The Why Files: Operation Podcast - 117: Forbidden Archaeology: Lost Giants of America | The Smithsonian's Biggest Secret
Episode Date: June 30, 2023In 1886, mining engineer John T. Reid was told the Paiute legend of a giant people defeated by the natives near Lovelock, Nevada. The last of the giants met their fiery end deep within the bowels of a... cave. Reid’s belief in this legend stirred great interest in the secrets held within Lovelock Cave. Official excavations were undertaken in both 1912 and 1924 by the University of California, with reports telling of thousands of artifacts being recovered. Of these artifacts, the most puzzling were human remains. Well, they were *almost* human. Skeletons measuring between eight and ten feet tall were said to be found during the dig. Skeletons belonging to who are now known as “The Lovelock Giants.” Legends of people of enormous size are told across a myriad of cultures, And despite what we’ve been told by *mainstream* science, there *is* evidence to suggest they really existed. The remains of giants have been found all over the United States; and all over the world. So why aren’t these amazing finds on display in any museum? Or taught in any classes? Or mentioned in any history books? Because the existence of giants, for some reason, has been covered up. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support
Transcript
Discussion (0)
You searched for your informant, who disappeared without a trace.
You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed.
You swept the city, driving closer to the truth.
While curled up on the couch with your cat.
There's more to imagine when you listen.
Discover heart-pounding
thrillers on Audible. In 1886, mining engineer John T. Reed was told the Paiute legend about a race
of giants. Giants who, after a long and bloody war, were defeated by the natives near Lovelock
Cave, Nevada. Reed's belief in this legend stirred great interest in the secrets held within Lovelock Cave.
Official excavations were undertaken in both 1912 and 1924 by the University of California,
with reports telling of thousands of artifacts being recovered.
Of these artifacts, the most puzzling were human remains.
Well, they were almost human.
Skeletons measuring between 8 and 10 feet tall were said to be found during the dig. The most puzzling were human remains. Well, they were almost human.
Skeletons measuring between 8 and 10 feet tall were said to be found during the dig.
Skeletons belonging to who are now known as the Lovelock Giants.
Legends of people of enormous size are told across a myriad of cultures.
And despite what we've been told by mainstream science, there is evidence to suggest they
really existed.
The remains of giants have been found all over the US and all over the world so why aren't
these amazing finds on display in any museum or taught in any classes or
mentioned in any history books well it's because the existence of Giants for some
reason has been covered up.
To say giants don't turn up in history books isn't exactly accurate.
Many ancient cultures refer to giants.
In Indian mythology, or the Vedas, there was a time called the Satya Yuga, or the Golden
Age, when all of humanity existed in complete harmony.
Humans during this time were believed to be 32 feet tall.
In the Old Testament, there are beings called the Nephilim,
and they're mentioned in Genesis.
There were giants in the earth in those days,
and also after that when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men
and they bare children to them.
The same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
One interpretation of this suggests that the sons of God were giant fallen angels who seduced human
women, and their offspring were the Nephilim. How does a giant seduce a human woman?
Oh, right. Giants show up quite a bit in the Book of Enoch, one of the religious texts found
among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Nephilim were said to have been men of the old times who existed before the great flood ancient indian
texts say the same thing the book of samuel also introduces us to one of the most famous giants in
history andre goliath goliath was a philistine warrior who challenged the israelites to send
out a champion for single combat.
David, armed only with a slingshot and faith in God, brought the giant down with a single stone.
Goliath was said to be between 7 and 11 feet tall and possibly descended from a people known as the Anakites or the Anakim.
And the Anakim were descended from the Nephilim.
But references to giants in history go back even further. The ancient Sumerians had an equivalent to the Anakim were descended from the Nephilim. But references to giants in history go back even further.
The ancient Sumerians had an equivalent to the Anakim,
a race of gods who are sometimes described as giants.
Anunnaki!
Yep, the Anunnaki.
And if you don't know who the Anunnaki are, here's a hint.
Look in the mirror. According to interpretations of ancient Sumerian and Babylonian texts, the Anunnaki were a race
of extraterrestrial beings from the planet Nibiru. Now, Nibiru is not some distant planet on the
other side of the galaxy, but is right here in our own solar system. It passes near Earth every
3,600 years. And this extra planet theory
was dismissed as pseudoscience for many years, but it's now widely believed that there is an
extra planet or some kind of large object in the far reaches of our solar system.
