William Niven - Dismissed by mainstream archaeology

Would a respected mineralogist and archeologist, really create 2,600+ fake tablets and other discoveries? To what end? It seems he would have more to loose than gain. In any event, the controversy rages on to this day.

I am curious to know, where the ruins he discovered are and what explanation archaeology offers to explain them?

William Niven (1850-1937) was a mineralogist and archeologist noted for his discovery of the minerals yttrialite, thorogummite, aguilarite and nivenite (named after him), as well as a set of controversial tablets. Originally from Scotland, Niven came to the United States in 1879, where he became heavily involved in mineralogy and mining.

Wikipedia

In 1911 Niven discovered ancient ruins buried beneath volcanic ash near Azcapotzalco in the Federal District, just north of Mexico City. He devoted the next two decades of his life to archeological exploration in the Valley of Mexico and through an arrangement with the Mexican government was able to fund his digging by the sale of artifacts. Niven established a private museum in Mexico City with more than 20,000 exhibits. It was later moved to Tampico.

He recovered the first in a series of unusual stone tablets bearing pictographs from his digs at San Miguel Amantla, Azcapotzalco, and elsewhere in the Valley of Mexico in 1921. This discovery eventually totaled more than 2,600 tablets and acquired notoriety through the writings of James Churchward, beginning with The Lost Continent of Mu, first published in 1926. Niven was a founding member of the New York Mineralogical Club, an honorary life member of the American Museum of Natural History, a member of the Scientific Society Antonio Alzate in Mexico, and a fellow in the American Geographic Society of New York and the Royal Society of Arts in London. In 1929 he moved to Houston, where he donated a large number of Mexican artifacts to the new Houston Museum and Scientific Society and served on its board of trustees. In 1931 he moved to Austin. He died there on June 2, 1937, and was buried in Mount Calvary cemetery.

His later discovery of twenty-six hundred inscribed stone tablets in the Valley of Mexico aroused considerable controversy, and inspired James Churchward to put forth an interpretation of the origins of the Native Americans in The Lost Continent of Mu (1926). They remain controversial to this day.

Niven's upper city was built before the mountains were raised at the beginning of the Pleistocene; his lowest city was built tens of thousands of years before this and goes far back into the Tertiary Era. Niven’s Mexican Bird Tablets . Among Niven’s Collection of 2600 ancient stone tablets, there are about thirty containing birds.

William Niven’s Own Report of His Explorations

“Over an area of about 200 square miles in the Valley of Mexico from Texcoco to Haluepantla, yhere are hundreds yes thousands of clay pits.

After serving the City of Mexico as a source for building materials for more than 300 years, these pits have enabled me to make an extensive examination of a vast ruin. Resently my efforts have been rewarded with some remarkable and startling discoveries, which seem to open up a new field for archelogical research on this continent.

My Operations have been confined to an area some 20 miles long by 10 miles wide, in the northwestern portion of the great valley. There I have found traces of two civilizations and three well preserved concrete floors or pavements , each one aat some time underlying a large city. These pavements are at a depth of from 6 to 21 feet from the surface. Above the first there is a deposit of small boulders, pebbles and sand covered with a foot thick coating of the rich soil of the valley. The great age of this upper or younger floor must be plain, when every layman stopss to consider the number of years required to deposit one foot of earth on a level plain. Everywhere in this deposit of boulders, pebbles and sand above the first floor I found fragments of broken pottery, small clay figures, diorite beads, spear and arrow heads, spindle whorls and other artifacts, mostly broken.

The second concrete floor is from 4 to 6 feet below the first, the difference in distance between the two accounted for by the broken condition of the lower pavement, due probably, to seismic disturbances. In the intervening space between the two pavements, one and two, I have failed to find a single piece of pottery, or any other trace to indicate that people had lived there.

Underneath the second pavement, however came the great find of my many years’ work in Mexican archaeology. First I came upon a well define layer of ashes from two to three feet in thickness , and since proved by analysis to be of volcanic origin. Just below the ashes I found traces of innumerable buildings , large, but regular in size, and appearing uniformly in more than 100 clay pits , which I have examined during my recent investigations.

