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Reflecting on a Season of America Unearthed

3/17/2013

57 Comments

 
Now that America Unearthed has concluded its first season, I feel like a weight has lifted from my shoulders. Writing weekly reviews of the show has been exhausting. With Ancient Aliens, it was much less work because their claims are so outrageous that even the most basic of facts refute them; with America Unearthed, the fabrication of pseudo-history is more subtle and requires much more effort to unravel. Additionally, the medieval period isn’t my favorite (I prefer to study from the Bronze Age down to the Classical period, which also happen to be Ancient Aliens’ favorite periods, too), so there was a lot I needed to learn to understand what was going on in Scott Wolter’s quixotic quest for the Holy Grail.

Reader response has been interesting. As I have previously noted, my America Unearthed reviews are the most-read writing I have ever done, in print or online. I’ve received messages that ranged from positive to horrifying. I’ve been called a douche, an arrogant know-it-all, an elitist, a betrayer of the white race, a jealous hater, a profiteer, and part of an academic, anti-Wolter conspiracy. By far, though, the most frequent complaint is that I am not “open minded,” which astounds me since the very definition of being open minded is that I am willing to entertain Wolter’s ideas and look for evidence rather than simply dismiss them as the impossible delusions of an ideologue. But by “open minded” most don’t mean the desire for inquiry; they use it as a synonym for anti-elitism and an opposition to what they see as academic and intellectual elites who monopolize knowledge. Being “open minded” means, in essence, agreeing with their world view.

Interestingly, none of these angry readers had checked my previous work before complaining. Many were surprised to discover that I have been equally critical of Ancient Aliens (in identical weekly reviews) as well as specific books by Erich von Däniken, Gavin Menzies, David Childress, Frank Joseph, Alan Butler and Christopher Knight, and more—and that I’ve been doing this since 2001. My reviews of America Unearthed seem more focused on one person, Scott Wolter, because the show is built around him; by contrast, an episode of Ancient Aliens has at least five or six talking heads, so my criticisms there are more spread out.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m going to be collecting my reviews of America Unearthed as an eBook and paperback (as I did with Ancient Aliens), and I’ll be revising all of them for publication. As I do so, I’m sure I’ll find some new tidbits I missed on my first pass through the episodes.

But now that the season is over, I’d like to talk for a minute about the meta-narrative the show presented. As I’ve discussed, this meta-narrative isn’t intentional, but it is the message that the show is communicating through the editorial choices it made over thirteen investigations. Consider this:

  • Number of Native Americans interviewed in 13 episodes of the show: 0
  • Number of non-white people interviewed in 13 episodes of the show: 1
  • Number of non-Western cultures alleged to have come to America out of 13 investigations: 1
  • Number of Native American sites attributed to Native Americans in 13 episodes: 0

For the record, the non-white person was the American-trained archaeologist Alfonso Morales, and the only non-white culture was the Maya. Both were in the same episode, and that episode was commissioned specifically to tie in to the December 21, 2012 “Maya apocalypse” programming on the H2 network. Even in that episode, the Native American (Creek) mound site at Ocmulgee (Track Rock) was attributed to the Maya, a culture that alternative writers have frequently claimed was “really” from Atlantis, Phoenicia, or other non-native origins.

The discussions of Native Americans that occured on the show are as follows:

  • The Creek were slaves of or descendants of the Maya
  • The Old Copper culture mined copper under the rule of the Minoans
  • The native peoples of the southwest learned architecture from a medieval Englishman
  • The Mound Builders were Norse Vikings
  • The Mandan people were really Welsh

Additionally, Native Americans appear as background noise in several other episodes. They are referenced as hostile forces threatening the Roanoke colonists and as awed observers of the Templars’ activities. Even in the last episode, when we hear of a current legend of the First Peoples (Canadian Native Americans) about cross-bedecked visitors, we don’t hear it from an actual Native American but rather secondhand from a white guy.

Even when the Native peoples under discussion still exist and could be consulted, as in the case of the Mandan, they are ignored. It simply fails to cross anyone’s mind on this show that Native Americans are and have been real people with their own intentions and actions, not just uncivilized savages waiting for a higher civilization to give them their orders.

I’m not sure that anyone involved with America Unearthed is aware of the racist and nationalist background of the stories they investigate. Certainly the show betrayed no awareness of the history of the ideas under discussion. Witness, for example, the attribution knowledge of Henry Sinclair’s voyage to “legends” despite the fact that the story originated in a known publication in 1784. Similarly, you would never know from America Unearthed that the third episode “copper heist” at Lake Superior originates in the work of Ignatius Donnelly, who concluded that Native Americans were too ignorant and inferior to have mined copper, and therefore Atlantis must have done so and carried it off to start the Bronze Age in Europe. In the same way, the imagining of Native burial mounds to be the work of Vikings, Phoenicians, or a lost white race was intimately tied to early American efforts to colonize Native lands by delegitimizing Native land claims and tied also to efforts to forge a new national identity.

But it’s not just anti-Native American racism that drove early ideas. There’s also the ethnic pride angle. The Newport Tower “mystery” was concocted in 1839 by a Scandinavian man, Carl Rafn, who wanted to attribute the discovery of America to the Vikings out of ethnic pride. (The Vikings, of course, did land in Canada, but there is no evidence they made it as far south as Rhode Island.) The Swedish-language Kensington Rune Stone just happened to show up amidst a Swedish immigrant community working hard to sink roots into newly-settled farmland.

None of this, of course, precludes the possibility that any one of these diffusionist claims is true; however, if the show would do the minimum to acknowledge the origins and pedigree of their claims, it would go a long way toward mitigating the meta-narrative the show is putting out, namely, that Native Americans are primitive and ignorant wild men whom Europeans and Euro-Americans can either safely ignore or control. 

Also, if even Ancient Aliens can manage to find a Native American willing to discuss whether aliens created Native American tribes, surely America Unearthed can find someone willing to speak to claims that all of the accomplishments of American prehistory belong to Europe.