In fact, NASA has been searching for this object for years,
though they call it Planet 9 or Planet X.
Oh, they can't give Zechariah Sitchin any credit, eh?
They won't admit that, but I bet it's a big part of it.
In 2015, Caltech researchers thought they found evidence for this planet.
And in 2016, they said they were almost sure the planet was out there.
And then in 2017, researchers agreed that data and computer models prove,
with almost 100% certainty, a large, secret, dark planet is lurking in the distant solar system.
And they expect this to be confirmed within the next few years.
And perhaps then we'll finally learn if this could actually be planet Nibiru,
home of the Anunnaki.
Now, according to the tablets, when the atmosphere on Nibiru started
to deteriorate, the Anunnaki came to Earth for resources,
specifically water and especially gold.
And after their slaves rebelled, the Anunnaki needed a new workforce.
They performed genetic experiments on different Earth animals to try to create a new slave
race.
Eventually, they were successful.
By splicing DNA from the Anunnaki with cavemen called Homo erectus, a new species emerged,
Homo sapiens.
In Sumerian and Babylonian texts, this new species was called the first men or Adamu.
And the Hebrews translated this to be men of Adam.
The first men were bred to work for the Anunnaki.
The Hebrew word avod means work for.
Avod also means worship.
And so humans worshiped their gods, the Anunnaki,
who were giants compared to puny humans.
Though it was forbidden, some Anunnaki bred with humans
and their offspring became known as the Nephilim.
Now, obviously the story of the Anunnaki
needs its own episode.
So if you'd like to see that.
Yes, please.
If you'd like to see that, let me know.
The tablets say the next time Nibiru passed near the inner solar system, it caused severe electromagnetic disturbances. Dark spots appeared on the sun and waves of color streaked the sky.
This is referring to extreme aurora borealis and australis, indicating a weakening of the
Earth's magnetic field. With less protection from the sun's energy, the ice caps melted and a great flood swept
across the entire planet.
To escape the devastation, the Anunnaki boarded skyships
with their gold and returned to Nibiru.
But on Earth, great cities were destroyed
and sunk beneath the waves.
When the waters finally receded,
only a small number of humans were left
to rebuild civilization.
And this creation myth is told in almost every culture on earth and recently
we're starting to discover evidence that a great flood did indeed occur but what
about evidence of Giants well there is evidence and some of that evidence has
been found right here in our own backyard.
Many Native American tribes tell of the long forgotten existence of a race of humans
that were much taller and stronger
and sometimes more cruel than ordinary men.
The Choctaw tribe has a legend about the Nahuilo,
a race of giants who ate human flesh.
The Choctaw killed these giants whenever they could.
Eventually those giants were driven west.
The Paiute settled in the Nevada desert
thousands of years ago and passed down the story
of a race of red-haired giants called the Sitica.
The Sitica literally means Thule eaters.
And Thule is a strong type of reed found in swamps.
Legend says the giants built rafts out of Thule
and arrived in Nevada thousands of years ago.
But Thule wasn't the only thing that the giants ate.
Like the Nihulo, Sirika also ate humans.
The Sirika waged war on the Paiute
and all other neighboring tribes.
The human tribes fought bravely,
but the giants were too strong.
The Sirika would often eat the people were too strong. The sitika would
often eat the people captured in battle. So after years of conflict, the tribes united
and that turned the tide of war. And in the final battle, the red-haired giants were driven
into a cave. The tribes stuffed the cave entrance with sticks and brush and set it ablaze. The
last remaining sitika either suffocated or burned alive. Sarah Winnemucca
Hopkins, daughter of Chief Winnemucca, was the first to write down and print the story of the
city car, but she said this wasn't a legend, it was history. She even wore red hair taken from a
giant woven into some of her clothes. When mining engineer John T. Reed heard the story in 1886,
he asked to be taken to the cave, the final resting place of the city John T. Reed heard the story in 1886, he asked to be taken to the cave,
the final resting place of the city-caught giants.
Reed wasn't able to finance the excavation of the cave at that time,
but when valuable bat guano was discovered, people started digging.
Bat guano.
Yep, it was used to make gunpowder and explosives.
No, I mean, what is bat guano?
Oh, guano is the, uh, waste of bats and birds.
You can make explosives out of sh**?
You can.
Okay, okay, okay. Do me a favor. When you clean my bowl, uh, can you save it for me? Fourth of July's coming up. I'm gonna make fireworks.
I'm not saving your sh- I'm not- I'm not- I'm not saving that for fireworks.
