pattern-woven blankets, tablet woven braids and a large collection of fragments from clothing, sails or tents, rugs, etc [2]. Many had detailed silk embroidery and embellishments on them. [2]

Anne Stine Ingstad died in 1997 at the age of 79 from complications from cancer [4]. She left behind her 98 year old husband and her daughter Benedicte Ingstad, a professor of medical anthropology at the University of Oslo [4].

References:

(Sadly, I had to refer a great deal to Wikipedia. Any inaccuracies discovered should be brought to my attention immediately and I will correct them. References must be provided for corrections.)

[1] Ingstad, Helge, Anne Stine Ingstad
2001. The Viking Discovery of America: The Excavation of a Norse Settlement in L’Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland. Checkmark Books.

[2] Ingstad, Anne Stine
The Textiles in the Oseberg Ship. (http://bit.ly/nduN7s)

[3] L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site of Canada
Discovery of the Site and Initial Excavations (1960-1968). (http://bit.ly/qFQuNu) Parks Canada. Accessed September 23, 2011.

[4] McG. Thomas, Robert, Jr.
1997. Anne-Stine Ingstad, a Sifter Of Viking Secrets, Dies at 79 (http://nyti.ms/rnzKbM). The New York Times. Accessed September 23, 2011.

Other Rescorces:

Parks Canada. http://www.pc.gc.ca

Wikipedia

Norwegian Forestry Museum’s http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsk_Skogmuseum

From Bad Archaeology, click to follow link

So I recently came across this vid while flipping thought YouTube the other day:

Man Vs. Archaeology Episode 1. (http://bit.ly/o4Mw0D)

It sounded familiar, as if I had heard someone debunking it before…When I realized I’d heard it on MonsterTalk over a year ago (http://bit.ly/q7PBmo).  Kenneth Feder talked about the Cardiff Giant and human foot prints found along side dinosaur ones in the Paluxy River in Glen Rose, TX. As you can see in the vid, Creationists claim that the man tracks are proof that humans and dinosaurs co-existed.  They put together a pretty convincing argument…until you realized there is more then what they are showing you.  If you watch the next vid, Episode 2 I believe, the “expert” they find to interview about the tracks claims that some “unknown individuals” were seen vandalizing the footprints. There-by allowing him to dismiss anything that would make the footprints look funny as vandalism. But I might be getting ahead of myself a bit. Let’s find a safe place to start…

The Paluxy River.

Located in Texas, it is a tributary, formed by the convergence of the North Paluxy River and the South Paluxy River and flows a distance of 29 miles before joining the Brazos River just to the east of Glen Rose, Texas.[1] It is best known for numerous dinosaur footprints found in its bed near Glen Rose at the Dinosaur Valley State Park. Dozens of various dinosaur tracks can be seen fossilized in the banks of the river [2]. To my knowledge, all of the tracks have been identified, including the mysterious “Man Tracks” we’ll cover here.

Man Tracks?

The Paluxy River “Man Tracks” were first discovered in 1908 and rose to popularity in 1938 when they were used as a tourist trap during the Great Depression [2]. Zana Douglas, admitted it was a hoax [3]. The Adams family had originally found many of Glen Rose’s real dinosaur tracks and sold them to tourists in the 1930’s for around $15 to $30 each. When the supply ran low, George Adams, carved more, some with human footprints[3]. Zana said her grandfather, George Adams, was an excellent sculptor [3].

These “human foot prints” caused a bit of a stir and drew the attention of Paleontologist Ronald Bird. He went and investigated them in 1938 and the “human” tracks were found to either be those of a bipedal dinosaur (there are clear claw marks) or chiseled forgeries made by the locals to draw crowds [2].

Sometime in the 1970′s the foot prints were re-discovered by the Creationist movement, even going as far as to make a movie (Footprints in Stone, 1973) to tout the ‘evidence’ of a young earth [2]. This was debunked by Berney Neufeld in 1975, when he wrote about his investigations and identification of the elongated tracks that were mistaken for human prints [5].

