Archaeologica.org

Farpoint‘s mention over on the “Land Bridge” thread about there not being found any Flores Man remains in N A reminded me of some old research I had tried to do on the “Little People” of NA
Unfortunately, much like trying to do research into their opposite of “Giants” in NA it is hard to get away from the fringe of the internet.

Like those Giant newspaper mentions, you go back to the late 1800’s and very little digitized evidence.
You end up chasseing curricular references to each other.

There seems to be two elements of physical evidence pointing to a NA Flores Man existence.
First was the discovery of big grave yards in KY and TN.
Second was “Pedro” found in WY.
The rest is Indian folklore. But that folklore is persistent and wide spread.

Pedro seems to be pretty well documented. X-Rays even. He made it to the curiosities circuit of state fairs and such, but was ignored by the “experts” and “mysteriously” lost.
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/wy-littlepeople.html

These are some of the better mentions I have found about the Little people in NA
(I have edited out the obvious book and DVD selling sites)
If someone better than me can find internet available site for the cited newspapers, etc I would be grateful for the sites.

http://www.burlingtonnews.net/littlepeople.html
http://ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore10.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Peo ... _Mountains
Lewis wrote in his journal that the Little People were "deavals" (devils) with very large heads, about 18 inches (46 cm) high, and very alert to any intrusions into their territory.

This one is often brought up by “belivers.” But this is an account of the attempt by Lewis to find some of the Little People by climbing what is now called Sprit Mound in S D. He never did see any Little People personally but recounts that they are a common belief among all the tribes of the area.
The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, August 24,25: 1804
http://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/re ... styles.xsl

No less that the “Newspaper of record,” The New York Times of March 24,1876 noted about the Pygmies cemeteries in KY and TN
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-fr ... 838D669FDE

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.h ... 838D669FDE

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/wy-littlepeople.html

http://www2.ferrum.edu/applit/bibs/tale ... people.htm

These are some of the quotes in the various sites that I have not been able to verify due to their age.

The American Journal of Science - Page 124
by Yale University Dept. of Geology and Geophysics - 1832

a very curious graveyard was discovered, some years ago, in middle Tennessee. the persons that had been buried were very small, perhaps not more than three or four feet in height. the graves which were made to correspond in size, were very shallow. A stone laid in the bottom, one on each side, and one on the top formed the simple domicile of the little beings. a small earthen vessel was placed in each grave: the use for which we are as much at a lost to understand, as we are to account for the existence of the graves themselves.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological institute of great britian and ireland. VOl VI 1877 page 100

A pigmy graveyard in Tennessee
and ancient graveyard of vast proportions has been found in coffee county.
It is similar to those found in white county and other places in Middle Tennessee, but vastly more extensive, and shows that the race of pigmies who once inhabited this country were very numerous. the same peculiarities of postition observed in the white county graves are found in these. the writer of the letter says :--"some considerable excitement and curilsity took place a few days since, near Hillsboro, coffee county, on James Brown's farm. A man was ploughing in a field which had been cultivated many years and plughed up a man's skull and other bones. After making further examination they found that there were about six acres in the graveyard. they were buried in a sitting or standing position. the bones show that they were a dwarf tribe of people, about three feet hight. It is estimated that there were about 75,000 to 100,000 buried there. This shows that this country was inhabited hundreds of years ago,"--Woodbury (tenn.) Press.

Anthropological Institute, Journal, 6:100, 1876.

An ancient graveyard of vast proportions has been found in Coffee county. It is similiar to those found in White county and other places in middle Tennessee, but is vastly more extensive, and shows that the race of pygmies who once inhabited this country were very numerous. The same peculiarities of position Observed in the White county graves are found in these. The writer of the letter says: "Some considerable excitement and curiousity took place a few days since, near Hillsboro, Coffee county, on James Brown's farm. A man was ploughing in a field which had been cultivated many years, and ploughed up a man's skull and other bones. After making further examination they found that there were about six acres in the graveyard. They were buried in a sitting or standing position. The bones show that they were a dwarf tribe of people, about three feet high. It is estimated that there were about 75,000 to 100,000 buried there. This shows that this country was inhabited hundreds of years ago."

