Occam's Trowel, Sifting archaeological fringe to get to archaeological fact.
Chapter 10 in, The Lost History of Ancient America, opens with the mysterious Professor Julia Patterson seeming to answer a comment from a reader of Ancient America named Tamara Szalewski. Szalewski mentions an anomaly they’ve discovered while looking at Google Earth and other maps. Szalewski mentions how she wonders if the anomaly is already recorded... Continue Reading →
Chapter 9 of the Lost History of Ancient America, is titled, Drowned Village of the Ancient Copper Miners, by Wayne N. May. It may as well be presented as a report of an article May read once. This article is simply a retelling of a 2012 article from Ancient America, about a 2011 discovery by Scott... Continue Reading →
In the briefest of introductions, Joseph outlines the purposes of the Section III. “Our pursuit of Upper Michigan’s Copper Batons…” (Joseph 71) So, among other things, we’re still looking for transoceanic bronze-age travelers.
The eighth article in The Lost History of Ancient America is titled “Michigan's Copper Barons” by Rick Osmon. Osmon jumps right into his article with no explanation of what or who he’s talking about. It’s a bit jarring, and sets the stage for a very confusing article to follow. He starts by telling us about an... Continue Reading →
The seventh article in The Lost History of Ancient America is titled “First Copper Workshop Discovered” by Wayne N. May. May starts with a story. He tells us about Gregory Perino’s discovery of a copper workshop located on Monks Mound in Cahokia, a Mississippian mound complex located in Illinois. Which in itself is not shocking... Continue Reading →
The 6th article in the Lost History of Ancient America is titled “An Ancient American Mexican Pyramid's Liquid Mercury” by Frank Joseph. Like the other articles in the edited volume, this one is brief and short on citations or evidence. What evidence that is offered is re-interpreted to try and hold up Joseph's buried argument... Continue Reading →
The fifth article in the Lost History of Ancient America book, edited by Frank Joseph, is Thomas Anderton's article "Who Were the Oil Tycoons of Pre-Columbian Pennsylvania?" If you answered the Seneca or Iroquois Indians, you would be wrong…according to Anderton. Anderton attempts to make the argument that the ancient oil pits of Pennsylvania were... Continue Reading →
Joseph introduces the second section of The Lost History of Ancient America by telling us about the “extraordinary achievements of ancient America” (2017). Namely that there are oil pits in prehistoric Pennsylvania, quicksilver in Mesoamerica, and of course the copper mines in Michigan (Joseph 2017). There is no grandiose boasting this section, just brief outline... Continue Reading →
The fourth article in The Lost History of Ancient America is titled ‘Eyewitness Engraving of Ancient American Mammoths’ written by Frank Joseph. It appears at first to be a puzzling article choice, as it seems to have nothing to do with transoceanic travelers or providing evidence of Europeans in America before Columbus. Joseph spends a... Continue Reading →
The second article in The Lost History of Ancient America is titled 'Plants Connect the Old and New Worlds'. It's penned by Dr. Carl L. Johannessen (2017), a retired professor of geography from the University of Oregon. Johannessen's article is the longest in the first section of the book and claims that there are 14 plants that were present in... Continue Reading →
Archaeological Fantasies 