Graves at Williamsburg’s First Baptist Church Will Be Excavated

Descendants, archaeologists and researchers alike gathered Monday for the long-awaited beginning of burial excavations at the original First Baptist Church site.

The First Baptist Church descendant community unanimously voted in March to begin excavating three grave shafts in order to learn the race, age, sex and anything else about the people buried on the site. Since archaeologists began digging in September 2020, the original foundation of the church, a structure dating to 1865 and 41 graves have been identified.

Members of several congregations who are descendants of early Williamsburg residents gathered to view the opening of the graves. The ancestral blessing ceremony that was performed before the work began included a mix of prayers and song — a solemn and moving moment, said Connie Matthews Harshaw, president of the Let Freedom Ring Foundation. The group has been working since 2018 to preserve the church, its history and artefacts that date to the 18th century.

“My heart is full. It was a moving tribute this morning. The day was all about the descendants,” Harshaw said. “We wanted the descendants to have an opportunity to voice what their ancestors may be thinking or saying.”

The 41 burial sites, which are rectangular holes about two feet wide and five feet deep, have been primarily identified because of their surface appearance, according to The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. One of the chosen graves was marked by an upside-down wine bottle, making it the only marked grave identified so far.

The process will take about two months. It will include confirming the presence of human remains, determining how long they’ve been there and assessing if the conditions permit further testing. If conditions allow, osteological and DNA testing will be done on the remains.

DNA testing will determine the eye colour, skin tone, propensity for certain diseases or conditions, genetic ancestry and biological connections of the person.

The osteological analysis can fill in some gaps of the DNA testing by examining the bones — age at death, stature, injuries, illnesses, physical stresses, quality of life and place of origin.

The DNA testing will require two samples from each subject and removing bone for that testing. The bones will then be fully excavated and moved to the Institute for Historical Biology on William & Mary’s campus for cleaning and analysis. Any artefacts found in the graves will be cleaned and catalogued in Colonial Williamsburg’s archaeological library.

The osteological and DNA analyses will take six months to a year. After the testing is done, all remains and artefacts will be reinterred in the original site. Then finally, hopefully, the descendants will have their answers.

“It has to be heartening for the descendant community because if you think about it, these people have laid there for more than 66 years under a parking lot at first, unrecognized,” Harshaw said. “If you stand still in the moment and think about the fact that what this means for the descendant community and their involvement in this process, this is really an example for the nation to follow in what we call community archaeology.”

The testing will allow researchers to establish a connection between the buried and the First Baptist Church and possibly help descendants find their ancestors’ final burial place.

“Every step of this process has been descendant-driven. … It wasn’t a decision for [Colonial Williamsburg]. It was not a decision for Let Freedom Ring. It wasn’t a decision for the church,” Harshaw said.

“It was the descendant community that will drive what happens on this site, with this site, how it’s interpreted because that’s the right thing to do.”

A Rock With Mastodon Carving Discovered At The Underwater Stonehenge Of Lake Michigan

Another incredible discovery has been made as researchers have found a rock with a carving of a Mastodon at the underwater Stonehenge of Lake Michigan. In 2007, at a depth of twelve meters, researchers found a peculiar set of aligned stones that are believed to be over 10,000 years old.

While searching for shipwrecks, archaeologists from Northwestern Michigan College came across something interesting at the bottom of Lake Michigan.

Mysteriously aligned rocks which were placed there by human beings before the area was covered with water. When the discovery was made, researchers couldn’t believe what they were seeing. It’s America’s Stonehenge.

According to researchers, the stones located at the bottom of Lake Michigan all measure the same distance across, something that wouldn’t be present if we were looking at a natural formation.

The rock formation found at the bottom of Lake Michigan resembles other structures found in England and France, and even those at Nabta Playa, making it very unlikely to be a natural formation.

As if the mysterious rock formation wasn’t enough, after a diving expedition to look at the stones, underwater photographer Chris Doyle found a mysterious stone with an incredible depiction: A Mastodon. This means that the carving must have been made way before the Mastodons were extinct.

The Mastodon rock is perhaps one of the most incredible features of the underwater Stonehenge. Researchers speculate that the rock is made out of granite, a very hard material.

For people to carve something onto this rock, they had to use a tool harder than granite. So the logical question is: What could ancient mankind have used 10.000 years ago to carve something onto a granite rock?

