The Americas Revealed goes high tech for the remainder of 2021

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect and City Planner

Our next article kicks off types of articles that you will see more and more of in future months. I will be comprehensively analyzing a chunk of concrete with a mural on one side that I found near Pozo Rico, Veracruz.

Bet most of you didn’t know that the Totonacs of eastern Mexico constructed concrete buildings. You certainly are not told that in Wikipedia. This concrete was originally fabricated around 800 AD. Around 1200 AD, the city in which it was made, was sacked by Chichimec barbarians. For the next 770 years, the mural sat face down in highly acidic, constantly damp and warm, tropical soil. Yet, as you can see below, it is in almost perfect condition, other than being broken off the main (approximately) 6 feet by 8 feet mural, when it fell to the ground almost eight centuries ago.

To put things in perspective . . . a modern concrete block would essentially be sand after being exposed to such conditions for a few decades. There is virtually nothing left of Civil War soldier skeletons, who were buried without a coffin in the acidic soils of the Lower Southeast. The soil around Pozo Rico are even more acidic. How could he be?

I now have a wide range of state-of-the-art equipment to comprehensively analyze and document ancient architecture. These include a powerful graphics platform computer, the latest architectural software, ultra-HD format digital camera and video camera with night vision, infrared electronic binoculars (with built-in video camera), magnetometer, Geiger counter, ultra-sensitive sound detection device, high-power, portable ultraviolet lamp, a portable, battery-operated, 1000X geologist’s microscope, a 2000X electronic laboratory microscope that see anything larger than a virus and a wide range of laser or electronic measuring devices. The portable and lab microscopes can view transparent and three dimensional objects with either visible or ultraviolet light. I am currently working on videos, which combine use of virtual reality animation software with these new devices.

Later on in the year, I will be using this equipment to compare potsherds and statuary that I picked up off the ground in Mexico to their counterparts obtained the same way in the Southeast. We also will be examining some of the Georgia petroglyphs and stone ruins close up.

A funny footnote

As many of you know, when I first moved to the Nacoochee Valley in May 2018, local law enforcement began telling anyone, who would listen that I “was a gay, male prostitute with AIDS, living off of welfare. All the buildings that I had designed had fallen down.” Apparently, they thought that they were still in Middle School. The proof of my criminal activity was that all real men are Republicans and have taken Adolf Hitler as thar Lard and Saveyer.

I told this to my long time sweety, Vivi, in northeastern France after we renewed communications in late 2020. It took her several days to stop laughing uncontrollably. She then wrote me back, offering to appear au naturelle in front of those law enforcement agencies, so they would know what a REAL woman looks like. She is healthier and curvier looking now than when I first met her, but French women are notorious for maintaining a youthful physique.

Then in late 2019, the rogue law enforcement officers began following me around at every place I shopped or ate a fast food meal, telling the management and employees that “I was a predator of young women.” By “young women” they meant over 18 and under 100.

That didn’t make any sense. I have not been on a date since before the Great Recession. Until 2018, I did have the discretional income to afford a date. Monasteries from around the world are constantly sending me pre-approved membership cards.

After telling Vivi about me being relabeled a predator of young women, her response was quick . . . “those girls should be so lucky!” Unfortunately, Vivi has been in a relationship for over 20 years and so can only be my cheerleader . . . but she’s a good one!

Yesterday, I found out from a federal investigator, how the second rumor got started. I was struck twice by ground lightening in July 2019, while working on my computer. All of the electronic devices were knocked out, plus several lithium batteries exploded. My computer mother board literally melted. I had to replace everything, except my detached back-up data storage.

Georgia State law enforcement is being hard pressed to explain why they have tapped my phone since 1995, when moved permanently back to Georgia. So . . . after I bought a new computer, some Einstein there decided that there might be something in my new computer for which they could arrest me.

A flunky, just out of college, was assigned the task of hacking into my computer, while I was online then uploading ALL of the thousands of photographs . . . mostly of buildings and nature scenes. Along with those thousands of architectural photos were a couple dozen photos of my favorite girlfriends from age 18 onward, plus a photo of Vivi at age 16, when she started modeling. I first met her on her 27th birthday at a Christmas party in Alexandria, VA.

Grasping at straws, these not-so-sharp pencils assumed that since the photos were downloaded in 2019, they were made in 2019. Vivi’s oldest modeling photo was made in 1979! I was obviously stalking and seducing young womenz! They were excited because some of the photos were in France, Sweden and Mexico . . . so I could be labeled an international criminal. Things are not going as planned, however.

Vivi sent me a comment last night, while I was asleep. “Richard! Did I not beg you to fly back home with me to France in June 1991?”

So far, I have not figured out any way that high tech analysis of ancient buildings can be interpreted as a crime.