THE PECULIAR PHENOMENON OF PSEUDOARCHAEOLOGY

WHAT IS THE APPEAL OF PSEUDOARCHAEOLOGY? WHAT PROBLEMS DOES ITS POPULARITY POSE?

By Kenneth L. Feder

Avast and splendid civilization is tragically destroyed more than 10 millennia ago in a natural cataclysm of imponderable proportions. Extraterrestrial aliens from a world inconceivably distant and different from our own, land on earth, share knowledge with our ancestors and, in so doing, instigate the evolution of the world’s first civilizations.

Are these and other equally intriguing tales little more than fantasy, or might they reflect a secret and repressed ancient history of humanity, a past denied by stodgy archaeologists? To be sure, they are compelling and entertaining, filled with adventure, romance, tragedy, and triumph. They are, perhaps above all else, deliciously surprising; we didn’t learn any of this in history class. Maybe that’s why so many people believe them. These intriguing possibilities about the ancient world provide the raw material for stories far more interesting than the dreary research concerning projectile points and potsherds done by archaeologists. However, though they don’t lack for drama, these stories do lack for evidence. The attempt to support these notions with dubious or fake archaeological evidence is pseudoarchaeology.

How pervasive is pseudoarchaeology today? The television listings give some indication. In any given week a viewer can likely find ostensible documentaries that, at the very least, sensationalize human antiquity. Atlantis, pharaoh’s

There are claims that Atlantis has been found in several different locations.This is an artist’s interpretation of what Atlantis looks like.This illustration is based on a sonar image taken off the coast of Cuba.

curses, extraterrestrial visitors to earth in antiquity, pre-Norse visits to the New World by various groups, and astonishingly advanced technologies in very ancient times are the usual fare.

Intriguing Tales

Consider the claim at the core of the recent popular book, 1421: The Year China Discovered the World by Gavin Menzies. Menzies proposes that 71 years before Columbus set sail, a fleet of more than 100 Chinese ships carrying 10,000 sailors circumnavigated the earth and explored, among other places, America. The problem with his argument, which is largely based on ambiguous old maps, is that there are no convincing early 15th-century artifacts found in firm archaeological contexts that offer proof of the early presence of Chinese explorers or colonists in America.

Compare this to the analysis of a Norse presence in the New World 500 years before Columbus. Admittedly, many archaeologists were skeptical of finding the Vinland referred to in Norse sagas in the New World. That skepticism disappeared, however, with the discovery and excavation of the L’anse aux Meadows site on Newfoundland, in eastern Canada. The Norse artifacts recovered at the site included a ring-headed bronze pin, a soapstone spindle whorl, and typical house remains. These artifacts and charcoal radiocarbon dated to more than 1,000 years ago won over the skeptics.

Though artifacts like the rune-inscribed Kensington Stone found in west-central Minnesota continue to generate heated debate, the archaeological evidence at L’anse aux Meadows and the scatter of Norse artifacts found throughout the eastern Canadian Arctic have shown conclusively that the Vikings reached the New World.

A precociously sophisticated lost civilization, far older than that of Egypt, Mesopotamia, or the Maya is another common theme of pseudoarchaeology. Atlantis is the bestknown example. The literary creation of the Greek philosopher Plato, Atlantis is portrayed by him as a powerful, sophisticated, wealthy, but evil empire. Plato created a warlike Atlantis as a plot device in one of his dialogues in order to test the mettle of a hypothetical, perfect society governed by the rules Plato laid out in his best known work, The Republic.

U.S. congressman and prolific author Ignatius Donnelly revived the Atlantis myth in the late 19th century, asserting that Atlantis had been a real nation that had greatly affected all other ancient civilizations. Donnelly’s belief in Atlantis was rooted in his insistence that the archaeological achievements of ancient peoples on both sides of the Atlantic were so sophisticated and similar—with pyramids, arches, metallurgy, agricultural systems, and written languages—there must have been a common, highly advanced source. For Donnelly, that source was Atlantis.

Donnelly recognized that archaeological evidence would be needed to support his Atlantean speculations. In fact, in the final paragraph of his book, Atlantis, The Antediluvian World, published in 1882, he suggests that in 100 years time, the great museums of the world might be filled

There have been a number of claims that tablets crafted by prehistoric Native Americans were the works of various Old World cultures.The Wilmington Tablet,shown here,was made by the Adena culture.

with archaeological artifacts and implements from Atlantis. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Atlantis was intended as a fiction and the lack of any archaeological evidence for its existence shows that it was nothing more.

Swiss author Erich von Däniken purports that extraterrestrial visitors played a crucial role in human prehistory and history. He advanced this argument in a very popular book of pseudoarchaeology, Chariots of the Gods.

