March 8, 2015 — David Hatcher Childress

[Burnt State]

The Childress episode was interesting but I also think there were some sweeping generalizations mixed with details both accurate and sometimes lacking. There was a little too much inexplicability and not enough explanation of our ancient ancestors' very tight relationship with astronomy and the movements of the sun & moon. We've also been very into burying our dead in increasingly elaborate manners. It's a little insulting to accuse our relatives of not being capable of doing what we have always done - building large buildings and sticking big erect objects in the ground. These are things men just can't stop doing. That is the basic nuts and bolts of his-story, subtracting the nuts though and just leaving our big bolts standing tall and proud everywhere.

And if you look around today you'll see that times have not changed much as we continue to convince hordes of men and women to build taller and taller structures using nothing but our wits and whatever power we can harness. If anything humans are incredibly creative folks and when we turn our mind to it building, smelting, cutting stone and convincing our neighbour's that these are necessary labours is what we do well. No need to introduce ancient alien helpers into the narrative of human invention.

As far as using sound and drums to lift stones...well Coral Castle is still pretty interesting, but I suppose if you give someone a lever they can probably move mountains if that's the task at hand or what your "sweet sixteen" asks of you.

 

[Polterwurst]

Good article here on piercing bodies with implements (Dervishes on display) and why there is no blood, pain or infection. It has a great section on Dajo in here giving some insight into his practice and death.

Did you watch the footage at all? Just look at the parts right in the beginning or at 2:20). It looks as if he`s literally run through side to side or front to back. As the surgeon in the vid says, there is no chance that "only" fat or conjunctive analgetic tissue was affected. In many cases, the lungs should have been pierced, but no air loss. In the 2:20 part, it's nearly impossible that the entrails would not have injured. IMO, once more, it's nothing but a cheap cop-out by people who don't want their precious worldview to suffer, to just say "oh, that's nothing unusual, these faking fakirs do that all the time".

"Dajo" might have had lots of strange and improbable theories about his "invulnerability" (which he obviously genuinely believed in, so I guess he can't be called a fraud or liar), but I think he was right in as far as consciousness can do a lot more than people think (back then much more so than today).

IMO, this blind belief in his invulnerabilty worked as a kind of super-placebo and helped ignoring the pain and healing the wounds. Although he could have been born with an insensitivity to pain and a very effective immune system that prevented infections, which is why I made the X-men remark.

 

[manxman]

Mind boggles at him, at what point do you think to yourself, ''i know i will just shove this harmless 2ft dagger thru my back and out of my chest'' that should impress the Fraulein's.


''Do us a favour m8, just shove this sword right thru me please, it will be ok i promise''

There had to be a first time another person skewered him right thru, i was watching their eyes in the vid, one guy keep looking in his face each push, that wasnt faked, that was concern.

 

[ChrisJohnsen]

Good article here on piercing bodies with implements...

If I had a nickel for every time I've read that in a Paracast forum post...

 

[Burnt State]

Did you watch the footage at all? Just look at the parts right in the beginning or at 2:20). It looks as if he`s literally run through side to side or front to back. As the surgeon in the vid says, there is no chance that "only" fat or conjunctive analgetic tissue was affected. In many cases, the lungs should have been pierced, but no air loss. In the 2:20 part, it's nearly impossible that the entrails would not have injured. IMO, once more, it's nothing but a cheap cop-out by people who don't want their precious worldview to suffer, to just say "oh, that's nothing unusual, these faking fakirs do that all the time".

"Dajo" might have had lots of strange and improbable theories about his "invulnerability" (which he obviously genuinely believed in, so I guess he can't be called a fraud or liar), but I think he was right in as far as consciousness can do a lot more than people think (back then much more so than today).

IMO, this blind belief in his invulnerabilty worked as a kind of super-placebo and helped ignoring the pain and healing the wounds. Although he could have been born with an insensitivity to pain and a very effective immune system that prevented infections, which is why I made the X-men remark.

