The Day the Past Arrives in the Mail: Why Biblical Archaeology Review Is My Favorite Thing in the World.

It is always a special day whenever one of these comes in the mail.

I have been saying that for most of a lifetime, and I have not found a reason to take it back. I have been reading Biblical Archaeology Review since I was a kid in the 1970s.[1] The magazine was new then. Hershel Shanks had just pried a door open between the trench and the kitchen table, and a generation of ordinary readers suddenly had access to the same arguments the professors were having in Jerusalem, Amman, and Cambridge.[2] I am still on that list. The issue still arrives every few months. And when it does, I have a ritual. I block the calendar. I throw the noise out of the room. I turn the phone face down. I let the house go quiet, and I go through the thing article by wonderful article until the night is gone.

If I milk it—and I usually do—I stay up while everyone else has gone to bed. Two o’clock in the morning, a glass of water, the window dark, the mind finally unhurried. I never get tired of it. They do such a good job on this magazine that I can disagree with half of what I am reading and still close the cover grateful. That is a rarer virtue than most publications admit.

A Rough Day, a Small Face, and Japanese Dumplings from Costco

Today was a rough day. There were problems stacked on problems, the kind of list that makes a person keep working because stopping would only let the list talk louder. I was at it when my wife went to the mailbox. She saw the mailman go down the road. She came back in with that smaller face she wears when she is carrying a gift she already knows will land, and she pulled the issue out of the stack as if she had found a holiday hiding in ordinary paper.

She knows the ritual. She has known it for years. Shut everything down. Give him the hours. Let him disappear into the Bronze Age and come back when he is done. She also knows the other half of the ceremony, which is not in any style guide and would not impress a tenure committee: Japanese dumplings from Costco. They are our favorite meal in the world. I put my work away. We ate. Then I came back to the magazine and started turning pages again.

I can tell you, without much fear of contradiction from anyone who has lived a long marriage, that there is not much better in the world than those two things arriving on the same evening. Life is already wonderful. The dumplings do not create the wonder. They just have the good manners to show up when the past does.

That is not a small thing. A culture is what it chooses to interrupt itself for. Some houses interrupt themselves for a game. Some interrupt themselves for a crisis. In this house we interrupt ourselves for a quarterly argument with the dirt of the ancient Near East, served with dumplings. I will defend that liturgy against any number of more fashionable ones.

I Do Not Read This Magazine Because I Agree with It

I do a lot of coverage on alternative history. The people who write Biblical Archaeology Review are, by and large, the academics who write the official history. In a seminar room, we would probably disagree on most of the load-bearing claims. Over coffee, one on one, we would discover we have more in common than the professional costumes suggest. We both love the ground. We both hate a lazy sentence. We both know it takes years to get one good layer out of a tell and only minutes for a man in an armchair to declare the layer silly.

I do not want to disparage their work. It takes a special kind of patience to spend a salary’s worth of afternoons on ancient Mediterranean studies, to draw a wall, to weigh a sherd, to argue about a burn layer until the argument itself becomes a kind of craft. Thank God people go out and dig. I love them for it. What they hand a general reader is the compressed labor of thousands of hours. That bandwidth is the gift. I can sit with their results at two in the morning and ask what the weight of the discovery actually does to the historical narrative.

The gift is not the same thing as a verdict. I come out of aerospace, which is a culture that slings a thousand things at the wall at the same time and then forces smart people to defend their assumptions out loud. You get them in a room. You make them spell the claim. When they stumble—because the evidence is not quite obtained enough, not quite clear enough—you put a mark next to that line and you keep going. A 5-Why breakdown is just the civilian name for the same habit.[3] You are trying to get to the bottom. You often end with more questions than you started with. That is not failure. That is the work confessing that the universe is larger than the first memo.

So I read BAR the way I used to sit in those rooms. I take the facts they sweat for. I refuse to inherit the spellings they cannot finish. Conviction, if it is worth anything, has to be able to look a trench report in the eye and still ask the next why.

What These Pages Teach Better Than Almost Anything

If you want a working grasp of the land of Canaan, of Israel, of the First Temple and the Second, this magazine is still one of the best public teachers in the English language. It will not give you a Sunday-school flannelgraph. It will give you walls, seals, bullae, burnt rooms, inscription fights, and the slow humiliation of theories that looked inevitable in 1986. That is how you learn a period well enough to ask an intelligent question about what is not on the page.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the obvious example. Once you have sat with what those caves actually held—the textual habits, the calendar arguments, the purity rules, the war language—you can hear Second Temple Judaism thinking out loud.[4] You stop treating “what people believed” as a slogan. You start treating it as an artifact. Belief leaves residue. So does politics. So does fear. A society is whatever it bothers to bury, copy, smash, or hide in a jar.

That is also why I read this magazine as a student of business and politics, not only as a student of Scripture. If you are trying to build a company culture, you are already in the archaeology business. You are asking what a group worships when no one is watching, what it will pay for, what it will kill a project to protect, and what story it tells itself about why the last city fell. Civilizations rise for reasons. They decline for reasons. The reasons are never only economic and never only theological. They are psychological, liturgical, and military at the same time.[5] The Bronze Age did not end because a professor needed a chapter title. It ended because systems that looked permanent discovered they were not.

I like politics. I like business. I like understanding how cultures work so I can apply the lesson before the lesson applies itself to me. You cannot do that on vibes. You do it by watching how a people handled copper, kingship, covenant, and collapse when the outcome was still in doubt.

The Questions the Trench Reports Keep Leaving Off the Table

Here is where I stop being a grateful subscriber and start being the guy from aerospace with a marker in his hand.

Everybody who reads widely in this field knows the argument about Bronze Age copper and long-distance trade. I have said for years that North American copper belongs in that conversation. The Old Copper Culture of the Great Lakes was not a footnote. The people working the Keweenaw and Isle Royale were among the earliest miners and metalsmiths on the planet.[6] Mainstream archaeology is prepared to praise that fact and then change the subject when the next question arrives: where did all that copper go, and what does the timing do to the usual map of Bronze Age supply? I know the consensus answer. The consensus answer is that European and Near Eastern copper is accounted for by Old World mines, and that a transatlantic trade remains unproven.[7] Fair enough. Unproven is not the same as unaskable. In a review room, “we have not found the shipwreck yet” is a status report. It is not a gag order.

The same habit shows up closer to home. When I talk about stone monuments in northern Michigan—dolmens, capstones, arrangements that look like cousins of the chambers you can walk through in the British Isles and across Atlantic Europe—the geological reflex is always waiting. Displacement. Glaciers. The ice did it.[8] Ice did a great many things. Ice does not get a monopoly on every balanced stone in the Upper Midwest. We already know that people in the Great Lakes arranged rock on purpose. Under Lake Huron, on the old Alpena-Amberley Ridge, there are drive lanes and hunting blinds nine thousand years old. That is not a glacier having a hobby. That is a culture thinking in stone.[9] If a people can build that under what is now water, I am not required to call every terrestrial chamber an accident of meltwater.

I am not asking BAR to become a magazine of North American diffusionism. I am asking the older question the magazine itself taught me to ask: if you know a period well, you are obligated to notice the silence around it. Why this map and not the larger one? Why this set of ancestors and not the ones standing in the next drainage? Absence from a journal is not the same thing as absence from the world. Spilled milk can disappear from the fossil record. That does not mean the glass was never full.

Canaan, Yahweh, and the Politics That Did Not Stay in the Ground

Once you have a good grip on what the excavators actually know about Canaan and the highlands of Israel, you can ask the question the field sometimes treats as bad manners: what kind of culture was already there when the Hebrew Bible says Yahweh told a people to go in?[10] I do not treat that command as a campfire exaggeration and I do not treat it as a modern war-crimes pamphlet. I treat it as politics in the older sense—the ordering of a people under a claim about who runs the unseen world.

The Bible is not embarrassed by a populated heaven. Psalm 82 puts God on his feet in a council of gods and tells them they are going to die like men. Deuteronomy 32, in the reading preserved by the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint, says the nations were parceled out according to the number of the sons of God, while Yahweh kept Israel as his own portion.[11] That is not a children’s story. That is a jurisdictional map. Babel is the administrative crisis that precedes the map. The conquest traditions are what the map looks like when it reaches the ground. You do not have to like the theology to see the structure. You only have to stop flattening the text until it resembles a modern committee.

This is the argument of the book I have been writing, The Politics of Heaven. Blood, loyalty, and throne-claims do not stay in one register. They move between temples, palaces, and the beings the temples were built to negotiate with. If that sounds speculative from the cheap seats, I would only note that the Bible itself is less shy about the subject than many of its professional interpreters.[12]

Eve, the Fruit, and a Remark I Have Not Been Able to Shake

Most of my readers do not leave public comments. They send texts. They send emails. They would rather be known by a sentence than by a handle. One of them said something I have been turning over ever since: Eve was the original Ayn Rand.

It is a mischievous line, and it is sharper than it first sounds. Rand was an atheist who treated knowledge as security. Eve reaches for the fruit she was told not to eat because the fruit promises the knowledge of good and evil—which is to say, it promises a kind of coverage. If I can see the whole field, I will not be surprised. If I cannot be surprised, I might not need to trust. The serpent’s pitch is not “become wicked.” The serpent’s pitch is “become independently briefed.” That is a political offer. It is also a religious one. The two are not different departments in Genesis.

There is good and evil. That part is not subtle. There is also the other tree, the one that did not get eaten, the one that has to do with eternal life. We were built for a purpose and we fell out of the purpose. Ever since, there has been a disorder in the world that would prefer the purpose stay fallen. The snakes are still in the catalog. They still talk. They still offer fruit at the expense of every Adam who thought he could manage the garden by intelligence alone.

I am not above a joke when I say that Jesus was crucified in the middle of that argument. I am thinking of Job, and of Satan telling the court that loyalty is only loyalty until the invoice arrives.[13] I am thinking of the wilderness, with the kingdoms of the world placed on a ridgeline and the offer to jump, to seize, to save himself. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” is what it sounds like when a man refuses the offer and pays the price the offer was designed to avoid. If Eve reached for knowledge as security, the cross is the opposite transaction: knowledge of the worst thing, accepted without the security.

That is not a footnote to archaeology. It is the reason archaeology of the biblical world still matters to a person who also thinks about elections, companies, and the way a culture decides what it is allowed to notice. The past is not a museum. It is a set of unfinished negotiations.

How to Read a Magazine Without Becoming Its Disciple

The method is simple, and I commend it to anyone who is going to spend a night with BAR or with any other serious journal.

First, grant the labor. A published excavation is not a blog post. Treat it that way.

Second, separate the find from the frame. The wall is one fact. The paragraph that tells you what the wall “means for early Israelite state formation” is another fact, and a softer one.

Third, ask the aerospace question: can they spell the assumption without coughing? If the dating depends on a circular pottery sequence, say so. If the absence of evidence is doing the work of a conclusion, say so. If a whole continent has been ruled out because it would rearrange the lecture notes, say so.

Fourth, keep a second ledger for the questions the article makes possible and then declines to ask. Those questions are often the real harvest.

Fifth, take the night. Do not speed-read a civilization. The quiet is part of the instrument. A magazine like this is built for the hours when the house has stopped performing and a reader can finally hear himself think.

