Noah’s Ark Ministries International, a Chinese Christian evangelical group, claims to have found “Noah’s ark” in Turkey.

It’s overdue. Various groups have been claiming every 2-3 years that this mythical boat has been found, but actual evidence never finds its way to the hands of independent investigators. The last ark discovered was by Bob Cornuke in 2006. It, too, never found its way to any real scientists to investigate.

The current “discovered ark” is alleged to be “carbon-dated to 4,800 years ago” by the Chinese “investigators.” There’s no revelation of the methodology or procedures used in conducting the radiocarbon dating, but even if the dates are correct, there’s ample evidence that the region was forested in the Bronze Age. There should be wooden structures.

My prediction: the site will always remain “a closely guarded secret”; no scientific publication of the find(s) will see the light of peer-reviewed literature; any additional information will be in the form of press release from the “ministry.”

Obviously they haven’t located “Noah’s ark.” There’s no reason to accept such a story was accurate given the earlier progenitor of the tale in the form of Gilgamesh, from which the anonymous authors of Genesis borrowed heavily, sometimes word-for-word.

What they should be looking for is Utnapishtim‘s boat or, better yet, Ziusudra‘s raft. But there is no evidence for a flood that was able to reach the peaks of Mt. Ararat -nor is there enough water in the entire world to make it happen. There are probably any number of real reasons to send archaeological expeditions to Mt. Ararat, but any of them looking for a boat that contained two of every species on the planet during a global flood is a colossal waste of time.

EDIT: On Paleobabble, Mike Heiser shares an email he received from someone alleging inside information to a very elaborate hoax. “In the late summer of 2008 ten Kurdish workers [...] are said to have planted large wood beams taken from an old structure in the Black Sea area”

Related articles by Zemanta

• Is this Noah’s Ark? (beliefnet.com)
• The search for Noah’s Ark: a history (telegraph.co.uk)
• Stunning Claim: ‘Noah’s Ark Didn’t Exist’ (grantlawrence.blogspot.com)
• Evangelist Explorers Say They Found Noah’s Ark (newser.com)

A few days ago, I posted some questions, skeptical of the recent news that a “crucifixion” nail of the time of Jesus was found. Primarily, I questioned the very notion that the nail could be dated with any accuracy. Other than saying, “its probably of the Roman period,” very little else can really be said of the nail’s provenience.

In a new article that I noticed on the interwebs, the director for the Association for Roman Archaeology, Bryn Walters, has made a few comments. He described the circumstances by which the nail came to light:

Mr Walters said that about seven weeks ago he had been asked to inspect the nail. “It was a Roman nail. There are millions of Roman nails, perhaps billions. It could not possibly be from a crucifixion be cause if it had been hammered in, it would have been bent — and this is dead straight.

“They did not tell me where it came from. I would not accept it as a nail coming from any crucifixion. It was perfectly preserved. It was four inches long, which I would say was a bit short for a crucifixion. A cruci fixion pin could be longer than that.

Oh, and he also said:

“I know of only one nail from a crucifixion, and that is kept secretly in Jerusalem. That was a nail ham mered through a heel: it was dam aged and rusty.”

Walters went on to describe the men that presented it to him as “not religious” and having “nothing to do with the Christian Church.” And, he included a comment that the nail could just as easily been part of 17th or 18th century residential construction at the fort it was found in, which is an 18th century fort on Madeira Island in Portugal at a port called Funchal.

Veneration of relics is something that has always existed in the early Christian Church. As far back as the 4th and 5th centuries CE, there are examples of this in Church literature. At around this time, the practice “expanded in the form of a liturgical cult, receiving theological justification”^[1]. In his book, Relics of the Christ, Joe Nickell classifies relics in four ways:

1. First Class: the body of a saint or a portion of it (bone, fragment of flesh, etc)
2. Second Class: item or piece of an item once used by a saint (clothing, etc.)
3. Third Class: an item deliberately touched to a first class relic
4. Fourth Class: anything deliberately touched to a second class relic with the intention of creating a fourth class relic.

Relics had a importance to 5th and 6th century religionists since without a relic, new shrines and other religious architecture couldn’t be built. The acquisition and possession of a relic at a fort could have meant justification for continued occupation of the site.

What politician doesn’t want to keep military installations in his district?