In the article I cited his autopsy reveals that there were in fact many internal injuries with a number of organs that were pierced and wounded from this process. I agree that mental focus has a lot to do with quelling the pain. But when you look at his back and read about the dervishes you can see how they are doing the exact same thing - the same wounds are present, and the description of how there is minimal bleeding is also present and explained. While I found the sword piercing through the centre of his chest to be quite impressive it seems that at 36 he ultimately succumbed to his practices and was not so invulnerable after all. In fact his pursuits just pushed his body too far.

I remember listening to Jim Rose (see above) of the Jim Rose sideshow explain how it was that he could pierce his own body in similar ways and how knowledge of anatomy was critical to avoid serious injuries. But apparently organs can get pierced and you can still live because of the nature of the wound. Apparently Dajo had no less than four fistulas in his body, or permanent holes, that he had created and allowed him to insert objects through there regularly. His death/autopsy and neighbour's belief system should not be ignored IMHO. But yes, the sword was quite disturbing and seemingly inexplicable.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

He will only do C2C and the Paracast, unless a top show dogs him repeatedly and he has a new book out.

Indeed and people can complain about DHC all they like but personally speaking, if we are one of very few shows he does I would much rather we have him occasionally rather than never! I hope he is back in the future. At the very least, someone with the experience and knowledge he has is someone who's point of view is well worth considering.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

I disagreed with David's views on Tiwanaku, ditto on what he said about construction of the Inca sites over the border in Peru, and that set the scene for me for the rest of the interview unfortunately - i.e. he had a bit of a credibility issue. Having lived for years down the road in La Paz I've had the chance to visit the above sites a fair number of times, and while they're undoubtedly impressive (and most certainly mysterious in Tiwanaku's ancient case), for me there's nothing there which couldn't have been built using local materials through a combination of clever engineering for its day, craftsmanship, political will to get the job done and plenty of brute force. I felt that David was very selective in citing evidence (and sometimes he didn't bother at all!). For example, many of the larger slabs at Tiwanaku have grooves for fitting ropes to move them into place. The Tiwanaku pyramid itself, while large in area, was in reality pretty flat, more of a platform than something you'd find in Egypt or Central America, plus the majority of the complex has been constructed from much smaller-sized building materials than monolithic slabs, as is immediately evident once you have a wander around. The latter is also true of Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu, for example, and the Incas' use of hefty ropes to assemble places like Sacsayhuaman is documented by the Spanish conquistadores, who witnessed their construction materials first-hand.

So, for me there was some interesting speculation but at the end of the day much of it was just that. Many of David's ideas reminded me of Gavin Menzies' book, 1421, about a Chinese treasure fleet circumnavigating the globe a century before Magellan's expedition: a good yarn with possible basis in fact, but light on hard proof and only one of a number of alternative theories which fit the current evidence. It's great that David has taken the time to visit places and has even blown the dust off a few old ideas like Earth's Crust Displacement Theory, but for me he should be making a much better case for all the above. He also hedged his bets a tad, I felt, on who built this stuff: as-smart-as-us humans from now-lost civilisations, or Swedish-speaking levitating aliens banging magical Tibetan prayer drums with genetically-modified bananas?

I certainly defer to your personal experience but may I suggest some of the intricate walls in places like Cusco with the crazy sides that fit together amazingly snugly are still probably beyond us to copy - never mind using the tools of the supposed time? Is it not the case that in many of these sites, the excellent build quality of the older parts is superior to newer walls etc that are built on top? The difference is so stark and yet they are often ascribed to the same builders and era?
(I'll state up front this is not my top subject and I am not speaking with any authority whatsoever; I am open to being corrected if wrong!)

 

[Goggs Mackay]

Sorry, I tried to find the footage with english commentary, but no cigar. The original footage has no audio anyway, so you could just turn the sound off.The information given in the vid can be found in the english article I linked.

Regarding acupuncture, the guy was dutch and the film made in Switzerland. These guys are nearly as strange as we are. I should edit the post, though, to give a warning that this is for macho men only. Wait, I'll do it right away...

