Kariong hieroglyphs – the movies – Part 3

The supposed Egyptian hieroglyph site at Kariong, north of Sydney, Australia just keeps on giving.  It has that rare quality that makes people want to pull out their video cameras, or even mobile phones, and start capturing footage that they can load on to YouTube with a bit of unstructured commentary.

Previous posts – Parts 1 and Part 2 have given us a bunch of shaky video, but among this latest batch there are some real winners.  We get more than 8 HOURS !!!! of footage, dominated by Steve Strong expounding on his theories about the engravings having not only Egyptian, but ancient Australian ritual and UFO connections, and even some Rex Gilroy.  This is much more than a casual sit-down.  Treat it like a box set of your favourite TV series – tell everyone you are out, lay in supplies and take the phone off the hook.  At the end of this marathon, if you make it, I suspect your resolve will be broken.  You may just find yourself becoming a believer so that the awfulness can stop. This is not for the faint-hearted.

If you are interested in the way the debate about this site has been running, you should also check out the comments accompanying the clips on YouTube.

28.  Woy Woy hieroglyphs – weeping eye  [0 mins 31 sec]

Uploaded by particle68 on 7 April 2012

29.  Gosford hieroglyphs  [15 mins 49 sec]

Uploaded by Leroy Johnson on 27 July 2012

30.  Steven Strong with Lisa Harrison  [1 hr 52 min 31 sec]

Uploaded by lisamharrison on 12 August 2012

31.  Glyphs affirm Pleiadian ETs as originators of homo sapiens as Australian Aboriginal – Steve Strong  [35 mins 47 sec]

Uploaded by exopoliticsTV on 29 August 2012

An interview between Steve Strong and Alfred Webre.

32.  Rex Gilroy – Ancient Egyptians in Australia  [5 mins 12 sec]

Uploaded by mike44920 on 10 September 2012

A rare polished performance from Rex Gilroy.  This is a short excerpt from an undated discovery Channel segment and also features Dr Boyo Ockinga of Macquarie University.

33.  Egyptians in Australia Part 1 – Steve Strong  [45 min 50 sec]

Uploaded by lisamharrison on 20 September 2012

34.  Egyptians in Australia Part 2 – Steve Strong  [45 min 01 sec]

Uploaded by lisamharrison on 21 September 2012

35.  A karryon @ Kariong. 2011  [18 mins 33 sec]

Uploaded by Brian Cooper on 26 September 2012

36.  Steven Strong with Lisa Harrison [2hrs 05 min 13 sec]

Uploaded by Lisa Harrison on 8 October 2012

Different from No. 30.  More focussed on Kariong, but still a very long slog for anyone not in love with Strong’s voice.

37.  Egyptians in Australia – Part 3  [6 mins 21 sec]

Uploaded by Theforgottenorigins on 12 October 2012

This is the third part of the Steven Strong presentation.  Much shorter.

38.  Egyptians in Australia – Part 4 [16 mins 24 sec]

Uploaded by Lisa M Harrison on 10 December 2012

Another Steve Strong-presented exposition of his view of the meaning of the glyphs.  Includes footage below ground and the circles which he considers to be constellation maps.

39.  Egyptian’s in Australia No 1  Are their carvings of UFO’s at Woy Woy NSW .mp4 [7 mins 37 sec]

Uploaded by Neville Joseph on 2 November 2012

40.  Egyptian’s in Austraila No2 Carving of UFO by N Roughan.mp4 [1 min 12 sec]

Uploaded by Neville Joseph on 3 November 2012

41.  Egyptians in Australia Part 4 [16 mins 29 sec]

Uploaded by lisamharrison on 10 December 2012

42. Gosford Egyptian Hyroglyphs (Glyphs) FAKES or FACTS [4 mins 48 sec]

Uploaded by Askew1312 on 22 December 2012

Rebuttal to the prevailing believer view of the authenticity of the Kariong engravings.

43.  Egyptians in Australia Part 5 [26 mins 12 sec]

Uploaded by liamharrison on 30 December 2012

44.  Egyptians in Australia Part 6 [1 min 52 sec]

Uploaded by lisamharrison on 4 February 2013

Very short clip showing Strong et al outlining what they say looks like a UFO rock engraving, near the Kariong engraving, and resembling some of the glyphs.

