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Review of America Unearthed S01E06: "Stonehenge in America"

1/26/2013

42 Comments

 
Note: This post has been edited to fix incorrect information about spherical geometry.

I think there has been some confusion over my reviews of America Unearthed. A great number of people who have commented or emailed take my reviews for a comprehensive examination of the claims made for the ancient sites featured on the show. In most cases, that would take a book, and I can only write so many books per year. My purpose is to review the program as a piece of television and to consider whether the evidence presented on the program makes the case it wants the viewers to accept as true. This is a different beast altogether, and it is theoretically possible that the program could fail miserably through sheer incompetence while missing genuine evidence for an alternative interpretation of history.

America Unearthed S01E06 “Stonehenge in America” opens with a sepia-toned recreation of a Depression-era barbershop with a faux news report playing on the radio describing the New Hampshire stone site then known as Mystery Hill Caves. An actor, presumably portraying former site owner William Goodwin, then drives past a recreated 1937 sign for the site to view its stony ruins in great awe. This is presented to be a major discovery, but the presence of the sign is the first clue that this is not what it seems.

Then we smash-cut to the opening titles, and we’re off to a discussion the site now known as America’s Stonehenge in Salem, New Hampshire. The episode begins, but before it does, I need to talk a little about my involvement with Mystery Hill.

As I did last week with Ancient Aliens, I need to offer some disclosure about where I am coming from in reviewing this episode. Unlike most of the ancient sites featured on the series, I’ve actually been to Mystery Hill, and I’ve investigated its “mysteries” in person. The first time I saw the place, when I was 16, it was one of the biggest disappointments of my life. I told the story in an audition tape I made for the Discovery Channel family of networks last year, for a proposed series that would have investigated alternative claims about ancient American history. Sound familiar? To be titled Ancient America, the program never made it out of preproduction; only now with a more or less complete set of America Unearthed episode descriptions posted on H2’s website do I see why: The two programs would have shared 8 out 13 episode topics in common. (The Discovery program would have added some aliens in, too.) I had no way of knowing when America Unearthed began, but Scott Wolter’s show apparently cost me one of my own.

I’ve repurposed that audition tape for this review. So, please enjoy me telling the story of how I was horribly disappointed by the unimpressive rocks of America’s Stonehenge:

OK, so with that out of the way, let’s begin.

We start by looking at England’s Stonehenge, which is composed of around 150 upright stone monoliths, which Scott Wolter claims is the work of an “advanced” civilization. I need to stop right here and remind everyone to take a look at the discussion of America’s Stonehenge I posted not long ago. The New Hampshire site is absolutely nothing like Britain’s Stonehenge. To begin with, the New Hampshire structures are built of piled stones, while the British site is made of monoliths. They are as different as two stone sites can be.

“America’s Stonehenge is a prehistoric site in Salem, New Hampshire,” Wolter intones. No, it is not “prehistoric”; that is an alternative history assumption. As I explained not long ago, while there is a layer of pre-colonial Native occupation, the stone buildings are believed to be colonial constructions (they were historically used as cold cellars); its sacrificial table is clearly a colonial lye-leeching stone for soap-making, and the “aligned” ring of standing stones was rearranged in the 1930s and 1940s by the site’s diffusionist owner, William Goodwin, to “restore” them to the positions he assumed were “original.” There is simply no way to verify that these stones were in positions claimed for them prior to 1937. The earliest reports make no mention of a stone ring but rather to the heaps of stone formed into rough caves.

Wolter reviews past episodes and lauds “the ancient practice of archaeoastronomy,” apparently blissfully unaware that the “archaeo-” comes from “archaeology” and refers to studying ancient people’s astronomical knowledge, not a discipline ancient people practiced!

Wolter and the son of the current site owner speculate on the movement of the earth’s axis and how that proves that the “alignment” on the stones of the site has changed due to earth changes. They completely ignore the fact that these rocks were repositioned in the 1830s due to rock quarrying in the area and again in the 1930s by William Goodwin. Any alignments are therefore speculative until and unless one can prove that the rock has been in its current position for more than a century.

We then see a bizarre sequence in which the kid uses Google Earth to show that a line drawn from the “summer solstice” alignment will pass through the center trilithon at Stonehenge in England and the Phoenician homeland in Lebanon. (Incidentally, the solstices were not always among the claims for the alignments at Mystery Hill; some maps show only equinox and mid-season alignments.) I can’t believe what I am seeing. Note: I have edited what follows to correct errors in my original description of the line passing through Mystery Hill and Stonehenge.