Fine. Then to celebrate, I'll just light my farts.
You better not.
Why do you hate your country?
Lovelock Cave was excavated in 1912 and in 1924.
And in 1929, the findings were published and they were surprising.
Well, they weren't surprising to the Paiute.
At the entrance to the cave, there was evidence of extreme scorching.
At some point, a fire burned very hot
and for a very long time.
On one of the cave walls, an enormous handprint was found.
Inside the cave, over 10,000 artifacts were recovered,
including many human bones.
Some of the bones showed that marrow had been removed,
a sign of possible cannibalism.
A sandal was found that would have fit someone
who wore a size 29 shoe and would have been
over 8 feet tall, and clothing was found that was too big to fit a normal-sized human.
During the first dig, it was reported that the mummified remains of two giants were found
– a female almost 7 feet tall and a male almost 9 feet tall – and both had red hair.
In addition to the initial findings even more
evidence exists in Lovelock Cave and its surrounding area according to a 1931 article
published in a Nevada newspaper two giant skeletons had been found buried in a dry lake bed close to
Lovelock Cave Nevada these giant gingers too yep they also had red hair but giants weren't just found in the nevada desert they were found
from coast to coast apparently long before native tribes arrived america was the land of the giants
you sailed beyond the horizon in search of an, scrubbed from every map.
You battled krakens and navigated through storms.
Your spade struck the lid of a long-lost treasure chest.
While you cooked a lasagna.
There's more to imagine when you listen.
Discover best-selling adventure stories on Audible. You searched for your informant who disappeared without a trace.
You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth, while curled up on the couch with your cat.
There's more to imagine when you listen.
Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible.
You sailed beyond the horizon in search of an island scrubbed from every map.
You battled krakens and navigated through storms.
Your spade struck the lid of a long-lost treasure chest.
While you cooked a lasagna.
There's more to imagine when you listen.
Discover best-selling adventure
stories on Audible. In Peebles, Ohio, the Great Serpent Mound is a 1,370-foot-long prehistoric
effigy mound. Nobody knows why it was built, but due to a nearby meteor impact crater,
the area is full of gravitational and magnetic anomalies. Some researchers, like Richard Hamilton,
believe the location for Serpent Mound was chosen specifically because of these
anomalies. And for many years, there have been stories of freak weather patterns,
UFO sightings, and strange lights in the area.
And also found near Serpent Mound, the remains of giants.
In 1872, a report appeared in the book Historical Collections of
Noble County, Ohio. Someone had stumbled across enormous skeletons. The remains of three skeletons
were found whose size would indicate they measured in life at least eight feet in height.
The remarkable feature of these remains was they had double teeth in front as well as in back
of the mouth and in both upper and lower jaws upon exposure to the atmosphere the
skeletons crumbled back to Mother Earth in 1891 anthropologist Frederick Ward
Putnam found large skeletons in the same area that measured seven feet or taller
with skulls twice as thick as a human's. In 1894, a local farmer found unusual graves.
The find was even covered by the New York Times.
Farmer Warren Cowan recently discovered
several ancient graves a mile
from the famous Serpent Mound,
where Professor Putnam of Harvard
made interesting discoveries.
Upon opening one of the graves,
a skeleton of upwards of six feet was brought to light.
In another grave was the skeleton of a man equally large.
It seems that the region was populated by a fairly intelligent people,
and that the serpent mound was an object of worship.
Ross Hamilton writes about giant skeletons found in Miamisburg Mound, about 70 miles from Serpent Mound.
The body of a man more gigantic than any ever recorded in human history has been found in the Miami Valley in Ohio.
The skeleton, it is calculated,
must have belonged to a man
eight feet one and a half inches in height.
It was found within a half mile of Miamisburg
in a location which contains many relics
of the mound builders.
Edward Gebhardt and Edward Kaufman
discovered it while they were
working in a gravel pit. Professor Thomas Wilson, curator of prehistoric anthropology,
Smithsonian Institute, says of the find, The authenticity of this skull is beyond any doubt.
Its antiquity is unquestionably great, though it is impossible to have a good guess as to its age.
To my own personal knowledge, several such crania were discovered in the Hopewell Group of Mounds in Ohio.
Hamilton said the bones were put on display at a local museum, but they're no longer anywhere to
be found. In just a short trip down the Ohio River Valley, another extraordinary skeleton was found.
