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Review of America Unearthed S01E10 "The Desert Cross"

2/23/2013

215 Comments

 
Let’s begin by stipulating something America Unearthed won’t tell you. The Tucson Artifacts discussed in “The Desert Cross” explicitly state in Latin and Hebrew that they were created by a mixture of Romans, Gauls, and Jews who came to early America and suffered a war with the Toltecs. The artifacts claim to have been deposited from 775 CE to 1000 CE by people who formed a colony called Calalus that lasted for several centuries before vanishing. You hear nothing of this on the show because this story, with its Jews, undermines the Christ-centric fairytale Scott Wolter wants to tell, a conspiracy-oriented fairytale that directly contradicts the artifacts themselves.

This episode didn’t play fair, and it ended up outright lying, even about its own lies, in pursuit of what I can only describe as a hidden agenda, one designed around Wolter’s apparent fixation on a Templar-Freemason conspiracy around the bloodline of Christ. (Yes, it’s the Da Vinci Code plot. Tune in next week for that episode.)

Did you know there really was a hidden culture of ancient Jews in the American Southwest? It’s true. They were not, however, the Mormon master race who first people America, nor the alleged Judeo-Roman hybrids of the Calalus literature. Instead, they were a group of conversos, Jews who converted to Christianity under the threat of expulsion from Spain but maintained Judaism in secret, under a veneer of Catholicism. Known as the crypto-Jews, a group left Spain for the New World, eventually settling in New Mexico, where they kept a vigil on Friday nights (the Jewish Sabbath) and abstained from eating pork. For five centuries these Latino crypto-Jews retained Judaic practices, and a few remaining crypto-Jews still do down to the present day, though many have lost most other traces of their ancestors’ Judaism. The story is fascinating, and it’s told in Stanley M. Horde’s To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico (2008).

This would have made an excellent episode of America Unearthed, looking for a real example of a “lost” culture that could be reconstructed only from the scant traces it left behind in the later practices of its successors. Its origins certainly predate the Roanoke colony that was the subject of an earlier episode, so it ought to fall under the show’s purview. But, sadly, the living people are Latino, so that’s not what we got this week. Instead, we’re treated to another “investigation” of how a group of supposedly lost white colonizers blazed a trail across America, left behind nothing except some highly dubious luxury goods, and vanished in large measure due to cultural contamination from the uncouth savages with whom they practiced miscegenation. (See also: Roanoke colony, Minnesota Vikings, Welsh Indians, Oklahoma Celts, New England Phoenicians, etc.) I don’t think anyone involved with this show is actually racist, but it’s hard to believe they could be blind to the clear implication of nearly every episode that advanced white culture inevitably succumbs to the savagery and sensuality of surrounding dark-skinned primitives. Heck, this week Wolter even blames swarthy Mideast Muslims for “forcing” the pure white people out of Europe! Does he even know the artifacts state that these Templar superheroes were largely Jews?

I don’t want to get political, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that this narrative has attracted such a large following (more than one million weekly viewers just for this show) in this particular time in United States history, when a particular demographic of white Americans is experiencing anxiety about the country’s multicultural future, when, in short measure, white Americans will become a plurality rather than an outright majority for the first time since the colonial era.

The episode opens in Tucson with a recreation of events from 1924, when a cache of “artifacts” were unearthed. This scene is oddly filmed from the artifacts’ point of view, with unnamed men uncovering, moving, recovering and staring at them in sepia-toned video, concluding with Scott Wolter opening a box in 2012 in his Minnesota lab (which could not possibly be the actual box from Arizona despite the implication since the artifacts are safely housed at the Arizona Historical Society) and looking dramatically into the box. Then we cut to the opening credits.

The show proper starts with a long tracking shot of the Arizona desert over which a graphic informs us that ritual objects and a lead cross were unearthed in 1924 on which was the date 800 AD. Here is the first omission: Another cross is actually dated 775 CE, but that one doesn’t conform to the narrative. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I’ve written about this before. I’ll be coming back to my thoughts on this as the show progresses. For now, the program is content to use a meaningless graphic saying, in scare quotes, that Christopher Columbus “discovered” American in 1492, implying this is a lie. Well, yes, it’s a lie in that the Vikings were in North America in 1000 and the Native Americans “discovered” America some 15,000 or more years ago. This does not, however, have any relationship to whether Romans were in Arizona in 800 CE. (I will be using the modern dating terminology of BCE and CE to talk about dates and the older AD system when speaking of the date on the cross itself.)

Scott Wolter is bringing his son with him to view the artifacts inscribed in very poor Latin, and Wolter calls this an “important” group of evidence—of what, I wonder? At the Arizona Historical Society, Wolter reviews some paperwork and photographs documenting the unearthing of various lead artifacts found by Charles Manier and Thomas Bent, and he meets with Chuck Bent, Thomas Bent’s grandson. Chuck suggests that there was a secret surrounding the artifacts and says that they were kept hidden in his grandfather’s house. Chuck says that Thomas doubted the explanation offered by “these academics” (as Wolter scoffs) that the crudely-formed swords were faked and planted in the ground as a hoax. Wolter is indignant that academics weren’t “all over” the artifacts, which bear no resemblance whatsoever to any medieval weaponry or symbolic ritual artifacts. They look like what they are: crude modern approximations of medieval material.

I suppose it goes without saying—not that Wolter would say it—that lead, being one of the heaviest elements, produces swords that weigh far too much for everyday use, nor is it common to find ritual artifacts made of lead in Europe. I’m not able to find any discussion of the use of lead for ritual objects, making swords, and military standards, which were almost always made of gold, silver, bronze, or iron. According to standard encyclopedias, medieval lead was used for cast objects (which the swords were not), small decorative badges for pilgrims (which these were not), and far after our period cast reliefs and coffins (which these were not). I can’t find anything about swords.

Wolter once again asserts that historians are unwilling to “rewrite history” to account for Wolter’s own discoveries. His head seems to grow larger with each episode.

So, Wolter and Bent travel out to the site where the artifacts were dug up to look at the rocks from which they were extracted. He hopes that the caliche (hardened rock formed of calcium carbonate) will match traces on the artifacts and thus prove the rocks dripped calcium carbonate over the artifacts for a long time, which is not as clear an indication of age as Wolter suggests. The rate of caliche formation is largely dependent on the amount of water present, which can cause it to form in mere months or years rather than centuries, and the presence of plants other than cacti at the site suggests enough water to have a fairly quick-forming process. For example, should the artifacts have been dug into a natural bed of caliche, water action over several years could have caused new caliche to form around the artifacts from bits leeched from the surrounding bed, embedding the artifacts into the stone. Many people have seen their drainpipes fill up with caliche in short order and would not be surprised by this. [click here for more on the artifacts' caliche]

At the Arizona Historical Society, we see the various lead artifacts, and we see some very quick looks at the inscriptions on the crosses. No Hebrew inscriptions are shown, only the Latin ones. Why is that? Wolter is smart enough to realize that the AD dating system might not have been used in 800 CE. As I discussed before, it was not in widespread use until after 1000 CE and almost nowhere outside of the Carolingian heartland before that time, though the possibility cannot be entirely discounted.

Grant Wolter “translates” the text on the cross, but while he seems to have general notion of Latin, he seems to be reciting someone else’s translation because—again, as I already discussed—the Latin is atrocious. It contains innumerable errors, including such basics as the difference between “to” and “from.” The grammar is worse than schoolboy Latin, and some have tried to suggest that it is the result of a non-native speaker writing it in 800, which is not likely since anyone fluent enough to write would know the basics of prepositions—especially since those prepositions did not change in the daughter Romance languages into which Latin evolved, and which any medieval travelers would have spoken. In my previous post, I discussed the finer points of the linguistic milieu of early medieval Italy and Gaul and how it fails to support the claims made for the crosses. The crosses also use the letter “z” which is not found in Latin except for transliterating Greek words.

Studies by less enthusiastic advocates have demonstrated that the fractured Latin on the lead artifacts can be traced to specific phrases from the Classical authors (like Cicero), specifically in editions available in the Tucson Public Library in the 1920s. We are to believe that our illiterate inscriber was fluent enough to quote Cicero and yet so illiterate as to not understand the Latin he quoted?

It bothers me that Wolter does not discuss the content of the inscriptions on the artifacts, probably because the story they tell is so stupid and fails to support his bloodline of Christ Da Vinci Code Templar fantasy, to be expounded next week in an episode about the bloodline of Christ. The story written across the artifacts (in a remarkably complete, if fractured narrative—another indication of a crude hoax) in both Latin and Hebrew is that a group of Romans, Gauls, and Jews left Rome and came to America where they built a long-lasting colony called Calalus (775-c. 1000 CE) and interacted with the Toltecs of Mexico. Wolter leaves all this out because it would imply the existence of a colony for which no buildings, no trash middens, no artifacts of any kind remain. This is intentionally deceptive and leaves out an important factor in considering how to evaluate these artifacts. Worse, by leaving out the Jews it only reinforces the idea that this show is obsessed with finding Aryans in America. The entire connection to ancient Mexico (the Toltec) is also left out, the defining narrative of the artifacts. This is another unforgivable lie by omission and one understandable only in the context of trying to hide anything testable. There are no Toltec artifacts in Tucson either.

