Conspiracy week: white people are Satanic Illuminati Neanderthals!

Here's the all-time winning YouTube video title: "The Satanic Neanderthal Edomite Evolution"


This is one of those weirdo slideshows that is hell-bent on proving a point: in this case, that white people are Edomites, descended from Esau (Jacob's brother in the bible) who had light skin and red hair. Then you connect the dots and realize that the Edomites were Neanderthals! Since they had light skin and hair too, maybe even freckles, and all-non African people today seem probably to have some Neanderthal genes (that much is for reals anyway). The savage Neanderthal genes explain the evil and sadistic behavior of white people in general. Then we get into the Illuminati, Satan, and the NWO! This is so weird, it's totally worth watching. 

This is Black Hebrew Israelite type thinking with extra racism and paranoia thrown in. Undercover Black Man unpacks it pretty well in this article. The formula is pretty familiar however - the white supremacist Christian Identity movement is also interested in the Jacob/Esau story, except that they see the Jews as the evil Edomites, and non-Jewish Europeans as the real Hebrews. Some white supremacist groups are also seizing on the Neanderthal gene findings to "prove" that "race" is real after all. On the other hand, maybe Bob Marley is the real Edomite. It's all so confusing.

These conspiracy theories are funny, you see the same elements repeating themselves over and over again, like there's only a certain number of weird ideas to go around. Take a dash of Illuminati, add some alien interbreeding with humans in antiquity, reference Jacob and Esau or some other Bible story, add a reference to a scientific study or excavation, and you're done! I should make a conspiracy generator.

Not to say there aren't originally freaky theories out there. This guy is my new favorite, he thinks that Silvio Berlusconi is suppressing telepathy and causing unnatural menstruation.

Richard Pryor: Egypt, 1909

In an ancient tomb, Richard Pryor discovers humanity's secrets... and his colleagues can't take it.

First aired on the Richard Pryor Show on September 20, 1977

Excavating with the X-Clan

Archaeologists discover the tombs of the Underseer and the Overseer, and lo, X-Clan is unleashed! Thanks to Sean for the video tip.



X-Clan was formed in 1990, broke up in 1992, and recently re-formed. They came out of a New York hip-hop scene that was heavily intertwined with political activism and Black nationalism. Besides having made some total jams, they have awesome uniforms and a great archaeopop aesthetic that mixes ancient Egypt, the African diaspora, and American urban style.

In North America, I think esoteric/Afrocentric hip-hop artists have done the best job of using archaeological and historical motifs to create a modern identity, mostly through the beliefs of the Nation of Gods and Earths (aka '5 percenters') a religious tendency that branched off of the Nation of Islam in the 1960s. There's been a lot of influential hip-hop artists out of this philosophy (Busta Rhymes, Eric B, Wu-Tang, Nas, Brand Nubian, Big Daddy Kane, Jay-Z). The symbology of Egypt is crucial (e.g. this Nas cover) and a lot of these artists' work deal with history and identity in one way or another.

X-Clan have a habit of poking fun at the historical representations of Black people in their videos that I really dig, pun intended. The tomb-opening scene in the video above lampoons the idea that African history is something of the past: Egypt's not dead! The opening to the video of 'Fire and Earth' (below) totally destroys the stereotype of the 'primitive' Black man AND sarcastically suggests that the white guys in black face are the real neanderthals, all in about 10 seconds:


This is one of the songs that has gotten stuck in my head most often over the last 20 years.

A lot of people find Afrocentric approaches to archaeology absurd or offensive. I think that's bullshit - people have the right to remix archaeology however they want and it's GOOD if the past means something to everyone.
Stop yourself next time you see a neoclassical façade in an American city and contemplate the breathtaking audacity of white Americans claiming to be the heirs of the ancient Greeks. I mean, check out this building here, the Nashville Parthenon. It's a life-size reproduction and is actually more complete than the original. It even has a cult statue of Athena, right here in the bible-loving heart of our "Christian Republic"! In Nashville! Weird as hell. But no one's shocked anymore by the bizarreness of the ideological program "America=Ancient Greece". 200 years of familiarity, and patronage from powerful people, have made the aesthetic vocabulary of Greece and Rome boringly normal. Remixing the past only seems ridiculous when it's people who are traditionally disempowered doing it. Daring to find your own meanings in the past is 'uppity' behavior (that stuff is for the experts, y'all quiet down!).

Seriously? We could use a lot more uppityness in the world of history and archaeology.

Music to Dig By: Sun Ra at the Pyramids, 1971

Sun Ra is one of the kings of archaeopop aesthetics and a major figure in Jazz and afro-futurism. In 1971 he fulfilled a lifelong dream and played at the Great Pyramid. This footage was taken there and on a side trip to Sardinia and used in the amazing 1972 film Space is the Place. (The rest of which was filmed here in Oakland and San Francisco!) It's magnificent.

Space is the Place is required viewing for Archaeopop readers, get to it!

