Tag: Biblical

‘Prehistoric Worlds Or, Vanished Races’: The truth of the anti-giant conspiracy

Not very long ago, my daughter called me in a rush from a used bookstore in downtown Middletown, Ohio—a place that’s seen better days, rough around the edges, but still holding onto some hidden gems. She told me I had to come right away because she’d found something special and was guarding it like a treasure. When I got there, she handed me an 1885 original edition of The Prehistoric World: Or, Vanished Races by E.A. Allen. The book is barely holding together after all these years, its pages fragile and yellowed, but it’s a remarkable artifact. I bought it for a reasonable price, and it’s become one of my prized possessions. It’s not just a book; it’s a window into a time when exploration and curiosity drove inquiry, before modern institutions locked down narratives with rigid assumptions.

I’ve always been drawn to these topics. Back in high school, even as far back as fifth and sixth grade, I was ahead of my teachers in history and anthropology classes. I’d read widely—Joseph Campbell’s works, myths, comparative religion—and I knew much of what was being taught was incomplete or outright wrong. I endured it to graduate and escape that institutionalized mindset, which I saw holding back real understanding. In my twenties, I dove deeper into Joseph Campbell and even joined the Joseph Campbell Foundation. My adventures around the world, combined with a lifelong connection to southern Ohio, shaped my views. My wife and I have been married nearly 39 years, and throughout that time, we’ve visited Serpent Mound repeatedly—every few years, it’s become a touchstone for us.

Living in southern Ohio, near Middletown and Hamilton, I’ve always had a personal relationship with these ancient sites. Serpent Mound, the massive effigy serpent earthwork in Adams County, is one of the most famous, but closer to home are the mounds along the Great Miami River Valley. There’s the Miamisburg Mound, one of the largest conical burial mounds in eastern North America, built by the Adena culture around 800 B.C. to A.D. 100. It’s 65 feet tall, 800 feet around, and excavations in 1869 revealed layered construction with possible stone facing and burial goods like pipes and effigies. There are even reports that they found skulls in that mound that would fit over the top of regular people, and that these finds terrified the excavators and they abandoned the site, never to return. Yet, despite its proximity—right near where I grew up—schools never took us there on field trips. We went to other places, heard stories about Native American burials and the sadness of destruction by Europeans, but nothing about these advanced earthworks.

Then there’s the area across from Joyce Park in Hamilton, where Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park now sits near Fortified Hill, an older than 2,000-year-old ceremonial earthworks site tied to the Hopewell or earlier traditions. In Allen’s 1885 book, there’s a description and illustration of a large effigy mound or structure in that vicinity—two high peaks carved or shaped, possibly reflecting ancient alignments, even to constellations like Aries, thought to be around 5,000 years old in some interpretations. The book chronicles many Ohio River Valley mounds, dedicating significant portions to the Miami and Mississippi cultures, Mexico, the Aztecs, and global prehistoric peoples. It’s an adventurous, Victorian-era take—profusely illustrated, speculative, open to wonders without the heavy filter of modern politics or funding constraints.

What strikes me most is how this 1885 book feels more honest about discoveries than much of what came later. During that era, explorers and adventurers reported findings without preconceived notions imposed by institutions. Allen’s work reflects a time when people were excited about vanished races and prehistoric worlds, including reports of mound contents that challenged emerging narratives. Many 19th-century accounts from Ohio mounds mentioned unusually large skeletons—sometimes described as 7 to 9 feet tall—unearthed during excavations. These were often speculatively linked to biblical giants or to ancient, advanced peoples. Newspapers and reports from the time sensationalized them, but they reflected genuine observations before professional archaeology standardized explanations. Mainstream archaeology today attributes these to the Adena and Hopewell cultures—sophisticated societies with wide trade networks, astronomical alignments in their earthworks, and ceremonial practices—but dismisses giant claims as misinterpretations, exaggerations, or hoaxes based on crumbling bones and poor documentation.  I have come to understand that the anti-giant conspiracy that has permeated the sciences was a secular construct intended to disprove biblical narratives, rather than to understand them, which was a critical error from that perspective.