In 1959, Dr. Donald Dragoo, curator for the Carnegie Museum, unearthed
a 7-foot, 2-inch skeleton during the excavation of the Cresap Mound in West Virginia. In 1868,
a report surfaced that quarry workers with the Sauk Rapids Water Power Company unearthed
the remains of a 10-foot-tall skeleton along the shores of the Mississippi River. A few
days later, the bones
were nowhere to be found, rumored to have been whisked east on a late night train and
sold to the circus.
In 1897, the Worthington Advance describes the Smithsonian Institution's work on the
eastern mounds in Iowa. The paper quoted the director of the Bureau of Ethnology, John
Wesley Powell.
It is a matter of official record that in digging through a mound in Iowa,
the scientists found the skeleton of a giant
who, judging from actual measurement,
must have stood seven feet six inches tall when alive.
The bones crumbled to dust when exposed to the air.
In Steelville, Missouri,
there's a documented case from the Steelville Ledger,
June 11th, 1933.
An ancient Ozark giant dug up near Steelville.
A boy looking for arrowheads turned up the complete skeleton of an eight-foot giant.
The grisly find was brought to Dr. R.C. Parker here and stretched out to its enormous length in a hallway of his office, where it has since
remained the most startling exhibit Steelville has ever had on public view.
Some believe these Midwest giants traveled west and occupied all of North America, and
perhaps they made it all the way to the Pacific.
San Diego, California has reports of enormous remains found all over the area.
A giant skeleton found in 1895 measured 8 foot 4 inches.
The skeleton was carefully inspected and measured by Professor Thomas Wilson and other scientists.
Wilson was an anthropologist for the Smithsonian Institution.
Also in Southern California on Catalina Island, amateur archaeologist Ralph Glidden found a total of 3,781 skeletons on the Channel Islands
between 1919 and 1930.
In 1833, Mexican soldiers were digging a pit
for a powder magazine at Lompoc Rancho, California.
They hacked their way through a layer of gravel
and found a 12-foot-long sarcophagus.
The skeleton of a giant man was found inside.
The grave was surrounded by carved shells, huge stone axes,
two spears, and thin sheets of quartz.
And the sheets of quartz were covered with symbols.
And he had another interesting feature,
a double row of teeth, both upper and lower.
Over the past 200 years, more than 1,000 accounts of 7-foot and taller skeletons have been found
across North America.
Newspaper accounts, town and county histories, letters, scientific journals, diaries, photos,
and Smithsonian ethnology reports have carefully documented this.
The Smithsonian Institution is mentioned dozens of times
as the recipient of enormous skeletons
from across the entire United States.
And if that's true, then where are the bones?
You sailed beyond the horizon
in search of an island scrubbed from every map.
You battled krakens and navigated through storms.
Your spade struck the lid of a long-lost treasure chest.
While you cooked a lasagna. There's more to imagine when you listen.
Discover best-selling adventure stories on Audible.
From New York to California and almost every state in between,
thousands of relics and over a thousand giant skeletons have been discovered and documented. They've been found in mounds, caves, burial chambers, stone crypts, and even on ancient battlefields.
Many of the skeletons have strange physiology, like elongated skulls and double rows of teeth.
In dozens of cases, the bones were turned over to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington,
D.C.
So, where are they?
The Smithsonian was never really suspected of wrongdoing, but then something strange
happened in 1950.
In 1892, ancient wooden coffins were discovered in a place called Crump's Cave in Alabama.
The coffins, along with some other artifacts, were sent to the Smithsonian.
This is all well documented.
So in 1950, researcher Frederick J. Pol wrote the Smithsonian to inquire about them.
It was a curious find because Native Americans didn't use coffins or caskets.
Pohl received a reply from the Smithsonian.
We have not been able to find the specimens in our collections, though records show that
they were received.
The matter was pursued again in 1992 by another researcher, David Barron.
He was told the coffins were wooden troughs.
Yes, troughs are long rectangular containers for
feeding cattle horses or pigs but before the Europeans arrived North America didn't have
any cattle horses or pigs and even if they did why would a trough have a lid on it what did this guy
mention this to the Smithsonian people he did he was told yeah well even if he wanted to see
the coffins or troughs or whatever they were,
he couldn't because they were in a warehouse that was contaminated with asbestos
and was closed for cleanup.
Closed for how long?
Ten years.
Ten years to clean up asbestos?
Yep.
Oof, they must have been union.
Yeah, it starts to smell like a cover-up.
