30% Acambaro, 70% Forteana, 100% Hard-to-Believe

“Mystery in Acambaro” is really two books wrapped into one volume. Only 30% of the Kindle version is the actual book on the so-called Acambaro figures,written by Charles H Hapgood and originally published in 1973. The bulk of the text is a very lengthy “introduction” by David Hatcher Childress.

Hapgood is mostly known for his controversial “Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings”, a book I consider thoroughly debunked. It's interesting to note that Hapgood believed in channeling, was a hang-around of “sleeping prophet” Edgar Cayce's ARE and had contacts with a New Age commune. He is listed as a co-author of a book apparently containing channeled material from a certain Jesus Christ. While this doesn't necessarily make him wrong when commenting on other topics, Hapgood's occult connections are virtually never mentioned by his admirers, presumably because they consider them embarrassing.

“Mystery in Acambaro” deals with a stunning collection of 33,000 supposedly ancient sculptures found outside the Mexican town of Acambaro by a certain Waldemar Julsrud and a group of local farmers. Hapgood believed that the artifacts were genuine and about 5000 years old, while mainstream archeology has rejected them as hoaxes. I believe the mainstream in this case. Julsrud paid the farmers for each artifact, on the condition that it wasn't broken. A surprisingly large amount of figures weren't, making the Julsrud collection the most well preserved in the annals of archaeology! He also demanded that all artifacts be cleaned before delivery (thereby making it difficult for archaeologists to determine their age). The farmers “excavating” the sensational find lived in houses underneath which large amounts of discarded figures have been found, suggesting that the figures were manufactured there.

Nor does the cultural context make much sense. Hapgood claims that the Natives making the figures were hunters and gatherers, since no agricultural motifs are present. Yet, these Amerindian hunters and gatherers had an advanced type of artwork, and knew about Sumerians, Chinese, Africans and Caucasians (depicted in their artwork). Even stranger, they interacted with a large amount of extinct animals *from many different periods in Earth history*. North American llamas and camels (extinct during the Ice Age), dinosaurs (extinct 65 million years ago) and mammal-like reptiles (which evolved into mammals even earlier) are all depicted in the Acambaro collection. This particular part of Mexico must have been a virtual Jurassic Park! Few things are entirely impossible in our strange universe (I happen to believe in a number of “alternative” claims myself), but this is simply too good to be true.

Julsrud had filled his entire house with the strange artifacts, and after his wife's death, her room too was quickly stashed with new ones constantly being brought by the local farmers. My guess is that Julsrud had a strange psychological obsession with the sculptures. He constantly complained about being cheated out of a real archeological discovery made in the 1920's, suggesting a possible psychological motive for his own “finds”. It's also obvious that neither he nor Hapgood knew much about archaeology. Hapgood reports, with a straight face, that Julsrud had informed him that the figures weren't “Inca”, but rather “pre-Inca”. Of course they weren't Inca – the Incas lived in Peru, not in Mexico! Good grief, guys.

David Hatcher Childress' so-called introduction (70% of the volume) is a collection of Forteana suggesting that dinosaurs and other Mesozoic creatures might still roam unexplored parts of our globe, including a particularly wild region of Arizona! I admit that his roller-coaster ride through cryptozoology is entertaining, and Loren Coleman is listed among the people who helped Childress on his quest. Personally, I consider most of the neo-dinosaur observations to be pretty crazy, and if they are “real”, they are presumably real in some kind of paranormal sense. I mean, many of these creatures are nocturnal, have red eyes and are connected to ghost lights. Sounds familiar, Mr Keel? Others might be unknown non-ghostly species of big bats or even hippos. But sure, who knows? My main objection here is the completely uncritical/sensationalist tack of Childress, who pretends to believe in everything, including debunked claims such as the “plesiosaur” found by the Zuiyo-Maru. Of course, he just has to believe in the Acambaro figures, too!

Since the book (both parts) was at least interesting, I give it three stars, but with some exceptions I don't think these particular claims will hold water…