45.  Egyptians in Australia Part 6 – the truth [4 min 22 sec]

Uploaded by mulcontent on 9 February 2013

Rebuttal of the UFO clip above.  Woy Woy Steve [mulcontent] shows that what Strong took to be a UFO is part of an Aboriginal whale engraving.

Professor Elkin’s secret masonic handshake

‘During 1931, Professor A.P. Elkin, then Professor of Anthropology at Sydney University, visited the north-west Kimberley region of Western Australia to make a field study of the Aboriginal cultures thereabouts. He came upon a strange tribe of Aborigines whom he soon found had never before seen a white man. Not only was the professor astounded when tribal leaders greeted him with secret Masonic hand signs, he was struck by the startlingly Semitic features present in the natives.

‘Prof. Elkin soon discovered that the natives worshipped the Sun, that they also had an Earth Mother and Rainbow Serpent cult, and that they practiced mummification of the dead. He recorded these and many other customs including the languages of the region. Only later did he discover that many of the words spoken by the tribes were of Egyptian origin.

‘These findings led Prof. Elkin to conclude that at some time in the distant past the Aboriginal culture of the north-west Kimberley had been influenced by visitors from outside Australia – that is, by visitors from the ancient Middle East, notably Egyptians’ [Gilroy 1995: pp. 248-9]

Could this be true? Could one of Australia’s most eminent anthropologists have discovered such convincing evidence of contact with ancient Egyptian sea-farers? And who kept it secret for half a century? What was the story?

In this post I want to look at the claim made by Gilroy about Elkin, but also mentioned by other explorers and travellers that they had met and exchanged Masonic hand gestures with Aboriginal people. It has some currency among secret visitor claims, and gets repeated often enough on the internet to merit discussing. Here are some other examples.

Atlantis Rising Forum – posted 10 May 2004

RBG Street Scholar – posted 25 Feb 2007

Above Top Secret Forum – posted 10 March 2012

Kariong – when were the glyphs found?

‘When were the Kariong engravings produced?’ has been the focus of nearly all the discussion about this site.  Another question that asks something slightly different is ‘When were the glyphs found?’.  Although it is most important to determine their actual date, we also need to know the date at which the glyphs were first brought to public attention.  In 1983-4 a National Parks and Wildlife Service ranger apprehended a man at the site with a chisel, and freshly carved engravings was observed by a rock art conservation specialist.  If we take that as the date of confirmed public discovery, when everyone in the pro- and con- camps agrees that they existed,  how much further back can we push knowledge of them?  This can lead to a better appreciation of when they were made and the way that dating evidence can be interpreted.

The Ploughed Ground – 1

One of the earliest speculations about unrecorded voyages to Australia comes from the memoirs of Joseph Mason, a convict who served his sentence in NSW in the 1830s.  Mason’s handwritten memoirs remained almost unknown, but were finally edited and published in 1996 [Kent and Townsend 1996] and are an important source for Australian convict history as seen from the inside.

Mason was transported for participation in unrest arising from the social dislocations accompanying industrialisation in Britain.  Perhaps because of his status as a political prisoner he reveals himself to be a thoughtful chronicler whose memoirs are quite different from the normal convict fare.  He was assigned as a convict servant to Hannibal Macarthur at his Vineyard estate near Parramatta in 1831.  Macarthur also had another grazing estate called Arthursleigh on the banks of the Wollondilly, south of Sydney, which had been established before official settlement was permitted within this area [Fletcher 2002].

In a section of his memoirs where he speculates about previous history of Australia, and whether the Aboriginal people were its sole former occupants, Mason says:

There is two spots of ground one about 30 miles to the south of any residence and the other on the bank of the Hunters River which I was informed by creditable witnesses as well as having seen the same in a book bear marks as if it had once undergone the operation of ploughing. The first of these lies in the road leading to the south of the colony and is always called the ploughed grounds. The blacks have been asked if they know what occasioned these spots [of] land to Assume their present shape but their are quite ignorant as to the cause Had any of their ancestors been acquainted with husbandry there certainly would have been more extensive marks of it remaining than these two spots of ground nor is it likely that the present race or rather generation should have been so retrograded from the path of industry as to possess not a single grain of corn an agricultural impliment, or the slightest notion of cultivating land.  [Kent and Townsend 1996: pp. 121-2]

Society for American Archaeology Conference 2012

The 77th annual Society for American Archaeology Conference for 2012 has just been held in Memphis.  This is one of the largest annual archaeology conferences in the world.  The SAA’s membership is more than 7000 professional archaeologists working throughout North and South America, as well as many Americans with research interests elsewhere.  What made it noteworthy here was that it included a session on pseudoarchaeology, organised by David S. Anderson of Tulane University and Jeb Card of Miami University.

