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Archaeological Cover-ups: A Plot to Control History?
by Will Hart
Part 1.




The scientific establishment tends to reject, suppress or ignore evidence 
that conflicts with accepted theories, while denigrating or persecuting the 
messenger.

THE BRAIN POLICE" AND "THE BIG LIE

Any time you allege a conspiracy is afoot, especially in the field of 
science, you are treading on thin ice. We tend to be very sceptical about 
conspiracies--unless the Mafia or some Muslim radicals are behind the 
alleged plot. But the evidence is overwhelming and the irony is that much of 
it is in plain view.

The good news is that the players are obvious. Their game plan and even 
their play-by-play tactics are transparent, once you learn to spot them. 
However, it is not so easy to penetrate through the smokescreen of 
propaganda and disinformation to get to their underlying motives and goals. 
It would be convenient if we could point to a plumber's unit and a boldface 
liar like Richard Nixon, but this is a more subtle operation.

The bad news: the conspiracy is global and there are many vested interest 
groups. A cursory investigation yields the usual suspects: scientists with a 
theoretical axe to grind, careers to further and the status quo to maintain. 
Their modus operandi is "The Big Lie"--and the bigger and more widely 
publicised, the better. They rely on invoking their academic credentials to 
support their arguments, and the presumption is that no one has the right to 
question their authoritarian pronouncements that:
1. there is no mystery about who built the Great Pyramid or what the methods 
of construction were, and the Sphinx shows no signs of water damage;
2. there were no humans in the Americas before 20,000 BC;
3. the first civilisation dates back no further than 6000 BC;
4. there are no documented anomalous, unexplained or enigmatic data to take 
into account;
5. there are no lost or unaccounted-for civilisations.
Let the evidence to the contrary be damned!


Personal Attacks: Dispute over Age of the Sphinx and Great Pyramid

In 1993, NBC in the USA aired The Mysteries of the Sphinx, which presented 
geological evidence showing that the Sphinx was at least twice as old (9,000 
years) as Egyptologists claimed. It has become well known as the "water 
erosion controversy". An examination of the politicking that Egyptologists 
deployed to combat this undermining of their turf is instructive.

Self-taught Egyptologist John Anthony West brought the water erosion issue 
to the attention of geologist Dr Robert Schoch. They went to Egypt and 
launched an intensive on-site investigation. After thoroughly studying the 
Sphinx first hand, the geologist came to share West's preliminary conclusion 
and they announced their findings.

Dr Zahi Hawass, the Giza Monuments chief, wasted no time in firing a barrage 
of public criticism at the pair. Renowned Egyptologist Dr Mark Lehner, who 
is regarded as the world's foremost expert on the Sphinx, joined his attack. 
He charged West and Schoch with being "ignorant and insensitive". That was a 
curious accusation which took the matter off the professional level and put 
the whole affair on a personal plane. It did not address the facts or issues 
at all and it was highly unscientific.

But we must note the standard tactic of discrediting anyone who dares to 
call the accepted theories into question. Shifting the focus away from the 
issues and "personalising" the debate is a highly effective strategy--one 
which is often used by politicians who feel insecure about their positions. 
Hawass and Lehner invoked their untouchable status and presumed authority. 
(One would think that a geologist's assessment would hold more weight on 
this particular point.)

A short time later, Schoch, Hawass and Lehner were invited to debate the 
issue at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. West was 
not allowed to participate because he lacked the required credentials.

This points to a questionable assumption that is part of the establishment's 
arsenal: only degreed scientists can practise science. Two filters keep the 
uncredentialled, independent researcher out of the loop: (1) credentials, 
and (2) peer review. You do not get to number two unless you have number 
one.

Science is a method that anyone can learn and apply. It does not require a 
degree to observe and record facts and think critically about them, 
especially in the non-technical social sciences. In a free and open society, 
science has to be a democratic process.

Be that as it may, West was barred. The elements of the debate have been 
batted back and forth since then without resolution. It is similar to the 
controversy over who built the Giza pyramids and how.