Why I Will Keep Subscribing

I can say the things I say about these topics because other people did the unglamorous work first. They published. I sat with what they published. Sometimes I said, that is not good enough. Sometimes I said, that changes the picture. Either way, the picture moved because they went into the ground.[14]

That is how you connect the past to the future without turning either into a costume. You learn a period until you can feel its joints. You watch what a people did when copper was wealth, when a temple was a government, when a scroll was a survival strategy. Then you look at your own shop floor, your own county, your own country, and you ask whether the same joints are moving.

If you have ever read The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, you already know I do not treat culture as decoration. Culture is the operating system. Archaeology is one of the few disciplines that lets you watch an operating system fail in slow motion and leave the wreckage where a later age can still touch it. That is why this magazine remains, for me, one of the best publications in the world. Not because it is always right. Because it keeps putting first-rate evidence in the hands of people who are willing to stay up with it.

My wife knew what kind of day I was having. She also knew the cure that would not insult the day by pretending it had been easy. She brought in the mail. She made the dumplings. She gave me the hours. It does not get any better than that.

Life is wonderful with or without the dumplings. It is more wonderful when the past arrives on the same plate.

Notes

The numbered notes in the essay appear as footnotes on each page. The list below is a reading path, not a claim that every title agrees with me. A good bibliography should be a room you can walk around in, not a unanimous chorus.

A Working Bibliography for Further Reading

Biblical Archaeology Review and the Public Craft

Biblical Archaeology Society. Biblical Archaeology Review. Washington, D.C., 1975–present. https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/.

Cline, Eric H. “Larger Than Life.” Biblical Archaeology Society, February 8, 2021.

Shanks, Hershel, ed. Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: Random House, 1992.

Shanks, Hershel. The Mystery and Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: Random House, 1998.

VanderKam, James C. The Dead Sea Scrolls Today. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010.

Collins, John J. The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.

Schiffman, Lawrence H. Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: Doubleday, 1995.

Magness, Jodi. The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021.

Canaan, Israel, Judah, and the Temples

Mazar, Amihai. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000–586 B.C.E. New York: Doubleday, 1990.

Mazar, Amihai, and Ephraim Stern. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible. Vol. 2, The Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Periods. New York: Doubleday, 2001.

Dever, William G. What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001.

Dever, William G. Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017.

Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed. New York: Free Press, 2001.

Finkelstein, Israel. The Forgotten Kingdom: The Archaeology and History of Northern Israel. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013.

Kitchen, K. A. On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.

Provan, Iain, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III. A Biblical History of Israel. 2nd ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015.

Rainey, Anson F., and R. Steven Notley. The Sacred Bridge: Carta’s Atlas of the Biblical World. 2nd ed. Jerusalem: Carta, 2014.

Stern, Ephraim. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible. Vol. 2. New York: Doubleday, 2001.

Ussishkin, David. Biblical Lachish. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2014.

Mazar, Eilat. The Palace of King David. Jerusalem: Shoham, 2009.

Faust, Avraham. The Archaeology of Israelite Society in Iron Age II. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012.

Killebrew, Ann E. Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005.

Levy, Thomas E., ed. Historical Biblical Archaeology and the Future. London: Equinox, 2010.

Bronze Age Worlds, Collapse, and Trade

Cline, Eric H. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Rev. ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.

Cline, Eric H. After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024.

Tainter, Joseph A. The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Yoffee, Norman, and George L. Cowgill, eds. The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988.

Drews, Robert. The End of the Bronze Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Broodbank, Cyprian. The Making of the Middle Sea. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Kristiansen, Kristian, and Thomas B. Larsson. The Rise of Bronze Age Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Kristiansen, Kristian. “The Rise of Bronze Age Peripheries and the Expansion of International Trade.” In Trade and Civilisation, edited by Kristian Kristiansen, Thomas Lindkvist, and Janken Myrdal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Roberts, Benjamin W., and Christopher P. Thornton, eds. Archaeometallurgy in Global Perspective. New York: Springer, 2014.

Radivojević, Miljana, et al. “The Provenance, Use, and Circulation of Metals in the European Bronze Age.” Journal of Archaeological Research 27 (2019): 331–98.

Muhly, James D. Copper and Tin. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1973.

Kassianidou, Vasiliki, and A. Bernard Knapp. “Archaeometallurgy in the Mediterranean.” In The Archaeology of Mediterranean Prehistory, edited by Emma Blake and A. Bernard Knapp. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.

Great Lakes Copper, Stone, and the North American File

Pompeani, David P., et al. “On the Timing of the Old Copper Complex in the Keweenaw Peninsula and Isle Royale.” Radiocarbon, 2021.

Wade, Lizzie. “Great Lakes people among first coppersmiths.” Science 371, no. 6536 (2021): 1299.

Martin, Susan R. Wonderful Power: The Story of Ancient Copper Working in the Lake Superior Basin. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999.

Pleger, Thomas C. “A Brief Introduction to the Old Copper Complex of the Western Great Lakes.” The Wisconsin Archeologist 82 (2001).

O’Shea, John M., and Guy A. Meadows. “A 9,000-year-old caribou hunting structure beneath Lake Huron.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 19 (2014): 6911–15.

Howey, Meghan C. L., et al. “Geospatial modeling approach to monument construction using Michigan from A.D. 1000–1600 as a case study.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 29 (2016).

Griffin, James B. “The Late Prehistory of the Ohio Valley.” In Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1978.

Cunningham, Wilbur M. A Study of the Glacial Kame Culture in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1948.

Squier, E. G., and E. H. Davis. Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1848.

Fell, Barry. America B.C. New York: Quadrangle, 1976. Read as a document in the history of a controversy, not as a closed case.

Feder, Kenneth L. Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries. 10th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. The standard skeptical counterweight.

Midgley, Magdalena S. The Megaliths of Northern Europe. London: Routledge, 2008.

Divine Council, Genesis, and the Unseen Politics of Scripture

Heiser, Michael S. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015.

Heiser, Michael S. “Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God.” Bibliotheca Sacra 158 (2001): 52–74.

Heiser, Michael S. “Divine Council.” In Lexham Bible Dictionary, edited by John D. Barry et al. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012.

Smith, Mark S. The Origins of Biblical Monotheism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Smith, Mark S. The Early History of God. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.

Day, John. Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000.

Mullen, E. Theodore, Jr. The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980.

Boyd, Gregory A. God at War. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997.

Walton, John H. The Lost World of Genesis One. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009.

Walton, John H. Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018.

Sarna, Nahum M. Understanding Genesis. New York: Schocken, 1966.

Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses. New York: Norton, 2004.

Levenson, Jon D. Creation and the Persistence of Evil. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Pagels, Elaine. The Origin of Satan. New York: Random House, 1995.

Wright, N. T. Jesus and the Victory of God. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996.

Wright, N. T. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.

Culture, Business, and Why the Past Still Issues Orders

Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. Author’s edition.

Hoffman, Rich. The Politics of Heaven. Forthcoming.

Ohno, Taiichi. Toyota Production System. New York: Productivity Press, 1988.

Schein, Edgar H. Organizational Culture and Leadership. 5th ed. Hoboken: Wiley, 2017.

Girard, René. Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.

Girard, René. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2001.

Voegelin, Eric. Order and History. 5 vols. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956–1987.

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane. New York: Harcourt, 1959.

Bellah, Robert N. Religion in Human Evolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.

Scott, James C. Against the Grain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.

Graeber, David, and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

Jordan, the East Bank, and the Neighbors the Text Will Not Leave Alone

MacDonald, Burton. East of the Jordan: Territories and Sites of the Hebrew Scriptures. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2000.

Bienkowski, Piotr, ed. Early Edom and Moab. Sheffield: J. R. Collis, 1992.

Dearman, J. Andrew, ed. Studies in the Mesha Inscription and Moab. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989.

Routledge, Bruce. Moab in the Iron Age. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

Herr, Larry G., and Douglas R. Clark. “Madaba Plains Project.” Multiple season reports in Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan.

Savage, Stephen H., and Steven E. Falconer. “Spatial and Temporal Trends in Levantine Settlement.” Journal of Archaeological Science, various.

A note on method. I have not required the bibliography to agree with me, and I have not required myself to agree with the bibliography. That is the same rule I bring to Biblical Archaeology Review. Read the people who dug. Read the people who doubt the people who dug. Then keep the night watch and decide which assumptions still refuse to be spelled.

[1] Biblical Archaeology Review (ISSN 0098-9444) has been published by the Biblical Archaeology Society since March 1975. The magazine is presently issued quarterly. See “About Biblical Archaeology Review,” Biblical Archaeology Society, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/magazines/.

[2] Hershel Shanks (1930–2021), a Washington lawyer turned editor, founded the Biblical Archaeology Society in 1974 and launched BAR in March 1975. He remained editor-in-chief until 2018. See Eric H. Cline, “Larger Than Life,” Biblical Archaeology Society, February 8, 2021; and “Setting the BAR,” Biblical Archaeology Society, 2025.

[3] The 5 Whys method is associated with Taiichi Ohno and the Toyota Production System. It is a root-cause drill: ask “why” until the chain of causation is exposed. In aerospace and other high-reliability cultures the same spirit appears as assumption-busting reviews, red teams, and formal failure analysis. See Taiichi Ohno, Toyota Production System (New York: Productivity Press, 1988).

[4] On the Dead Sea Scrolls as a window into Second Temple belief, see James C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010); and Hershel Shanks, ed., Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Random House, 1992).

[5] On collapse and regeneration as a comparative problem, see Joseph A. Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Eric H. Cline, 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, rev. ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021); and Norman Yoffee and George L. Cowgill, eds., The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988).

[6] David P. Pompeani et al., “On the Timing of the Old Copper Complex in the Keweenaw Peninsula and Isle Royale,” Radiocarbon (2021); and Lizzie Wade, “Great Lakes people among first coppersmiths,” Science 371, no. 6536 (2021): 1299. Sediment and radiocarbon work now places intensive Great Lakes copper working as early as ca. 9500 years ago, peaking roughly 7000–5000 years ago.

[7] The hypothesis that Lake Superior native copper supplied Bronze Age Europe remains outside the archaeological consensus. Mainstream syntheses locate European copper in Alpine, Iberian, Balkan, Cypriot, and British Isles sources. See Benjamin W. Roberts and Christopher P. Thornton, eds., Archaeometallurgy in Global Perspective (New York: Springer, 2014); and “The Provenance, Use, and Circulation of Metals in the European Bronze Age,” Journal of Archaeological Research 27 (2019). I record the disagreement rather than pretend it does not exist.

[8] On European and Levantine dolmens, see Magdalena S. Midgley, The Megaliths of Northern Europe (London: Routledge, 2008); and James L. Swauger, work on petroforms and stone constructions in the Upper Great Lakes. Geologists commonly classify northern Michigan capstone-and-pedestal arrangements as glacial erratics. I do not find that explanation sufficient for every specimen.

[9] John M. O’Shea and Guy A. Meadows, “A 9,000-year-old caribou hunting structure beneath Lake Huron,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 19 (2014): 6911–15. The Alpena-Amberley Ridge drive lanes are a reminder that stone work in the Great Lakes is not exhausted by the glacial-dumping story.

[10] On the archaeology of Canaan, Israel, and Judah in the Iron Age, standard entry points include Amihai Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000–586 B.C.E. (New York: Doubleday, 1990); Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed (New York: Free Press, 2001); and William G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001). I read all three and do not baptize any of them.

[11] Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015); and Heiser, “Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God,” Bibliotheca Sacra 158 (2001): 52–74. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint support “sons of God” rather than “sons of Israel” at Deuteronomy 32:8.

[12] Rich Hoffman, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business (author’s edition); and Hoffman, The Politics of Heaven (forthcoming). Related essays appear at overmanwarrior.wordpress.com.