I really wish I could have taken Sun Ra's class at Berkeley:

In early 1971 Sun Ra was artist-in-residence at University of California, Berkeley, teaching a course called "The Black Man In the Cosmos". Rather few students enrolled but the classes were often full of curious persons from the surrounding community. One half-hour of each class was devoted to a lecture (complete with handouts and homework assignments), the other half-hour to an Arkestra performance or Sun Ra keyboard solo. Reading lists included the works of Madame Blavatsky and Henry Dumas, the Book of the Dead, Alexander Hislop's The Two Babylons, The Book of Oahspe and assorted volumes concerning Egyptian hieroglyphs, African American folklore, and other topics.

Also check out this peculiar exhibition, "Sun Ra meets Napoleon: Fragments of the Alter-Future", which juxtaposes the pioneering Egyptologists Giovanni Belzoni and François Champollion with the music of Sun Ra. Belzoni in particular deserves the attention: he started life as a circus strongman and ended up as an Egyptologist!

Ancient Egypt in Georgia: Tama-Re

The always-excellent BLDGBLOG profiles Tama-Re, an ancient Egyptian theme city built by cult leader Dwight York in Georgia:

The Urban Dictionary's description of Tama-Re is amazing; it reads like every race-based fear of the white U.S. middle class summed up in one surreal location.

When York and his Nuwaubians moved there and began erecting pyramids and obelisks there was much curiosity about the group. However trouble started when the citizens became aware of the fact that York was an ex-Black Panther and a convicted felon and statutory rapist who was preaching the gospel that whites were mutants and were inferior to blacks. There is also a foam rubber alien on display in the compound that causes problems with public relations. Officials have had problems with the Nuwaubians failing to comply with zoning and building permits that coincide with what they have created. The Nuwaubians feel that this is a racist attack.

It's hard to top a "foam rubber alien," but the fear-factor nonetheless gets ratcheted up a notch:

Many children from upper middle class cities have left college to live in poverty at the cult's compound, Tama Re. This has caused a lot of turmoil in the lives of many families who can't accept the fact that their sons and daughters have left them to follow an alien messiah. Throughout the grounds speakers everywhere emit the humming sound of Egyptian chants 24 hours a day. Inside one of the pyramids you can buy books and clothes as well as a Dr. York doll. The people who live on the land dwell in a trailer park full of double-wides. York claims his people are Moors who traveled by foot from Africa to what is currently Georgia before the continental drift. The only problem with this "indisputable" fact is that the moors were Muslims who existed way after the birth of Christ which was only approximately 2000 years ago.

Ergo, there was no way in plate tectonics that they could have walked all the way to Georgia.

In June 2005, after the compound's governmental seizure, financial forfeiture, and ensuing sale for $1.1 million, outright demolition began. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at the time, the local sheriff was on the scene, "speaking with relish as he watched crews tear through the series of obelisks, statues, arches and buildings. Many of the dozens of structures were weathered and in disrepair. He said very few of the Egyptian structures or objects were worth salvaging. 'It feels good to tear down the SOB myself,' he said. 'By the middle of next week, there will be nothing but a couple of pyramids.'"

Nuwabia is another permutation of the idea that lost tribes of 'Moors' or Egyptians settled America, first promoted more than a century ago by Noble Drew Ali of the Moorish Science Temple and more recently popularized in the writings of Hakim Bey/Peter Lamborn Wilson, where the concept of 'Moor' is used in a more esoteric, metaphorical sense of persecuted 'other' condemned to wander and live on the margins of the Babylon that is American society. All combined, of course, with that uniquely American strain of Egyptomania found in a wild range of characters from Joseph Smith of the Mormon Church to Sun Ra's extra-solar odysseys.

One of the best and worst things about America is that people have treated it as a blank slate to build their own versions of the past - or their galleries of how the past ought to have been.

Music to Dig By: Egyptian Lover, 'Egypt Egypt'

Afrocentric archaeology is an amazing subject and frankly deserves a blog or three all by itself. Many white folks pooh-pooh the notion that ancient Egypt is a part of Black and African history. But Europeans claim all kinds of preposterous things about how they’re the spiritual heirs of the ancient Greeks, without the slightest hint of irony. Serious people even think the Elgin Marbles should stay in London!

The point is, it’s just plain fun to appropriate the past, especially when it gets you in with The Ladies. So when a DJ from LA with extremely smooooth ways wants to become “The Egyptian Lover”, I’ll just chill out and go along for the ride.

Download: Egyptian Lover - 'Egypt, Egypt' (1984)

"Pyramids are Oh so shiny
The women here are Oh so cute
The freaks are on the floor now
Dancing to beats that I compute"

This is a stone cold classic electro jam, no way around it. It has my two favorite things, 80s futurism and mysterious archaeological references, all together in one package. Buy the album “On The Nile” here.

Egyptian Lover was part of the early 1980s west coast electro and hiphop scene, hanging with the likes of Ice T, Arabian Prince, and Dr Dre. In this 1983 nugget from the YouTubes, Chris “The Glove” Taylor explains how to cut and scratch while Egyptian Lover spins and Ice-T raps.



Egyptian Lover’s been on tour lately, and his shows are supposed to be pretty good. He also gives funny interviews, check out the ones at West Coast Pioneers. (He claims 'Egypt Egypt' took him 30 minutes to create!)

I can’t write about the Egyptian Lover without mentioning his most incredible contribution to our understanding of LGBT issues. Click here, you won’t regret it.