This brings up the issue of The Big Lie and how it has been promoted for 
generations in front of God and everyone. The controversy over how the Great 
Pyramid was constructed is one example. It could be easily settled if 
Egyptologists wanted to resolve the dispute. A simple test could be designed 
and arranged by impartial engineers that would either prove or disprove 
their longstanding disputed theory--that it was built using the primitive 
tools and methods of the day, circa 2500 BC.

Why hasn't this been done? The answer is so obvious, it seems impossible: 
they know that the theory is bogus. Could a trained, highly educated 
scientist really believe that 2.3 million tons of stone, some blocks 
weighing 70 tons, could have been transported and lifted by primitive 
methods? That seems improbable, though they have no compunction against 
lying to the public, writing textbooks and defending this theory against 
alternative theories. However, we must note that they will not subject 
themselves to the bottom-line test.

We think it is incumbent upon any scientist to bear the burden of proof of 
his/her thesis; however, the social scientists who make these claims have 
never stood up to that kind of scrutiny. That is why we must suspect a 
conspiracy. No other scientific discipline would get away with bending the 
rules of science. All that Egyptologists have ever done is bat down 
alternative theories using underhanded tactics. It is time to insist that 
they prove their own proposals.

Why would scientists try to hide the truth and avoid any test of their 
hypothesis? Their motivations are equally transparent. If it can be proved 
that the Egyptians did not build the Great Pyramid in 2500 BC using 
primitive methods, or if the Sphinx can be dated to 9000 BC, the whole house 
of cards comes tumbling down. Orthodox views of cultural evolution are based 
upon a chronology of civilisation having started in Sumeria no earlier than 
4000 BC. The theory does not permit an advanced civilisation to have existed 
prior to that time. End of discussion. Archaeology and history lose their 
meaning without a fixed timeline as a point of reference.

Since the theory of "cultural evolution" has been tied to Darwin's general 
theory of evolution, even more is at stake. Does this explain why facts, 
anomalies and enigmas are denied, suppressed and/or ignored? Yes, it does. 
The biological sciences today are based on Darwinism.

Pressure Tactics: The Ica Stones of Peru

Now we turn to another, very different case. In 1966, Dr Javier Cabrera 
received a stone as a gift from a poor local farmer in his native Ica, Peru. 
A fish was carved on the stone, which would not have meant much to the 
average villager but it did mean a lot to the educated Dr Cabrera. He 
recognised it as a long-extinct species. This aroused his curiosity. He 
purchased more stones from the farmer, who said he had collected them near 
the river after a flood.

Dr Cabrera accumulated more and more stones, and word of their existence and 
potential import reached the archaeological community. Soon, the doctor had 
amassed thousands of "Ica stones". The sophisticated carvings were as 
enigmatic as they were fascinating. Someone had carved men fighting with 
dinosaurs, men with telescopes and men performing operations with surgical 
equipment. They also contained drawings of lost continents.

Several of the stones were sent to Germany and the etchings were dated to 
remote antiquity. But we all know that men could not have lived at the time 
of dinosaurs; Homo sapiens has only existed for about 100,000 years.

The BBC got wind of this discovery and swooped down to produce a documentary 
about the Ica stones. The media exposure ignited a storm of controversy. 
Archaeologists criticised the Peruvian government for being lax about 
enforcing antiquities laws (but that was not their real concern). Pressure 
was applied to government officials.

The farmer who had been selling the stones to Cabrera was arrested; he 
claimed to have found them in a cave but refused to disclose the exact 
location to authorities, or so they claimed.

This case was disposed of so artfully that it would do any corrupt 
politician proud. The Peruvian government threatened to prosecute and 
imprison the farmer. He was offered and accepted a plea bargain; he then 
recanted his story and "admitted" to having carved the stones himself. That 
seems highly implausible, since he was uneducated and unskilled and there 
were 11,000 stones in all. Some were fairly large and intricately carved 
with animals and scenes that the farmer would not have had knowledge of 
without being a palaeontologist. He would have needed to work every day for 
several decades to produce that volume of stones. However, the underlying 
facts were neither here nor there. The Ica stones were labelled "hoax" and 
forgotten.

