Three people claiming to be members of the US Army shot this Video where they go into Breitenwinner Cave in Germany, apparently part of a live fire range on a US military base. While inside, they find a large number of skeletal remains, including some larger peices they claim are giant human skeletons. Of course, they are not, looking clearly like animal remains.
Through their progress they make various other mistakes as well. First, they say that some bones are burried and others are just people that died inside the cave. The low levels of articulation seem to indicate that they actually did not die in the site, since we should then expect at least some articulation. Additionaly, the burried remains may very well just be old remains under the constant fall of sediment.
Finally, they are just terribly abusive to the site, throwing and banging what they claim is a fossilized homid skull, digging violently through layers of bones, and generally disturbing a potential site. After this destruction, they procede to discuss how a proper burrial seems like the right thing to do, which is quite absurd after their behavior.
If these are actually members of the military, they should be repremanded for their destruction of archaeological site. However, I generally an inclined to think this is more of a hoax of some idiot kids.
Filed under: Archaeoporn, Looting | Tagged: Archaeoporn, Army, Breitenwinner Cave, Giant Skeletons, Hoax, Human Remains, Military
first off it was impossible to explore the cave without walking on top of the remains of those inside. second, we dug through the remains because we were looking for a skull to bring back as evidence. we did bring one bone back with us and it has been identified as a human humeral shaft. third, at no time in the video did we ever say the bones were from giants, and we did talk about many possibilities. fourth, in order to access parts of the cave, it was very unlikely that they carried bodies into it. it was hard for us to go in there just carrying backpacks, let alone a body. and finally fifth, the cave is on the grounds of the joint multinational readiness center in germany… formerly known as stalag 383 (a nazi prisoner of war camp). im sure you would have done everything in a perfect manner if you came across a mass grave. how can this be a hoax? are they chicken bones?
In the video, someone holds up a vert. and says it appears to be human and giant, it is clearly not human, in any way, and resembles no hominid I know of.
Taking any bone is looting, and is a criminal offense, and something that soldiers are trained against doing, disturbing the bones through violent digging was unnecessary, and destructive tot he archaeological site, in that it destroys context and stratigraphy.
Even if it were difficult to get into the cave carrying someone, the archaeological evidence is clearly against any large number of people dying in there on their own, at least from the video. There is no clear articulation which would be expected, and the lack of skulls points to an obvious human hand in internment.
Would I have done everything perfectly from an archaeological perspective? Yes, because I would have first reported it to the army branch responsible for such things, and would certainly not have throne bones, banged them against rocks, or dug through them in the rough manner presented in this video. There is a clear difference between surveying and destroying portions of a site.
As for it being a hoax, no I do believe there may be human bones, though nothing in the video appeared dirrectly to look like one to me in the light, but the claim that has been circulating with this is that they were giants. This likely stems from the obvious misidentification of the vert. in one scene.
The question of it being H. sapiens (and thus from WWII) must also be asked, since one bone was said to have been fossilized. This could not have taken place within such a time frame, and could mean that these were actually H. neanderthalensis, though I am unsure if the bone in question was actually a fossil.
I would suggest against any such visits in the future, or the removal of further bones, as this is looting, and violates various international laws, perhaps you should alert local universities or other such institutions.
listen, i am a soldier and we have never been trained on anthropoligical related stuff. what is the standard operating procedure for a situation like this… you find a mass grave with thousands of bones, there are fake landmines around the entrance to the cave, its located in the heart of a U.S. Army Training Base for Nato forces, and the cave is currently located in the part of the “box” or training area that happens to be a live fire area where they drop munitions from planes and helicopters. if you are so worried about us destructing bones by recklessly digging through the evidence, maybe you should also be worried about american war planes boming the entrance to the cave and the block surrounding it! as far as it being a hoax, what else do you want from us? we have a bone, we have pictures of the bone, we have a video of the site, we have had the bone identified as a human humeral shaft, an osteologist has clearly identified a lumbar vertebrae in the video, we have put the exact location and gps coordinates of the cave on the website… what do you want now…. a carcass dug up and stuffed in your mailbox. by you saying this is a hoax it discredits the fact i say (FACT) that it is there and the u.s. military uses the land for target practice. If this was a cemetary people would be freaking out but because its a cave… who cares? oh, be sure to punish the soldiers who let it known to the world though!
and what exactly is the hoax? there are bones within the cave… obviously some of the bones are larger than human, there are thousands of bones in there and it is on the ground of the joint multinational training center…. exactly where is the hoax? what pisses me off is that by your website you take away any chances of us getting a real explanation of this matter. if the majority of people think this is a hoax due to you… do you think the u.s. goverment would ever warrant an investigation? do you believe that the chain of command in hohenfels does not know about this cave…. who do you think bought the gates barring the entrance… fairies? you had more than enough opportunities to email me at cavelore.com, there you could have checked my credibility, seen pictures of the bones and site, and emailed me any questions. but no, you just assume you know everything and this is a huge hoax. thanks for not helping out our cause!