[13] Job 1–2; Luke 4:1–13; Matthew 4:1–11. The Accuser’s wager in Job and the wilderness temptations of Jesus are two scenes in the same political drama: a claim on loyalty, tested under pressure, with the kingdoms of the world placed on the table.

[14] Biblical Archaeology Society All-Access membership presently includes the print magazine, the digital BAS Library (every issue of BAR since 1975, plus Bible Review and Archaeology Odyssey), lecture video, and curated collections. See https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

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About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.

Podcast Episode: I Didn’t Want To Be That Guy: The Influence of Non-Human Intelligence on the Ohi

Pip: The Overmanwarrior is the kind of site where you go to read about local Ohio history and end up reconsidering whether ancient earthwork builders had help from outside the solar system — and honestly, that’s a fair trade.

Mara: Rich Hoffman takes us deep into that territory today — ancient mounds, inscribed stones, and the question of what intelligence, human or otherwise, has been shaping civilization from the beginning.

Pip: Let’s start with the Newark Holy Stones and the case for non-human fingerprints on Ohio’s ancient landscape.

The Newark Holy Stones and Non-Human Intelligence

Mara: The post opens with a personal visit — a trip to the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in Coshocton, Ohio, where the Newark Holy Stones are held. The question it presses is whether institutional archaeology can fully account for what’s encoded in these sites and objects, or whether the framework itself is too narrow.

Pip: And the museum’s current panels, for what it’s worth, call the stones nineteenth-century forgeries — which is the tidy answer the post keeps poking at.

Mara: The post is direct about why that answer feels incomplete. Here’s the line that anchors it: “The possibility that non-human intelligences have interacted with human beings across deep time is no longer the fringe claim it once was. Government releases on UAPs in recent years have normalized the conversation in ways that would have been impossible even a decade ago.”

Pip: So the UAP disclosure moment is doing real work here — not as a distraction, but as permission to revisit old questions with new seriousness.

Mara: Exactly. The Newark Earthworks themselves are central to that case. The post describes them as tracking the moon’s 18.6-year nodal cycle with geometric precision — and then extends that into a navigational argument: if entities experience time dilation, these lunar-aligned earthworks function as ground references for calibrating not just where you are, but when.

Pip: Which reframes the whole complex from ceremonial site to cosmic waypoint — ribbons on trees in a forest, the post calls it, except monumental and landscape-scale.

Mara: The post also brings in David Wyrick, the surveyor who discovered the Decalogue Stone in 1860 — a carved figure with Hebrew inscriptions. The mainstream reading is Civil War-era political motivation: monogenism versus polygenism, the biblical argument against slavery. The post acknowledges that evidence but calls it incomplete. Wyrick was managing chronic pain with laudanum, already immersed in the mounds, and the post raises the possibility that what came through him “felt as if it came from outside himself.”

Pip: That’s a careful move — not claiming the stones are ancient, but asking whether the origin of the impulse matters as much as the origin of the carving.

Mara: And the post connects this to a broader pattern. The Wilmington Tablet — an Adena sandstone piece the post’s author found a replica of, for five dollars, in the museum gift shop — carries edge markings that suggest a systematic identity or ritual-status marker. The post reads these tablets alongside the earthworks as part of the same question: precise knowledge appearing suddenly, in multiple places, in ways that invite asking where it came from.

Pip: Five dollars for an artifact that raises questions archaeology hasn’t settled. That’s the best museum gift shop story I’ve heard.

Mara: The post is careful to say it respects the archaeological labor. What it questions is the institutional reluctance to hold anomalies open rather than explain them away — and that’s what the book The Politics of Heaven is framed as addressing. The full picture, the post argues, needs more than one discipline and more than one kind of evidence.

Mara: That tension between documented record and larger pattern is really the spine of everything here — and it doesn’t stay confined to Ohio.

Pip: What stays with me is the image of sitting quietly in front of the Decalogue Stone while the grandchildren wait — and still not being able to let the question go.

Mara: The post ends exactly there: the stones keep asking, the earthworks are still standing, and the disclosures are still coming. The conversation isn’t closed.

Rich Hoffman

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The Smoking Gun of Windover: What NAGPRA was meant to conceal

I have been reflecting deeply on this as April 9th rolls around—my birthday—and I decided this year I would give myself something truly personal, something that excites me at the core of my being and ties together years of my own research, political observations, and that relentless drive to uncover truths that the system tries to bury. It is not some flashy gift or a day off from the work I do for everyone else; instead, it is this deep dive into what I consider one of the most important archaeological revelations of our lifetime, a site that serves as a smoking gun for so many historical narratives that have been twisted, politicized, and deliberately constrained. I am talking about the Windover archaeological site in Central Florida, that extraordinary bog cemetery near Titusville, just up the road from the Kennedy Space Center, where an accidental discovery in the mid-1980s peeled back layers of prehistory in ways that challenge everything we have been taught about the peopling of North America, the sophistication of ancient cultures, and the very foundations of modern political narratives about land, history, and who truly belongs here. I have poured over the rare academic book that documented it all—Windover: Multidisciplinary Investigations of an Early Archaic Florida Cemetery, edited by Glen H. Doran and published by the University Press of Florida in 2002—and it has become my birthday present to myself because it represents a narrow window into truth before the doors slammed shut with laws like NAGPRA. I invite everyone who reads this to share in that excitement with me, because this is not just dusty bones in a pond; it is evidence of a sophisticated society that predates the standard Beringia migration story by thousands of years in meaningful ways, and it exposes how politics, not science, has been driving the suppression of our deep past.

I first came across references to this site years ago in my own independent studies of ancient American history, the kind of reading I do late at night after dealing with local politics here in Butler County, Ohio, or after watching the national scene unfold with all its layers of deception. Back then, I was already skeptical of the official timelines pushed in academia—the neat little story that indigenous peoples crossed the Bering land bridge around 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, spread south as hunter-gatherers, and that everything before European contact fits neatly into that box with tribes like the Iroquois, Lakota, or Sioux representing the “original” inhabitants. But Windover blew that open for me in a way nothing else had. Discovered accidentally in 1982 or early 1984 when a backhoe operator for a housing development called Windover Farms scooped up a human skull while digging in a small peat bog pond, it quickly became clear this was no recent crime scene. County medical examiners dated the remains as ancient, and that led to Florida State University anthropologist Glen Doran stepping in as principal investigator. From 1984 through about 1987, his team excavated roughly half of this half-acre pond cemetery under challenging wet-site conditions, uncovering the remains of at least 168 individuals—men, women, and children, from infants to elders around 60—buried in a deliberate, logical manner that suggested a thoughtful, organized society. What made it extraordinary was the preservation: the acidic yet neutral-pH peat bog acted like a natural time capsule, keeping not just bones but also soft tissue intact. We are talking brain tissue still present in 91 skulls, some with cellular structure preserved enough for DNA extraction; skin on the bodies; even the last meals still identifiable in their stomachs. They had clothing woven from plant fibers—some of the oldest and most complex textiles ever found in the New World, requiring looms or advanced weaving techniques that nobody expected for an “Archaic” period people 7,000 to 8,000 years ago. Wooden artifacts, bone and antler tools, a bottle gourd—evidence of a culture far more advanced than the simple hunter-gatherer label academia slaps on prehistory.

I have that Doran book—it is a thick, technical volume, the kind produced in limited academic runs, probably only a few thousand copies worldwide, and I feel fortunate to have one because it captures every multidisciplinary angle: environmental analysis, radiocarbon dating pinning the site firmly to around 6000-5000 BC, mortuary patterns showing bodies often placed with poles or stakes to keep them submerged, facing north with heads turned west in what looks like a deliberate ritual orientation toward the setting sun and perhaps some spiritual reverence. The people themselves were robust; average adult males stood about five feet nine inches, taller and healthier than many later prehistoric groups, with some individuals pushing six feet or more based on femur lengths and bone density—enough to fuel those early newspaper reports of “giants” in North America before institutionalized science dismissed them as hoaxes or exaggerations. There is no wild conspiracy in Doran’s work; it is straight, careful archaeology by scientists who genuinely loved the field and rushed to document everything because they sensed the political tides turning. Half the cemetery was left untouched, and today the site sits under a plaque in a wooded subdivision, a National Historic Landmark with no further major digs. That is the tragedy I keep coming back to, and it is why Windover feels like the smoking gun for me.

What hit me hardest when I dug into the details—and this is where my own political experience from years fighting school levies, local corruption, and national narratives in Ohio gives me a unique lens—is how perfectly timed this discovery was before the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) slammed the brakes on American archaeology. NAGPRA passed Congress on November 16, 1990, right after the Windover excavations wrapped up and right around the cultural frenzy sparked by Dances with Wolves, that Hollywood epic romanticizing the Sioux and framing Western expansion as pure theft of indigenous land. I have studied how bills get written, who lobbies them, and the closed-door intentions behind them, and NAGPRA was loaded with progressive language designed to solidify a specific narrative: America as stolen property from “Native Americans” defined by a very shallow historical scope. It required consultation with tribes for any remains or cultural items, mandated repatriation, and effectively shut down large-scale digs because developers and archaeologists alike knew that uncovering bones could halt projects, tie up land in legal battles, and invite tribal claims. Developers started burying finds quietly rather than reporting them, and grant money in academia dried up unless you played along with the official story. Windover happened in that narrow window before the law fully kicked in—Doran and his team worked fast, funded in part by the curious developers themselves, who paused their subdivision to allow proper science—and the result was this irreplaceable snapshot of an 8,000-year-old culture that does not neatly fit the Beringia-to-modern-tribes pipeline.

The DNA analysis of the preserved brain tissue is what really undermines the premises on which NAGPRA was built. Studies showed genetic markers linking these Windover people to ancient Asian populations via the Beringia route, as expected—haplogroups like A, C, D, and even the rare X that pops up in some Native contexts—but crucially, they do not align closely with any living Native American tribes or even many known prehistoric groups. It suggests either their lineage died out, experienced a severe bottleneck, or represents a distinct early population that predates or diverged from the groups we retroactively label as “indigenous.” I am not here to take anything away from what we have been calling Native American communities or their cultural heritage; I respect the reverence for ancestors. But when you have remains this old—older than the pyramids, older than Mesopotamian civilizations in some contexts—and DNA that does not match the shallow 300-400-year tribal samples used to justify repatriation claims, who exactly do you hand them back to? The law assumes a direct, unbroken chain to contemporary tribes, but Windover proves the timeline, and the populations were far more complex. These were not simple hunter-gatherers; they had advanced textile production, implying looms; thoughtful burial rituals suggesting religion or cosmology; trade networks possibly reaching far beyond the region (given certain materials); and a settled community life in a resource-rich Florida environment when sea levels were lower and the coastline extended miles outward. Villages and mounds now submerged offshore hint at even broader Archaic networks. This site forces a reevaluation: the “Native American” designation under NAGPRA was built on politically convenient assumptions that ignored deeper prehistory, and that ignorance was weaponized to challenge the legitimacy of Western expansion and the founding of the United States itself.