The "straightness" of the alignment is due entirely to the projection Google Earth is using for the earth and it does not correct for the curvature of the earth. As you can see the line looks straight because the globe has been flattened into two dimensional space, but the globe has been titled far outside its actual north-south orientation:

Picture
But if you look at the globe in a standard projection with north at top, you’ll see that the “straight” line only appears straight because you are looking at a very broad curve from “above” such that the curve is masked by the curvature of the earth:

Picture
That said, yes, a curved line does pass between the two sites of Mystery Hill and Stonehenge, just as a curved line can be drawn between any two points on the globe. The "Phoenician" part of the alignment crosses no major Phoenician site and can be discarded, unless we'd like to include Germany and Ethiopia in the alignment as well. This curved line, however, is not a "northeasterly" line, which would take you to Iceland, as navigation charts show.

In short, the line twists wildly off of true northeast. (Try looking at the sites’ latitudes to confirm that they have no directional alignment.) It is due entirely to the fact that any two points on the earth's surface can be connected by a circle equal to the earth's circumference, called a Great Circle.

According to Google's "Great Circle Mapper," the shortest distance on the earth's surface from Salem, NH to Beirut, Lebanon passes through the area around Stonehenge, though I caution that this is not the same as traveling in a continuous northeasterly direction from Salem, as the program claimed. It is, however, a Great Circle, meaning it is on a line equal in distance to the circumference of the earth. But: Look how much other territory is as well, including parts of Cyprus, Austria, Germany, etc. 
Picture
Any two points can be connected by a Great Circle, and that circle is bound to hit a third point that has some point of interest. For example, a Great Circle drawn through my house in Albany, NY and the Inca temples of Peru passes directly through Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a Great Circle drawn from my house to the Colosseum in Rome passes through the Neolithic stone monuments of Western France. But does it mean anything? No. I urge you to try it yourself to find your own spurious "alignments"!

“This rewrites a huge chapter of American history. This isn’t kidding around!” Wolter enthuses. I know he’s not a stupid man, but, man, this one makes no sense, even by his standards. After all, so many "alignments" have been proposed for America's Stonehenge, that a Great Circle drawn through any of them is bound to hit something ancient elsewhere in the world.

Wolter next expresses his belief that the site could not be colonial because it “reeks” of being old and no one would bother to build in stone when they had wood to use. Apparently he is ignorant of the British animal pens that colonial people took as their models; they were made of stone using dry stone construction, and people coming to America, especially Scots-Irish immigrants, used dry-stone enclosures and fences here in the United States and continued building them into the middle 1800s under the supervision of Scots-Irish craftsmen. You can visit many of them today.

Then we see some squiggles on a rock that are claimed as a Canaanite inscription to Baal (the Phoenicians of the Bronze Age called themselves Kenaani), but it looks like no Phoenician writing I’ve seen. What bothers me is that all of the adventurers who supposedly came to America were terrible at their own cultures and were unable to carve recognizable letters, writer coherently, or draw pictures in the style of their own cultures. Nor were the Mediterranean peoples shy about proclaiming their accomplishments; the famed Periplus of Hanno the Carthaginian (the Carthaginians being an offshoot of the Phoenicians) tells much about his trip around Africa and was put on display for all to see, but somehow every traveler to America was some kind of ignoramus who couldn’t scratch his own name in his own alphabet without turning it into a giant mess.

Finally we come to the sacrificial table! It’s still very obviously a colonial-era lye-leeching table for soap-making, as I previously discussed. (Seriously, there are so many of them in the U.S. that they are easily recognizable. It’s identical to them.) Nevertheless, the site owner tells us that this was used for human sacrifices—none of which, conveniently, have ever been found.  Wolter notes the exfoliating weathering, but he neglects to consider the damage done to the stone as a result of the soap-making process, thereby allowing him to make the table seem thousands of years old.

We also look at some of dry stone caves and the echoes they make (the alleged Oracle Chamber), which the owner attributes to “shamans” or “priests” making noises around non-existent human sacrifices. The problem is that Phoenicians did not use the faux-Neolithic architectural style of Mystery Hill, nor did they squat in tiny caves. They build very nice buildings that look like buildings. Even adapting to local materials, ancient people did not abandon every marker of their culture when colonizing a new area.