Is it possible he is one of those people whose internal anatomy is very displaced and things like the heart can be on the wrong side etc - if this was the case, could he be avoiding major organs and blood vessels? I'd still think this would have a very high chance of infection, even if skewer were sterilised!

 

[Ezechiel]

Great episode... that got me thinking about 'Carnac stones' ... and Puma Punku
Carnac stones - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Estimated age of the site in Carnac France is 4500 years. A primitive construct that likely required the engineering capacity upper limit of an early group of humans.
Regardless, this is exactly what I would be looking for on Mars... or any 'goldylock' zone planet where water once thrived.

That kind of unnatural arrangement of monoliths is the perfect enduring testament of sentient life for a planet that loses its water relatively early.

But then you don't want to go nuts with low resolution interpretations of Mars like these cydonia drawings. You have use low altitude mapping a bit like the movie Prometheus where the ship detects an alignment

Mars-Earth Connection

Puma punku is fun too. That kind of refinement is like some out of whack weird evolutionary flash in stone cutting technology that somehow wasn't retained. A bit like those Egyptian batteries.
Enigmatic Tiwanaku And Puma Punku Bolivia | Hidden Inca Tours

Shows you how a freak technological advance in a specific field can produce wealth and sustenance for a civilization... not to mention the seemingly godlike reputation you acquire.
Unfortunately the technique was lost and no written record exists explaining the methods used.

Imagine what an EMP blast would do to our records in 2015

 

[Ezechiel]

If you turn this logic upside down and there is no freak technological advance to explain sites like Puma, Egyptian pyramids... etc.. ... The following possibility becomes interesting:

What if you are an interstellar explorer far from home and your ship crashes on an alien planet. Your iPhone 'galactic edition' is on the fritz but you have these nice excavation and cutting tools... And your fusion plant (ark of the covenant type thingy) happens to still be good for a few hundred years.

Appearing as a God before the primitive locals that you were studying, you get them to build something visible and detectable from space. And hitchhike a ride back home... or get your ship fixed

Damn iPhone 'galactic edition' LOL (alien below doesn't look too happy)

So that big Giza pyramid is really an ET call home (get me off this planet) device ?

 

[Bergen]

He also has visited many of these enigmatic constructions and ruins w/ engineers, geologists, archeologists, etc., and other so-called "experts," so it stands to reason that he has drawn his informed conclusions based on real research and informed opinions of others.

do you have any examples where DHCs supernatural conclusions are based on the research of engineers, geologists, archeologists, etc

and what do you mean "so called" ?

I would think that this work and the passion to come to informed conclusions is worth more than that of your ordinary, average armchair critic/"other guy."

not if his conclusions are wrong though. If an armchair criitic , say , conclude that the SANDstones at Puma Punku could be worked with the most basic stoneworking tools and DHC says that they had to be cut with diamond tipped power tools then it doesnt matter how traveled or devoted he is

 

[Sue]

I view Childress as living a romantic and dashing life I would envy to call my own, but whose books I can't take seriously. This was a great interview, since if only on the basis of his Lost City books Childress is an interesting person to hear talking on the record.

I didn't mind that he wasn't a polished presenter, but I did mind that for most of the interview his illogic hovered in the wishy-washy zone. Personally, I prefer either Dallas Thompson-class claims or a line of reasoning at least firm enough to hang my false teeth on. The interview finally arrived when Childress started talking about the mystery of bananas (about 1:38 in the Plus version of the show). The question was something about the most exciting discoveries in archaeology and ufology in the last few years. Childress started riffing on why bananas were so weird. That was great radio right there.

His anti-science stance was a bit tiresome. You got to suffer if you want to sing the blues; if you want to complain about science this and science that, you really need to have done a stint on the inside.

