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Two British Retirees Are Looking for a Second Great Sphinx at Giza

8/31/2017

Yesterday I had a bit of a mishap with the vacuum cleaner. It caught the Velcro strap that is used to tie up my computer’s AC adapter, and it sucked the whole cord in, destroying the connecter at the end. And of course my laptop uses a non-standard adapter, so there is no place within 50 miles that sells a compatible one. The manufacturer’s billing system crashed when I tried to order a replacement, which meant that the shipping deadline passed. Now, thanks to the holiday weekend, I have to hope that it will arrive on Friday or else I will be sans computer until next week.

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Graham Hancock Wants Your Help Proving Alaskan Mammoths Died in One Massive Catastrophe

8/30/2017

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Just days after recovering from a life-threatening seizure and coma, alternative history researcher Graham Hancock put out a call to crowdsource research for a forthcoming book. Hancock asked his fans to help him research the question of whether wooly mammoths faced a catastrophic extinction event in Alaska at the end of the Ice Age. Hancock is particularly interested in the work of Frank Hibben and Froelich Rainey from the 1930s and 1940s, and the articles that he cites sounded familiar to me. It turns out there was a good reason for that. The sources Hancock uses are the same ones that creationists have spent the better part of half a century using to allege that the mammoths were “flash frozen” by a catastrophic change in temperature. I explored those claims last year (here and here), but Hancock has now offered a slightly more sophisticated version of the earlier claim in defense of his current hobbyhorse, that a comet slammed into the Earth at the end of the Younger Dryas, destroying Atlantis.

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History Channel Sends Giorgio Tsoukalos on Latin American Tour as Part of "Ancient Aliens" Promotional Extravaganza

8/29/2017

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Venezuela is in the midst of a terrible crisis that is consuming every level of its society. Pres. Trump called the country a dictatorship, and the socialist government has come under international criticism for pushing through constitutional changes under a dubious referendum with the goal of consolidating the ruling party’s power for a generation. Meanwhile, ordinary people are starving as food supplies run low. So what does one of the country’s leading newspapers think that the public needs to know about? Giorgio Tsoukalos and space aliens, of course.

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Fringe Writer Claims to Have Satellite Evidence of More Than 40 Ancient Monumental Statues in Antarctica

8/26/2017

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Here we go again. Yet another trove of fake artifacts purports to depict modern Grey aliens. This set comes from Mexico and is supposedly a cache of fragments of ancient Maya art. What a surprise that patterns on the fragments follow the contours of the broken rocks they are crudely carved into, just as if a modern hoaxer were trying to decorate the rocks. There isn’t much to say about the stones; they look fake and there is no evidence to suggest anything else. Needless to say, they aren’t being investigated by archaeologists but are instead in the hands of a radio personality and a YouTuber who are trying to monetize them. Good to know that if the aliens ever really do come, we’ll hear about it first for $4.99 as a member-exclusive video download.

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Eric Kurlander's New Book Attempts to Explain Nazi Supernatural and Occult Beliefs

8/25/2017

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The Nazis are history’s archetypical supervillains, and there has long been a tendency to ascribe to them supernatural evil. Members of the Nazi Party used the occult for a variety of purposes. The ridiculous World Ice Theory found favor mostly because it could be used as an alternative to “Jewish” science. Atlantis and Thule were potential Aryan homelands, and the Holy Grail was supposedly an artifact of Germanic history. Heinrich Himmler, perhaps the truest believer, hoped to infuse pagan ritual into the SS to give an extra layer of emotional power to Nazi ideology.

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Leon of Pella, the Mysterious Writer Who Claimed Egyptian Gods Were Human Kings

8/24/2017

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Today I thought I would introduce you to Leon of Pella, a shadowy figure who played an outsized role in spreading the doctrine of euhemerism from the Hellenistic era down to Late Antiquity. For a writer of outsize influence, what is most interesting about him is that we don’t really know anything about Leon at all, and that includes even his name. Nevertheless, whoever Leon was, he helped contribute to a number of controversial views about Egyptian history and the ancient past.