I see this as part of a larger pattern I have observed in my own work on politics and history—the way organized systems, often with roots in spiritual battles that play out in the terrestrial realm, rewrite narratives to maintain power. My upcoming book, The Politics of Heaven, dives straight into this because sites like Windover provide the hard evidence that legends, mythology, and even biblical accounts of ancient sophistication are not fairy tales. Think about it: these people knew how to weave delicate fabrics thousands of years before we associate such technology with the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, or Egypt. They cared for their sick and dead in a mass cemetery with ritual precision. Their stature and health suggest a robust population living in a stable society. And all of this at a time when the Ice Age was ending, sea levels were rising, and cultures we now call “Atlantis” in Platonic accounts or other global flood myths were supposedly migrating and seeding knowledge worldwide. Plato described Atlantis as an advanced civilization destroyed by catastrophe, with survivors spreading to Egypt, Britain, the Americas—places where we find sudden leaps in sophistication that do not fit the slow Beringia crawl. Windover fits as one piece of that puzzle: evidence of pre-Mesopotamian complexity right here in North America, with possible ties to shamanic or spiritual practices seen in even older Near Eastern sites. Take Qesem Cave near Tel Aviv in Israel, for example—an ancient site showing early humans (or pre-modern hominins) with innovative tool use, controlled fire, and communal activities dating back hundreds of thousands of years, far predating the standard timelines and hinting at organized, intelligent societies communicating with or revering something beyond the material world. Similar patterns appear in Natufian or shamanic contexts in the Levant around 13,000-10,000 BC, with ritual fires and early communal structures. These are not isolated; they point to a deep, sophisticated human history that institutional science, constrained by funding and politics, has been reluctant to explore fully.

Here in North America, we have the same suppression at work, only dressed up as “reverence for indigenous rights.” Cahokia Mounds near St. Louis is another example I have studied closely—a massive Mississippian city around 1000-1400 AD with more people than London at the time, featuring the famous Birdman tablet and legends of Thunderbirds that echo across Native oral histories. Yet St. Louis was literally built on top of it, and we still vaguely associate it with later tribes despite clear discontinuities. Mound builders, Adena, Hopewell—earlier cultures with advanced earthworks and trade—get shoehorned into the same narrative, ignoring how each generation builds over the previous one, claiming territory like animals marking trees. Human nature drives this, but laws like NAGPRA freeze it artificially at a politically useful point: 1492 onward, with Europeans as the sole thieves. The reality, as Windover shows, is layered theft and migration going back millennia—groups taking from older groups, sophisticated societies rising and falling. If we had unrestricted digs, we could map this properly, learn from mistakes, and avoid repeating cycles of conquest and cultural erasure. Instead, the law—passed in that post-Dances with Wolves glow of guilt—created incentives to hide discoveries, starved archaeology of funding for controversial sites, and prioritized a narrative that undermines the Christian-influenced Western foundation of America. I know how these bills are crafted from my own experiences fighting local and state politics; the closed-door intentions are rarely about dead ancestors and always about power, land claims, and reshaping history to favor certain ideologies.

Glen Doran himself, who passed away in 2021, and his colleagues captured their frustration between the lines in that book. They knew NAGPRA was coming; they rushed the work because they understood the profession was about to be handcuffed. The peat chemistry, the pollen, the paleoethnobotany, the DNA—all of it documented before the repatriation machine could intervene. Yet even today, the remaining half of the pond sits largely untouched, and broader Florida bog sites or offshore mounds from lower sea-level eras go unexplored because developers fear land seizures and archaeologists fear grant denials or tribal vetoes. This is not reverence; it is concealment. I love true archaeology—the kind done in England on shows like Time Team, where they dig openly, analyze bones without mandatory handover, and let evidence speak. Here, the human need to know has been subordinated to politics, which is why Windover feels like such a miracle: it slipped through just before the gates closed. It validates folklore, Plato’s hints at Atlantis, global trade networks in deep antiquity, and even the idea that our origin stories—whether biblical, mythological, or shamanic—involve advanced pre-flood or pre-catastrophe civilizations that revered higher powers, appeased spirits, and built societies with ritual purpose. The Windover dead faced north, heads west toward the sunset—symbolism that screams cosmology, not random burial. They were not “cavemen”; they were part of something older and wiser than we have only breadcrumbs of now.

This all ties directly into the spiritual warfare I explore in my work—the fallen entities at war with creation itself, imprinting their influence on earthly power structures to erase God’s narrative and replace it with controlled ignorance. Laws like NAGPRA are not neutral; they serve to keep humanity deficient in knowledge, allowing modern political orders to maintain authority built on false premises. Western expansion brought a Christian viewpoint and free civilization that disrupted older pagan or shamanic systems, but if deeper evidence shows sophisticated pre-Columbian (and pre-Beringia in practice) cultures with their own complexities, the “stolen land” story loses its moral absolutism. Everyone stole from someone; history is layered conquest. The real crime is preventing inquiry that could reveal this, because it threatens the power base. Windover proves it in my eyes: 8,000-year-old brains yielding DNA that does not fit the 1990 legal template, textiles requiring technology we associate with much later eras, and a cemetery showing care and ritual in a society predating known tribes. It is the perfect example for my book because it shows how politics cascades from heavenly rebellion into terrestrial control—concealing evidence so the deficient knowledge keeps people dependent on the current narrative.

I have met enough people in politics over the years, from Tea Party rallies to local commissioners, to recognize when good intentions get co-opted by larger agendas. Archaeologists like Doran wanted knowledge; the system wanted control. That is why I judge these things rigorously in my own life and work—if you cannot manage truth at the foundational level, you cannot lead effectively elsewhere. Windover demands we repeal or heavily reform NAGPRA, not to disrespect anyone but to prioritize the human need to know over artificial constraints. We need more digs, more funding for wet sites in Florida and beyond, and more open analysis of offshore mounds from Ice Age coastlines. Only then can we bridge the gap between legend and evidence, avoid repeating past mistakes, and understand our true place in the deep timeline. This site, with its preserved last meals, woven fabrics, and unclaimed DNA, hints at Atlantis-like migrations, shamanic connections to the spirit world (echoing Qesem Cave’s early innovations or Cahokia’s Birdman symbolism), and a history far richer than the shallow one politicized in 1990.

As I celebrate another year on this earth, I find real joy in holding this truth close. It reinforces why I fight the battles I do—not just local levies or national elections, but the deeper war for accurate history. The Windover people were real, sophisticated, and part of something vast. Their story survived by accident in the bog, preserved long enough for us to glimpse it before the political machine intervened. That is my birthday gift: the excitement of knowing more is out there if we demand the freedom to look. I will keep pushing in my writings, my podcast, and my life because evidence like this changes everything. Share it, study it, and let it provoke the larger discussion it deserves. The republic, and humanity’s understanding of itself, depends on refusing to let politics bury the past any longer.

Footnotes

1. Primary source details on discovery, excavation, and findings from Glen H. Doran’s edited volume and supporting analyses.

2. DNA results and non-alignment with modern tribes were summarized from peer-reviewed studies referenced in site reports.

3. NAGPRA legislative history and timing relative to Windover drawn from official records and archaeological critiques.

4. Stature and artifact sophistication (textiles, rituals) from bioarchaeological chapters in the Windover investigations.

5. Broader connections to global prehistory (Qesem Cave, Cahokia) informed by my independent cross-referencing of Paleolithic and Mississippian sites.

6. Political motivations behind NAGPRA are tied to the cultural context of 1990 (Dances with Wolves) and observed patterns in bill-making from my experience.

Bibliography for Continued Reading

• Doran, Glen H., ed. Windover: Multidisciplinary Investigations of an Early Archaic Florida Cemetery. University Press of Florida, 2002.

• Wentz, Rachel K. Life and Death at Windover: Excavations of a 7,000-Year-Old Pond Cemetery. Florida Historical Society Press, 2012.

• National Park Service. “Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.” Official NPS overview and regulations.

• Plato. Timaeus and Critias (translations discussing Atlantis).

• Various reports on Qesem Cave: Barkai et al., publications on Lower Paleolithic innovation in Israel.

• Pauketat, Timothy R. Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi. Penguin, 2010 (for Birdman and mound-builder context).

• Biblical Archaeology Review and related journals on Near Eastern shamanic/ritual sites predating Mesopotamia.

• My own forthcoming The Politics of Heaven for expanded spiritual-political synthesis.

• National Geographic and Florida Museum archives on Windover preservation and public exhibits.

Rich Hoffman

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Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.

He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.

Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.

The Mysterious London Stone: Secrets hidden behind polite society

The fascination with human history, particularly its deepest archaeological and anthropological layers, often begins in childhood curiosity and persists as a lifelong pursuit. For many, including those drawn to the remnants of ancient civilizations, the pull toward uncovering what lies beneath the surface—literally and figuratively—stems from an innate sense that the official narratives taught in schools and textbooks are incomplete. These narratives, built incrementally on prior assumptions by scholars who prefer orderly progression over disruption, have long dominated our understanding of the past. Yet, as access to information expands online and discoveries emerge, the time has come to question the narrow timeline we assign to human achievement. Civilizations like the Romans, often seen as ancient, appear in this light as relatively recent inheritors of far older knowledge, layering their societies atop foundations laid millennia earlier.

This reevaluation finds a compelling voice in David Flynn’s work, particularly in his book Temple at the Center of Time: Newton’s Bible Codex Finally Deciphered and the Year 2012. Published around 2008, the book initially struck many as speculative or fringe. Flynn drew on patterns in geography, history, and biblical prophecy, suggesting that pivotal events and locations are connected in time and space to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. He built on Isaac Newton’s own pursuits of ancient wisdom, or prisca sapientia, tracing how distances from the Temple Mount to global sites encode prophetic timelines. For Flynn, the Temple Mount served as a literal and symbolic center, where measurements of space and time intersect, hinting at a predestined framework governing human affairs. While mainstream academia dismissed such ideas as pseudoscience, Flynn’s approach—combining scriptural proficiency, geometric analysis, and historical events—revealed connections that challenge the linear view of progress.

Flynn’s earlier work, Cydonia: The Secret Chronicles of Mars, explored apparent artificial structures on Mars (like the “Face on Mars”) and their potential ties to ancient earthly mysteries, including ley lines and occult knowledge passed through mystery schools. His untimely death in 2012, from what some describe as mysterious circumstances common among researchers in these fields, cut short further exploration, but his ideas have gained renewed attention through figures like Timothy Alberino. Alberino, an explorer and author focused on biblical narratives intersecting with alternative history, UFO phenomena, and megalithic sites, has highlighted Flynn’s contributions as foundational, emphasizing a theological lens on discovery that pairs scripture with archaeology.

These themes resonate deeply when considering sacred stones and central markers that anchor cities and cultures. The London Stone, a block of oolitic limestone (likely from the Cotswolds or similar Jurassic sources) embedded in Cannon Street, London, exemplifies this mystery. First recorded around 1100 CE, its origins remain debated—possibly Roman, perhaps a milestone used to measure distances in Roman Britain, akin to Rome’s Milliarium Aureum. Legends tie it to Brutus of Troy, the mythical founder of Britain, or pre-Roman Druidic significance, with folklore warning that London’s fate is linked to the stone’s preservation. People walk past it daily without realizing its potential antiquity, predating Roman occupation and possibly connecting to Neolithic or earlier peoples. Cities built around such markers suggest intentional placement, as if ancient builders recognized inherent geographic or cosmic importance.

A parallel exists in Paris with the Point Zéro des Routes de France, a bronze marker set into the pavement in the forecourt of Notre-Dame Cathedral. Established formally in the 18th century (with roots earlier), it serves as the official origin for measuring all road distances across France—“Paris 250 km” means from this spot. The city’s street grid spirals outward from here, symbolizing Paris as the nation’s heart. Why Notre-Dame? The cathedral itself overlays older sites, and the marker’s placement evokes questions of erasure—attempts to burn Notre-Dame or destroy historical records, much like the Library of Alexandria’s loss, conceal deeper layers. These points hint at a pattern: humans gravitate toward specific locations for measurement and reverence, perhaps echoing ancient knowledge of earth’s geometry.