The suppression of Native American archaeological evidence allegedly began in 1881 up until that point the smithsonian was under the direction of john wesley
powell the geologist famous for exploring the grand canyon powell had spent a lot of time with
the winnebago indians and he found them to be thoughtful and intelligent so powell and the
smithsonian actually promoted the idea that native Americans, who were at the time being exterminated in the Indian Wars, were descended from advanced civilizations
who communicated with and traded with cultures all over the country and possibly all over
the world.
This widespread dispersion of culture is called diffusionism, which the Smithsonian supported.
But then Powell appointed Cyrus Thomas as the director of the Eastern Mound
Division at the Smithsonian. And then things got political. Thomas wasn't a fan of Native Americans.
He thought of them as nothing more than howling savages. Thomas thought it was impossible for
savages from one side of the Mississippi to visit savages on the other side. And to think that
people as primitive as Native Americans could sail over an ocean was just ridiculous.
This is called isolationism.
Isolationism says that civilizations develop independently from each other, and have very
little contact with other civilizations, especially across oceans or lakes.
The debates in the Smithsonian raged, and Cyrus Thomas eventually won the battle of
isolationism versus diffusionism.
Soon, the Smithsonian took an official stance
that any archaeological evidence supporting diffusionism was fraudulent.
It was believed that contact between the civilizations of the Ohio and Mississippi
valleys were rare, and contact between the Mississippian cultures and the Mayas,
Poltex, or Aztecs in Mexico or Central America? Well, that was absurd.
So the history books were written. Native Americans were a primitive and sometimes
savage people, and that was that. But not so fast. When those ancient mounds and pyramids
in the Midwest were studied, it was shown that the Mississippi River Valleys was,
at one time, home to an ancient and sophisticated culture. At the time, the
culture's capital city, Cahokia, was bigger than almost any city in Europe. When the Spiro Mounds
in Oklahoma were excavated between 1933 and 1935, a man over seven feet tall was discovered.
He was in full armor, and buried next to him was a pot of thousands of pearls and other artifacts.
This was one of the largest treasures ever discovered at that point in time.
We know that the man in armor was found and the Smithsonian was contacted.
So where is he?
Many human remains were found in graves next to artifacts, but the remains were discarded
and we're told that most of the rare and priceless objects disintegrated before scholars could
reach the site.
How convenient that priceless objects vanish before anyone gets there.
And when the excavation was finished, dynamite was used to destroy the burial chamber,
and any remaining artifacts that were considered valuable were sold off.
The Acombaro artifacts were discovered in Mexico in 1994 and have been the center of controversy.
Over 33,000 unusual artifacts, including many ceramic and stone figurines, were found.
Initial laboratory testing suggests the artifacts were about 6,500 years old.
But here's where things get controversial.
Some figurines depict dinosaurs living alongside humans.
And there's a famous carving of a human warrior
riding a triceratops diverse ethnic groups are represented blacks whites and Asians are depicted
but those races should have been unknown in the Americas 6 500 years ago and there were strange
creatures like mermaids human animal hybrids even a Bigfoot also found were teeth from an extinct Ice Age horse and the skeleton of a mammoth.
Neither of these animals should have been there.
Archeologists Charles C. DePeso and John H. Tierney
examined the collection and authenticated the find.
Carlos Perea, the director of archeology
for the Acombaro Zone, also authenticated it.
But the Smithsonian and other authorities
dismissed the findings as fraudulent.
Despite laboratories dating the objects to 4500 BC,
the Smithsonian declared the artifacts 30 years old and said the whole find was a hoax.
John Tierney, who later collaborated with Professor Charles Hapgood,
said the Smithsonian Institution and other authorities
had conducted a campaign of disinformation against the discoveries.
If you remember from the Adam and Eve episode we did,
Charles Hapgood was dismissed as a pseudoscientist
because he claimed the continents drift over millions of years.
Oops.
Yeah.
So John Tierney filed a Freedom of Information request
and asked for all the Acombarra files from the Smithsonian.
Well, turns out the files are missing, and all the Acombaro files from the Smithsonian. Well, turns out, the files are missing,
and all the Acombaro objects in the Smithsonian's possession have been put into storage and may not be viewed by the public.
Until when?
Didn't say.
Tierney went on to write a book called Acombaro,
Archaeology's Astounding Scandal.
But good luck trying to find it.
