Posted on 12/24/2012 8:48:15 PM PST by Theoria
On a recent December morning, Mack Jones hiked a trail bordering the lake at Sandy Creek Park in Athens before he ventured off the path and up a forested ridge. There he showed a group following him a series of mysterious stone terrace walls and rock piles.
"It's hidden in plain sight, and it's been that way for the 30 years the park has been here," Jones said. "No one has messed with it and maybe they won't."
Jones believes those numerous rock piles - and especially the stone wall terraces lacing the hillside - might constitute evidence that the ancient Mayans once established a village here in Georgia
"Maybe it's not as crazy as it seems," said Jones, who has spent much time photographing and mapping the stone works as he sought to document the site in hopes that one day archeologists will launch an investigation.
Tonight at 10 p.m. on History Channel's H2, "American Unearthed" will address the question on whether the Mayans established villages in north Georgia. The program keys on a site in Towns County known as Track Rock.
The show's producer, geologist Scott Wolter of Minneapolis, heard about the sites in Georgia, but was told by several Georgia archaeologists "that there was nothing to the Track Rock site. They knew for a fact that no Mayan immigrants ever came to the Southeast," he said in a press statement.
Contacted Wednesday, Wolter wouldn't discuss what the program will disclose.
"I can't tell you how the episode ends, but let's say I was very, very surprised at what we found," Wolter said. "This is not a matter of faith. It's a matter of evidence."
One Georgian that the History Channel producers interviewed is Richard Thornton, an architect and city planner, who has studied the Track Rock ruins, a large series of about 150 terraces. Thornton, a Dahlonega resident who is of Creek Indian ancestry, spent time in Mexico studying the ancient Indian cultures.
Thornton provided the show with information on what he has found at Track Rock, which he considers "an important archeological zone."
The show producers were told about the site at Sandy Creek Park, but Thornton said he doesn't know if they found time to visit.
"It looks very similar to Track Rock in many ways, but until you get archeologists in there doing radiocarbon dating and tests, we won't know for sure if there is a Mayan presence," Thornton said.
The program will also present DNA evidence gathered from people in the region, Thornton said. Some of the Creek Indians in the region of Track Rock provided DNA samples and tests revealed the presence of both Mayan DNA and DNA from people of South America.
Thornton's published works on Track Rock opened Jones' eyes to the possibility a Mayan connection to the Sandy Creek site.
Thornton's illustrations "showed the mounds of rocks and terracing and it looks like what I'm seeing at Sandy Creek. I call it getting my eyes right," said Jones, a graphic artist who lives in Athens.
Once Jones felt like the terraces and rock piles might have historical importance, he pondered what he should do. He contacted officials with the park and archeologists at the University of Georgia.
"Nobody was getting back in touch with me, so I wrote Thornton and he wrote me back," Jones said. "I told him it was his illustrations that made me see this out here."
According to Thornton, the show will have a surprising conclusion.
"They have absolute proof that the Mayans have been coming here for a long time," he said. "It's not just Track Rock."
Mayan Ruins in Georgia? Archeologist Objects, Debate Breaks Out Online
Not fiscal cliff, doomsday ping.
The History Channel really doesn’t deserve the name anymore. It’s a higher quality version of the SyFy Channel.
Did u actually watch the special? If u did not, suggest u do.
I watched it and there is hard evidence.
The final chemical analysis of the Mayan blue dye compared to Georgia clay was very interesting.
I believe it isn’t unusual to think that the native nations of the Americas traveled a lot more than is commonly assumed.
The Mayans are from Mexico. They migrated to the United States. Nobody asked them to come here.
What else is new.
I have seen the same sort of walls and rock piles in both S Fulton county Ga and central NC. Both locations were miles from any roads and no evidence at all of recent occupation or ag use of the land. Recent as in last 100 years or so.
If a PHD doesn’t get a huge gov’t grant to “discover” these things, they do not exist.
I will admit that I have wanted to know how much of N. America were the Maya and Aztecs aware of. However, all that 2012 stuff and UFO goofiness makes it hard to take them seriously.
It’s probably the Survivor Panama set.
The History Channel really doesn’t deserve the name anymore. It’s a higher quality version of the SyFy Channel.
it seems both are more about reality shows than anything else
Doesn’t the Mormon’s (LDS) believe that the South American Indians inhabited the US or what is now the US?
This is from the BYU Mormon Encyclopedia.
“”The Book of Mormon tells that a small band of Israelites under Lehi migrated from Jerusalem to the Western Hemisphere about 600 B.C. Upon Lehi’s death his family divided into two opposing factions, one under Lehi’s oldest son, laman (see Lamanites), and the other under a younger son, Nephi 1 (see Nephites).
During the thousand-year history narrated in the Book of Mormon, Lehi’s descendants went through several phases of splitting, warring, accommodating, merging, and splitting again. At first, just as God had prohibited the Israelites from intermarrying with the Canaanites in the ancient Promised Land (Ex. 34:16; Deut. 7:3), the Nephites were forbidden to marry the Lamanites with their dark skin (2 Ne. 5:23; Alma 3:8-9). But as large Lamanite populations accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ and were numbered among the Nephites in the first century B.C., skin color ceased to be a distinguishing characteristic. After the visitations of the resurrected Christ, there were no distinctions among any kind of “ites” for some two hundred years. But then unbelievers arose and called themselves Lamanites to distinguish themselves from the Nephites or believers (4 Ne. 1:20).
The concluding chapters of the Book of Mormon describe a calamitous war. About A.D. 231, old enmities reemerged and two hostile populations formed (4 Ne. 1:35-39), eventually resulting in the annihilation of the Nephites. The Lamanites, from whom many present-day Native Americans descend, remained to inhabit the American continent. Peoples of other extractions also migrated there.””
It wasn’t until 1978 Lamented would be allowed into the priesthood.
Nonsequitor, I know...
It wasn’t until 1978 Lamenites would be allowed into the priesthood.
Nonsequitor, I know...
(fixed)
Ping
MerryChristmas, FRiend
Nonsequitor, I know...
(fixed)
You still got it wrong.
It's Lamanites, and they have always been allowed to hold the LDS Priesthood. It's African Blacks (Canaanites) you're thinking of.
Frickin people of coluh .....
(fixed)
Nonsequitur.
(fixed).
;)
Did they leave a rock saying when the Bulldogs are going to win a National Championship?
It’s a higher quality version of the SyFy Channel
I don’t think it even qualifies for that. With shows like Ice Road Truckers and the like, the channel’s History descriptive is lost.
But on the subject of the Mayans resettling in Georgia, one would have to wonder why no evidence exists closer to Mexico. Did they just wake up one day and say, “Hey, our civilization is collapsing. Let’s move to Georgia...”?
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