Every now and then, the alternative research community gets an unwitting boost from science, and in this case, the research in question is that of my colleague-in-Bell research (and indeed, the individual who uncovered the Nazi Bell story), Igor Witkowski, of Warsaw, Poland. What most people do not know, is that besides his phenomenally well-documented, tightly argued, and provocative The Truth About the Wunderwaffe, Mr. Witkowski also wrote another highly intriguing book, The Axis of the World, published by Adventures Unlimited Press. In this important work, which I had the privilege of seeing before it went to press, Mr. Witkowski outlined his case that the “land bridge” theory of migration to the North and South American continents was all wrong. His thesis was the converse, that ancient peoples had come across the Pacific, island-hopping along the way, to arrive first at Easter Island, and then across the expanse of sea to South America. His argument was both contextual and linguistic: he pointed out the similarities of Rongo-Rongo script of Easter Island to that of the Indus Valley civilization of India, a point which was noticed by his fellow countryman, the linguist Szalek. Witkowski also pointed out the greater antiquity of structures in South America – Lake Tihuanaco for example, and the monuments of Pumu Punkhu – and the relative decline in technological capability as one moved northward to consider more recent structures. For him, in other words, the migration from Asia was not from Siberia to the North and finally South American continents, but the reverse: a migration of Indo-Polynesian peoples from India and Southeast Asia, across the southwestern Pacific, to South America, and thence northward. Interestingly enough, two regular readers here, Ms. P.H. and Mr. S.D., both shared stories this past week about how recent genetic studies indicate a connection between the population of Easter Island, and South America: Genomic data support early contact between Easter Island and Americas Easter Islanders sailed to Americas, DNA suggests The phys.org article in particular notes that current “textbook theories” will have to be revised, the theories still currently advocated in American edgycayshun: “The findings are a reminder that “early human populations extensively explored the planet,” says Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas from the Natural History Museum of Denmark’s Centre for GeoGenetics. “Textbook versions of human colonization events—the peopling of the Americas, for example—need to be re-evaluated utilizing genomic data.” “On that note, a second article that will appear in the same issue of Current Biology by Malaspinas along with Eske Willerslev and their colleagues examined two human skulls representing the indigenous “Botocudos” of Brazil to find that their genomic ancestry is Polynesian, with no detectable Native American component at all.” The dating here is significant, for it is still being couched in terms of a relatively recent interaction of Easter Islanders and South American native populations: “While it may have taken weeks for Polynesians to reach even the closest nearby islands, there are hints of contact with the larger world. For example, there is evidence for the presence of crops native to the Americas in Polynesia, including the Andean sweet potato, long before the first reported European contact. “Genome-wide analysis of 27 native Rapanui now confirms significant contact between the island people and Native Americans sometime between approximately AD 1300 and AD 1500, 19 to 23 generations ago. The Rapanui population began mixing with Europeans only much later, in about 1850. The ancestry of the Rapanui today is ?76% Polynesian, 8% Native American, and 16% European.” This is still a long way from the much earlier dating suggested by Mr. Witkowski, but again, his data set had no such genetic studies on which to base his arguments and speculations. But his consideration of fellow countryman and linguist Szalek’s studies of Easter Island’s native script and its undeniable resemblance to the Indus Valley scripts, some dating from ca. 8000 BC, is suggestive in and of itself. While genetics appears to be a long way from confirming these dates, it does appear to have loosely corroborated Mr. Witkowski’s general pattern and thesis, that of a regular and consistent connection of peoples from the Southwest Pacific, across that ocean, to South America. I suspect in time we will see more and more corroboration of this pattern. One can only hope that, by the same token, science will respect the attempts of those researchers, like Mr. Witkowski, who attempted to synthesize various data sets into a different picture, and to brave a break with mainstream paradigms.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 17:18:56 +0000