Groupthink

The Case of Diffusionism

I was taking requests for what to write about, and someone asked about groupthink.

Of course groupthink and the concomitant cognitive bias is what makes the world go round. Let’s look here at the theory of diffusionism, that the similarity in cultures in America and Afro-Eurasia are due to ancient voyages, rather than the theory currently in vogue, that these similarities are due to coincidence.

Coincidence theorists have a lot of explaining to do. What are the odds that two cultures on either side of the Atlantic both elongated their skulls, genetically engineered cotton and made long robes out of it, mummified their dead by sucking their guts out of an incision in the left lower abdomen, drilled holes in their skulls, and built structures with thirty-ton blocks for no apparent reason? Well, sure. Those are just basic human tendencies.

All of the Roman coins found in North America? Some antiquarian must have let them carelessly drop out of his pocket where they were rattling around with his nickels and dimes. Those inscriptions found on a tablet buried deep in the roots of a tree that are exactly like ancient Phoenician characters? Just a coincidence. Those are marks from someone sharpening a spear.

One way for the establishment to deal with these pesky artifacts is to ignore them. Another is to hide them. Another is to gaslight us about what we’re seeing. That elephant there? That’s a bird. Trust me, I’m an expert.

Another way is to hastily, peremptorily, angrily declare them hoaxes, without even looking at them. Each one MUST be a hoax, because, it’s the only one found. Well, except for the other dozens of “hoaxes”. Even the ones that were deep in the mound, or in the ground, and covered with undisturbed soil. Even the ones with inscriptions in scripts that hadn’t even been deciphered at the time of discovery. Never mind the logistics involved for a farmer to write in an undeciphered script then somehow bury it many feet down without digging. All for ... attention?

But why would the field of American archaeology be so rife with fakes, frauds and forgeries? People going to so much trouble for a laugh?

In the 1960s, Smithsonian archaeologist Betty Meggers found Japanese pottery in Ecuador she dated to the third millennium BCE. Though her evidence, methodology and conclusions were beyond reproach, she was ostracized by her collages.

Even ordinary people are triggered by diffusionism. Karl Lehrburger recounts a story of how a local archaeologist working at the Bureau of Land Management site of Mojave North told him he needed a research permit to study a public site; despite it being on public land, he was told to leave since the investigation was “commercial” in nature. Without an archaeology degree, no such permit was possible, of course. The official insisted there could not be pre-Columbus contact; I always love it when people are 100% certain that something didn’t happen, as you can never definitely prove that something didn’t happen. It suggests bias of a quasi-religious nature. Lehrburger proposed to him that they protect the site, but the guy poo-pooed the idea, saying it would only attract people who would damage it. So, it was left exposed to vandalism.[1]

I’m not surprised. The same thing happened with ancient Neolithic sites in Turkey that were teeming with female figurines. The digs were halted, and the sites destroyed by vandals.

In 1972, a bunch of amphorae, long-necked jars used in the ancient Mediterranean to store liquids, turned up at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Honduras. It was examined by scholars who identified them as North African and requested permission for an excavation of the shipwreck. It was denied because “they feared further investigation might compromise the glory of Columbus.”[2] Similarly, Brazilian authorities denied permits for the excavation of a shipwreck that contained thousands of third century ceramics pinpointed to Roman city of Kouass. Brazil was also protecting the fame of their national Columbus figure: the official discoverer of Brazil, Pedro Álvares Cabral. The Brazilians even went so far as to hire a dredger to cover the ship with mud and silt so that no one in the future could disprove their legend.[3] Sigh.

So, institutions even destroy priceless relics to protect their precious turfs, beliefs, or rights. Many owners of the lands where artifacts were found destroyed large collections of them on the advice of government propaganda.[4] In New York, archaeologists are being paid to sign Declarations of Non-Significance so stone chambers can be destroyed by developers. US Army Corps of Engineers dumped thirty tons of rock on the Kennewick Man site on the Columbia River ... “because Indians already know their history.” In New Zealand, caves of non-Polynesian skeletons were bulldozed by authorities so as not to offend Māori rights.

This makes my blood boil. I’ve lain awake at night pondering why diffusionism, of all academic heresies, evokes so much apoplectic rage that they stop at nothing to destroy it. I don’t pretend to know, but since I have studied the coverup of the ancient matriarchy, I wonder if it’s connected with that. After all, you’re going to find the Goddess if you start messing with ancient inscriptions in the Americas.

My prayer is that soon the ridiculous narrative that Columbus was the first person to the sail to the Americas will finally collapse. This is the topic of my upcoming book, Before America: Of Mounds and Megaliths. May it set set off a chain reaction of May we will realize that academic experts are MORE prone to groupthink, not less. Because their livelihoods depend on it. That’s why so many advancements in academia come from unlettered nobodies. We aren’t required to tow the party line in order to maintain their credibility and get funding.

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[1] Lehrburger, 426.

[2] Unchartered, 32.

[3] Unchartered, 33.

[4] Lehrburger, 479.