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

If an armchair criitic , say , conclude that the SANDstones at Puma Punku could be worked with the most basic stoneworking tools and DHC says that they had to be cut with diamond tipped power tools then it doesnt matter how traveled or devoted he is

Unfortunately, you've fallen for the intellectual dishonesty of the Ancient Aliens Debunked crew concerning Puma Punku. Yes, there are some megalithic stones that have been carved out of sandstone, but the "H" blocks and other exotic stone carvings are carved out of granite. I asked both Chris Dunn and DHC specifically about this "debunked" dismissal and both assured me that extremely hard granite had been fashioned in a way virtually impossible for stone age builders with their primitive tools. Dunn told me that nothing short of corundum tipped tools could possibly have made the precision cuts. You should get DHC's video where he and Dunn walk around and show close-ups of some of the amazing carving details of the site. They show how sandstone was used later after the original construction, but the original granite working is undeniable. Moral of the story Bergen? Just because a debunker makes a claim, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's true!

 

[Goggs Mackay]

In addition to what Chris is saying above I must add that in a lot of debunking of AA (and I'm no supporter of AA per se) there is a lot of 'well it is actually done this way and .....' but there is no actual proving of claims. I mean like there are many who claim to know how the Pyramids were built or how huge blocks of stone were perfectly cut in Peru but I've personally yet to see anyone actually recreate these feats - even one large block!

Also I'm still waiting for an AA debunker to tell us how the Trilathon blocks at Baalbek were quarried, transported and lifted into place. I had an argument in this forum years back with someone who told me the Romans had cranes and it was all really easy. Except I found out the approx max load of these Roman cranes and it was way,way short of what was needed. Even if you had 20 of them, how would they all be used in tandem and move as well? Ask someone today who actually works with blocks of stone or constructs large buildings how they would quarry and move the blocks. You will not get an answer in the positive.

 

[ChrisJohnsen]

Often times I enjoy the post-episode forum discussions as much as, if not more than, the episodes themselves. A bunch of (mostly) smart people kicking around their thoughts and impressions about the issues raised.

I'm not a world traveler like DHC or Chris O'Brien. I'm not even an armchair researcher, more like a couch-surfing enthusiast. As such, I enjoy quite a few of the AA episodes and the interesting questions they sometimes raise. Again, RAISE, because they certainly don't answer any. Which is OK. I can look past the liberally-applied Ancient Alien Reductionist Theory and simply enjoy the the pushback against mainstream archeological thinking and all its own shortcomings, in certain areas, to adequately explain what could be called "outlier" structures and physical evidence. Debunkers and skeptics prefer to hew to the mainstream explanations, no matter how hard they have to ignore physical evidence and lack of credible proof to support those very mainstream theories.

I have the same questions related to Baalbek, Puma Punku and Tiahuanaco as Goggs. Throw in the Sphinx and the Egyptian Pyramids for good measure. Aliens? Maybe. Lost/Forgotten ancient technology? Seems possible. A combination of the two? Perhaps. Current mainstream archeological explanations? Incomplete and insufficient, IMO.

 

[Ezechiel]

I love that Spielberg actually explored the AA 'get me off this planet' idea with his 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the crystal skull' flick.
The exchange between an alien dimensional race and humans was well executed as Indiana brings in the final piece allowing them to get back home.

Maybe all the strange constructs on earth are all about desperate attempts by visitors to find a way to get back home... or make their last days less miserable
Spielberg has exploited this idea many times already... makes you wonder.

Imagine the kind of mind control that would motivate Egyptians to build a perfect and massive geometrical structure over hundreds of years. It might just be extreme fear of the power that this entity held. No glyph inside Giza

I'd call all this the 'technological' panspermia theory lol. Where simple biological constructs can crash into life-sustaining planets as well as complex technological expressions... Which potentially could happen to Voyager 1 lights years from now.
Voyager - The Interstellar Mission

The Pyramid of Pharaoh Khufu
When Pharaoh Khufu set out to trump his father’s pyramid at Meidum he set the bar higher than would ever be achieved again. Khufu had a reputation for being a cruel and despotic ruler, and ignoring all other speculation about how the Great Pyramid was built, the sheer logistics of completing the project within the presumed timeframe suggests in the very least a classic overachiever. Whatever else may be true of Khufu, the man knew how to get things done.