I can’t help but feel that institutional science took a wrong turn. After the late 19th century, education and research became centralized, often prioritizing narratives that fit political or funding needs over raw observation. The mounds were attributed solely to ancestors of modern Native Americans, like the Adena (800 B.C.–A.D. 100) and Hopewell (200 B.C.–A.D. 500), who built massive geometric enclosures and burial sites with precision. These are now UNESCO-recognized, like the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, celebrated for their engineering and cultural depth. Yet, in my view, this framing sometimes ignores anomalies or alternative interpretations to maintain control over the story.

This ties into broader questions I’ve pondered for decades. What if these earthworks—Serpent Mound with its debated alignments to solstices (summer sunset at the head, possible lunar or solar cycles), Miamisburg’s layered burials, Fortified Hill’s ceremonial space—are remnants of something older, perhaps offshoots of lost civilizations? Some speculate connections to Atlantis or pre-Ice Age advanced societies, which were wiped out by the Younger Dryas catastrophe around 12,900–11,600 years ago—a sudden cold snap possibly triggered by comet impacts and freshwater floods that disrupted ocean currents, leading to megafauna extinctions and cultural disruptions. Graham Hancock and others link this to Plato’s Atlantis, a global flood-like event ending an Ice Age civilization, with survivors possibly influencing later cultures.

In Ohio, the mounds don’t fit neatly into short timelines. Serpent Mound’s age is debated—some radiocarbon dates suggest an Adena date around 300 B.C., others a Fort Ancient date around A.D. 1100, with possible repairs—but its astronomical sophistication and serpent symbolism hint at deeper roots. The book I found predates the heavy institutionalization that followed, capturing a spirit of adventure where discoveries weren’t immediately boxed into “primitive Indians” or dismissed. It dedicates half its 800 pages to American earthworks, showing alignments and complexities that modern textbooks often downplay.

My frustration stems from this: growing up here, no one talked about these sites in school. No field trips to Pyramid Hill or Miamisburg. No discussion of potential giant remains or alignments that “they shouldn’t even know about” at the time. It felt like a deliberate omission to preserve a simple narrative. Institutions, chasing grants and political correctness, built assumptions around limited data, leading to dead ends. Meanwhile, independent researchers and adventurers are bypassing them, returning to direct observation and instinct.

This book reminds me how much more open inquiry was in 1885, before the Smithsonian and universities solidified control. It shows we knew—or at least wondered—more freely then. We’ve gone downhill in some ways, prioritizing preservation of timelines over pursuit of truth. My daughter recognized that instinctually when she saved it for me. It’s a benchmark: a call to question, explore, and reject complacency in institutionalized science.

We need to return to that adventurous spirit—observe these mounds, ask who built them, why, how old they truly are, and how they connect to our story today. The earthworks along the Ohio River Valley aren’t just relics; they’re evidence of advanced understanding—astronomical, engineering, spiritual—that challenges easy answers. By reflecting on books like Allen’s, we see where assumptions went wrong and how rediscovering truth requires going beyond the official path.

Bibliography

•  Allen, E. A. The Prehistoric World: Or, Vanished Races. Central Publishing House, 1885. (Available via Project Gutenberg and archives.)

•  Ohio History Connection. “Miamisburg Mound.” ohiohistory.org.

•  Ohio History Connection. “Serpent Mound.” ohiohistory.org.

•  Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks. hopewellearthworks.org.

•  UNESCO. “Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks.” whc.unesco.org.

•  Romain, William F. Various studies on Ohio earthworks astronomy.

•  Hancock, Graham. America Before: The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilization. St. Martin’s Press, 2019. (For Younger Dryas and catastrophe discussions.)

