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Government Suppression and Ethnocentrism: Avoiding Anomalous Evid lence in NZ, China and Mexico controversial, but the book became far more controversial than the Government Suppression and Ethnocentrism: Avoiding contents when it was used in a documentary. Anomalous Evidence in NZ, China and Mexico In 1996, NBC broadcast a special called The Mysterious In New Zealand, the government actually stepped in and enact- Origins of Man, which featured material from Cremo's book. The ed a law forbidding the public from entering a controversial reaction from the scientific community went off the Richter scale. archaeological zone. This story appeared in the book, Ancient NBC was deluged with letters from irate scientists who called the Celtic New Zealand, by Mark Doutré. producer "a fraud" and the whole program "a hoax". However, as we will find (and as I promised at the beginning of But the scientists went further than this—a lot further. In an the article), this is a complicated conspiracy. Scientists trying to extremely unconscionable sequence of bizarre moves, they tried _ protect their "hallowed" theories while furthering their careers are to force NBC not to rebroadcast the popular program, but that —_ not the only ones who want artifacts and data suppressed. This is effort failed. Then they took the most radical step of all: they where the situation gets sticky. presented their case to the federal government and requested the The Waipoua Forest became a controversial site in New Federal Communications Commission to step in and bar NBC —_ Zealand because an archaeological dig apparently showed evi- from airing the program again. dence of a non-Polynesian culture that preceded the Maori—a fact This was not only an apparent infringement of free speech anda _ that the tribe was not happy with. They learned of the results of blatant attempt to thwart commerce, it was an unprecedented the excavations before the general public did and complained to effort to censor intellectual discourse. If the public or any govern- the government. According to Doutré, the outcome was "an offi- ment agency made an attempt to handcuff the scientific establish- cial archival document, which clearly showed an intention by ment, the public would never hear the end of it. New Zealand government departments to withhold archaeological The letter to the FCC written by Dr Allison Palmer, President information from public scrutiny for 75 years". of the Institute for Cambrian Studies, The public got wind of this fiasco but is revealing: the government denied the claim. At the very least, NBC should be However, official documents show required to make substantial that an embargo had been placed on prime-time apologies to their In New Zealand, the site. . p viewing audience for a sufficient the government actually Doutré is a student of New Zealand period of time so that the audi- ste ed in and enacted a law history and archaeology. He is con- ence clearly gets the message ene . cerned because he says that artifacts that they were duped. In addi- forbidding the public proving that there was an earlier cul- tion, NBC should perhaps be G 6 ture which preceded the Maori are fined sufficiently so that a major from entering al controversial missing from museums. He asks what fund for public science educa- archaeological zone. happened to several anomalous remains: Where are the ancient Indo- European hair samples (wavy red brown hair), originally obtained tion can be established. I think we have some good leads on who "the Brain Police" are. And I really do not think "conspiracy" is too strong a word—because for from a rock shelter near Watakere, that were on display at every case of this kind of attempted suppression that is exposed, the Auckland War Memorial Museum for many years? 10 others are going on successfully. We have no idea how many Where is the giant skeleton found near Mitimati? enigmatic artifacts or dates have been labelled "error" and tucked away in storage warehouses or circular files, never to see the light Unfortunately this is not the only such incident. Ethnocentrism of day. has become a factor i in the conspiracy to hide mankind's true his- ae ath In New Zealand, the government actually stepped in and enacted a law forbidding the public from entering a controversial archaeological zone. Unfortunately this is not the only such incident. Ethnocentrism has become a factor in the conspiracy to hide mankind's true his- tory. Author Graham Hancock has been attacked by various eth- nic groups for reporting similar enigmatic findings. The problem for researchers concerned with establishing humanity's true history is that the goals of nationalists or ethnic groups who want to lay claim to having been in a particular place first, often dovetail with the goals of cultural evolutionists. Archaeologists are quick to go along with suppressing these kinds of anomalous finds. One reason Egyptologists so jealously guard the Great Pyramid's construction date has to do with the issue of national pride. The case of the Takla Makan Desert mummies in western China is another example of this phenomenon. In the 1970s and 1980s, an unaccounted-for Caucasian culture was suddenly unearthed in China. The arid environment preserved the remains of a blond-haired, blue-eyed people who lived in pre-dynastic China. They wore colourful robes, boots, stockings and hats. The Chinese were not happy about this revelation and they have downplayed the enigmatic find, even though Asians were found buried alongside the Caucasian mummies. National Geographic writer Thomas B. Allen mused in a 1996 article about his finding a potsherd bearing a fingerprint of the Data Rejection: Inconvenient Dating in Mexico Then there is the high-profile case of Dr Virginia Steen- McIntyre, a geologist working for the US Geological Survey (USGS), who was dispatched to an archaeological site in Mexico to date a group of artifacts in the 1970s. This travesty also illustrates how far established scientists will go to guard orthodox tenets. McIntyre used state-of-the-art equipment and backed up her results by using four different methods, but her results were off the chart. The lead archaeologist expected a date of 25,000 years or less, and the geologist's finding was 250,000 years or more. The figure of 25,000 years or less was critical to the Bering Strait "crossing" theory, and it was the motivation behind the head archaeologist's tossing Steen-MclIntyre's results in the circular file and asking for a new series of dating tests. This sort of reaction does not occur when dates match the expected chronological model that supports accepted theories. Steen-MclIntyre was given a chance to retract her conclusions, but she refused. She found it hard thereafter to get her papers published and she lost a teaching job at an American university. APRIL — MAY 2002 NEXUS ¢ 63 www.nexusmagazine.com