But, the bottom line is this: The show is over for the season, and I do not have to deal with it again for at least a few months!
57 Comments
Shawn Flynn
3/17/2013 06:04:58 am

Don't worry, I'm sure H2 will drop some new stupid/vaguely racist show so you can facepalm while debunking stuff they shouldn't have presented as almost fact in the first place.

Reply
Omar Vega
6/29/2013 03:01:35 pm

I don't agree is "vaguely" racist, but fully racist! This idea of showing white men conquered the Americas before Indians is pure racism. I don't know why Amerindians can't sue stupid programs like this for telling so many lies.

Reply
CFC
3/17/2013 06:16:15 am

Thanks Jason. I'm going to miss these reviews but frankly wish this program would be canceled. Perhaps a clever competetor will create a well-researched program with a credible host.

No amount of clever editing can hide Mr. Wolter's lack of knowledge about these topics. I'm repulsed by the producers at Committee Films and H2. It is their lack of standards that allow the end product to be so misleading and dishonest and they are the ones promoting this ridiculously incompetent host.

Reply
Kate
3/17/2013 07:04:16 am

Thanks, Jason, for enduring this season of AU. I found your research/reviews to be far more interesting than anything presented on AU.

Reply
Cathleen Anderson
3/17/2013 07:33:57 am

Your posts were more accurate and interesting than the innacurate, false and misleading crap that was on American Unearthed.

Reply
Leona Sutton
3/29/2013 07:11:41 pm

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one! I like the show. It's interesting and not boring like when we had to read chapters and chapters out of our history books in school. God forbid somebody disagrees with what is written in black and white in some book. But if you're the kind of person that believes everything you read then you probably wouldn't want anyone to challenge it. Happy Easter

Reply
Jason Colavito link
3/29/2013 11:28:18 pm

I think you have confused "challenging" ideas with "making things up." Have you investigated the actual work scholars have done challenging conventional narratives, such as the Monte Verde site in South America? Or do you only see a battle between evil elites and populist heroes? Knowledge is constantly expanding, but that means doing the real work of proving a case scientifically, not just making things up because you really, really want Jesus' kids to have lived in Minnesota.

Christopher Randolph
3/17/2013 08:07:14 am

"and that episode was commissioned specifically to tie in to the December 21, 2012 “Maya apocalypse” programming on the H2 network"

True. Judging from that final Grail episode it looks like Wolter, who I assume is going to make a basket case out of math, logic, geometry, cartography and who knows what else. is drawing some Fibonacci-inspired spiral connecting sites, which looks like the foundation of something for the second season. He needed something in the American SE for that.

Within seconds of Wolter beginning to draw the sprial it occured to me that he appears to be doing so on a 2-D Mercator projection of a roughly spherical reality, and therefore whatever mathematical point he's attempting to make based in that is almost certainly invalid before we even reach the supernatural claim behind it.

The Grail episode also has us using the woo-woo dousing method and claims of supernatural magnetic-like fields connected to the Grail. Positive insanity, but then History is currently treating the Bible as a historical reality as well so there you go.

If Wolter isn't looking for the Grail (which he understands to be a different cup for a different purpose than the original but hey whatever) he's leaving the door open to be looking for... cue the Raiders of the Lost Ark theme ... the Ark of the Covenant. Something tells me he won't be looking for it in Axum, Ethiopia anytime soon, even though the Ethiopian church claims to, yknow, have it there.

There's zero doubt to me that the people who green-light and produce these shows are aware that messages that white American Christians are guided and protected by God are great for their demographics.

It seems that God is drawing a very important spiral, and it happens to begin in the Midwest. Well of course it does...

Note that God's spiral involves not only white Christians, but pre-Christian white Celts and Vikings, who also are Chosen. This is a hypothesis one puts together only out of the most extremist formal racist ("racialist" as some prefer) literature.

Reply
Christopher Randolph
3/17/2013 08:12:43 am

Dowsing - I meant dowsing.

The "dousing" method I also meant to mention - why would anyone in their right mind send a diver into a shallow well you were just going to pump it out anyway? This is the sort of 'method' that proves Wolter is no archeologist and more a (poor) showman charlatan than any form of scientist.

Any field archeologists reading this? Is this CLOSE to any method you would use if you thought you found a castle and a secret chamber..?

Reply
Christopher Randolph
3/17/2013 08:18:41 am

Oh geez... let me also append that I read this post not having seen the following one yet, and Jason appears to have already noted the spiral nonsense.

As someone who used to run a geography program at universities and high schools in which we had people think about and compare map projections, within seconds of the spiral starting I was laughing.

L Bean
3/17/2013 09:24:16 am

Exactly.

"This is a hypothesis one puts together only out of the most extremist formal racist ("racialist" as some prefer) literature."

America Unearthed would STILL be racist even if it were to include native or Arab/Asian/African experts(assuming they exist in great enough number); the TOPIC is racist. But the fact that no one, even a white expert on Native Americans, is included in their expert field is just gravy for their message.

I find it hard to swallow that this "meta-narrative" isn't intentional when it really, and let's be honest here, mirrors the White Nationalist buzzword salad, as well as dutifully negating by omission any non-european actors in American history. The "whole package" for racist loons, in other words.

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Christopher Randolph
3/17/2013 11:20:05 am

"I find it hard to swallow that this "meta-narrative" isn't intentional when it really, and let's be honest here, mirrors the White Nationalist buzzword salad"

That it does. Let's include in that the attacks on academia and the federal government ("Zionist Occupational Government" perhaps or Secret Muslim Sharia Law PC government, take your pick depending on how old one is and when one jumped on the lunatic train).

The feds and academics are said to be in on the conspiracy to hold down the white man, the rightful owner of this continent by divine right. Note that Wolter repeatedly says that the history taught in schools is a lie and the government is actively HIDING the truth about our historic sites.

