Tag Archives | Alternative History
Strange History: Did Native Americans Land in Ireland?
Another possible case of Pre-Columbian Trans-Atlantic travel?
Picture: Edward Curtis (PD)
One of the most dramatic pieces of evidence for a pre-Columbian crossing of the Atlantic is to be found in a single Latin marginalia, that is some words scribbled into the margin of a book. The sentence in question appears in a copy of the Historia rerum ubique gestarum by Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini which was published in Venice in 1477. In that work Piccolomini discusses the arrival of Indians in Europe blown from across the Atlantic at a date when America was unknown to Europeans (another post another day). Next to this passage a reader has written in Latin the following extraordinary words:
Homines de catayo versus oriens venierunt. Nos vidimus multa notabilia et specialiter in galuei ibernie virum et uxorem in duabus lignis areptis ex mirabili persona.
Keep reading…you’ll never guess who scribbled in the book.… Read the rest
Humboldt Museum: Native American Tale of “Red-Haired Giants” Slain by Tribe
Picture: Timothy O'Sullivan (PD)
Atlas Obscura travels to Nevada’s Humboldt Museum and hears what is purported to be a legend of the Paiute tribe concerning a race of warlike, cave-dwelling, red-haired giants who were slain by fire and arrow.
Local legends passed down by the Paiute Indians tell of a race of giants who were exterminated by the tribe. It is said this was done by trapping the giants in a cave, shooting arrows at them, and then starting a large fire at the mouth of the cave. When the Lovelock Cave was later mined, many giant skeletons and artifacts were found in the area; there was also a large quantity of arrowheads found in the cave. Many of the artifacts were lost in a fire, but some of the skulls and artifacts are located at this museum.
Want to hear more about the legend of the red-haired giants?… Read the rest
Turning Back the Timeline: Human Growth Boom Started Before Agriculture
Picture: Margaret A. McIntyre (PD)
Researchers who dare to propose that the development of human civilization started well before the established timeline of approximately 4,000 BC are used to the scorn of mainstream academics. However, as historical anomalies too big to ignore or cover up continue to surface some academics are learning that they don’t like the taste of their own medicine.
Mainstream academia teaches that proper civilizations and its associated sciences, like architecture, began with the birth of agriculture. Crops offered a sustainable source of food, hence ending the need to wander in search for sustenance. Population growth followed, and along with it specialized social strata and trades: artisans, farmers, soldiers and priests. Walls, temples and towers grew to dominate the landscape. Or at least, that’s what generations of students have been taught.
The so-called “Neolithic Revolution” – one part of which was the birth of agriculture – began sometime between 10 and 5,000 years ago.… Read the rest
Divers Return to Antikythera
Picture: Marsyas (CC)
Almost every student of anomalous history will know the story of the Antikythera Mechanism, a mysterious, ancient “computer” of unknown origin discovered on the ocean floor off the island of Antikytherain in 1900. The machine has puzzled scientists since its discovery, but a new mission to the site where it was recovered may provide more information. Via The Guardian:
This week, the team begins a three-week survey using rebreather technology, which recycles unused oxygen from each breath and allows divers to stay deeper for longer. The aim is to survey the wreck site properly for the first time, to find out once and for all what has been left down there – and to check down the slope, to 70 metres depth or more, to see if those stories of runaway statues are true.
Any items found on the wreck site could provide further clues to the origin or ownership of the ship.
You Are Still Being Lied To: Howard Zinn’s “Columbus and Western Civilization”
The following is an excerpt of “Columbus and Western Civilization” written by Howard Zinn that appears in the Disinformation anthology You Are Still Being Lied To edited by Russ Kick.
Author’s Note: In the year 1992, the celebration of Columbus Day was different from previous ones in two ways. First, this was the quincentennial, 500 years after Columbus’ landing in this hemisphere. Second, it was a celebration challenged all over the country by people—many of them native Americans but also others—who had “discovered” a Columbus not worth celebrating, and who were rethinking the traditional glorification of “Western civilization.” I gave this talk at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in October 1991. It was published the following year by the Open Magazine Pamphlet Series with the title “Christopher Columbus & the Myth of Human Progress.”
George Orwell, who was a very wise man, wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future. And who controls the present controls the past.” In other words, those who dominate our society are in a position to write our histories. And if they can do that, they can decide our futures. That is why the telling of the Columbus story is important.
Let me make a confession. I knew very little about Columbus until about twelve years ago, when I began writing my book A People’s History of the United States. I had a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University—that is, I had the proper training of a historian, and what I knew about Columbus was pretty much what I had learned in elementary school.
In Defense Of Conspiracy Theories
[disinfo ed.'s note: this original essay was first published by disinformation on November 29, 2001.]
An Introduction to the World of Conspiracy Theories for the Mainstream American
While I was writing Paranoia, many of my friends wondered why I was interested in conspiracy theories. They are fringe territory in American culture. Strangely, while “conspiracy theories” are for “crazy people,” many of my friends also believe that various conspiracy theories are true. While I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I have always been fascinated by them–introduced to alternative histories by a friend living in Santa Fe; Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus trilogy; and Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. Conspiracy theories contain a certain power, and those who treat them as a casual belief, hobby or lifestyle collectively function a bit like a secret society themselves, with various degrees of initiation into the deeper mysteries. After some exploration my imagination, “Okay, what if all of this were true?… Read the rest
Iron Sky: Space Nazis Seek Revenge From The Moon!
Iron Sky is a 2012 Finnish science-fiction comedy film directed by Timo Vuorensola. Set in 2018, it tells a story where German Nazis, after being defeated in 1945, fled to the Moon where they built a space fleet, and are now ready to conquer Earth.
Did Hitler Escape Germany in 1945?
Could Hitler have lived out his days sunning himself on the beach in Villa Gessel, Argentina? Parapolitical reveals:
Adolf Hitler spoke briefly with one of the SS soldiers standing guard outside the Führerbunker, the last refuge of the inner circle of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. “Germany,” he said, “can hope for the future only if the whole world thinks I am dead.”
It seems impossible to believe that Adolf Hitler could not only have escaped Germany but, in fact, survived in relative comfort in Argentina until his death of natural causes in 1962. Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams’ new book Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, which released earlier this month, presents a remarkable, linear account of a sequence of shadowy events occurring in the final days of World War II that is neatly timelined and meticulously sourced.
The book navigates the various stages of creation and execution of what may have been one of the most daring and enigmatic escapes in history.
Madame Restell: The Wickedest Woman in New York
Madame Restell was a flamboyant 19th century abortionist whom history remembers as ”the wickedest woman in New York” —but had she been? Victorian Gothic takes a critical look:
The cover of The New York Illustrated Times for February 23rd, 1878 depicts the arrest of the notorious abortionist Ann Lohman, alias “Madame Restell,” by the moral crusader Anthony Comstock. Flanked by reporters and deputies, the statuesque crime-fighter is pictured with a search warrant in hand, which he reads to the lady villain in the attitude of a holy messenger, banishing evil by its sacred words. Comfortably situated amongst the opulent furnishings of her Fifth Avenue mansion, Madame Restell wears a cool, appraising expression, as if to say “Ah, Comstock, my nemesis—I have been expecting you.” Her right hand is clenched into a fist, which overlaps the womb of a veiled woman who weeps with shame in the background.
Dubbed the “wickedest woman in New York,” Madame Restell built an empire of cruelty; promoting vice, and profiting upon the mistakes of married women and wayward girls.