So Wolter travels to Mt. Holyoke to talk to an actual scholar, Mark McMenamin, who explains what we know about the Phoenicians and their Mediterranean trade network, which was based on their ability to navigate by the north star at night. Wolter again confuses “archaeoastronomy” (the science of studying ancient people’s astronomical knowledge) with plain old astronomy (twice proves it’s no mere lapsus linguae) and claims that the Phoenicians, because they knew the north star was in the north must therefore have understood celestial mechanics in all their complexity, a logical leap the program asks us to accept on faith. Sadly, though, McMenamin is not a scholar of the Phoenicians; he is a geologist, like Wolter. His alternative history claim is the 1996 idea that a Carthaginian coin depicts a map of the world, including what he says is North (but not South) America, including Florida and Mexico. Given that the Americas are shown as smaller than Spain, it is much more likely that if this really is a map, the blob represents Britain or the Azores or other known lands. Another coin, not shown on the program but which can be seen here, depicts similar markings with both “Britain” and an unexplained blob, but these markings are so small (fractions of a millimeter) that I can’t see anything in them other than the chance design of an ancient die-maker. Ancient dies simply weren’t that good to have such tiny pictures, and McMenamin relied on computer enhancement to "restore" the map and make it visible, a telltale sign of problems.

McMenamin cites Diodorus Siculus (5.19-20) in support, when Diodorus describes a fantastical island outside the Pillars of Heracles, a veritable paradise. He wrote that “The Phoenicians, then, while exploring the coast outside the Pillars for the reasons we have stated and while sailing along the shore of Libya, were driven by strong winds a great distance out into the ocean. And after being storm-tossed for many days they were carried ashore on the island we mentioned above, and when they had observed its felicity and nature they caused it to be known to all men.” Yet somehow despite this global fame, we are also asked to believe that the island was kept a big secret, as per McMenamin’s suggestion. There are several theories about Diodorus’s island, which include (a) it was fiction, (b) it is the Azores or the Canaries, and (c) it represents the Americas. There is no archaeological evidence to support the latter two theories, though occasional reports—unconfirmed—of Phoenician or Carthaginian artifacts in the Canaries or Azores suggest these are the most logical choice.

Following this, we travel to Stonehenge to discuss irrelevant material about the ancient site, which is so wildly different in construction, style, and function that even unobservant viewers must have noticed it is nothing like “America’s Stonehenge.” Wolter tries to make a connection to astronomical alignments at both sites, but as I explained, we can’t know where the New Hampshire rocks were once placed, so any connection is pure speculation.

Wolter shows the Google Earth “alignment” to a Stonehenge expert, who, essentially, laughs at him, and the expert seems confused about why a weird curve is being taken as an “alignment” when it has no relationship to actual directions on the spherical earth, though he is too polite to say so.

After Wolter’s idea that the Phoenicians were involved in building Stonehenge got shot down, he instead claims it “could have been a sacred sanctuary for them,” which I suppose is possible, though there is no evidence of a Phoenician occupation at Stonehenge. (The Phoenician connection to Britain was promoted by British imperialists of the nineteenth century, but even then it was obvious that there was no archaeological support.)

Wolter concludes by asserting that “the elite” who ran Stonehenge “came over here” to build Mystery Hill because “there’s no doubt” the two sites are “connected.” The connection is nothing more than a Google Earth distortion and the fact that both sites feature astronomical alignments (dubious ones in the case of Mystery Hill). But, by the standards of America Unearthed, this was some of the most solid evidence yet uncovered, which is to damn it with faint praise.


Next week: The lost colony of Roanoke! This happened in historic times, so I can't imagine that America Unearthed could screw it up too badly.
42 Comments
RM
1/26/2013 08:43:54 am

You're right on with your reviews. The shows are nothing but pure entertainment and make no legitimate, scientific attempt to substantiate their claims. The assumptions are wild and far ranging, and linking them requires bigger leaps than Evel Knievel was capable of pulling off.

The unfortunate part is a lot of people view them as scientifically valid rather than fun TV to watch for a laugh.

Reply
J.
1/27/2013 04:01:30 am

Isn't Stonehenge about ten degrees higher in latitude than America's Stonehenge in New Hampshire? And isn't Beirut at a lower latitude than both New Hampshire and Stonehenge -- about 20 degrees lower than Stonehenge, and 10 degrees lower than America's Stonehenge?

Now I'm no archaeoastronomer with a fancy honorary degree, but I took geometry in high school and remember what points on a line, ray and plane are. If you drew a ray connecting America's Stonehenge to Stonehenge, that ray would have to continue moving towards a higher latitude. Since that's the case, and unless directions and latitude are different in the alternative history universe, then a ray from America's Stonehenge through Stonehenge would land you somewhere up near Oslo or Uppsala, no? I'm no Magellan, but isn't Beirut nowhere near Oslo or Uppsala? You'd have to be going northeast from America's Stonehenge to Stonehenge, and then southeast from Stonehenge to Beirut, which wouldn't actually be in the same plane.

