Novelist David Brody Claims New Novel Inspired by "America Unearthed" Research

12/13/2013

Do you remember David Brody, the novelist who has played an instrumental role in promoting the story of Scottish noble Henry Sinclair’s alleged 1398 voyage to America? Well, he wants everyone to know that after his low-budget movie about the Westford Knight, he’s back again with another novel that expands on his fictional universe. Like Dan Brown before him, Brody claims (and not just within his novels) that the artifacts and conspiracies he writes about are true, which crosses the boundaries of fiction into the world of pseudoscience.

Just in case you don’t believe me, here is what Brody writes on his official website:

The story itself is fiction, but its premise rests on firm ground: Numerous artifacts and sites in and around New England (see attached images) clearly evidence a history of pre-Columbian discovery and exploration of North America.

Brody claims in media interviews to have been instrumental in Scott Wolter’s research for America Unearthed, and he says he provided research assistance for the show’s first-season discussion of Holy Bloodline conspiracies. In turn, Brody claims that he has incorporated material from America Unearthed into his novel series.

His first book, Cabal of the Westford Knight, described Henry Sinclair, the Westford Knight, and the idea that the Knights Templar visited America. His second, Thief on the Cross, covered many of Scott Wolter’s most familiar topics, including, the Burrows Cave stones, the Bat Creek Stone, the Prince Madoc legend, and the “White” Mandan Indians, again in pursuit of the Knights Templar. Charmingly, his books carry a warning that Christians should not read them because they will consider offensive the Holy Bloodline conspiracies about Christ and His kids.

His latest claims derive from Sir Laurence Gardner’s unique combination of Holy Bloodline conspiracy theories and Zecharia Sitchin-inspired ancient astronaut hypothesizing. The book is called Powdered Gold and it is another sequel in a series he calls “Templars in America.”

What do you think are the chances that the new novel also incorporates Scott Wolter’s latest “discoveries” about “alignments” at the Newport Tower and America’s Stonehenge (Mystery Hill) and exactly reflects claims from the new season of America Unearthed about the Ark of the Covenant? 100% you say? Why yes, of course it does. Because these people all work together to promote one another in a mutually-reinforcing intertextual, multimedia Holy Bloodline conspiracy all their own.

Here is the book’s official synopsis. Count the America Unearthed topic references.

Historian Cameron Thorne and his fiancée Amanda Spencer don’t for a second believe the Ark of the Covenant is hidden in a cave in the Arizona desert. But when a militant Survivalist leads them to a radioactive replica of the Ark, filled with a mysterious white powder, they begin to wonder if legends of Templar Knights visiting the American Southwest on a secret mission might be true. What is this strange white powder? And is it the key to understanding the true power of both Moses and the sacred Ark of the Covenant?

In the deserts of the American Southwest, they examine artifacts such as the Mustang Mountain Rune Stone, the Tucson Lead artifacts, the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone and the Grand Canyon cave drawings—do these objects, along with ancient Aztec/Toltec legends, somehow tie back to the Knights Templar or their French forbearers?

Working with a militant survivalist attempting to go “off grid” in the Arizona foothills, Cam and Amanda also investigate a strange, seemingly-magical substance called White Powdered Gold, or ORME, derived from the desert sands of Arizona. They are intrigued by the similarities between this substance and manna, the miraculous food that nourished the Israelites while they wandered in the desert. Is it possible that White Powdered Gold is the key to understanding the mysteries of, and power behind, the sacred Ark of the Covenant? More ominously, has a radicalized group within the Defense Department reached the same conclusion and vowed to silence anyone who might disclose this secret?

The powdered white gold is the substance that Laurence Gardner claimed that the Anunnaki used to achieve immortality after creating the human race to mine gold for that purpose. Gardner later claimed that the Anunnaki were forced to replace powdered gold with menstrual blood of the Holy Bloodline after their supply ran out, sometime near the end of the Exodus. Today it is most famous as the secret food of the Reptilians in David Icke’s conspiracy theories and in Jim Marrs’s rambling rants. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough evidence to know who came up with the idea first, though Icke claims that powdered gold increases nervous system impulses “ten thousand times.” As far as I know, powdered monoatomic white gold in the form described does not exist.