Researchers stress that the marks and lines that make out the mastodon figure were precisely carved, the lines were not just “scratched” onto the rock.

The incredible rock formation and the precisely aligned stone circles clearly indicate a man-made structure. The areas around Michigan are witnesses of early human presence in the American continent which is believed to date back over 25.000 years.

In the distant past, the Lake itself did not exist since an Ice Age ruled over the lands and what is not located at the bottom of one of the five Great Lakes of North America, was located on dry land.

The man responsible for this incredible underwater discovery is Mark Holley, professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan College. In 2007, he searched for shipwrecks but found, 12 meters below the surface a series of stones arranged in a circle.

Adding to this amazing discovery is a relatively large rock which has, on its surface a depiction of a mastodon, an animal that became extinct around 8000 BC.

In the region near Lake Michigan, researchers have previously discovered menhirs and petroglyphs. When the first Europeans arrived in the seventeenth century they found that Michigan had thousands of prehistoric mounds.

Scholars also found “sacred stones” across the geography of the Great Lakes, stones according to the natives were placed by another race who lived there before. Statues and stone idols erected in various parts were discovered weighing over 100 kilograms.

The underwater Stonehenge of Lake Michigan must have been created before the last Ice Age, when the lake bed was dry and that is, according to researchers, over 12.000 years ago, a time that according to history, mankind couldn’t erect such elaborate constructions.

What does this tell us about history? Is this another piece of evidence that points to the fact that history books, as we know them should be re-written? We believe yes.

Map of the Lost Lizard City under Los Angeles

This map is an essential ingredient of a story that has ‘Indiana Jones’ written all over it: secret caves, a lost civilisation and above all, a treasure trove of gold in unimaginable quantities. And all this is in the ground below the present-day metropolis of Los Angeles.

Below are two extracts from the LA Times of 29 January 1934, in the first of which reporter Jean Bosquet details the incredible story of G. Warren Shufelt, a mining engineer, who had been told of the underground city and its treasures by a wise old Indian, had consequently located it via ‘radio X-ray’ and at the time was sinking shafts into the ground to reach it.

The second extract explains the whereabouts of the putative underground city on the map and provides the legends for a few photos showing Shufelt’s hard work.

Needless to say, no such city has ever been found. Whether fully intentional or not, the hoax did leave us with this strange map of the supposed underground city, its tunnels vaguely laid out in the shape of a lizard.

Interestingly, this article on Skeptoid, a website providing critical analysis of pop phenomena, raises the possibility that Mr Bosquet’s story may be the original source for the later conspiracy theories about humanoid reptilians controlling the world. Indiana Jones has fathered David Icke…

LIZARD PEOPLE’S CATACOMB CITY HUNTED

Engineer Sinks Shaft Under Fort Moore Hill to Find Maze of Tunnels and Priceless Treasures of Legendary Inhabitants

(LA Times, 29 Jan 1934)

By Jean Bosquet

Busy Los Angeles, although little realizing it in the hustle and bustle of modern existence, stands above a lost city of catacombs filled with incalculable treasure and imperishable records of a race of humans further advanced intellectually and scientifically than even the highest type of present-day peoples, in the belief of G. Warren Shufelt, a geophysical engineer now engaged in an attempt to wrest from the lost city deep in the earth below Fort Moore Hill the secrets of the Lizard People of legendary fame in the medicine lodges of the American Indian.

So firmly do Shufelt and a little staff of assistants believe that a maze of catacombs and priceless golden tablets are to be found beneath downtown Los Angeles that the engineer and his aides have already driven a shaft 250 feet into the ground, the mouth of the shaft being on the old Banning property on North Hill street overlooking Sunset Boulevard, Spring Street and North Broadway.

LEGEND SUPPLIES CLEW (sic)

Shufelt learned of the legend of the Lizard People after his radio X-ray had led him hither and yon, over an area extending from the Public Library on West Fifth street to the Southwest Museum, on Museum Drive, at the foot of Mt. Washington.

“I knew I was over a pattern of tunnels,” the engineer explained yesterday, “and I had mapped out the course of the tunnels, the position of large rooms scattered along the tunnel route, as well as the position of deposits of gold, but I couldn’t understand the meaning of it.”