Scott Wolter seizes upon the appearance of the name Theodorus on the cross to jump to the conclusion that this was the same Theodorus who was allegedly Charlemagne’s lieutenant in the 770s. I am not able to find any reference to a Theodorus among the entourage of Charlemagne; the closest I could find was a Theodorus of the Huns who visited Charlemagne in the 780s, or Theodulf of Orleans, an ally of the Frankish king’s in the 790s. James Wald reminds me that a Theodoric (not Theodorus) was a commander under Charlemagne, but continued on past 775. In fact, I can’t find any reference to this Theodorus outside discussions of the Arizona artifacts. When Wolter claims that “some” say Theodorus came to America in 775 CE, he is actually quoting another of the Arizona lead crosses, one which he had declined to feature on the show because its wretched Latin is so obviously a fake. He’s quoting the artifacts themselves as evidence for the artifacts!

One cross has a dinosaur drawn on it. A dinosaur.

Wolter looks at the artifacts under a 3-D microscope, which he claims will help him to use “archaeopetrography” (his self-created “new” science) to date the crosses. That went so well with his previous investigations. At any rate, petrography of course refers to rocks, and the crosses are made of lead. I suppose the crystallization of the minerals on the rock is what will pass for stone. Wolter notes that the deposition of the minerals on the crosses could take as little as decades but perhaps centuries. He fails, however, to consider the amount of water at the site where these were unearthed, thus meaning that his findings are speculative and have no real value since we can’t know how fast caliche was forming in the place where they were deposited without knowing about the water table, capillary action, rainfall, etc.

Wolter becomes very excited after discovering an image of the Cross of Lorraine on one artifact, the symbol of the Knights Templar. Do I even need to say that the Knights Templar weren’t formed until the 1100s? If they hadn’t decided to dig for the Ark of the Covenant on the Temple Mount, no one would have cared at all about them. Sigh. Wolter says that the same symbol represented the dragonfly to Native Americans so both groups “shared” it. There’s a connection all right, but only in the sense that Hitler, the Hopi, and Helena Blavatsky “shared” the swastika. Similar symbols do not imply cultural connections. The Cross of Lorraine on the artifact appears to be surmounted by a stereotypical crown, with large, rounded drapery between supporting arches—a style of crown not used until the modern period. Medieval crowns were bands of gold. (It might be an episcopal crown, but I could not tell from the short shot.) Another artifact shows what appears to be a “church” complete with a Gothic arch, an arch not used until the High Middle Ages.

Next up we go looking for the source of the artifacts’ lead, but this is a wild goose chase. It makes no difference to the story whether the artifacts were made from local or non-local lead; any result Wolter would interpret as evidence of “Romans.” If it is local, the Romans were mining; it not, they brought it from home.

A careful shot of the crossed X’s in the Exxon Mobile logo is meant to imply a modern connection to the Templars via the Cross of Lorraine.

Wolter calls up a friend identified as a “Masonic Historian” and launches into a weird conspiracy theory about how the Knights Templar gave rise to the Freemasons, but this is rampant speculation with no basis in fact whatsoever. There is no evidence of any Templar activity from the fourteenth century to the rise of Masonry three hundred years later. This idea’s inclusion here is out-and-out conspiracy-mongering. Wolter thinks that the artifacts display “Masonic” symbols, part of a 1,500-year-long cult. But both Wolter and his friend are more interested in the Exxon Mobile logo! The “expert” explains that the red and white logo represents the Templar’s red and white colors; the crossed X’s are the Cross of Lorraine, and the blue bar under the logo is the Atlantic Ocean, across which the Templars sailed to establish their secret club hideouts.

In the real world, we know that the colors come from the fact that Exxon (and Mobil) were once part of Standard Oil, whose colors were the American red, white, and blue. The crossed X’s were put in place to symbolize reliability, according to Exxon. The X’s weren’t added until 1966 (when the current Exxon name was adopted), and an actual document exists showing the many draft versions of artist Raymond Loewy, from which the one with crossed X’s was finally chosen. Among the logos are a few that look something like the Masonic square and compass, as Wolter immediately notes. Even if Loewy did this on purpose, the entire corporate executive suite would have to be in on it, or else oblivious to it. There is no conspiracy here, much less any truth to Wolter’s claim that it is “accepted as fact” that Freemasons are Knights Templar. There is no continuity whatsoever in this. But what difference does any of this make to crosses from 800 CE?

As we barrel toward a conclusion, Wolter tests the caliche and finds that the caliche matches the limestone surrounding the artifacts. No fooling. As I noted before, he failed to check for groundwater, capillary action, rainfall, and other factors that influence rate of deposit. Instead, he simply declares that there is no evidence of hoaxing, which is not the case. Since Wolter failed to examine the Latin on the crosses, or to even tell viewers about the story told by the artifacts—much less its clear evidence of hoaxing—the only one hoaxing anyone is the fakery the show is pulling on the audience by lying through omission to turn what was originally a hoax about a Roman-Jewish colony in America into an Aryan-Templar fantasy.

Wolter entrusts his son Grant to determine whether the AD dating system was used in 800 CE. “It does work because they were using AD,” he says, and that’s the last word. No one even bothers to check to see how and when the system was adapted gradually and incompletely across medieval Europe. As a point of fact, “Romans” from Rome (as the Latin on the artifacts state—not that you’d know from this show) did not adopt the AD system until much later, after 1000. Under the medieval popes, they used the ab urbe condita (AUC) system (or the reigns of the popes), even despite Charlemagne’s only partly successful attempts to impose AD in Germany. At any rate, in 775 it would be even less likely than in 800.

We return to the bad drawing of a stereotypical early twentieth century image of an Apatosaurus (brontosaurus) or diplodocus, and Wolter declares that the forked tongue makes it a lizard. No lizard looks like this, with a humped back, tapering tale, and long neck, and the drawing is, to my artistic eye, quite obviously a modern forgery made by someone with as little knowledge of biology as he or she had of Latin. [Update: I checked my Victorian-era natural history books, which I am loathe to do because they are very fragile, and I found at least one depicting a prehistoric monster similar to the one on the artifact with the same telltale forked tongue. See follow-up here.]

Wolter concludes that a “precursor” to the Knights Templar came to America as religious refugees—a precursor organization for which not a lick of evidence exists in Europe. Prove that this “precursor” group existed 300 years before the Templars. Wolter reminds us again about his work on the Kensington Rune Stone, which the show simply presents as settled fact despite the widespread criticism of his geology, and this somehow “proves” that Wolter is right about the “precursor” group, which makes no sense since accepting the Rune Stone implies nothing about anything that happened prior to 1362.

Even Chuck Bent seems confused that Wolter concluded that the artifacts were genuine when Wolter comes to tell him, probably because he knows that the Latin inscriptions say and is dumbfounded that Wolter hasn’t paid any attention to that in crafting his Templar fantasy. The heavy editing of the scene makes it hard to judge just what Bent was really thinking. The critical questions he asked suggest that he was less certain than the show makes him seem about accepting Wolter’s verdict.

“Who were these people, who made the artifacts, and where did they come from?” Wolter asks. Well, the artifacts actually say, but since you didn’t bother to read, you don’t know. They say that a group of Romans, Gauls, and Jews came over and interacted with the Toltecs. You are purposely hiding this information in order to preserve the mystery, create false connections to the Knights Templar, and avoid the real problems with the inscriptions, not least of which is the completely absent “colony” of Calalus that the artifacts assert actually existed. Instead, you want us to believe that “some Muslim group” “persecuted” the “precursors” of the Knights Templar—a story completely contradicted by the artifacts you created this story to support!

For crying out loud, even David Hatcher Childress managed to get the Jewish part right in mongering this mystery.

215 Comments
B L
2/23/2013 04:08:27 am

I loved this episode! I've never done so much eye-rolling in my life. Its like watching an hour long train wreck where the only person who gets hurt is the show's insane host.

I suppose if you can find proof that the Templars came to America before Columbus by studying the Exxon corporate logo, then you could find similar proof just about anywhere you look.

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terry the censor
2/24/2013 11:52:12 am

Excellent point!

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FPM
2/25/2013 08:59:16 am

Ha, BL I had the same reaction, I watch this show purely to see how outrageously idiotic this Walter guy can make himself look, Im assuming he is just completely ridiculed in academic (ie respected) circles? The ridiculousness of this show is paralleled only by Brad Meltzer's show Decoded and his motley crew of equally outrageous 'investigators'. But at least it seemed like Meltzer was just going for entertainment value, this Walter guy actually believes all the quackery his show conveys; the lack of partiality and an objective analysis just serves to embarrass him.

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Ray S
4/30/2013 04:38:28 pm

I watched this Desert Cross AZ video and one of the items had a dinosaur etched on it. Scott said he did not know what that meant.

Well in Las Vegas I saw a gas station with the same dinosaur a on the station sign that said Sinclair.
I would go to their website to find out more info. Thought you would want to know.
Is anything true anymore?

