Evidence that the Book of Mormon could be true!!!

[_BartBurk]

Back to church everyone.

Are they claiming that when the Tennessee Valley Authority flooded the region that this site disappeared?

[_Quasimodo]

Back to church everyone.

Are they claiming that when the Tennessee Valley Authority flooded the region that this site disappeared?

This explains why I kept getting snags and losing my lures while fishing for bass on Watt's Bar Lake. I wonder how many of my spinners are dangling off the roof of some old Egyptian temple?

[_tapirrider]

I can't find anything about this supposed ancient temple in Tennessee. Anyone else been able to find anything?

The photo comes from the Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 118, 1938, "An Archaeological Survey of the Norris Basin in Eastern Tennessee" by William S. Webb. It is plate 108 in the photos and is Site No. 19, Cox Mound.

The photo can be seen online at this link
http://archive.org/stream/bulletin118sm ... 7/mode/2up

You can download the entire report from this link
http://archive.org/details/bulletin118smit

Site No. 19, Cox Mound, can be read on pages 161 to 179. These structures are known to have been built by Native American peoples during the Mississippian period approximately AD 900-1500. The report gives many examples of burial comparisons to known practices of the Creek Indians and others.

The claim made on the video about it being a temple comes from an old newspaper article of 1934 from the Associated Press. Here is a link to one of the papers that published it.

The Florence Times, Florence Alabama, March 23, 1934
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=cS ... gypt&hl=en

The claims being made in the Lost Civilizations of North America DVD are not supported with science. Here are more links to scientists' statements and writings about the DVD.

Statement about "The Lost Civilizations of North America" DVD
http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/20 ... ns-of.html

"In our opinion, there is no compelling archaeological or genetic evidence for a migration from the Middle East to North America a few thousand years ago, nor is there any credible scientific evidence that Old World civilizations were involved in developing Native American cultures in pre-Columbian times."

Civilizations Lost and Found: Fabricating History - Part One: An Alternate Reality
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/civilizat ... ernate_re/

Civilizations Lost and Found: Fabricating History - Part Two: False Messages in Stone
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/civilizat ... _messages/

Civilizations Lost and Found: Fabricating History - Part Three: Real Messages in DNA
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/civilizat ... _messages/

I hope these links and information help.

[_brade]

I can't find anything about this supposed ancient temple in Tennessee. Anyone else been able to find anything?

The photo comes from the Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 118, 1938, "An Archaeological Survey of the Norris Basin in Eastern Tennessee" by William S. Webb. It is plate 108 in the photos and is Site No. 19, Cox Mound.

The photo can be seen online at this link
http://archive.org/stream/bulletin118sm ... 7/mode/2up

You can download the entire report from this link
http://archive.org/details/bulletin118smit

Site No. 19, Cox Mound, can be read on pages 161 to 179. These structures are known to have been built by Native American peoples during the Mississippian period approximately AD 900-1500. The report gives many examples of burial comparisons to known practices of the Creek Indians and others.

The claim made on the video about it being a temple comes from an old newspaper article of 1934 from the Associated Press. Here is a link to one of the papers that published it.

The Florence Times, Florence Alabama, March 23, 1934
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=cS ... gypt&hl=en

The claims being made in the Lost Civilizations of North America DVD are not supported with science. Here are more links to scientists' statements and writings about the DVD.

Statement about "The Lost Civilizations of North America" DVD
http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/20 ... ns-of.html

"In our opinion, there is no compelling archaeological or genetic evidence for a migration from the Middle East to North America a few thousand years ago, nor is there any credible scientific evidence that Old World civilizations were involved in developing Native American cultures in pre-Columbian times."

Civilizations Lost and Found: Fabricating History - Part One: An Alternate Reality
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/civilizat ... ernate_re/

Civilizations Lost and Found: Fabricating History - Part Two: False Messages in Stone
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/civilizat ... _messages/

Civilizations Lost and Found: Fabricating History - Part Three: Real Messages in DNA
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/civilizat ... _messages/

I hope these links and information help.

Thank you! Have you been able to find any basis for their claims that Egyptologists were brought in and asserted that what was found was similar to Middle Easter temples? I can't find any mention of that anywhere.

[_tapirrider]

Thank you! Have you been able to find any basis for their claims that Egyptologists were brought in and asserted that what was found was similar to Middle Easter temples? I can't find any mention of that anywhere.

Not yet, I'm still searching old newspapers. But the AP story I linked earlier mentioned Thomas M. N. Lewis. To shed some light on that 1934 story, see Lewis's writing in 1937 disputing an ancient race.
http://archive.org/stream/annotationspe ... 6/mode/2up

"The people responsible for their construction are frequently referred to as the "Mound Builders," with the inference that they were a distinct race which preceded the American Indian of early historic times. This conception is erroneous, since the evidence uncovered by scientific investigators has shown conclusively that the mounds were constructed by the Indian groups which were ancestral to those that occupied this continent at the advent of the European peoples."