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Dating of Iron Nails (ahotcupofjoe.net)
• It’s time to bring relics back to the Catholic Church. (slate.com)

1. Nickell, Joe (2007). Relics of Christ. University Press of Kentucky, pp. 18-19

One of the pseudo-archaeological claims that I see from time to time on the intertubes is the speculation that there are underwater ruins of an ancient civilization off the coast of Yonagumi.

This by itself isn’t such a fantastic claim. There are countless settlements and remnants of civilizations as old as the neolithic and before that have since been inundated by rising sea levels. At the height of the Last Glacial Maximum, sea levels were as much as 100-120 meters lower^[1]. According to Graham Hancock, a mystery-monger and significance-junkie who profits quite well from his books and media appearances in which he appeals to the sense of mystery in us all, the site at Yonaguni is at a depth of “up to 30 meters^[2].” By conservative estimates, this would put the region above sea level at between 8-10 thousand years ago^[3]!

What Hancock would have us believe is that a culture lived and thrived on this remote island 10,000 years ago and was able to create monumental architecture. Again, by itself, this isn’t a completely far-fetched idea. Monumental architecture did start to appear in various places around the world at around 10,000 – 6,500 years ago. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be the case at Yonaguni.

The conclusion that the submarine rock formations found at Yonaguni are anthropogenic is quite a leap that isn’t supported by evidence. To reach this conclusion, we must first begin with the premise that the submarine geology cannot be natural. As with other sites around the globe, mystery-mongers will quickly and quite fallaciously conclude that “nature doesn’t make right angles” and Hancock, in chapter 27 of Underworld, quotes, mentions, or implies this more than once. You might recall my previous posts on Semir Osmanagic and his (and others’) “nature doesn’t make right-angles” claim.

Many of the angles that I’ve seen in various photographs on the “ruins” aren’t right-angles at all, but rhombohedral. That is to say, they’re slightly off from perpendicular, which is a characteristic of a kind of fracturing in geology known as jointing. Jointing occurs when there is fracturing without movement as with a fault. Imagine placing a stack of Graham crackers on a pencil and apply force to the top of the cracker and you’ll see various fracturing occur depending upon the direction and intensity of the force applied and the position of the pencil (or pencils if you want to get creative).

One of the supporting claims of proponents of the “ancient ruins” speculation is that a “stone

The Alleged Stone Tablet

A Cypriot Stone Anchor

tablet” has been found, but photos of this “tablet” look more like a weight or anchor -which would depend upon the size. None of the photos on the internet have actually had anything included in the photo for scale (archaeologists often include a small black and white placard in centimeters; geologists often just plop their hammer in the photo). I would be very surprised if these types of stones weren’t common in the region given the thousands of years of fishing economy. Nets need weights and boats need anchors.

The Alleged Head

Yet another supporting photo is the “colossal head,” reminiscent of Olmec society in Mesoamerica. Yet this rock seems to be a perpetrator of pareidolia more than anything. Like the so-called “face on Mars,” this rock only just resemble a face with some vaguely familiar crevices where one might expect to see eyes. Given the number of rocks in the area, there are bound to be several that have naturally occurring “faces” on them -you can see such “faces” just watching a few cumulus clouds pass on a breezy spring day.

Then there’s the pictures at the top of this post. Number 1 shows an alleged “site plan” of the “ruins,” but this is completely fallacious and leading since it presupposes and leads the viewer into the expectation that something has actually been discovered. Looking at this diagram, you can see its labeled with “terraces” and “streets,” a “sacred place” and a “gate” and so on. None of these alleged features have any supporting evidence for context. Not a shred. Indeed, they look like rocks that have fractured underwater in the same manner that they have above sea level. The difference is the debris. There is a distinct lack of debris in the photos you see of the underwater features (i.e #2) while there are more rubble and debris from broken and fallen rock on the coastal formations. The reason is most likely the current. I noticed that this warm water region is distinctly void of vegetation and fish, which is consistent with rough water due to wave action. These same waves would remove the debris from broken rock and fill the base with sand further hiding the debris.

