The latest issue of the Skeptical Inquirer, “The magazine for science & reason,” includes the first in a three-part series of articles written by archaeologist Ken Feder, historian Terry Barnhart (a former Curator of History for the Ohio Historical Society), physical anthropologist Deborah Bolnick and me responding to the claims put forward in the video documentary The Lost Civilizations of North America.
The title of this first article is “Civilizations Lost and Found: Fabricating History. Part One: An Alternate Reality.” We previously issued a brief statement that addressed our concerns with this documentary in general terms, but in this series of articles we refute many of the more serious errors of fact and interpretation that appear in this video in a much more substantive way. We are enormously grateful to Kendrick Frazier, the editor, for recognizing the need for a fulsome response to the important issues raised in the DVD and for allowing us to spread our discussion over three issues!
Perhaps the most important take-home message in the entire series of articles is that “there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that the cultural developments exhibited in the archaeological record [of North America] were in any way inspired by visitors or migrants from Africa, Europe, or Asia.” And, in view of my recent appearance on the television program Ancient Aliens, we could have added “visitors or migrants from other planets” to that list!
Check out the article and watch for the rest of the series in the coming months! Here is a link to our previous “Statement about the Lost Civilizations of North America DVD”: http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2010/12/commentary-on-lost-civilizations-of.html
Brad Lepper