This pattern extends to monumental earthworks aligned with celestial bodies that track time and cosmic cycles. In Britain, sites like Stonehenge—its massive sarsen stones forming precise alignments to solstices and lunar standstills—demonstrate sophisticated astronomy predating written history. Circular ditches, henges, and stone circles obsess over stellar orientations, suggesting a culture chronicling seasons, harvests, and perhaps metaphysical events. David R. Abram’s Aerial Atlas of Ancient Britain captures these from above, revealing Neolithic tombs, Iron Age hillforts, and alignments across landscapes, many of which share constructs with global counterparts—circular forms, ditches, and star-oriented placements.

In North America, particularly the Ohio Valley and Miami Valley near Middletown, similar earthworks abound. The Hopewell culture (circa 100 BCE–500 CE) constructed vast geometric enclosures—circles, squares, octagons—often aligned to lunar cycles (e.g., the 18.6-year standstill at Newark Earthworks’ Octagon) or solar events. Serpent Mound in Ohio aligns with solstices and possibly the Milky Way’s “Path of Souls,” a motif in indigenous cosmologies linking earth to afterlife journeys. Adena mounds (earlier, circa 1000–200 BCE) and Hopewell sites feature precise geometry, trade networks spanning continents, and astronomical observatories. These predate European arrival by millennia, challenging notions of “primitive” hunter-gatherers. Nearby, the Miami Valley hosts mounds echoing these patterns, with alignments suggesting cosmic clocks for ritual and seasonal life.

A groundbreaking North American site is the Windover Bog in Florida, discovered during development in the 1980s. Dating to 6990–8120 years ago (over 3,500 years before Egypt’s pyramids), it yielded 167+ burials in a peat pond, preserved remarkably due to anaerobic conditions. Bodies were placed on left sides, heads west, faces north, often fetal, staked to prevent floating—indicating directional symbolism and care. Most strikingly, 91 skulls contained preserved brain tissue (shrunken but with cellular structure and DNA recoverable), the oldest known human brain preservation. This suggests rapid burial (within 48 hours post-mortem) and sophisticated rituals, perhaps tied to beliefs in body preservation for dimensional or spiritual continuity. Far from primitive, Windover reveals an organized society with advanced mortuary practices, challenging shallow historical timelines.

These sites—London Stone, Point Zéro, Stonehenge, Ohio earthworks, Windover—point to a global reverence for specific places: stones, mounds, alignments marking time, space, and perhaps destiny. Why bury with heads west? Why align to stars? Why build temples on threshing floors (as with Solomon’s Temple on the site Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac)? Flynn posits these as entry points or measurements in a cosmic grid, possibly from ancient visitors or lost knowledge, tied to biblical hints of pre-flood civilizations and migrations (e.g., Egyptian ties to Atlantis via Plato). The Bible, as a preserved chronicle amid lost libraries, offers context—books like Judges establishing moral foundations for governance, echoed in modern gestures like beautiful study Bibles gifted to legislators (as shared in conversations with figures like Senator George Lang, a pro-business advocate who values ancient history alongside capitalism).

This raises profound questions: Is free will illusory if events align with predestined patterns? Horoscopes, zodiacs, and fate tied to birth location persist because ancient knowledge intuited cosmic influences. Temples, stones, and mounds chronicle timelines across generations, measuring planetary proximities and earthly geometry. Contested sites like the Temple Mount—proximity to Mecca’s Black Stone—underscore not mere religion but fundamental roles in time-space measurement.

The Windover people, with their preserved brains and oriented burials, key this reevaluation. They hint at sophisticated understanding predating “civilized” history, urging us to extend timelines backward. Romans inherited; Greeks contemplated Atlantis; Egyptians migrated from fallen ties. We must reverse-engineer ancient thinking with math and logic, applying it to mounds, stones, and alignments worldwide.

Flynn knocked on genius’s door by connecting dots others dismissed. As evidence accumulates—new digs, reexaminations—his questions gain traction. A healthier future demands honest reckoning with this past: not dismissing speculation but embracing patterns in remnants. Archaeology, anthropology, and theology together illuminate what survives erosion, guiding productive fulfillment of fate. Magnificent understandings await, if we dig deeper and contemplate openly.

Bibliography and Further Reading (footnotes-style references drawn from sources):

1. Flynn, David. Temple at the Center of Time: Newton’s Bible Codex Finally Deciphered and the Year 2012. Official Disclosure, 2008. (Core text on Temple Mount measurements and prophetic timelines.)

2. Flynn, David E. Cydonia: The Secret Chronicles of Mars. (Explores Mars-Earth connections and ancient knowledge.)

3. Abram, David R. Aerial Atlas of Ancient Britain. Thames & Hudson, 2022. (Visual documentation of British prehistoric sites and alignments.)

4. Doran, G.H. et al. “Anatomical, cellular and molecular analysis of 8000-yr-old human brain tissue from the Windover archaeological site.” Nature, 1986. (Scientific paper on Windover preservation.)

5. Wikipedia and Historic UK entries on London Stone (various dates). (Overview of history and myths.)

6. Atlas Obscura and related sources on Paris Point Zéro. (Details on the marker and its significance.)

7. Ohio History Connection and NPS resources on Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks/Newark Earthworks. (Astronomical alignments in Ohio mounds.)

8. Alberino, Timothy. Various works and interviews referencing Flynn (e.g., Birthright and podcasts). (Modern continuation of alternative history themes.)

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an independent writer, philosopher, political advisor, and strategist based in the Cincinnati/Middletown, Ohio area. Born in Hamilton, Ohio, he has worked professionally since age 12 in various roles, from manual labor to high-level executive positions in aerospace and related industries. Known as “The Tax-killer” for his activism against tax increases, Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.

He publishes the blog The Overmanwarrior (overmanwarrior.wordpress.com), where he shares insights on politics, culture, history, and personal stories. Active on X as @overmanwarrior, Instagram, and YouTube, Hoffman frequently discusses space exploration, family values, and human potential. An avid fast-draw artist and family man, he emphasizes passing practical skills and intellectual curiosity to younger generations.

The Windover Giants: Its all about the bog people of central Florida and a connection to the fallen Nephilim

The Windover Archaeological Site, discovered accidentally in 1982 during construction of a housing development near Titusville, Brevard County, Florida, stands as one of the most significant prehistoric burial grounds in North America. What began as a backhoe operator uncovering what he initially thought was an unusual rock—soon identified as a human skull—unfolded into the excavation of a shallow pond that became an ancient cemetery. Over several field seasons from 1984 to 1986, led primarily by Florida State University archaeologist Dr. Glen Doran, the site yielded the remarkably well-preserved skeletal remains of at least 168 individuals, along with artifacts, textiles, and, in many cases, preserved brain tissue. Radiocarbon dating placed these burials in the Middle Archaic period, roughly 7,000 to 8,000 years ago, a time when sea levels were significantly lower due to the lingering effects of the last Ice Age, making the area a higher inland location rather than the near-coastal zone it is today.

The preservation at Windover is extraordinary, thanks to the anaerobic, acidic peat environment of the bog-like pond, which prevented rapid decay and allowed soft tissues, such as brain matter, to survive in shrunken but intact form for millennia. This enabled DNA sequencing from the brain tissue, revealing genetic markers linking the Windover people to ancient Asian populations via migrations through Beringia, with no direct matches to modern Native American groups alive today. The DNA evidence supports the broader consensus of Siberian/Asian origins for early American populations, though some early interpretations or discussions speculated on other affinities; current analyses firmly place them within the founding lineages of the Americas without evidence of European admixture from that era. Other than the burial technique itself, and the Western European DNA mixed into the specimens.

The burials were intentional and organized: bodies were often placed in a flexed or fetal position, lying on their left side, with heads oriented west and faces north, wrapped in textiles or accompanied by grave goods. Artifacts included woven plant-fiber fabrics—some of the oldest and most sophisticated textiles known from Archaic North America—bone and wood tools, and other items suggesting a settled, resourceful hunter-gatherer society capable of complex social practices, including caring for the injured and elderly. Evidence from the skeletons shows healed fractures, possible splinting of broken bones, and even signs of amputations, indicating communal support and medical knowledge far beyond simple survival instincts. The population included men, women, and children across all ages, from infants to individuals aged 60–70, an unusually long lifespan for the period, with roughly equal representation of the sexes and about half the remains being subadults.

Skeletal analysis provides key insights into stature and health; these people were very large for their time. Adult males averaged about 5 feet 9 inches (175 cm), with some reaching nearly 6 feet, while females averaged about 5 feet 2 inches to 5 feet 6 inches. These heights were notably taller and more robust than many later prehistoric populations in the region, with strong bone density reflecting a healthy, active lifestyle supported by a diverse diet of fish, shellfish, plants, and game. This discovery is consistent with the reports of giants found in many North American mounds. The example shown in the video could easily have been a 7-foot-tall person. But even the 6’ averages are extraordinary considering the period. The people were heavily muscled, adapted to a wetland environment rich in resources. This physical profile has fueled speculation in some circles about connections to reports of unusually large individuals in early American history, including newspaper accounts from the 19th and early 20th centuries describing oversized bones from mound sites across the Midwest and elsewhere. Proponents of alternative histories link such findings to biblical accounts of giants or Nephilim, as described in Genesis 6 and elaborated in texts like the Book of Enoch, suggesting a pre-flood or pre-Columbian race of large-statured people whose remains were later suppressed or reinterpreted.

Claims of 7- to 9-foot skeletons from mound sites in Ohio’s Miami River Valley or along the Mississippi have often been traced to exaggerated reports, mismeasurements, or hoaxes from an era before rigorous scientific standards. But also a desired interpretation by secular science, not wishing to introduce discoveries that shatter credentialed statements about human origins. In this case, the video shown at the museum is hard to interpret as reckless, as the bone presented could easily be interpreted as a very large bone for a very large person, well beyond the average heights assumed. Early archaeology, pre-1950s, frequently documented large bones in mounds attributed to Adena or Hopewell cultures, but modern re-examinations attribute these to normal variation, robust builds, or occasional taller individuals rather than a distinct giant race. Institutions like the Smithsonian have faced accusations of hiding such evidence to fit evolutionary or secular narratives.

The Windover site’s significance extends beyond stature. It challenges simplistic views of Archaic peoples as purely nomadic hunter-gatherers with minimal social complexity. The organized mass cemetery, sophisticated textiles, and evidence of long-term site use (one family lineage apparently burying there over a century) indicate settled communities with ritual practices and cultural continuity. The bog burial method mirrors practices in northern Europe (e.g., Danish or German bogs), prompting questions about cultural diffusion or independent invention. Underwater sites off Florida’s coast, now submerged due to post-Ice Age sea-level rise (up to 300–400 feet higher today), likely hold similar settlements, suggesting a richer coastal prehistory than previously assumed.

The exhibit at the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science in Cocoa, Florida, preserves this legacy through displays, loaned artifacts from Florida State University, and interpretive materials. Directed for years by Patricia (Patty) Meyers, an anthropologist passionate about public education, the “People of Windover” exhibit includes reconstructions, videos, and casts of remains. In one featured video segment, anthropologist Dr. Geoffrey Thomas (often referred to in some accounts as Jeffrey Thomas) demonstrates skeletal elements, holding up a femur and comparing it to his own leg to illustrate its size and robustness. Such presentations highlight the impressive preservation and stature beyond dispute. The museum, in a tourist-rich area near Kennedy Space Center, remains underappreciated despite free or low-cost admission and dedicated volunteers; it offers an accessible entry point for exploring this discovery firsthand.