FIRE DESTROYS ALL

According to the legend, as imparted to Shufelt by Macklin, the radio X-ray has revealed the location of one of three lost cities on the Pacific Coast, the local one having been dug by the Lizzard People after the “great catastrophe” which occurred about 5000 years ago. This legendary catastrophe was in the form of a huge tongue of fire that “came out of the Southwest, destroying all life in its path,” the path being “several hundred miles wide.” The city underground was dug as a means of escaping future fires.

The lost city, dug with powerful chemicals by the Lizard People instead of pick and shovel, was drained into the ocean, where its tunnels began, according to the legend. The tide passing daily in and out of the lower tunnel portals and forcing air into the upper tunnels, provided ventilation and “cleansed and sanitized the lower tunnels,” the legend states.

Large rooms in the domes of the hills above the city of labyrinths housed 1000 families “in the manner of tall buildings” and imperishable food supplies of the herb variety were stored in the catacombs to provide sustenance for the lizard folk for great lengths of time as the next fire swept over the earth.

CITY LAID OUT LIKE LIZARD

The Lizard People, the legend has it, regarded the lizard as the symbol of long life. Their city is laid out like a lizard, according to the legend, its tail to the southwest, far below Fifth and Hope streets, it’s head to the northeast, at Lookout and Marda streets. The city’s key room is situated directly under South Broadway, near Second street, according to Shufelt and the legend.

This key room is the directory to all parts of the city and to all record tablets, the legend states. All records were kept on gold tablets, four feet long and fourteen inches wide. On these tablets of gold, gold having been the symbol of life to the legendary Lizard People will be found the recorded history of the Mayans on one particular tablet, the southwest corner of which will be missing, is to be found the “record of the origin of the human race.”

TABLETS PHOTOGRAPHED

Shufelt stated he has taken “X-ray pictures” of thirty-seven such tablets, three of which have their southwest corners cut off.

“My radio X-ray pictures of tunnels and rooms, which are sub-surface voids, and of gold pictures with perfect corners, sides and ends, are scientific proof of their existence,” Shufelt said. “However, the legendary story must remain speculative until unearthed by excavation.”

The Lizard people according to Macklin were of a much higher type intellectually than modern human beings. The intellectual accomplishments of their 9-year-old children were equal to those of present-day college graduates, he said. So greatly advanced scientifically were these people that, in addition to perfecting a chemical solution by which they bored underground without removing earth and rock, they also developed a cement far stronger and better than any in use in modern times with which they lined their tunnels and rooms.

HILLS INCLOSE CITY

Macklin said legendary advice to American Indians was to seek the lost city in an area within a chain of hills forming “the frog of a horse’s hoof.” The contour of hills surrounding this region forms such a design, substantiating Shufelt’s findings, he said.

Shufelt’s radio device consists chiefly of a cylindrical glass case inside of which a plummet attached to a copper wire held by the engineer sways continually, pointing, he asserts, toward minerals or tunnels below the surface of the ground, and then revolves when over the mineral or swings in prolongation of the tunnel when above the excavation.

He has used the instrument extensively in mining fields, he said.

DID STRANGE PEOPLE LIVE UNDER THE SITE OF LOS ANGELES 5000 YEARS AGO?

An amazing labyrinth of underground passages and caverns hundreds of feet below the surface of Fort Moore Hill is revealed in maps – all rights to which have been reserved – prepared by G. Warren Shufelt, local mining engineer, who explains his topographical endeavours as being based on results obtained from a radio X-ray perfected by him. In this elaborate system of tunnels and rooms, according to a legend furnished by Shufelt by an Indian authority, a tribe of human beings called the Lizard People, lived, 5000 years ago.

The network of tunnels formed what Indians call the lost Lizard City, according to Shufelt and the legend. Gold tablets on which are written the origin of the human race and other priceless documents are to be found in the tunnels, according to the legend. Shufelt declares his radio X-ray has located the gold. The engineer has dug a shaft 250 feet deep on North Hill street, overlooking North Broadway, Sunset and Spring streets, and intends to dig to 1000 feet in an effort to strike the lost city.

The Upper right-hand corner inset is Times Staff Artist Ewing’s conception of the Lizard People at work. Lower left, upper inset shows Shufelt and crew at top of the shaft, bailing water out of their deep excavation. The lower left inset shows Shufelt operating his radio X-ray device.