The claim, in turn, probably derives from alchemy’s alleged aurum potabile, or drinkable gold, promoted by Paracelsus in Treasure of Treasures and other works in the sixteenth century. He claimed to have invented aurum potabile and he believed it to be the elixir of life, a cure for disease, and a path to immortality. The occultist Manly P. Hall adopted aurum potabile into his system via a secondhand summary of alchemy from a Victorian textbook, and from there it entered occult circles, where it sits today.

This substance, in turn, was inspired by the idea of colloidal gold, a suspension of gold nanoparticles used in making colored glass since antiquity, with which it became confused by modern alternative health practitioners who pass off colloidal gold as extraterrestrial monoatomic white gold. The solution can be stirred to form a precipitate of gold atoms, which must be the “monoatomic” gold of occult theory, though technically the nanoparticles aren’t single atoms, as I understand it. One gold atom is 0.135 nanometers wide, while colloidal gold nanoparticles range from 5 to 1,000 nanometers in size.

Does Scott Wolter believe in gold-munching aliens? Who knows? But I can’t imagine it’s a complete coincidence that his friend David Brody’s new novel contains the exact material Wolter is investigating on America Unearthed at the same time that the show is showing those investigations. The Grand Canyon location of the Ark of the Covenant was teased in S02E01 and will make a return appearance later in the season. Both Brody and Wolter bizarrely make the Tuscon Lead Artifacts—whose inscriptions claim, at face value, to be the work of Roman Jews—the work of “French forebearers” (Brody) of the Templars or “proto-Templars” (Wolter). And a government conspiracy to cover it all up? Why, that’s Scott Wolter’s bread and butter—How many times has he told us that “these academics” and the U.S. government have been trying to suppress his work?

If only Brody’s hero were a maverick geologist instead of one of Wolter’s hated “academics,” this could easily be America Unearthed: The Novelization.

But what disturbs me is the way that fringe ideas cross so easily between “fact” and fiction and can use fiction to give spurious weight to “fact” and reinforce, through repetition across multiple media channels, a fictitious version of history based only on imagination and conspiracy claims.

33 Comments

Ancient One

12/13/2013 04:33:36 am

Once the genie's out the bottle, it's impossible to put back in. These latest pseudohistorical religious beliefs are here to stay because there will always be those folks attracted to them

Shane Sullivan

12/13/2013 05:06:29 am

Sounds like some kind of nightmare mockery of peer review. If a novelist agrees with a geologist, then what they have to say about medieval history must be true.

A pseudoscience circle-jerk, if you will.

Clint Knapp

12/13/2013 06:02:35 am

Perhaps there should be some sort of skeptical factual-fiction counter novel to butt heads with this tripe. It could follow the exploits of an archaeologist traveling around the country to hit the cranks where they live; conventions.

Our Hero would drag around a cart full of source texts and charcoal rubbings of clay tablets to combat the various spurious claims made by the Sitchin/Gardner/Velikovski-ites and provide worthwhile insights until one day he found himself abducted by aliens who specifically tell him that they made up these conspiracies just for kicks to see how gullible humans could really be.

In the end, it will be revealed that while the aliens HAVE been there all along, they've just been watching in small numbers because the Earth is like their version of a TruTV show- made-up reality with a comically unaware cast- and plan to cancel the station in another season or two due to market flooding by competing networks on Zeta Reticuli and Alpha Centauri.

12/13/2013 06:12:17 am

The facts and information are out there, books have been published explaining the situation. But believers never want to know. They prefer to switch off. "Rosslyn and The Grail" by Mark Oxbrow & Ian Robertson, for example.

Jason Colavito link

12/13/2013 08:03:03 am

On this site and others, we have gone through the evidence for a Holy Bloodline conspiracy from top to bottom and found not a shred of proof. You're welcome to search my archive for details.

Scott Hamilton

12/13/2013 07:21:46 am

The reference to a "radicalized group in the Defense Department" may be dragging Nick Redfern's alleged "Collins Elite" into it. Redfern claims this high-ranking think tank in the military believes aliens are really demons harvesting souls. This neatly allows for the alien stuff be true, but it's really Christianity in disguise.

spookyparadigm

12/13/2013 11:00:32 am

Though that isn't exactly the worldview Redfern promotes in his books. About half of his books, by his own admission, are written to order. But the other half do paint a vaguely cohesive worldview, or least style, that is two parts John Keel and one part Lovecraft. Ultraterrestrial demonology, magickal workings, ancient entities, secret societies in the know, etc.. His Collins Elite is a bit of a departure, but you get the feeling that it is a bit of a audience grab-attempt and a bit of political statement. It makes the most sense in the 2000s in America (the setting of the book and its primary audience), when liberals were particularly terrified of a conspiratorial theocratic takeover, and this is indeed the scare story at the end, that while there may be demonic entities (with demonic here being more their intent and attitudes than their theological origins), the real danger is that the CE have radicalized and will fake an alien invasion to install a theocracy that they believe is the only hope of stopping alien demons from eating human souls.