Funding challenges and institutional priorities have limited broader excavations—only half the pond was dug, leaving potential for future work. Some critics argue that narratives around indigenous rights, repatriation under laws like NAGPRA, or academic agendas favoring certain migration models have slowed inquiry into mound sites or “anomalous” finds. Yet archaeology thrives on evidence, not suppression; new technologies, such as ancient DNA, continue to refine our understanding. The Windover shows a logical connection to reports of biblical giants and early transoceanic contact, enriching the story of human adaptation in the Americas by showing sophisticated societies millennia before agriculture dominated.

This discovery invites reevaluation of pre-Columbian history. Traditional models of Siberian land-bridge migration around 15,000–20,000 years ago, followed by a gradual spread, are complicated by sites like Windover, which demonstrate early complexity. Parallels to mound-building cultures in the Ohio Valley (e.g., Adena earthworks) or the Mississippi Valley suggest shared architectural or ritual traditions across vast distances, possibly through trade or migration.

For those drawn to the intersection of archaeology and scripture, works like the ESV Archaeology Study Bible correlate findings with biblical timelines, viewing such sites as evidence of ancient human ingenuity under divine creation. The Book of Enoch’s influence on New Testament ideas, preserved in Ethiopian traditions and echoed in Masonic lore, adds layers to interpretations of “giants” as fallen angel offspring. Yet evidence demands scrutiny: Windover’s “large” bones reflect healthy, tall-for-their-time people, not mythical behemoths. But present a bridge to associate myths and legends with actual evidence that shows how such conclusions emerged in human consciousness.

The site’s obscurity—covered now by development, with only a small exhibit and limited media coverage—contrasts with its potential to reshape narratives. It underscores the need for open inquiry, free from ideological constraints. As an aerospace executive accustomed to root-cause analysis (digging through “five whys” or more to reach truth), I see Windover as a call to keep excavating—literally and figuratively—beyond surface assumptions. Mainstream science may resist paradigm shifts, but discoveries like this, preserved in museums and DNA labs, push toward a fuller picture.

What the Windover discoveries ultimately expose is not merely a dispute over bones or measurements, but a deeper conflict over who gets to define evidence and under what conditions it is allowed to matter. Across professional fields—archaeology included—people often carry private doubts and curiosities that never surface publicly because institutional survival depends on conformity. Funding structures, professional accreditation, and reputational risk quietly shape what can be said, what can be studied, and what must be dismissed. In such environments, agreement is frequently less a function of conviction than of economic alignment. People learn, often unconsciously, to adopt the intellectual posture required by those who control resources, grants, and career continuity.

This dynamic is not unique to archaeology; it is a recurring feature of modern institutional life. When research is tethered to centralized funding—whether state-based, academic, or corporate—the culture surrounding that research tends to harden around acceptable conclusions. Over time, this produces a form of intellectual self-censorship where entire categories of inquiry are quietly labeled unproductive, controversial, or unprofessional. Evidence that challenges dominant narratives is not always refuted; more often, it is starved of attention, relegated to obscurity, or dismissed before meaningful examination can occur. The result is a consensus that appears robust but is, in reality, tightly bound by economic and cultural incentives.

By contrast, independent researchers—particularly those who are self-funded or operating outside institutional hierarchies—retain a degree of intellectual freedom that formal systems often cannot tolerate. Without a paycheck to protect or a grant cycle to satisfy, they can follow the evidence wherever it leads, even when it collides with established assumptions. This does not make independent inquiry automatically correct, but it does make it structurally less constrained. Ironically, it is often these unaffiliated voices—working without institutional sanction—that preserve the exploratory spirit science claims as its foundation.

In this light, the muted response to Windover and similar archaeological anomalies becomes more revealing than the discoveries themselves. The lack of enthusiasm, the rapid dismissal, and the reluctance to engage deeply point more to strong disincentives than to weak evidence. Funding models, cultural expectations, and philosophical commitments—particularly those that resist integration with older historical or biblical frameworks—play a decisive role in determining what is deemed worthy of serious study. These patterns suggest that the real conspiracy is not one of secret cabals or hidden vaults, but of incentives quietly shaping belief. What is hidden, why it is hidden, and who benefits from its obscurity often tell us far more than the measurements of the bones alone.

Ultimately, Windover reminds us that history is layered, like the peat that protected these remains. It was no accident of nature alone but a deliberate choice by people who valued their dead enough to bury them in a sacred pond. Whether linking to biblical giants, ancient global civilizations, or simply advanced Archaic societies, the evidence invites wonder and further research. Visit the Brevard Museum, watch the exhibit videos, and measure the casts yourself. The truth lies in the bones, waiting for those willing to dig deeper.

Footnotes

1. Wikipedia, “Windover Archeological Site” (accessed via current knowledge).

2. The History Center, “Windover: Prehistoric Past Revealed at Ancient Pond Cemetery.”

3. PBS NOVA, “America’s Bog People.”

4. History Hit, “The Secrets of The Bog Bodies at Windover Pond.”

5. Brevard Museum resources and Florida Frontiers episodes on the Windover exhibit.

6. DNA studies referenced in Wikipedia and related publications (e.g., linking to Asian markers).

7. GreaterAncestors.com and similar alternative sources for stature discussions (for contrast).

8. ESV Archaeology Study Bible (Crossway) for scriptural correlations.

9. Pre-Columbian archaeology texts (pre-1950s editions) for historical context.

10. Book of Enoch translations and commentaries for interpretive links.

Bibliography

• Doran, Glen H. (various publications on Windover excavations, Florida State University).

• Milanich, Jerald T. Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida (1994).

• “The People of Windover” exhibit materials, Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science.

• Pääbo, Svante et al. (DNA sequencing studies on ancient remains).

• The Book of Enoch (Ethiopic version).

• Crossway ESV Archaeology Study Bible.

• Various Florida Historical Society and PBS Florida Frontiers documentaries.

• Academic papers on Archaic period stature and health (e.g., via ResearchGate distributions).

Rich Hoffman

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The Real History of Göbekli Tepe: Trying to fit the evidence to a previous narrative

This is a widespread problem in all professional fields. What we are seeing these days from the field of archaeology is certainly not unusual. However, the story surrounding Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, the ancient Neolithic site dating back to approximately 9600-7000 BCE, is at the center of a lot of conversation that reveals many mistakes regarding the study of the human race. The problem is that the site predates any other known human site in the world in a sophisticated manner, and appears to be something not unusual, overturning many of our previous assumptions about the evolution of our species by many years. And Gobekli Tepe isn’t the only place like it; there are other sites nearby that are just as old and just as sophisticated. So I was curious at the beginning of August 2025 when Josh Gates from Expedition Unknown covered the ancient site on his television show. I have always liked Josh Gates, and when he’s in town for one of his live shows, I like to take my daughters to see him. However, to have a mainstream show on television, Josh has turned more toward mainstream ideas about science than toward what is called pseudoscience, where people question, with great speculation, the established opinions of academia. Gobekli Tepe certainly challenges this assumption, because we know the dates of the site, we can see how articulate the stone work is for a group of people who were supposedly hunters and gatherers, and we know that the site as it is now in Turkey is a tiny part of a much larger complex, much of it still underground. The answers to many questions about Göbekli Tepe still need to be uncovered in the surrounding hills, but for some reason, Archaeologists have limited themselves to the same portion of the discovered site and used that minimal knowledge to tell the complete story. So, yes, given all the controversy, I was curious to see how Josh Gates would handle it.

For a qualifier, I don’t like to trash archaeologists. I am glad they work hard and dig in the ground to provide us with evidence to discuss. I am not shy about it, but my favorite organization in the world is the Biblical Archaeology Society, which publishes the Biblical Archaeology Review magazine. I find it fascinating to see evidence for the validation of events from the Bible, the most essential piece of literature the human race has ever produced. And to watch various groups dispute, or use that evidence to validate their religious perspectives. I love archaeologists because they dig in the dirt, analyze data, and reveal new things about the world. However, I also don’t like the term ‘pseudoscience,’ which is often applied to Graham Hancock and others who question the established narrative presented by institutionalized science. I think that archaeology and anthropology, as general fields of endeavor, are too young to be conclusive about anything. Just over one hundred years is not enough time to do anything, so defending conclusions from the field of archaeology is ridiculous. We have only just begun to dig in the world, and there is still a lot of evidence that we will yet discover. So conclusions about anything at all are premature at this point. The story will continue to evolve as new information becomes available, which we find out all the time. Gobekli Tepe is just the tip of a lot more hidden below the surface, all over the world. We tend to see a lot more archaeology in the Holy Land region, which is where Göbekli Tepe is located, because of the Bible. I think there are sites older around the world that we don’t yet know about because nobody is looking for them. They look in the Bible land because of the Bible. However, similar sites are likely in China, Russia, and all over South America. And likely, when we reach Mars, we will find archaeology there too.

My rule of thumb for analyzing data from the archaeological community is based on James Frazer’s excellent book, The Golden Bough. The 12-volume set, which evolved into two enormous volumes, was a magnificent contribution to the early field of anthropology, spanning approximately from 1890 to 1923. It was the study of global culture and its use of magic and religion to navigate existence, and it essentially laid the groundwork for the fields of anthropology and archaeology. The study of human cultures was significantly better before institutionalized science attempted to confine it within a box, and that is the problem with all static cultures when dynamic ideas are introduced. But I judge scientists in these fields by their knowledge of that large book by Frazer. I’ve read it many times and it’s one of my favorites. It answers many questions that were hard to get at the time the book was written, for instance, why do headhunters seek to steal the head of their neighbors and eat their bodies? Or why are kings sacrificed through ritual regicide once they lose their powers of youth? Understanding these kinds of things, of course, carries over into our modern world, from psychology to politics. Understanding why people do what they do is crucial to grasping the fundamentals of human existence. And in management cultures, even when managing a McDonald’s drive-thru, understanding human behavior is the key to success.

So it was painful to watch Josh Gates try to take what is known about Göbekli Tepe and fit everything into the academic box of hunters and gatherers, because archaeologists have already established a timeline of discovery, and with Göbekli Tepe, they were purposefully trying to fit the evidence into the assumption, rather than the other way around. That’s why I like old books like Frazer’s over modern work. Because when the field of anthropology was established, it was done so with a great deal of human imagination and ambition attached to it. However, once we institutionalize that information, it loses its authenticity and becomes part of a corrupt static order, which is what we find in the Gobekli Tepe case. The answers are in digging the whole hill, which will tell everyone most of the answers they want to know. However, because there is an apparent fear that what they will discover will destroy their institutionalized status, they are not digging in those areas and instead try to plant trees over those sites to prevent future excavation. So, rather than trying to understand what Gobekli Tepe is, mainstream archaeologists, including Josh Gates on the Discovery Channel, are trying to fit what they know into what they want it to be. Which is just as ridiculous as what we saw during COVID with the mask policy, where we were told to stop the spread, yet we had to wear a mask. The game is about accepting an authority figure’s opinions over the flighty assumptions of the casual observer. Because there is power in defining the truth, and that holds even when we are talking about presenting evidence that might run counter to previous assumptions, which gives the people who provided it power over their sector of society. So it was fascinating to watch. I enjoyed the broadcast. However, the answer to Gobekli Tepe and other sites in the region is that there is much more to the story, just waiting to be uncovered. And rather than concluding that it was hunters and gatherers who built the site, the evidence suggests a much older human race that was more sophisticated. And if we want to know the truth, we should withhold our opinions until we gather all the evidence. Anything else would be premature.