In 2009, researcher Glen J. Kuban, published his analysis showing the prints are those of an Upright Dino, the long foot-like depression being it’s elongated metatarsals as it walked plantigrade (heel-down) [4].

Where does this get us.

What do we have here then? We’ve got a printed confession, identification of forgeries, and actual identification of real dinosaurs. That’s pretty open and closed. So what made me so interested in the vid on YouTube? The date.

According to the posting date of the First episode of Man vs. Archaeology the show went live on Aug 5, 2011. The guy hosting is pushing the claim that the tracks are real, his expert wants you to think they are as well, and anything that looks weird is really just vandalism. He also makes some claim about “lost” evidence, which is a huge red flag.

Two of the biggest claims that conspiracy theorists and their like make is that their evidence was either 1) Tampered with in order to disguise the truth, or 2) just out right stolen/lost/covered up so no one can see it. That way, when you ask for their evidence they can plausibly say they can’t show it to you. Not because it doesn’t exist, but because it’s been manipulated or stolen.

And So.

First, I think the name of the show is rather, I don’t know, silly. Man vs. Archaeology, is he getting into a boxing ring with the entirety of the field? Is he going to debate some personification of the field in an open forum? He does have catchy theme music, and a really nice intro, once you’re past all the religious stuff that screams  CONFIRMATION BIAS!!!!

Second, talk about beating a dead horse! I mean, how debunked does this have to be? This was put down in the 1930’s! It was debunked again in ’75 and 2009. Then to try and wave all that away with claims of vandals with crowbars? Come on.

Resources:

[1] “PALUXY RIVER,” Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/rbp17), accessed September 06, 2011. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

[2] Feder, Kenneth L. 2010. Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atalantis to the Walam Olum. Santa Barbara, CA. ABC-CLIO, LLC,

[3] Kennedy, Bud. 2008. “Human footprints beside dinosaur tracks? Let’s talk”. Fort Worth Star-Telegram. p. B02. (http://bit.ly/nCW8JQ)

[4] Kuban, Glen J. 2010. “The Paluxy Dinosaur/”Man Track” Controversy” (http://paleo.cc/paluxy.htm), accessed September 06, 2011.  Published by Glen J. Kuban.

[5] Neufeld, Berney. 1975. Dinosaur Tracks and Giant Men. Origins 2(2):64-76.  Geoscience Research Institute. (http://bit.ly/nVu3F6)

She was born to Claude Lordawick Ashley and Elizabeth Miller in Atlanta, Georgia on January 12, 1902. Entering into a prestigious pedigree, she none the less struck out to make a name on her own [2]. She attended Oglethorpe University in Atlanta and graduated an A.B. in English literature and a minor in journalism [2]. Afterwards, she enrolled in Columbia University in 1926, pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology and studying under Franz Boas [2].

Also that year she began excavating, working on the Indian Island site, now known as the Shinholser Mound site (9Bl2) in Baldwin County, Georgia [2]. This site is still located on the Oconee River near Milledgeville, GA [1]. This site contains two mounds dating to the Middle Mississippian Savannah period, along with artifacts from the Late Archaic, Late Mississippian Lamar, and Historic Creek Indians which have also been recovered [1]. There is also some evidence of early Spanish trade with the local Indian population [1].

Here Ashly did what all of Boas’ students were taught to do; good documentation and careful excavation. She did most of her work on Mound B and wrote a report for the Museum of the American Indian [2]. She described the stratigraphy and the recovered materials along with a few illustrations. Thought she wanted to return to the site, it’s not clear if she did or not.

In July 1927, Ashly notified Boaz that she’s spent a good deal of time traveling through Georgia and visiting sites. She formally began what she called “an archaeological survey of Georgia”, possibly meant to be her dissertation topic. At the time of the letter she had already surveyed four counties and some 500 sites [2].