Redfern says his books are based on real informants etc., and that can't really be confirmed or denied except by him. It may be entirely coincidental that they seem like an attempt at creating a subtle fictional mythos or body of semi-coherent short novella horror stories. It is purely random chance that after reading one I feel like I'm somewhere between a decent episode of Scooby Doo and a somewhat unorthodox session of Delta Green.

gdave

12/13/2013 07:27:01 am

"Numerous artifacts and sites in and around New England clearly evidence a history of pre-Columbian discovery and exploration of North America."

Of course, this is actually true, it's just that those doing the discovery and exploration were American Indians, who somehow don't count in this sort of writing.

J.A. Dickey

12/13/2013 09:32:53 am

Sir Isaac Newton's alchemical notes & thoughts about a very
assumed and presumed philosopher's stone beg the question
as to what the people like John Dee were referring to!!! Before
Robert Boyle defined chemistry proper and pulled it away from
medieval alchemy, there was a group of "invisable university"
people who had agreed to a given list of terms. if this is loosely
something yellowish or whitish but is a compound and not an
element or on any periodic table, we'd need a time machine to
even have an idea of what is being talked about. all alchemical
recipes are literally like publishing a cookbook with 1/3rd or 1/2
the steps excluded, and a common object often is substituted for
the rarefied one the group "in the know" is well aware of, and even
if one has the ingredients correct, the sequence & the proportions,
as Newton knew, easily 9/10ths of the time the spells don't work
as we look back 300 to 400 years in time at ancient slang + jargon!

thane

12/13/2013 03:48:12 pm

And then there is the mercury poisoning and related delusions.

12/13/2013 09:44:01 am

Newton the Alchemist
Posted 11.15.05NOVA

The revelation that Sir Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist of all time, practiced the covert art of alchemy may shock us today, but was this pursuit considered deviant in Newton’s own era? To find out, we spoke to Bill Newman, an historian of science at Indiana University who spent years deciphering Newton's secret coded recipes.

A LEGITIMATE PURSUIT
NOVA: Why are people surprised when they hear that Isaac Newton—the grand patriarch of physics—was an alchemist?

BILL NEWMAN: Well, I think it's because alchemy has been portrayed as the epitome of irrationality and a sort of avaricious folly.
Sinister, dark-robed sorcerers trying to turn lead into gold. Is that an accurate picture of alchemists in Newton's time?

It's accurate for some alchemists. But we now know that most of the great minds of the period were involved in alchemy, including Robert Boyle, John Locke, Leibniz, any number of others.
Given that so many great minds were interested in it, why was alchemy illegal?

Well, first of all, it became legal during Newton's time. But why was it illegal? There's a long association, for good reasons, between alchemy and counterfeiting. It's quite likely, actually, that medieval and early modern rulers were consciously employing alchemists to debase their own coinage.
But they didn't want other people doing it?

[laughter] Yeah, right; exactly, exactly.
A painting of an alchemist
In this painting of an unidentified alchemist, the planetary symbols for metals, which Newton used in his own writing, appear in the open book on the floor. Enlarge
Photo credit: © David Lees/Corbis
So what were these "legitimate" alchemists in the 17th century trying to do?

Alchemy really encompassed all chemical technology—everything ranging from the manufacture of pigments for paint to making artificial precious stones. It included the manufacture of so-called "chemical medicines." And, of course, it also included the attempt to make the "philosophers' stone."
"He really thought that alchemy provided a sort of limitless power over nature."
Tell me about the philosophers' stone. I think of it vaguely as some magical substance that could turn ordinary metals into gold.

The philosophers' stone was thought to be an agent of universal transmutation. It also was viewed as a curative agent that could "cure" metals of their impurities and cure human beings of their illnesses. So it was a sort of universal panacea.
Was Newton an alchemist because he wanted to make gold or find the key to immortality? Or was his alchemy just another part of his science—a way to gain knowledge about the material world?

