August 22, 2009

Carleton Coon on video

The Penn Museum has put up "What in the Word", a series from the 1950s, in which a group of panelists (one of which is physical anthropologist Carleton Coon) discuss various artifacts in the context of world archaeology/anthropology/history.

Here is the first episode:

5 comments:

Kepler said...

Thanks, Dienekes.
Very funny how they portrayed things back then.
I couldn't help to see countries in the mpa. Germany was divided by occupation forces back then and most of Africa were colonies.

Bob Campbell said...

I knew Dr. Schuyler Van Rensselaer Camman, professor of (East) Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where these episodes were taped. He was from a Dutch patrician family on Long Island. He is the tall person standing on the right. I was at Penn during the 1960's.

D. B. Light said...

I remember watching this show when I was a child. It sparked my interest in the past. Much later I got a Ph. D. in History from Penn. The University Museum was one of my favorite places to read and study.

Anonymous said...

Strange spooky presentation. A little like looking at a crystal ball, and the at a UFO.

Coon's New England accent made me laugh. Interesting how they did not really know the age or origin of the exhibits specifically but just in a general way. The discussion on the piece of Obsidian was the most amusing. Coon's habit of looking around and over his glasses was annoying.

Patrick Henry said...

Major Carleton Coon was in the OSS during World War II and was one of the first persons to advocate assassination in order to eliminate tyrants or dictators who were inimical to the interests of the United States. See the Jim Hougan web site for more information. Coon was also the prototype or paradigm for the "Indiana Jones" character. They both were intellectual Anthropologists and Egyptologists who worked for either the OSS or the CIA (Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), and they both packed a pistol (Coon's pistol was used to kill Admiral Darlan head of the Vichy French) and they both dabbled in Mind Control and UFO sightings as well. Coon worked under Ulius Amoss in Cairo, Egypt and both reported to Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg of the Air Force. Amoss used funding from Clendenin J. Ryan to perpetrate soldier of fortune operations like getting a Polish pilot to bring over a Soviet MiG jet for analysis by U.S. forces and they tried to kidnap Lenin's son as well. Ryan later funded Young Americans for Freedom for William F. Buckley, Jr. according to Doug Caddy who roomed with Ryan's son at Georgetown. Ryan's father sent industrial diamonds from his South African diamond mines to Hitler during World War II and was considered a traitor for doing that. Amoss sold his GramTrade Intl firm to Boston Metals Processing in 1961 and later Boston Metals and Baldt Anchor and Chain were involved with laundering money for the Contras in Nicaragua according to Robert Maxwell the Trust Officer at The Bank of Maryland. Coon and Amoss were also involved with Mind Controlled programmed assassins and their prize pupil, Robert Emmettt Johnson actually fired shots at JFK in Dealey Plaza. By that time Johnson was run by Ray S. Cline of the CIA. Cline later ran The World Anti-Communist League US chapter during its most fascist period. While Coon used programmed assassins to kill Vichy or Nazi leaders, Cline used them to murder Communists and leftists instead.