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CuriousGeorge
5/18/2013 06:12:30 am

You have misinterpreted the clues . . . . The Knights Templar were the forerunners of the current board of Exxon. While the crusades provided cover for their travel and activities in the middle east, they were there for the oil. While the etching of the dinosaur may lead some to surmise that Exxon and Sinclair are linked, the Knights of Sinclair didn't form until the 15th century. The dinosaur etching is actually a symbol used for dino-juice (oil) to remind the Knights Exxon---I mean the Knights Templar---of their own subterfuge and the god that they serve. Hope this was helpful. If you want more, write to the History Channel----I am hoping to get my own show.

Almost Retired
3/4/2015 05:23:06 pm

The forked tongue lizard on the back of one of the crosses? A gas station called Sinclair, which at one time was spun-off when American Standard Oil, owned by JD Rockefeller, was forced to split up its monopoly. And an additional company that emerged from American Standard Oil was Exxon, today known as Exxon-Mobile. The Exxon logo makes use of the Charlemagne cross within its double X's in Exxon (Scott Wolter made note of this in his TV series)..

Sinclair, no doubt a coincidence, (or is it?) is also the French family name believed to contain the bloodline of Jesus Christ tying again into the Da Vinci Code.

RELIGIOUS historians speak highly of Charlemagne, the German ruler who reigned from A.D. 768 to 814 being crowned by the pope in the year 800.

Note, the year 800 AD was inscribed on the back of one of the crosses.

To what lengths people will go to fabricate a hoax?

Devi link
2/20/2017 12:29:31 am

OMG!The dinosaur represents Sinclair.For Henry Sinclair who was a Knights Templar who came to Oak Island &built a castle fortification .Which leads to the The Money Pit!Brilliant! Great job,Ray S.! Love it!

Jason
1/4/2014 02:32:08 pm

you're funny!

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stephen compton
2/1/2014 03:16:06 pm

Looking at photos and the episode do those pieces fit together (holes and pegs)?

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Thomas Geraghty
2/11/2015 06:56:45 am

I just watched the show on Netflix. It's a fun show. But this episode was frustrating for the obvious avoidance of the lengthy inscriptions which Scott Wolter ignored. "Where's the translation!" I kept yelling. When the yr AD 800 was discussed in connection with the Knights Templar, things got really nutty. As this writer noted, the Knights were formed in 1100 AD.

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laurier
2/3/2016 12:33:17 pm

The theory itself is good...this show is commercial oriented like most shows like this. The bigger picture here is not about the Knights Templar but about the cross on their uniform. That cross is seen on all things associated to the invention of the Denier currency. That currency is invented just as the Irish monks are in the territory of the Lombards and building monasteries. The denier, currency of the cross, circulates for 1000 years and follows the evolution of the Franks realm which in the era comes to include the Holy Roman Empire. Whoever preceded the Templars as temple guards Western Europe would be the guys who Wolter should mention. He also never mentions the successors of the Templars which were the Order of Christ brotherhood born in Portugal circa 1318. This is where things get complicated...A similar order of temple guards was invented by the French and the Papacy. They were the Jesuits. The order of Christ was a Dutch/Habsburg thing while the Jesuits were a France/Italy thing. Were they allies or competitors ???? I say, follow the Order of Christ evolution ( the world of Saint George and Saint Jerome ) and you might come to know who, if anyone, had an interest in building the Newport Tower and bringing relics to America.

There may be more truth about this topic than Wolter can or wants to admit. It is just a bad commercial attempt to make the network more money. It fits right into the same bin as the Oak Island show. If any treasure was buried there it would have been relocated long ago by groups with a keen interest in keeping guard over those temple relics. It's in my backyard....lol..

laurier
10/11/2016 12:32:12 pm

After thinking some more about the invention and the elimination of the Templar Order i am left with this suspicion.

c. 1100 Bernard is the Christian guy who is trying to reform the monasteries. He plays a part in bringing about the Cistercian Order which spreads throughout English lands ( and elsewhere ). Meanwhile he is a big player in the writing of a constitution for the behavior of the Templar Knights.

c. 1120 Geoffrey V Plantagenet, son of Fulk V the Count of Anjou and later the King of Jerusalem when he marries Melisende, becomes the first Knight initiated as a Templar ( I did not make that up. It is the opinion of some ancient writers ). Who wanted this new order ? Fulk V had a daughter named Matilda. She was contracted in marriage to the William Adelin ( English Prince and son of King Henry I ).

Times were complicated in Europe. Matilda of Anjou was made a widow when William died on the White Ship ( accident ??? ) as it crossed the channel c. 1121. Matilda survived and went on to become the prioress of the newly invented Fontevraut Abbey (near Angers ). With no heir apparent Henry of England, and Fulk, arranged a new marriage between Matilda of England ( Empress Matilda since she had recently been widowed when her husband the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V had passed ) and Geoffrey V Plantagenet.

If Geoffrey V was indeed the first Templar initiate then it stands to reason that Fulk and King Henry of England were part of the making of that order.

With Geoffrey V and Matilda came Henry II who had to wait out the kingship of Stephen and so on. These were the Plantagenet.

Things weren't getting any easier.

Henry II's family saw all types of conflicts where Richard took the crown but died from an injury from friendly fire. His brother, also named Geoffrey, or Godfrey, had fallen off his horse and had died but not before marrying a girl named Constance who bore him a child named Arthur. Arthur was favored by Richard to take on the Crown of England but he disappeared, likely murdered, along with his mother Constance. They'd be held captive in the Rouen castle towers by John who managed to convince some powerful people that Richard had changed his mind about who should inherit the crown and titles.

John had spent most of his princely years fighting alongside the French monarchy in an attempt to take over as much of his brothers land as possible ????

c. 1216 After doing away with guys like Faulke Breaute ( Briouze ? ), king John's right hand man and castle keeper, King John died. He died after many years of civil strife with the barons which brought about the Magna Carta.

A few generations later, circa 1300 the idea of eliminating the Templar Knights comes along. About the same time, a guy named Edward is born. He will soon be made King of England and from his time until about 1800 the English will make claims to the throne of France.

King Edward brought about the Order of the Garter and so on that story continues to build until King George of Brunswick Hanover revives that order with the invention of the Order of the Bath circa 1724.

What does this have to do with the Knights Templar in America theory ?

Face it....if ever there was a secret about that secret society of poor military monks, the secret would be that the only the very top initiates ( the royals ) were likely aware of the mechanics of the order. Fulk ended up in Jerusalem while Henry I, the son of William the Conqueror of Falaise, ended up with control of the ancient Angevin lands around Angers and Anjou which served as a safehaven for many royals including those who played a role in the Jacobite revolts.

So if the royal knights of the Templar order knew what was coming circa 1300, or worst if they had a role in the dissolution of this order , then it is likely that they would have taken whatever treasure the order had and they would have shifted that loot to new hideouts.

If so, then did some of that loot end up in America ? The few ( royal ) knights that would have survived this type of reality would have likely been part of the invention of the Order of the Garter and their descendants would then have been revived as the Order of the Bath which was based in Somerset, in a place that has history going back to Brutus and the earliest Roman population ( legendary ) of the islands....,

....but those interested in continuing down this path should map the movement of the Brunswick lineage and the rise of Bath in the US and Bath in Canada.

From there the story tells itself as the British conquer the French and later lose control of ( or do they simply create ) a population that becomes the Americans of the United States. And perhaps the invention of such, along with the writing of a constitution for the conduct of the population ( the status of behavior in trade for liberty ), was simply a royal ploy, a part of the bigger end game. An America all occupied by British colonies is no place for a competition. As such it seizes

MT Tomb
2/23/2013 04:21:09 am

I admit I was intrigued by this show but every episode seems to get more and more preposterous. I looked into the info myself and you're correct in that they left out the ridiculous story written in Latin. I found it odd that Wolter seemed to simply assume the date of 800ad on the cross meant it had to have been created there on that date. My first assumption was that any Spanish explorer (Catholics used Latin) after 1492 could have left those items in the desert. I also found that a slightly earlier yet contemporary local artist was known to craft "artifacts" out of lead. Those items could have been buried there a few years earlier. As for the geological work, it's all suspect as far as I'm concerned. In an earlier episode he used his expertise to confirm an item's authenticity when later in the show the item is confirmed to be a fake! I was surprised they even included that as it calls into question all Wolter's work. The History channel is sabotaging its own reputation by airing shows like this and, the even more dubious, Ancient Aliens. And the worst part is that the masses take all this as scientific truth. These shows belong on the SciFi channel alongside Ghost Hunters and not on a channel that's always been associated with real history. *sigh*

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Russ Burrows link
2/23/2013 09:31:14 am

I too was interested this episode until the Templer thing came up. The Templer thing and Scott Wolter is really, I don't know what to call it, strange. I know Wolter and I'll tell anyone who listens that he is full of BS. Why he wamts to tout the Templers is beyond me but, what do I know. I sure as hell would like to know what a forensic gelogist is. Never hear of one.

Russ Burrows

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Lynn Brant
2/23/2013 09:33:43 am

google Burrows Cave

Danielle
2/24/2013 04:51:24 am

Lynn. U r close minded. U don't know everything like u think u do.