If we can assume the model (#3) found on many websites is accurate, we can then compare it with terrestrial geology. Does it compare? I’d say so. Photo number 4 is a close up of the same member, with the same apparent strike and the same stratigraphy of shale or sandstone as the underwater version. There are right angles. There are rhombohedral angles. There are steps. There are “terraces.” See the full size version below:

There’s little doubt that those who want there to be a dark, mysterious but lost civilization to exist in the waters of Yonaguni will simply go on seeing only evidence of that imagined civilization in the very natural but cool geology of the region. However, there simply isn’t any supporting evidence that such a civilization existed and that this civilization created the monumental architecture necessary to be what is claimed. There are too many new assumptions that must be introduced (which is the very thing that appeals to certain mystery-mongers) about human evolution. Along with monumental architecture comes wide-scale domestication of plants and animals -a fishing culture alone would not be able to provide the required calories for the number of people necessary to engage in such architecture. There should be corresponding artifacts on the island of Yonaguni which support the hypothesis that 10,000 years ago there existed a culture which was able to engage in monumental architecture. Such evidence is not forthcoming either on land or below the surface of the waves thrashing Yonaguni’s shores.

1. http://www.cartruts.com/pictures/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.jpg
2. Hancock, Graham (24 May 2008) Confronting Yonaguni, online excerpt of Chap. 27. Underworld. Crown, 2002.
3. http://www.cartruts.com/pictures/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.jpg

I recently blogged about the Serpent Mound after a visit to the Ohio archaeological site, sharing a few of the photos I took while there. Today, I get a comment that explores the “alternative” explanations for the mound (as well as other ancient sites). My first instinct was to simply delete the rather lengthy comment that started off in the first sentence talking about “energy,” but I realized that this sort of nonsense needs rebuttal -there are too many impressionable kids and less-informed but curious fans of archaeology out there that will ultimately stumble on to my misinformed guest’s website. So better to tackle it head-on.

I also invite any other readers of this blog or the Skeptic’s Circle to comment in response. But without further ado, let me introduce Miroslav Provod:

Serpent mound is a clay mound that is shaped in meandering curves, which form more energy in their inner bents due to the increased density of zones. The condition for it’s functioning is the same as with other megalithic structures – it must be placed into a location with enough cosmic energy (details can be found at http://www.miroslavprovod.com There were many serpent mounds built, but a mound that looks like a snake that is trying to swallow an egg seems to be the most perfect one. It is a mound with four different energetic degrees:
- six locations of a meandering shape of the same energetic value (half of a winding)
- one location of greater energy in the shape of an egg (one whole winding)
- one location of even greater energy in a triangular winding
- and one last location of a different degree of energy in the tail part, which is formed by the combination of the meander with the spiral

There is just so much wrong with this.

The only energies in the mound that can be empirically shown to exist are infrared energy, absorbed from the sun, and the energies involved in chemical and molecular bonding. Each of these energies are well-understood and present in all rocks and earth. There isn’t any special energy, as yet undefined, that has been shown to exist in mounds. In this paragraph, Provod here several pseudoscientific and nonsense terms and phrases. For instance, what does “energetic degree” mean? Energy is something that can be empirically measured and simply refers to the ability to do work. There isn’t anything mystical about that. Provod implies that the shape of the mound affects the mound’s energy, but this simply isn’t the case. The only useful energy in the Serpent mound (or any other mound or megalithic structure) is infrared, which is absorbed during the day and emanated during the night.

For all its useful purpose, the energy given off by the serpent mound is no different than the energy given off by any other hill, rock or field in the area. To state differently is to make baseless, wild, and pseudoscientific claims that cannot be empirically supported.

The energetic function of the mounds could be proved by an easy experiment, during which the energy would be measured by a method, which is described in detail in my article “Dowsing versus aura”. To perform this experiment, we need about 10 metres long hose with water flowing in it and any rock of about 60Kg mass.

There’s no need or reason to “prove” the “energetic function of the mounds.” This is something that is well-understood in geology, physics, and meteorology. The sun’s radiation is absorbed during the day and emanated at night. The effect can be responsible for various weather related phenomena such as fog, dew, or even wind. There’s no mystery. It has little or nothing to do with the shape or size of the mound, though hills in general can act to funnel air currents. The Serpent Mound (along with most man-made mounds) is far too small to have any noticeable effect on air currents beyond the immediate vicinity of the mound itself.

It could be concluded from these experiments that the clay mounds of a serpent shape gave people an energetic place to increase their energy in the same way as menhirs, dolmens and other prehistoric structures.

This is a completely nonsensical, non-scientific, and uneducated statement. There is no scientific basis to make such claims. Indeed, “an energetic place to increase their energy” means nothing to someone that isn’t plugging in an iPod to a USB port. The Hopewell, Adena and other early inhabitants may have held lines of thinking that support these “energy” claims, but these were based on superstition and myth, not empirical knowledge.

