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Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [246]

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citizen, experienced similar difficulties with standard scientific journals. Expressing his frustration, he wrote: “A nervous or timid editor, his senses acutely attuned to the smell of danger to position, security, reputation, or censure, submits copies of a suspect paper to one or two advisors whom he considers well placed to pass safe judgement. They read it, or perhaps only skim through it looking for a few choice phrases that can be challenged or used against the author (their opinions were formed long in advance, on the basis of what came over the grapevine or was picked up in the smoke-filled back rooms at conferences—little bits of gossip that would tell them that the writer was far-out, a maverick, or an untouchable). Then, with a few cutting, unchallenged, and entirely unsupported statements, they ‘kill’ the paper. The beauty—and the viciousness—of the system lies in the fact that they remain forever anonymous. The author may damn and fume and even correctly guess at their identity—but he is helpless. When in the course of time he is dead and safely buried—and proven to have been right—he will either be ignored or said to have been right, but for the wrong reasons” (T. E. Lee 1977, p. 2).

Most of the key reports about Sheguiandah were published in the Anthropological Journal of Canada, which Lee himself founded and edited. Lee died in 1982, and the journal was then edited for a short time by his son, Robert E. Lee.

After Lee left the National Museum of Canada, he eventually obtained a teaching position at Laval University. In 1980, he received for review a book (Initiation a l’archeologie) by René Lévesque, a former student. Lévesque had written on the title page: “I hope not to lose your friendship with my book. But the eternal enemies are still on the war path. I am honored to be with you in that fight” (T. E. Lee 1981, p. 18). Somewhat puzzled, Lee paged through the book. It contained a list of important archeological sites in North America, but the list did not include Sheguiandah. Nor was there any discussion of Sheguiandah in the text. Lee (1981, p. 19) found this strange, because Lévesque, his student, knew well “the inescapable proofs that put Sheguiandah back in the 150,000-year range, as determined by a number of geologists, both Canadian and American.” Lee noticed, however, a very complete list of his works on Sheguiandah in the bibliography in the back of the book. “It should be clear by now,” wrote Lee (1981, p. 19), “to everyone who reads this in the far corners of the earth, that a hatchet job was done . . . to eliminate Sheguiandah from the text, with the Bibliographie being overlooked, either in haste or arrogance.”

Of course, it has not been possible for establishment scientists to completely avoid mentioning Sheguiandah, but when they do, they tend to downplay, ignore, or misrepresent any evidence for an unusually great age for the site.

Lee’s son Robert wrote: “Sheguiandah is erroneously explained to students as an example of postglacial mudflow rather than Wisconsin glacial till; the reports, they are told, are too badly written to be worth reading, if indeed their existence is acknowledged” (R. E. Lee 1983, p. 11).

The original reports are, however, not so badly written, and give cogent arguments against the mudflow hypothesis. The elder Lee (1983, p. 58) wrote that many geologists “have stated that the deposits would definitely be called glacial till were it not for the presence of artifacts within them. This has been the reaction of almost all visiting geologists.”

To Thomas E. Lee (1983, p. 58), the signs of the glacial origin of the deposits in question were unmistakable: “Among the indications which point to till are the lenses of fine gravels and sands observed in the lower half of the deposits. Such lenses are typical of till.”

Any kind of mudflow or soil creep (solifluxion) would have required a slope of an appropriate inclination in the immediate area of the site, but no such slope was evident. The paths of flows from more distant high areas were blocked by transverse ridges

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