Truthnhonesty
10/1/2013 12:11:45 pm

You are a fool, it is a proven fact the Templars came to America, and the Masons claim themselves they came from the Templars, our founders were all Masons

GF Reel
11/5/2013 01:03:00 am

I was wondering why no one thought that they might have been brought by early Spanish travelers (especially J. Onate-there is a love hate relationship with him in my town and nearby El Paso) Why couldn't a traveler have brought an OLD cross with him from a Spanish grave. And since I live with caliche, caliche seeps - I understand Scott said the cross was encrusted, but just the one test doesn't really date the site or the cross. I agree with your comments though about the show...they did seem to get more and more preposterous.

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Kelz
2/1/2014 12:28:16 pm

I love this show and Ancient Aliens....but no one watches them because they think they're real, do they? I mean, seriously, they don't, right?

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Zack
2/2/2014 10:58:46 pm

Yes to some point they could most certainly be real.

Kristian
2/23/2013 04:57:24 am

As usual, a great summary and analysis, Jason.

I couldn't finish this episode, it was just too absurd, even by the reduced standards of the series.

As long as the "AD" part checks out, we're good to go! Forget about translating the hundreds of other lines of text (which are some stupid mish-mash of Horace, Virgil, and Cicero), that's just a side-show.

And I love how we get from "[How long could the deposits take to form?] I would say at least decades, more probably hundreds of years..." after which he then blithely skips over on what basis he embraces the 'hundreds of years' end of the spectrum just because there is a limestone match.

I think you've pegged it--this show is converging on some pseudo-Dan Brown reality-show minus the fact-checkers. It was probably pitched as "Da Vinci Code meets Finding Bigfoot". I'm a bit embarrassed to have been contributing to its ratings...until yesterday.

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Jake
2/23/2013 05:40:12 am

Now this is how you argue against a theory properly. Far less speculation and assumptions in this argument. Based on this reading, I am inclined to agree with you that they were likely faked. This is much better than your last article on this subject.

A couple of things though. You still assume that speaking a language translates to being able to write a language. This is not so. Just because you can speak it doesn't mean you can write it.

Also, in your last article you said the AD system didn't come into until 800, now you say it's 1000. Which is it? We already discussed that the AD system was created in 525 and had plenty of time to come into use by 775-800. This as proof of forgery does not pan out.

Lastly, Wolter's caliche analysis method made not have been entirely thorough but that doesn't mean his conclusion is wrong. It is very possible that the caliche on the artifacts is an exact match to caliche at the dig sight indicating they were buried hundreds of year ago. A more thorough analysis is needed to support or disprove this.

I agree there were a lot of omissions and that is disappointing. Nothing was said about the use of lead which seems out of place. However, it is possible the artifacts were constructed in America and not in Europe which is why they were made of lead and not of the typical form of European artifacts.

I don't like the inference of questing for Aryans in America, that is a bit insulting. I don't believe Wolter is looking for Aryans and that inference is a bit of an insult to the rest of us who believe people like Henry St Claire may have come to America long before Columbus.

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Jason Colavito link
2/23/2013 05:55:12 am

The AD system was invented in 525 CE, imposed in Charlemagne's German realms around 800 CE, but was only widely adopted in Latin south (southern France, Spain, Italy, etc.) around 1000 CE when the popes switched to it.

Between 525 and 800, it was not in widespread use, and certainly not among the people said to have come to Arizona, among whom were many Jews unlikely to use an A.D. dating system.

Do note that I carefully said that no one involved with the show is a racist. But it's hard to ignore the narrative formed by the repeated invocation of superior white cultures undone by contact with non-white peoples. It's not their intention, but it is the result.

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Matt
3/7/2013 02:40:37 am

Jason, I find your inference that because you believe that the population of white people in America is decreasing, this would mean that some people would be drawn to Scott Wolter's show in some sort of indirect innoculation from the present demographic changes. That statement on its own is an insult and shows a certain bias on your part.

Jason Colavito link
3/7/2013 02:48:09 am

The "white" population is not decreasing in absolute terms but only as a relative percentage of the overall population. You may be insulted by the suggestion that historical fantasies have a resonance for their audience, but this is not bias on my part but rather a conclusion drawn from evidence. "Bias" is a preconceived notion; I drew my conclusion from watching many episodes of this show. In fact, the first episode, about the Maya, obscured this narrative, and I only recognized it much, much later in the series' run--the very opposite of bias.

Martin Perez link
1/4/2014 03:23:55 pm

Why would Wolter not be correct? And by the way, the Spaniards were not Mexicans, hence, European.

Andrew
9/2/2015 09:18:59 am

It isn't racism that attracts many viewers It is a mistrust of academia which is solely the fault of academics. People in rural communities and the the lower class. feel that there is an elitist element in academia that is well justified by the past and current attitudes. how is this the fault of academics? Well there is a fairly consistent message they have been sending out " We are experts there by smarter than you just accept what we say as fact, we don't feel like providing consistent evidence because you wont understand it anyway" This is how these theories develop people naturally question things and when the information that has been provided to them is incomplete and over simplified they find apparent holes in the logic.

There is also a strange draw to the idea of pre Columbian contact.I think it is that many Europeans find the colonial period much less interesting than earlier periods. I fell the draw as well but the I feel the same draw from ancient aliens despite that I know how absurd it is. its all a good fantasy but nothing more.

Christopher Randolph
2/23/2013 07:22:45 am

"Just because you can speak it doesn't mean you can write it."

In many languages that might be the case (English for example, which has a complex history and a spelling system which reflects same), but the Latin alphabet of the time left the writer few options. If you speak Spanish as a primary language for example, and you are literate, how much leeway does Spanish really leave you to screw things up? How many sounds do the available letters correspond to?

Certainly anyone who is tasked by an entire colony to be their scribe (!) could be expected to be able to write Latin, which had fewer available letters for carving than Spanish does today.

Writing vs speaking of course doesn't explain how someone could mix up prepositional phrases in their native language.

"I don't like the inference of questing for Aryans in America..."

I don't like the fact that one of the highest rated cable networks in America is on a borderline literal crusade to claim that white Christians established continent-wide colonies centuries before they did. And I'm white for the record.

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Jake
2/23/2013 07:35:07 am

Who says the person who made the inscriptions was the expedition's scribe? You're assuming that person was the official scribe. Perhaps the scribe was killed and someone else took over which is why the grammar is poor.

There is a lot of evidence that indicates white Europeans may have come to America long before history says they did. I don't see this as a crusade. If it's true, it's true; regardless of how racist you may think it is.

Christopher Randolph
2/23/2013 08:01:54 am

"Who says the person who made the inscriptions was the expedition's scribe?"

I'm basing this in the fact that this would be the only person from whom we have inscriptions.

I know you don't care whether or not anyone finds your fantasy world racist. I expect nothing else.

HB Kelley
7/23/2013 06:58:42 am

Jake: You made since, this Jason seems like he does not like Wolter and you can't change his mind on that. I have lived in Arizona all my life and have found caves with Knights Templar and Celtic alphabet in them. In one cave it appears the Templar and Celtics were there together telling where they are from and where they are going. I had some experts in Templar and Celtic writings look at the photos from inside the cave and they agree it is from around 800 AD. These experts sure want me to show them where the cave is, but not until I have done all my investigation into it. The writings in the cave are so numerous that I need to get back in there and get it all logged with movie and digital cameras. The amount of writings tells me whom ever carved the writings, were there a long. time. I don't see anywhere on this blog where I can post a photo of the cave.

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HB Kelley
7/30/2013 09:22:36 am

I forgot to mention, on the lead artifacts found in the caliche, was malachite. Malachite takes hundreds of years to form, I know this for a fact and if you don't believe that, look it up for yourself. Malachite is formed in most of the sand washes in Arizona where copper is present and it takes hundreds of years of water soaking through the sands to form it. Caliche is the best place for malachite to form. I was wondering why Jason did not mention the malachite on the lead artifacts, So Jason tell all the facts and not your dislike for the fact Celtics and Templars did come to the American southwest hundreds of years ago.

HB Kelley
7/30/2013 09:24:17 am

Jason, what about the malachite on the lead artifacts, which takes hundreds of years to form. Hummm.

Jason Colavito link
7/30/2013 09:48:11 am

Malachite is formed from the oxidation of copper and can form very quickly, as in copper pipes or on pennies. In fact, with a little lemon juice you can produce a malachite coating on (copper) pennies in an afternoon. You're thinking of the formation of large-scale, rock-sized malachite deposits, which take much longer to develop into big rocks.

HB Kelley
7/30/2013 10:21:32 am

Wrong, your talking about oxidation not the forming of the crystals that are on the lead artifacts. Oxidation is not malachite, this I know for sure, you see I have worked in the copper mines for many years and know what it takes to make malachite and not just oxidation build up on a copper object. Oxidation on copper is like rust is to iron the same thing, just a build up of the metal deteriorating away.

Jason Colavito link
7/30/2013 10:41:31 am

The malachite on pennies requires more than just the lemon juice to form; it's a standard science experiment kids used to do in school. The reaction produces Cu2CO3(OH)2, the same as in the rocks. It forms particularly quickly in the presence of limestone (or quick lime), which gives the carbonate to the forming compound.

