Greg & Lora Little
Mound Builders
Mound Builders is the term used to describe a number of indigenous American cultures that were responsible for the building of over 100.000 burial and ceremonial mounds along the Mississippi Valley from as early as 6,000 years ago.
There was a reluctance, by many, to credit the ancestors of today’s Native Americans with the construction of these mounds and so were prepared to attribute their existence to almost anyone except the early ‘Indians’. The lost tribes of Israel or even the Vikings were suggested.
Ignatius Donnelly proposed that colonists from Atlantis were responsible for the construction of the mounds, devoting chapter three of part five of his book to the idea. Preceding Donnelly’s claim of an Atlantean connection for the Mississippi Mounds were those of the 19th-century writer, Lafcadio Hearn. Jason Colavito has expanded on Hearn’s probable sources, which include P.G. Wodehouse’s grandfather, John Bathurst Deane(a).
Colavito has now published The Mound Builder Myth [1723] in which he debunks the 19th-century white supremacist attempts to claim that the mounds “as the work of a lost white race of “true” native Americans.”
>Greg and Lora Little have also suggested a link between Atlantis and the Mound Builders(b). Another article more specifically claims that the Cherokee people were Mound Builders and are descendants of Atlanteans(c).<
(a) Roundup: Pharaohs’ Curse on “Today,” Greek Myths in the Bronze Age, and More – JASON COLAVITO
(b) The Mound Builders: Giant Skeletons and the Soul’s Journey to the Sky | Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E. *
(c) Did the Cherokee Migrate from Atlantis? | Parisha’s Circle (wordpress.com) *
Donato, William Michael
William Michael Donato is an American archaeologist who holds an MA in anthropology and is a regular contributor to the Ancient American and Atlantis Rising magazines and is an advocate of a Bimini location for Atlantis. He was the founder of The Atlantis Organisation (TAO) whose work is now continued by the Apex Institute(a), which was established in 2001 to investigate sites in the Bahamas and other places around the world that might provide evidence of ancient advanced civilizations.
As of November 2016, I can find no trace of the Apex Institute apart from a website(b) with a bald mission statement.! Donato is also Archaeology Coordinator for the Genesis Quest network(c).
Donato’s Master’s Thesis was entitled A Re-examination of the Atlantis Theory. Donato was a member of the 2005 team of researchers who claim to have found definitive evidence of two submerged ancient harbours off Bimini.
Donato advises me that his “November 2006 expedition verified side-scan sonar images from 1998 and 1999. The ARE and my friends Greg and Lora Little have verified some of the targets, but no one has yet looked at the best ones — which resemble Maya-style temple pyramids. According to Greg’s account, one area has 35 building foundations in the target area of my side-scan sub-bottom profiling expedition.”
*(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20130814012706/https://apexinstitute.org/Mission.aspx*
(b) https://www.apexinstitute.org/
(c) https://www.genesisquest.org/?s=Donato