Gentlemen's Magazine, 3:8:182, 1837.

In 1837, a number of tiny human skeletons from 3 to 4 1/2 feet tall were found buried in tiny wooden coffins near Cochocton, Ohio. There were no artifacts found, but the number of graves led one observer to note that they "must have been tenants of a considerable city."
A short distance from Cochocton, Ohio, U.S., a singular ancient burying-ground has lately been discovered. "It is situated," says a writer in Silliman's Journal, "on one of those elevated, gravelly alluviums, so common on the rivers of the West. From some remains of wood, still apparent in the earth around the bones, the bodies seem all to have been deposited in coffins; and what is still more curious, is the fact that the bodies buried here were generally not more than from three to four and a half feet in length. They are very numerous, and must have been tenants of a considerable city, or their numbers could not have been so great. A large number of graves have been opened, the inmates of which are all of this pygmy race. No metallic articles or utensils have yet been found to throw light on the period or the nation to which they belonged."

A much larger burial ground, was later found in Tennessee as reported by Anthropological Institute, Journal, 6:100, 1876.

An ancient graveyard of vast proportions has been found in Coffee county. It is similar to those found in White county and other places in middle Tennessee, but is vastly more extensive, and shows that the race of pygmies who once inhabited this country were very numerous. The same peculiarities of position Observed in the White county graves are found in these. The writer of the letter says: "Some considerable excitement and curiosity took place a few days since, near Hillsboro, Coffee County, on James Brown's farm. A man was ploughing in a field which had been cultivated many years, and ploughed up a man's skull and other bones. After making further examination they found that there were about six acres in the graveyard. They were buried in a sitting or standing position. The bones show that they were a dwarf tribe of people, about three feet high. It is estimated that there were about 75,000 to 100,000 buried there. This shows that this country was inhabited hundreds of years ago."

My daughter lives near Coffee County in TN.
Maybe the next time I visit her I will have to check out their Historical Society and ask about pigmy graveyards in the area.
That should get me a sideways look.

"But that folklore is persistent and wide spread."

The folklore concerning the Easter Bunny is also persistent & widespread. That doesn't make it a reality though.

Looking at the pics of the mummy, I would say that the mummy is a subadult exhibiting neoteny.

I have yet to hear of a 75,000 body Easter Bunny graveyard.

In 1837, a number of tiny human skeletons from 3 to 4 1/2 feet tall were found buried in tiny wooden coffins near Cochocton, Ohio.

I wonder where they are now? One claim for the "giants" skeletons was that they were in the Smithsonian but it turns out that the Smithsonian knew nothing about it.

Yes it is hard to work with these materials, but people in the fringe, such as yourself KB, assembled a lot of materials, oft times throwing together unrelated materials and adding in their own lunacy.

In this case, these remains were not related to Homo Flores.

The Coshocton graves were widely noted in the literature of the time.

Perhaps they were members of an Ocanachee-Yuchi related people, in other words the later Savanah River culture.

But originally they were very early immigrants from South America who most likely brought Clovis tech north.

As to why these remains were found in Coshocton, it is on the Muskinghum River, a good hunting place on animal migration paths, and a chert source.

On the other hand, Perhaps the site might have been a childrens' grave yard.

Or both.

The "giants" are covered in "Man and Impact in the Americas".

Please don’t put me on the fringe E.P.
I prefer to think of myself as one without blinders on or with tunnel vision.
It is kind of standing on your back porch in Ford County in Feb.
You can see the curvature of the Earth.
I like that perspective.

And I wasn’t trying to say the Homo Flores discovery was directly related to the OH, KY and TN discoveries.
The NA ones seem to be much more recent.
However it does seem that there may have been “human” inhabitants of NA that do not relate directly to the current ones.

And they appear to have been a pretty large and wide spread population.
Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee.
Again, 75,000 to 100,000 is a lot of bodies.
And that is only one cemetery.
If those were children, what was the adult population?
There certainly would be some trace of them.