 

[Polterwurst]

I don't know. At least the place should have been a lot less dull before these humans started spreading and littering their stuff everywhere. But it wouldn't be entirely incomprehensible that they would have liked to get away ASAP. Not much fun to have, trying to talk to dinosaurs or amoebas.

 

[Bergen]

Unfortunately, you've fallen for the intellectual dishonesty of the Ancient Aliens Debunked crew concerning Puma Punku. Yes, there are some megalithic stones that have been carved out of sandstone, but the "H" blocks and other exotic stone carvings are carved out of granite. I asked both Chris Dunn and DHC specifically about this "debunked" dismissal and both assured me that extremely hard granite had been fashioned in a way virtually impossible for stone age builders with their primitive tools. Dunn told me that nothing short of corundum tipped tools could possibly have made the precision cuts. You should get DHC's video where he and Dunn walk around and show close-ups of some of the amazing carving details of the site. They show how sandstone was used later after the original construction, but the original granite working is undeniable. Moral of the story Bergen? Just because a debunker makes a claim, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's true!

1.Can you point me to a source that says the H blocks and other exotic stones were cut out of granite ? I can only find Sources that says andesite and sandstone

2. No, obviously not. But if a geologist tells me a rock is andesite and not granite id take his word/work for it over a guy that also writes books on lost cities , extraterrestrial archeology, vimana aircraft, atlantis, time travel ,technology of the gods, hollow earth ,yetis, sasquatch ,cranial deformation and hairy giants

 

[Ezechiel]

1.Can you point me to a source that says the H blocks and other exotic stones were cut out of granite ? I can only find Sources that says andesite and sandstone

2. No, obviously not. But if a geologist tells me a rock is andesite and not granite id take his word/work for it over a guy that also writes books on lost cities , extraterrestrial archeology, vimana aircraft, atlantis, time travel ,technology of the gods, hollow earth ,yetis, sasquatch ,cranial deformation and hairy giants

That's right red sandstone and andesite according to wiki:
Pumapunku - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Based upon detailed petrographic and chemical analyses of samples from both individual stones and known quarry sites, archaeologists concluded that these and other red sandstone blocks were transported up a steep incline from a quarry near Lake Titicaca roughly 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) away. Smaller andesite blocks that were used for stone facing and carvings came from quarries within the Copacabana Peninsula about 90 kilometres (56 miles) away from and across Lake Titicaca from the Pumapunku and the rest of the Tiwanaku Site.[3][5]

Pretty heavy.. but easier to carve than granite. Beautiful stuff carved out of it in India.

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

1.Can you point me to a source that says the H blocks and other exotic stones were cut out of granite ? I can only find Sources that says andesite and sandstone

According to David it is (reddish colored) "red granite." I think you are right, technically, he is wrong and he is not a geologist. Granite, is not andesite. However, that said, the type of andesite in the Puma Punku area is high in quartz and very hard—between 5.5 and 6.5 on the Moh scale. This hardness would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible to create perfect curves and elaborate multi-leveled bevels, etc.

Please understand: I am NOT a geologist or an apologist for DHC. There are many things, opinions and questionable theories he propounds that I have major problems with. He can get a bit sloppy in his thinking–I'll be the first to confirm that, but at least he gets his ass out there!

A really good person to speak w/listen to about Puma Punku is engineer Christopher Dunn. For 50 years he has "worked at every level of high-tech manufacturing from machinist, toolmaker, programmer and operator of high-power industrial lasers, Project Engineer and Laser Operations Manager" and has worked in and out of aerospace for years. He wrote an eye opening book titled: The Giza Power Plant (1998) where he postulates that based on his measurements of Egyptian monuments, ancient stonecutters somehow "achieved a high-precision accuracy surpassing modern accuracy standards in building."

David and Chris produced a video titled: Ancient Advanced Technology in Peru & Bolivia. In it you can see the level of precision that the "experts" claim was achieved by stone-age stonecarvers. You decide... I'm done here...