IT’S NECESSARY to remind – and I emphasize this – that at the times of constructions of the megalithic structures, the grid of energetic parts wasn’t affected by the civilization sources.

Again, this is a statement that makes no logical or rational sense. “[T]he grid of energetic parts wasn’t affected by civilization sources” means nothing. It is a phrase that holds no value, particularly with regard to first century or earlier civilizations. It certainly hasn’t enough value to be emphatically reminded since this implies that the notion had value to begin with. You may need to restate this in some way that elucidates your thoughts more clearly.

The burial-ground of the rulers of Egypt “The kings’ valley” is situated in a meander of river Nile. There are hundreds of thousands of megalithic structures in the world that are built in the inner bends of water streams, meanders and confluence of rivers.

To demonstrate the pseudoscientific thinking involved with making statements like this, I feel it’s necessary -and I emphasize this- to point out two things: 1) the meandering nature of rivers and streams changes, often within single generations. So sites that are presently situated at the bend in a river may not have been 4,000 years ago. Or they may have been 4,000 years ago but not presently; 3) monumental architecture is most evident in agricultural societies (they had the social/political/economic capitals to build). Such societies nearly always built near rivers and streams because, guess what? They lived there.

There are also a great number of megalithic and religious structures built above the underground springs.

See my paragraph above.

The curvature of any matter works in the same way as a curve of a water flow, but only given that the matter has enough energy.

Again, this is a nonsensical statement. The type of “energy” isn’t defined. Is is molecular? Chemical? Infrared? Moreover, water *is* matter, so therefore the first part of the sentence defeats itself. In addition, what does it mean to say “works the same?” The angle of the curve is the same. The laws of physics each obeys is the same. etc.

In Malta in the Mediterranean and in other places, there were ritual meeting places for people built in an ellipsoidal shape, partly submerged underground. Domes, vaults, apses, circular structures and other rounded structures have the same qualities that strengthen the energy. Some nations, for example the Celts, constructed clay mounds of squared or rectangular ground plan, where the zones were also dense, but in a different grid.

Again, this are nonsensical statements. “[S]trengthen the energy” doesn’t seem to make sense in the context it’s presented. One cannot “strengthen” energy except to add additional energy, i.e. increasing voltage, focusing the sun’s rays on with a mirror, reducing the amount of resistance on a variable resistor to turn the heat up on an oven, etc. The shapes of buildings can “strengthen energy” in this way by making infrared radiation emanated from the ground or a hearth more efficiently used. But I suspect this isn’t the context you had in mind.

People used to supply their body energy by the use of all kinds of megalithic structures.

This is true in the hearth context I mentioned, but nonsense in the context you’re implying. One can benefit from infrared energy by sleeping over the buried coals or near the heated rocks of a hearth. That’s about it, bub.

However, this is just a first finding, which could be compared to a snowball, which eventually grows into an avalanche.

Doubtful. Sorry, but your premises about the nature of “energy” and megaliths are neither sound nor cogent.

It is described in technical literature, how some rocks of various chemical compositions were exactingly transported (pyramids, Stonehenge, Machu Picu and others) in order to achieve proper combinations.

Again, this statement makes no sense. What “technical literature” do you refer to. I suppose it’s true that the sarsens and lintels of Stonehenge were of “various chemical compositions” like diorite, rhyolite, tuff, etc. It’s also true that they were “exactingly transported. But the statement breaks down when you add, “in order to acheive proper combinations.” There is nothing mystical about the combination of the rocks used in the sites you mention. Each of the quarries are known (though there is some very minor disagreement about the origin of Stonehenge’s bluestones) and there exist very plausible and sensible hypotheses as to the functions of each of these sites that are independent of the non-existent “energies” you allude to.

It’s necessary to clarify their interactions and explain the chemical processes of the rocks, which affected the energy.

This is completely pseudoscientific. Inclusion of words like “chemical,” “process,” “interaction,” and “energy” doesn’t automatically imply that you have a good grasp of physics or science in general. You must first use these words in contexts that make sense. Stating that there are “chemical processes” that must be “explained” to understand how builders of monumental architecture achieved the “combinations” that they did is truly not necessary. There is no correlation that has been established to exist nor have the “chemical processes” themselves been defined. We certainly cannot effectively discuss how “energy” is “affected” since, once again, the “energy” also isn’t defined (infrared, molecular, etc.).