As reviewed before on this blog and in its comments, the notion of archeologists and historians holding back research for finanical reasons or to forward their careers is nonsense. Assuming the conspiracy is a PC 'Mud People' gambit to disenfranchise the superior white American from his rightful place in the world makes more sense here.

This is infotainment for neo-fascists, and they do report themselves infotained.

Matthew Dentith link
3/17/2013 08:57:37 am

"Also, if even Ancient Aliens can manage to find a Native American willing to discuss whether aliens created Native American tribes, surely America Unearthed can find someone willing to speak to claims that all of the accomplishments of American prehistory belong to Europe."

I can't say much about the American situation, but here in Aotearoa me Te Wai Pounamu (New Zealand) there are a few Māori (our indigenous people) who have lent their support to the claim the Celts got here first or that the descendants of an ancient super civilisation (the Waitaha) here integrated into the Māori of the South Island about eight hundred years ago. These claims aren't treated very seriously by most Māori, but if you look hard enough you can find them. I assume you're right to think that the same is true in America (and Canada, since the last episode was set mostly in Nova Scotia).

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Mike M.
3/17/2013 09:56:35 am

Not far indeed, Matthew. Vine Deloria, the well known author and American Indian activist had little or no respect for archaeology or anthropology. He was delighted with many of the hyper-diffusionist ideas that challenged the scholarly community, and regarded professionals who opposed them as trying to keep Indian peoples isolated historically from the rest of the world. There is even a well known ethnography of the Santee Dakota in which an elderly Dakota woman tells a story she heard about the old days when her people were visited by strangers in a big boat with a sail, etc. It dovetails perfectly with the Kensington Stone story. In fact, the ethnography, done in the 1930's I believe, probably recorded the diffusion of the Kensington story to the local Santee community. Anyway, I understand the 'racism' argument that some on this blog advance, and I understand how easy it is to come to that conclusion,but there are complications. One is hard pressed to call an elderly Santee woman, or Vine Deloria anti-Indian racists.

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Jason Colavito link
3/17/2013 10:13:50 am

Let me say that there is nothing inherently racist about arguing that there was some contact or another with Europe. Indeed, in the case of the Vikings, the speculation eventually proved correct.

The problem comes when the narrative purposely excludes Native voices or, worse, reassigns demonstrable Native accomplishments to non-Native peoples. In the case of the show, the Native copper industry was reassigned to the Minoans, the Cliff Dwellings to the English, and so on. And in every case, Native accomplishments and voices were systematically excluded.

I don't think anyone involved is being purposely racist, but it's a huge blind spot in the show that they simply fail to recognize that Natives exist as actual people possessed of their own ideas and will, not just furniture decorating an empty continent.

Vine Deloria, for all his faults of methodology and historiography, was never blind to the fact that all of the world's peoples had their own cultures and ideologies.

Christopher Randolph
3/17/2013 10:18:33 am

It's not at all unusual for a racist group to find someone, somewhere from another background who supports them.

Famously (maybe not so famously outside of the UK) I give you Abdul Rafiq:

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/rangers-fan-who-is-only-muslim-1087185

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Defence_League

There's an excellent Vice Magazine documentary on YouTube about "Old Firm" (Rangers/Celtic) violence in which Rafiq figures. He's clearly a useful idiot for the EDL. The fact that they can drag him in front of the camera or point to him repeatedly (as they do) does not make them anything other than a racist organization.

He's also a Glasgow Rangers ultra who's been banned from league matches for singing violent anti-Catholic songs.

Christopher Randolph
3/17/2013 10:19:14 am

It's not at all unusual for a racist group to find someone, somewhere from another background who supports them.

Famously (maybe not so famously outside of the UK) I give you Abdul Rafiq:

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/rangers-fan-who-is-only-muslim-1087185

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Defence_League

There's an excellent Vice Magazine documentary on YouTube about "Old Firm" (Rangers/Celtic) violence in which Rafiq figures. He's clearly a useful idiot for the EDL. The fact that they can drag him in front of the camera or point to him repeatedly (as they do) does not make them anything other than a racist organization.

He's also a Glasgow Rangers ultra who's been banned from league matches for singing violent anti-Catholic songs.

Matthew Dentith link
3/17/2013 10:35:43 am

"One is hard pressed to call an elderly Santee woman, or Vine Deloria anti-Indian racists."

True, but sometimes views are held for reasons other than that they reflect some historical truth.

For example, the Waitaha claims in the South Island of Aotearoa me Te Wai Pounamu (New Zealand) appear to be the result of awkward politics[1]. Due to the way we engage in redress for historical injustices towards our indigenous people, there are a number of political issues which get played out, in sometimes abstract ways. In the South Island the major iwi(/tribe) Ngai Tahu settled with the Crown. Some of the members of the hapu(/sub-tribes) of the area disagreed that they should be put under the aegis of Ngai Tahu and started to advocate that they were really an independent nation, which lead to the Waitaha Nation claim. Whilst there is no archaeological evidence for the Waitaha Nation and the purported oral histories which indicate its ancientness only appeared in the last few decades, many members of the Waitaha Nation sincerely believe they are the descendants of an ancient people who are not Ngai Tahu and who predate Ngai Tahu. It looks very much that this is an attempt to legitimise a sense of independence from Ngai Tahu, a form of political activity which is, in itself, a reaction to the way the New Zealand Government has decided who they deal with with respect to Māori and historical redress.

Not all dissent from orthodox history comes out of the discovery of a history that challenges the status quo; sometimes the assertion of unorthodox history is political. Jason has pointed out how European settlers in America often wanted to legitimise their sovereignty over land they had taken from the local, indigenous people. In the same way, many indigenous peoples react to the often quite strait-jacketed anthropology and sociology which constrains and defines indigenous people with respect to Western ideals. With respect to the Waitaha Nation case, some South Island Māori don't identify with Ngai Tahu and resent the fact that the Crown seems to want to deal with Ngai Tahu and not recognise the differences between different hapu.

