Author E.P. Grondine talks about Giant Mound Builders of America

Did Giants build the ancient mounds in the United States? Many people think that the mounds were created by Nephilims mentioned in the bible. E.P. (Ed) Grondine, author of the book “Man And Impact In The Americas” explains more about the mound builders called Andaste or Susquehannock.

There is been a lot of confusion in the American Anthropological community about the Andaste, the tall people. Your standard text on Adena culture as the archeologists call is “Dragoo and Neuman’s”. And they were stunned when they found these extraordinarily tall skeletons. They spend about half their book on that.

A pocket of the survived, Adena culture survived on the Susquehanna River till European contact. They were Andaste killed in 1676, genocidally exterminated. We have direct eyewitness accounts of these guys who are seven and a half foot tall.

“If you look at newspapers that were like 50 years ago even in New York Times, you can see 8 feet tall, eight and a half feet tall (skeletons). Was that normal?”

Yes, for the Andaste it was. They did cannibalism, child sacrifice, torture. They were greedy. They would claim far more resources than they needed and anybody that interfered…They were territorial, anybody that they caught – they tortured to death. So they weren’t … This is not the Native American way: child sacrifice, cannibalism and greed. These things are not done in Native American societies between the nations that were here. If you are a neighbor… if you are having a bad year… if you had food generally you would help your neighbor to get by. Well the Andaste didn’t, period and that was it. And they took the best and they were greedy. And then treated the local people; who remained were subjugated, if they allowed them to live at all. We are not really sure about that.

“I mean we do hear that there are large skeletons or Giants but we don’t actually see any skeletons of them at all, anywhere in the museums.”

Well you have to… if you went back to Dragoo and Neuman’s excavations. I am thinking they are at Carnegie, I believe that they have their excavation reports, so you can go there.

“Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh?”

Yes exactly, right at your home.

What happened to their skeletons, I don’t know. Whether there is anything to sample for DNA, I am sure there is X mitochondrial DNA. You know, this is it. The pattern of their migration is very interesting and is absolutely unique. I’d like to say that all the Native American peoples remember these guys.

“As tall?”

Yes, they were Giants. As I mentioned before the Ho-Chunk Winnebago fought them, the Ojibwe fought them, Three Fires fought them, Five Nations fought them. The Shawnee fought them, the Cherokee fought them, the Choctaw Chickasaw knew them as the “Hollow”, they fought them. They finally… a small part of them intermarried with the Osage tribe. Actually if you have ever seen the Osage drums… so that X mitochondrial DNA survives in some of the Osage.

Apparently this group, as near as you can tell from tracking the X mitochondrial DNA haplogroup. They evolved on the Black Sea. When the sea level rose, after the Holocene Start Impact Event in 10,850 B.C they migrated out of the area. And then a group went out… They are maritime people they are living on black sea so they have a very advanced marine technology. They go up on the Atlantic coast and cross over to North America where they are known as Red Paint people and the Canadian Maritime Archaic, about 8,350 B.C very approximately. So we can track them, pretty much dots on. A couple of items in their technologies are really, very much advanced. Serrated edges on stone tools and polished stone tools. When you see those they are… the first introduction as usually Andaste. They are bringing that over from Europe. You will see the introduction to those technologies in historic West Africa from when they initially go out to the straits of Gibraltar.
One of the things that is characteristic of Andaste society which we just realized is their use of plinths i.e., Stone Steles and these are showing up at Andaste sites. Of course what generally happened was… when they were driven out, the plinths were thrown over. So they are still there, they are large, they are massive. Myself and my colleague Fletcher Wilson are currently involved in retrieving them. You can see one down at the Serpent Mound.

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