It does not support the Lost Civilization DVD claim about Egyptologists and an ancient temple.

Here is the link to download the complete publication "Annotations pertaining to prehistoric research in Tennessee"
http://archive.org/details/annotationsperta00lewiuoft

The Cox Mound and Norris Basin does not have anything to do with Egypt, but it has quite a bit to do with Mississipian period houses. See this 2004 graduate thesis from the University of Alabama.
http://rla.unc.edu/Mdvlfiles/ma/Lacquem ... 4%20MA.pdf

Pseudoarchaeology like that in the "Lost Civlizations" DVD relies on outdated newspaper stories and things like "it is underwater now". They won't tell you how the research published in 1938 is still useful in studying house construction 800 years ago in Eastern North America.

[_tapirrider]

The claim about Egyptologists comes from:

A Temple in Tennessee, Issue 7 of After-glow Essays, James Rendel Harris, University of London Press, 1935

It doesn't seem to be available digitized online, I'll check for interlibrary loan so I can read it.

[_brade]

Wow, tapirrider, excellent work. I hope you're able to make a copy of this new source and I'm excited to see what it has to say.

Edit: Looks like there's a copy at Princeton. Anyone in New Jersey and want to take a trip to the Princeton library?

[_tapirrider]

You can also see the picture in one of Wayne May's books.
http://books.google.com/books?id=akOQXA ... 6&dq=false

He says it is stone ruins, but it is not.

If you notice on page 165 of An Archaeological Survey of the Norris Basin in Eastern Tennessee, by William S. Webb
http://archive.org/stream/bulletin118sm ... 4/mode/2up

"The earth piers shown in the photographs of the excavations contained post fragments which were being "treated" before being removed from the ground."

"This pair is one of seven such pairs found in the south wall, as shown in plate 108. The earth pillars were left, as they were necessary to support these post remnants, and the earth prevented the posts from drying excessively before the excavation was completed."

The picture does not show stone ruins at all, it shows cedar posts encased in the dirt left on them during the excavations. That is why I want to read Harris's "Temple in Tennessee". Did he even visit the site, or did he base his ideas on the picture?

[_brade]

You can also see the picture in one of Wayne May's books.
http://books.google.com/books?id=akOQXA ... 6&dq=false

He says it is stone ruins, but it is not.

If you notice on page 165 of An Archaeological Survey of the Norris Basin in Eastern Tennessee, by William S. Webb
http://archive.org/stream/bulletin118sm ... 4/mode/2up

"The earth piers shown in the photographs of the excavations contained post fragments which were being "treated" before being removed from the ground."

"This pair is one of seven such pairs found in the south wall, as shown in plate 108. The earth pillars were left, as they were necessary to support these post remnants, and the earth prevented the posts from drying excessively before the excavation was completed."

The picture does not show stone ruins at all, it shows cedar posts encased in the dirt left on them during the excavations. That is why I want to read Harris's "Temple in Tennessee". Did he even visit the site, or did he base his ideas on the picture?

Right. It's interesting that in that news article from 1934 an archeologist is paraphrased as saying that this is a site unlike any in the US. The archeological survey published four years later details rather well parallels with other sites in the surrounding area and seems to suggest that there isn't a lot that's really unusual about the site. I read the whole report, there's absolutely no mention of any parallels to the Old World.

[_tapirrider]

I received the book "A Temple in Tennessee" this morning. Just as I had suspected, the photo that Rendel Harris used (page 4 of his book) is the same as shown in plate 108. There is no mention in the book of coming to Tennessee and examining the site. It would seem that all conjecture is based on that one photo that had appeared in the New York Times.

On page 5 he wrote "underneath these Indian Settlements there appeared the Temple to which I have referred. The Red Indian was superposed upon another race which had disappeared."

That statement is not accurate. The mound was formed from repeated collapses of a house that had been built several times. It dated after the Hopewell period, during what is known as the Mississippian period, between AD 900 and AD 1700.

Again on page 5, Harris wrote "We shall claim this temple as a Temple of Isis because it is situated in the territory of ta-n-Ese, and the monolith, if such it be, which the photograph apparently shows us, as a Pillar of Osiris, such as we have traces of in England and elsewhere"

It was not a pillar at all, it was a cedar post left encrusted in the dirt during the excavation. The rest of the book speculates on how Egyptians might have gotten to Tennessee. Harris did not understand how recent the Cox mound site dated to. The Egyptian civilization that he speculated about was gone before the house in Tennessee was first built.