Diffusionist theories are often advanced to explain how nonwhite peoples of the Americas and the Third World could have built such impressive monuments. Obviously the Egyptians or Maya or Aztecs or Incas or Zimbabweans or Moundbuilders of the American Midwest couldn't have developed sophisticated cultures on their own; they must have had help from Irish monks or Atlanteans or spacemen! For archaeologists, this has unfortunate echoes of their own profession's avowedly racist past.

"There's a terrific anathema [in alternative archaeology] to the idea that different people in different places have arrived at similar solutions to the same problems," Fagan says. "One particular development can only have taken place once, and its true source is invariably white people. I'm not proposing that Graham Hancock etc. are racists, but they are purveyors of dangerous ideas that should be left in the past."

Critiques like these have done little to squelch the popularity of mythic speculation, which is precisely what alternative archaeology has to offer. Some scholars even wonder whether such speculation, unfounded and reckless as it may often be, should be understood as an unruly cousin of the profession, rather than its direct competitor. Accepting myths and legends as at least potentially accurate enabled Heinrich Schliemann to find the ruins of Troy, and enabled Helge Ingstad to find L'Anse aux Meadows, the Newfoundland site that authenticated the idea that the Norse had visited America 500 years before Columbus. Given the intensity of archaeological activity over the last century, it's not very likely anything similar will happen again. But as spiritual or imaginative inquiry into the past and the nature of humanity, alternative archaeology may be said to possess its own kind of legitimacy.

"Archaeologists do not serve as a special state police force dedicated to eradicate interpretations that are considered false or inappropriate by a self-selected jury," writes Cornelius Holtorf, an archaeologist at the University of Lund in Sweden and something of a professional maverick. "Neither students nor other audiences should be indoctrinated with a particular version of the past or an exclusive approach to its proper study."

Not many American archaeologists share Holtorf's views, but most would admit that belief in Atlantis, or in even the dopiest of diffusionist claims (King Arthur, after leaving Camelot, apparently retired to Kentucky), causes no obvious harm. Creationism is another matter. What's at stake isn't religious belief per se, although archaeologists have the reputation of being a secular bunch, but rather a particular doctrine that has aligned itself with right-wing politics and declared war against modern science.

While Atlantis-hunters and diffusionists have attacked mainstream archaeology throughout the 70 or 80 years it has existed, creationists have mainly targeted biology, geology and astronomy, areas of science that most obviously contradict the Genesis account. They have brushed against archaeology every so often, while hunting for Noah's ark in Turkey, claiming Mesopotamian sites for the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel, or trumpeting "oopart" discoveries, like the Coso artifact, that struck them as potential relics of the pre-Flood world.

But as archaeology and its close cousin, paleoanthropology (the study of early man), have pushed ever deeper into the human past -- and as creation-science evangelism has grown more sophisticated and recruited more people with academic credentials -- conflict became inevitable. Creationists have gone to war over the fossil skulls of early hominids, arguing that they are either clearly apes or clearly humans, but never an intermediate evolutionary stage (although they have yet to formulate a consistent case about which bones fall into which category). They have labored mightily to make Middle Eastern archaeological evidence fit the chronology of the Old Testament -- impressive scholarly powers have been devoted to proving that the walls of Jericho did indeed come tumbling down.

The creationist movement has also become much more cautious about looking foolish. Answers in Genesis, which acts as a clearinghouse for the most coherent presentations of creation science, has pretty much backed away from the Garden of Eden, the quest for Noah's ark and the Ark of the Covenant, and those long-cherished human footprints that Carl Baugh found among dinosaur prints in Texas. Its basic position on the Genesis Flood is that it was such a devastating catastrophe, and altered the globe so thoroughly, that real evidence of the pre-Flood world is very difficult to find. If you can suspend disbelief about creationism's starting point, this might be described as a sensible view.

Ken Ham, AIG's U.S. president and himself a former science teacher from Australia, says the organization's aim is "a reasoned and logical defense of the faith," in the classic tradition of Christian apologetics. Rejecting spurious or easily disproven claims, he says, "is an evangelical tool, to be honest. Our mission is to bring people to Jesus Christ, and we want them to understand that science, properly considered, should be no impediment to that."

Ham claims no archaeological expertise, but AIG refers callers to Bryant G. Wood, a professional archaeologist who edits a Christian journal called Bible and Spade. Wood's main work involves authenticating biblical proper names and dates -- if Ashdod and Belshazzar and the Hittites were real, the argument goes, the Bible becomes more plausible -- and he declines to speculate about any archaeological evidence on Atlantis or the pre-Flood world.

While mainstream archaeologists would say they seek to learn the truth about the past, Wood makes no secret of his mission to bring the past, as it were, to the Truth. "The discoveries of archaeology can be helpful in removing doubts that a person might have about the historical trustworthiness of the Bible," Wood writes in an online article.

As Ham and Wood are clearly aware, archaeology and paleanthropology pose a larger challenge than the question of how tall Goliath really was and whether slings like David's are well attested. Leaving aside Cremo's litany of anomalous findings, there's plenty of physical evidence of human culture many thousands of years before any date creationists could possibly accept. In North America alone, the long-accepted date of 12,000 years ago for the first Paleoindian arrivals has pretty much been dumped. Most archaeologists would say there is decent evidence for a human population arriving here 30,000 to 50,000 years ago. On a global scale, the fully modern form of Homo sapiens appeared at least 160,000 years ago, and the archaeological record of human or hominid tools and weapons goes back roughly 2.5 million years.

Creationists don't seem ready or eager to take on this challenge, beyond their customary protestations that the radiometric dating methods used by scientists are unreliable. Their intellectual energy is largely devoted to battling evolutionary theory and developing elegant solutions to astrophysical problems. (Given a 10,000-year-old universe, how can we see the stars?) One could speculate that they're grateful to see people like Cremo and Hancock attacking archaeology on their behalf.

In an influential 1987 essay, historian William H. Stiebing Jr. wrote that alternative archaeology "functions in the way myth does in primitive cultures. It resolves psychological dilemmas and provides answers for the unknown or unknowable." The "strong emotional attachment" some people feel for such explanations, he went on, seemed directly related to "the unscientific, quasi-religious, anti-Establishment nature of the theories."

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