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Graham Hancock Recovering from Health Crisis, Says Negative Energy from Online Skeptics and Haters Contributed to Stroke, Coma

8/23/2017

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Self-described “alternative historian” Graham Hancock announced on his blog yesterday that he has recovered from a life-threatening stroke, seizure, and coma that had left him hospitalized and semiconscious for most of the last week. Hancock had begun experiencing seizures in May when he was wrongly diagnosed with a heart condition following a stroke. After a major seizure on August 14, Hancock lapsed into a coma, and medical personnel advised his family to prepare themselves for his death or severe brain damage. He escaped both, and doctors concluded that his seizures were caused by his decades of heavy use of sumatriptan, a medication for migraine headaches. Hancock took a sumatriptan shot every other day or so for twenty years. According to Drugs.com, current medical recommendations say that most users should limit themselves to four uses per month.

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Review of "Cosmic Womb: The Seeding of Planet Earth" by Chandra Wickramasinghe and Robert Bauval

8/22/2017

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Good news, everyone! Robert Bauval, the purveyor of The Orion Mystery, has finally admitted to being an ancient astronaut theorist. I’ve suspected this for decades, ever since Bauval admitted in The Orion Mystery that his inspiration for the book was the ancient astronaut speculation of Robert Temple. His frequent appearances on Ancient Aliens were also a strong hint. But Bauval has long pretended to be interested only in Graham Hancock’s lost civilization. However, in December he will release a new book with panspermia advocate Chandra Wickramasinghe called Cosmic Womb: The Seeding of Planet Earth (Bear & Company, 2017) in which Bauval and Wickramasinghe argue that Earth life was purposely seeded from the stars by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization and that ancient people were aware of this fact. This is an early review of the forthcoming book courtesy of galley proofs made available by the publisher

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Conservative Christian Touts Lovecraft as a Tool to Bring Readers Back to Christ

8/19/2017

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It seems like most of the fringe history purveyors have been laying low this month, the traditional time for a summer vacation. Or maybe the current flap over white supremacy has left purveyors of bad ideas about the past trying to stay below radar since so many of their ideas tend to have white supremacist undertones. Whatever the reason, it seems like there have been fewer high-profile fringe history claims this week than in most. So today I bring you an interesting meditation on H. P. Lovecraft instead. The piece in question comes from conservative Christian C. R. Wiley, who argues that Lovecraft’s weird fiction can actually help to bring Christians closer to God by giving them a “taste” of the “weirdness” of God. It’s an unusual argument, and perhaps one that Lovecraft would find amusing, if not offensive.

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Poland's Version of Fringe History Imagines a 70,000-Year Aryan Super-Empire

8/18/2017

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There is no new episode of Ancient Aliens tonight due to the History Channel’s car-focused programming week. (What, no “Aliens and Automobiles” episode?) So, it looks like I get the night off! That would be great, except that I am bombarded with work today. Therefore, I’m going to keep today’s posting short.

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<<Previous

Two British Retirees Are Looking for a Second Great Sphinx at Giza

Graham Hancock Wants Your Help Proving Alaskan Mammoths Died in One Massive Catastrophe

History Channel Sends Giorgio Tsoukalos on Latin American Tour as Part of "Ancient Aliens" Promotional Extravaganza

Fringe Writer Claims to Have Satellite Evidence of More Than 40 Ancient Monumental Statues in Antarctica

Eric Kurlander's New Book Attempts to Explain Nazi Supernatural and Occult Beliefs

Leon of Pella, the Mysterious Writer Who Claimed Egyptian Gods Were Human Kings

Graham Hancock Recovering from Health Crisis, Says Negative Energy from Online Skeptics and Haters Contributed to Stroke, Coma

Review of "Cosmic Womb: The Seeding of Planet Earth" by Chandra Wickramasinghe and Robert Bauval

Conservative Christian Touts Lovecraft as a Tool to Bring Readers Back to Christ

Poland's Version of Fringe History Imagines a 70,000-Year Aryan Super-Empire

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