Rich Hoffman

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A Wonderful Expereince: Playing the new Indiana Jones game on PS5

I wasn’t going to play the new Indiana Jones game on PlayStation 5, but after much encouragement from my wife, I did, and I’m glad. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was an excellent experience with a great story, and was a throwback to the kind of entertainment I think we need a lot more of. I was skeptical of Lucasfilm doing anything with Indiana Jones these days under the ownership of Disney. I like the character and the kind of science spawned from those movies over the years. But I wasn’t sure if they could pull off a good story without George Lucas. But my wife has been pressing me to play more video games with the grandchildren, because that’s what they like to do. But my life is so busy, I don’t have time to hang out online like most video games require, with a very social experience. These days, video games are a way for kids to interact socially. Games like Fortnite and Call of Duty put you in contact with thousands of people daily. Kids who play these games for hours will interact with thousands of people in real time, so video game playing these days is a very social experience, and I’m not at all crazy about that. I talk to way too many people throughout the week to want to spend my downtime talking and playing with more people. So I haven’t been playing video games very much, and my wife thinks I need to do more for stress management. So I listened to her, wives can be good for many things, and when the new Indiana Jones game came out in April of 2025 on the PS5 console, I thought I’d try it.

Because I’m a fan of the character and raised my kids on the optimism of those movies, as a baseline for other things, I bought the Collector’s Edition of the game, which came with all kinds of neat stuff. But once I started playing the game, I enjoyed the story as it takes you through the character of Indiana Jones to Peru, the Vatican, Giza, the Himalayas, Thailand, Shanghai, and Iraq. It’s not an online game, so you can play it without interacting with others and have a nice story-driven experience. And much to my surprise, this game was very much in line with the Indiana Jones movies, and it had a tone similar to the most recent one, the Dial of Destiny. So it was true to the original character and didn’t have the woke stuff, which is such a problem these days. There were a few things, but not enough to tarnish the game. It was a good adventure story that was much longer than a typical movie. I spent 60 hours playing the game, with about 12 hours of that time just doing the story itself, so it turned out to be a long movie experience that took place for me during April 2025, which was a good break from all the other things I typically do. And it was good for the grandkids to see me doing something besides reading books, as I’ve said before, I read 4 to 5 books a week. Some weeks, more than that, so I cover a lot of content that is very personal. You can’t share the content you read with your family very well because reading is such a private thing. But ironically, there is a scholarly element to this Indiana Jones game that was very refreshing.

The game itself is about the “giant” controversy, which I think is the most important in the world right now, the idea that an ancient race of giants who lived before Noah’s flood inhabited the earth and had a very advanced culture. I read a lot about this evidence, and it was a surprise that the modern debate drove the game’s plot. We live in a time when people ask tough questions, and authority figures in authority positions have been caught lying to us, right to our faces. At the center of this Indiana Jones story are many problems that played out during the Second World War. Playing the Indiana Jones character you get to deal with actual historic characters such as Bonito Mussolini and the obsession with the occult that the Nazis were investing in and when you put the biblical narrative of the Fallen Angels of God, the Nephilim at the heart of a massive modern conspiracy theory, you have all the contents of a fascinating story, and it was. Because I read so much about many different topics, the story of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle felt like it was produced and made just for me, including all the items that came with the Collector’s Edition. I spend a lot of time thinking about these things through books and online lectures. So it was a pleasure to play a video game about that kind of storyline. And to have the material compelling, educational, and entertaining. The game makers really loved the story, and it showed.

They first announced this game in 2020 during the COVID-19 crisis. I wanted to like the news, but I was so down on Disney and Lucasfilm for what they had done to Star Wars that I would have rather they just left Indiana Jones alone. As a literary character in our culture, Indiana Jones does so many good things that I figured Disney would only damage that character, as they have so many other things they’ve mishandled. For instance, the pressure seen on a recent Joe Rogan Podcast with the Egyptologist Dr. Zahi Hawass probably wouldn’t have happened without an Indiana Jones character in popular, mainstream literature and filmmaking laying the foundation to apply the pressure. So many people have been inspired by the character that they have correctly challenged established norms in a very healthy, academic way. And when a game like this comes out and a mainstream audience plays it in such a mass way, good things tend to happen, and you see that with the questioning of independent investigators, questioning the institutional narrative of things to evoke the truth, which is what we should all be concerned about. Stories like this light intellectual fires and usually have great significance for those who experience them. So a game format, as opposed to a movie or a book, was very appropriate. And I had a lot of fun with the game. I’m glad I listened to my wife. I like playing video games, but don’t think I’ll play them often. But I am so happy to have taken the time to play this one, and it ended up being a positive thing for my entire family. And I wish it could have gone on forever in many ways. But playing through the whole story was an enjoyable experience that was a nice break from my day-to-day. And I look forward to similar experiences to come along that kind of storytelling frontier.

Rich Hoffman

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Buying the Truth: Peer reviewers have made over a billion dollars from the top four medical outlets

I read a fascinating book this week that I thought was very revealing about the field of anthropology by a professor of that field called Weaponizing Anthropology, which is about how the CIA has infiltrated that science and the colleges that teach it to shape narratives to build a social narrative. The book by David Price, I think, explains a lot about just how wrong it is that we establish what we think of as a fact. And it reminded me of the problems revealed during Covid from the Lancet in England, a very respected medical publication, where Bill Gates and Dr. Fauci found ways to manipulate the important news of hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin to prevent and treat Covid-19. And to take away that hope from millions of people suffering from the artificial virus, let loose from a lab in China to spread around the world, from gain-of-function research. Regarding the field of anthropology and the related sciences, I have complained a lot about some of the ridiculous assumptions made about the mound building culture in the Ohio Valley for instance that steers concern more toward a hunter and gatherer mindset of gradual evolution when in fact we are looking at a Vico Cycle of continued decline and rebirth from cultures extending deep into the past, well beyond the Archaic Period. And recently, we learned that peer reviewers for four of the top medical journals have received payments from drug and medical device manufacturers totaling around 1 billion dollars from 2020 to 2022. This has opened the door to what big business it is to be in the peer review business. People tend to trust information that is associated with an expert opinion. But the deceit is that when that expert is paid to have an argument that the people writing the checks want them to have, the information is meaningless. And in the context of the value of helpful information, we are finding that what we assume to be a reality is, in truth, only shaped by those paying for the definition of that reality, which endorses a need they have for mass public opinion to shade in their direction.

This morning, I had 337,000 unread emails, and about a quarter of those are from people who offer peer review services and want me to pay them for their expert opinion to lend to the credibility of my material. Or, they want me to review their material and are willing to pay for it. It is an enormous business, and many people make a lot of money offering nothing more than an opinion, and the fee for being an expert in a field is very valuable. But I don’t get into that money game for many reasons. For a long time, I have not trusted peer-reviewed opinions for many reasons. This recent information from the Weaponizing Anthropology book and this report on the peer review contributions to the top four medical journals has only solidified my opinion. Which is sad because I would like to see the system work. I read a lot of information, and I have my trusted sources. I think the information is more credible when I see their name next to an article or a book. But that’s how this whole racket got started in the first place. Trust was for sale, and there were a lot of evil characters in the world willing to exploit it for all kinds of nefarious reasons. That was indeed happening in the medical field. And it was happening in large doses in anthropology and archaeology. Those who pay for an opinion get to shape what that opinion is.

I think we were a lot better off in the sciences when adventurers through discovery would publish wild finds in a search for fortune and glory. The idea of profiting off finding a new treasure in the world and becoming rich in the process was more honest than what we have now, where experts are paid to shape an opinion and steer people as sponsored spokespeople toward some treatment that might not be good for them. A good example is in the diagnosis of diabetes, for instance, where pancreatic health can be self-generated. However, the medical approach shaped by paid experts wants to steer patients toward pharmaceutical treatments because that’s where the profit is. The goal is not in saving lives with real and permanent treatment, it’s in keeping people sick so that pharma companies can profit off the demise of those patients. The ability to purchase a peer-reviewed opinion then shapes reality, not toward the truth but toward the desire of profit seekers at the expense of honesty. How often have I heard that the Clovis people migrated into North America across the frozen land bridge from Russia to Alaska 20,000 years ago? When none of the expert opinions can begin to explain why there were such large skeletons found in Indian mounds all over North America from a people with very precise understandings of mathematics, and were certainly not hunters and gatherers, but sophisticated city dwellers, such as at the Cahokia site just outside of St. Louis that had cities larger than what was found in Europe at the time. Most of that information has been suppressed by the peer review process, and only old-fashioned passion projects from seekers of fortune and glory have been able to shake that information loose from the world.

It has been a house of cards that was always going to fail, and that one billion dollars reported just for those four publications is just the tip of the iceberg. This same practice is occurring in all our professional fields that produce experts. Being an expert pays a lot of money once you establish yourself. And as I said, I get a lot of offers, which I turn down because I don’t like the process, and would never take money for it. Because I see it all as a huge problem. These latest reports only confirm what I always suspected. When you can pay cash to create a truth, can you say that a truth is real? When opinion is for sale, I don’t see that it has any value. An expert might work hard to build up credibility to put their name next to something, but the minute people discover that the opinion was purchased, all merit for the contents flies out the window. That is what the CIA has been doing in the field of anthropology to shape social discourse by controlling the narrative with people on their staff, or with money paid to experts through black budgets not regulated by members of an elected body of government in Congress. And since many people got caught over the Lancet issue regarding COVID, I don’t think the expert class will ever gain credibility back. It will take more than time to get people to trust in the system again. And the peer review process is now broken forever. And that might lead to wild theories and speculations from a hungry public. But honestly, that information is more valid than the opinions of people paid to shape a truth that might have no basis in reality. But it might serve the plots of more scandalous people who do not have our best interests in mind.

Rich Hoffman

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The Great Serpent Mound in Ohio Needs Money: One of the great sites in the world has fallen into disrepair

The thing about the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio is that it’s our version of Stonehenge, and that it has fallen into a state of ridiculous disrepair, and it shouldn’t be. When you look at the great historic sites around the world, like the Pyramids, Göbekli Tepe, and Stonehenge, they all have significant commitments to tourism dollars that inspire people to visit, instead of trying to frustrate them from doing so. I have talked about it before. I like what they did to Stonehenge to make it a positive visitor experience, and at least that level of investment should be applied to the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio because, in many ways, it’s more mysterious. It may not be as technical in its construction, but the mathematical logic that went into the Great Serpent Mound, just an hour or so east of Cincinnati, is equally impressive. Given what we do know about it, I would say that Serpent Mound is one of the most mysterious sites in the world, and Ohio should be showing it off a lot more than they do. I recently made it part of a grand paranormal tour that I took with my family, and we made a point to stop by and see it. It was good to see again, I’ve seen it a lot over the years. But each time it has fallen into disrepair more and more, instead of anybody giving it a fresh coat of paint and advancing it. The Great Serpent Mound has recently received much attention because of Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse show on Netflix, which deserves a lot of respect. Graham also discusses the site in the opening chapters of his popular and well-researched book, Before America. I read it and think that Graham is onto something about ancient cultures in North America, way before dates proposed by modern archaeology. And sadly, they have dug in on their previous assumptions because they don’t want to admit that what they put forth regarding the history of Serpent Mound was lazy and needed significant updates.

