古代神器猎人

Western Kentucky, gravel mining operation, a site which arguably contains the highest concentration of portable rock art in North America. Clay Mathis and Carell Lerberger, along with a film crew, study the rock art, looking for clues to the ancients. This location is close in proximity to Adina and Hopewell burial mounds. This is rock art paradise. It's probably one of the few places in the country, perhaps the world, there's such a predominance of portable rock art. It remains a mystery how it got 12 feet below the surface into a gravel pit. Another mystery is we don't know how old it is. Or we can suppose it was the mound builder culture, but we really don't know. It could be quite a bit older. That's what some of our colleagues think. I'm going to pack what I got so I don't stop. Yeah, you got to think of your legs, my friend. That's what I'm saying. I can't help it. Yeah. Start getting stupid. It's the addiction of the fine. The addiction of the fine as you're about to step on it. Well, it's hard to, it's hard to break them. That's the good thing. Although I broke some. Yeah, I think it is. Related cultures. I think it is. I think it's the mound building before and after. But with portable rock art, they could have had a piece in the family or in the tribe for tens of thousands of years for all we know. And it's scattered here among more recent pieces done 1200, 1300 years ago. Unlike a petroglyphic rock where you're looking at perhaps one plane, singular, double image. Here we're looking at multi-dimensional rock. It's portable and we could have a piece from thousands of years ago sitting next to a piece from a thousand years ago. One thing I'd like to answer along with Clay is he says that a lot of this rock is not natural. It was imported. We could use some help with geologists on that point. And there's a lot of art that we believe were tools. And by validating these tools with an archaeologist, I think that would advance our cause of discovery forward. You would think that an indigenous Native American wouldn't make things out of rocks. They do make things out of rock, but they don't make these kind of things. No, they don't. I'm sorry to disagree with you, but no. Okay. You know, they have a little parameter of what things are supposed to be like, and anything that deviates from that, they just deny it. The challenge is proving to other people that you do, in fact, have artifacts. I've been in and out of probably seven artifact sites, and I got tired of the sarcasm and the belittling of people that posted their artifacts. Most of the people, they were conditioned for arrowheads, and they really couldn't tolerate anything else. If you present this on a website about artifacts that aren't portable rock art, you will be attacked, because people think artifacts, they think projectile things. I'd love to expose that doctor up there at Michigan State University and told me it was just a rock. The archaeologists that are saying this is insignificant, culturally irrelevant. Most professional archaeologists, such as myself, will err on the side of caution and only assign cultural significance, cultural significance, cultural significance, to something that is obviously flaked material. The archaeologists took one look at it and said, it's just rock. I contacted two, in fact, one from Grand Valley and one from Michigan State, but they weren't overly interested. It's not real. They use terms like pareidolia. What you're seeing here is an example of pareidolia. I suspect you're probably not familiar with this term. I see a lot of this with people who think they found an artifact. Have you ever seen a face in a cloud? You see, it's like that. They know arrowheads. They're pretty fluted arrowheads. When I post things like this, they just freak out. It's a rock, natural. They refuse to acknowledge it. I'm sorry to disappoint, but the objects in the photos appear to be naturally formed rocks, not cultural artifacts. Academia is also a very elitist. They see laypeople and amateurs and independent scholars as unworthy. They largely ignore the findings because of the way that science and hard evidence is used in archaeology. I always respected archaeology and always dreamed of being an archaeologist, but after knowing and speaking to some about some of this stuff, I totally get how the rest of you guys feel. The rock art community really seems to struggle with getting their pieces validated by quote-unquote experts. Finding people that are willing to do this work as a hobby or for free sometimes in their own independent groups or even by themselves, they're doing it quicker than archaeologists are working at the pace right now. Even I, as a layman, can see a bird. I can see a mammoth. I can see faces. I can see wolves, bears, etc. We're missing out on a lot of what makes us human when we take away the importance of the findings of everyday people. Apparently, there's some debate over this stuff about what's natural and what's not. To me, there shouldn't be a debate. This is part of history. It's old. It tells a story. I'm not the person that can translate it or understand it, but it is history. Portable rock art is human markings on movable natural rock or stone. Ancient humans exploited some of the natural shapes and properties of rocks to achieve the desired visual results. A global phenomenon, these Stone Age objects have been found in many regions of the world with similar motifs, including the Americas. Many portable artifacts are believed to have been passed down from generation to generation, keeping them in use for hundreds or even thousands of years. Although it's difficult to date portable rock art, it provides an important link in building a chronology of the art and thus the evolution of prehistoric