In the first half, researcher Michael Cremo discussed his continuing work in forbidden archaeology and human origins, including artifacts and discoveries that don't fit into conventional timelines. He reported on an intriguing discovery-- a modern human buried 7,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi was found to have traces of Denisovan DNA. The Denisovans, first uncovered in Siberia, were an extinct branch of humans that may have been related to the Neanderthals, he said. "The real significance of this new discovery is that humans like us were co-existing in the past with other types of hominids," including recently discovered species like the Denisovans, he added. Cremo said he and his co-author Richard Thompson proposed that modern humans lived concurrently with various types of hominids and ape-men for their 1993 book "Forbidden Archaeology."
He shared details of a discovery made in the 1890s in Java by Dutch researcher Eugene Dubois. He found fossil evidence for what he thought was an ancient ape-man (called Pithecanthropus erectus or Java Man) that lived around 800,000 years ago. But in more recent years, anthropologists studied the femur bone from the Java find and determined that "it's not different from an anatomically modern human," Cremo revealed. That suggests to him that during that time of nearly a million years ago, modern and primitive hominids co-existed. Elsewhere on the Indonesian islands, archaeologists found human artifacts in layers of strata about 800,000 years old, he cited. For more, check out a video interview with Michael Cremo at an archaeological site visit ('The Cortex Paradox') with David Edwards.
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Therapist with a master's degree from Penn State, Adam Blai, is a Church decreed expert on religious demonology in the Pittsburgh diocese. In the latter half, he talked about demonology and exorcisms, as well as Marian apparitions, and the origin of Halloween. By the time a possessed person seeks out an exorcism, they may have dozens or even hundreds of demons infesting them, and rather than a single ritual, they undergo a process that may take months or even years to cast out all the entities, he explained. Typically, the ritual prayers trigger the demons, and that's when the physical resistance can happen, he continued, adding that the higher-ranked demons can be incredibly strong and demonstrate superhuman feats.
Blai has looked into Marian apparitions and religious miracles. Over centuries, there've been hundreds of reports of Marian (Virgin Mary) sightings, and about 25 of them have been officially approved by the Church. He recommended the new book, The World of Marian Apparitions, chronicling the Fatima sightings and other incidents from the 20th century. During the Iron Age (around 1200 BC), the Celts developed a festival around October 31st involving bonfires to drive away the souls of the dead, and children wore masks to evade the spirits. Later, the Catholic Church established All Saints Day (Hallowmass) on November 1st, and the night before was known as Hallowmass' Eve, which became Halloween, he recounted.
News segment guests: Lauren Weinstein, Steve Kates