-Caveat Lector-
I'll have to dig out my Barry Fell books (*America B.C.*, etc.), which I do
not have readily available. If memory serves me, however, this is an example
of the kind of racist argument I mean (and I am not accusing Fell of racism
himself): the Welsh heroic tradition supposedly records the voyages of the
medieval prince Madoc from North Wales to North America. As some students of
Madoc interpret the story, Madoc landed on the Gulf Coast of Alabama and
worked his way inland with a band of settlers, along the way building a fort
"in archaic Welsh style" at Stone Mountain, Ga. They settled for a time in
Kentucky, according to this hypothesis, then for unknown reasons moved on to
the northwest, eventually intermarrying with and being absorbed by the
Mandan tribe of the Dakotas, who were supposed to be blue-eyed blonds. This
hypothesis was very popular during the Eighteenth Century, when virtually
all pre-Columbian earthworks in Eastern North America were attributed
variously to Egyptians, Romans, or Madoc's Welshmen, among many other
(non-Native American) peoples. One of the assignments Thomas Jefferson gave
to Lewis and Clark was to contact the Mandans and study their language, to
see how much Welsh vocabulary had survived. Other examples of this kind of
racially-oriented pseudo-archaeology include the speculation about the
"Celtic" or "Viking" origins of the Mystery Hill earthworks in New Hampshire
(which have been so extensively altered that any determination of their
origin is probably impossible); the Kensington Runestone, almost certainly a
fake; and mysterious stones with supposed "Punic" inscriptions on them
turned up by a farmer's plow in Oklahoma and adduced as evidence of
Carthaginian settlements in the New World. Virtually all of these
"discoveries" have been made in the context of efforts to "prove" that
Native Americans could not be the legitimate possessors of the land where
the artifacts were found, because (obviously white) settlers had gotten
there first.
With this said, I recognize full well that there is *much* evidence for
extensive pre-Columbian exploration and settlement by "non-Native
Americans." In fact, this can be expanded worldwide; our human ancestors
seem to have been inveterate roamers, forever wandering in search of
whatever they could find, always following the horizon. This has meant that
there is no such thing as a "pure" race, a "pure" culture, a "pure"
language...anywhere, anywhen. No one, not the Smithsonian, the Hopis, the
Maori, or the Dalai Lama, has anything approaching the truth about our
race's past. Discoveries reported just in the last year, such as "Woodhenge"
on the English North Sea coast, the "Miami Circle," and the
recently-revealed evidence for routine cannibalism among at least some
Neanderthal populations, have thrown a lot of accepted archaeological and
historical dogma into confusion. There are mysteries enough on this planet
to keep us busy until the turn of the Fourth Millennium without having to
invent new ones!
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Anon Ymous [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, December 09, 1999 9:25 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [CTRL] People in America early
>
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> > Even borderline researchers such as
> > Barry Fell, for all their good intentions, often wind up using
> arguments
> > which originated with white racists.
>
> Could you please give more info on this?
>
> tanx
>
>
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