If you look at the experimental notebooks that he kept for about 30 years, it really is impossible to avoid the conclusion that he was trying to produce the philosophers' stone. But I don't think he was doing it to gain monetary wealth.
Was it to gain an understanding of nature?

And power over nature. Power over nature has always been a key element to alchemy.
CODES AND RIDDLES
Did alchemists think that they were going to discover powers they wanted to keep for themselves? Is that why alchemy is so veiled in secret codes?

That's certainly part of the reason. You find alchemical treatises that claim that knowledge of the philosophers' stone has to be kept secret, because if it gets out to the world that a particular alchemist has it, he'll be strangled in his bed to extract the secret.
It seems that Newton also wanted to hold tight to his secrets—he never published any of his alchemical work.

I think that, like other alchemists, he thought that alchemy promised tremendous control over the natural world. It would allow you to transmute virtually anything into anything else, not just lead into gold. There are other things, too, that probably were in Newton's mind. For example, alchemists realized that if the philosophers' stone were real and it got out to the public, it would ruin the gold standard. [laughter]
"Alchemy was the ultimate riddle [which] provided a challenge to him that he just couldn’t resist."
I think what makes a lot of people think of alchemy as black magic is this bizarre language—phrases like "the Green Dragon" or the "menstrual blood of the sordid whore."

Yes.
It's mind-boggling to think of Newton writing those phrases.

Well, this was the enigmatic language of alchemy. I mean "enigmatic" in a quite strict sense: it was a riddling language. The best way to look at these metaphors is in the light of riddles. So the "menstrual blood of the sordid whore" is decipherable. It means simply the metalline form of antimony. That is the "menstrual blood" that's extracted from the "sordid whore," which is the ore of antimony. [See more of Newton's alchemy decoded in our interactive manuscript.]
It's a coded language.

It is a code, and it's clear that the alchemists delighted in this code. It's almost a form of poetry. In fact,

Codebreaker

12/13/2013 11:08:27 am

There is no need to accept the irrational part of Isaac Newton

12/14/2013 02:48:04 am

Alternatively, if I.Newton was the most logical and rational man of his time, then his contemporaries in a manner like most Medievals were
highly illogical and rational but assumed each other to be quite lucid!
Keynes's essay about Newton the Magus explains much. Dr.Einstein
Then has the honor of being totally logical, lucid, rational & a man of science!

12/14/2013 02:57:37 am

Medievals to the 90 percentile could be illogical, irrational and almost totally illiterate.

Enlightenment Minds had their quaint degrees of logic and irrationality if very literate.

Newton's natural philosopher brain-freezes forgive any Intelligent Design speculations...

If Newton was an "Aspie" he might have been logic personified in a semi-barbaric age...

Asperger's Syndrome explains his lack of Social I.Q. points, he is clearly a genius...

If the PRINCIPIA is the last LATIN medieval manuscript, then C.Darwin's ORIGIN Of
Is the first modern science tome because it does not bow down to all ANGELs in Genesis!

12/13/2013 03:32:25 pm

The Philosopher's Stone is just what its name says; a philosophical element. There has never been any proof of its existence, and like all things alchemical even its interpretation is up for grabs. Yes, alchemy was a precursor to modern chemistry in some senses, but at its core it was very much a belief system dressed up in psuedoscience.

Newton was a product of his time. Rational science was still transitioning from belief-science methods like alchemy and astrology and as such it should be no surprise that some vestige of the old way persisted down to his time.

That no example of the Philosopher's Stone OR the Universal Panacea have ever been shown to actually exist and all accounts of either one are entirely anecdotal (usually in the form of one man claiming to have made it and then deciding not to show anyone) should be rather telling as to the legitimacy of alchemy's magical powers and secret substances.

Titus pullo

12/13/2013 11:17:33 am

Debasing the currency. Nice to know our rulers continue to do the same today I.e. quantitative easing

Debasing currency is the main reason republics and empires fall. No need for aliens or secret societies...

Varika

12/13/2013 03:02:09 pm

Money only has the value that is socially agreed upon--and not just what a government determines. Debasement of currency is NOT the "main reason" republics and empires fall. A complex dance of movement of goods and services that may or may not be reflected by the money is the "main reason" for the fall of societies. The Roman Empire, for instance, didn't collapse due to its coinage, its coinage lost value because the Empire collapsed under its own size and unreasonable demands.

