Articles

Journalism and Opinion

Below you will find samples of my published nonfiction writing and journalism. Selected older articles from my archaeology site Lost Civilizations Uncovered are available in the Special Collections (below) or through the fly-out menus on the navigation bar.

Did Native Americans Discover Europe in 60 BCE?
Skeptic 17.4 (2012)

"The long and short of it is that there is no independent confirmation that Native Americans washed up in Holland around 60 BCE. We can’t rule out an accidental shipwreck of Native Americans, but the evidence from the brief ancient passages now extant argues against it."

Of Atlantis and Aliens: Alternatives to History as Cultural Mirror
Swans (November 5, 2012)

"The ancient astronaut theory, as depicted on Ancient Aliens, had collapsed in on itself. The twentieth century version of the theory had argued that ancient gods were really aliens; its modern religious version told Ancient Aliens' 1.5 million weekly viewers that the aliens were in fact their true gods."

Golden Fleeced: The Misuse of the Argonaut Myth in Robert Temple's Sirius Mystery
eSkeptic (May 5, 2010)

"It is not my intention to review the case against Temple’s space-faring fish-men and their watery revelations. Such work has already been done, exhaustively, and, to most skeptics’ minds, conclusively. Instead, I would like to explore Robert Temple’s misuse of Greek mythology."

Belief in Prehistoric Nuclear War Fuels Modern Fears
The Canadian (March 2008)

"Believers maintain that in the distant past either extraterrestrials or a lost civilization like Atlantis detonated nuclear weapons, producing terrible devastation. This disaster was recorded, they say, in the Bible, Hindu scriptures, and world mythologies."

Who Really Discovered America?
Skeptic 12.3 (Summer 2006)

"Pity poor North America, a land whose history can never be her own. For centuries scholars, prophets, and cranks have tried to prove that the continent did not belong to the native peoples who populated it when the European explorers first arrived."

Image courtesy Virginia Dept. of Historic Resources

Review of Civilization One by Knight and Butler
Skeptic 11.3 (Winter 2005)

"Christopher Knight’s and Alan Butler’s Civilization One reads like the notes for a much better book that could be written by authors less awestruck by their own cleverness. Superficial and often unreadable for the density of mathematical equations, the book commits the first sin of popular literature: it is no fun to read."

Who Lost the Middle Ages?
Skeptic 11.2 (Summer 2004)

"[L]ate medieval scribes [...] accidentally made history four times longer than it should have been by repeating the same history four times. Fomenko believes this accounts for 'similarities' he has found in the different periods of human history"

Charioteer of the Gods
Skeptic 10.4 (2004)

"...for people familiar with the science fiction magazines of the 1940s and 50s, [Eric] von Daniken's "revolutionary" assertion [about alien gods] held more than just a hint of other writings that claimed long before that the gods were not of this world."

Literary Criticism

Below are samples of my published literary criticism covering literature, genre fiction, and the arts.

The Tyrany of Time and Identity: Overcoming the Past in Gregory Maguire's Lost (2001)
21st Century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels since 2000, ed. Danel Olson (Scarecrow Press, 2011)

In Danel Olson's guide to Gothic novels of the first decade of the twenty-first century, I have written the entry for Lost by Gregory Maguire, the story of a woman who travels to London and encounters a ghost, tying the story to history and modern perceptions of medieval and Victorian life. (Not online; print only.)

Image courtesy Scarecrow Press

Review of Ancestor by Scott Sigler
Skeptic 16.1 (2010) and eSkeptic (March 2, 2011)

"Scott Sigler writes books with an eclectic mix of elements drawn from science fiction, horror, and thrillers with a heavy emphasis on real life science. Skeptics can take heart in knowing this science is (within reason) true to life and without the supernatural and metaphysical aspects that color so much genre fiction."

Image courtesy Crown Publishing

Oh the Horror! Why Skeptics Should Embrace the Supernatural in Fiction
Skeptic 15.3 (Winter 2010)

"For as long as there have been stories of the supernatural, some who heard them believed that the menacing creatures depicted in them really existed. There have also always been skeptics who doubted the reality of the supernatural monsters."

A Skeptic's Defense of Supernatural Television
Skeptic 12.3 (Summer 2006) and eSkeptic (April 20, 2006)

"Many skeptics who issue dire warnings and oppose televised supernatural fiction often engage in uncritical and fallacious thinking that undercuts their rationalist message. Attacking these television shows risks insulting the audience skeptics wish to reach, and it suggests an elitist, condescending attitude..."

Online Exclusive Articles

The following articles are JasonColavito.com exclusives, written just for my online readers.

Cthulhu vs. Xenu: The Case of H. P. Lovecraft and Scientology's Cosmology

In this online exclusive, I explore the thematic similarities between the cosmic fiction of H. P. Lovecraft and the cosmology of Scientology and consider the literary and historical connections between the Cthulhu Mythos and L. Ron Hubbard's OT-III.

Photo: © BenduKiwi via Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons license

Pauwels, Bergier, and Lovecraft: Establishing a Cthulhu-Ancient Astronauts Connection

In this online exclusive, I take a closer look at the evidence that the seminal ancient astronaut ur-text, Morning of the Magicians, was inspired by the work of H. P. Lovecraft.

Aliens and Ancient Texts: What Taking Ancient Texts Literally Really Means

In this online exclusive, I examine the use of "ancient texts" in ancient astronaut theories. I show that by taking ancient astronaut theorists' own claims at face value, their efforts to understand ancient texts literally face an irresolvable paradox.

The Case of the False Quotations: How Ancient Astronaut Theorists Faked a Hindu Nuclear Explosion

In this online exclusive, I explore how ancient astronaut theorists fabricated evidence that the Hindu scriptures contain evidence of ancient atomic bombs through selective quotation and mistranslation.

What Was the Scholomance? Horror, Ancient Myth, and the Origins of the Devil's School

In this online exclusive, I trace the origins of the mysterious Scholomance, the school of the Devil, from Bram Stoker's Dracula back to its surprising origins in ancient myth.

The Secret Prehistory of El Chupacabra

In this online exclusive, I look at the connection between the modern myth of the vampire-like goat sucker and the ancient European myths associated with its namesake, the bird known as the goatsucker.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Alien Abduction at the Outer Limits

In this online exclusive, I explore the connection between the most famous alien abduction case and the science fiction television series The Outer Limits, often claimed as a source for the nonfiction abduction claims.

Special Collections

The following contain collections of articles, essays, and blog posts organized by theme.

Ancient Aliens: Myths, Distortions, and Lies

Thanks to the History Channel's Ancient Aliens, ancient astronauts are back. And with the return of the ancient astronaut theory there also returned the falsehood, misinterpretations, distortions, and outright lies This special collection brings together in one place all of my essays, articles, and blog posts refuting and criticizing the AATs' most outrageous claims and outright frauds.

Skeptic Magazine and eSkeptic Articles

Much of my writing on skeptical topics has appeared in the pages of Skeptic magazine. This special collection brings together all of the articles, essays, interviews, and reviews I've published in Skeptic magazine and its online publication eSkeptic since.

Ancient History
From 2001 to 2010, I produced original content for my first website, Lost Civilizations Uncovered, a web-based magazine praised by Archaeology magazine. This section collects the best of my early pieces on ancient history from Lost Civilizations Uncovered and selected other outlets.

The Lovecraft Legacy
Lovecraft's fictional creations have led to an explosion of pseudo-historical claims that real aliens influenced actual human history. This special collection brings together my articles and blog posts about the accidental influence of H. P. Lovecraft in the world of nonfiction.

Except where otherwise indicated, images are from public domain sources.