A Landmark Book

[uniface]

If you are interested in the history of the people who made the artifacts, especially in New England and Eastern Canada, across to the upper Great Lakes and down to the Gulf of Mexico, then "Man and Impact in the Americas" by E. P. Grondine will be the best book you ever read, without a doubt.

For an example of one of the impacts he covers, the earth passing through the tail of the comet Encke in 536 AD, triggering worldwide climate changes that included the crop failures that began the Dark Ages in Europe and, over here, the collapse of the Hopewell civilization in North America. And so forth through 465 pages of densely researched text (the last 78 of which are verbatim translations of the traditional histories of the Six Nations, the Natchez, the Shawnee, the Creeks and the Lenape).

Each impact is discussed from a scientific perspective first (the author was a reporter who covered NASA for scientific publications), and then from the descriptions of them found in the traditional histories. Together, these paint a surprisingly detailed picture of the history that it's fashionable to regard as "lost," but isn't lost at all -- only ignored.

A couple of the remarks he tosses in as he goes :

Many in the anthropological community decry any suggestion of trans-Pacific or trans-Atlantic contact, as though the adoption by Native Americans of "foreign" technology would somehow take something away from them. The plain fact is that due to natural currents, both trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic contacts were inevitable; if not by design, with certainty by accident. Once again, in only one century from 1775 to 1875 at least 20 Japanese junks were involuntarily driven by storms and currents to landing points from the Aleutian Islands to Mexico; an average of one watercraft every five years [footnote 11]. Further, in the last century, some 600 African craft have washed up on the coast of South America, a rough average of one watercraft every two months [footnote 12].

Given these rates of accidental trans-oceanic crossings, it is a slur on the Native American peoples to insist that either 1) they were so cruel that they immediately dispatched every mariner who had the misfortune to be ship wrecked and then the good luck to be stranded on their shores alive, or 2) they were too stupid to take advantage of the new technologies which either these mariners or their crew-less watercraft would have provided. Those who blindly dismiss trans-oceanic contact also fail to consider that technologies may have spread from Native Americans in the other direction -- and this is well evidenced as well. Plants with trans-oceanic distribution include cocoanut, various edible palms, pineapple, banana, cotton, the grain amaranth, and hennequin, a type of hemp [footnote 13].

This led them to an absolute denial . . . of the existence of "Giants" until the late 1950s. At that time, archaeologist George K. Neuman discovered the remains of a giant while excavating at Steubenville, just down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh, and shortly afterwards archaeologist Don W. Dragoo discovered similar remains while excavating Cressap Mound in West Virginia[footnote 2]

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This is a landmark book in the recovery of North American History before Columbus, IMHO. The sheer volume of research in it is mind boggling. You can get it for $35 plus mailing from Amazon, or postage free from E. P. Grondine, P.O.Box 158, Kempton,Ill., 60946

 

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[Tnmountains]

You know Uni that accidental trans-oceanic crossings had to of happened. Its crazy for us to even think otherwise. Given the ocean currents and all the documented finds from Vikings to who knows all else. It seems the only proff that will fly will be digital photographs of the landings
Hope I get a chance to read that book. It sounds like a good winter read. Thank you.
Merry Christmas to you and you family
TnMountains