All of these houses are badly ruined, crushed and filled with ashes and debris. In the past week’s work I found a wooden door, the wood of which had petrified and turned to stone. The door was arched with a semicircle lintel, maid by bending the trunk of a tree about five inches in diameter or thickness. This is he first curved arch ever found in the ruins of Mexico; and , as the walls of the house were laid of stone, bound together with white cement, harder ttthan the stone itself, this wooden arch must have been put in as an ornament. Cutting through the door, I came into a room about 30 feet square, filled with almost pure volcanic ash, apparently about the only room strong enough to withstand the terrible weight of soil , ashes and stone above it. The roof which had been of concrete and stone, and flat, had caved in, but around the lower edges of the room great flat fragments of this roof had formed arches, little caves in the ashes, in which were preserved many artifacts of the dead race. With the artifacts were bones, numberless bones of human beings, which crumbled to the touch like slacked lime.

Above their tomb the waters of a great flood had raged, wiping out another civilization. Flood and the crashing boulders had not disturbed the sleep of this mighty race.

The doorway was over six foot deep, and on the floor, thirteen feet from the door, I came upon a complete gold-smith’s outfit. It consists of a terra-cotta chimney 25 inches in height, tapering upwards from a round furnace 15 inches in diameter. On the floor around the furnace, to which still adhered bits of pure gold, I found more than 200 models, which had once been baked clay, but which had been transformed into stone. All of these were duplications carved on figures and idols which I found later in the same house. Evidently this had been the house of a prosperous goldsmith and jeweler of the better class in the ruined city.

Some of the models or patterns were less than one-twentieth of an inch in thickness, and were used for the manufacture of the gold , silver and copper dress, head, breast, arm and ankle ornaments which thw statuettes show the people to have worn in those days. Each model was thickly coated with iron oxide, bright and yellow, probably put on there to prevent the molten metals adhering to the pattern while in the casting pot…The work is fine, beautifully polished, and shows a hight of civilization fully as great, if not greater, than that possessed by the Azteca when the Spanish under Hernando Cortez first invaded Mexico.

But what struck me most as the feature of the room was the mural decorations. Evidently there had been a slight partition through the center, while from the rear walls the dim outline of the door appeared to lead into another room, which is now so complete a ruin that I doubt that anything other than bones will be found in it. Here are wall paintings done in red, blue, yellow, green and black, which compare favorably with the best photographs I have ever seen of Greek, Etruscan, or Egyptian works of the same kind.

The ground color of the wall was pale blue, while six inches down from the fourteen foot ceiling a frieze painted in dark red and black ran all around the four sides. This frieze owing to the fact that it had been glazed after painting, wit a sort of native wax , is perfectly preserved, so far as colors and patterns go. It has been, however, broken in three places by fragments of the falling roof, but otherwise it is almost as legible as the day when first painted. It depicts the life of some person evidently a shepherd, bringing him from babyhood to his death bead.

Beneath the room I found the tomb of some one of importance, possibly of him whose life was portrayed in the frieze above. In this vault, which was only three feet in depth and lined with cement, were seventy five pieces of bone, all that remained of a complete skeleton. One large fragment of the skull contained the blade of a hammered copper ax, which had evidently dealt death to the occupant of the tomb, and which had not been removed by his relatives or friends. The bones crumbled to the touch, so long had they been in the tomb, but there were other objects more interesting than the bones. One hundred and twenty-five small clay terra- cotta idols, manikins, images and dishes of all kinds were ranged around the bottom of the tomb. Among the objects unearthed were over 2600 stone tablets.

Read more from the source, includes diagrams and photos



[edit on 4-6-2009 by warrenb]

Given Mexico's own history books about the area that Niven made his discoveries, how can "western" archaeology dismiss Niven's finds?

Pre-Hispanic history of Mexico(state)
In the Pre-Hispanic period codices were very important. There were several Aztec codices Aztec codices Aztec codices are books written by pre-Columbian and colonial-era Aztecs. These codices provide some of the best primary sources for Aztec culture.... about history, religion, tribute’s administration, cartography (maps) from the 16th century. The pre-Columbian codices differ from European codices in that they are largely pictorial; they were not meant to symbolize spoken or written narratives. The colonial era codices not only contain Aztec pictographs, but also Classical Nahuatl (in the Latin alphabet Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin.... ), Spanish Spanish language Spanish or Castilian is a Romance languages that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade.... , and occasionally Latin. Examples of these Aztec codices include:as Tlacotepec, Xilotepec codex, Tezcoco-Acampan codex.

Mexico State is part of a cultural area called Valle de México or Valley of Mexico Valley of Mexico The Valley of Mexico is a highlands plateau in central Mexico roughly coterminous with the present-day Mexican Federal District and the eastern half of the M?xico .... , characterized by homogeneous cultural elements despite the presence of multiple linguistic groups.