1. This issue gets a bit difficult to deal with, because whilst there are a set of people who claim to be descendants of the Waitaha Nation (the supposedly pre-Māori group) there are also a set of people who can whakapapa (show descent) from Waitaha, an actual iwi that got subsumed via conquest into Ngai Tahu several centuries ago; these descendants of the Waitaha don't support the notion of the so-called "Waitaha Nation" whatsoever.

Gunn Sinclair link
3/17/2013 10:06:44 am

"The Swedish-language Kensington Rune Stone just happened to show up amidst a Swedish immigrant community working hard to sink roots into newly-settled farmland."

Jason, I've enjoyed the blog, but you've got the roots thing at the end here twisted all around. In the referenced case, a Swedish farmer, Olaf Ohman, actually worked hard to remove roots from newly-settled farmland, not the other way around...but I know what you mean. (Chuckle.) It shouldn't be that surprising that Scandinavians would choose to settle into an area somewhat like what they left back home; also the Germans, etc.

Jason, I would like to invite you up here this spring or summer, and we can go to the Runestone Museum together. Besides the runestone, they have a great collection of medieval, Scandinavian-style combat iron artifacts found around the area. Afterwards, I'll take you for a tour of Runestone Park near Kensington, where you can see where the runestone was discovered back in 1898, in addition to seeing some stoneholes in rocks, up close. Not far away is Sauk Centre, where that so-called Altar Rock is located not far from Sauk Lake. I can take you there to see the now-famous "Jason Colavito Stonehole," which by all accounts seems absolutely old and not new, such as a very round and fresh stonehole used for blasting. I am serious about the offer.

Here is my strange position: I believe the Kensington Runestone is authentic, in large part because of all the other "evidence" in the region, which includes the many stoneholes. My position is much different from many others', though, in that I believe, based on science, that these many stoneholes could not have been used to moor ships. Now, even Scott Wolter knows these old stoneholes weren't for mooring ships, or for blasting. The other important issue that separates my viewpoint from others' is that I don't lump the runestone in with Vikings. Again, I am being fact-based, as anyone studying the period knows that 250 years separate the end of the Viking Age from the Kensington Runestone. So, in my opinion, the Viking stuff is just that...nonsense.

Being from Minnesota myself, it's hard to just ignore all the Scandinavian oddities around here that appear to point to medieval activity, if one can believe the 1362 date chiseled into the runestone. If this is a genuine stone document, and I believe it is, the message indicates at least a partial Christian ideology. But rather than supporting the notion of a Jesus bloodline, as Wolter seems to be doing, I've been advocating for the runestone to be considered in the light of its Christian message...specifically, the expression of horror at finding ten men murdered.

I can't help believing that some day something will be discovered up here that will have real, actual, acceptable provenance...and that will change everything....

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Christopher Randolph
3/17/2013 10:33:29 am

A lot of Scandinavians lived where they lived because the railroads needed farmers to farm areas where they were building lines. Ads were placed in regional publications to get people to resettle in areas where they became in effect dependent on those railroads.

http://wwwwin.cord.edu/courses/hist317/page6.htm

But this took place two centuries after the first Scandinavians in America actually settled on the East Coast, as one would expect because... hey it's on the coast. They were here in the Philadelphia area, having settled "Wicoca" before it was Philadelphia as well as nearby Delaware and New Jersey. There are still street and town names regionally which reflect this. This is where the first wave settled and I can't say it looks overly much like Scandinavia.

You might like to check out this museum, which is now in decidedly non-Nordic South Philly:

http://www.americanswedish.org/

You seem to be positing some scenario in which Vikings were all over the continent and decided to settle in the upper Midwest because it looked like home, projecting backward a portion of the 19th century experience which in fact had to be made known to the 19th century settlers via commercial advertising by non-Scandinavians.

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Mike M.
3/17/2013 01:38:02 pm

Well Gunn, I've done a lot of archaeological work in western Minnesota over the past 35+ years--no Scandinavian artifacts from the Medieval period. None of the miscellaneous artifacts attributed to Scandinavian explorers are anything other than settler period. I've worked at several so-called "Viking sites." One was an actual occupation, but we found a cast iron fragment with the word 'Cleveland' embossed on it. It turned out to by a settler's sod hut, attested by his grandkids, not a Scandinavian longhouse. I even worked just off Runestone Hill at the site of the infamous AVM find, later confessed to as a joke by a couple of former grad students in Germanic languages. A few pieces of flaking debris from a prehistoric native use of the area. Nothing European. Anyway, the stone holes in and around Runestone Hill were actually chiseled by Olof Ohman's sons, and one of them admitted it in a newspaper story (I think the Brainerd paper, around 1985). I seem to remember he even explained why some of them were triangular. These holes really are from the settler period. It's about the only way to explain why there are so many, and why there are so many accounts by locals about making them. I think the city of Melrose even had a granite company that bought the rocks.

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Gunn Sinclair link
3/17/2013 07:23:50 pm

Well Mike, there are many iron medieval-era weapons at the Runestone Museum, not from the Settler period, but found here in MN over the years. I've already stated that nothing with provenance is held there, but these weapons as a group collection cannot be as easily dismissed as you would like.

The stoneholes were not made by one of Olaf's sons...check with Darwin Ohman, a grandson, and you will find that this is absolutely not true.

I've gone to lengths to show that the stoneholes are not from the settler era, but much older, and associated with other "Scandinavian" evidences, such as the drinking horn carving in SD, and the runestone itself. You say, "it's about the only way to explain why there are so many," etc., but no, Mike, it's not about the only way to explain them. I explain them as being for marking up land for intended future ownership, and others from around MN explain them the same way.

A lot does depend on knowing what these stoneholes were really for. In my opinion, they cannot be as simply explained away as some would want. If someone reading this hasn't seen one of these very old, slightly triangulated stoneholes, I invite you to take a look:

hallmark emporium dot com

PS: I put Newport Tower photos up for someone here. Has anyone ever read commentary about the set of initials seen in one close-up? Just curious.