The website you discuss, cavelore.com, is presenting the possibility that this is a site for ancient giants, which of course is not true. This is the hoax I was speaking of.
As I have stated, looting of a bone is grave robbing, and an breach of various international laws concerning antiquities, and destructive to site context. As was the violent digging. Your disruption of the site has been destructive of its value, and may actually make it less likely for archaeologists to care about it.
On the website I link to, this cave is tied to some bible UFO crap and over the internet is linked to all sorts of other woo.
As for the human bone, yes you may have taken one illegally from the site, unfortunately it now lacks context, and no archaeologist would be able to use in in study of the site. No bone on the video are clear enough to be identified as definitely human, which has been supported by a physical anthropologist I have talked with in discussion of it. Additionally, the site notes the looted bone as being a humeral shaft. Was this the exact words of the analysis? Is there a copy of the analysis, and who was it carried out by?
Were there actually fossilized bones, as stated in the video? This could significantly change the picture of what is going on here, as these would not be from Nazi mass graves.
So, to sum it up so that you might understand exactly what I say is a hoax: There is no evidence of giant humans or other unexplained evidence at this site, to spite various claims to the contrary.
There may be human remains in the site, though the video does not make this clear, and offers no means of dating the various levels of human or other remains. There is no clear evidence of articulated bones leading to the interpretation presented that humans may have died naturally in the caves.
The work of the three soldiers is destructive, non-archaeological, and likely illegal. It goes against US military policy on antiquities, and is clearly against the hope, stated by one soldier, that those inside receive “proper” burials.
i am the one in the blue coat in the video… if you go to my myspace you can see my profile and pictures to back up who i say i am. i do regret going through the bone piles in a reckless fashion but time was of the essence. also i am not an anthropology major and we thought that us searching with the equipment we had available was less hazardous then the bombing of the site that is happening today. the reason that cavelore has information about giants on it is because there was a report submitted to the german goverment and city of amberg dated from 1535 that talked about this cave. in the original report it also talked about bones being in this cave and many of a massive proportion. in the report it also mentions huge human skulls. so it is appropriate that when we talk about the possible history of the cave… we talk about the entire history including the 1535 exploration of berthold buchner and his opinions. i personally am not a conspiracy nut or find myself an active participant in the ufo community. i am simply a soldier who found a mass grave located on a live fire munitions range… dugg through it quickly to find a skull… something that anyone looking at it could not contest… and get out before any training rotations occured again. the person who gave us the information about the humeral shaft is Dr. Jeff Muldrum from Idaho State University. We have not yet carbon dated the bone though due to lack of knowledge on how to get it done…. plus the lack of funds to accomplish this. Though we both are in agreement that this is an important archaeological site… the specifics of the exploration or what my friends did in the video should be disregarded. what should be the main issue at hand here is the u.s. military supports nato and other coalition soldiers dropping amunition from helicopters, mortars, and planes over the grounds of this cave. i could care less if they are giants, midgets, bigfoots, humans, dinosaurs, etc etc etc… the site should be preserved and those who could identify the remains should be allowed to do so. it would take only one week for anthropologists or archaeologists to examine the complex for further information. we only found one bone that appeared to be fossilized.(seen in the video) there were three parts of the cave (1) the top of the cave with broken and burned bones in a 4 to 5 foot pile spanning a room about 200 square feet (2) what we refer to as the hallway, bones that are poorly buried in some ritualistic manner in the middle of the cave. there are rock walls about 4 to 5 feet high holding the bones back on either side of the explorer as you walk through the cave (3) the bottom of the cave where bones appear to be very very old and are found in this huge clay pile. its a hard situation you put me in. if i dont take any bones and leave everything as is you will state that the bones are from cave bears or horses… not human, if i take a bone to get analyzed now you accuse me of being a graverobber. either way i guess im in the wrong!
As a combat photographer, you should be well aware that photos would be sufficient to illustrate a mass grave.
As a Soldier, you should be aware of international law concerning antiquities.