The case did not require a head-to-head confrontation or public discrediting 
of non-scientists by scientists; it was taken care of with invisible 
pressure tactics. Since it was filed under "hoax", the enigmatic evidence 
never had to be dealt with, as it did in the next example.

Censorship of "Forbidden" Thinking: Evidence for Mankind's Great Antiquity

The case of author Michael Cremo is well documented, and it also 
demonstrates how the scientific establishment openly uses pressure tactics 
on the media and government. His book Forbidden Archeology examines many 
previously ignored examples of artifacts that prove modern man's antiquity 
far exceeds the age given in accepted chronologies.

The examples which he and his co-author present are controversial, but the 
book became far more controversial than the contents when it was used in a 
documentary.

In 1996, NBC broadcast a special called The Mysterious Origins of Man, which 
featured material from Cremo's book. The reaction from the scientific 
community went off the Richter scale. NBC was deluged with letters from 
irate scientists who called the producer "a fraud" and the whole program "a 
hoax".

But the scientists went further than this--a lot further. In an extremely 
unconscionable sequence of bizarre moves, they tried to force NBC not to 
rebroadcast the popular program, but that effort failed. Then they took the 
most radical step of all: they presented their case to the federal 
government and requested the Federal Communications Commission to step in 
and bar NBC from airing the program again.

This was not only an apparent infringement of free speech and a blatant 
attempt to thwart commerce, it was an unprecedented effort to censor 
intellectual discourse. If the public or any government agency made an 
attempt to handcuff the scientific establishment, the public would never 
hear the end of it.

The letter to the FCC written by Dr Allison Palmer, President of the 
Institute for Cambrian Studies, is revealing:

At the very least, NBC should be required to make substantial prime-time 
apologies to their viewing audience for a sufficient period of time so that 
the audience clearly gets the message that they were duped. In addition, NBC 
should perhaps be fined sufficiently so that a major fund for public science 
education can be established.

I think we have some good leads on who "the Brain Police" are. And I really 
do not think "conspiracy" is too strong a word--because for every case of 
this kind of attempted suppression that is exposed, 10 others are going on 
successfully. We have no idea how many enigmatic artifacts or dates have 
been labelled "error" and tucked away in storage warehouses or circular 
files, never to see the light of day.

Data Rejection: Inconvenient Dating in Mexico

Then there is the high-profile case of Dr Virginia Steen-McIntyre, a 
geologist working for the US Geological Survey (USGS), who was dispatched to 
an archaeological site in Mexico to date a group of artifacts in the 1970s. 
This travesty also illustrates how far established scientists will go to 
guard orthodox tenets.

McIntyre used state-of-the-art equipment and backed up her results by using 
four different methods, but her results were off the chart. The lead 
archaeologist expected a date of 25,000 years or less, and the geologist's 
finding was 250,000 years or more.

The figure of 25,000 years or less was critical to the Bering Strait 
"crossing" theory, and it was the motivation behind the head archaeologist's 
tossing Steen-McIntyre's results in the circular file and asking for a new 
series of dating tests. This sort of reaction does not occur when dates 
match the expected chronological model that supports accepted theories.

Steen-McIntyre was given a chance to retract her conclusions, but she 
refused. She found it hard thereafter to get her papers published and she 
lost a teaching job at an American university.

Government Suppression and Ethnocentrism:
Avoiding Anomalous Evidence in NZ, China and Mexico

In New Zealand, the government actually stepped in and enacted a law 
forbidding the public from entering a controversial archaeological zone. 
This story appeared in the book, Ancient Celtic New Zealand, by Mark Doutré.

However, as we will find (and as I promised at the beginning of the 
article), this is a complicated conspiracy. Scientists trying to protect 
their "hallowed" theories while furthering their careers are not the only 
ones who want artifacts and data suppressed. This is where the situation 
gets sticky.