The phrase, a skeleton in the closet,
refers to a secret that, if exposed, would cause
shame, guilt, or even a scandal. Now, we all have a skeleton or two in the closet. For us,
that's just a metaphor. But for the Smithsonian, they're actual skeletons.
Giants in America. A government conspiracy, a Smithsonian cover-up.
It's a fascinating story.
But is it true?
Well, let's unravel it.
Ohio has been the epicenter for giant skeletons, especially in the 19th century.
When early discoveries made the news, the stories were a national sensation.
Now, this amount of attention also brings out the hoaxers and scammers.
Hey, you want to buy a hecklefish NFT?
I do not. And by the way, if you bought an NFT relating to the Y-ers and scammers. Hey, you want to buy a heckle fish NFT? I do not.
And by the way, if you bought an NFT relating to the Y-files or heckle fish,
you got scammed. But not by me.
No refunds.
In 1882, enormous skeletons were discovered in a lake bed near Cincinnati.
The Columbus dispatch ran with the story. The problem was it was all a hoax.
The alleged discoverer was charging admission to visit his property and view the skeleton.
Now, it may or may not have been a real skeleton, but either way, it was about 5'8", so not a giant.
Maybe the guy who found it was really short.
Maybe, but the story was so exciting that newspapers around the world ran it without fact-checking.
Journalists running stories without checking the facts? No, it can't be.
As more stories about giants popped up in the news,
it was hard to separate fact from fiction,
because the newspapers ran every story.
Hey, you want the truth or you want to sell papers, am I right?
Right.
Nothing ever changes.
That's true.
Ralph Glidden was the archaeologist who found over 3,000 giant skeletons
in 800 graves on Catalina Island.
That turned out to be a huge hoax.
He did find one skeleton
and took a picture of himself standing near it.
He showed the picture to a friend who said,
that looks like a giant, which it does,
but only because the skeleton is closer to the camera.
Clinton ran with the idea to make some money,
but it was all a scam.
And since the early days of the internet,
photos have been floating around of people excavating sites with giant bones some of the pictures are great and
i used a lot of them today but most of the pictures are from a photoshop contest held in 2002
in fact science says that giant humans could not exist yes there are human beings who grow very
tall but that's due to medical conditions and genetic disorders.
Gigantism often happens when someone has a tumor on their pituitary gland, but this is
a serious medical problem, and people who suffer from gigantism often die very young
due to the strain on their hearts and other organs.
Then there's Marfan syndrome, a genetic condition that can cause limbs to be much longer in
relation to the rest of the body.
It's believed that Abraham Lincoln might have had Marfan syndrome.
At 6'4", he was much taller than most of the men of his time.
He also died young.
Oof.
What?
Still too soon?
But the reason humans can't grow to be giants is the square cube law.
This states that as the size of any object grows, its volume grows faster than its surface
area.
If a giant is 60 feet tall, or about 10 times the size of someone 6 feet tall, the giant's
body volume would have to be 100 times the volume of the 6-foot man.
A cubic inch of bone can support 19,000 pounds.
That's a lot.
But at 60 feet tall, bone would need to support well over 550,000 pounds.
Human bones would shatter and crumble under this weight.
Uh, yeah, but who says giants are human?
Now that's a fair point. There are discoveries of giants where it was reported that the bones
of the body and the skull were much thicker than humans. So is the Smithsonian covering this up?
Well, debunkers say no. The story about John Wesley Powell nominating Cyrus Thomas to the Smithsonian first appears
in an article written by David Childress in 1993.
The article caught fire and has been in circulation ever since.
Now that doesn't mean Childress is wrong, but I do get suspicious when stories about
the 19th century don't emerge until the late 20th century.
So have the authorities been suppressing knowledge
that the Americas were once inhabited by advanced civilizations?
Civilizations who made contact with cultures around the world?
Well, to get this answer, we're going to need a sweet potato.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Do I have sea monkeys in my ears, or did you just say sweet potato?
For over a hundred years, the Smithsonian and mainstream archaeology has supported isolationism. But the cultures that emerged in North America did not have contact with Central America or South America,
and definitely did not contact cultures across the oceans.
It's absurd to even think it.
But the Smithsonian has a problem. The sweet potato. Sweet potatoes are native to the oceans. It's absurd to even think it. But the Smithsonian has a problem.
The sweet potato. Sweet potatoes are native to the Americas, but an ancient sweet potato was
found in the Cook Islands, which are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The potato was
carbon dated to the year 1000. That would mean that 500 years before Columbus, a Native American
tribe traveled across the Pacific and landed in Polynesia and brought sweet potatoes with them.