The issue of giants etc, is of great concern to the media both you and I have linked to, especially cavelore.com, which you are associated with. Which attempts to tie the site to the the bible and giant hoaxes from around the world.
As for the bombing, yes it may cause some damage, but the collapse of caves is constant in any environment and part of preservation, disturbing context and removal of bones by looters cannot be adjusted for nearly as easily by archaeologists. Unfortunately, even if carbon dated, the bone you looted is beyond archaeological use now, and is actually prohibited in most scholarly publications.
I am not going to state that the bones are anything without evidence, unfortunately the only really clear evidence at present is the single vert. picked up and shown clearly in a single shot. While I believe the assertion that their may be human remains in the site it remains unsupported (as the looted bone cannot actually be linked through any reliable means, even the video does not show it).
Quite frankly, it is an easy position, finds such as this should be reported to the proper governmental authorities, or in this case the proper military authorities. There are regulations concerning this, as this is not the first set of remains to be found on a military site. Any statement about horses or cave bears does not mean the site should not be excavated.
But instead, this video popularizes various misconceptions of history and destructive exploration and looting of archaeological sites.
would you consider the bombing of a cemetary part of a normally changing environment? i was in the military for 7 and a half years and i know for a fact i was never taught a proper standard operating procedure for this type of scenario. the simple truth is that it is a much greater chance that these are humans buried in a ritualized manner than cave bears or horses. how can you deny past human envolvement with this cave complex? i encourage you to watch the video again but make sure it is the one on the cavelore website and not myspace or google. the one on the site has had the gamma and brightness adjusted at different spots as to show more of the detail within. i am willing to bet money that you and most anthropologists or archaeologists have never heard of this cave before. the u.s. army has been there for 60+ years. doesnt it sadden you to know the army has never warranted an investigation before of a cave in the middle of the training post (and former American and British P.O.W. camp for that matter ((Stalag 383))? that is why we did not take it to military authorities, if they wanted an investigation they would have done it long before i was stationed there. think about what kind of monkey wrench it would throw in the training rotational plan of the jmrc if a mass grave was discovered on the soil of a P.O.W. camp. first, the post public affairs officer would be busy every single day escorting professionals from your background through the training grounds until the investigation was over. second, the training rotation for 20+ countries would be postponed or impaired in some way before their deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Balkans. Third, what goverment would want to finance this operation? Don’t you think the army priorities will not lie with escorting anthropologists during a time of war? this would not just effect the army, it would affect the goverment contractors such as raytheon, anteon, general dynamics, ponds, etc etc etc that work on the premises. one lower enlisted soldiers testimony to the chain of command will not change the army’s view on this… however massive outcry of a major injustice to history will force them to investigate. i dont want to politely ask the chain of command, i want the media outlets to force the chain of command into compliance. the only reason giants are even mentioned in this situation is because 1) there are large bones in the cave and 2) a historical document filed with the german goverment in 1535 makes mention of it. those two reasons only! if you worked for a small company and found 200 human corpses in the basement of it, would you go tell the about to retire CEO that works two floors above? probably not, because he will already know about it. how is this situation different? though my mates and i are definitely not experts in excavation, you have to at least agree with the possible utopian result…. a full investigation with qualified individuals and moving of the live fire range to elsewhere on the 200 square mile training area. this is what we are attempting to force
Ok, let me first say that no, I had not heard of this cave, but that isn’t because of any cover up or anything, its because it isn’t unique at all, things like this exist the world over.
As for the government escorting anthropologists, they do it all the time when they find human remains or important sites.
The fact is that you went about doing this the wrong way, and the addition of a website arguing for giants and biblical UFOs is only going to make serious scholars laugh.
Having large bones in the cave that are clearly non-human certainly does not help in making anyone look positively on such claims, nor does relying on a document from 1535, a period well before serious archaeology.
Your concern doesn’t change the fact that you claim to have looted a dead person’s arm, although it cannot actually be identified as a human humeral shaft.
It appears to me that archaeologyknits is a skeptic and no matter what you say Danny your not going to convince him. Who cares what he thinks. You could find a giant skull and your still going to have someone say it’s not real. There’s always someone going to take up an arguement against you. So just do what your doing and prove him wrong.
You both sound like a couple of ladies though. Sorry, I hate to say it, but you do.
Being a skeptic does not mean I won’t believe anything, I just want evidence. A giant skull would do it, though I would want many tests run to make sure it was not a second Piltdown Man. However, if it were looted, it would be essentially worthless.
