THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Before World War II, the settlement of America was looked upon by most historians as one more phase of this long, long westward movement of the "Aryans" or Indo-Europeans which began thousands of years ago.

In fact, descriptions of the Celtic and Germanic "barbarians" moving down toward Rome sound very familiar today. Those gigantic wagon trains looked a lot like older versions of the Conestoga wagons that reached California. They were.

Nothing that the Romans ever wore is as familiar to us as the pants and shirts the Celtic invaders wore. And the houses they built two millennia ago look very much like European housing a century ago. They were the same types of houses we have today.

Before World War II, the millennia of Indo-European wagon trains was routinely referred to by historians as "the great racial movement." The settlement of America was routinely referred to as simply an extension of the thousands of years of "racial movement." It moved from some unknown starting place of the Indo-European people somewhere east and north of today's Iran, and it conquered India and Western Europe. In fact, it conquered Western Europe many times, in wave after wave.

"Barbarians" rolling in from the east brought the original Romans - the speakers of "Italic languages." Then came the Celts.

Then came the Germans. Then the Slavs. As far as we know, they all came from same place because their languages are so closely related at the base. And the base of their languages is the also base of today's Hindi and Persian languages.

This real history of the push west, across half the globe, was a titanic adventure. It involved thousands of years of adventure.

The REAL HISTORY of OUR CHILDREN'S ancestors is absolutely fascinating, and the wagon trains of the Old West were simply an extension of it. That would FASCINATE our children. If today's history students could hear it, they wouldn't be bored sick in class. So why is it taboo?

The usual reason: mention of it now makes you anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.

Hitler talked about Aryans and Aryan supremacy. So any discussion of the real history behind Western Civilization, exciting as it would be, is now condemned as Nazism.

Why do I bring all this up? First and foremost, I bring this up because a Nice Person is absolutely forbidden to discuss it. As you well know, I love offending the rigid taboos of our day, just for the fun of it if nothing else.

But, as always, I offend these taboos with a purpose in mind. It is to show why the history we have has so little to do with reality.

Instead of this great adventure, history talks about Aztec pottery and Incan pictures as if they were a part of real history. Any real history leading to modern society would be based on the thousands of years of our forgotten westward trek. But anything that is not Nazism has to show that all history comes more or less equally from All Mankind.

To keep from being naziswhowanttokillsixmillionjews, much of our history seldom touches on reality and is tortuous boredom for our children.