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5.4.1.2 How Lee Was Treated

We shall now present Thomas E. Lee’s account of how his discoveries were received. Although this history will not be found in standard archeological publications, it is worth careful study. Lee’s experiences shed light on how the scientific process works in practice. We shall leave it to the reader to decide whether or not his complaints are justified.

Lee (1966a, pp. 18 –19) recalled: “Several prominent geologists who examined the numerous excavations in progress during four years at Sheguiandah privately expressed the belief that the lower levels of the Sheguiandah site are interglacial. Such was the climate in professional circles—one of jealousy, hostility, skepticism, antagonism, obstructionism, and persecution—that, on the advice of the famed authority, Dr. Ernst Antevs of Arizona, a lesser date of ‘30,000 years minimum’ was advanced in print by some of the geologists to avoid ridicule and to gain partial acceptance from the more serious scholars. But even that minimum was too much for the protagonists of the ‘fluted-pointfirst-Americans’ myth. The site’s discoverer [Lee] was hounded from his Civil Service position into prolonged unemployment; publication outlets were cut off; the evidence was misrepresented by several prominent authors among the Brahmins; the tons of artifacts vanished into storage bins of the National Museum of Canada; for refusing to fire the discoverer, the Director of the National Museum [Dr. Jacques Rousseau], who had proposed having a monograph on the site published, was himself fired and driven into exile; official positions of prestige and power were exercised in an effort to gain control over just six Sheguiandah specimens that had not gone under cover; and the site has been turned into a tourist resort. All of this, without the profession, in four long years, bothering to take a look, when there was still time to look. Sheguiandah would have forced embarrassing admissions that the Brahmins did not know everything. It would have forced the re-writing of almost every book in the business. It had to be killed. It was killed.”

Lee’s account was supported by Dr. Carl B. Compton, who wrote in The Interamerican (January 1966, p. 8): “When Thomas E. Lee found artifactual material in glacial till at Sheguiandah some years ago and when the age was estimated by several well-known and respected geologists at more than 30,000, the Brahmins presented their well-known ‘Berlin Wall’ to ‘contain’ this heresy” (T. E. Lee 1966b). Compton obviously thought that Lee was the victim of a power play in a scholarly community divided into hostile factions.

Here are additional comments by T. E. Lee (1964, p. 24) on his fate: “I, even as a professional archaeologist and officer of the National Museum of Canada over most of a nine-year period, found my work subjected to discrimination, whisper campaigns, and behind-the-scenes throat-cutting of the most contemptible and despicable order.” Eventually, Lee had no choice except to resign from his position at the museum. He recalled: “My own resignation was in protest against the activities of R. S. MacNeish and was forced upon me by an impossible ultimatum delivered to me by that same Director of Natural History” (T. E. Lee 1964, p. 28).

Lee experienced great difficulty in getting his reports on his discoveries at Sheguiandah published through the National Museum of Canada. He wrote: “By depriving me of all essential services, burdening me with routine cataloguing, and closing publication outlets to me, every effort was made in the National Museum of Canada and in its string of satellites to block such publication. . . . I was hounded from my Canadian government position by certain American citizens on both sides of the border and driven into eight long years of blacklisting and enforced unemployment” (T. E. Lee 1974, p. 23). He also said that papers written by him were “filed away and lost” in the museum (T. E. Lee 1964, p. 24).

Having failed to get his reports into print in government publications, Lee, as a private