HB Kelley
7/30/2013 11:08:23 am

If you look at the malachite on the lead objects you will see it is in the crystal form and not oxidation, which proves to me the objects were buried for hundreds of years. Why do you insist on making America Unearthed into something it is not. It's a very good show and gives one another look at the possibilities of other Europeans coming here hundreds of years before Columbus. What is so wrong with that. As I said before, I can show you a cave here in Arizona that will blow your mind, to bad I can't post a photo of the cave. The cave is about 50 miles from Tucson and the writings on the wall are both Celtic and Tempal alphabet. This cave was found many years before America Unearthed was ever heard of. I did some serious investigation into who wrote this stuff. I was amazed to find it was ancient Celtic and Templar alphabet and not American Indian.

Richard Clark
11/29/2013 06:07:27 pm

I hope you post the pic's you found in the cave.

Don
2/23/2013 07:49:11 am

Jason,

When he cut to the Exxon sign while he was on the phone, I don't think I've laughed that hard in quite some time.

You're spot on with your review here. Even my teenaged son saw through Wolter's charlatan pseudoscience.

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Jake
2/23/2013 08:23:54 am

That was a pretty ridiculous moment in archeology.

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Christopher Randolph
2/23/2013 07:57:34 am

Jason -

Excellent post as always. Concise thoughts, well-written.

Don't sweat "getting political" on this issue, that's the only thing that explains this nonsense. Certainly logic and evidence won't help us find its roots,

You are correct that some white folks have gone into a race-panic. Some of that is immigration patterns, some of that is the fact that 30 or so years ago corporate America and academia embraced any non-white person so long as they acted like an establishment white person; in fact in a hamfisted embrace of (cynical, surface-level) "diversity" having a different skin tone with the same darn thoughts as a white executive became an advantage. This hasn't really filtered down to the proles yet, and when you get a Pres. Obama or now a potentially non-white pope some white people who don't have socioeconomic advantages really go nuts. It's been long enough that the upper tiers of society have dropped at least the phenotypical race barrier that you're getting the odd non-white person in a position of genuine power, and not just in sports and music any longer. Scary monsters.

In my view Obama for example could not possibly be more mainstream - he has friends at Wall St, raised by white people, college educated, even admires Ronald Reagan for many things, etc. (In fact I'm not a fan of Obama as politician for precisely some of these reasons lest anyone think I'm worshipping him here.)

Could there be a nerdier, WHITER guy in many ways than Obama? Geez, he's far WASP-ier than I am, or anyone in my family, or in the ethnic Catholic neighborhood I grew up in. Yet a large portion of the public acts as if he shows up at meetings in a loincloth with a bone in his nose.

The 'me' who attended an elite university in the '80s/'90s & has had professional jobs has met a whole lot of Barry Obamas. The 'me' who grew up in a working class white neighborhood prior to that had not met anyone with a 'funny' name and mixed genetic heritage.

Most people in America, including most white people, are (and have been, many have always been) struggling. The one thing a lot of whites had to cling to was a central and even superior place culturally or symbolically, and now that this too has to be shared some folks have gone bat guano-crazy.

Let's face it, most Americans don't know much history - certainly not enough to decide from a position of strength they want an 'alternative' option - and they don't follow the details of most political issues. They elect people based on how much they like their personalities (or at least the image projected), how comfy they are with them... and they pick sides on social and historical issues based in what makes them feel comfy too.

The "facts" are retrofitted to the worldview that assuages. Base tribal emotions are driving this nonsense. The parts of the brain that serve those functions are clearly overriding the logical parts of the brain that knows darn well that Judeo-Romans didn't move to Arizona a thousand years ago.

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William Smith
2/23/2013 08:17:09 am

I noticed holes in some of the artifacts which may imply they were made to hang on a wall. If the caliche is a form of concrete it should be able to be tested for age by measuring the cure time rate of the minerals that make it up. Wolter has stated that his lab and their microscope technology is the leading facility for this work. Makes you wonder when no report has been made on the mortar sample taken from the Newport Tower.

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Jake
2/23/2013 08:22:51 am

"I'm basing this in the fact that this would be the only person from whom we have inscriptions. I know you don't care whether or not anyone finds your fantasy world racist. I expect nothing else."

So the only possible person who could have made those inscriptions was a professional scribe? That's an idiotic assumption. And explain how I live in a racist fantasy world? If white Europeans made it here long before Columbus there would be nothing racist about that. It would simply be a fact. The mark of the American liberal, if you disagree with it, call it racist. You're a joke.,

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Christopher Randolph
2/23/2013 08:31:04 am

Who typed 'professional'? I didn't.

"That's an idiotic assumption."

Agreed. Glad therefore I'm not the one who made it.

A maker of inscriptions is a scribe. With me so far? You have one scribe in this fantasy colony of yours, and s/he sucks at writing their own language.

Are you claiming:

A) that the colony had a person unusually bad at writing their own language act as a scribe when chiseling the crucially important history of their people and their amazing journey

or

B) that the best available person out of a group of a good many people was chosen to do this, and was terrible at it

Those are your two options.

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Red Johnson
2/23/2013 08:31:09 am

Jason, can you recruit a geologist to comment on some of this scienctific work? I agree that without a baseline of moisture data from that area and other scientific tests relating to mineral deposition on lead, Wolter's results are "eye-ball" old and nothing more. Has he ever even published a single scientific paper that describes the chemical reactions and rates behind his aging work? Seems everything he touches he proclaims as authentic when in fact most likely none of them are because his aging work is not based on any baseline of data. Someone with much better credentials needs to confront this work before too many kids are harmed by bad geology and incorrect historical conclusions. Good work btw. We know how hard it must be to write at the quality level you do.

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Jason Colavito link
2/23/2013 08:53:33 am

Thanks for the compliment. The hardest part of writing reviews like these is the mountain of information needed to make sense out of the weird claims. In my Ancient Aliens review, for example, I am frequently driven to distraction trying to figure out what the heck they're talking about since they seem completely uninformed even about their own ideas!

There are several geologists who regularly read my blog, and I'm sure one will much more expertise than non-geologist me can comment on the caliche formation. Wolter has never published a peer-reviewed paper on his new science.

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James link
12/16/2013 07:33:10 am

Caliche depends on what part of az I send indian stone artifacts in for auth, and some completely covered in it 700to1200 AD same material no caliche an date 13,000 BC.thanks

Kate
2/23/2013 12:30:53 pm

I couldn't agree more -- this show is undermining geology as a science. What's worse is that the U of MN has a fantastic geology department that has been featured on this show in previous episodes to perform *1* measurement that has almost no bearing on the investigation. I could continue to express my disappointment with this program, but I'm already getting a headache by merely considering the list of inadequacies.



As for precipitation in the area, it's easy to find these things. Even if you don't want to sift through the goldmine of data the USGS or NOAA collects daily/monthly/yearly, the Weather Channel has averages per month of rainfall. The data is not hard to find, and you don't have to be an academic to have access to it. But I digress.


Having done fieldwork in the southwest including Arizona, it does get hot (shocking, I know), but there is also significant rainfall during the warmer months almost every day in the form of the Arizona Monsoon. This is not the same torrential downpour that places like India experience, but it is significant rainfall for a very dry area (2+ inches per month). This is enough water to create caliche, which is essentially gravel and sediment (already present) cemented together by calcium carbonate (dissolved in the water). It's pretty much the same process as hard water forming a film on your shower head, and we know that doesn't take hundreds of years. It's also been documented that caliche layers can form in a generation -- farmers see it in their fields over time, homeowners have to deal with it in their yards.

Another point: the azurite/malachite formation (the dark blue secondary and green tertiary minerals mentioned, respectively) don't take decades to form. First of all, that area is rich in metals, lead was focused on because of the "artifacts", but copper is another abundant element. We've established that there is significant water runoff. And the hot temperature is important too. The average high temperature during May,June, July, August, and September is over 90 degrees, and it has been established -- in peer-reviewed articles -- that azurite, a copper carbonate hydroxide, can be created in copper- and carbonate-rich solutions at about 70-98 degrees in just a few hours. Azurite breaks down into malachite rather quickly in air, but it can also form on its own without first forming azurite.

I apologize if the previous paragraph wasn't completely clear, but the take-home message is this: it doesn't take hundreds of years or even decades to form caliche or azurite/malachite.

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Jason Colavito link
2/23/2013 12:38:42 pm

Thank you very much for that, Kate. It's great to hear from a real geologist that my cursory reading on caliche formation was on the right track. It makes me feel better. The material on the azurite/malachite was fascinating.

James link
12/16/2013 07:43:43 am

The last 3years not enough rain to take a good shower .

Celine
11/30/2013 08:56:17 am

I've lived in Tucson all my life and judging by the scenery, I live within two miles of where these crosses were found. I would be happy to send some dirt samples to Jason or anyone that would like to do some testing. I really couldn't believe this episode. It was just too absurd.

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Dave Morris
2/23/2013 12:50:57 pm

Thank you for writing this. I found this blog using Bing to search for more information on these artifacts, because I could not believe the show didn't even give us a translation of the Latin. I studied Latin for 2 years, and while I recognized a lot of words as garden variety vocabulary, I wanted somebody to give us a translation. It was incredible to me that they omitted it. Of course, with your analysis, it makes a lot of sense that they failed to translate it. This show appears to be joining so many other shows that are more about entertainment than about real truth. Sigh.