CFC
3/17/2013 10:33:48 am

Jason- I like the data you prepared but wondered did you do a breakdown of male vs female representation. I recall few if any women being represented on the program. Just curious.

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Jason Colavito link
3/17/2013 10:37:57 am

Sorry, my notes aren't thorough enough to give statistics on women, and I can't imagine sitting through 13 hours of it again to find out. As My notes mention the art historian who talked about the map of Virginia (the only actual expert, I believe) and the woman who owned the Ullen sword. I think there may have been one or two others associated with various museums and shops. Overall, though, the show was very heavily male.

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Graham
3/18/2013 12:45:19 am

Which would seem to suggest makers of this travesty are at least partially following the 'Ten Commandments of Paranormal TV'

"Commandment the First: Thou shalt always have thy team comprised of more men than women. The former should generally sport some form of headwear (either a baseball cap or something befitting Indiana Jones). The latter should always be kept away from Manna from Heaven and the food of the gods. Anorexic-looking, in other words."

CFC
3/17/2013 10:51:42 am

No one should be put through the torture of sitting through the 13 episodes again. I was just curious and my recollection rhymes with yours. Thanks so much for all your work these past few months.

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GlassHouses
3/18/2013 04:01:19 am

Jason states: "my America Unearthed reviews are the most-read writing I have ever done, in print or online."

So, how many people actually read these articles on a weekly basis? Judging by the number of "likes" each article gets...on average 2....I can only assume maybe a couple hundred people read any given article and the vast majority (99%) don't like them. So they may be the "most read writing you've ever done" but all that says is you're previous work was ready by NOBODY. And more importantly, clearly no one actually "likes" your writing as judged by the number of likes and tweets each of your articles get. For someone who claims to be a "best selling author" you'd think you'd have a much bigger fan base that actually waited on pins and needles for every new article. Clearly you have no fan base other than the three people who repeatedly comment on all your posts.

Perhaps you should find a better way to spend your time, Jason. Anyone can take potshots at another person's work, that's easy. It's much harder to build your own body of work and build an audience around that work. It would seem your time and energy would be better spent focusing on your own ideas rather than trying to tear down someone else's. It's clear you are very jealous of Mr. Wolter's success and trying to ride the popularity of his tv show. It's ironic that your most read writings are the result of Mr. Wolter. In primate organization that makes him the Alpha Male and you're just some lowly ape fantasizing about dethroning the king one day. A very sad spectacle to watch....but nonetheless entertaining.

So keep it up. I for one can't wait to see your futile attempts to debunk the next season of America Unearthed and read your own hair-brained conspiracy theories about Scott Wolter, the Sinclairs, the tv producers shooting out of sequence (gasp!) and all the other sillyness you've obsessed over. I only wish you were half as smart as you think you are. You might then realize your time was better spent creating your own body of work rather than trying to tear down someone else's.

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Jason Colavito link
3/18/2013 04:19:52 am

I don't suppose you noticed that I regularly publish my own body of work, my many books and article, including my newest, which will be out very soon.

My blog is a bit of entertainment in between writing my actual work, and my discussion of America Unearthed began with the first episode and now concludes in its aftermath.

I note that you don't seem to care that I also have done the same thing with Ancient Aliens since 2011. Am I jealous of Giorgio Tsoukalos' hair?

I've been writing about history and its discontents since 2001, and I will probably be doing so long after America Unearthed has passed into digital dust.

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Christopher Randolph
3/18/2013 04:57:05 am

"Anyone can take potshots at another person's work, that's easy. It's much harder to build your own body of work and build an audience around that work. It would seem your time and energy would be better spent focusing on your own ideas rather than trying to tear down someone else's. ..."

Have you no sense of irony at all?

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L Bean
3/18/2013 09:49:47 am

Irony is for Alpha Apes only.

ThrowingStones
3/18/2013 08:09:40 am

It seems to me, sir or madam, that you are placing over-reliance on a Facebook app. Not everyone bothers with obsessively clicking Facebook "like" buttons. I, for instance, read this blog 2-3 times a week at least and very much enjoy it. I have even gone back and read a goodly chunk of the archives, I enjoy it so much.

However, I have not once clicked the Facebook "like" button, not because I don't like what I'm reading, but because I find the obsessive "like" clicking to be banal, irritating, and a horrible waste of time. In short, I dislike FACEBOOK APPS, not the articles.

Strangely enough, I've found this to be a prevalent (though not overwhelming) attitude among people who like to think...

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RLewis
3/18/2013 11:04:18 am

I just checked the H2 site and saw that only 2.3k viewers recommended America Unearthed. At 840k average viewers weekly, that's less than 1%. I wonder if H2 realizes that nearly 100% of their viewers hate the show?
Or maybe that's just a ridiculous means of measuring interest.

GlassHouses
3/20/2013 02:29:46 am

Jason has a grand total of 398 Twitter followers. He claims to be a "best selling author"...I know high school kids with more followers and they aren't "best selling authors." He has a grand total of 164 Facebook friends. Wow. My mother who barely knows how to use a computer has more friends than him. His "best selling" books on Amazon have almost no reviews. "Knowing Fear" has ONE review. "The Cult of Alien Gods" has seven reviews. It has an Amazon best sellers rank of #1,019,772. Whoah...not exactly selling like hotcakes. The Publishers Weekly review of this book stated: "Colavito resorts to sweeping generalizations the reader must buy into for the rest to follow-an especially difficult proposition given Colavito's credentials (he is a freelance writer, not a historian or sociologist). Though the writing is engaging and the topic intriguing, readers will be frustrated by Colavito's frequent forays to the soapbox." So an impartial third party has accused Jason of being guilty of every single thing he's accused Scott Wolter and America Unearthed of being guilty of. The reason Jason is so obsessed with Scott Wolter is because they are flip sides of the same coin...except Wolter is more successful. Jason isn't an expert or authority on anything except being Jason Covalito. He has zero credibility and if it wasn't for people Google searching for America Unearthed no one would even know who the hell he is. Keep riding Scott Wolter's coat tails Jason. Maybe you'll eventually make it to 500 Twitter followers. LOL.