Again, maybe I need to be an archaeoastronomer to make three non-contiguous points be on the same plane, but if I followed a straight line from America's Stonehenge to Stonehenge and then beyond, I think I'd have to pack for someplace chillier than Beirut.

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Jason Colavito link
1/27/2013 04:17:33 am

It's very confusing because (a) the earth is a sphere and (b) the show confuses navigational directions (traveling northeast from New Hampshire, which would put you near Iceland) with following a "Great Circle" (a circle equal to the earth's circumference which demarcates the shortest distance between two points on the spherical globe). Because the earth is a sphere, a curved line, not a straight line, is needed to connect points.

A Great Circle passing between Salem, NH and Salisbury, UK would have an inflection point in the mid-Atlantic, meaning that you'd stop going northeast and start heading southeast.

But, as I said above, a Great Circle can be drawn through ANY two points on the globe, so this is hardly the amazing discovery the show made it seem. As I mentioned, my own house is "aligned" to the Colosseum in Rome and the Inca heartland in Peru using the same Great Circle calculations.

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J.
1/27/2013 05:20:51 am

Any two points is understandable, as is the curved line to account for earth's spherical shape. But three points -- America's Stonehenge, Stonehenge and Beirut -- just doesn't compute for me. It seems too imprecise (which is what you were getting at), and kind of like random ley lines. If they're measuring their great circle in the way they're claiming, then it also nicks the Burren and Connemara in Ireland, which also has plenty of dolmen structures like Poulnabrone; maybe they missed an opportunity. I liked the way the British archaeologist just politely smiled at the end when Wolter authoritatively declaimed what the henge cultures believed about celestial bodies, as if the America's Stonehenge lineage had been proved.

I wish we got more from that archaeologist, because it might have demonstrated one of the real differences between what America Unearthed is doing and what academics actually do -- question their own assumptions and challenge them, not protect knowledge as if it were a sacred text. If the assumptions can't stand up to a challenge, they need to be altered or discarded. One method starts with evidence and tries to draw testable conclusions, and the other method starts with a conclusion and assembles evidence to support that conclusion (Egyptian Mithraism engraved on rocks by Celts in Oklahoma).

I'm kind of fascinated with what's behind the latter thinking, whether it starts from an ideological position, an identity position, a knee-jerk anti-authority position, or something else. In essence, I think it comes down to a kind of conspiratorial thinking of a particular American sort. I used to teach a writing and argument course on conspiracy theories, and it's a rabbit hole of folklore; you can trace things like anti-Freemasonry back to the early days of the colonies, track it as political propaganda that ends up as folkloric received knowledge, and then see the same arguments recycled for anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, and anti-Government positions in later eras -- which pops up in places like America Unearthed as decrying a joint effort by the academic and governmental establishments to keep "the truth" (of what?) hidden from its brainwashed citizens. I've given Ancient Aliens a miss because I thought it'd be too frustrating to watch; from a kind of anthropological perspective that observes that style of conspiratorial thinking, am I missing out? Or are the logic leaps too acrobatic to follow?

Jason Colavito link
1/27/2013 05:42:23 am

It doesn't compute because the alignment isn't intentional. The circle described by any two points is bound to pass through a third point close to some ancient site or another. The real question is INTENT, and as you note there is no evidence of intention anywhere.

Your comments on the origins of fringe thinking anticipated the blog post I was in the middle of writing when you posted your comment! I agree that believers have various political, cultural, identity, and ideological reasons for belief and that these stand outside any "evidence" in the scientific sense.

Plentsje
2/10/2013 03:48:37 am

the kid said he started drawing the line from the center, (you see the lines on the ground on google earth) along the summer solstice line and folowed it up to england, can somebody find out if this is so cuz i can't draw a line in GE

Pamela
1/27/2013 12:30:28 pm

This show makes me sad. Entertainment value doesn't redeem it when one considers that people believe the subjects presented are based on concrete fact rather than wild conjecture. It is unfortunate that our educational channels are devolving into trash tv.

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Gail
8/7/2013 03:14:17 pm

I totally agree

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Jon Landis
1/28/2013 11:33:55 pm

I'm lost as to the point of this solstice line they talk about. What is the exact definition of the line they are creating? I interpreted it to be a vector pointing to the sunrise point on the horizon on the morning of the summer solstice. If I am interpreting it correctly, I don't see how any vector points in a direction other than southeast to northwest. The sun at its zenith only comes to 23.5 degrees north latitude on that day, and my gut tells me that the sunrise point from NH should be viewed to point well south of any imaginary line that might or might not eventually pass thru Stonehenge...or any other place, as you describe in your great circle discussion.

