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‘History is a myth men have agreed upon.’ – Napoleon Bonaparte

Many Americans tend to think of North American history as beginning in 1492 with the near discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. (He actually landed in the Bahamas and later Spaniards founded the first settlement in the New World, in St. Augustine, Florida in 1565, good old Plymouth Rock didn’t come around until 55 years later in 1620).

With this thought in mind, I’ve often wondered, can you ‘discover’ a place where people already reside? For example, I’ve never been to Kansas, but I’m pretty sure that if I arrived there tomorrow and claimed it to be discovered by my clan, there would be some serious discussions by the inhabitants of this state.

If we were to believe the notations made in diaries and records kept by the puritanical English settlers who arrived by ship to the east coast, we’d be under the impression that the indigenous people who lived here prior to the discovery of the land by Europeans, were unsophisticated and uncivilized, which then leads to a belief that there is no civilization.  That’s the nicest term one could think to use in comparison to how the indigenous people were maligned and betrayed. History, as Winston Churchill said, is written by the victors. It is always interesting to see in history how what is done to one group of people in an act of force, will then be used by the very same people at a later date when they perform the same act of force and how history will be rewritten and facts eliminated in order to secure political, religious and financial standing. For example, when Caesar marched from Rome to conquer Britain, he embarked on a smear campaign to destroy the credibility of the Druid community by describing the people as uncivilized and holding ritualistic human sacrifices, when in fact he had never witnessed this act nor had a single report to list as evidence.

As scholars and researchers continue to delve into the ancient past, the untold history of the previous settlers of North America continue to haunt the land and their stories beg to be told. An example of this work is the book – Advanced Civilizations of Prehistoric America: The Lost Kingdoms of the Adena, Hopewell, Mississippians and Anasazi, written by Frank Joseph. Frank examines these four ancient cultures and their influences in North America, all of which occurred long before Rome set out to conquer the world.

The book explores the ancient history of North America and covers the research conducted by universities, archeologists and researchers, including many stories which have not found their way into school history books quite yet.

For example, do you remember reading in your history book about:

• stone pyramids amid smoking iron foundries from the Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi River
• a walled city more populous than London at the time, with a pyramid larger than the Great Pyramid of Egypt, called Cahokia  located near present-day St. Louis, Missouri
• the Hopewell people who settled in what is now called the Ohio Valley and traded extraordinary quantities of luxury goods from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian shores of the Great Lakes, in 300 B.C.
• the Adena people and their ancestral burial grounds with skeletons of the men and women measuring up to 7 feet and the recently discovered Temple of the Moon structure which had been covered up over the years by a lake
• the Anasazi solar observatory in Casa Rinconcada, New Mexico

Author Joseph serves as editor in chief of Ancient American magazine and has been a guest on Explore Your Spirit. In Advanced Civilizations of Prehistoric America, he shares how each of these civilizations reached great pinnacles of advancement, while also sharing the research on how they vanished from the country. Perhaps as further research continues and natural landscapes change such as melting glaciers in Alaska, more civilizations will be uncovered revealing their haunted past.

To see more untold American History, watch the very entertaining Assume the Position with Mr. Wuhl, sharing the dis-information on Christopher Columbus and Paul Revere.

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