•  Various 19th-century newspaper reports on mound discoveries (e.g., via historical archives).

Footnotes

1.  Radiocarbon dating debates on Serpent Mound: See Monaghan and Hermann (2019) reconciliation of dates.

2.  Giant skeleton reports: Often debunked as mismeasurements (e.g., Columbus Dispatch, 2019), but reflect period observations.

3.  Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis: Firestone et al. (2007) and subsequent studies.

4.  Adena/Hopewell mainstream views: National Park Service, Hopewell Culture National Historical Park.

Rich Hoffman

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The Bible Will ‘Make America Great Again’: Our infrastructure is already in place, we just need to drop the experiment of secular society–it has been a disaster

You can’t do it, have a secular culture, and expect society to adhere to values.  Specifically, America was founded as a Christian nation.  Our laws were formed around Biblical ideals.  Without those values driving our decision-making process, the wheels fall off entirely.  This separation of church and state was an attack on the concept of American life, not a way to protect it from various ideas.  If we want to Make American Great Again, the Bible must be at our culture’s core.  We can be tolerant of other cultures and religious beliefs, but to have common footing and a value system people can believe in, we must turn to the Bible to establish a foundation that mass society can start with as a means of acquiring proper social behavior.  I have been saying this for a while now, and the evidence is obvious.  Without Biblical concepts to drive society, it flies apart quickly.  Regarding the Jewish traditions of the Ten Commandments, which are the foundation for our entire law and order society, we should look back now with the benefit of hindsight at the start of the problem, the removal of the Bible from our legislative process.  The people who wanted to do that understood what they were strategically doing.  They didn’t want America to survive or thrive.  They tried to destroy our country and our values, and the first place they started was with the religious foundation of the country, to begin with, and disguised their efforts as a “protection of free speech.”  To use free speech as a means to destroy free speech.  We have been dealing with some real bad guys up to substantial no good, and it’s time we go in the other direction.  If we want to establish law, order, and social value, the Bible is our best option as a mass society.

A lot of people have been mad at me for my statements about the Bible needing to be the center of our society.  I am probably more tolerant of other people’s religions and beliefs than most are.  I am sure the average person doesn’t interact with people from all over the world with as much diversity in belief as I do on a daily basis.  And I’ve heard all the atheist arguments regarding God from the Ayn Rand Objectivism, which is OK for specifying the value of money and how it measures worth in society.  Separating the element of God from those kinds of discussions helps make a point of what value is and how people should conduct themselves.  When the Bible was written, and before the idea of free people was contemplated as a reality, money was handled by those exerting power over others.  That still occurs around much of the world, but in America, the concept of wealth creation has a moral element that preserves individual liberty.  Money doesn’t usher in the roots of all evil into a people who should be worshipping Yahweh with sacrifices and a bent knee.  We’re not talking about subservience to a deity as much as we are expressing the values and lessons of the human race since the beginning of time, more than 10,000 years of evolution.  Once America was formed on Biblical concepts as a free nation fleeing the religious persecution of Europe, things started to work out very well with the human race.  Cleon Skousen’s 5000 Year Leap understands this concept very well.  Until those elements of Biblical value combined with individual freedom, the entire human race was in a desperate state that continued to rise and fall throughout history.  It’s not an accident that the Jewish people became the longest-lasting group to survive for such a long period.  Because the ideas about how to structure society, from judges to rulers to everyday conduct, worked as they were written in the Bible.  And our civilization flourished accordingly.

