■ Science ^ Discovery •: 
CAUSES OF THE TRIUMPH OF HUMBUG 
IN ARCHEOLOGY 
M UCH of what goes by the name 
of archeology, especially in this 
country, is a hodgepodge of delu¬ 
sion, misinformation and humbug. The 
field is exploited by the pseudo-scientist, 
the unbalanced amateur, the enthusiast 
for this theory or that. The result is that 
most of us cherish ill-digested tissues of 
mistakes on such subjects as prehistoric 
man, the aboriginal races of America and 
the character of the civilizations that 
flourished in the western hemisphere prior 
to the arrival of the white man with 
Columbus. These errors ramify in all di¬ 
rections, especially into “sociology” and 
geology, besides affording various incom¬ 
petent individuals opportunities for the 
exploitation of themselves as serious sci¬ 
entists. 
This melancholy state of affairs is due 
in large part, declares Doctor William H. 
Holmes, in his work on American abo¬ 
riginals, issued by the Smithsonian Insti¬ 
tution, to the sheer multitude of the 
sources of misinformation. These com¬ 
prise, referring especially to America, the 
misinterpretations and errors embodied in 
four centuries of literature, among which 
are the imperfect observations and errone¬ 
ous deductions of amateurs and the inept. 
Especially to be deprecated are the utili¬ 
zation of this class of observations by 
enthusiastic supporters of vague theories 
and preconceived views, and the demand 
for sensational matter by the newspapers. 
It would seem as if the newspapers of our 
time were among the worst offenders in 
their ready acceptance of whatever is sen¬ 
sational in the way of an archeological 
“find,” without reference to the soundness 
of the inferences based upon it. 
“The diversity of invented and exaggerated 
statements which find currency is, indeed, ap¬ 
palling. The world hears constantly of the 
discovery of skeletons of giants and of pyg¬ 
mies ; of caverns filled with mummified 
bodies and rich plunder; of ruined cities 
abounding in marvelous works of art; of 
hardened copper; of walls and buildings of 
astonishing magnitude; of sunken conti¬ 
nents; of ancient races associated with ex¬ 
tinct species of animals; of inscribed tablets 
of doubtful origin and extraordinary import; 
of low-browed crania attributed to prehis¬ 
toric races but which are mere local varia¬ 
tions or pathological freaks; of fossil bones 
of animals parading as the bones of man; of 
reputed petrified human bodies which, on in¬ 
spection, turn out to be of modern cement; 
of faked pottery, metal work and the like, 
so well wrought and so insidiously brought 
to the attention of scholars as to have be¬ 
come in certain instances the types of an¬ 
tiquity; of learned readings of undecipher¬ 
able inscriptions; and of the remains of 
man and his culture from formations of all 
ages, dating from the present back to the 
Carboniferous age. The output is so great 
and the public mind so receptive to error 
that the tide of misinformation keeps steadily 
on, hardly reduced in bulk by the never- 
ceasing efforts of science. The compilations 
of a Bancroft, a Winsor or a Fiske, illumined 
as they are by exceptional genius, could not 
always rise above the vitiated records upon 
which they drew; and our best authorities 
in many cases are subject to the danger of 
combining the original errors into new fic¬ 
tions so compounded and difficult of analysis 
as to elude the vigilance even of the critical 
scientific world.” 
From the first, potent agencies of error 
have conspired to obscure the aboriginal 
record. The attitude of the propaganda 
of Christianity at the period of the dis- 
