The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America: The Missing Skeletons and the Great Smithsonian Cover-Up
PUBLISHER'S SUMMARY
A study of the substantial evidence for a former race of giants in North America and its 150-year suppression by the Smithsonian Institution. It:
- Shows how thousands of giant skeletons have been found, particularly in the Mississippi Valley, as well as the ruins of the giants' cities
- Explores 400 years of giant finds, including newspaper articles, first-person accounts, state historical records, and illustrated field reports
- Reveals the Stonehenge-era megalithic burial complex on Catalina Island with more than 4,000 giant skeletons, including kings more than nine feet tall
- Includes more than 100 rare photographs and illustrations of the lost evidence
Drawing on 400 years of newspaper articles and photos, first-person accounts, state historical records, and illustrated field reports, Richard J. Dewhurst reveals not only that North America was once ruled by an advanced race of giants, but also that the Smithsonian has been actively suppressing the physical evidence for nearly 150 years. He shows how thousands of giant skeletons have been unearthed at Mound Builder sites across the continent, only to disappear from the historical record. He examines other concealed giant discoveries, such as the giant mummies found in Spirit Cave, Nevada, wrapped in fine textiles and dating to 8000 BC; the hundreds of red-haired bog mummies found at sinkhole "cenotes" on the West Coast of Florida and dating to 7500 BC; and the ruins of the giants' cities with populations in excess of 100,000 in Arizona, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Louisiana.
Dewhurst shows how this suppression began shortly after the Civil War and transformed into an outright cover-up in 1879 when Major John Wesley Powell was appointed Smithsonian director, launching a strict pro-evolution, pro-Manifest Destiny agenda. He also reveals the 1920s' discovery on Catalina Island of a megalithic burial complex with 6,000 years of continuous burials and more than 4,000 skeletons, including a succession of kings and queens, some more than nine feet tall – the evidence for which is hidden in the restricted-access evidence rooms at the Smithsonian.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2013 Richard J. Dewhurst. All Rights Reserved. (P)2019 Inner Traditions Audio. All Rights Reserved.
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: History
My Review
This is one of the most fascinating books I've ever read. The author, Richard J. Dewhurst, did the legwork of searching through old newspaper archives online, from around the United States, and uncovered hundreds of newspaper reports about the discovery of giant skeletons. The articles spanned primarily the 19th and early 20th century, though some are even earlier while a few are more recent. Consistently, we see a pattern emerge. Local people of varying qualifications (ranging from farmers to university professors) unearth giant skeletons. They reach out to the Smithsonian, who then takes possession of the finds. Then the giant skeletons vanish from the records. I have always been aware that these stories existed, but I was previously unaware of how numerous they are, over how broad a span of time these incidents occurred, how they consistently were found in and around "mound builder" sites, and how some of those finds are not only witnessed by credible academic authorities, but photographed (some of the photos are in the book and included as a PDF with the audiobook.) If you are the sort of person who has always dismissed these kinds of things as "hoaxers" then I strongly encourage you to read this book and to keep an open mind. The sheer volume of incidents makes the idea that all of these stories were made up almost more implausible to me than that these finds were real.
Despite the book's title, Dewhurst does not spend a lot of time on the "conspiracy" portion of the narrative. He speculatively attributes the actions of the Smithsonian in hiding or destroying these giant skeletons to a couple of the Institution's leaders in the late 19th and early 20th century. The picture painted is not one of secret societies, but rather opinionated museum managers not wanting to keep items around that do not fit their own personal worldviews. It is certainly possible that the wrong person at an authoritative bottleneck could do irreparable harm to our understanding of the ancient past. That seems to me a reasonable explanation and that's how the author seems to view things. He goes so far at the end of the book as to guess that most current employees at the Smithsonian are not even aware of past events, though he adds that it is also likely that ideological indoctrination has likely made them uncurious about ideas outside the established narrative.
To the extent that Dewhurst's book is likely to be controversial, it's in how he (primarily through the various news articles, though also from outside sources) presents the giants themselves. They are described as Caucasian, blue-eyed, and with red hair or blonde hair. As a reader, though, I am not certain whether "white people descended originally from cannibal giants" should be interpreted as white supremacy or anti-white bias. I think one could look at that either way.
To that end, Dewhurst mentions the various ancient accounts in the Old World of giants, who were also often described in a similar way as to indigenous accounts, and skeletal remains, from the Americas. For example, the Greek and Roman pantheons both argue for the existence of giants. So, too, does the Bible, which describes the Nephilim, Anakim, Rephaim, and other giant tribes in the Old Testament. The Biblical account of giants is far from flattering, with extra-Biblical texts and traditions describing giants as the monstrous hybrid offspring of angels and human women.
Origins and interpretations notwithstanding, a big hurdle to overcome is how gigantic Europeans might have arrived in the Americas in the far remote past. Dewhurst does not speculate as to how, but the obvious answer seems to be via boat. One does not have to imagine a voyage across the center of the Atlantic, either. You simply need to imagine island hopping across the North Atlantic - the same way that the Vikings made the journey thousands of years later. If the Pacific Islanders were capable of island hopping in deep antiquity, why not northern Europeans?
One of the best bits of evidence for this, from within the book, is also one of the later discoveries mentioned. In the early 1980s, Dewhurst describes eight thousand year old mummies of European descent discovered in the bogs of northern Florida. Dewhurst's book notes that the mummies were incredibly well preserved due to the way they were buried under a thick layer of peat, such that even brain matter survived for DNA testing. The mummies were described as being buried in a manner similar to how northern Europeans did it at the time. The mummies were also allegedly genetically tested, and shown to be of northern European descent. However, the follow-up genetic testing by the University of Florida, and Florida State University, has (as of 2012) been withheld from the public.
For the book reviewer benefit, I looked for some updates on the Florida bog mummies and came up with this:
One other topic, pointed at by the author, explaining why many of these deeply ancient mysteries remain mysterious concerns U.S. law regarding Native American burial sites. The tribes can claim possession of skeletons found on their land - even if the skeletons are not those of their own people. In the case of the Florida bog mummies for example, only a very limited testing has been allowed by local tribal authorities because the tribe does not want the dead to be desecrated. It is unclear whether DNA testing that revealed the mummies to be of European origin might be treated differently. It would undoubtedly need to be litigated to make that type of determination.
Most of the book concerns itself with the unidentified "mound builders" of ancient North America. Many of America's ancient mounds are many thousands of years old, originating just after the end of the most recent Ice Age. Several of these sites contain not only giant skeletons, but also elements (copper, sea shells, etc.) not local to the sites, implying large-scale trade across the Americas in great antiquity. The book mentions articles which imply trade in the Americas with even ancient Rome, though not much time is spent on this. After covering the article, the author speculates that a Roman coin could travel far from Rome, via trade routes, even if there was no direct contact (the ancient British could have traded a Roman coin with Native Americans in Greenland and present-day Canada, and a coin could be traded again, further inland.)
Overall, the book is absolutely fascinating and the author provides a lot of valuable and interesting information on a variety of topics concerning the ancient Americas. I think it would be going too far to say that Dewhurst proves anything, regarding giants, with the compilation of his data, however, he makes a compelling case that the established narratives concerning the original peopling of the Americas should be revisited with an open mind. Maybe the nearly global belief that giants existed in antiquity might be rooted in truth.
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