man. Artifacts are a artistic embellishment of stones, an ancient art form that heretofore has been mostly unrecognized. But before we talk about artifacts, I'd like to provide some background on myself, the quest for a new history of America, which culminated several years ago for me in the publishing of Secrets of Ancient America, in which I was able to demonstrate that our history has been covered up and that a fresh new view of history and humanity is required to really see the language of the ancients and to understand our true history. Certainly, I am not alone in this. A book by James Lowen, Lies My Teacher Told Me, has become very popular in exposing some of the myths, lies of history, beginning with the colonization of the Americas and the destruction of ancient Indian cultures. And part of the quest for a new history of America is the retelling of our history, and we can't avoid that. And I have to acknowledge one of my teachers and mentors, Barry Fell, who demonstrated in the 70s and 1980s that many explorers from around the world have been to the Americas long before Columbus. But like authors before him and after him, even though he had proof, he was denigrated by the academic society and the different universities. And even today, when they talk about Dr. Barry Fell, it's usually prefaced by saying controversial. One of Barry Fell's collaborators was Bill McGlone, and Bill McGlone teamed up with Phil Leonard, and they are really my mentors, and I want to acknowledge them at the beginning. And they taught me just about everything I've learned about Petroglyphs. Bill and Mr. Leonard also were able to develop not only the rock art aspects of Petroglyphs, but looking at the possibility of inscriptions, that is, writing in the Americas. And certainly, they discovered it specifically Celtic writing, as well as other Indo-European languages that have found their way in America. So we start our journey on portable rock art by acknowledging our teachers, but also the ancestors themselves. I got started, I was really bored, and I always was interested in this since I was a kid. So I decided to go look for artifacts, and everything kind of snowballed from there. I've been collecting Indian artifacts two years in the spring. I found that there's a lot of history, a lot of pieces to be found here in this area. How do you feel about being in a documentary? You've assured me that you could make a silks purse out of a Salazier, so here I am. I come about getting into the artifacts of some of the ancient Native Americans, I believe, that come here. I was digging field for a construction site. I wasn't looking for this stuff, and about 15, 20 foot down in the ground, I just started hitting rock that should not be there. And the more I looked at it, and realized that a lot of the rock was not even native to our area, started paying a little more closer attention, and started finding these little statues. My first piece was a bird, a perfect little eagle, and after that was on. And after that, I just started going out every day, walking the fields, the creeks, and backpacking home 40, 50 pounds of rock. Before I knew it, I had enough to fill up a museum. After about 100 hours of constant looking and searching in a two-week period, every day, 10, 12 hours a day, I knew stuff had to be here, but where was it? You know, that was the problem, was I wasn't finding it. The area where I was at, it was arrowhead pour. That was my original intention, was to find arrowheads. And then I started noticing these globular figures like this, these strange designs on them. It finally came to me that they were a form of artifact just as worthy as arrowheads, or pottery, or anything else. I started recognizing the pattern. And when I seen the pattern of a rock, and I thought it was interesting, I didn't pick it up. But then a few feet later, I seen the exact same rock, and I'm thinking, you know, what's happening here? Groundhog Day or something? You know? And that's when I realized that everything around me were the artifacts, were around me. They were just camouflaged and looked like rocks. I call this one the Smiley Man, just nicknaming it. And here's one, as you can see, that's carved out of the rock, looks like a monkey, a monkey's head. Just some really wild and strange pieces, but undeniably, somebody made it. I went down to Kentucky with Chris to help him shoot a portable rock art documentary. I went purely on the aspect of video production, which is my background. He showed me pictures of birds, and mammoths, and everything. And it really intrigued me, and kind of turned my focus, if you will, from going down just being a production assistant, to when we got down there, the next thing I know is I'm looking on the ground, looking for artifacts. There's a lot of land behind us, so naturally, I'm back there looking for arrowheads. And during the course of that time, I'm finding all kinds of stuff that doesn't fit the typical archaeological paradigm. Rocks that are carved to look like animals, and human faces, and all these different things that made no sense to me. I had no idea what they were. I knew they were work. They showed those telltale signs of human-like manipulation that you see in typical artifacts. One day, the light hit my box of rocks perfectly, and I saw this human face that was undeniable. Since spring before last, I've accumulated well over 200 pieces, and I can't believe it myself, the things that I have. Monroe County, located in southeast Michigan, surface-hunting plowed fields with local portable rock art collector James Meadors. Monroe County was the location of the infamous Battle of the Raisin River during the War of 1812. This war was fought between the United States and a British alliance with Native