Jason Colavito link
3/20/2013 03:19:36 am

Are you aware that the word "best seller" is just a marketing term? My "Critical Companion to Ancient Aliens" was an Amazon.com best seller in the archaeology category in December 2012, which fact I have never hidden. (It's on my website.)

"The Cult of Alien Gods" is almost 8 years old; back in 2005, it did quite well in its category in the month when it was first released.

I wrote "Cult" when I was 23, and it was published when I was 24; I've learned much about writing since then. Sadly, I can see now that at the time I thought I knew how to write a book from reading "alternative" books, but I've since learned that their strident rhetoric and vocal opinions don't work except among select audiences of true believers.

I'm still not getting the "obsession" with Scott Wolter. I've been critiquing alternative history since 2001, starting out with analyzing Graham Hancock, so I'm not sure how reacting to the current big thing in alternative history while it's big is an "obsession."

Seonaid
3/26/2013 04:24:32 am

Completely agree. Since Jason's blog was recommended to me, I now check it a couple of times a week and dip into the archives too, but have never once 'Liked' it.

I am now tempted to join the Twitterati, just to follow Jason and bump his numbers up, but have better things to do. I'm sure Jason has better things to do also. Obsessively checking how many Facebook likes or Twitter followers one has (or in this case, another has) is bordering on obsessive-compulsive and more than a little sad.

C.C.
3/18/2013 06:46:04 am

On the women on the show there were few,but that would be aCommitee films decision. Wouldn't it?

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Jason Colavito link
3/18/2013 07:56:18 am

The production team is responsible for organizing the show, but the producer is a woman (Maria Awes) so I think the lack of women represents a general lack of female involvement in extremist alternative history rather any systematic discrimination.

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RLewis
3/19/2013 05:43:57 am

Can you apply the same logic to the white-race dominance? I mean, how many non-whites are involved in extremist alternative history? Ancient Aliens, Big Foot, UFOs, Ghost Hunters - nearly 100% white.

Jason Colavito link
3/19/2013 05:50:54 am

Suprisingly, the ancient astronaut theory has a very broad appeal, with many Indians (from India) engaged in the "movement." The Ancient Aliens program itself has featured female, African American, and Native American believers, as well as interviewees from around the world. Sad but true, Ancient Aliens is a practically a model of diversity compared to most cable documentary series.

M Salz
3/18/2013 11:36:21 am

Wow. 'Like' - 'not like' I'm more interested in content than that. I sat through enough AU episodes to know I've done penance. But I'm white male so maybe he's a new Leader.

Roanoke was interesting due to someone pushing back and not changing history to be on TV for 15 minutes. Just doing some nosing around on Youtube, there's an eight year old "Digging For the Truth" episode walking the same ground (and golf course). It included the Croaton island connection and perhaps a population split with some reasons.

What intrigued me was both came out of the History Channel. How different the approach! Regardless of theory, or the amount of fun the host has, and he does have fun, you have a better product. Oh! How the mighty have fallen.

Considering the evidence of man's quest for the unknown and the fickle weather gods, I'm sure someone visited these shores. It's just those later arrivals made it stick. Conquest has a certain way about things.

Before anyone take that wrong, we have all been conquerors and conquered. It's merely the time frame in which to measure.

Thank you Jason.

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Cathleen Anderson
3/18/2013 01:16:21 pm

One of the really annoying things for while watching Scott Wolters in action on this show was how it actively gave all that disinformation about what Freemasonry is.

They do not have ritual bathing as he claimed in that episode about the spring houses.

They do not worship Venus and there is not a heavy male female dichotomy. They do not promote one religion over another and some of the branches of freemasonry do not even require that members believe in a god or gods.

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Matt Mc
3/19/2013 04:05:37 am

I thought I wanted to chime in on how subliminal techniques are used in AMERICA UNEARTHED, more so that I have seen in other like programs (including ANCIENT ALIENS). Hopefully it is noticed by viewers as a program progresses that Wolter reasserts his theories many times, each time he presents his theories he asserts them as more defined. While I don't have direct access to a program right now I will give a brief demonstration below (The times are mine and they are needed to show how this form of subliminal suggestion works, for sake of simplicity I will break down only the statements that are being subliminally suggested over a 3 minute period) and the topic is completely off base (I will use Jason's Unicorn for this)


00:15:00 - (receives a email and then calls someone) I have just received something interesting, Mr Norse seems to have discovered some strange stone marking on his property indicating a Unicorn was buried there.

00:45:00 – (now in a car- voice over) We are heading out to the southern neck to investigate the strange Unicorn drawing that Mr Norse found on his property. As you know I have been investigating the truth behind Unicorns for year, I have shown that at other locations the Templar raised unicorns for years after traveling to the Americas in the early 1300'.s

01:00:00 (exiting car) We are hear to talk to Mr Norse about the stone marking he has discovered on his property showing the possible location of a buried Unicorn on his property.

01:10:00 (Intro to Mr Norse) Well Hello Mr. Norse, so you found a possible clue to the burial of a Unicorn? I have been studying the connection to the unicorns and the templars for years? You may have the proof I have been looking. Despite my well documented claims and the well documented Horned Circle found on the Detroit Stone main stream researchers refuse to believe that the templar came to the America's to raise unicorns. This may be the proof we are looking for.

01:40:00 (Talking to Mr Norse) According to these pictures it appears we have the proof that we are looking for, that unicorns where raised in secret in America by Templars

01:55:00 (voice over) We are heading over to the site that the templars directions to their unicorn burial grounds.

02:05:00 (Talking to Mr. Norse while approach alleged site) We there it is. Look at the fauna around here, as a geologist I can see why the Templars raised unicorns around here.

02:15:00 (Talking to Mr. Norse) Well here were are, so this is the stone that has the engraving leading us to the unicorn burial site. Did you know in the early 1300's the templars had to flee Europe because they where being persicuted by the Catholic church because of raising unicorns, It makes sense they came to America to continue raising them since the food supply here is perfectly suited for unicorns.