The Waipoua Forest became a controversial site in New Zealand because an 
archaeological dig apparently showed evidence of a non-Polynesian culture 
that preceded the Maori--a fact that the tribe was not happy with. They 
learned of the results of the excavations before the general public did and 
complained to the government. According to Doutré, the outcome was "an 
official archival document, which clearly showed an intention by New Zealand 
government departments to withhold archaeological information from public 
scrutiny for 75 years".

The public got wind of this fiasco but the government denied the claim. 
However, official documents show that an embargo had been placed on the 
site. Doutré is a student of New Zealand history and archaeology. He is 
concerned because he says that artifacts proving that there was an earlier 
culture which preceded the Maori are missing from museums. He asks what 
happened to several anomalous remains:

Where are the ancient Indo-European hair samples (wavy red brown hair), 
originally obtained from a rock shelter near Watakere, that were on display 
at the Auckland War Memorial Museum for many years? Where is the giant 
skeleton found near Mitimati?

Unfortunately this is not the only such incident. Ethnocentrism has become a 
factor in the conspiracy to hide mankind's true history. Author Graham 
Hancock has been attacked by various ethnic groups for reporting similar 
enigmatic findings.

The problem for researchers concerned with establishing humanity's true 
history is that the goals of nationalists or ethnic groups who want to lay 
claim to having been in a particular place first, often dovetail with the 
goals of cultural evolutionists.

Archaeologists are quick to go along with suppressing these kinds of 
anomalous finds. One reason Egyptologists so jealously guard the Great 
Pyramid's construction date has to do with the issue of national pride.

The case of the Takla Makan Desert mummies in western China is another 
example of this phenomenon. In the 1970s and 1980s, an unaccounted-for 
Caucasian culture was suddenly unearthed in China. The arid environment 
preserved the remains of a blond-haired, blue-eyed people who lived in 
pre-dynastic China. They wore colourful robes, boots, stockings and hats. 
The Chinese were not happy about this revelation and they have downplayed 
the enigmatic find, even though Asians were found buried alongside the 
Caucasian mummies.

National Geographic writer Thomas B. Allen mused in a 1996 article about his 
finding a potsherd bearing a fingerprint of the potter. When he inquired if 
he could take the fragment to a forensic anthropologist, the Chinese 
scientist asked whether he "would be able to tell if the potter was a white 
man". Allen said he was not sure, and the official pocketed the fragment and 
quietly walked away. It appears that many things get in the way of 
scientific discovery and disclosure.

The existence of the Olmec culture in Old Mexico has always posed a problem. 
Where did the Negroid people depicted on the colossal heads come from? Why 
are there Caucasians carved on the stele in what is Mexico's seed 
civilisation? What is worse, why aren't the indigenous Mexican people found 
on the Olmec artifacts? Recently a Mexican archaeologist solved the problem 
by making a fantastic claim: that the Olmec heads--which generations of 
people of all ethnic groups have agreed bear a striking resemblance to 
Africans--were really representations of the local tribe.

STORMTROOPERS FOR DARWINISM

The public does not seem at all aware of the fact that the scientific 
establishment has a double standard when it comes to the free flow of 
information. In essence, it goes like this... Scientists are highly 
educated, well trained and intellectually capable of processing all types of 
information, and they can make the correct critical distinctions between 
fact and fiction, reality and fantasy. The unwashed public is simply 
incapable of functioning on this high mental plane.

The noble ideal of the scientist as a highly trained, impartial, apolitical 
observer and assembler of established facts into a useful body of knowledge 
seems to have been shredded under the pressures and demands of the real 
world. Science has produced many positive benefits for society; but we 
should know by now that science has a dark, negative side. Didn't those meek 
fellows in the clean lab coats give us nuclear bombs and biological weapons? 
The age of innocence ended in World War II.