There is a lot of mystery going on these days with archeoastronomy that dates Serpent Mound to the Draco constellation between 3000 and 5000 BC, similar to what we see with the Great Boar at Fortified Hill just outside of Hamilton, Ohio. Or Fort Hill, just to the north of Serpent Mound. As well as the many other ancient sites built all over Ohio. None have survived as well as Serpent Mound, but they are much more complicated than we have assumed of Native American cultures. We are looking at the remains of a very ancient and sophisticated culture and it is more likely that the Adena and Hopewell Indians lived in these locations more as squatters than as architects, following a well-known Vico Cycle that is inconvenient to historic knowledge that has already broadcast to the world a lazy explanation that is now very much refuted. Ross Hamilton has done a lot of good work at Serpent Mound that offers much older dates and sophistication for the building and use of the mound complex, and the archaeology community has only dug in deeper, almost wishing the site would just go away so they could stop answering questions. There is now a policy that drones can’t be flown over the site because the caretakers of Serpent Mound don’t want their complex to be shown all over the world, as it has been, so they are frustrating efforts to do research in the area rather than embracing a continued understanding. I understand why, but it’s not a good reason.

My interest in these kinds of things is the next level of political discussion for me, which is the root cause behind many of the troubles in our world. I am personally tired of the lazy approach to everything that has permeated all our institutions, this little shell game where it is said, “there is no evidence to support wild accusations,” but at the same time being too lazy to look for the evidence because you are afraid of what you’ll find. To call such an approach a massive conspiracy is an understatement. I do not hate archaeologists by any stretch of the imagination. It takes a lot of hard work to dig in the dirt, discover things long buried, and figure out what they mean. Serpent Mound is well known to have had reports of giant skeletons of people seven to eight feet tall coming out of the mounds at that site, and like the other sites I have pointed out, the reaction to this news has been to dig less. They excavated at the site when I was a kid to understand it better. But over the years, like the Miamisburg Mound they have stopped looking for evidence so that they could then say that any proposal of giants in those burial mounds is not proof because they don’t want to find it and what they have discovered is shoved into the corners of museums and private collections, not released to the public for all kinds of political reasons. If these are wild theories, well then, let’s prove it. Let’s dig and learn the truth. However, keeping away from the questions is not a good strategy.

I remember in 2003 when a crop circle of great sophistication was made into a soybean field across the street from the Serpent Mound complex. It was far too complicated to be a hoax by some deranged teenage kids, and it was very similar to the kind of designs that are common outside of Stonehenge in England, which has many of the same types of sites there as well. We are looking at a global culture of Mound Builders who were not just surviving hunters and gatherers. I think that the growing understanding points to the remnants of the Atlantean culture that had migrants fleeing the well-known island that was overcome by water somewhere off the coast of Britain and north of the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. Former island dwellers dedicated to the God Poseidon, who ruled Atlantis, took with them their knowledge of astronomy and duplicated it all over the earth, as well as many of the ancient sites we talk about today. A lot was going on from the time of Göbekli Tepe to the proposed construction dates of the Great Serpent Mound, or the Great Pyramids and archaeologists, being a young science, got it wrong from the start and its time to revise our previous assumptions with the many new facts that have been discovered over recent years. And why Poseidon? Well, he had an attraction to Medusa and her hair of snakes, which makes a lot more sense for the snake worship of the constellation Draco than the explanations we have received so far. And while that may sound wild and unbelievable, it makes more sense than saying that a bunch of hunters and gatherers had all this advanced mathematics and built all these mounds, but they struggled to catch a rabbit for food. We need a lot more research and understanding, and all that starts with the preservation of that historic site with fresh funding, and I would even propose a tourist model to pay for it, similar to what they do at Stonehenge under the care of English Heritage. We should be making Serpent Mound a big part of our state identity, because people worldwide fly to Ohio to visit Serpent Mound. We need to treat it with that level of care because it is incredibly unique and requires much more research and debate.

I’m prepared to stake my claim with what I think is significant evidence, that a culture, like Atlantis, and even cultures older than that but have been lost because there wasn’t a Plato to record it in a way that survived, populated the entire world and that they were very tall people obsessed with worship of planets and their power, which still exists to this day in cults of magic and occult astrology attached to many secret societies who wish to rule mankind from the shadows gaining control of our political, educational, and financial institutions so they could set policies that would maintain their concealment. And from 9000 BC to around 3000 AD, they ruled the world until a rebellion of ideas came along and toppled their empire, for which Yahweh played his part. I propose that Serpent Mound is the remains of this very ancient cult that was preserved and restored by many generations of inhabitants, of which the Adena and Hopewell Indians did just as Egyptian society did and that was to build their empires around the structures that were already there for many thousands of years. Not much remains of this ancient culture because time tends to wipe them all out if something is over 3000 years old. But Göbekli Tepi and other sites around the world dating back to 10,000 years ago show that there were already very advanced cultures on Earth with a high understanding of mathematics. And Ohio has a big piece of that puzzle, which should be preserved. As I explained to my kids on this trip, there should be nice, paved trails, a nice restaurant, and an admission price to raise money for the preservation at the Serpent Mound complex. But this whole native American sacred site stuff needs to go. Science needs more evidence and a bigger picture to consider in the schemes of the universe as captured in sites like the Great Serpent Mound. And I dare everyone who snickers at this claim to prove me wrong. Because I don’t think they can.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Empire of the Snake: Why Islam will always be at war with the Bible

It’s almost comical to see modern science tell us that the Serpent Mound in Ohio was built by Indians when they could barely get up each day to eat food. About an hour east of Cincinnati, the Serpent Mound is one of the most mysterious places on earth and is revered archaeologically as high or higher as the Great Pyramids of Giza. What makes Serpent Mound so astonishing is the very advanced mathematics and knowledge of the stars that it would have taken a culture thousands, if not millions of years, to develop. Admittedly, I have been to the Serpent Mound site lots of times. I have even gone there to think and get away from the world’s chaos on really bad days. If I’m having a terrible day, don’t be surprised if you find me there reading a book, or looking at some crop circle that sometimes happens across the street from the park entrance. When I go to Serpent Mound, I think about many things, but it’s never about Indians. The site was never intended to be a burial mound for a ceremonial culture. But a reference to the stars and, specifically, the constellation Draco. It truly has an ancient feeling to the place that is bizarrely intelligent, not the sentiments of a hunter-gatherer culture. Even more mysteriously, the entire site is built on the edge of a massive crater left over from a crypto explosion many millions of years ago. So, how did they know where to put the Serpent Mound when there isn’t any evidence to the naked eye of this explosion? The people who pay reverence to the site with the construction of Serpent Mound would have had to know what the geology under the ground would eventually show, and that is the alarming part of the place and the peek back in time toward an entirely different global civilization that nobody has yet figured out because they are asking all the wrong questions about the evidence that we do have. We had a global civilization of star worshipers who used to build earth effigies that contained very advanced mathematics. And something happened to them that was very traumatic.

It’s coming up a lot lately because of the recent terrorist attack in New Orleans from a radical practitioner of Islam; what is the primary difference between the Christian Bible and the Muslim Quran? That’s an interesting question because both religions have many of the same characters, so how could they have such a radically different approach to the world? One pronounced difference is that Islam and Christians have almost the same Adam and Eve story, except in Islam, the Devil is the villain. In the Jewish and Christian faiths, the snake gives Eve the apple and tells her to eat from the knowledge of good and evil. The more you dig, the more it is realized that the religion of the Arab people, the same descendants of Mesopotamia, and the original antagonizers from the Land of Canaan were these same people. And that Yahweh’s fight against them traces back to this essential difference. In Islam, the snake could be a jinn, a helpful or harmful spirit. This view of snakes traces back to an Empire of Snake worshippers who had an obsession with star worship and traumatic crises culturally when it comes to the memory of the constellation Draco, Sirius, and many others. Things get wild when we consider that Thuban, the pole star, lines up with Serpent Mound from approximately 3942 BCE to 1793 BCE. And if that was the only case with those dates, we might assume somebody made a mistake. But this same kind of math can be found in the Pyramids, Stonehenge, and even at another giant earth effigy just to the south of downtown Hamilton, Ohio, at the Fortified Hill complex, which during the same period lines up to the constellation Pleiades. If you want to check it out for yourself, just visit Pyramid Hill Park, and you’ll get a fascinating perspective on the scale of our subject.

To Islam, the snake is beneficial, just as it is viewed in most cultures of the world with ancient reverence, especially in the Orient, where serpents, dragons, and all species of snakes are seen as helpful entities, not enemies. But to Western culture, dragons are to be slain. Snakes are the embodiment of evil. And to this very day, at the center of conflict between Christianity and Islam is the reverence of the snake and what we should or shouldn’t be doing with them. For the same reasons that modern archaeologists can’t figure out the Serpent Mound’s relationship to the constellation Draco, they are looking for Indians who would evolve even to begin to understand those kinds of things. What they miss is a clear understanding of the kind of rebellion that Yahweh was advocating for, which is clearly expressed in the Bible as a crisis against the global power of snake worship that inspired the conquest of the land of Canaan to begin with. And that’s where things really start to get interesting, especially when the most common theme that emerges from the use of psychedelics in religion shares a relationship with snakes as one of the primordial terrors that come from visits to the spirit world today. Practitioners of the ayahuasca experience that shamans from South America utilize and have become very popular, know what I’m talking about. Most all experience snakes as dominant figures in that hidden kingdom. And it looks like it was primarily psychedelics in the form of mushrooms or other plant-based agents that helped form the basis for the world’s religions. And Yahweh was rebelling against the Empire of the Snakes, not submitting to them.

Therefore, we had an entire world that traded with each other for obviously tens of thousands of years. Probably much longer. They did not behave as modern scientist lazily concluded, and that is as hunter and gatherers who migrated to North America from the Jomon people emerging out of Japan and crossing the Bering Strait without any advanced knowledge of the greater heavens that wasn’t at the center of their worship, a crisis for them in great turmoil yearning for celestial bodies. I have also been to many Jomon sites in Japan, dating from 14,000 BCE to around 300 BCE. Many of their artifacts can be found buried offshore when sea levels were over 400 feet lower during the Ice Age. All this matters in understanding the vast difference in Western civilization, how it works, and why the East is and will always be at war with it. Islam is a religion of the East. Their concepts of the jinn, evil spirits, are almost identical to the Japanese kami and the spirits of the Indians. And they all stand, just as the land of Canaan did, against the advancement of Western civilization and its blaming of the snake for all that went wrong in the world, as opposed to an artificial Devil as Islam does. And with that straightforward distinction, we see the root cause of much of the trouble. The Empire of the Snake is old and global. It took a rebellion to stand against it and overthrow it, which was captured in the Jewish stories about the conquest of the Land of Canaan and why that was necessary. It also explains why those who still worship the snake have so much trouble in the world and why Western civilization can be said to be so much better. Because the anxiety of snake worship never took that global civilization to a healthy psychological place. We will find the same crises once we land on other stars, such as Mars, and find ourselves homesick to beliefs that resonated from those faraway places. Only to have a religion come along and fight against that ancient reverence and deal with what is before us in a psychologically healthy way. At the heart of that, we can then understand why Islam will always be at war with Christians because, for them, the snake and its old empire is a cry for home, a sense of belonging that they will never have again.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

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