The situation here, is that there is insufficient evidence to even convince a bigfoot proponent/physical anthropologist whom the soldiers had analyze the bone. This is someone of their choosing, who is open to fringe beliefs, but even he did not find evidence of hominids in the caves in any conclusive manner.
This is how science works, evidence is necessary, especially when there is epistemological evidence strongly against a claim. It’s fine if someone like Danny can prove people wrong, but the fact that he is breaking to the law to do so is not defensible, nor is it very likely anyway.
how exactly does one get a bone professionally analyzed and carbon dated without removing it from the cave? especially when the goverment does not give you permission to be there and continues dropping munitions. if we would have never have brought this up this historical site would have been lost to history.
Well, at present, any carbon dating etc is worthless, as it has been removed from the site, potentially contaminated, and was removed from context in a non-documented manner.
For other analysis, such as identification, one would think that a photographer for the military would see the obvious value of pictures.
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I just stumbled across this page by accident, but I had to leave a comment. This Danny kid is no more of an expert than this kid who runs this blog, for him to give the same redundant attacks, instead of contacting the soldiers is ridiculous. Instead of making himself looking like an idiot, the blogger should have contacted the soldier in question if he ever wanted to present himself with a semblance of professionalism. And as far as the web site that this video is associated with it didn’t see any where on the site that say “FACT: GIANT’S ARE REAL.” I was just made aware of the history and myths of the caves. Is the document accurate? Who knows? Keep in mind the date of the document, when is it date for? The 1500’s? Well if you showed those people a flash light they would have thought it was magic. So I don’t see it as being amazingly reliable, but I still see it as being more reliable that an archaeological hobbyist bloggers point of view.
I think that the site actually begins with the text “Giants were here!”.
Additionally, as Danny has responded here, this post was quite an effective means of contacting the soldiers, while also exposing the manifold issues involved in the site.
The way these guys treated that site is shocking. A few photos, a video, fine. But digging around? Looting? I have a lecturer on my Archaeology course who’d have a heart attack if he saw that video. Danny’s defence of his actions is poor. Someone doesn’t have to have a BA in arch/anth to know that a possible mass grave should be treated carefully and referred to experts with all due haste. Personally, I hope these dudes get their arses handed to them by the relevant authorities.
blah blah blah, reprimand them, they should be punished… la la la! dont punish the men with the bombs, punish the men with the shovels. like i said, the army already knows it is there, they have not done official testing on the bones within so they could be of anything. one thing is for sure though, it is very unlikely that cows and pigs were buried in this cave in a ritualistic fashion. second what cave people would live in a cave that also held their dead? wouldnt the smell be horrible? i have said a thousand times that i regret digging through the bone piles because it ended up being in vain. the new commenters dont need to repeat it for an umpteenth time how i am so horrible. you want to blame someone, blame uncle sam and the u.s. army for disregarding this site for 60 years, blame uncle sam for allowing tank battles to happen around castles on the hohenfels training area.
Actually it is quite common to find dead people in caves they may have lived in.
As for the government ignoring it, I hardly call closing it off ignoring it.
Well, I can tell you as a fact since I live pretty close to this area and I haven’t heard about this cave before this documentation has been published. All other caves, cemetaries and working camps from WWII are officially listed and can also be visited. So how come, this one is not on any list, can not be visited and is not known as an official mass grave?
The only report in my mother language about it is from a student of a German university speaking of the same document from 1535. Better said a report aboout the city of Velburg.
Yes, it was not right that he was digging. But I think you should keep in mind it was a mass grave with thousands of bones. Do you think you could have made a right decision after seeing piles of bones everywhere? If so, then you are not being realistic.
I do think it was right what they did. Because this is happening on German ground and a cave with a mass grave is not different from a cemetary. If you go to Nuremberg there is the Documentation Centre…there you can find pretty much everything from WWII and all infos about work camps, concentration camps, gas chambers, etc. Well, I have been there 8 times so far and there is still not even one word said about the caves and that area…How come?
Anyways, the people who have died in there, maybe Americans, Canadians, Jewish or maybe Germans still do deserve what all humans deserve.
I will make sure that this goes to the right people and publish it, so that the German population knows what is happening behind their backs.
Because it is obvious that they don’t know about it.
And the US Army happening to put fake landmines right in front of it, and barriers…makes it obvious that they DO KNOW about it but do not give a damn to investigate.