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Reuben
2/23/2013 01:10:28 pm

I feel like this show would be much stronger if they took 10 minutes away from random backpack shots and had Scott say something about what "mainstream archaeologists" think/don't think about this topic, and then making up some bogus about why it's wrong. They don't even need to change where the show ends up, but a short analysis of the literature (flawed or not) would do a lot for the show.

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Joe
2/27/2013 05:10:59 am

And you're not even joking about the "random backpack shots." I think Wolter must be getting product placement money from whoever made his pack! This episode has at least two shots where they bend over backwards to get that backpack into the frame: The shot in the car where his son has to haul the pack up to the front seat to get the Tums bottle, then a totally pointless shot where they go under the barbed wire and we need to see Wolter get the backpack handed back to him.

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Doug Harris
2/23/2013 02:19:03 pm

Has anyone else done the same study to disprove the find or is this all opinion?

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Phillip
2/23/2013 04:59:22 pm

WOW, What a circus. History should be rewritten based on local legend, and a cell phone confirmation that AD was used in 800. Well Im convinced, the prequel to the Knights Templar was from the good ole' U.S. of A! YEE HAW!

As far as Wolters Templar fantasy, has he not been informed that the person behind the source material for "The Da Vinci Code" has come clean? The Priory of Sion was fiction, Oh wait, the History Channel can beat this dead horse until its a spin off show devoted to more pseudohistorical nonsense.

Shame on the "History" channel. History Channel is Pawn Shop Reality, H2 is "viewers are stupid", can I sue the "History" Channel for false advertising?

cheers

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intelligentheating
2/24/2013 12:21:46 am

"The Priory of Sion was fiction"

Now that would be a great show, discussing Pierre Plantard and 1950's French politics!

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Scott M
2/24/2013 03:03:41 am

Hey, I like Pawn Stars. The focus of the show tends to be more historical items so that's why I watch. It's like a random smattering of history with a little entertainment. Give it a chance, it's certainly no Ancient Aliens or America Unearthed, at least Pawn Stars deals in some factual research.

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Joe
2/27/2013 05:16:08 am

That's the weird world of "reality" TV. Pawn Stars is good concerning the history of the items they discuss...it's just you can't trust that it was truly something that happened to show up at the shot or a plant done just for the show. (They've been caught doing that on multiple occasions, including a classic guitar that showed up at their shot that their guitar expert had been trying to sell, brought to them by none other than an employee of their guitar expert!)

Phillip
2/23/2013 05:17:00 pm

P.S. Im watching the History Channel right now and a man is pawning a grenade. God I love history.

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Madrdismus link
2/23/2013 05:39:04 pm

I wrote a post called America Unearthed: A Response to Tucson Relics (The Desert Cross): http://madridismus.blogspot.com/2013/02/america-unearthed-response-to-tucson.html

I do appreciate your comments, Christopher Columbus did discover, i.e. "uncover"or unearth America for Spain. This is fact. Mr. Scott Wolter should revise that. Sr. Columbus never claimed to be the first man here, rather he was exploring and claiming land in the name of the crowns of Castille y Leon and Aragon with an official mandate from the Monarch and the Pope.

As far as the Templar story, there is some things relating to this that may be unearthed, but I would say more with the Order of Christ and Order of Montesa. However, I cannot exclude the idea that other Templars may of came to America sometime before. But he should consider all facts and possibilities and reject them appropriately.

With the so-called Tucson Relics, I wished he had a paleologist examine the Latin text. No expert was brought in, and that A.D. citation he claimed was used circa 800 but no example was given, why? He did not cite the studies of the Professors who wrote books on the findings, why? Finally, I wish Mr. Wolter would open an official blog, Twitter account, YouTube page, Facebook page, etc. to answer these great objections. Legitimate questions deserve answers, right?

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CFC
2/23/2013 10:57:43 pm

Kate,
Thanks very much for your comments.
Scott Wolter is an embarrassment to the geology profession. Aren’t there some professional and ethical standards being violated here? I wish more geologists would speak up and take action before further damage is done.

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sherm
2/24/2013 03:49:11 am

Yes,you are right about that too.. that claim has been made before. When he used a concrete core sampler bit and drilled a 2 inches deep and 2 inch diameter hole in the kensington runestone it was just so insane. Then he spred some release agent on it and made a mold and turned the stone black. Just appaling. Keep him away from the Mona Lisa with that drill.

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Mike
2/24/2013 12:14:08 am

Jason,

I don't believe that you're actually a race-monger, but you've provided extremely weak evidence in support of your theory that the show's large audience is due to racist white people in fear of losing majority status.

You state that "it’s hard to ignore the fact that this narrative has attracted such a large following" and describe the narrative as "advanced white culture inevitably succumbs to the savagery and sensuality of surrounding dark-skinned primitives."

Is that really why you think most viewers watch the show? I suspect most viewers aren't even aware of what you believe is the narrative.

You're not nearly as demanding of yourself as you are of Wolter. The extent of your logic seems to be correlation equals causation, since you find a correlation hard to ignore. Have you asked any members of the audience? I suspect you'll find many perfectly good reasons viewers enjoy watching the show, despite its shortcomings.

With your leaps of logic, I'd accuse you of going native on us, but you'd probably just call me a racist.

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Jason Colavito link
2/24/2013 12:21:57 am

I never said that the audience was racist, but it's hard to ignore, as I said, the correlation between the narrative offered on the show and the political climate in which it is offered. This ought to be no more shocking than the fact that 1960s alternative theories focused on the peace/love/ecology angle (paralleling the counterculture) or the war of the worlds/nuclear annihilation theme (paralleling the Cold War). Or that in the early 21st century there was such a craze for the Chinese-discovered-America theme, when modern America was confronted with the rise of China, or in the 1990s the (white) Atlantis as global hegemon, at the same time modern America played the same global role.

Most of the people watching the show (or consuming any of the previous versions) will not have given a moment's conscious thought to any of this, but the thematic resonance is hard to miss. The stories we tell ourselves have a relationship to our ambitions and our fears; how the audience chooses to use the narrative presented is another question, which gets into communication theory. But, if you judge by the nastly letters in my inbox accusing me of betraying the white race for reviewing this show, I'd say there are more than a few people who are in it for the race angle.

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Mike
2/24/2013 01:54:29 pm

Thanks for your reply, and for tolerating the provocative nature of my post. I take your point that you do hear from a vocal portion of the show's audience.

You make an interesting point about the nature of the material and the times. I'm not convinced the narrative you describe is clear enough to effect the audience much - as you say, most will not have given a moment's conscious thought to it. I don't know the extent that race enters into the subconscious messages received from this show that may drive the audience. Personally, I've been more interested in the specific subjects in the episodes, without considering the racial balance of the series. With more knowledge of the subject matter, I'm sure these issues jump out at you as you watch the episodes.

Mike
2/24/2013 01:54:46 pm

Thanks for your reply, and for tolerating the provocative nature of my post. I take your point that you do hear from a vocal portion of the show's audience.

You make an interesting point about the nature of the material and the times. I'm not convinced the narrative you describe is clear enough to effect the audience much - as you say, most will not have given a moment's conscious thought to it. I don't know the extent that race enters into the subconscious messages received from this show that may drive the audience. Personally, I've been more interested in the specific subjects in the episodes, without considering the racial balance of the series. With more knowledge of the subject matter, I'm sure these issues jump out at you as you watch the episodes.

Mike
2/24/2013 01:55:23 pm

Thanks for your reply, and for tolerating the provocative nature of my post. I take your point that you do hear from a vocal portion of the show's audience.

You make an interesting point about the nature of the material and the times. I'm not convinced the narrative you describe is clear enough to effect the audience much - as you say, most will not have given a moment's conscious thought to it. I don't know the extent that race enters into the subconscious messages received from this show that may drive the audience. Personally, I've been more interested in the specific subjects in the episodes, without considering the racial balance of the series. With more knowledge of the subject matter, I'm sure these issues jump out at you as you watch the episodes.

Mike
2/24/2013 02:05:05 pm

Sorry for the multiple posts. Each time I submitted it, it replied:

"There was an error submitting your comment. Please try again"

so I did.

HB Kelley
7/30/2013 09:29:45 am

Jason, you brought the race issue in this from your long winded comment about the show. What I would like to know, is why did you not mention the fact that malachite is on the lead artifacts and it takes malachite hundreds of years to form. This I know for a fact and if you don't believe it, look it up for yourself.

Kevbo
11/2/2013 07:47:23 pm

The fact of the matter is that people like to hear about their own culture, even if it's made up. That doesn't make someone racist. Coming up with the stories against all evidence might, but tuning in and zonking out are another matter. People get tired of the same old stories about the amazing minorities. I guess some people consider that incipient racism, but that's pretty much par for the course as far as humanity is concerned, and is completely natural, and doesn't have to be dangerous or evil. A narrative that reinforces the idea that White people are oh-so-racist can, on the other hand, get to be dangerous. (This particular guy has so many problems that I wouldn't put much past him.)

Christopher Randolph
2/24/2013 03:03:31 am

Riddle me this, Mike:

Why do you suppose that there's never been a single show in this series that credits native North Americans with having built one darn thing?

