Blog Archives

Return of the Colossal Stone Head of Guatemala: Now with 50% More Easter Island

11/14/2018

Yesterday, Martin J. Clemens of Mysterious Universe presented an article about the infamous photograph of a carved stone head in Guatemala, first publicized by Oscar Rafael Padilla Lara in 1987, that continues to circulate online as evidence of ancient stone-working, despite the clear evidence that the head is in fact a modern carving by a known individual. Clemens, indeed, speculates that these facts may be safely discarded in favor of a more exciting conclusion: that that Olmecs, c. 1200-400 BCE, were attempting to emulate the colossal stone heads of Easter Island, which were only carved after 1200 CE, on the basis of recent DNA evidence showing trans-Pacific contact between Polynesia and South America. “In light of this, does it not seem reasonable to suppose that Padilla’s colossal head, is in fact an attempt to replicate the look of the moai of Easter Island by an Olmec stone craftsman?” Clemens writes.

Since it has been almost exactly five years since I shared with my readers the real story of the Guatemala stone head, it seems like a good time to present again my 2013 blog post on the fake mystery, which here follows in slightly updated and adapted form.

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Review of "Truth or Double Dare (TODD)" (2018)

11/13/2018

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Truth or Double Dare (TODD)
2018 | L.O.U.D. (Living Out Ur Dreams) Films | 62 minutes

Every day, publicity agents send me pitches to review new movies, TV shows, web series, concept albums, and books. As a general rule of thumb, if they are asking me to review something, it’s probably bad. I only watch about one in ten of the movies that I get asked to review. I review maybe one in five of those at best because most are vaguely competent but clichéd riffs on familiar themes, destined to cycle through a third-tier streaming service and be forever forgotten. They aren’t even worth hating. But once in a while I find a movie so staggeringly awful that it takes even me by surprise. And I have watched every episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

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The Mutual Reinforcement of Dubious Templar Documents; Plus: Travel Channel Teases Megan Fox's "Legends of the Lost"

11/10/2018

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With the recent publication of alleged journals written by Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney in the late 1300s, it was only natural that Sinclair conspiracy theorist Scott F. Wolter would attempt to fold them into a unified conspiracy theory with the other dubious evidence he has used to support the imaginary idea that the Knights Templar brought the secret descendants of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene to North America in the Middle Ages and set up an enlightened goddess-worshiping society based on the principles of Freemasonry. In a new blog post he does just that, suggesting that the supposed Cremona Document, which I have previously concluded is almost certainly fake, reinforces the equally dubious Sinclair journals like an ouroboros eating its own tail:

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Giorgio Tsoukalos Offers More of the Same in New Interview

11/9/2018

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In an interview yesterday with Inverse to promote the upcoming Baltimore Alien Con, Ancient Aliens star Giorgio Tsoukalos … well, offered more of the same, actually. For someone who is supposedly an expert on … something … he is remarkably shallow in his interviews and rather repetitive in the potted anecdotes he parcels out. Perhaps it comes from too many years reciting prewritten lines for Ancient Aliens, or perhaps it reflects the dearth of originality behind the ancient astronaut theory. There were, however a few highlights worth mentioning.

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Henry Sinclair and the Zeno Narrative in Eighteenth Century Literature

11/8/2018

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The myth that Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, a vassal of the king of Norway, was mixed up in the European discovery of America a century before Columbus came to us from Johann Reinhold Forster, a German-born scion of a dispossessed Scottish noble family. Forster wrote in 1784 of Henry Sinclair’s involvement with the brothers Zeno (or Zeni, or Zen), whose story was told in the controversial account of their alleged voyage to Greenland and audience with fisherman who had returned from unknown lands beyond published by their descendant Nicolò Zeno the Younger in the 1500s, two centuries after the fact, and from non-existent documents that the younger Zeno claimed to have destroyed and then recreated from memory. Forster decided that the story’s fanciful manic pixie dream prince, Zichmni of Friesland, was none other than Sinclair: “This name of Sinclair appears to me to be expressed by the word Zichmni.” It was, however, a footnote which Forster labeled as “a conjecture” that struck him while contemplating the geography of the northern Atlantic.

