MEXICO's GIANTS
In 1944 an accidental discovery of an even more controversial nature was made by Waldemar Julsrud at Acambaro, Mexico. Acambaro is in the state of Guanajuato, 175 miles northwest of Mexico City. The strange archaeological site there yielded over 33,500 objects of ceramic;stone, including jade; and knives of obsidian (sharper than steel and still used today in heart surgery). Jalsrud, a prominent local German merchant, also found statues ranging from less than an inch to six feet in length depicting great reptiles, some of them in ACTIVE ASSOCIATION with humans - generally eating them, but in some bizarre statuettes an erotic association was indicated. To observers many of these creatures resembled dinosaurs. Jalsrud crammed this collection into twelve rooms of his expanded house. There startling representations of Negroes, Orientals, and bearded Caucasians were included as were motifs of Egyptians, Sumerian and other ancient non-hemispheric civilizations, as well as portrayals of Bigfoot and aquatic monsterlike creatures, weird human-animal mixtures, and a host of other inexplicable creations. Teeth from an extinct Ice Age horse, the skeleton of a mammoth, and a number of human skulls were found at the same site as the ceramic artefacts.
Radio-carbon dating in the laboratories of the University of Pennsylvania and additional tests using the thermoluminescence method of dating pottery were performed to determine the age of the objects. Results indicated the objects were made about 6,500 years ago, around 4,500 BC. A team of experts at another university, shown Jalrud's half-dozen samples but unaware of their origin, ruled out the possibility that they could have been modern reproductions. However, they fell silent when told of their controversial source. In 1952, in an effort to debunk this weird collection which was gaining a certain amount of fame, American archaeologist Charles C. DiPeso claimed to have minutely examined the then 32,000 pieces within not more than four hours spent at the home of Julsrud. In a forthcoming book, long delayed by continuing developments in his investigation, archaeological investigator John H. Tierney, who has lectured on the case for decades, points out that to have done that DiPeso would have had to have inspected 133 pieces per minute steadily for four hours, whereas in actuality, it would have required weeks merely to have separated the massive jumble of exhibits and arranged them properly for a valid evaluation. Tierney, who collaborated with the later Professor Hapgood, the late William N. Russell, and others in the investigation, charges that the Smithsonian Institution and other archaeological authorities conducted a campaign of disinformation against the discoveries. The Smithsonian had, early in the controversy, dismissed the entire Acambaro collection as an elaborate hoax. Also, utilizing the Freedom of Information Act, Tierney discovered that practically the entirety of the Smithsonian's Julsrud case files are missing. After two expeditions to the site in 1955 and 1968, Professor Charles Hapgood, a professor of history and anthropology at the University of New Hampshire, recorded the results of his 18-year investigation of Acambaro in a privately printed book entitled MYSTERY IN ACAMBARO. Hapgood was initially an open-minded skeptic concerning the collection but became a believer after his first visit in 1955, at which time he witnessed some of the figures being excavated and even dictated to the diggers where he wanted them to dig.
Adding to the mind-boggling aspects of this controversy is the fact that the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, through the late Director of PreHispanic Monuments, Dr. Eduardo Noguera, (who, as head of an official investigating team at the site, issued a report which Tierney will be publishing), admitted "the apparent scientific legality with which these objects were found." Despite evidence of their own eyes, however, officials declared that because of the objects 'fantastic' nature, they had to have been a hoax played on Julsrud!
A disappointed but ever-hopeful Julsrud died. His house was sold and the collection put in storage. The collection is not currently open to the public
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