That the scientific community has an attitude of intellectual superiority is 
thinly veiled under a carefully orchestrated public relations guise. We 
always see Science and Progress walking hand in hand. Science as an 
institution in a democratic society has to function in the same way as the 
society at large; it should be open to debate, argument and 
counter-argument. There is no place for unquestioned authoritarianism. Is 
modern science meeting these standards?

In the Fall of 2001, PBS aired a seven-part series, titled Evolution. Taken 
at face value, that seems harmless enough. However, while the program was 
presented as pure, objective, investigative science journalism, it 
completely failed to meet even minimum standards of impartial reporting. The 
series was heavily weighted towards the view that the theory of evolution is 
"a science fact" that is accepted by "virtually all reputable scientists in 
the world", and not a theory that has weaknesses and strong scientific 
critics.

The series did not even bother to interview scientists who have criticisms 
of Darwinism: not "creationists" but bona fide scientists. To correct this 
deficiency, a group of 100 dissenting scientists felt compelled to issue a 
press release, "A Scientific Dissent on Darwinism", on the day the first 
program was scheduled to go to air. Nobel nominee Henry "Fritz" Schaefer was 
among them. He encouraged open public debate of Darwin's theory:

Some defenders of Darwinism embrace standards of evidence for evolution that 
as scientists they would never accept in other circumstances.

We have seen this same "unscientific" approach applied to archaeology and 
anthropology, where "scientists" simply refuse to prove their theories yet 
appoint themselves as the final arbiters of "the facts". It would be naive 
to think that the scientists who cooperated in the production of the series 
were unaware that there would be no counter-balancing presentation by 
critics of Darwin's theory.

Richard Milton is a science journalist. He had been an ardent true believer 
in Darwinian doctrine until his investigative instincts kicked in one day. 
After 20 years of studying and writing about evolution, he suddenly realised 
that there were many disconcerting holes in the theory. He decided to try to 
allay his doubts and prove the theory to himself by using the standard 
methods of investigative journalism.

Milton became a regular visitor to London's famed Natural History Museum. He 
painstakingly put every main tenet and classic proof of Darwinism to the 
test. The results shocked him. He found that the theory could not even stand 
up to the rigours of routine investigative journalism.

The veteran science writer took a bold step and published a book titled The 
Facts of Life: Shattering the Myths of Darwinism. It is clear that the 
Darwinian myth had been shattered for him, but many more myths about science 
would also be crushed after his book came out. Milton says:

I experienced the witch-hunting activity of the Darwinist police at first 
handÉit was deeply disappointing to find myself being described by a 
prominent Oxford zoologist [Richard Dawkins] as "loony", "stupid" and "in 
need of psychiatric help" in response to purely scientific reporting.

(Does this sound like stories that came out of the Soviet Union 20 years ago 
when dissident scientists there started speaking out?)

Dawkins launched a letter-writing campaign to newspaper editors, implying 
that Milton was a "mole" creationist whose work should be dismissed. Anyone 
at all familiar with politics will recognise this as a standard 
Machiavellian by-the-book "character assassination" tactic. Dawkins is a 
highly respected scientist, whose reputation and standing in the scientific 
community carry a great deal of weight.

According to Milton, the process came to a head when the London Times Higher 
Education Supplement commissioned him to write a critique of Darwinism. The 
publication foreshadowed his coming piece: "Next Week: Darwinism - Richard 
Milton goes on the attack". Dawkins caught wind of this and wasted no time 
in nipping this heresy in the bud. He contacted the editor, Auriol Stevens, 
and accused Milton of being a "creationist", and prevailed upon Stevens to 
pull the plug on the article. Milton learned of this behind-the-scenes 
backstabbing and wrote a letter of appeal to Stevens. In the end, she caved 
in to Dawkins and scratched the piece.

Imagine what would happen if a politician or bureaucrat used such pressure 
tactics to kill a story in the mass media. It would ignite a huge scandal. 
Not so with scientists, who seem to be regarded as "sacred cows" and beyond 
reproach. There are many disturbing facts related to these cases. Darwin's 
theory of evolution is the only theory routinely taught in our public school 
system that has never been subjected to rigorous scrutiny; nor have any of 
the criticisms been allowed into the curriculum.

