Oh Boy! Oh Boy! Oh Boy! (If I had a tail, I'd be wagging it). My favorite show was on last night and once again confirmed my confidence in The History Channel and it's choice and quality of shows and how this particular show keeps me on the edge of my seat.
The brothers hit the road this week to Appalachia where the largest cluster of giant finds is located, heading to a place referred to as the "bone cave" in Tennessee. One of my favorite books about the Giants and the Little People of Tennessee was The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee by John Haywood that gives vast accounts of the finds. Repatriation laws have meant that ancient burial finds have to be handed over to Natives. This has left many finds reburied and lost.
Meanwhile, at the Goshan Tunnel, the team studied the interesting script in the stone and symbols that were pointing to something, so they decided to follow the direction.
At the bone cave, they followed the 1872 Tennessee paper that talked about the "dead house" in the cave where ruins were found. There were caverns with crawl spaces and it looked like it could collapse. It was in sad shape. They figured with rock collapses over time, things might be blocked in the cave. The men used the newpaper's description to find the steep drop off that might lead to this dead house section. They found a tunnel!
Jim bravely crawled into the tunnel, but it was so tight that it was impossible to go deeper without an expert caver.
Meanwhile, back in Massachusetts at the Goshen Tunnel, they saw the symbols pointed northeast and thought it might be solstice alignment and possible sacred site. They went to check it out. They found a huge rock covered in moss, so they removed the covering, and they found markings on it. They kept following markings and found a fourth boulder! It had a strange hole in it.
Back in Tennessee, the brothers pulled out a map of the mounds and where they were with an expert, Ross Hamilton. Ross believes the giants might have been the pre-history America's empire rulers. Ross remarked there used to be a great country from Hudson Bay to Gulf of Mexico, called the Alihana (sp?), perhaps 6000 years ago. A single ruler and single language existed there, perhaps. These giants appeared as gods to regular people. Ross told Jim and Bill Vieira that he knows someone who has come close to giant remains.
The brothers approached the man and he appeared resistant. They wanted his help and asked to speak to him aside. Jim explained their agenda. The man agreed to talk. He told them that the history they told us was wrong about the pre-history of America. The ancients had much more knowledge than we ever imagined. Serpent mounds, every part of it pointed to something significant. This man was with a man who had remains and they had to move them and he handled the remains himself. He said one was significantly bigger than the rest. The man walked the brothers down to the river and he talked about how skeletons can come out of the banks after storms. He helped rebury the bones that he handled. He was sworn to secrecy about their location.
The men at Goshen tunnel were finding a connection between alignments from the stone carvings and a burial mound. They found out the carvings led from one stone to another for five stones before they ended up in a backyard, a house sitting where the next stone would have been.
Using GPS, Hugh Newman studied the locations of the stones and the tunnel. Hugh found it aligned with summer solstic sunrise.
The brothers called in a friend who is a caver. A mummy was reported in the early 1900s in the cave, a body of enormous size. The men geared up and headed in. They climbed through a very tight area and worked their way in. Jim had a crazy time going down the rock shelves in a tight area into a bigger area. He saw no evidence of dead matter on the floor that had been reported in the "dead house." Jim did find a carving with a date in the 1800s.
They moved on and found two tunnels described in the old newspaper and one was covered in rock and the other one was heading in the right direction.
Jim found an old sign from 1983 with "Old Stone Fort" on it. It was the name of an ancient structure and this might mean the cave connected them and the sign was washed down during flooding. They then found water in a passageway, just like the newspaper account said.
The men planned to get into the chilly water, but hyperthermia is a danger. They put on wet suits. Jim decided to go in, despite the inherent dangers. Jim was stuck in some mud that was nasty, the air quality worsened and he wondered what he should do. The ceiling was too low for the camera to get through without damage, but Jim continued on. This was really tense. It says a lot about his drive to find something.
Jim could see there was some kind of expansive cavern, but it cannot be gotten to unless going through some extreme conditions and underwater.
Next week looks totally toe-curling, but I ain't talking!
Once again, i was not at all disappointed. This is very intelligent television, done in a beautifully edited way with the teams separated and doing things in two locations, and the brothers on the road in search of remains anywhere they can find them. This is beating out Monsterquest and UFO Hunters as my favorite show on The History Channel thus far.