Different ethnic groups including the Otomi Otomi Otomi may refer to:*Otomi people, an indigenous people of Mexico*Otomi language, the language of the Otomi people*Otomi , an Aztec military order... , Mazahua Mazahua The Mazahua are an indigenous peoples of Mexico, inhabiting the northwestern portion of the Mexico and southeastern Michoac?n, with a presence also in the Mexican Federal District owing to recent migration.... , Matlatzinca Matlatzinca Matlatzinca is a name used to refer to different Indigenous peoples in Mexico in the Toluca Valley in the M?xico , located in the central highlands of Mexico.... and Chichimeca Chichimeca Chichimeca was the name that the Nahua peoples generically applied to a wide range of semi-nomadic peoples who inhabited the north of modern-day Mexico, and carried the same sense as the European term "barbarian".... have made the State of Mexico their home.

At the end of the classic period the region was dominated by the Tepanec Tepanec The Tepanecs or Tepaneca are a Mesoamerican people who arrived in the Valley of Mexico in the late 12th or early 13th centuries. The Tepanec were a sister culture of the Aztecs as well as the Acolhua and others -- these tribes spoke the Nahuatl language and shared the same general pantheon, with local and tribal variations.... as who live in the Azcapotzalco Azcapotzalco Azcapotzalco is one of the 16 Boroughs of the Mexican Federal District into which Mexico's Mexican Federal District is divided. Azcapotzalco is in the northwestern part of Mexico City.... region, the otomi Otomi Otomi may refer to:*Otomi people, an indigenous people of Mexico*Otomi language, the language of the Otomi people*Otomi , an Aztec military order... es that create the kingdom of Xaltocan Xaltocan Xaltocan was a pre-Columbian city-state and island in the Valley of Mexico, located in the center of Lake Xaltocan, part of an interconnected shallow lake system which included Lake Texcoco.... , the acolhua Acolhua The Acolhua are a Mesoamerican people who arrived in the Valley of Mexico in or around the year 1200 Common Era. The Acolhua were a sister culture of the Aztecs as well as the Tepanec, Chalca, Xochimilca and others.... s that live in Coatlichan and a new tribe call the Mexicas who end being the dominant power of the region. (The mexicas was original name it Aztecs that means people form Aztlan Aztlán Aztl?n is the legendary ancestral home of the Nahua peoples, one of the main cultural groups in Mesoamerica. "Aztec" is the Nahuatl word for "people from Aztlan."... , the mythical city in the north from who in their tradition they begin his journey, as they travel to the south they change their name to mexicas or mexitin, see Aztecs).

With the dead of Tezozomoc Tezozomoc Tezozomoc Yacateteltetl born 1320, was a Tepanec leader who ruled the altepetl of Azcapotzalco from the year Aztec calendar or Aztec calendar until his death in the year Aztec calendar .... from Azcapotzalco Azcapotzalco Azcapotzalco is one of the 16 Boroughs of the Mexican Federal District into which Mexico's Mexican Federal District is divided. Azcapotzalco is in the northwestern part of Mexico City.... his son Maxtla Maxtla Maxtla was a Tepanec ruler of Azcapotzalco from 1426 to his death in 1428. He succeeded his father Tezozomoc , possibly through assassination of his elder brother Tayauh.... , king of Coyoacan Coyoacán Coyoac?n is one of the 16 delegaciones into which Mexico's Mexican Federal District is divided. Coyoac?n also is commonly used to refer to the neighborhood at the heart of the borough.... , assume the power of the region. Maxtla try to submit the mexicas into his direct control. The mexicas forge an alliance with the tetzcocanos Texcoco Texcoco was a major Acolhua city-state in the central Mexican plateau region of Mesoamerica during the Late Postclassic period of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican chronology.... , another group submitted by Tezozomoc. Their combine forces defeated the tepanec Tepanec The Tepanecs or Tepaneca are a Mesoamerican people who arrived in the Valley of Mexico in the late 12th or early 13th centuries. The Tepanec were a sister culture of the Aztecs as well as the Acolhua and others -- these tribes spoke the Nahuatl language and shared the same general pantheon, with local and tribal variations.... as.

Some of the more important emperors settled in the Valley of Mexico were Tezozomoc Tezozomoc Tezozomoc Yacateteltetl born 1320, was a Tepanec leader who ruled the altepetl of Azcapotzalco from the year Aztec calendar or Aztec calendar until his death in the year Aztec calendar .... , Tlalmanalco, Opochihuacan and Xaltocan Xaltocan Xaltocan was a pre-Columbian city-state and island in the Valley of Mexico, located in the center of Lake Xaltocan, part of an interconnected shallow lake system which included Lake Texcoco.... .