Or Polynesians traveled to the Americas and back.
The counter-argument is that the sweet potato fell off a boat near Central America and floated to Polynesia, over 5,000 miles away.
It's one lucky potato.
Linguists have found that the word for sweet potato in early Polynesian languages is kumala.
In Native American dialect spoken in Ecuador, the word is kumara. Now, it could all be a coincidence,
but we're not done yet. Even more compelling is DNA analysis of Polynesian chickens. In 2007,
chicken bones were found at an excavation site in Chile. The DNA of the bones matched chickens from the Pacific Islands of Samoa and Tonga, and
were carbon dated to between 1304 and 1425, before the Spanish arrived in the New World.
In 2019, South American chickens were studied and found to have an unknown genetic component.
It turned out that component was from chickens found on Easter Island, in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean. The study was so astounding that research was from chickens found on Easter Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
The study was so astounding that research was done on human DNA.
And in 2020, the study showed that some Polynesian people had DNA inherited from people who lived in Colombia about 800 years ago.
Specifically, Polynesians shared DNA with the Xenu tribe, who lived in Colombia on the Caribbean side, not even the
Pacific Ocean side. It's too much to cover in this episode, but there's evidence of Chinese
contact with the New World in 1200 BC, or Indian contact in 2000 BC, and of Arab contact in the
9th century. There are even old maps from the Arabs and Turks, like the Piri Reis map, that
show North and South America, a thousand
years before Columbus was born.
And there's much more.
Some mummies have been found with traces of coca and nicotine.
A re-examination of the mummy of Ramses II in the 1970s revealed the presence of fragments
of tobacco leaves in his abdomen.
Coca and tobacco are native to the Americas.
The mainstream science says an archaeologist handling the mummy must have spilled his pipe.
That is hot cocoa.
That's what they say.
Now, remember, we did an episode on Egyptian artifacts allegedly discovered in the Grand Canyon in 1909.
The Smithsonian denies this and claims the whole story is a hoax.
But for some reason, the part of the Grand Canyon where the discovery was made is off limits.
You can't even fly over it.
If you do wander into the area, within a few minutes, unmarked planes and helicopters appear
in an area where flying is not allowed.
I'll link to the episode below, which goes into detail.
You'll even see the planes and helicopters I'm talking about.
Once again, those artifacts were sent to the Smithsonian and nobody knows what happened. In 1990, a law was passed, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
This law says that any federal agency in possession of Native American cultural items,
including human remains or sacred objects, will be returned to the tribes upon
request. Great! The Smithsonian is a federal agency. So can we get all the skeletons from
Ohio and have a look? Nope. United States Code, Title 25, Chapter 32, Section 3001, Subsections
4 and 8 state. Subsection 4. Federal agency means any department, agency, or instrumentality of the United States.
Such term does not include the Smithsonian Institution.
Subsection 8. Museum means any institution or state or local government agency, including any institution of higher learning,
that receives federal funds and has possession of, or control over, Native American cultural items.
Such term does not include the Smithsonian Institution or any other federal
agency. The law requiring the government to return skeletons to the tribes? Well, the Smithsonian
is exempt. So if history books need to be rewritten, don't look to the Smithsonian for help
and don't demand answers either. Mainstream science and especially the media have a playbook.
It's easy to recognize once you look for it the four stages of suppression
are criticize marginalize attack and censor now here's an example i don't claim to be an
archaeologist or a scientist when graham hancock released his documentary series called ancient
apocalypse it was a huge hit it explores the theory that ancient advanced cultures existed
thousands of years ago,
but were wiped out in the great flood of the Younger Dryas. Now, you could agree with this
theory or disagree with it. Either way is fine with me. But wherever you stand, we can all agree
that it's an interesting theory worthy of discussion, right? Well, wrong. The Guardian
reviewed the series in an article titled Ancient Apocalypse is the Most Dangerous Show on Netflix.
Now, there's stage one, criticize.
Not only should we not discuss alternate theories,
it's actually dangerous to discuss them.
But people like us don't care about criticism.
We don't care what the media thinks.
So they have to escalate to stage two, marginalize.
That same article has a spicy subtitle which read,
a show with a truly preposterous theory is one of the streaming giant's biggest hits,
and it seems to exist solely for conspiracy theorists.
So if you believe in or even have an interest in this preposterous subject,
you're marginalized as a conspiracy theorist.