Even more notewworthy is that I presented a paper.  Well, I put in a paper and David Anderson did the always thankless job of having to read it out.  I would have loved to attend but as Sydney University is currently laying waste to its academic teaching staff in the Arts Faculty it would seem gratuitous to have sought travel money [and also here, here and here].

Michael Terry

Michael Terry is little known now but was one of a small group of adventure-writers who helped to shape Australia’s self image during the 20th century.  A genuine explorer, who took advantage of motor vehicles to traverse some of the last desert areas crossed by Europeans in Australia, he helped to open up and map large areas of desert country.  In 1961 he discovered unusual rock art at Cleland Hills, west of Alice Springs, depicting stylised faces, which he thought may have indicated ancient foreign contact.  From that time on secret visitors became an obsession and he can be credited with collecting many of the stories that were later picked up by Rex Gilroy and others and have become part of secret visitor lore.

Kariong presentation – December 2011

I had pretty much been holding off on contributing much on Kariong until I was a bit further advanced on my own work, but this notice appeared yesterday in OzArch, the Australian archaeology Google group.

– – – – – – – – – – –

Posted 27 November 2011 at 1.13 pm
The Australian Aborigines are the first humans.
They were created long ago on the Fist Day.
This was at a time before time began.
Long afterwards, after their culture had fully evolved, the Aborigines sailed from Australia all around the world in a figure 8 and colonised the whole earth.
All of the world’s peoples and all of the human culture derive from the Aborigines.
The predominant teacher of all this at the current time is Mr Steven Strong.
Steve says that his task is to prove by science what the Elders have always said.
Steve Strong’s latest speaking engagement will be as follows:

“”””””””
Sunday 11th December, 2011 Artsbarn 2 Dandaloo St Kariong, NSW, Australia.   Steven will be accompanied by Dr. Hans-Dieter von Senff.

“”””””””
– –  – – – – – – – – –

Father and son team Steven and Evan Strong have written several detailed works on why they believe that modern human evolution began with Australian Aboriginal people.  These can be found here.

Dr. Hans-Dieter von Senff is the leading promoter of the authenticity of the Kariong engravings.  Its not clear whether he will be speaking.

On the face of it there is little shared ground between the two – Strong is dealing with early human evolution and a refreshing twist on the usual diffusionist scenario.  Von Senff’s interest in the hieroglyphs, apart from some chronological issues, requires less a reversal ofthe current view and more a suspension of disbelief.

Not sure I can make it, but would love to hear from anyone who goes.

More Devil Hands making lighter work

A previous blog post described the Devils Hands rockshelter along the Shoalhaven River, which was interpreted and incorporated by Lawrence Hargrave into his theories.  Since then I have found the correspondence between Hargrave and Walter Hull, who brought it to his attention, in the National Library of Australia.

On 20 August 1910 Walter Hull, of ‘Tolosa’, Beuna Vista Road in the Sydney suburb of Mosman wrote to Hargrave.  He was interested in Hargrave’s idea that what was considered to be Aboriginal art had a more complex origin.  He included a copy of the photo that had been reproduced in the Lone Hand, having sold them the copyright some time earlier.  Hargrave gave a quick and positive reply within a few days, as was his practice, but a month later came back with a much more developed understanding of them.

… Boat shaped marks refer to water journeys, footsteps refer to land journeys and ‘hands’ refer to manual labour.  What labour?  The search for gold, and it is certain that if Lope de Vega got any gold from near Sydney it was from the Shoalhaven River.  The hands or fingers are a record of the number of quills of gold obtained.  The Peruvian-Spaniards did not go there by water, they had had enough of the sea and were only interested in the land.  The land journey was easy, a few cabbage palms or dry logs would ferry all that it was necessary to keep dry.  14 days would suffice to get there.