Source

Thanks for the post. This is again something I havent heard of. I have the PDF file and will be reading it throughout the day. I did find some pics or renderings of some of his tablets. Too bad they were lost.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/71a4e891a513.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/565beef77a80.gif[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/5aa78caa7fea.gif[/atsimg]

I think the Niven Tablets are worth re-examining. Many dismissed them only because they were featured in the poorly written and racist "Lost Continent of Mu" books. But thats not Nivens fault.

[edit on 4-6-2009 by Skyfloating]

reply to post by Skyfloating


I did find Churchward's attitude towards natives to be quite demeaning. Especially towards the Aborigines of Australia.

IMHO, a case of too much personal opinion sprinkled in with his research.

On the flip side, media of the day seem to portray that it was a common attitude amongst the *cough* "civilized" peoples.

reply to post by warrenb


It used to be common attitude back when the books were written. But apart from that...I read all of his books because I do believe in an ancient past much different than taught...I could not make any sense of his books. The subject needs to be re-written by someone more clear-minded. The Tablets too need to be looked at with fresh eyes.

They haven't been ignored, as far as I can tell.

They are not, however "Pleistocene" in origin, and they certainly aren't from any "lost continent of Mu." I'll look up better references tonight, but they are part o numerous collections and I'm certain they've been identified.

The people who want you to believe in "Mu" like to think they're ignored and his work was dismissed. Instead, the truth is that his collections are a part of many museums' collections and they have been studied and identified. There's a nice group of them in Houston.

Subjects like this really interest me mainly because I believe in lost knowledge and things that are taught wrong on purpose in schools. I haven't heard of this man but I'll be reading up on whatever I can find and reading over what you have posted

It's a very interesting read and I appreciate your post!

S&F for you sir, keep it coming.

Thank's A lot Warrenb!!

Why History is forbidden for man? I mean real History!
Is it a kind of accidental conspiracy?

It's amazing, all we have in the whole world are half-truth saying!!

SNC

Originally posted by mblahnikluver
Thanks for the post. This is again something I havent heard of. I have the PDF file and will be reading it throughout the day. I did find some pics or renderings of some of his tablets. Too bad they were lost.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/71a4e891a513.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/565beef77a80.gif[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/5aa78caa7fea.gif[/atsimg]

Looks like an angel and the earliest form of a Swastika which used to and i guess till is a symbol for i think unity or love or something....


Interesting How the line with the square forms in the middle of it.....I believe I have seen this somewhere before....

Oooookayyyyy.....

Far from being ignored, Niven's finds are acknowledged to be rather important to the overall archaeology of Mexico. There's at least one biography of him ("Buried Cities, Forgotten Gods) and he was one of the first to recognize the stratigraphy of the area. Spinden published a paper on a sepulcher he found in that area in a 1911 edition of American Anthropologist. Niven himself contributed a chapter to a book on the archaeology of the area, where he goes into detail on what he found.

The valley basin where he dug was one of the sites of maize domestication.

(I'm hoping Hanslune will come along shortly and give us some insight, since he dug in Central and South America)

A quick search through Google Scholar shows papers on the site, and on the sepulcher he found. The find occurs just before (unfortunately) a very bloody period in Mexican history, and much of the valley was looted or destroyed.

There also seem to be a number of papers in Spanish (which I can't read), a 1979 doctoral dissertation on some of the material... and so on and so forth.

Okay... let's place it in context. This was found in the late 1800's, and I'm afraid that more recent findings have gotten a lot more press than those from the 1800's. At the time, though, papers were written about it and he was certainly respected for his work. It was hardly hushed up (given the number of articles I see on the area), and Niven was hardly ignored (given the number of references I find for his name in later digs involving his dig site.) And his collections are in a number of museums.

Now... it hasn't received the continuous international attention that, say, the pyramids at Giza have received. On the other hand, very few sites have received this. I'm sure that very few of you know of the beautiful pictographs at Hueco Tanks, including some important historic ones or the ones out at Painted Rocks here in Texas. There's not a lot of papers on either one.

Why wasn't it studied more? Foreign country, revolutions, problems with the natives of the area, national attention focused on World War I and World War II (during which young people who might have become archaeologists died), lack of access (Niven had to buy the mineral rights in order to go dig at some of the sites), and the amount of money needed to do a dig. At one point, though, a re-examination of one of his sites (perhaps more) was done by the Mormons (in an attempt to prove the Book of Mormon was correct.)

Churchward did no favors to the world by his announcement that the artifacts were from "Mu".