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Jason Colavito link
1/28/2013 11:51:58 pm

You're right. The entire alignment is an artifact of how Google Earth uses Great Circle lines to project directions, combined with the arbitrary selection of a center point for Mystery Hill (the observation point needed to "see" any alignment) to generate the "alignment" to the "solstice" marker stone, which of course was only moved into position in the 1930s!

So, in answer to your question, the line they drew isn't a projection from Mystery Hill toward the sun but an extension of the line drawn from an arbitrary observation point at the center of Mystery Hill to the pointy tip of the rock supposedly marking the solstice. This "observation line" goes north and east even though the sun itself is not.

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PWAX link
1/30/2013 08:52:39 am

OK. How about coming to the woods north of Fitchburg MA to look at some completely undisturbed mound sites?

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[email protected]
11/25/2016 01:26:22 am

where near fitchburg, is there a river deep for phoenician boats don't remember.regardless what that windbag said i have proof pheonecians or even way heavier and dudes were here over 5000yrs+ ago despite nh site is totally bogus ...no remains no script onsite no blood ochre staining way toooooo clean!!!!! does he recall thoth/quetzle/kulkulkan colonized meso-america approx 3800bce after marduk/ra deposed him

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B L
1/30/2013 09:18:08 am

I've seen every episode of this show. I really enjoy it. I love to pick apart all the assumptions and jumped-to conclusions the creators use to "prove" their theories. My favorite part of the series to date? Easily...the first 5 or so minutes of the first episode. Wolter gets painted as a fast-charging, ready-at-a-minute's-notice, hard-cussing, short-tempered, grizzled, real-life Indiana Jones. It is so kischy that you can't help but laugh and continue to watch. It comes off like a middle-aged man trying to emulate his favorite super hero.

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B L
1/30/2013 09:38:18 am

Another thing I found confusing about the "Solstice Line" that seemed to link Mystery Hill to Stone Henge? Early in the show Wolter made the assumption that the sun was probably intended to rise over the highest point of the stone in the circle at Mystery Hill. Later in the show it was demonstrated that the sun rose over a lower portion of the stone during the solstice. As you mentioned in your blog the reason given for this apparent moving of the sun's track was the shifting of the Earth's poles. Okay...but, how does that relate to the "solstice line" the owner's son discovered? If the Earth's poles had not shifted then the solstice line would not run through Stone Henge, right? Thus, the interesting, but pointless line becomes even more pointless.

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Jason Colavito link
1/30/2013 12:35:02 pm

It's all a big mess, and the entire alignment is dependent upon arbitrarily selecting a point to "observe" the solstice, a point on the rock to arbitrarily select as the "alignment" point, etc. I wouldn't sweat the details until someone can prove that rock has been in place since 1500 BCE. Most professionals who've studied the site believe it was placed there after 1937, or the 1800s at the earliest.

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MC
5/18/2013 02:00:20 pm

BL.
Nicely Done...
My questions are , then who is moving the Stone Hinge stones?
and how did they no which way to move them for the summer solstice to line up?

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Christopher Randolph
2/1/2013 03:45:01 pm

Kudos for continuing to dog this fraud. I caught a rerun of this nonsense tonight (2/1/13) & I too noted that anyone with a decent high school geometry background could immediately detect a load of BS on the supposed solstice ley lines... or whatever it is we're claiming. Wolter doesn't even attempt fully explaining what he claims this ARC (not in fact a "line") represents.

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Joe
2/4/2013 06:20:40 am

This was the worst America Unearthed yet. You know things are seriously bad when Wolter becomes the voice of reason, explaining that the dates don't allow for the Phoenicians to have built Stonehenge which is apparently what the owners of America's Stonehenge had wanted to believe.

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Kat
3/8/2013 05:58:15 pm

I loved the Stonehenge expert. The look on his face was priceless as he tried to politely explain to Wolter that his idea was just plain silly.

I'm so sad that your show didn't get picked up, because I'd have been glued to every episode AND it would have had actual redeeming value. Your fascination with what these alternative histories say about the people who create and believe in them, is exactly the same fascination I have always felt with cryptozoology.

It is interesting how everybody who came to America from an impossible culture was completely ignorant of their own culture and immediately began producing artifacts with no relation to their past, isn't it? I laugh every time somebody talks about the Lost Tribes of Israel leaving records written in Egyptian hieroglyphics. They did have their own language, you know, people. And it was a lot easier to write than hieroglyphics. Even the Egyptians didn't use hieroglyphics a lot!

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DrBB
1/3/2014 05:26:38 am

Just caught a re-run of this travesty. I was (foolishly) hoping I might catch a bit of actual, y'know, HISTORY programming on the "History" Network, since it's a weekday afternoon not primetime and maybe they might have something on with a basis in fact. Oops.