I read Chariots of the Gods when I was an undergraduate student in the early 1970s. I remember being immediately struck by a peculiar pattern. Von Däniken provides dozens of examples of technological sophistication in the archaeological record of Asia, Africa, and the Americas that he felt were so beyond the capabilities of the indigenous people, they must have been inspired by contact with a higher power, i.e., extraterrestrials. Interestingly, von Däniken seemed reluctant to ascribe any archaeological evidence in Europe to extraterrestrial involvement; I counted only two such examples in the book for the entire European continent. His pseudoarchaeology seems based on the libel that ancient civilizations, especially those outside of Europe, could not have been developed by the people themselves, but must have been inspired by what amounts to an extraterrestrial Peace Corps.

The attempt to deny a connection between American Indians and the more impressive elements of the archaeological record seen in the New World is common in pseudoarchaeology. For example, as European settlers spread across the American Midwest in the 18th and 19th centuries, they encountered the widespread remnants of substantial monuments of earth. Many of these were conical in shape, some just a few feet high, but others towered over the landscape. Within these conical mounds were found human burials, often accompanied by substantial assemblages of artistically impressive grave goods of clay, stone, copper, and mica.

Other earthworks consisted of extensive walls enclosing round, square, or even octagonal plazas of up to 50 acres. Still other mounds had been built as enormous effigies, representing on a monumental scale animals like bears, birds, and even snakes. Larger still were earthen pyramids, truncated at the top as if to provide an elevated platform for a temple or palace. Who built the mounds and produced the artistic objects found within them? The obvious answer was the ancestors of the native people of America. Unfortunately, many Americans of European descent refused to believe that America’s aboriginal inhabitants possessed such capabilities. Consequently, it was thought that some other group was responsible. So was born the myth of a race of moundbuilders who had originated somewhere in the Old World.

But scholars, including Thomas Jefferson, excavated the mounds and found no evidence to indicate that the Indians didn’t build them. In a project funded by the Smithsonian Institution, beginning in 1882, archaeologist Cyrus Thomas and his crew investigated 2,000 mounds in 21 states, collecting 40,000 artifacts. This archaeological evidence showed unequivocally that the moundbuilders had been Indians.

The Kensington Runestone was found in Minnesota.It tells the story of a Norse expedition that originated in Vinland in A.D.1362.Most archaeologists doubt the runestone’s authenticity because no evidence of a Norse encampment was found with it,and because L’anse aux Meadow,the only proven pre-Columbian Norse settlement,was long abandoned by then.

Serpent Mound is an effigy mound in the form of an enormous snake.It is an example of the remarkable prehistoric mound-building tradition of the Native Americans.European settlers thought that the Native Americans lacked the sophistication to construct these mounds,which led to the myth that they were the works of more advanced,Old World cultures.This myth still endures.

Nonetheless, the notion that Old World people could have made the artifacts within the mounds persisted. The 1860 discovery of the so-called Keystone in Newark, Ohio, immediately east of a series of substantial earthworks, is an example of this persistence. The Keystone looks a bit like a plumb bob with Hebrew writing on all four of its faces. The writing suggested it had been ancient Hebrews—the Wandering Jews of history—who had built at least some of the remarkable earthworks of North America.

However, the Hebrew lettering was modern in appearance, an anachronism on an object that ostensibly dated to the period of Ohio mound construction some 2,000 years ago. Therefore many people recognized the Keystone as a hoax.

The discovery five months later in Ohio of another anomalous artifact was highly suspicious as well. Called the Decalogue for its inscription of the Ten Commandments, this artifact bore a more appropriate, archaic version of the Hebrew language, dating to a time similar to that of mound construction. As Brad Lepper, a curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society, points out, this “improvement” in the Decalogue probably resulted from its maker learning from the rather obvious inauthenticity of the Keystone.

Despite an extensive program of mound excavations over the last 100 years, professional archaeologists have never found any genuine Hebrew—or any other—inscriptions in association with the mounds. The Keystone and Decalogue are viewed by most archaeologists, historians, and linguists as crude hoaxes.

Why Worry About Pseudoarchaeology

Do people actually believe pseudoarchaeology, or is it all just harmless entertainment? Data on the actual impact of pseudoarchaeology books and television programs is hard to come by. However, I have been polling students at my university for more than 20 years, (the number of students polled is roughly 2,000 to 2,500), surveying their responses to claims about Atlantis, extraterrestrials, psychic archaeology, and America’s exploration and settlement by ancient Celts, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Hebrews, and so on. The majority of the students neither strongly agrees nor disagrees with these claims. For example, when I last polled them in 2003, only about one percent strongly believed the ancient astronaut hypothesis and an additional five percent thought it could be true. That’s good news. However, I have also found that a disturbingly large fraction of my students—anywhere from one-third to one-half, depending on the claim—are fascinated by these claims but admit that they don’t know enough to accept or reject them.