Now this is example is little over a minute and I am being sparing about the mentions of Unicorns, I am given episode of America Unearthed you will find a mention of what ever Wolter is trying to assert about every ten seconds, bouncing back forth between voice overs and on camera reasserting his position from shot to shot. What is being done here is subjecting the viewer to a progression of statements that cause the viewer to be more and more comfortable with the given assertion no matter how up surd it may be.

Now there is a difference in frequency used in programs like this also. At the beginning of the program it is aggressively used and is more speculative (ie. Theories says, people claim, ect...) and becomes less and less frequent as the program goes on, going from a mention every ten to fifteen seconds to once a minute. The one exception to this is returning from breaks in the program where it is again asserted every the to fifteen seconds for the first minute or so. Now also over the course of the program the claims go from speculation to almost assumed fact.

As I said before these a common techniques used in Documentary filmmaking to help the filmmakers to establish and convince there viewers that the facts are presented within are without speculation and are fact. America Unearthed uses this style or propaganda to the extreme both with the subject matter of the given program and with the fact the “mainstream” science is hiding or withholding facts from the public.

I only bring this up because of how aggressive this technique is used. I, as someone who works in the documentary field, find it upsetting that they producers and Wolter feel the need to be this aggressive with its use. It shows to me that they also understand that the facts they are using are fallible at best and instead have to use tried and true propaganda techniques to promote their agenda.

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Jason Colavito link
3/19/2013 05:52:41 am

Thank you for that very clever illustration of exactly how this technique works. National Geographic's Atlantis documentary from a few years back did the same thing, asking questions and later restating the questions as "facts."

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Matt Mc
3/19/2013 09:06:00 am

The style is commonly used in the "fringe" shows, I notice it all the time on Ghost Hunters, UFO hunters, and other paranormal and unexplained shows. Ancient Aliens does it a lot but there are is a question involved "you must ask yourselves" "Or one could believe" which in my mind keeps using this format as technique as opposed to propaganda.

The other show I have noticed this used in a more propaganda form is Nostradamus Effect and the Doc called Mayan Apocalypse, which was about a Rock on an island and it supposed relationship to the Mayan calendar (I would love to have a follow up since 12/21/12 has passed) .

I have only seen a Little of Holy Grail in America but I would be willing to bet that it is also full of the same editing technique. I would bet looking at Committee films online CF reels, that this is the only style of presentation they know how to do since they only do Alternative History docs and commercial advertising. I am not sure what there first doc was but I am sure they used that style in that doc, History liked it, said something like deliver more like this and we will buy it and that was that. No need to challenge themselves or change any techniques. Overall it is a pretty simple show with the exceptions of the recreations, which are most likely done to inflate budget or to meet certain requirements provide my History Channel. Even then they are crudely filmed (I mean poorly lit and composed, and heavily reliant on color correction to provide the stylized look )and are all filmed over a short period of time (most likely a two week period for the whole session).


CFC
3/19/2013 05:05:16 am

Many thanks for taking the time to outline and illustrate how these "propaganda techniques" have been used to promote and market their (Wolter/Committee Film's) agenda.

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Tripps
3/19/2013 01:09:39 pm

Dam I'm gonna miss the show

Need my weekly Sinclair and Templar fix

Oh well I don't suppose the Templar brotherhood will allow such an open bashing of Wolter next season assuming they have any power left lol

Reply
Mark link
3/23/2013 12:36:45 pm

I only saw a couple of Unearth America shows and thought that they were quite interesting. To me they just raise questions as it is hard to accept the contents as fact. My take was the the shows purpose was to show these sites, give a short story, and really create questions as to whether the topic is true, possibly true, or false. First, I can not verify the drawing in the cave in Oklahoma but if it is true that the head of the sun god was in place to marry up with the equinox, it would take someone smarter than the average bear to accomplish it. American Indians could have done it but we don't know. So, the question remains unanswered. Questions could also be raised about the stone hedge in New Hampshire. How long has it been there? Who put it there? Could people from Europe or Asia have been here before? Those would be questions I have. It appears to me that conventional historians and archaeologists have dismissed these sites. It would be interesting to know why. As for the guy in the ground with the bulls blood, that is a tough one to believe, for me at least.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
3/23/2013 12:44:56 pm

It takes no special skill to make a solstice alignment. Simply wait for the solstice, draw an X on the cave wall where the sun hits, and carve your picture around it. Instant alignment.

Archaeologists dismiss the "Stonehenge" in NH because it was built by a guy named Jonathan Pattee in 1826 as a set of cold cellars, and all the evidence found there dates back no further than him.

The bull's blood rite I recently discussed on my blog. It's a misconception from a Roman rite said to have been practiced in honor of Cybele. (It's recorded in Prudentius, though it's doubtful he was describing a real event.) It has nothing to do with Mithras, or Celts.

Reply
B L
3/31/2013 11:42:30 am

My Easter surprise?...My family all got together for brunch. During meal-time discussion my mom chimes in and says "Has anyone seen the show America Unearthed? They now think even the Celts were coming here before Columbus!" My own mother obviously ecstatic that history was being rewritten, and that she was alive to see it!! I was extremely alarmed. I know my mother is not dumb; she is one of the most level-headed, logical people I know. I didn't really understand what Jason meant when he warned us that this kind of television can be dangerous. Then I was forced to burst my mom's Eater bubble and drag her kicking and screaming back into the real world.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
3/31/2013 12:43:07 pm

One of the special reasons for this is that television is a uniquely emotional medium, and this means that even in nonfiction, a significant portion of the message is conveyed through nonverbal cues, music, emotional meanings, and images. This is one reason that traditionally network news divisions forbade music. (Cronkite used only the sound of a teletype machine as the CBS Evening News theme, for example.) As a result, essentially the facts don't matter for how audiences perceive and engage with TV shows.

