If you’re been reading the left-wing Drudge Retort lately, you may have been jolted out of your armchair by a bit of exciting news: ancient Mayan ruins have been discovered in the mountains of North Georgia! According to the report, picked up from a fly-by-night Web pub called the Examiner, a small group of archeologists led by University of Georgia scholar Mark Williams discovered the 1,100-year-old city “on the southeast side of Brasstown Bald in the Nacoochee Valley.” Only, the report “is not true,” according to Williams, reached by email. “I have been driven crazy by this.”
The original story was written by one Richard Thornton — who claims that “like most Georgia and South Carolina Creeks, I carry a trace of Maya DNA,” and that his ancestors came to North America fleeing “volcanic eruptions, wars, and drought” — and it has certainly caught fire across the Twitter/blogosphere thanks to the general obsession with the 2012 Mayan prophecies. (Even the venerable Washington Post interrupted its regularly-scheduled news rapportage to alert readers that “a second brick found at a Mayan ruin also contained the Dec. 21, 2012, date.”)
But, as Williams says, “The Maya connection to legitimate Georgia archaeology is a wild and unsubstantiated guess on the part of the Thornton fellow. No archaeologists will defend this flight of fancy.”
Too bad for holiday cocktail-party conversation, the news of Mayan ruins among us appears to be bunk.
- Andrew M. Goldstein
[Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that the story had been picked up by the far more famous right-wing Drudge Report and poked a little fun at the conspiracy-friendly nature of that site. We regret the error.]
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I laughed when I first read about this, more internet craziness from people with far to much time on their hands, the mer mention of the word “Mayan” in a sentence and the whole blogsphere explodes, I surprise no one has tried to connect these Mayan non-ruins to the end of the world in 2012.
Wondering why when people from US are referring to US as oppose to Mexico that they do so by referring to US as North America? N. America includes Canada, US, Mexico and Central America
When used by geologists and geographers, “North America” includes Mexico and Central America. However, the term is also used in a cultural sense for non-Latin America, in which case it includes only Canada and the US.
Wrong Drudge. The Drudge Report is drudgereport.com. This story was posted on drudge.com, which is the left-wing “Drudge Retort”. Maybe you should be a little less eager to confirm and declare your political biases.
“venerable Washington Post”
Now there’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever seen one!
This blog is super fail.
Latest breaking news, authentic medieval Alpine German village found in Helen, Georgia!! It’s true, google it!
My wife and I were actually planning to go see the “Mayan” ruins later this week. Thanks for the feedback.
Can you believe it!! What a letdown!
Don’t count the chickens before they are hatched. http://blog.muz.ru/index.php?s=b2dc682e9beffebe3a54a71a5e756c8e&showuser=1174301
It is not true that there’s no evidence of a Mayan presence in Georgia. Here is more evidence:
http://lostworlds.org/maya-mining-gold-georgia/
Also, Mark Williams did not research the site purported to be a Mayan site. The story states Williams did a two day investigation of a site on the opposite side of the mountain from the possible Mayan terrace site. His report stated that the site was unlike anything else in the archaeological record in the southeast and was quite the enigma. It appears Williams was mentioned in the article to simply show that other enigmatic sites exist in the same area as the terrace site. I’m not sure why he’s being interviewed and questioned about a site he didn’t investigate. The story states that a guy named Loubser investigated the possible Mayan site. Loubser is a South African rock art specialist and not a specialist in Mayan terrace sites so he wouldn’t be able to identify it as a Mayan site either. His investigation of the site amounted to mapping the site and doing a few test digs where he uncovered burials and immediately stopped his investigation. Thus neither of these sites have anything close to resembling a proper archaeological investigation thus who built them is completely unknown. The fact that both of these sites are unique and unlike any other archaeological sites in eastern North America should make professionals somewhat cautious in saying who “didn’t” build them. If it was local Indians then why are both sites so unlike other sites in the region? Williams offered no explanation for this because he simply doesn’t have one.
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