The same article insinuates that people who are curious about civilizations before the flood
are the same as flat earthers.
It still might be flat.
We're 9-11 truthers.
Inside job.
Not now.
Being called a conspiracy theorist used to be a major insult, but we've heard it so much
that we're not affected by it anymore.
I take it as a compliment.
I know.
So they escalate to stage three, attack.
MSN reviewed the documentary in an article with this headline,
Graham Hancock's series promotes racist conspiracy theories.
And there it is.
ABC ran with it.
Ancient Apocalypse series uses racist ideologies.
Now, I watched and enjoyed the documentaries.
I enjoyed discussing alternate history and life before the Younger Dryas flood. I'm not racist, are you?
I don't care what color the people were before the flood.
I just want to know about them.
And I would guess that you are the same.
But calling someone a racist without evidence
is very much in style now.
But because that word is thrown around so much,
that attack is also losing its teeth.
So you criticized, it didn't work. You marginalized, it didn't teeth. So you criticized it didn't work.
You marginalized it didn't work.
Attacked it didn't work.
That leaves stage four, which does work, censorship.
It's right there in that headline from The Guardian where the author poses the question,
why has this been allowed?
What does he mean allowed?
Who does he want allowing or disallowing free speech?
Netflix?
The government?
I suspect I know the answer. Now, I don't agree with all of Graham Hancock's assertions laid out in the documentary, but
all of them are worthy of discussion.
Mainstream media and science disagrees.
These discussions are preposterous, dangerous, and racist, somehow.
So censor it.
For a hundred years, Egyptologists proudly claimed ancient Egypt as the first major civilization,
with a minor shout-out to the Sumerians who were there a thousand years earlier.
Any culture older than that was nonsense, and discussion was censored.
But then Gobekli Tepe was discovered in Turkey and is found to be 5,000 years older than Sumeria.
Oopsie.
Yeah, that was embarrassing.
Then Monkuklu Tarla was discovered, also in Turkey.
That culture dates back to over 12,000 years ago.
That's a period of time called the Pleistocene.
We were taught that this was the time of the cavemen.
But in Boncuklu Tarla, they understood agriculture and animal husbandry.
They could cut stone, and they engaged in city planning.
A few years ago, a sewer system was discovered. These weren't cavemen. They lived in houses built around a
central religious center. A Netflix documentary discussing different theories isn't dangerous,
but articles by mainstream television writers who get their facts from mainstream scientists,
those articles are dangerous. They're dangerous because they suppress debate,
which in turn suppresses discovery. I'm so glad the archaeologists who found Bonkuklu those articles are dangerous. They're dangerous because they suppress debate,
which in turn suppresses discovery.
I'm so glad the archeologists who found Bonkuklu
didn't read internet news.
Otherwise those racist conspiracy theorists
might never have found what is so far
the oldest culture on earth.
A culture that emerged by the way,
right after the great flood of the Younger Dryas.
As more time passes,
more evidence emerges
to support theories about alternate history.
If giants walk the earth,
sooner or later that too will be discovered.
But mainstream media will do everything it can
to prevent that news from getting out.
If The Guardian, NBC, ABC, USA Today, CNN,
and all the others continue to be wrong
over and over again,
maybe we have to start asking the question about those articles.
Should they be allowed?
Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. My name is
AJ that's hecklefish. This has been the Y files. And if you had
fun or learn anything, do him a favor, like, subscribe, comment,
share, that stuff really helps us out. like most topics we cover here on the channel,
today's was recommended by you.
So if there's a story you'd like to see or learn more about,
go to the Y-Files.com slash tips.
Now, if you'd like to join a great community,
consider joining the Y-Files Discord.
There's thousands of people on there and it's a lot of fun.
And special thanks to our patrons who make all this possible.
Without your generosity, there'd be no Y-Files.
And special, special thanks for
ordering all those hecklefishes this past week. We appreciate it. Now, if you'd like to support
the channel, consider becoming a member on Patreon. For as little as $3 a month, you can
support the channel and get some perks, or buy something for the Y-Files store.
Feet by foe, thumb, grab yourself a hecklefish t-shirt,
or a hecklefish plushie talking doll face talking fish doll.
Yeah, I've been meaning to talk to you about the teeth.
They feel real.
They are.
Really?
Where do they come from?
They're harvested.
Harvested from where?
You don't want to know.
Fair enough.
Well, that's going to do it.
Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated. Thank you. Thank you.