The blacks got it hot for the memory to last to our time; and continued opposition would decorate the outskirts of the gold working camps with blakc fellows seated on pointed stakes. [NLA MS 352-6: Hargrave to Hull 22 Sept 1911]

A month later Hargrave wrote again, requesting whether he could use it in his forthcoming latest work.  Neither Hull nor the Lone Hand had any issue with it, and it was incorporated in the third Lope de Vega instalment [Hargrave 1911].  Hull set out his belief that the hand stencils reflected foreign influences, asserting that the hands were found only in the Shoalhaven district, which was also cited by Hargrave.  Given that Hull’s Mosman home was probably within a few kilometres of many rockshelters with all manner of hand stencils it is hard to know how he made that statement except by remarkable lack of awareness.

In another group of papers in the Hargrave collection there is a small map cut out of the Daily Telegraph of 4 July 1913 showing the proposed Warragamba Dam in Sydney’s west.  Hargrave marked it with a red pencil and the annotation ‘Probable track to silver mine and gold river’.  The path chosen was along the coast south of Sydney, then along the Shoalhaven, to where it swings southwards and into the Bungonia Gorge.  The Spanish travellers then emerged passing the site of Marulan and joining the Wollondilly River, which they followed north into the Burragorang River valley, now submerged by Warragamba Dam.  Joining the Nepean River at Mulgoa they then followed this to about Richmond, presumably crossing back to Sydney overland [NLA MS 352-19].

Hargrave sought corroborating evidence for this theory, including writing a letter to the Burragorang Valley school principal, in case he had come across anything of interest.  Unsurprisingly, no answer was forthcoming.

As I had supposed, Hull was prompted by Hargrave’s newspaper articles to offer his own idle speculation to what was a surprisingly sympathetic ear.  As discussed in the earlier post the quest for gold provided a very useful reason to have Spanish mariners and their Peruvian slaves running around the landscape, and attempting to explain the great quantity of contrary evidence that did not fit his theory.  In late 1910 Hargrave was busily working on the third instalment of his Lope de Vega paper, and perhaps if he had more time may have looked harder at the evidence.  As it was he put more effort into getting a copy of the Lone Hand picture into his paper than in thinking about the contribution it made to his case.

References

Greig, A.W. 1909
‘Aboriginal art: with an account of the mysterious rock pictures of the Glenelg District [W.A.]‘, The Lone Hand, 5, 1 May 1909, pp. 42-48.

Hargrave, L. 1911
Lope de Vega: in continuation of previous publications contained in the Journal of the Royal Society of New South Wales, Vols XLIII,XLIV, 1909, 1910, privately published, Sydney.

Unpublished

National Library of Australia
MS 352 – Lawrence Hargrave papers relating to Lope de Vega
Series 6 – correspondence 1908-1910
Series 19 – newsclippings

William Augustus Miles

William Augustus Miles came to Australia to serve as the Superintendent of Police in Sydney.  He did not have any particular aptitude for the task and is generally seen to have been a very ordinary administrator.  He was reputed to be the illegitimate son of one of the British monarchs and a ‘remittance man’ – recipient of an allowance that obliged him to clear off and keep his head down.  Miles was an amateur naturalist and also had undertaken archaeological work in Britain.  From when he arrived in Sydney in 1841 until his death in 1851 he was probably the most experienced archaeologist on the continent.

Our interest in Miles rests on his interpretation of Aboriginal rock engravings and cultural connections.  These were presented in two papers – one as an appendix to George French Angas’s Savage life and scenes in Australia and New Zealand [1847, also Angas 1877] and the other read to the Ethnological Society of Great Britain, and presented in its Journal [Miles 1854].  They reveal a very speculative but also insightful application of what was then a fairly vague body of theory in relation to Aboriginal origins.  The results were totally wrong, wrong enough to make it into the secret visitor category but represent an important early attempt to make sense of the evidence.

Kariong hieroglyphs – the movies

There are a number of video clips on YouTube that show the Kariong hieroglyphs in varying levels of detail.  I have added links to all those that I could find below. They are sorted by upload date. Generally they have been produced by believers or borderline accepters of their authenticity, although the final one is a very well-produced rebuttal of the Egyptian claim that draws on a range of internet sources.

There’s more than an hour and a half of footage here. So get a cup of tea, some Tim Tams, sit back and enjoy.