Therefore, it’s not only about supplying bodily energy but also about the quality of the energy and it’s transformation onto the cellular membranes in an optimal amount.

Please, feel free to define “bodily energy.” The closest analog in reality that I can come up with is infrared (a.k.a. heat). But how is the quality of heat important to monumental architecture like the Serpent Mound or Stonehenge? What “cellular membranes” is this heat being transferred to? One assumes humans, but depending upon the Serpent Mound or Stonehenge for warmth is inefficient to say the least. It would be a much better use of energy (a.k.a. work) to build a hearth and a subsequent fire.

If we want to continue in uncovering the secrets of ancient past, we must begin with the fact that we can’t bluff ourselves with explanations of the megalithic cultures, which are not logical.

What non-”logical” explanations are being presented other than your own. The explanations suggested for the Serpent Mound are not only plausible but, given the evidence, it is probable that one (or more) are accurate. The site was probably ritual and funerary in use. There’s no evidence that iPods were being charged. There’s even less evidence that humans were getting warmth (or any other energy) from it.

And we must also respect the fact that we have something to do with a civilisation whose technical maturity we don’t understand yet.

On the contrary, we have a very good understanding of the technical maturity of the Hopewell and Adena cultures. They achieved rudimentary ceramic skills. They built thatched homes. They had rudimentary agricultural skills. And so on. All of this survives very well in the archaeological record.

Also, I think it may be favourable to find out, why was this force of nature that goes through history in the religious structures until our age concealed and who wanted it to be concealed.

What do you mean concealed? The Serpent mound wasn’t concealed. Nor was Stonehenge, Nabta Playa, the Maya ruins, etc. Vegetation may have grown over some of them, but there was no intelligent agent at work with goal to “conceal” them.

One of the reasons I’m so sure that Provod simply copy/pasted the text of his “comment” is that he bothered to leave the comment at all, particularly with such a tone of confidence and assurance that his opinion is informed and rational. Mr. Provod, I’m sorry but, while your comments are welcome, this one was neither informed nor rational.

In the last year, there have been a few stories that presented some bad archaeology and, since this is the last Four Stone Hearth of the year, I thought it might be useful to recap these stories with a summary of each that includes the primary assumptions and faults they rely on. I’ve included some stories that you might expect, such as the Bosnian pyramid and the Jesus tomb, but also at least one you might not have heard about. A bibliography with links for further reading will follow this article

The Bosnian Pyramid

For a brief summary of the Bosnian Pyramid debacle that is still playing out, see my previous post, The Bosnian Pyramid: a Brief Summary. This, therefore, will be a brief, brief summary!

The hoopla actually started in 2006 with Semir Osmanagic’s announcement that he had found the largest and oldest pyramid known to man, which was created by between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago –so large and so old it threatened to change the history of Europe and the World as we know it. And it would have. Had it been genuine.

But such is the nature of pseudo-archaeological claims: they provide much sensation and appeal instantly to the significance-junkies and mystery-mongers who want there to be something mysterious and, perhaps, sacred about the emergence and antiquity of man. This is why we see so many products for sale, particularly in the “alternative” medicine (as if there really are legitimate alternatives to medicine) field, that claim to have been “discovered by” or “known to” the ancients.

Osmangic was the guy that wrote a book which put the ancestry of the Maya as the Atlanteans. And, as if this weren’t kooky enough, he placed the ancestry of the Atlanteans as extra-terrestrial. The media (perhaps being the natural significance-junkies and mystery-mongers that they are) picked up on Osmanagic’s press releases and ran with them, without consulting with any genuine archaeologists. In spite of the press claims, Osmanagic is not an archaeologist. Not even close.

The reason the press was duped (and is still being duped in some cases) by the pyramid-claims is that the hill does vaguely look like a pyramid from certain angles (as do many, many hills around the world) and that there is some very interesting geology in the region that gives the appearance of manmade blocks. But the geology has been very well explained and understood, even before Osmangic and his “team” began bulldozing the hillside in what they refer to as “excavations.”

The main problem with this sort of pseudo-archaeology is that it is destroying a genuine archaeological site that has nothing to do with pyramids.

The Jesus Tomb

The tomb itself was actually discovered in 1980, but “rediscovered” in more recent years by Simcha Jacobovici who co-produced the documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus with James Cameron.