In September of the same year, Ashley was asked to organize a department of archaeology for Emory University and to represent Emory in Warren K. Moorehead’s excavations at the Etowah site (9Br1) in North Georgia [2]. Ashley accepted this position and discontinued her official studies at Columbia. She assisted Moorehead until the spring of 1928, when she took over as director of the site [2]. She continued her survey of Georgia while working with Moorhead taking a field crew and investigating another 12 sites [2].

In 1929 she turned her attention to studying the pottery of the Etowah for Phillips Academy and the inevitable report became a major contribution to the Etowah Papers [2]. In it, Ashly tried unsuccessfully to use stratigraphy to separate pottery types. Still if gave her a good deal of experience that served her on other sites as wel [2]l.

Ashly conducted many, many more surveys during her time in the field. They would take pages to list them all, but at some point she bumped into or worked with just about every up and coming or already well know archaeologist in the state.

One of the last sites Ashly apparently surveyed was the Lockett Mound, now known as the Neisler site (9Tr1), located near the Flint River [2]. Ashley and her assistant Frank T. Schnell, spent three weeks at Neisler, performing major trench excavation atop the mound and surveying 250 test units [2]. Two fire pits were uncovered on the mound and fourteen burials excavated in the outlying area [2].

A great quote comes from this time. Ashly removed two burials while at the Neisler site and was asked by a reporter in attendance if they could have a bone as a “souvenir.” Ashly admonished the reporter by saying, “We do have respect for our finds.” [2] I whole-heartedly agree, it is because of this sentiment that so much of our past is preserved.

On February 18, 1930, the field lost Margaret Elizabeth Ashley as she became Margaret Elizabeth Ashley-Towle when she married Gerald Towle, a Harvard graduate and Moorehead’s top field assistant [2]. During her marriage she abandoned archaeology for some fourteen years, never to resume field work in Georgia [2]. During this time she was apparently injured severely causing her to spend the rest of her life in some pain that made field work nearly impossible [2].

In 1944, Gerald Towle died, and suddenly Ashly rejoined the field, returning to her pursuits at Columbia, this time studying ethnobotany [2]. In 1958, Margaret completed her dissertation, The Ethnobotany of Pre-Columbian Peru as Evidenced by Archaeological Materials, and received her Ph.D. Her dissertation was published as book 30 in the Viking Fund Publication in anthropology [2].  It was well received and filled a much neglected hole in archaeological study, enriching the study of agriculture in archaeology. Ashly worked for the Harvard Botanical Museum as an unpaid associate until her death on November 2, 1985 [2].

References:

[1] Hammack, Stephen A. 2011. OAS members visit Shinholser Mound site. (http://thesga.org/2011/04/oas-members-visit-shinholser-mound-site/) accessed September 06, 2011. Published by The Society for Georgia Archaeology.

[2] White, Nancy Marie, Sullivan, Lynne P., and Marrinan, Rochelle A., eds. 1999. Grit-Tempered: Early Women Archaeologists in the Southeastern United States. Tallahassee: University Press of Florida.

Other Rescorces:

Etowah Indian Mounds State Historic Site (http://ngeorgia.com/ang/Etowah_Indian_Mounds_State_Historic_Site)

Shnell, Frank T. and Newell O. Wright, Jr. 1993. Mississippi Period Archaeology of the Georgia Costal Plain. (http://shapiro.anthro.uga.edu/Archaeology/images/PDFs/uga_lab_series_26.pdf) University of Georgia.

The Society for Georgia Archaeology. (http://thesga.org)

William, Mark. 2009. Mapping the Shinholser Site, 2007 (http://shapiro.anthro.uga.edu/Lamar/images/PDFs/publication_133.pdf) Lamar Institute. Lamar Institute Publication

1990 Archaeological Excavations at Shinholser (9BL1): 1985 & 1987. (http://shapiro.anthro.uga.edu/Lamar/images/PDFs/publication_04.pdf) Lamar Institute / University of Georgia.