In 1983, I polled archaeologists who taught at universities concerning their views about the impacts of pseudoarchaeology. It was apparent at the time that, while many were concerned about the inability of students to skeptically assess extraordinary claims about the human past, few had the time or inclination to do much about it. Fortunately, this appears to have changed somewhat. For example, in the mid-1980s I first circulated the draft of a textbook that debunked pseudoarchaeological claims. Sixteen publishers turned down the proposal, primarily because they didn’t be-

lieve that university archaeologists felt the need or had the time to discuss such things in class. That book, Frauds, Myths and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, ultimately was published, as was another book responding to pseudoarchaeology, Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory, by Stephen Williams.

It is gratifying to report that both of those books have become staples in courses on pseudoarchaeology offered by anthropology departments throughout the United States and Canada. That these textbooks have survived and even thrived (Frauds is currently going into its 5th edition) is clear evidence that plenty of teaching archaeologists recognize the challenge posed by pseudoarchaeology and devote some time to it in their introductory classes or even teach an entire course focusing on the issue.

A highly significant difference between the 1980s and today is the existence of the Internet, a virtually limitless, open forum for ideas, scientific and otherwise. Certainly, the Web affords a soapbox for all manner of pseudoarchaeological claims. A Google search of the phrase “The Lost Continent of Atlantis,” for example, generates over 84,000 hits. A search of the phrase “Ancient Astronauts” produces more than 300,000. By comparison, a Google search of the phrase “debunking Atlantis” generates almost 6,000 hits, and a search under “debunking Ancient Astronauts” produces a little more than 4,300.

The Web also allows archaeologists to get their message out and a handful of them have developed sites responding directly to claims of lost tribes, sunken continents, ancient astronauts, and the like. My personal favorite, in fact, is titled Fantastic Archaeology! Lost Tribes, Sunken Continents and Ancient Astronauts (http://www.uiowa.edu/~anthro/fantasti/cultindex.html), produced by Larry Zimmerman and Richard Fox.

Ultimately, how troublesome is pseudoarchaeology? Consder that a low opinion of the capabilities of ancient peoples—or, at least some ancient peoples—seems to reside at its core. The archaeological record is filled with examples of spectacular architectural achievements, sophisticated technologies, wonderful artwork, and glimmerings of science. Much of pseudoarchaeology is based on the belief that indigenous peoples were incapable of producing these things. Needless to say, this reluctance to give much of ancient humanity its due is troubling to scientists who have devoted their professional lives to illuminating the accomplishments of those people.

Fascination with and acceptance of pseudoarchaeological claims also seems to be part of a broader inability on the part of the public to distinguish science from pseudoscience. The results from my most recent student polling is an indication of this. Fifty-three percent expressed strong or mild belief in psychic power, 25 percent in the claim that UFOs are alien spacecraft, and 18 percent in the efficacy of astrology. Garrett Fagan, a classical archaeologist at Penn State University, became so concerned about what he perceived to be an insufficient and unsystematic professional response to pseudoarchaeology that he organized a workshop on the subject at the 2003 annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America. It was extremely well-attended and even drew the interest of a publisher. Fagan, in fact, is now editing a book titled Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public, based on contributions to that workshop. The various articles in the book share a common perspective: it is important, but not sufficient, to be reactive to unsupported claims about the human past as they come up. Fagan believes that archaeologists also need to be proactive, promoting the discoveries of genuine archaeology to the public, and not just debunk the junk. Indeed, he has a point. Archaeologists cannot abandon the public forum to the pseudoarchaeologists. We need to show an interested public—one that supports archaeological research through the purchase of books, visits to museums and sites, and contributions to organizations working to preserve the past—that the true stories of antiquity, inspired by the hard evidence of archaeology, are every bit as intriguing, fascinating, and enthralling as the stories told by the pseudoarchaeologists.

(Top) The Keystone was found in association with a mound site in Newark,Ohio,in 1860.It bears a Hebrew inscription on each of its four faces,which some people claimed was proof of an ancient Jewish presence in Ohio.

(Bottom) The Decalogue is a limestone tablet covered with Hebrew letters.Like the Keystone, it’s considered to be a forgery.

KENNETH L. FEDER is a professor of anthropology at Central Connecticut State University.He is the author of several books including Frauds,Myths andMysteries:ScienceandPseudoscienceinArchaeology.