I’ve tried accommodating people’s secular sentiments, but it doesn’t work.  I’ve been there for a while, especially in watching how angry so many people who are rooting for the failure of America to happen have been toward President Trump.  I wouldn’t say that Trump has been over his life an example of moral compunction.  Like many people, he came to it through experience and necessity.  Trump was very much living the life of a Hugh Hefner Playboy type.  It only took him a few wives to start figuring it out, and Melania has been good for him.  It probably took a few years to work out that lifestyle of not being a playboy, and as a result, a more biblical perspective became an increasing part of his life.  But as he ran for president, the resistance to him pushed him in that direction for the better, and he has turned out to be a pretty good person as a result.  If you have looked at his books written since he was president, books from Winning Team Publishing like ‘Our Journey Together’ “Letters to Trump, and this latest one, which is fantastic, ‘Save America,’ you will see more than the journey of a presidency from campaign status to fulfillment and a real representative of the American lifestyle in a moral way.  A person’s journey growing into actual Biblical value, like a character from the Bible called to do God’s work. 

I was thinking about all this while serving as a foreman for a grand jury.  It was my job to swear in all the witnesses, and they gave me a card that said on one side, “So help me God.”  On the other, it removed God from the sentence and was intended for more secular types.  After hearing from hundreds of witnesses over several weeks and listening to the many criminal cases presented, it was obvious the root cause of much of it was the lack of biblical value in our society that was put there with progressive politics.  Only a few months before my grand jury service, I had just traveled to Japan for the second time in six months. I was exposed to the nightlife of Kyoto, complete with the traditional dress they have there. I saw a lot of temples and the burning of incense where people openly worshipped the religion of Shinto, which involves the worship of kami, spirits that inhabit everything.  There isn’t much crime in Japan, and they thrive. Much of that is caused by their understanding of the social values provided by the Shinto religion.  There are shrines everywhere; it’s impossible to walk around too far in Japan and not have exposure to Shinto worship.  It reminded me that much of our infrastructure for religious value is already in place in America.  You can hardly go anywhere in America without seeing a church.  During my grand jury service, I didn’t have to use the back of the card to swear people in.  Everyone I swore in seemed to like how I said, “So help you, God.”  That’s why we traditionally have people put their hand on a Bible to swear them in, it’s a testament to the values contained within it.  Based on what we know now and what we have learned from other cultures that have not embraced some ridiculous concept of secular law and order, a biblical foundation is crucial to Making America Great Again.  All we need to do is accept what we have learned about social order and apply it accordingly, and things will restore to proper conduct quickly. 

Rich Hoffman

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Defeating Evil Governments: A society with lots of guns and Bibles keeps people free

It’s been a more common occurrence, of course, that I discuss religion. I mean, look at the times we are living in. There is an astonishing level of evil on display here, so it comes my way a lot; what should we do? So, it’s unsurprising that I talk about religion; it has always been a big part of my life. But I have a lot of other things going on in my life that I felt I could talk about everything else without imposing myself on the people around me. I deal with a lot of people with lots of different viewpoints. Everyone knows that I’m morally very rigid, but I am accommodating toward other people, perhaps extraordinarily. But religion isn’t a new thing for me. I never said a curse word in my life until after I was 18 years old. I never drank alcohol until my church pushed it on me to take communion. I despise belching and farting, especially when people can hear it. I’ve never smoked marijuana or done drugs of any kind. I went to church most Sundays of my life until I was about 22. And I stopped because the pastor of my church had his wife leave him, which I never forgave him for. As I said then and still say it today, how do you lead a church if you can’t lead a family? (she got bored with Church life and had a wild streak hit her in her middle years. But I still blame the husband when things like that happen)  Church wasn’t religious enough for me, so I stopped going. I never felt it did a good enough job of fighting evil. I could go on and on, but as a person, I’ve never been a very loosie goosy person to be around. So when all the avenues of evil show themselves for the slaughter, I feel that there is a license to express myself accordingly. 