But apparently the biggest mistake I made was switching off before this Brit expert was interviewed--sounds like the most rewarding moment in the whole episode. How ever did they screw up and let in someone who actually knows things about stuff?

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Colin
6/12/2013 04:00:10 am

In my humble opinion, Scott Wolter has done a huge disservice to himself, his university, and the History Channel.
As a supposedly reputable academic, Wolter has a responsibility to use established knowledge and facts together with logic (not to mention common sense) to present plausible possibilities before presenting his theories to an audience. He obviously does little, if any, of that. The result is that he presents arguments and theories that even a reasonably educated person can establish to be nonsense. He may make money from his TV programs, but I suspect his reputation will forever be tarnished by his ludicrous conclusions and claim that his ‘findings’ will rewrite American history books.
I know nothing about his education, but one must question how his university and tutors thought him fit to be awarded the high academic qualifications he apparently gained.
As for the History Channel, the mind boggles how it agreed to produce and broadcast such nonsense. The channel has always maintained a high standard for its published material, until now, but I fear its reputation has now been tarnished in a similar manner. Given a different method of presentation, of the same program content, the programs could easily be presented as satiric comedies on a comedy channel.
It’s a sad day for truth, established fact, common sense and logic, when such program material is presented by a reputable TV company, as having plausible and objective investigative content that should be treated seriously by viewers. It’s scary that gullible and uneducated viewers may take the programs seriously, not to mention children who may do the same and forever live with such crazy beliefs and hypotheses.
It would be good if every viewer were made to read Jason Colavito’s analysis of each episode, just to get their feet firmly planted in the real World.

Reply
Kim
8/15/2013 12:21:20 pm

Colin- check out Jason' post about Mr. Wolter's non existent degree. He's been falsifying his resume for over two decades: http://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2013/01/scott-wolters-apparently-non-existent-degree.html

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Cory
11/29/2013 11:25:36 am

A bachelors degree is bogus?

Reply
Colin Hunt
11/30/2013 05:35:54 am

Yes, it is bogus. See Scott Wolters own admission on the subject on Jason's blog 01/23/2013) , the message from Scott Wolter reads...
"…I was invited by the UMD Geology Department to give a lecture at the college about my research. Afterword, six of my former professors asked me technical questions which I answered to their satisfaction. Afterward, they had an informal reception in the Professor’s [sic] lounge where they gave me an honorary degree with a whipped cream-topped coffee as my “certificate.” Was it officially recognized by the University? No. They gave it to me as I have always presented it to be, a sympathy degree."
Jason explains that "Wolter removed the unofficial degree from his resume after the Minnesota state geological licensing agency recently raised questions about the credential, which had appeared on his resume since 1987."

Jason Colavito link
11/30/2013 05:38:18 am

Do note that his bachelor's degree is real. He had also claimed an honorary master's degree, which is the degree that was not formally bestowed by any university.

John
11/2/2013 10:54:33 am

If you extend that line through the united states it hits Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Montgomery, The Mississippi Delta, and Finally Teotihuacan and Mexico City.

Reply
Americanegro
9/2/2016 05:56:01 pm

All hotbeds of Masonic/Templar activity...

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Kevbo
11/2/2013 08:06:18 pm

"Any two points can be connected by a Great Circle, and that circle is bound to hit a third point that has some point of interest. For example, a Great Circle drawn through my house in Albany, NY and the Inca temples of Peru passes directly through Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a Great Circle drawn from my house to the Colosseum in Rome passes through the Neolithic stone monuments of Western France. But does it mean anything?"

Yes, it means we now know exactly where you live! Bwaaa ha ha haaaaaa. Dooooom!

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John
11/30/2013 01:11:34 am

These are all major cities and capitals which are perfectly symmetrical to the great circle described in the documentary "Revelation of the Pyramids". This is the remnant of an ancient global religion which is still being practiced today by Freemasonry. I am merely wasting my time however trying to explain this to sheep. Baaahhhhhhh!

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Dan
11/30/2013 05:32:16 pm

The most infuriating portion of this fraud television show is when Wolter is speaking with the current site owner and his son at the very end of the episode and is completely dishonest about what he learned at the real Stonehenge from the actual expert. He says learned that "the Phoenician connection is a little bit tenous, it actually predates the Phoenicians by a little bit." Actually, any Phoenician "connection" is impossible. It doesn't predate by "a little bit", but by at least 1200 years. We learned that from the Stonehenge expert about 10 minutes earlier in the show.

