But the Egyptians didn’t get to England. If they had got there we would expect to find a lot of archaeological evidence of their being there, and the evidence is notably lacking.

The same is true for the Celtic New Zealand thesis. Doutré claims to have evidence, but when its appraised critically the evidence fades away. Mounds of rocks are sometimes just mounds of rocks. If there was a pre-Maori culture in Aotearoa/Te Wai Pounamu we’d expect to find quite specific evidence of settlement, agriculture and so forth, and we aren’t finding it.

There’s no grand political or academic conspiracy at work; if there was evidence of a different pre-history to the one we’ve been taught it would be discussed and analysed, because that’s what happens. The fact that this discussion is not going on in Anthropology, Archaeology, History or Sociology tells us that while people like Doutré might firmly believe some other History, their other histories are not justified beliefs.

There are fashions in history – what is liked is favoured for whatever reasons, not least of all our advisors don’t like having to rewrite things (viz a vis our Government reluctant to change the “smacking law”).

We’ve all been brought up on “things started in Mesopotamia, then via Egypt, Greece and Rome” etc….. and an age old document heavily edited by the “Roman” Catholic church…
and that the Spanish found the America’s.
This is permanent fact!
Or Is it? Really?

I’m just reading “When Troy was in England” ….

How would our concept of history be if this was true?
Egypt was often invaded by the “Sea Peoples” whom we’re told came from somewhere the Egyptians supposedly did not know of. At least until some old but “new “slants on history are examined.

It is very possible many of our concepts as taught in “Classical History”, and voluminously written about are actually quite wrong!

What if the eastern Mediterranean cultures did originate from the West? After all Atlantis was well to the west before it was destroyed.

What if Homer himself was a “Celt”. Really? What if these Celts were the inheritors of the Atlantean sea travel knowledge. The western seaboard of Europe : Portugal, Spain, France, Britain, the Low-countries and Scandinavia is thought to have embraced the same ocean in which Atlantis was largely by general opinion, thought to have been located.

Now to the East of Atlantis there is the American coastline and contact would not have just been with the European coastline.

Very simply man has always travelled and had seaworthy boats with people curious about what was around them. Every day we now read of things that change, or should change, our rigid concepts. Many people are too tied into politically correct racial application of historical knowledge. History is the story of what happened, not what we would like to have happened – that’s politics or history by design. Politicians and people who follow current PC correct history lines are trying to design what they would like to happen or to have happened. The reality this is often wrong or doesn’t work as expected.

Martin’s research doesn’t match what many “thought they knew” and “would prefer to match current PC opinion”. Well Martin is not the only person who finds current opinion lacking.

Now imagine the problem if Iman Jacob Wilkens book , “When Tory was in England” correctly expresses the Homeric story as having taken place in Western Europe and Britain. This person is not the only one to have written about this slant on European history. Lt.Col. L.A. Waddell has written about the Phoenician Origin of the Britons, Scots and Anglo-Saxons as long ago as 1925 (2nd edition.) . But Waddell wrote as if it had been an East to West event. Maybe it was or maybe a bigger maybe is the question now relevant. Was it a West to East migration? Did Egyptians arrive from the West? Curiously as Martin has noted, the pyramid builders seem to have had Nordic features (as left in the evidence of their mummies). Martin has also made similar notes in relation to mummies on the Nazca Plains in S.America. Thor Heyerdahl and many others have been scratching away at aspects of history, often with derision and contempt. Yet amongst the facts emerging it is very obvious much “traditional history” is simply “modern” opinion and when artefacts and actual proofs appear, these are often hidden away to prevent “awkward realisations” from upsetting the status quo – for political reasons, for professional jealousy reasons, and don’t rock the effin’ boat reasons.

As for the hewn caves… Well, they exist and their purposes as foos storage, shelter and embalming places are well known. They are part of Te Koutu Peninsula Pa, which was built by Ngata Tarawhai. They were originally above ground but, after the Tarawera eruption and the ash it dumped all over the region, now look subterranean. The caves are perfectly explicable in respect to the history of the Maori and are definitely not evidence of some precursor people (http://www.doc.govt.nz/upload/26537/Lake-Okataina-Scenic-Reserve-cultural-history.pdf).

My view is that as there is no evidence for a pre-Maori population in Aotearoa/New Zealand then that automatically precludes the notion of some ‘Celtic’ settlement here. Despite what Doutré asserts, if there was good evidence for a people who predated the arrival of the Maori it would be made very public; there’s already a healthy debate in both History and Archaeology as to when exactly the Maori first arrived en masse and whether smaller, non-colonising groups arrived much earlier. If evidence appeared that showed that a different people had arrived here even earlier archaeologists and historians would disseminate it widely. Academics love controversy; it’s how you generate publications, devise papers and generally garner what little fame you can in the so-called Ivory Tower.

In your opinion, what is to be made from the archaeological surveying and hewn cave ‘evidence’?

Is it the claim of celtic sttlement, or any pre-maori settlement whatsoever that you find lacking?.

I don’t really think I’ve been too skeptical in regard to Doutré; his arguments for the existence of a pre-Celtic people are lackluster at best and do not survive scrutiny.

But seriously, I do think Doutré’s thesis should cut either way. He argues for an ancient Celtic civilisation but his evidence really seems to support the Polynesian peoples as being the true descendants of the global superculture.