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A short time later, Schoch, Hawass and Lehner were invited to Pressure Tactics: The Ica Stones of Peru debate the issue at the American Association for the Now we turn to another, very different case. In 1966, Dr Javier Advancement of Science. West was not allowed to participate | Cabrera received a stone as a gift from a poor local farmer in his because he lacked the required credentials. native Ica, Peru. A fish was carved on the stone, which would not This points to a questionable assumption that is part of the have meant much to the average villager but it did mean a lot to establishment's arsenal: only degreed scientists can practise sci- the educated Dr Cabrera. He recognised it as a long-extinct ence. Two filters keep the uncredentialled, independent species. This aroused his curiosity. He purchased more stones researcher out of the loop: (1) credentials, and (2) peer review. from the farmer, who said he had collected them near the river You do not get to number two unless you have number one. after a flood. Science is a method that anyone can learn and apply. It does Dr Cabrera accumulated more and more stones, and word of not require a degree to observe and record facts and think critical- their existence and potential import reached the archaeological ly about them, especially in the non-technical social sciences. In | community. Soon, the doctor had amassed thousands of "Ica a free and open society, science has to be a democratic process. stones". The sophisticated carvings were as enigmatic as they Be that as it may, West was barred. The elements of the debate = were fascinating. Someone had carved men fighting with have been batted back and forth since then without resolution. It | dinosaurs, men with telescopes and men performing operations is similar to the controversy over who built the Giza pyramids and —__ with surgical equipment. They also contained drawings of lost how. continents. This brings up the issue of The Big Lie and how it has been Several of the stones were sent to Germany and the etchings promoted for generations in front of God and everyone. The con- were dated to remote antiquity. But we all know that men could troversy over how the Great Pyramid was constructed is one not have lived at the time of dinosaurs; Homo sapiens has only example. It could be easily settled if Egyptologists wanted to _ existed for about 100,000 years. resolve the dispute. A simple test The BBC got wind of this discovery could be designed and arranged by and swooped down to produce a docu- impartial engineers that would either mentary about the Ica stones. The prove or disprove their longstanding rr . media exposure ignited a storm of con- disputed theory—that it was built The sophisticated carvings troversy. Archaeologists criticised the ue He sees methods were as enigmatic as they Peruvian government for aaa of the day, circa . . ° about enforcing antiquities laws (bu Why hasn't this been done? The were fascinating. Someone that was not their real concern). answer is so obvious, it seems impos- had carved men fighting Pressure was applied to government sible: they know that the theory is . h di officials. bogus. Could a trained, highly edu- wit Inosaurs... The farmer who had been selling the stones to Cabrera was arrested; he claimed to have found them in a cave weighing 70 tons, could have been but refused to disclose the exact loca- transported and lifted by primitive tion to authorities, or so they claimed. methods? That seems improbable, though they have no compunc- This case was disposed of so artfully that it would do any cor- tion against lying to the public, writing textbooks and defending rupt politician proud. The Peruvian government threatened to this theory against alternative theories. However, we must note _ prosecute and imprison the farmer. He was offered and accepted that they will not subject themselves to the bottom-line test. a plea bargain; he then recanted his story and "admitted" to having We think it is incumbent upon any scientist to bear the burden _ carved the stones himself. That seems highly implausible, since of proof of his/her thesis; however, the social scientists who make he was uneducated and unskilled and there were 11,000 stones in these claims have never stood up to that kind of scrutiny. That is all. Some were fairly large and intricately carved with animals why we must suspect a conspiracy. No other scientific discipline | and scenes that the farmer would not have had knowledge of would get away with bending the rules of science. All that without being a palaeontologist. He would have needed to work Egyptologists have ever done is bat down alternative theories every day for several decades to produce that volume of stones. using underhanded tactics. It is time to insist that they prove their | However, the underlying facts were neither here nor there. The own proposals. Ica stones were labelled "hoax" and forgotten. Why would scientists try to hide the truth and avoid any test of The case did not require a head-to-head confrontation or public their hypothesis? Their motivations are equally transparent. If it discrediting of non-scientists by scientists; it was taken care of can be proved that the Egyptians did not build the Great Pyramid —_ with invisible pressure tactics. Since it was filed under "hoax", in 2500 BC using primitive methods, or if the Sphinx can be dated —_ the enigmatic evidence never had to be dealt with, as it did in the to 9000 BC, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. next example. Orthodox views of cultural evolution are based upon a chronology of civilisation having started in Sumeria no earlier than 4000 BC. Censorship of "Forbidden" Thinking: Evidence for The theory does not permit an advanced civilisation to have exist- | Mankind's Great Antiquity ed prior to that time. End of discussion. Archaeology and history The case of author Michael Cremo is well documented, and it lose their meaning without a fixed timeline as a point of reference. also demonstrates how the scientific establishment openly uses Since the theory of "cultural evolution" has been tied to _ pressure tactics on the media and government. His book Darwin's general theory of evolution, even more is at stake. Does Forbidden Archeology examines many previously ignored exam- this explain why facts, anomalies and enigmas are denied, sup- ples of artifacts that prove modern man's antiquity far exceeds the pressed and/or ignored? Yes, it does. The biological sciences age given in accepted chronologies. today are based on Darwinism. The examples which he and his co-author present are cated scientist really believe that 2.3 million tons of stone, some blocks The sophisticated carvings were as enigmatic as they were re fascinating. Someone es a. f% bat _ Censorship of "Forbidden" Thinking: Evidence for Mankind's Great Antiquity The case of author Michael Cremo is well documented, and it also demonstrates how the scientific establishment openly uses pressure tactics on the media and government. His book Forbidden Archeology examines many previously ignored exam- ples of artifacts that prove modern man's antiquity far exceeds the age given in accepted chronologies. The examples which he and his co-author present are 62 ¢ NEXUS APRIL — MAY 2002 Pressure Tactics: The Ica Stones of Peru had carved men fighting with dinosaurs... www.nexusmagazine.com