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Singer-Songwriter Handywoman Promises to Reveal Secrets of the Great Pyramid

11/7/2018

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In southeastern Pennsylvania, the local MUFON chapter puts on monthly programs to “educate” (I guess) the public about issues relevant to UFOs. Next week they present “The Night We Rocked the Pyramids,” in which local minister Annabelle Wood, a self-described student of quantum physics, will discuss her experiences searching Egypt’s pyramids for hidden truths. Here is what the news release promises for the Nov. 13 event in Strafford, Penn. Be sure to read all the way to the end, when the story takes an incongruous turn.

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More Sinclair Diaries Claims; Plus: Freemasons and Templar Worship of Baphomet

11/6/2018

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I don’t want to beat a dead horse by continuing to examine the case of the so-called Sinclair journals, but I am rather perplexed by some of the claims that Scott Wolter is making for them, and I shudder with dread at the upcoming discussion of more Templar “secrets” Wolter promises for “the coming days.” On his blog, Wolter replied to questions from the regular reader of this blog who posts under the name “An Anonymous Nerd” with some baffling claims revolving around the question of the Templar interest in Jerusalem vs. their supposed centuries of secret missions to the middle of America:

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Scott Wolter Discusses His Role in Publicizing the Alleged Henry Sinclair Journals

11/3/2018

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Not long ago, I reported that Diana J. Muir self-published the first $45 installment of a planned multivolume translation of the supposed private diaries of Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney and his descendants for four hundred years. Sinclair holds an exalted place in the fringe history imagination because of a wrongheaded eighteenth century opinion that he was the Zichmni of the hoax Zeno narrative and the even more incorrect twentieth century opinion of Frederick J. Pohl that he was the inspiration for the Mi’kmaq demigod Glooscap and Scotland’s colonizer of America. In recent years, he has been promoted to a possessor of the secrets of the Knights Templar, disbanded half a century before his birth, and guardian of the secret bloodline formed by the union of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ, joining him to a conspiracy theory about a Holy Bloodline first proposed by Louis Martin in the 1880s.

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On Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories

11/2/2018

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This week, U.S. President Donald J. Trump said that he would not be “surprised” if billionaire George Soros, who is Jewish, were paying hundreds of Hondurans to trek across Mexico to reach the United States. A week earlier, Soros had been the target of an attempted mail bomb assassination, and the man who committed the largest violent attack on Jews in the United States a few days later cited anti-Soros conspiracy theories among the reasons he believed that Jews needed to die. Writing these words is horrifying, and I struggle to understand exactly how our country has reached this point. It is almost like something out of the Twilight Zone, except that the Twilight Zone was created by a Jew, Rod Serling, who always made sure that in his stories the Nazis didn’t win.

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Bad Data Dump: "To the Stars" Takes Italy, and Brien Foerster Releases Elongated Skull DNA Results

11/1/2018

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I have some work to do today on my book, so I will leave you in the capable hands of Robert Shaeffer and his analysis of Tom DeLonge’s recent trip to Italy to present alongside Luis Elizondo (mis)information about To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science to a private Italian UFO group. The four-hour presentation was uploaded to YouTube and then transcribed on UFO Joe, and Shaeffer reviewed it. have neither the time nor the interest for so much talk, no, not even when one of the Italians shared a racist cartoon and said he hoped it wouldn’t offend anyone. At this point, was that even surprising? I skimmed the transcript, but it was so… rote. I didn’t have the energy to go through it line by line.

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Forward>>

Return of the Colossal Stone Head of Guatemala: Now with 50% More Easter Island

Review of "Truth or Double Dare (TODD)" (2018)

The Mutual Reinforcement of Dubious Templar Documents; Plus: Travel Channel Teases Megan Fox's "Legends of the Lost"

Giorgio Tsoukalos Offers More of the Same in New Interview

Henry Sinclair and the Zeno Narrative in Eighteenth Century Literature

Singer-Songwriter Handywoman Promises to Reveal Secrets of the Great Pyramid

More Sinclair Diaries Claims; Plus: Freemasons and Templar Worship of Baphomet

Scott Wolter Discusses His Role in Publicizing the Alleged Henry Sinclair Journals

On Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories

Bad Data Dump: "To the Stars" Takes Italy, and Brien Foerster Releases Elongated Skull DNA Results

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