From the Archives with Rick Osmon

Summary

Author Rick Osmon, writer of 'Graves of the Golden Bear: Ancient Monuments and Fortresses of the Ohio Valley,' argues that Romans, possibly the vanished Ninth Legion, reached North America centuries before Columbus. He points to Roman coin hoards, a network of stone signal towers in the Ohio Valley, and reports of giant red-haired skeletons and tiny 'Pukwudgie' burials as evidence that mainstream archaeology has ignored or suppressed. The conversation also links the legal Doctrine of Discovery and the Kennewick Man dispute to a possible motive for keeping pre-Columbian history buried.

Key takeaways

• 1Osmon claims hundreds of Roman coins have been found near Eastern U.S. waterways, plus a newly reported cache of 386 coins in Utah, the first west of the Rockies.
• 2He theorizes the Roman Ninth Legion, which drops out of the historical record around 117 AD at the start of Hadrian's reign, was sent on a secret resource mission to North America. He cites Lucius Aemilius Carus, a former Ninth Legion officer who later became governor of Arabia Petraea.
• 3An 1840s map of Grave Creek Mound in Moundsville, West Virginia, reportedly shows 15 stone towers within sight of the mound, which Osmon interprets as a Roman-style line-of-sight signal network. The mound's central burial was a roughly 6.5-foot man laid on mica, buried with the now-lost Grave Creek Stone.
• 4A burial disinterred near Petersburg, Indiana, in 1818 reportedly held an 8.5-foot man in a copper-lined oak coffin. Giants were described as red-haired, sometimes polydactyl, and sometimes with double rows of teeth.
• 5A Middle Tennessee pygmy burial ground was estimated at 7,000 graves. Barry Fell reportedly examined the Smithsonian remains and concluded they were adults, not children, raising comparisons to Homo floresiensis.
• 6Osmon argues that the 1452 papal bull behind 'terra nullius' and the Doctrine of Discovery would be undermined by proof of pre-Columbian Christians, such as the Norse at L'Anse aux Meadows. He also cites Kennewick Man, Poverty Point's seven concentric rings likened to Atlantis, and the Decalogue Stone.

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

There's more to these sounds than meet the ear. It isn't always easy recognizing that everyday feelings like stress, anxiety, or trouble sleeping could be signs of something more. At Cigna Healthcare, we help you recognize the mental health warning signs and support you with expert care, personalized guidance, and proactive outreach. So caring for your mental health can be part of your everyday. That's better by design. Learn more at Cigna.com slash better. Hey, hey, hey, and welcome to Expanded Perspectives from the Archives, revisiting the conversations that help shape the show. This is a new show. It's a spinoff of the original show, and I'll explain why we're doing this. You see, when Cam and I first started back in 2012, well, we didn't know what we were doing. And so we relied heavily on our guests to do most of the heavy lifting. And so we got to deal with a book publisher, two or three, actually. What they would do is they would send us the books, we would read the books, and then they would send us the contact information to the actual authors, who then we would schedule to come on the show. And that's kind of the way it worked for the first two or three years. And then slowly over time, we started doing less and less interviews as we learned what we were doing and found our way. And today, we virtually don't do interviews at all. I mean, it's very rare that we do any interviews. And it's not because of lack of people trying to get on the show. Every day, we probably get four to six requests for people to have come on the show. ...

Excerpt from Expanded Perspectives, Jul 19, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.