So yes, it has always come up, I handle religion cordially, but I often don’t impose my views on people because, literally, nobody has the kind of views about a good and moral life that I do, so I’ve learned to keep a lot to myself, just to have speaking relationships with people. But my views are certainly not new. I’m talking about it more now because it literally comes up every day from someone looking for answers. And with all the talk about what’s going on in the world and the level of evil we are dealing with, I have a simple two-part answer strategically on how to defeat our foes that I’m happy to share. It’s why I don’t worry too much about the level of corruption we are dealing with because I have always seen the clear path out of it. Of course, I’m happy to share that self-assurance with anybody who wants to listen. However, for context, even the most devout Baptist minister would find it hard to live with my rigidity religiously. My comment to people who are curious is that evil is struggling to remain hidden, and now they are going all out toward apocalyptic activism. But the trajectory of history is against them, and they are behaving out of desperation because they know it. So, when people ask me about the solutions to our modern problems, I assure them that the bad guys will not win, especially in America, for two very specific reasons, the Bible and gun ownership. As long as those two things exist in America, the government might fall away, but the people will go on as usual. Because we are not ruled, we have representatives. If they go bad, that doesn’t mean all the people follow. Instead, far from it.

I was at one of my favorite bookstores recently in Dayton, Ohio. It has a tremendous second floor, large enough to comfortably throw footballs in, big high ceilings, and lots of open space, and I took a minute to marvel at the religious section. The number of Bibles on display for sale was bewildering, and they are there because Bibles make up a substantial percentage of all books sold. And when people buy Bibles, they read them, so a literate society makes for one that won’t fall for all the ridiculously stupid leftist ideology. The really religious people, the people who read the Bible, tend to make up most of the homeschool movement, which I’ve always been a part of in some way. My children are currently homeschooling my grandchildren, for instance, because the schools are such cesspools of evil, exposing them to it just isn’t in the cards of reality. But I get to speak with a lot of very smart people because they essentially read their Bibles. Reading as an action makes people more intelligent, so Bible reading gives people who do so advantage over those who don’t. And the Bible’s contents took many lives to reach our hands. Every time I see a bunch of bookshelves filled with Bibles knowing that people are buying them up often, I consider how many millions of people died just to get those lines printed on paper for people to read. It’s quite a journey filled with a lot of spilled blood. But printing presses, mass publishing, and a stable economy have made Bibles so common that there is no way to go back in time to where totalitarian governments ruled by ignorance. That is clearly the modern strategy to rule over the world, to keep people ignorant and groundless on morality. But as long as there are Bibles in the world, tyranny will not be able to take over where people read them. That’s why communist countries are so hostile toward the Holy Bible because it’s nearly impossible for them to rule over literate people with beliefs in good and evil. 

But reading the Bible isn’t enough. Throughout most of our history, just reading and sharing certain Bibles, such as the Wyclif Bible in 1384, could put you to death. A lot of people have been burnt at the stake or killed in multiple ways just for reading the Bible or seeking independent spiritual belief, a belief away from the governments trying to impose on people a belief system they otherwise wouldn’t accommodate. That’s why our gun culture is so influential and why they want to get rid of guns so aggressively. Guns keep the government from coming door to door and burning people at the stake because they want to read from the Bible or express their values which go against the lunacy of a tyrannical government. So long as those two things are in a society, the intentions of evil upon a mass culture will fail. In America, currently, the government is failing, but the people are not. This government tries to rule through fear, mechanisms they learned in academia. But the assumption all along was that they could turn America into an atheist nation and a gunless nation. And they haven’t been able to come close on either point. And so long as guns and Bibles are part of American culture, the intentions of the communists, the Democrat losers, the globalists, the gangsters who are now in our government to hide from the prosecutors who used to haunt them, now they are them—all of them will fall short on their objectives because, for the first time in history, people have access to massive self-defense, and the intelligence of the written word, the ability to think for themselves. They don’t need government. But the government needs them. And in times such as these, a way of life that I have been more than prepared for every year that I’ve lived it, the things I have said over all that time are only becoming more obviously true. Keep your guns close and use them to keep reading from the Bible. And if you do those two things and share your enthusiasm openly, the bad guys will lose in this apocalyptic war, which will be fun to watch. 

Rich Hoffman

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