This is an interesting fact, because a recent poll showed that the American 
public wants the theory of evolution taught to their children; however, "71 
per cent of the respondents say biology teachers should teach both Darwinism 
and scientific evidence against Darwinian theory". Nevertheless, there are 
no plans to implement this balanced approach.

It is ironic that Richard Dawkins has been appointed to the position of 
Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is 
a classic "Brain Police" stormtrooper, patrolling the neurological front 
lines. The Western scientific establishment and mass media pride themselves 
on being open public forums devoid of prejudice or censorship. However, no 
television program examining the flaws and weaknesses of Darwinism has ever 
been aired in Darwin's home country or in America. A scientist who opposes 
the theory cannot get a paper published.

The Mysterious Origins of Man was not a frontal attack on Darwinism; it 
merely presented evidence that is considered anomalous by the precepts of 
his theory of evolution.

Returning to our bastions of intellectual integrity, Forest Mims was a solid 
and skilled science journalist. He had never been the centre of any 
controversy and so he was invited to write the most-read column in the 
prestigious Scientific American, "The Amateur Scientist", a task he gladly 
accepted. According to Mims, the magazine's editor Jonathan Piel then 
learned that he also wrote articles for a number of Christian magazines. The 
editor called Mims into his office and confronted him.

"Do you believe in the theory of evolution?" Piel asked.
Mims replied, "No, and neither does Stephen Jay Gould."
His response did not affect Piel's decision to bump Mims off the popular 
column after just three articles.

This has the unpleasant odour of a witch-hunt. The writer never publicly 
broadcast his private views or beliefs, so it would appear that the 
"stormtroopers" now believe they have orders to make sure "unapproved" 
thoughts are never publicly disclosed.

TABOO OR NOT TABOO?

So, the monitors of "good thinking" are not just the elite of the scientific 
community, as we have seen in several cases; they are television producers 
and magazine editors as well. It seems clear that they are all driven by the 
singular imperative of furthering "public science education", as the 
president of the Cambrian Institute so aptly phrased it.

However, there is a second item on the agenda, and that is to protect the 
public from "unscientific" thoughts and ideas that might infect the mass 
mind. We outlined some of those taboo subjects at the beginning of the 
article; now we should add that it is also "unwholesome" and "unacceptable" 
to engage in any of the following research pursuits: paranormal phenomena, 
UFOs, cold fusion, free energy and all the rest of the "pseudo-sciences". 
Does this have a familiar ring to it? Are we hearing the faint echoes of 
religious zealotry?

Who ever gave science the mission of engineering and directing the 
inquisitive pursuits of the citizenry of the free world? It is all but 
impossible for any scientific paper that has anti-Darwinian ramifications to 
be published in a mainstream scientific journal. It is also just as 
impossible to get the "taboo" subjects even to the review table, and you can 
forget about finding your name under the title of any article in Nature 
unless you are a credentialled scientist, even if you are the next Albert 
Einstein.

To restate how this conspiracy begins, it is with two filters: credentials 
and peer review. Modern science is now a maze of such filters set up to 
promote certain orthodox theories and at the same time filter out that data 
already prejudged to be unacceptable. Evidence and merit are not the guiding 
principles; conformity and position within the established community have 
replaced objectivity, access and openness.

Scientists do not hesitate to launch the most outrageous personal attacks 
against those they perceive to be the enemy. Eminent palaeontologist Louis 
Leakey penned this acid one-liner about Forbidden Archeology: "Your book is 
pure humbug and does not deserve to be taken seriously by anyone but a 
fool." Once again, we see the thrust of a personal attack; the merits of the 
evidence presented in the book are not examined or debated. It is a blunt, 
authoritarian pronouncement.

In a forthcoming instalment, we will examine some more documented cases and 
delve deeper into the subtler dimensions of the conspiracy.

© 2002 by Will Hart
Will HART


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