Gunn

12/14/2013 04:24:01 am

From "Builders of Our Country," by Gertrude Van Duyn Southworth, 1906, pages 8 & 9 (Leif the Lucky):

..."In due time the colonists reached Vinland, and there still stood Leif's huts to offer them a shelter....

...Then, suddenly one day a great number of natives appeared in their canoes. They had come to trade with the Northmen. They proved to be especially fond of the red cloth that the Northmen had. In exchange for it the Skraelings gave skins of animals.

The Skraelings continued to come in such great numbers that the Northmen were soon short of red cloth, so Karlsefin divided what they had into narrow strips. Some were not more than an inch in width, but the natives gave as much for these narrow strips as they had given for the wider.

After a while something happened which changed this peaceful relation between the Northmen and the Skraelings. Karlsefin had a bull. Now, it is difficult to see how a bull could bring on a war, but that is what this bull did. Once when the Indians were trading with the settlers, it ran, loudly bellowing, out of the field in which it had been kept. Terribly frightened, the natives fled to their canoes.

For fully three weeks they were not seen. When they did appear, there was no more peace for the settlers...."

(Red cloth? Bull? Who would've known?)

12/14/2013 01:10:34 pm

Quite clearly, Vinland was not in Newfoundland. So the settlements of Leif and Karlsefin must have been further south, probably more around the (future) US coastline of Maine, or even further south. Due east of Kensington puts one around the northern US coast, also, an indication from the message on the KRS that Vinland is east. Directly east? Why? Coincidence? Probably not.

Early European/"US history" begins before Columbus, so let's stop pretending that it doesn't. Where was Vinland? Not in Newfoundland. Where was Leif? Apparently not in Newfoundland's Meadow Cove, but somewhere south, along the future US coastline.

So, I guess the academics and history books of TODAY may have it wrong about the "Builders of Our Country." Just think of all the many ways these early explorers and would-be settlers had an impact on Native Americans...ways we don't even know about. Just because everything isn't written down, does that mean the early Scandinavians arriving to America's shores didn't have a "significant" impact on the Native Americans? Certainly not. Everything does not need to be written down to be somewhat understood, if proper logic is carried to a proper conclusion. Uh-hem.

12/14/2013 01:41:04 pm

1. You are using pseudo-logic again: "Just because we can't see it doesn't mean it's not there" is not a logical claim, it is the desperate battle cry of the true believer. Nothing in the narrative you quoted indicates that Vinland could NOT have been Newfoundland, nor that there is any connection whatever to the KRS. However, the fact that there were neither European buildings nor European methods being used by the time the English and the French made it to the are indicates that the "impact" Scandinavians had was not--by comparison to the impact the English and French had--"significant." Certainly it precludes the Scandinavians from being "the builders of our country" when they were NOT HERE when the country was actually being built. Unfortunately, the people who WERE here before the French and English showed up didn't even get to have much impact in "the building of our country." The French and the English (and the Dutch and Spanish) didn't recognize the claims to land of the people who were already living on it and using it; why do you think they would have recognized the spurious claim of a group who wasn't even THERE on the basis of a buried stone with a suspect story of a spurious battle on it? Assuming it wasn't a hoax? Therefore: KRS is absolutely IRREVLEVANT. A footnote at best.

2. What the HELL does this REALLY ANNOYING KRS crap dump have to do with debasing of currency and the fall of the Roman empire? Are you back to the idiotic thread-hijacking, or are you specifically attempting to harass me personally by finding anywhere I might possibly post and dumping on me? Because either way, you are not convincing me of ANYTHING and in fact you are only making me that much LESS likely to look at any evidence associated with the KRS as convincing, in much the same was as the overly-pushy Jehova's Witnesses have entirely put me off of Christianity as a whole. Step off, sir. I am not interested in what you are selling.

12/15/2013 03:34:27 am

You said, "Money only has the value that is socially agreed upon." And I followed with a communication, which you don't see as an example of your comment, with a historical twist? Well, boo-hoo-hoo.

Varika, you come across as a very scathing person, totally uncalled for, even if my version of history is different from yours. I didn't realize before just how mean and nasty you can be, but now we find out. You always want to leave things out, like GRAPES--actual grapes, not something to replace them with.