Why do you suppose that despite a quite incredible, well-documented but not popularly known / primary school-taught history of the large cities and mound-building cultures of North America that not one single show in the series has been dedicated to that?

Why do you suppose that a show supposedly about pre-Columbian archeology ALWAYS ends up focusing on Europeans?

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Jason Colavito link
2/24/2013 03:06:40 am

Small point of fact: The first episode of the series did claim that the Maya built the mounds of Georgia. This episode, however, is the only one to focus on a non-white people and only did so because it was special-ordered by H2 to coincide with their 2012 Maya Apocalypse programming bloc.

That said, you do have to wonder why there is no discussion about the Chinese, Japanese, Buddhist, Hindu, Polynesian, and sub-Saharan Africans that have at one time or another been claimed to have discovered America before Columbus. Instead, we get only white people.

Joe
2/27/2013 05:29:10 am

Prior to this show I hadn't really noticed any racial undertones. I figured most of Wolter's alternative claims were just made because they sounded more fun and exciting than the conventional theories. "Those aren't spring houses, but ritual baths!" "Englishmen were in the Arizona desert!" "Giant Vikings were in Minnesota!"

But it's impossible to ignore after this episode. The inscriptions should have been the entire story: "authentic" relics dating back to 800 AD telling how the Toltecs, Jews and Romans were all here in America. But instead he goes out of his way to ignore the evidence he claims is genuine in favor of his Knights Templar theory. Logically, there's no way to justify what happens in this show. If he truly believes the artifacts are real, why doesn't he embrace the story they tell?

jim
7/30/2013 07:34:01 am

Oh My GOD! enough with the racial crap! put this all aside and just look at the this laughable junk called history channel. I agree with this blog as far as the artifacts go. They are fake plain and simple alot of knowledgeable people have pointed this out based on the story presented. Now, as much as you want this to be true it isnt. now lets move on there is a reason why these items have been laying around in the AZ building for so long with out anyone taking them seriously.

Cheryl
2/22/2015 02:52:30 am

Too True !! Why not spotlight Cahokia or the Ohio Valley and Louisiana mound builders ? What about Chaco Valley and Toltec roads etc. in the South West ? It does seem as if the Templar/Mason connection has always been the focus of America Unearthed.

Sean
2/24/2013 05:12:27 am

When it comes to AU and its implications to the history of the indigenous people of North America there are more than a couple things to consider. Yes, the viewership of this show is inevitably made up many different types of people watching for different reasons. It’s clear from this blog that some proportion of the audience is watching to evaluate the show’s lack of methodology and objectivity. However, when the issue of race comes into the conversation evaluating this program cannot be approached in the same way. This isn’t simply a matter of whether or not the production team did proper research on an object or site, or whether the proper tests are being performed. This is an ever-present shadow in our culture and it’s almost a national pastime not to discuss it but here we are again. When we talk about racism we tend to speak of in absolute terms as if it were light and darkness. There’s rarely ever a discussion of degrees on the subject. To refer to a person as a racist is to condemn that person in whole to being hateful. While supporting a racially motivated theory because you can relate to it in someway doesn’t make you a racist nor does it make you innocent of bias. Doing so does in fact help to advance ideas that others can use as justification for more overtly racist ends. Therefore the benign action of support cannot be severed entirely in its culpability.
I’ve been following forums for discussion about this show and I’m sorry to say that I’m not surprised by the emails that Mr. Colavito describes receiving. The majority of support for this show on social media and entertainment review sites remains enthusiastic that educated people are not to be trusted and that everyone has folklore about ancient visitors that happen to have the same cultural lineage as the majority of the town/city/county and that arrived in North America before anyone else. Unfortunately there are two other types of commentary going on that I never hear anyone discuss. The first comes from the type of people that accuse Mr. Colavito of betraying his race, proudly praising the show for “proving” that “Aryan tribes” colonized North America. Variations of such comments are all too common in that they exist at all and get no responses from other contributors. The other type of comments on these sites comes from members of American Indian communities. Some of these are very angry. Some express their disappointment in a more enlightened manner, sharing links to cultural web pages and information but most do use the word racist in describing this show. Conversely, these get plenty of commentary defending both Mr. Wolter and the show.
I suppose in the end what we have to ask ourselves is how we define racism. Is it by the people whose history is being unduly expanded or by the people whose history is perpetually being erased to make way for it? My answer would have to be that the targets of prejudice get the final say as to whether or not it is hate.

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Jason Colavito link
2/24/2013 05:19:19 am

Those are great points, Sean, and I think you're right to point to the difference between racial hatred and simple cultural bias. In the case of America Unearthed, I think that cultural bias is what we are looking at more than anything else, where the people making and consuming these particular ideas use them as part of a sort of cultural revitalization movement. In that sense, they aren't driven by any "hatred" of non-white peoples, only a cultural bias that means that they simply don't consider them at all. While that doesn't make the individuals racists (and most are not in any way), the EFFECTS of their speculations certainly have racial implications in the larger sense.

Lynn Brant
2/24/2013 05:28:47 am

So let me get this straight - because I don't believe any Chinese or Mayan or ancient Hebrew people came here before Columbus, and because I do believe Norse did (and beyond L'Anse aux Meadows), I'm a racist?

Jason Colavito link
2/24/2013 05:35:36 am

No, the belief in any one of the alternative theories doesn't make anyone a racist. A show like America Unearthed, however, consistently and exclusively presents multiple "theories" that repeat the same basic narrative of white culture destroyed by interactions with non-whites. It is the narrative that is being spun--largely without any evidence--that makes many uncomfortable because of the consistent theme that (a) native peoples could not build their own giant dirt piles or mud-brick buildings without white help and (b) the downfall of white culture in America comes at the hands of non-whites.

Have you seen this month's National Geographic? A while back the magazine ran a report on new evidence about Viking-Dorset interaction, and the letters section this month was full of readers wanting to know why the magazine refused to consider that the Dorset were "really" degenerate Vikings who had their culture handed to them by superior white Europeans.

Lynn Brant
2/24/2013 05:46:51 am

Do you think Scott, the producer and the History Channel are all in cahoots to advance racism subliminally?

Jason Colavito link
2/24/2013 06:04:12 am

No, I don't. I think, though, that no one involved has stopped for a moment to think about the thematic message the program is sending through the choices its producers and host have made, choices based in large part on their own cultural biases.

Lynn Brant
2/24/2013 06:15:56 am

I don't know, Jason. It still sounds to me like you're ready to label someone a racist because their thematic message was, in your opinion, arrived at as a result of their cultural bias. It strikes me that the only way they could have avoided this condemnation would have been to have a different thematic message, So I'm back to wondering if you think we should weigh evidence based on how racist it might look, which would be contrary to science.

Jason Colavito link
2/24/2013 06:32:41 am

Evidence is evidence regardless of its cultural impact, but the story Scott Wolter is telling is not based on evidence. Because it is constructed from half-truths and speculation, it's legitimate to treat it as one would any piece of literature, to tease out the themes and messages. As literary theorists know, the author's intent is only a part of how a text can be interpreted since the message exists independent of the messenger.

Christopher Randolph
2/24/2013 02:39:30 pm

Lynn -

I for one don't think there's a lick of the 'subliminal' in History's overt racism. They're telling fairy tales of comfort to people who want to be reassured that their ancestors (Europeans) are superior people who did everything first, and are the rightful inhabitants of what is now the United States.

That's when they take a break from the overtly racist notion that it's more likely that UFO beings than brown people could figure out how to pile stones on top of each other on continents other than Europe.

Christopher Randolph
2/24/2013 02:55:05 pm

Lynn -

I'm beginning to think you might be beyond your comfort zone on the race thing because of how hard and frequently you try to deflect attention from the obvious pattern the claims on AA and AU take.

Nothing other than race panic explains the need for some people to produce and/or consume these hamfisted myths. It's a not a coincidence that this is all happening when people are aware that the US is becoming a country of racial plurality, that the president is half-African genetically and has a couple Islamic-derived names (and an outright African-American wife), and the next pope or two might be from the developing world.

As I've stated before, I happen not to be an Obama fan for the record (only stated to note I'm not defending him as a politician, that's not what I'm here to do). But people are evidently willing to believe that his birthplace was obscured by a conspiracy and/or that he practices a secret religion before they are willing to believe that just maybe one of the HUNDRED MILLION Americans who can't neatly be described as "white" could POSSIBLY have been legitimately elected president.

Not for the first time, a large portion of white America has stripped a gear in their head machinery.

T.
2/24/2013 03:15:24 pm

"So let me get this straight - because I don't believe any Chinese or Mayan or ancient Hebrew people came here before Columbus, and because I do believe Norse did (and beyond L'Anse aux Meadows), I'm a racist?"

No, but you're belief in the Norse beyond Newfoundland is just that. A belief. Not verified fact. So while you might not be racist, you are biased enough to believe something to be historically accurate without sufficient evidence.

"Do you think Scott, the producer and the History Channel are all in cahoots to advance racism subliminally?"

It probably never occurs to anyone involved that they're doing anything wrong at all. That's part of the problem.

"So I'm back to wondering if you think we should weigh evidence based on how racist it might look, which would be contrary to science."