The assertion is, obviously, that this is the tomb of Jesus Christ, the Christian Messiah who was, according to biblical legend, crucified to death by the Romans only later to “rise from the dead” and ascend to heaven. The implication, therefore, is that Jesus did not ascend at least bodily to heaven and that there were remains left to entomb. Based on the inscriptions found on other ossuaries within the tomb, other implications were that Jesus: was married to Mary Magdeline; had brothers and sisters (some of whom may have been older); had a child; may not have died on the cross; etc.

The producer, Jacobovici, claimed in the documentary that this is proof of the existence of Jesus, making this, too, an implication for those that doubted the historicity of Jesus or for those interested in defending that historicity. However, the documentary doesn’t reconcile a few problems, most namely perhaps, the 600 to 1 claim created by a statistician and used in the documentary. In this claim, statistician Andrey Feuerverger concluded that the odds are at least 600 to 1 that the combination of names appeared in the tomb by chance.

Scientific American had this to say:

Scan The Lexicon of Jewish Names, which includes names from ossuaries, ancient texts and every other source available, and you will learn that the names unearthed in the so-called Jesus Family Tomb were among the most common of that era. One in every three women listed in the Lexicon was named Mary, for instance, and, at that time, one in every 20 Jewish men was called Yeshua, or Jesus. […]“I did permit the number one in 600 to be used in the film—I’m prepared to stand behind that but on the understanding that these numbers were calculated based on assumptions that I was asked to use,” says Feuerverger. “These assumptions don’t seem unreasonable to me, but I have to remember that I’m not a biblical scholar.”

Indeed, one of the biggest contentions about the alleged “tomb of Jesus” is that the names were common. William Dever who, until recently, was the Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, stated in the Washington Post article, ‘Lost Tomb of Jesus’ Claim Called a Stunt, the following:

“I’ve known about these ossuaries for many years and so have many other archaeologists, and none of us thought it was much of a story, because these are rather common Jewish names from that period. It’s a publicity stunt, and it will make these guys very rich, and it will upset millions of innocent people because they don’t know enough to separate fact from fiction.”

That article is no longer available online, but there are numerous internet sites that seem to quote it. I’ll include it in the bibliography as I did find it in the Lexis-Nexis database. The quote is accurate.

Adam’s Bridge

Also known as Rama’s Bridge (or Rama Sethu in Sanskrit) via the Ramayana written between 500 – 100 BCE, this tombolo connects India to Sri Lanka and Vedic legend says that it was built by Rama as a means to rescue his consort who had been abducted and taken to Sri Lanka by Ravana. The tombolo itself stretches approximately 30 miles and separates the Gulf of Mannar from the Palk Strait. Believers in Vedic mythology think the tombolo is a manmade bridge (the name “Adam’s Bridge” is the Western name found on early British maps), but science reveals something quite different of course.

The reason this shows up as a topic of psueud-archaeology is because the highest court of the state of Tamil Nadu, where the bridge resides, states that the “bridge” is manmade. This is in response to the Sethusamundram Ship Canal Project (SSCP), which is a goal to link the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar between India and Sri Lanka, a project that, upon completion, would cut about 400 km of shipping normally used in the voyage around Sri Lanka. But government officials deem the tombolo as a “divine” feature and one that is religious in significance, preventing progress in their region.

This is a topic that is linked very strongly to the Vedic Creationism of Michael Cremo, the author of Forbidden Archaeology, and I think I remember seeing it mentioned in this “text” if I’m not mistaken, but I no longer own a copy of it to verify. Regardless, Cremo argues elsewhere that man is millions of years old, and as Homo sapiens who possessed “high technology” or “high civilization.”

Adam’s Bridge is a geologic feature and not a constructed one, and it has been studied at length and satisfactorily described by geologists (Nityananda & Jayakumar, 1981). There’s no mystery to the Palk Straits. Tombolos are common in the world and the geologic morphology is ideal for one in the Palk Straits. Moreover, 1 million years ago the dominant hominid species was Homo erectus, who relied on Acheulean tools, hardly the technology capable of constructing a “bridge” across the Palk Straits. Various dating of the tombolo itself has been placed between 3,500 to 6,000 years ago, which puts the formation at a very recent age, geologically.

Bibliography

Cooperman, Alan (2007). ‘Lost Tomb of Jesus’ Claim Called a Stunt. Washington Post, Section A, A3, February 28, 2007.