"Builders of Our Country," page 6, "...he had been for a ramble and, wonderful to tell, had discovered countless vines loaded with grapes; and if the others had been Germans, as he was, and had been brought up in the land of luscious grapes, they would understand his joy.

The Northmen had never seen or tasted grapes before, but you can imagine that they soon shared with the German sailor his love for them. On account of the vines, Leif named the land Vinland.

All this was in the year 1000. When the next spring came, the Northmen went home to Greenland, their ship filled with timber and dried grapes...."

I would not purposely torment you with the KRS, Varika, but I did mention it to make my point about Vinland being east of Kensington. You get the connection, but you don't want to admit it. You see Scandinavians trading for furs on the East Coast in medieval times and it makes you mad, huh?

From that same book quoted, above, continuing: ..."They never knew when to look for an attack. At last, after many of his brave men had been killed in these fights with the Skraelings, Karlsefin decided to give up his colony and go back to Greenland.

When the disappointed settlers sailed away from Vinland, just ten years had gone by since Leif's discovery of this beautiful country--his land of grapes, which most likely lay somewhere on the New England coast."

You are about as sure of yourself as Jason is, but at least he isn't vile. By contrast, he is a gentleman. You sound like a witch who doesn't like what Gertrude had to offer back in 1906, before the discovery at Cove Meadows by archaeologists. I had communicated with you, specifically, because I thought you were more savvy than what you are. You're surprisingly close-minded, besides being unpleasantly haughty. Don't worry, after your last unprovoked attack, I won't bother to teach you anything new. You, like your master here, already know everything...and I guess anything not written down isn't possible. What a weird take on history.

12/15/2013 03:51:54 am

I guess it might be worth mentioning that you have commented off my comments as much or more than I have yours...almost always to disagree with something I said. So, don't twist this around to make it look like you're being persecuted, like I'm hitting you on the head with the KRS. What, you can give it, but not take it? To be clear, the KRS was mentioned by me to help give credence to where Vinland may have been, a valid point...unless one foolishly believes the KRS is a hoax.

12/15/2013 05:21:23 am

Gunn, NOTHING in what you posted had to do with CURRENCY or FALL OF EMPIRES. At MOST, it was "and this is how a colony failed," which STILL had nothing to do with currency, the debasing thereof, or fall of empires. Additionally, your previous quote mentioned red fabric and a bull, NOT grapes.

Let us be perfectly clear: my mind is not closed to alternative ideas IF they can be properly investigated and evidence provided. My mind is closed to YOU, sir. I would have to check with someone else for the veracity of the statement "the sun rises in the east" if YOU were the one to say it. You have caused this antipathy in me all by yourself, with your pushiness, your vindictive personal attacks, your thread hijacking, and your outright harassment for which you have been called out before.

I have tried being nice. I have tried being respectful. This is me being out of patience. I have not descended into the depths of "scathing," out of respect for Jason, not you. However, you have quite literally asked for it, so here, you win, have some scathing:

You are a complete and utter moron, pathologically attached to a blatant hoax. The reason your only evidence for it is insufficient is because you are delusional to the point of needing psychiatric treatment. You see 1800s holes drilled for dynamite and random lumps of metal as evidence for a story that never mentions either one. You can quote whatever sources you want, they do not say what you so desperately and pathetically want them to say. You couldn't teach me to rub sticks together because you not only can't figure out how, you don't know what sticks are. Go get a REAL education, you ignorant hack, and leave history to the people with BRAINS.

There, scathing enough for you? Good. Now shut up and GO AWAY.

Oh, by the way? Calling me a witch? So NOT an insult, since I'm PAGAN, you moron.

Only Me

12/15/2013 08:50:36 am

Since there are no specifics regarding Vinland's geographical location, and the word can mean two different things, what the Norse were referring to may go unanswered.

As to fur trading, I don't think that was as important as you might believe. Greenland, and perhaps by extension Newfoundland, was in the market of providing ivory from walrus and narwhal tusks. It was no longer economically viable in the later 14th century, due to the decline in the demand. Consequently, this may have led to conflict with the Dorset, and later, the Inuit.

Could Vinland have been in the north-eastern coastal region of the U.S.? Could some fur trapping have occurred in the same area? Sure, it's plausible. Without the discovery of solid evidence, though, it's all speculation at this point.

