My publisher has informed me that the new title for my Jason and the Argonauts book is going to be Jason and the Argonauts through the Ages. I’m not sure what I think of it; there won’t be a subtitle, so this is the whole of it. I guess it’s OK, but it seems less vigorous and rigorous than I might have liked.
I’ve been working on putting together a sourcebook of ancient texts used by ancient astronaut theorists and fringe historians, and it’s coming together surprisingly well. I’ve been going through ancient astronaut and fringe history books and collecting the various references (not always easy given how sloppy these writers are) and digging out the original texts. Given that the fringe writers are loathe to do research that takes real work, almost all of the texts are easily found in the public domain. I even managed to track down some public domain translations of important parts of the Popol Vuh, a work not fully translated until the mid-twentieth century.
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Because I’m busy today, I prepared a blog post ahead of time. I’m going to review another episode of Destination America’s Unsealed: Alien Files, this time on “Aliens and Civilizations.” I can hardly wait to see what this stock footage spectacular has to say about ancient buildings!
(Once again, full disclosure: Destination America once interviewed me for a position hosting an America Unearthed-style program, but after determining that I wasn’t willing to claim aliens were responsible for Native American artifacts and constructions, the project was discontinued for being too similar to America Unearthed.) Unsealed: Alien Files is a syndicated television show that, so far as I can tell, never aired in my local market during its first run last year. Earlier this year, Destination America purchased the rights to the show and now broadcasts its UFO and ancient astronaut conspiracies amidst its other programs aimed primarily at men 25-54. I’ve never seen the show, so I thought I’d given an episode a try to see this program’s take on the ancient astronaut idea.
(Full disclosure: Destination America once interviewed me for a position hosting an America Unearthed-style program, but after determining that I wasn’t willing to claim aliens were responsible for Native American artifacts and constructions, the project was discontinued for being too similar to America Unearthed.) In this episode, Ancient Aliens crosses over into the Holy Bloodline of Jesus territory by looking at the way royal and imperial claims of descent from a god (read: alien) produce a divine right to rule. Since Laurence Gardner was both a dedicated advocate of the secret Holy Bloodline of Jesus that he thought led to all European rulers sharing genes with the children of Christ and Mary Magdalene and was also an ancient astronaut theorist who thought Jesus was the fruit of an extraterrestrial lineage, I imagine that makes him the spiritual godfather of S06E07 “Emperors, Kings and Pharaohs.”
Alan Butler: Moon Built by Time-Traveling Humans, Washington Monument Signals Mithras Worship11/8/2013 I thought about holding this for Sunday, but I think it is important to get a debunking of this nonsense into the public record. Alan Butler, that faithful friend of Scott Wolter who once tried to sue me for reviewing one his books, has taken on a new persona. According to his Facebook page, he is now “Alan Butler, Time Messenger,” and he aims to tell us that time travelers built the moon and invented the conspiracy guarded by the Freemasons.
Butler and Scott Wolter, with whom he is working on the Freemason part of his new ideas, assert that the Washington Monument was deliberately positioned in downtown D.C. by Freemasons to produce two remarkable effects. First, it is designed to have its shadow reach the U.S. Capitol on September 17—Constitution Day—to celebrate the Constitution. It is also designed to repeat the feat on March 25, to celebrate Mithras and Attis, the secret gods of their hidden star-goddess cult. Doug Woodward Says I Am Wrong Because Nephilim Infected Our Y Chromosomes with Evil Angel DNA11/8/2013 A self-proclaimed member of the “Christian community,” Doug Woodward, author of a book on the coming threat of the Antichrist to America, has challenged my recent discussion of the Nephilim and the ancient astronaut theory, particularly as presented by L.A. Marzulli. Before reading Wooward’s discussion, it’s probably a good idea to review my original blog post, which examined Marzulli’s upset and outrage at Ancient Aliens’ recent episode arguing that Satan was a cosmic defender of humanity against nefarious aliens masquerading as Yahweh.
The crux of Woodward’s claim is that I am insufficiently deferential to biblical infallibility, which is not a critique so much as a philosophy. Woodward maintains that the Nephilim are real angel-human hybrids who continue to pose a threat to humanity today. On the other hand, he views me as “pseudo-sophisticated” and says I am employing distortions and falsehoods to deny these creatures’ existence. He also makes a very serious legal claim that I committed “defamation” in my remarks about Marzulli by suggesting that his views were not intellectually sound. A frequent complaint I’ve received over the past nine months or so is that it is inappropriate of me to mix into my discussion of ancient astronauts and alternative history anything smacking of either politics or contemporary implications for the claims alternative history proponents make. On one hand, I understand the desire to isolate historical studies from modern political controversies, but on the other hand I find it impossible to divorce the two since alternative history is born of politics and speaks to political discontent. I believe that restricting discussion to purely mechanical issues of what facts alternative historians faked, or which quotations they got wrong, or how ancient sites could really have been built impoverishes our understanding of the underlying meanings and motives behind fabricated history.
I have a fun one for you today. You probably saw Sen. Rand Paul’s claim that “haters” were conspiring to expose plagiarism in his work, and he vowed to take corrective action by requiring his staff to provide better footnotes and citations in material they provide for work published in his name. In the wake of Sen. Paul’s plagiarism scandal, I was inspired to go back to finally investigate a case of century-long copying that has baffled me until this week, when I finally stumbled across the original source.
Travel Channel Has Fox News Pundit and Ancient Astronaut Theorist Investigate JFK Conspiracies11/5/2013 In the news today, the internet is salivating over a mysterious box containing drawings of extraterrestrials as ancient mythological figures. The drawings by Daniel Christiansen date from the 1930s to the 1980s and are obviously influenced by pulp science fiction illustrations. Christiansen illustrates material related to Chariots of the Gods and The Spaceship of Ezekiel and yet somehow we are meant to see this as independent confirmation of ancient astronauts, according to internet posters, because Christiansen claimed to have encountered an alien and… believed really hard in ancient astronauts? Frankly, I can’t fathom why the art, made largely after Chariots (1968), almost entirely after the Bible-UFO movement of the 1950s, and absolutely after “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) should be evidence of anything.
But let’s talk instead about the latest cable television attack on the concept of credibility. Although I have not yet read Graham Robb’s new book The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts, which was published in the U.K. as The Ancient Paths, the book’s major claims straddle the border of alternative history and deserve a mention, even if it might take me a while before I get to reading the book. The information below comes from a number of reviews of the books published recently.
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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