Fagan, Garrett and Feder, Kenneth (2006). Crusading against straw men: an alternative view of alternative archaeologies: response to Holtorf. World Archaeology, 38 (4), xxx-xxx.

Garufi, F. (2006). World’s Largest Pyramid? or Hoax? (C. Dowell, Editor) Retrieved September 10, 2007, from Circular Times

Hawass, Z. (2006, June 27). Personal Correspondance with Mark Rose. Retrieved September 9, 2007, from Archaeology Magazine: http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/osmanagic/zahi_hawass.pdf

Headlines India (2007). Ram Sethu man-made, says Madras HC, June 19, 2007.

McGirk, Tim (2007) Jesus: Tales from the Crypt. Time, February 23, 2007

Mims, Christopher (2007). Special Report: Has James Cameron Found Jesus’s Tomb or Is It Just a Statistical Error? Scientific American, March 2, 2007.

Nandini Nityananda and D.Jayakumar (1981). Proposed Relation between Anomalous Geomagnetic Variations and Tectonic History of South India. Phys. Earth Planet, Vol. 27, pp 223-228.

Salt, A. (2006, May 29). Bosnian Pyramids: Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Atlantis. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from History News Network: http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/25850.html

Tabor, James (2007) The Jesus Dynasty Blog.

The Indian Express (2003). Rama’s Bridge is only 3500 years old: CRS February 3, 2003.

In a recent issue of Atlantis Rising, the ragazine that appeals to the significance-junkie, the mystery-monger, and skeptics like me who are fascinated with the first two, Michael Cremo’s latest column “Forbidden Archaeology” highlights a figurine of dubious origin. The article in question is “the mystery of the Nampa image,” Atlantis Rising, no. 64, July/August 2007.

According to Cremo, the figurine (dubbed the Nampa Image) was recovered by workers who were drilling a water-well in Nampa, Idaho in 1889. The figurine, about an inch and a half long and made of baked clay was reported to have been recovered by the sand pump from a depth of 300+ feet. Cremo’s account of the “artifact’s” discovery is both credulous and inconsistent. Cremo is critical of Michael Brass, who wrote in his book, The Antiquity of Man: Artifactual, Fossil and Gene Records Explored, that it would have been destroyed by the drilling equipment upon retrieval as it was brought up to the surface. Cremo’s response to Brass is that a tube was used after drilling through the lava layer to pump out the sand but, previously, he mentions that the figurine was brought up with a “core sample.”

This is a small quibble to be sure, but it is relevant since if it were brought up in a core sample, the figurine would be stable and not bumped about. In the tube of sand pump, it would be subject to the laws of physics and knocked around at least enough to pulverize the fragile clay figurine. At the very least, the abrasive effect of the sand in the pump would have rounded it to the point of being unrecognizable to even the most gullible.

The crux of Cremo’s claim with the figurine is that since it was found in a geologic stratum that was of the Plio-Pleistocene, at a depth of 300 feet, the culture that created it must have been in the region about 2 million years ago. As usual, Cremo is credulous to the point of ignoring any parsimonious or realistic explanation, which makes him the utter laughing stock of real archaeology. Unfortunately, the lay-public, eager for stories of mystery and intrigue, get only a portion of the story when they read his perspective. Cremo says in the article, “scientists will go to great lengths to make up some story in order to explain it away,” and is critical of more parsimonious and possible explanations as “powers of the imagination!” and as “speculative tales.” The irony is deep.

What Cremo misses in his account of the “Nampa image,” the little, fragile clay figurine common to the local Native Americans of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is the voices of reason with regard to the find. More likely, he was aware of them, but cherry-picked which criticisms he would be willing to be counter-critical of. He does make short work of one suggestion that the figurine may have found its way at the stratum naturally through a rock fissure or natural geological process. I agree, the explanation is far from realistic, not to mention the same problem of fragility is encountered as the clay figure makes its way to a depth of 300 feet through a rock crevice or fissure as yet undiscovered or exemplified elsewhere in the Glenn’s Ferry formation.