But, as Min says, where are they now?
Their remains seem to be a well accepted discovery in their day, but they are now unknown, or at least not spoken of today.

One claim for the "giants" skeletons was that they were in the Smithsonian but it turns out that the Smithsonian knew nothing about it.

The Smithsonian knows nothing about a lot of things that have been donated to it -- skeletal remains of giants in particular. Go back through the old county history books & collect the accounts of their discovery, examination and acceptance by Smithsonian officials (including "thank you" letters quoted verbatim).

How could anyone have read Cremo's Forbidden Archaeology, with its wealth of documented stuff given to (and accepted by) museums that isn't there any more and not comprehend that "disappearing" things that don't fit the paradigm has been business as usual for a long while now ?

Michael A. Cremo (born July 15, 1948, Schenectady, New York), also known as Drutakarma Dasa, is an American Hindu creationist whose work argues that humans have lived on the earth for billions of years.[1] Cremo's book, Forbidden Archeology, has attracted attention from Hindu creationists and paranormalists, but has been criticized by many mainstream scholars for his unorthodox views on archeology.[2][3] Scholars of the mainstream archaeological and paleoanthropological communities have described his work as pseudoscience.

Oh, please. What's next?

Didn't you know min??? It's a HUGE conspiracy to dupe the public and keep us all ignorant!!!

Yeah. Always a conspiracy!

You know, folks, there are places on earth where people actually read books (as opposed to knowing it all about what's in them without having to bother).

And, in those places, if they disagree with what they read in them, they do so in a focused and intelligent manner.

As opposed to operating on the assumption that mockery and contempt suffice.

Before anyone jumps on me - I don't agree at all with Cremo.

But - I don't think we can dismiss "all" the claims made by folks like Cremo when it comes to artifacts and theories that don't fit the paradigm. So I'd like to know about the allegations of artifacts that are hidden in the Smithsonian, please.

The down side of "the information age" is that websites cost money, so many of the most valuable ones have the lifespans of insects.

One such, and a case-in-point, was a compilation of information on giant Mound Builder skelatons (and associated artifacts) by someone who got fascinated with it and put a lot of time into researching it. It is -- alas -- no more, and, having lost the url many microsuck computer crashes ago, I don't know how to find it via the wayback machine.

The most ready access to detailed information bearing on this is preserved in the numerous County Histories that were published around the last quarter of the 19th century in Mound Builder territory. These started with formal history and supplemented it with whatever oral history the publishers gathered from longtime residents. They're full of the paid-for lengthy memorial obituaries people filled them with, commemorating their ancestors, but you can skim past those.

Discovery of Mound Builder stuff was a lively interest, and careful accounts of it abound in these, compiled while the discoveries were still fresh and memories clear. What was found, by whom, and what happened to what was found are all chronicled -- including (in many cases) details of their examination by, donation to, and acceptance by (quoting letters from the museum officials at the time) the Smithsonian. Stuff like skulls big enough that ordinary men of the time could wear them like helmets, some with double rows of teeth, etc.

If you're seriously interested, these accounts, cross-referenced to contemporary newspaper accounts (when these have been saved) are where you'd start your quest.

In short, the Smithsonian's Party Line is roundly contradicted by numerous, verbatim publications of letters it wrote accepting, and thanking named individuals for, their donations of what they're denying -- today -- ever existed. No wiggle room on this exists. Too many people saw the stuff, and left too many records of it.

What's impressive about Cremo is that he's found so much of this, and documents everything to the point where you can't dispute him -- you have to dispute his sources. Most of which are the museums at issue themselves in years past.

FWIW

uniface wrote:You know, folks, there are places on earth where people actually read books (as opposed to knowing it all about what's in them without having to bother).

And, in those places, if they disagree with what they read in them, they do so in a focused and intelligent manner.

As opposed to operating on the assumption that mockery and contempt suffice.

"Forbidden Archaeology" is sitting in my bookcase 8 feet from me as I type. Mockery and contempt is all it deserves.

(See what happens when you assume?)