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Ray
11/30/2013 10:54:43 pm

I wasn't t all surprized to see Mark McMenamin's name come up in this program. McMenamin, presented as the program's "scholar" on the Phoenicians, is well-known within geology circles as a crackpot. He is an intelligent design creationist and has had some outrageously stupid ideas. See Donald Prothero's review of McMenamin at http://www.skepticblog.org/2013/11/06/krakens-and-crackpots-again/.

And try to withhold your laughter, please. So why is it that such flakes always seem to maintain multiple, stupid ideas? What, one stupid idea isn't enough?

Reply
Andy
12/7/2013 02:10:44 pm

The drinking game applications are becoming obvious to me after watching this many episodes. If you're a lightweight, drink each time you hear "this will rewrite a huge chapter in American history." If you're a serious drinker, drink every time Wolter misuses the word "archeoastronomy."

Reply
Martin R
12/15/2013 11:00:02 am

Jason, another great job. I wish you had received the de-bunking show. In the 1970s, National Geographic devoted an entire show disproving the Erich von Däniken's theories, which proved to be ridiculously easy. This included a subdued von Däniken reduced to, 'Oh, I didn't know that.'

Reply
Jason H.
1/17/2014 08:23:38 pm

So, I'm reading through this, wondering why no one has touched on the one set of cities that Stone Henge IS lined up with perfectly, using the "great circle" process... Boston, NY, Philly and DC - in that order radiating from Stone Henge as well as on our Nation's timeline. Boston was settled by the puritans in 1630 and was the scene of the American Revolution, among other things; New York was born about as New Amesterdam in 1626, then was under English control in 1664 and served as our Nation's Capital from 1785-1790; Philadelphia was founded by W. Penn in 1682, was the meeting place of our Founding Fathers and was one of the Nation's Capitals during the Revolutionary War and was the temporary Capital while D.C. was being built; and finally, Washington D.C. became the Capital District in 1790 and then the city of Washington founded in 1791, and of course, our Nation's Capital ever since. So what reason did they hold for founding these cities, along this "great circle" emanating from Stone Henge? Even further, this "great circle" emanates as a line that actually perfectly bisects a 12:5 proportion rectangle that is formed by the four station stones surrounding the Stone Henge that runs from the Samhain Sunste to the Beltane Sunset. Below are two links to supporting diagrams. Of note would be that the 12:5 rectangle you see is duplicated in Washington DC's street plan with the White House being the center, and the Washington Circle, Mt. Vernon, US Dept of State, and US Navy Memorial being the 4 "station stones", again in NY's Central Park where it's actually two 12:5 rectangles side by side with the Metropolitan Museum of Art being centered, and yet again, oddly, in Jerusalem, with the ancient Jaffa Gate being the bottom left station zone, and the eastern wall being the eastern-most extent of the rectangle. When you halve this rectangle into two 6:5 rectangles, Mt Calvary and Sanctum Sanctorum(Dome of Tablets(Commandments)) are at the exact centers of these. (These two spots, it's worth pointing out, are arguably the Holiest place of Christianity and the Holiest place of Judaism, respectively). But I digress. BUT, if you want a little more, you can also follow that latitudinal line from The Church of the Holy Sepulcher east through the Dome of the Tablets, through where Jesus drove the money-changers from the temple, through the "Golden Gate" of the Jerusalem's city wall, through Gethsename, where Jesus was arrested before he was hung, and also to where he preached at the Mount of Olives. All of this along the same latitude that bisects the 12:5 rectangle in the city of Jerusalem, just like the ones in DC, NY, and Stone Henge. Just a little food for thought. Go ahead and look it up. Links just after this text to a map and a diagram of the rectangle I speak of at Stone Henge. Have a great day...

http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q250/jlogic_2000/hengetodc_zps90bb9930.jpg

http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q250/jlogic_2000/StonehengeDiagramOrigSize1200_zps25b4a707.jpg

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Jason H.
1/17/2014 08:30:23 pm

My apologies to John, above, who did actually touch on the fact that this line carried through the aforementioned cities, and I had not even followed it through "Atlanta, Montgomery, The Mississippi Delta, and Finally Teotihuacan and Mexico City." Very nice.

Reply
Karl N.
3/16/2014 02:11:34 pm

I couldn't stop from giggling when he was looking at the sacrificial table.

I grew up in York county Pennsylvania. In 1928 a man named Nelson Rehmeyer was murdered by a person that was under the belief that Rehmeyer had put a hex on him. The tract of land owned by Nelson Rehmeyer became known as Rehmeyer's hollow, and attracted endless numbers of people seeking some sort of supernatural experience. There was a house located at the north end of the hollow, now Spring Valley County Park, rumored to be Nelson's house. Of course behind the house there was a sacrificial table, complete with grooves for the collection of blood.