However, there were many criticisms of the object itself, which was heralded by one George Fredrick Wright, an amateur geologist that began as a Christian Darwinist then later turned to active fundamentalist (and was even an author of some of the essays called The Fundamentals, which started and defined this now obnoxious movement of Christianity). There’s an added irony that Cremo, an ancient-Earth Vedic creationist is using a young-Earth Christian creationist to make his point of an exaggerated antiquity of man. Cremo cites Wright’s book, Origin and Antiquity of Man, but makes no mention of Wrights contemporaries who were critical and nearly unanimously dismissive of his work. Indeed, actual geologists and anthropologists of the period remarked that Wright was pseudoscientific:

Dr. Wright’s last example is the feeblest of all-the Nampa image, a “beautifully formed clay image of a female,” said to have been brought up from a depth of 320 feet (!) in the holing of an artesian well, at Nampa, Idaho. It is sad to destroy illusions; but when this same image with its story was laid before a well known government geologist, and he at once recognized it as a clay toy manufactured by the neighboring Pocatello Indians, the person displaying it replied with engaging frankness, “Well, now, don’t give me away!” (Brinton 1892).

And that “well known government geologist?” This was J. W. Powell, who wrote in Popular Science Monthly (1893):

In the fall of 1889 the writer visited Boise City, in Idaho. While stopping at a hotel some gentlemen called on him to show him a figurine which they said they had found in sinking an artesian well in the neighborhood at a depth, if I remember rightly, of more than three hundred feet. The figurine is a little image of a man or woman done in clay and baked. It is not more than an inch and a half in length, and is slender and delicate, more delicate than an ordinary clay pipestem, and altogether exceedingly fragile.

Hold the figurine at the height of your eye and let it fall on the hearth at your feet, and it would be shivered into fragments. It was claimed that this figurine had been brought up from the bottom of an artesian well while the men were working, or about the time that they were working at the well, and that as it came out it was discovered.

When this story was told the writer [Powell], he simply jested with those who claimed to have found it. He had known the Indians that live in the neighborhood, had seen their children play with just such figurines, and had no doubt that the little image had lately belonged to some Indian child, and said the same. While stopping at the hotel different persons spoke about it, and it was always passed off as a jest; and various comments were made about it by various people, some of them claiming that it had given them much sport, and that a good many ” tenderfeet” had looked at it and believed it to be genuine; and they seemed rather pleased that I had detected the hoax. When I returned to Washington I related the jest at a dinner table, and afterward it passed out of my mind. In reading Prof. Wright’s second book I had many surprises, but none of them greater than when I discovered that this figurine had fallen into his hands, and that he had actually published it as evidence of the great antiquity of man in the valley of the Snake River.

Consider the circumstances. A fragile toy is buried in the sands and gravels and boulders of a torrential stream. Three hundred feet of materials are accumulated over it from the floods of thousands of years. Then volcanoes burst forth and pour floods of lava over all; and under more than three hundred feet of sands, gravels, clays, and volcanic rocks the fragile figurine remains for centuries, under such magical conditions that the very color of the burning is preserved. Then well-diggers, with a pump drill, hammer and abrade the rocks, and bore a six-inch hole down to this figurine without destroying it, and with a sand-pump bring it to the surface, to be caught by the well-digger; and Prof. Wright believes the story of the figurine, and places it on record in his book!

And Michael Cremo places it on record in his book! It’s a lengthy quote, but the full context of the account is important. Cremo also cited F.F. Jewett (1890) who described having done “experiments” on the clay that led him to the conclusions that it “must be of considerable age.” What experiments, specifically, aren’t mentioned. But he goes on to declare that “the accumulation of iron upon the grains of sand” can’t be accounted for “except by supposing to have been the result of slow decomposition of substances containing iron.” Perhaps this was the prevailing scientific assessment of the 19th century, but what, precisely, is Cremo’s excuse for failing to recognize that iron oxidation occurs on clay when intentionally fired this way. A process well-known to archaeology and should be understood even for a pseudo-archaeologist.

The “Nampa image” is a hoax. Pure and simple. It was presented at a time in which hoaxes were popular and people liked the notoriety. A contemporary of this little figurine is the Cardiff Giant, which was just being exposed for its fraudulent nature at around the time the worker in Nampa, ID claimed to find a modern clay doll in the sediments of a time when people simply didn’t live in North America, much less make fired clay dolls.

References

Brinton, D.G. (1892). Man and the Glacial Period, a book review. Science, 20 (508), 249.

Cremo, Michael (2007). The mystery of the Nampa image. Atlantis Rising, no. 64, July/Aug.

Jewett, F.F. (1890). Report to the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, vol 24, 448.

Powell, J.W. (1893). Are there evidences of man in the glacial gravels? Popular Science Monthly, vol. XLIII, 324