Even the best informed viewers invariably accept most of what they hear on TV as true for a variety of reasons researchers only partially understand. Advertisers, of course, love this and regularly take advantage of it.

Reply
PaulN. link
7/5/2014 08:14:04 pm

Regarding CBS evening news during the Cronkite years they opened with the teletype as you say. However the closing theme was Beethoven's 9th symphony, second movement.
That piece, along with the theme to the Lone Ranger and the Warner Bros. cartoons (when they were shown un-cut and un-censored) gave me a love for classical music.

carrie
4/5/2013 03:41:21 am

Well I am no Scott Wolter fan first of all. I admit I have watched a few episodes out of curiosity and giggled at many parts of them. I also have a science background and understand the importance of having real evidence. But Jason-it seems like you really have a personal axe to grind against this guy! I have read a lot of your entries and it seems like you just kind of shoot down any idea he throws out there. Are none of these scenarios, in your opinion, even worthy of looking into further? Are they truly all hoaxes and wild speculation? Just curious!

Reply
Jason Colavito link
4/5/2013 04:00:19 am

They are all hoaxes and wild speculation.

I have never met Scott Wolter and have no personal relationship with him in any way beyond his visit to my blog to accuse me of "near religious zealotry.'

Please note that my entries for America Unearthed are no different from the reviews of Ancient Aliens that I've been running for years, or my analyses of Graham Hancock's lost civilization work before that. I've been doing the same thing to bad ideas about the past since 2001, and selecting only my Scott Wolter posts gives an unfair picture of the breadth of dumb claims I've investigated.

If I didn't consider these scenarios worth looking into, I wouldn't have reviewed them. I did look into them--every single one, in careful detail--and I found every one of them to lack evidence, with the possible exception of the first, the Maya episode, which builds however implausibly on an actual archaeological suggestion that Mesoamericans influenced the Southeast Ceremonial Complex.

The fact is, every time you look at one of Wolter's claims, it vanishes like a roach retreating before the light from a switched on lamp.

I would be interested to know which of his ideas you found compelling.

Reply
Robert L.
5/1/2013 09:15:59 pm

From my experience, it seems a great number of people have trouble with what should be a basic skill, sorting fact from opinion. I have only seen one episode and parts of a couple of others, but it quickly became clear the host was aggressively pushing pure speculation and trying to dress it up in the guise of scholarship. These tactics quickly reminded me of the Ancient Aliens series.

In the episode I saw, he was trying to link the Templars with some ruined structure. His argument went like this:

Premise 1: The Templars revered Venus.
Premise 2: There is an astronomical alignment with Venus built in the structure.
Conclusion: The Templars must have built this structure.

Perhaps premise one is true, I have no idea. I don't really care either. Premise two proved to be false, but lets assume his "experiment" was successful. Premise one and two do not logically lead to the conclusion.

Think about it from a common sense perspective. Take this argument:

Podiatrists like feet.
Bob likes feet.
Conclusion, Bob is a Podiatrist.

The conclusion doesn't follow from the evidence. Bob may be a Podiatrist, but you can't know that from the info provided. Look closely at all of Wolter's arguments, they follow that form. His conclusions never follow from the evidence.

I took a logic and critical thinking class years ago and I forget what the techincal terms are for Wolter's brand of logical reasoning, but the arguments I have seen him make are text book definitions of fallacious thinking.

Reply
Omar E. Vega
6/29/2013 02:59:27 pm

It is unbelievable how low as fallen History Channel. Not only has developed a very long series about pure stupidity, such as the "Ancient Alliens" stuff. Now, it started a series with an ignorant pseudo-archeologist whose only goal in life is to prove "White men" arrived to the New World before Native Americans.
I don't know why such racist and stupid shows are forbidden by law in the U.S. Well, obviously a country where many people still denies evolution is a fertile ground for pseudoscience.

Reply
Gene I
8/25/2013 12:06:06 am

This overly sensationalized TV show is a disgrace to folks interested in real scientific critical analysis applied to the field of archaeology. However, it is entertaining and somewhat laughable to see how gullible some people can be chasing "Holy Grails" and encountering "knights who say Ni". I hear there's a hillside in New York that belches out magic golden plates with "ancient" inscriptions on them too, harhar! But hey, it's good that some weird sites with artifacts (most of which are probably FORGERIES or are genuine Native American artifacts) get highlighted as roadside attractions and/or entertainment oddities. People with rational minds and critically functioning brains realize this show is entertainment for laughs. The main problem I have with shows like this is that some ignorant people are going to be duped, and some kids are going to be misinformed and believe that this crap is really true. "Of course them Native American Injuns didn't do nuthin' much, little Jimmy, it must've been White Celtic Vikings or summethin' doin' all them carvings - ya see, their happy hunting ground was really our Valhalla all along 'cause there's no way they coulda come up with such ideas on their own!" The show Ancient Aliens craps on the whole human race, saying all of our human achievements are basically those of a superior alien race from across the universe. Unearthed America, on the other hand, seems to prefer to overlook the Native Americans in order to further promote notions of White Supremacy (through the barely veiled notion that "these United States were really White Man's land all along"). Way to relegate the first Americans to an archaeological reservation, History Channel! Disgraceful!! Hey, Scott and the History Channel folks: If you really want to do a good show on strange archaeological sites, please use real scientific critical analysis in your methods and presentation instead of all the wide-eyed gullible belief without sufficient evidence bullcrap, but then again, that might just be too much to ask of a channel that spins yarns about aliens building the pyramids to try and sell commercial space to "what if" history buffs who prefer fantasy to evidence-based reality. Or, at the very least, please rename your channel something more accurate like, "The Folklore Channel", or, "Folklore and People Digging Through Barns To Try And Find Old Crap To Sell Network".

Reply
KP
12/23/2015 09:06:17 pm

OMG! Scott Wolter is the greatest explorer ever!!!!! He is like Indiana Jones!!!!! I want to be like Scott Wolter! He is definitely by far the greatest discoverer of nothing in all recorded history!!!!!!

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