Americans. The artifacts uncovered by James suggest a much earlier occupation. Beautiful this time of year, right here. Yeah, you won't, you get down in this corner here, you won't get out with so much stuff. You probably made this little spot. All right, no nuttin' trespass. So the farmer's cool. Oh yeah, yeah. I made a deal with him. I hauled all the rocks out of the field for him. And I got on Adderall one day, and I went nuts, man. Frickin' dude, I had pyramids all around the whole property. He goes by, and he friggin' about fell off his tractor. Wouldn't have been so hard. Right the other day, when he plowed the day before, it rained all that night, and it was a nice sunny day the next day, and it couldn't have gotten better than that. I must have 100 pieces out of here, out of this field that day. Every time it rains, it's like a whole new time. It brings the stuff up. Allegan County, located in southwest Michigan. Gary Skidmore returns to an archaeological site searching for artifacts. Gary has found numerous fired clay items, which suggests this site may be an archaic site. However, up till now, no projectile points have been uncovered, which makes this site difficult to date. Okay, so this is the main spot, huh? One of them. So where at? Point out the direction right here. Oh, we can get out. Okay, cool. We're gonna get wet. No! Okay, you see here? This is all clay pottery right here. All these brown pieces. This right here is highest point, one of the highest points of the county, right here. And it extends over there. Kitty corner to it. It's another large field that I found large coarse chunks of pottery in it. I realized it was somewhat of a By the multitude of what I found here, I think it was a trade area. They were an old, old plan out here. The seven nations they were called. What called the history of Michigan, it was the largest tribe in the state of Michigan. And it was said in the paper, tons of artifacts found in Ash Township, Carlton, all the pieces, the story, everything's logged at Cranbrook Institute of Arts. Right at the peak, as the peak starts coming down along that whole line, that's where I started finding them. It's got, you can tell it has a hole in it. There's the dirts in there. I would guess this to be a spindle weight for a bow drill. Yeah, Randy out there owns an Indian gully. Plowing his fields, had his tractor set out there. Real expensive tractor. And he gave me already written permission and stuff. And his farmhouse about a quarter mile across the field. And I'm out there one day and he comes flying up in his truck. You know, he couldn't tell his youth through this 30 odd six scope. Let's give a little bath. See what we got. Getting old, hard to get down. Can't get back up sometimes. But like I told somebody, I'd probably fall over and die out here in one of these fields one day doing this, I'm sure. Yeah, there's something going on here. Clean it up. The damn clay gets in these crevices, it's hard to get out. I'd say it's a funny face. They had a sense of humor. And they took advantage of the coloration of the stone and the quartz vein running through it. Looks like a green stone. Those look intentional. Nose and a mouth. You can see here they did a lip outline. They could probably stand a little more cleaning. You can see here, I'll clean it up a little more for you. I would say that was intentional, but definitely under the mile a page. The first known Stone Age tools and possible portable rock art discovered were approximately three million years old. For millions of years, animals crossed the Bering Land Bridge from Siberia into North America. Prehistoric man has always migrated following food sources. So it's only logical that hominids also crossed over during the last two million years. The place to see megafauna, which are the large animals of the Ice Age, came to North America millions of years ago. People followed big game. That's what they ate. So people probably came over much earlier than 13,000 years ago. You know, America has the richest soil of any country in the entire world. And so people were always here. Inaccurate accounts of history has been due to the lack of archaeological or scientific evidence, political or religious agendas, and racist stereotyping. The nearly 100-year-old Clovis first predominant theory is the belief that humans first existed in North America approximately 13,000 years ago. There's no particular reason to think that North America was first colonized after the last Ice Age rather than before. What's particularly confusing about some of these sites, especially in West Michigan here, is, you know, I mentioned we find a lot of macedons and mammoths and things like that. And then the portable rock art, of course, typically it's fairly crude. So you think, this is really old. It's paleo. It's pre-Clovis. It may be even back further than that. We don't know. We can only hypothesize at this point. But then we find other artifacts that more look like archaic era artifacts, like, for example, things that are made with fire clay. Clay came into existence, generally speaking, in the archaic time in North America. And also the fact that we're finding, you know, hundreds of pieces in small, I mean, we're digging in a location that's about a quarter of an acre right here. We've uncovered at least 100, 150 pieces. So you got to think this area was very densely populated. I dated them by, I think there's the Ice Age. And so I'm dating it at the least possible age because I'm not trying to inflate nothing. So I'm conservative in my dating, you know, and I'm thinking it's 10 to 15,000 years. Civilization probably 5,000 years ago. But yet I found stone implements there that seem to predate that. Really, the few tools that we found are very, very rare.