So either they are trying to hide this or they basically don’t give a damn that this is still German property and there might be German, Jewish, American or Canadian bones in there.
Oh and, whatever your name it archaeologyknits, as long as you didn’t get your ass to Germany, Bavaria, Hohenfels don’t even dare to talk about this at all as it’d be a hoax.
Because in this case you have no idea, no evidence that it is a hoax. Danny has brought the best evidences he could get for the fact that his ass could be bombed as soon as he’d leave the cave. Or do you expect a war journalist also to first think “oh no, i’ll stay in today, it’s not safe enough… and the world does not need to know what is going on anyways”?
Btw, did you know that in Germany you can be sued for this? Yeah. So please, until you don’t arrive at the Munich airport or Nuremberg airport, rent a car and try to get in there, don’t dare to talk about it. Thanks.
Danny if you need your documentary translated let me know.
“We firmly believe that it is morally wrong to use the grounds around Breitenwinner Cave as a
live fire area in the pursuit of training. We feel that this should not only be a project of a select team of anthropologists, but should be a working project of all X-Zone listeners.
Please tell your friends that only mass publicity of this mass grave will push the
U.S. Military into an investigation of the matter.
Though this cave was written about almost 500 years ago, it is a possibility that some of
the remains belong to U.S., Canadian, and British military personnel from World War II.
The Stalag 383 Prisoner of War camp of 5000 allied troops was less than one mile away.
If it is of an ancient civilization, science should do its job, but if it is of World War II era prisoners,
the families of the deceased should be notified.”
Maybe you can tell me where in this statement Danny said that it might be giants in that cave. He said IF.
How did you get to know about this anyways? Is your life so boring that you have to google random stories and call them all a hoax? Then your life is one pretty unfulfilled life.
Maybe you should use your time then and do something real senseful – helping others who live in poverty and who do not even have the money for food nor for an internet account which they can use all day long to google random (eventually true) documentaries or stories and the people who took effort to investigate and put them out as liars and call the story a hoax.
But no, you probably wouldn’t do such things. Because then you would have realise that you are wasting your time with what you are doing now.
Ok, a couple points on these two posts above.
First, there is no evidence this is a mass grave, certainly if there is a report from the 1500s, we can be pretty sure that at least a large amount of the bones did not originate in the Holocaust, and that they can’t actually be Canadian or American as it were.
Second, because it may have been a mass grave, disturbing the dead in the area was appropriate? That makes little sense, as the scenario of historic human remains would be the least acceptable for destruction, especially if they were interred against their will etc.
The website Danny is associated with, cavelore.com, begins with the words ” The Breitenwinner Cave
Here Were Giants!” across the top. It also focuses on a variety of other documents about woo, the bible, and ETs.
I also severely doubt that I would be open to a law suit, as nothing I said was libelous. I should note that, I am not denying that the Holocaust took place. I am just stating that from the evidence provided, this cave does not appear to have been involved, and that if it were, the actions taken to explore it would be all the more tragic.
I would have to agree with Archeologyknits on this one.
there are two points here, whether it is a mass grave, and why no one has investigated it already.
I know that someone went there in the 1500 but this can hardly be called a scientific study, and Danny digging around with his mates like some sort of wannabe Time Team character doesnt help matters.
also, relating this cave with all the UFO/Giant woo woo seriously undermines it and may cause it to be overlooked by anybody with the appropriate background or experiance.
are you a James Randi fan by any chance Archeologyknit?!?!
That is a wonderful video and a valuable record of the site. The fact that they were less than gentle with an already clearly abused bonepile is not really relevant to such a MASSIVE site. Their impact on the site was de minimus, and certainly comparable to other finds by non-archaeologists. Likewise, any sanctimonious arguments about removal of the remains is just silly
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In order to expose the truth, one often has to be as ruthless as those who cover up the truth.
I think that Buchner’s 1535 account is 100% factual. These were devout Christians who would not have lied so extravagantly. The parts of the cave that Buchner’s group explored were probably sealed off by the U.S. Army at some point.
All charges of negligence on the part of Danny et al are moot. The important issue is that of access to this site. Surely there is at least ONE archaeologist in Germany or elsewhere who would LOVE to examine this cave and its contents? So let’s get the ball rolling people! Someone contact the large Germany Universities!
Danny is telling the truth. I seen it…
Fantastic post!!! Cheers!
Thanks Danny for the video. I am really glad these dudes went in the cave and showed us the video! The bones are most likely humans from the war. You guys should have dug really deep (off the camera of course) to see what you could find!