Not only was this actually a table for the collection of lye, (The York Historical Society owns several of them) But the old abandoned house was not the house where Mr Rehmeyer lived or was murdered. As soon a I saw the table in this episode I knew exactly what it was.

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Albert B. Hackney
10/19/2014 06:21:36 am

On America Unearthed today, 10/19/14, they talked about the
megalithic yard being about 2.67 ft. This is about the average man's stride or pace. It appears that the megalithic yard is simply the average man's "pace". Mans first means of measuring distance.

Reply
Dawn
12/20/2014 03:41:35 pm

I loved this show, I've watched every episode thus far. I started researching some of the stuff that comes up on his show, out of curiosity mostly. At first I noticed info left out of certain episodes that seemed crucial. But still, I gave it a chance --- and was left disappointed. Finding this website tonight confirmed what my gut was telling me all along -- the truth isn't being told, it's just about the ratings.
So disappointing.

Reply
Americanegro
8/17/2015 04:46:16 pm

'“This rewrites a huge chapter of American history. This isn’t kidding around!” Wolter enthuses. I know he’s not a stupid man...'

All evidence to date suggests that he is in fact stupid.

Reply
kathy
8/19/2015 10:15:01 am

I only want to say, after very briefly reading some key points you made, I suspect that you're one of those kind of people that just REVELS in tearing up someone else's work into little stupid, unrelated pieces. Irritates me because I find no real value in that. You flaunt and dazzle with your sharp mind and wit while having zero regard for the spirit of what's being suggested. You love to show how stupid some really ingenious and courageous people are, only because it makes you feel so intellectually valuable. It's easy to tear someone else's hard work that they had the guts to do in the first place, then had even further guts to risk scathing attacks disguised as criticism, and even possibly being called a fool! Whether Scott Wolter is right or not, he makes you look like a cowardly idiot. Like so many people all thru history, I don't believe for a nano second that you're even slightly interested in what the TRUTH IS. I think you're just interested in looking VERY smart. Big deal.

Reply
pferk
5/20/2016 06:15:49 pm

If the amount of work were the main criteria for respect, then Sisyphus would be on every coin, bill and monument.

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Jesse link
8/6/2017 08:27:25 pm

I think it is poor reporting on both you and Wolters part to not discuss the best part of visiting America's Stonehenge; it's an ancient mystery site AND alpaca farm.

It's one stop shopping for archeoastrology and early winter socks!

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      • Chariots of the Gods at 50
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    • Collection: Ancient History >
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    • Collection: The Lovecraft Legacy >
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          • W. Scott-Elliot >
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        • Maspero's Review of Akhbar al-zaman
        • The Holy Grail as Lucifer's Crown Jewel
        • The Mutinous Sea
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        • Fabulous Zoology
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        • Mexican Mythology
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      • Extreme History >
        • Roman Empire Hoax
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        • Historical Chronology of the Mexicans
        • Maspero on the Predynastic Sphinx
        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Remarkable Discoveries Within the Sphinx (Hoax)
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • The Shaver Mystery >
          • Lovecraft and the Deros
          • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
        • Fortean Society and Columbus
        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
        • The Skyfort Document
        • Whirling Wheels
        • Denver Ancient Astronaut Lecture
        • Soviet Search for Lemuria
        • Visitors from Outer Space
        • Unidentified Flying Objects (Abstract)
        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
        • Ancient Astronaut Society Telegram
        • Noah's Ark Cables
        • The Von Daniken Letter
        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
        • CIA Search for the Ark of the Covenant
        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
        • UFOs in Ancient China
        • CIA Report on Noah's Ark
        • CIA Noah's Ark Memos
        • Congressional Ancient Aliens Testimony
        • Ancient Astronaut and Nibiru Email
        • Congressional Ancient Mars Hearing
        • House UFO Hearing
      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
        • Premodern UFO Sightings
        • The Moon Hoax
        • Inhabitants of Other Planets
        • The Fall of the Sky
        • Blavatsky on Ancient Astronauts
        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
      • Interdimensional Flying Saucers
      • Poltergeist UFOs
      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
      • Sublime and Beautiful
      • Voltaire on Vampires
      • Demonology and Witchcraft
      • Thaumaturgia
      • Bulgarian Vampires
      • Religion and Evolution
      • Transylvanian Superstitions
      • Defining a Zombie
      • Dread of the Supernatural
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      • Werewolves and Vampires and Ghouls
      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
      • King Solomon's Mines
      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
      • Sredni Vashtar
      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
      • The Corpse on the Grating
      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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