Mondays are my busiest day of the week, so today I thought I’d share an interesting bit of information that turned up recently in a Cracked.com article on historical mistakes. Regular readers will recall that alternative historians are obsessed with the idea of finding early medieval Irish Ogham writing virtually everywhere on earth. Ogham, of course, is easy for non-specialists to confuse with any random scratch mark because it is made up primarily of straight lines and angles. Barry Fell famously declared nearly every set of angular lines appearing on any rock evidence of Ogham. Scott Wolter thought he found some in Oklahoma. Worse, the Nigerian scholar Catherine Acholonu-Olumba, who holds a wide range of alternative beliefs centered on Afrocentric claims to history, has even proposed that Ogham is not Irish or medieval but rather a pre-Sumerian African invention!
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Before I was so rudely interrupted with A+E Networks’ cease and desist order, I was planning to discuss the Ciudad Blanca story a bit more. So, here is what I originally planned to write yesterday, delayed by one day:
On Thursday, I discussed the question of whether archaeologists discovered Ciudad Blanca, a legendary lost city in Honduras. I must confess that in writing the piece, I intentionally left out an important part of the story in order to focus on the fact that the existence of a myth of legend is no barrier to archaeological interest in a topic. The part I left out? The “legend” of Ciudad Blanca is a modern fabrication drawn from a number of sources. That story, being long and complex, is justifiably the subject of a separate discussion, one that casts additional light on the workings of “alternative” history. One of the refrains we hear repeatedly from fringe writers is the claim that archaeologists are unwilling to take folklore, myths, and legends seriously and reject efforts to seek out the truth behind stories of lost cities and vanished civilizations. Well, apparently events are transpiring in Honduras to give the lie to the idea that archaeologists don’t care about such things. At the America Geophysical Union meeting in Cancun yesterday, archaeologists presented the findings of exciting new technology that let them penetrate the Honduran jungle in search of the legendary Ciudad Blanca (White City), also known as Xucutaco.
One of the biggest problems with “alternative” history is that its practitioners come up with an idea and then cherry pick evidence to support it, even if a fair evaluation of the facts suggests other conclusions. We saw this last Friday on America Unearthed where Scott Wolter was dead set on declaring a spring house (a type of root cellar) a Freemasons’ ritual bathhouse to the point that he actively ignored evidence opposing his hypothesis. We see it in every ancient astronaut book and every episode of Ancient Aliens, too.
So today I’d like to share one of my adventures in archaeology and to think about what alternative historians would have made of it. Before I review America Unearthed S01E04 “Giants in Minnesota,” let me stipulate that in the course of the hour Scott Wolter uncovered no evidence whatsoever of giants in Minnesota, or the Norse visitors he ties them to. He admits this, so it is not just me saying it. This, sadly, means that there is little factual material to examine, leaving me to critique this show as a television performance. In that light, we can look at the episode as a triumph of editing in trying to make three pointless investigations add up to more than the sum of their parts through carefully cross-cutting among them and avoiding dwelling too long on the inevitable disappointments. The way the show subtly switches from the proposed topic to others designed to garner support for its star is masterfully executed but deeply manipulative.
An area that fascinates me is the way ancient (and not-so-ancient) peoples used fossils, archaeological remains, and ruins to imagine a new mythic past for themselves. That’s why I just posted a translation of Boccaccio’s report of the discovery of a fossil giant. Adrienne Mayor sparked this interest with her book The First Fossil Hunters (2000), which received wide praise for its investigation of the connection between fossils and Greek and Roman mythic figures. In that book, Mayor states that Georges Cuvier (1806) was the first to propose such a connection, but it was "subsequently forgotten amid the exciting scientific discoveries of his day.” With the exception of Othenio Abel (1914), many critics said Mayor was therefore the first to address the subject in two centuries.
This is in no way intended to disparage Mayor’s admirable book, but after reviewing nineteenth century books on geology, this simply isn’t true, and I think I may know what really happened. Get this: I—despite having only this blog as a forum—have annoyed Ancient Aliens star Philip Coppens enough that he deigned to blast me on his blog yesterday, and in flattering terms! He discusses me after complaining that Ancient Aliens Debunked filmmaker Chris White had the gall to respond to Coppens’ criticism of him after Coppens had specifically insisted that any such rebuttal was inappropriate, offensive, and “blablabla.” Coppens, you will recall, previously stated that he would no longer respond to criticism because he considered it an effort to goad him into personality-driven conflict, which is beneath him. That lasted a week: Reviewing David Childress's "Technology of the Gods" (Pt. 3): Plagiarism AND Manipulated Quotes!8/23/2012 I'm continuing my review of David Childress's masterwork, Technology of the Gods (2000). To the documented plagiarism, we can now add hoaxing and quote manipulation. Of course, this isn't Childress's fault, since he's merely copying and copying and copying others who hoaxed and manipulated well enough to fool him.
Robert Schoch's Wacky Easter Island-Gobekli Tepe Theory: The Hypocrisy of Alternative Dating8/15/2012 Yesterday I examined geologist Robert M. Schoch’s attempt to radically revise human history by claiming that the Easter Island writing system, traditionally dated to c. 1200-1500 CE, is in fact 10,000 years older. This claim appeared in part one of a two-part article. Today, let’s take a look at the second part, “The Mystery of Göbekli Tepe and Its Message for Us,” which appeared in New Dawn magazine’s September-October 2010 issue.
Last night, on the season finale of SyFy’s Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files (S03E12), the team of mostly competent (though often inexplicably credulous) investigators broke from their stated purpose of examining paranormal videos to take on instead the “mystery” of Stonehenge. Things started out badly but gradually got better as the episode wore on.
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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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