12/15/2013 12:03:35 pm

I guess I wasn't wrong about you, then. Just remember, though, that "money only has the value that is socially agreed upon," even if that has to do with furs and red cloth. Sour-puss. You need to put a plug in somewhere, yourself. Don't worry about me, I'll be around. Don't comment on my comments anymore, bothering me all the time, and I won't comment on yours. The same goes for your side-kick, Only Me. Double trouble for the innocent.

charlie

12/13/2013 12:12:38 pm

Wolter and the others like him are so funny. The evil "government" is trying to suppress his work, and yet, there he is, on the TV sets of hundreds, literally hundreds, now every week on H2. Wow, I'd have to say that government "suppression" sure ain't what we thought it was. Yes, I did mean to be very sarcastic, to Wolter.

12/13/2013 02:14:14 pm

That's the paradox of conspiracy. Absence of proof of suppression is still considered proof, because the "elites" and "academics" remain silent. In the mind of the conspiracist, these agents hope their silence will undermine the "hidden truth", by playing into the doubt of those still on the fence.

On the other hand, if they address the "truth seeker" directly, then they're guilty of suppression.

It's a win-win for the conspiracists.

12/13/2013 03:48:16 pm

Well of course the government's suppression of the truth wouldn't actually *work*; the Nixon administration couldn't even cover up a case of breaking-and-entering. The fact that Wolter's crusade of truth has gone unobstructed just proves that the conspiracy is real!

It's unassailable logic.

12/14/2013 03:02:25 am

Worse, you can go into the website for the series
and happily look at the previous week's episode!!!
Uncle Sam is not being a wise censor at all today.

diggity

12/13/2013 11:50:02 pm

So no mention of Oreo's?

12/14/2013 03:59:24 am

"But what disturbs me is the way that fringe ideas cross so easily between “fact” and fiction and can use fiction to give spurious weight to “fact” and reinforce, through repetition across multiple media channels, a fictitious version of history based only on imagination and conspiracy claims."

Yes, yet the work, the book, will remain a fictitious version of history. No harm there, as long as the story concept is clear up-front to the reader. We touched on this before on this blog.

In my mind, there is harm when actual deceit takes place in connection with erroneous information, but this is hard to nail down. What does an author really believe, and what is her intent? The harm seems greater when done on purpose, for whatever reasons.

An author can be dumbly innocent, too. I can't quite figure out where some books fit in, such as the recent work of fiction that comes across as a scholarly book on the mission of Sir Paul Knutsen, which supposedly left the infamous Kensington Runestone while looking for Greenlanders. "Last Kings of Norse America."

On the other hand, Gunn Sinclair (yours truly) wrote a highly unsuccessful young adult novel designed to show how the KRS may have been "planted," using sacred geometry, though since writing it, dear Gunn has changed his mind about the stone being buried in the first place...since it was a memorial stone. But, that specific aside, I was able to show a proposed route the party of men probably took, from Lake Superior to the Kensington area.

So, even though I fictionalized the possibility of Templars burying the KRS, which may very well be incorrect, I was able to introduce in fiction form other aspects of the placing of the KRS, including the river route. (Most people, I think, speculate a Hudson Bay route or an overland route.) I touched on stonehole rocks a bit, too, which I certainly won't go into here, uninvited.

In the end, all that matters is what is true, and it is up to the reader to determine what is true and what isn't. Common sense helps.

Jason helps readers determine what is true, but it is while looking through a filter-lens, which can distort things, too, especially when politics or religion become too personal for public taste. I am not alone in occasionally becoming chagrined here...after all, my money still says, "In God We Trust." In the end, we must take what others say with a grain of salt...yes, what I say, too.

The Other J.

12/19/2013 04:51:04 am

I wonder if the makers of Goldschlager cinnamon schnapps -- which have gold flakes in them -- were influenced by Manly P. Hall.

It'll be interesting if Wolter gives any sideways nod to Brody's book via a "some say" reference that's meant to be support for a claim he's promoting. Then we'll see fiction being used to support fact in real time.

Jens Holstein-Rathlou

1/13/2014 08:09:59 pm

The vikings relied on weight only when trading.
They had no currency as such of their own.
The viking period ended in 1066. On secluded places sometimes into the 1100's, like on the island ovfBornholm. Putting the KRS out of date by several hundred years. To associate it with vikings is incredibly ignorant.