External links
- Official website
- Adventures Unlimited Press, official website
- World Explorers Club, official website
- David Hatcher Childress at IMDb
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David Hatcher Childress | |
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| Born | June 1, 1957 |
| Occupation | Author |
David Hatcher Childress (born June 1, 1957) is an American author, and the owner of Adventures Unlimited Press, a publishing house established in 1984 specializing in books on unusual topics such as ancient mysteries, unexplained phenomena, pseudohistory, and historical revisionism. His own works primarily concentrate on pseudoarchaeological and pseudoscientific topics such as "UFOs, secret societies, suppressed technology, cryptozoology [and] conspiracy theory." Childress, having no degree, refers to himself as a "rogue archaeologist". [1]
Born in France to American parents, and raised in Colorado and Montana, United States, Childress went to University of Montana–Missoula to study archaeology, but left college in 1976 at 19 to begin travelling in pursuit of his archaeological interests. [1] After several years in Asia and then Africa, Childress moved in 1983 to Stelle, Illinois, a community founded by New Age writer Richard Kieninger; Childress had been given one of Kieninger's books while touring Africa. [1] Childress chronicled his explorations in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s in his Lost Cities and Ancient Mysteries series of books.
Childress's first book, A Hitchhikers Guide to Africa and Arabia, was published in 1983 by Chicago Review Press. In 1984, Childress moved to Kempton, Illinois, and established a publishing company named Adventures Unlimited Press, [1] [2] which is a sole proprietorship. His company published his own works and then those of other authors, presenting fringe-scientific theories regarding ancient civilizations, cryptozoology, and little-known technologies. [1] [2] In 1992, Childress founded the World Explorers Club, which occasionally runs tours to places he writes about, and publishes a magazine called World Explorer. [1]
Patrick D. Nunn, a professor of geography at the University of the Sunshine Coast has noted that Childress is a proponent of pseudoscientific claims such as the lost continent Mu and megaliths on the Pacific islands built by levitation. Nunn wrote that "the disappearance of Mu is very convenient because it means that theorists like Childress can say what they like and appear convincing to people who are comparatively uninformed, as many naturally are, of the huge body of scientific information on Pacific geology and cultures." [3]
Historical archaeologist Charles E. Orser (editor of International Journal of Historical Archaeology ) has criticized Childress's writings:
Pseudo-archaeologists continue to perpetuate the idea that Atlantis was a racialized place. David Hatcher Childress, one of the most flagrant violators of basic archaeological reasoning, has provided perhaps the most outrageous racialized vision of Atlantis. In discussing Tiahuanaco in Bolivia—as a palace built long before any Native South Americans were present—Childress proposes that the majestic site could only have been constructed by the "Atlantean League." The league was composed of mythic seafarers who "sailed the world spreading a megalithic culture, and wore red turbans over their blond hair" (Childress 1986: 139, emphasis added). Nowhere did Plato, the only actual source on Atlantis, mention the blond hair of the Atlanteans. Plato did mention that the men and women of Atlantis, being semi-divine, were inherently good . . . The correlation between goodness and whiteness is thus obvious in Childress's formulation and in much else that has been written about Atlantis.
— Charles E. Orser, Race and Practice in Archaeological Interpretation [4]
Childress's company has published nearly 200 books (many translated into foreign languages) over the course of two dozen years. Childress himself has authored and co-authored over a dozen books, from his first in 1983 to his most recent in 2013. His influences include Erich von Däniken, Thor Heyerdahl, and Charles Berlitz. [1]
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Atlantis is a fictional island mentioned in Plato's works Timaeus and Critias as part of an allegory on the hubris of nations. In the story, Atlantis is described as a naval empire that ruled all Western parts of the known world, making it the literary counter-image of the Achaemenid Empire. After an ill-fated attempt to conquer "Ancient Athens," Atlantis falls out of favor with the deities and submerges into the Atlantic Ocean. Since Plato describes Athens as resembling his ideal state in the Republic, the Atlantis story is meant to bear witness to the superiority of his concept of a state.
The Hollow Earth is a concept proposing that the planet Earth is entirely hollow or contains a substantial interior space. Notably suggested by Edmond Halley in the late 17th century, the notion was disproven, first tentatively by Pierre Bouguer in 1740, then definitively by Charles Hutton in his Schiehallion experiment around 1774.
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Kenneth L. "Kenny" Feder is an emeritus professor of archaeology at Central Connecticut State University and the author of several books on archaeology and criticism of pseudoarchaeology such as Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. His book Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis to the Walam Olum was published in 2010. His book Ancient America: Fifty Archaeological Sites to See for Yourself was published in 2017. He is the founder and director of the Farmington River Archaeological Project.
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Rota Latte Stone Quarry, also known as the As Nieves quarry, is located near the Chamorro village of Sinapalo, on the island of Rota in the Marianas Archipelago. The prehistoric megaliths found there are believed to have been used as foundation pillars for houses, with some of them weighing up to 35 tons. Their exact age, origin, methods of quarrying and means of transportation have not been determined.
The House of Taga is an archeological site located near San Jose Village, on the island of Tinian, United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, in the Marianas Archipelago. The site is the location of a series of prehistoric latte stone pillars which were quarried about 4,000 feet (1,200 m) south of the site, only one of which is left standing erect due to past earthquakes. The name is derived from a mythological chief named Taga, who is said to have erected the pillars as a foundation for his own house.
White gods is the pseudoscientific belief that ancient cultures around the world were visited by white races in ancient times, and that they were known as "white gods".
The Lost City of the Kalahari is a historical mystery of exploration and archaeology dating to the end of the 19th century. History reports the existence of a ruined city found in the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa.
In 1864 the Chilean government ordered the construction of two corvettes in Ravenhill, the O'Higgins and the Chacabuco. Both corvettes were seized by the British authorities in order to enforce a neutrality provision in the impending state of war between Chile and Spain. In 1866 the countries reached an agreement in which Chile received the corvettes and Spain the ships Arapiles and Victoria.
Philip Coppens was a Belgian author, radio host, and commentator whose writings, speeches and television appearances focused on areas of fringe science and alternative history.