The material that y'all are exclaiming over actually greatly resembles some of the rock art from the Pueblos in Albuquerque (which would put it in the "Middle to late Classic period"... and is consistent with some of the findings down there.) Hopefully Hans will have more to add, since this is his arena of study.

And (to answer the first question), the reason this doesn't show up in the American (US) history books is because US history is about the United States, and generally about the political history of the collective group of lands called the United States. The history books of each state mention only some of the archaeological record, but they don't cover even 1/100th of the material that's published on each state. To get that kind of depth, you need to take an "archaeology of Texas" (or whatever) course... and you need to take several semesters' worth of it. Not just one course.

If US history was about Mexico, we'd see some stuff in there. And world history for school kids just doesn't go over digs and archaeology (reading about 10,000 digs would NOT bring history alive for them... trust me on this one.)

So: he's not ignored, his findings aren't hidden. You simply need to know where to look and under what names to look and you can find enough published material to keep you busy reading for a very long time.

reply to post by Byrd


i think that you have made good points , but again i must point out that i am skeptical of your "there is no mysteries" attitude especially in regards to the vast and unknowable past

as far as i am concerned, most archaeologists are wrong about most things like dating techniques, and in the future we will certainly learn new things and have to rewrite our history books many times...

so im not going to act like i know who made those tablets, and as far as i am concerned, no one really knows in which circumstances they were made

there is really not any way to know...

we can speculate tho, and speculation is fun

Originally posted by Byrd



And (to answer the first question), the reason this doesn't show up in the American (US) history books is because US history is about the United States, and generally about the political history of the collective group of lands called the United States. The history books of each state mention only some of the archaeological record, but they don't cover even 1/100th of the material that's published on each state. To get that kind of depth, you need to take an "archaeology of Texas" (or whatever) course... and you need to take several semesters' worth of it. Not just one course.

sadly, a few archaeology classes will be over before you can blink your eyes lol

And thats really expensive (thousands of $) just to let someone lecture you about something they barely know anything about.

So i would add to your suggestion and say visit a University Library as they potentially have thousands of texts on Mexican Archaeology

I know at Texas Tech we had a extensive collection of Arch books in the library, but i am sad to admit that the Arch courses there were pretty lame and basic

they had to dumb it down so much for the mainstream kids that a typical ATSer would get bored often

so hit up the Library, its free!

most universities also have collections of artifacts, and if you know who to ask, you could probably get a quick tour of them too

Since its talking about mu i thought id post this link to site about a book of mu
really good book shades light on religion and the first so called religion to emerge. im only on chapter 2 but its a great compelling and revealing read.

www.sacred-texts.com...

Mu seems to have more meaning than being a prior civilization. Besides, it would be against the agenda of the State to teach of civilizations 1000's of years old. It would go against the idea of Creationism of which ages the Earth at just a few thousand years old if one calculates the timeline of the progeny of Adam and Eve.

MU

MU=Standard Gravitational Parameter



[edit on 5-6-2009 by Perseus Apex]

Originally posted by Perseus Apex
Mu seems to have more meaning than being a prior civilization. Besides, it would be against the agenda of the State to teach of civilizations 1000's of years old. It would go against the idea of Creationism of which ages the Earth at just a few thousand years old if one calculates the timeline of the progeny of Adam and Eve.

Actually, there's simply no evidence for it. And nobody heard of it before the late 1800's (unlike Atlantis.)

I am complete agreement with Byrd, so I won't repeat what he has said. I do have a question though.

What exactly is mainstream archeaology?

Originally posted by mblahnikluver
Thanks for the post. This is again something I havent heard of. I have the PDF file and will be reading it throughout the day. I did find some pics or renderings of some of his tablets. Too bad they were lost.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/71a4e891a513.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/565beef77a80.gif[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/5aa78caa7fea.gif[/atsimg]

i98.photobucket.com...

Take a look at the similarities between these two.
I have highlighted what appear to be the four 'W' 'M' '3' 'E' glyphs.

The 'Niven Tablet Swastika' is found in Rome too btw.

namaste

reply to post by CHiram_Abiff


If you liked to see the 'tablets'

This pdf has images of them
Niven's 'tablets'

They appear to me to be more like art work than a tablet

Originally posted by muzzleflash
i think that you have made good points , but again i must point out that i am skeptical of your "there is no mysteries" attitude especially in regards to the vast and unknowable past

Gee, turns out the entire premise of this ignorant thread is false, so now we have to make some other outrageous claim about what Byrd does or does not believe?

Harte