First, with all due respect, you've already proved yourself to be willing to advance ideas without proper evidence so you wouldn't be a reliable source to criticize scientific methodology. Second, Jason is correct when he says evidence is evidence. And since no one has suggested that evidence be ignored and this program has presented no credible evidence of any kind the point is not only moot but would seem to be a purposeful deflection on your part.

Based on the number of posts you've added to this thread and the increasingly defensive tone you've taken in them it seems like you're taking this subject rather personally and I'm curious as to why that is. Maybe you should too.

Lynn Brant
2/24/2013 12:28:09 am

The only race angle I see is in the quick presumption that many of the artifacts had to have been european, because indians could not have accomplished them.

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Christopher Randolph
2/24/2013 03:08:02 am

The central tenet of the show is that the native peoples of North America could not have accomplished anything. The level of racism that assumption needs is staggering, especially in the face of what qualified archeologists know about what did happen on this continent.

As a white person I'm embarrassed and horrified.

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Lynn Brant
2/24/2013 04:32:43 am

After all the breast-beating about scientific method, I hope no-one is seriously suggesting that evidence should be weighed, even in part, by considering whether it might look racist to someone, somewhere.

Jason Colavito link
2/24/2013 04:52:44 am

No, Lynn. I think the point is that BECAUSE there is no proof that these speculations have any grounding in fact, it becomes an interesting question why people choose to propose and/or believe that which science says is improbable or untrue.

Christopher Randolph
2/24/2013 03:09:43 pm

Lynn -

First let's get Wolter to produce some evidence, shall we?

You're projecting. The opposite is happening here in reality-based reality; Wolter is telling people on a national cable network (one titled "History" no less!) that a PC academic/elitist conspiracy is afoot to hide the accomplishments of white people in pre-Columbian North America.

I know this because that's what the man says. Clearly. Repeatedly.

It;s actually Wolter who is using race as a jumping-off point and gathers his "facts" and "scientific evidence" running from those assumptions.

He should be shouting this on a street corner, holding up a cardboard sign and wearing a foil hat. Instead, because crazy is the new normal for a lot of white America, he has more funding than your local high school's actually history department.

dave richards
2/24/2013 02:12:51 am

I was looking for a more plausible "ancient Aliens" theory.

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CFC
2/24/2013 04:50:17 am

I’m not paying much attention to the “race angle” (I’m not receiving nasty emails like Jason) but do find the discussion intriguing. important.

What disturbs me are the harmful messages being communicated by America Unearthed each week: ridiculing academia, insulting educators and other professionals and demonstrating questionable research practices, all in the name of entertainment.

This program adds nothing of real value to our understanding of history and science. It only confuses and misleads the viewers. I would like to see QUALITY, well-researched programming, highlighting the importance of archaeology, anthropology, and geology to our historical, cultural and community development.

Such programming would be useful, would expand our knowledge and encourage a deeper understanding and appreciation of proper scientific investigation.

I would envision of group of ndividuals representing various disciplines, well established (with real credentials) in their fields of study, teaming up and creating a very dynamic and credible program.

In my view this program is a waste of time and money and doing real harm.

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intelligentheating
2/24/2013 07:13:33 am

So from watching the show since its first episode we are generally lead to believe that the following cultures had some presence in what now constitutes the United States prior to Columbus (please correct me if I am wrong here). These come through either explicit mention of these cultures in the show, or from those mentioned on certain artifacts (for example those listed on the lead crosses):

The Egyptians
The Phoenicians
The Minoans
Early Medieval Scoti (i.e. the Irish)
Early Medieval Britons (i.e. the Welsh)
Carolingian Franks
Gauls
Romans
Early Medieval European Jews (I would guess from Narbonne or a similar region of modern day France)
Post Norman Conquest Anglo-Saxons
The Norse (including Giants!)
Medieval Danes in the guise of Knights Templar leading to....
The Knight Templar (which will possibly in later shows lead to reference to the Sinclair story i.e. Medieval Franco-Scots)

So if we take a step back for a moment. This show is leading us to believe that apart from the Maya there was contact between the Classical World (Romans, Minoans, Phoenicians, Egyptians) through the Dark Ages/Early Medieval period (Irish/Scoti, Welsh/Britons, Norse, Franks, Gauls, European Jews) on through the high Middle Ages (Post Conquest Anglo-Saxons, Danish Templar/Knights templar in general) and yet the only evidence we have is carvings and rune stones (oh and some "Giants" graves)?

No post holes? No horse bones? Garbage? Sewage pits? Weapons/Arrow heads? Foundations? Wells? Pottery? No cemeteries (again apart from the "Giants graves" and the A/S head stone).

Maybe one of the archaeologists on here can comment, but from what I have seen the vast majority of archaeological digs turn up broken pottery, post holes and other "boring" traces of human existence.

It seems to be a rare occurrence that you hit gold and find an Anglo-Saxon treasure horde or a Rosetta stone?

I just find the show absurd when you are expected to believe that for at least 1000 years prior to the Vikings landing in Newfoundland we had people arriving in North America yet there is no "boring" evidence for this!













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Phillip
2/24/2013 11:36:15 am

HA! Very well said.

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J.
2/25/2013 03:58:46 am

Yeah -- no doubt. I'm not professionally trained in archaeology, so again, pros speak up, but it's the detritus that usually marks a presence of past people. I grew up in Wisconsin just a few blocks from the Mississippi, and as a kid I found three arrowheads in the bluffs behind my neighborhood. They weren't part of a hidden stash, they were just around. There was an archaeological dig in the floodplain about a mile away from our house, and most of what they found were remnants of everyday life -- food waste like nut shells and bones, pottery, that sort of thing.

Like Wolter, I've also been to Newgrange, and probably spent more time there than he has. One of the things he didn't mention is the sheer volume of paleolithic trash that's been recovered around the Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth mounds -- hazelnut shells, burnt hazelnut shells, shellfish shells, fish bones, the remains of wooden frames for houses, flint spearheads and arrowheads, pottery, etc. There's a large tourist center with a museum recreating the paleolithic village that housed the people who built the mounds. If a similar ritual mound was built in North America, similar detritus would be expected. The people building it would have had to eat and sleep while building it, and they most likely wouldn't have just built it and run off.

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Lisa
3/18/2013 12:36:14 am

Haha, I love your summation, when you put it all together like that it shows the utter nonsense of this show.
You're absolutely right about the archaeology too, I'm a professional archaeologist and whilst one of the mantras you learn is 'absence of evidence doesn't mean evidence of absence' without any real archaeological remains there is very little that can be said, except that there is no archaeological evidence!

It was interesting that the one time that any archaeological investigation was conducted (the Minnesota giant bones), that plenty of material remains were found, including animal bones, pottery, chipped stone - pretty much what you'd expect) and they were all typical of native or colonial occupations.

I suppose Wolter would dismiss anything I have to say outright as being part of the 'mainstream conspiracy', but most archaeologists, scientists and scholars in my experience would be perfectly happy to accept these hypotheses if they were tested and proved to be true. Archaeology (and science in general) is often all about changing old beliefs and trying to improve our understanding, wherever the evidence may lead.

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Ben
11/30/2013 06:28:41 pm

Clearly all WHITE EUROPEAN cultures, especially those Egyptians.

So, I appreciate the critique here quite a bit, you lost me when you brought up race. I was hoping for a logical rebuttal and you were 98% there.

Keep to the logic, and I'm on board. Bring in this race issue, and I start to feel like there is a 2nd agenda. I don't think there is, but I can't help but feel it when it is brought up.

Race and racial bias is such a convoluted and murky issue with NO empirical means to be proven, it has very little merit (in my book) on a critique such as this.

Claiming racial bias (intentional or not) can only be "proven" through circumstantial evidence, which is ALMOST at the level of a H2 show.

(This is not an endorsement of Wolters or this show, and the first person to respond calling my racial bias into play will be rewarded with $500 of Monopoly money)

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terry the censor
2/24/2013 12:06:33 pm

> Wolter says that the same symbol represented the dragonfly to Native Americans so both groups “shared” it

This is a clear inability to distinguish homology from analogy.

HOMOLOGY
A similarity often attributable to common origin.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homology

ANALOGY
Resemblance in some particulars between things otherwise unlike.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/analogy

This is an important difference to know in science. For instance, in biology, this distinction helps one to avoid telling evolutionary "just so" stories.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_09

I recommend that fringe scientists and their fandom have a look at these terms and the real-world examples.

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terry the censor
2/24/2013 12:09:34 pm

> Prove that this “precursor” group existed 300 years before the Templars

I wonder if Wolter has got it into his head that the Freemason's were in Roman-occupied Palestine in the time of Jesus. Many years ago I came across a 1950s-era book in a second-hand shop that stated the Masons emerged from the Essenes, and (presumably) to remove the "taint" of Judiasm, further claimed that Jesus was an Essene.

I can't speculate on what would drive the writer to concoct such a fantastic pedigree for the Masons, but googling around it seems many people subscribed to this view (or something like it).

This is a 2001 Masonic text cautioning against such an unfounded relationship. That the fellow had to make such a presentation suggests it was a problem not limited to one or two kooks.
http://www.grandlodge.mb.ca/mrc_docs/Essenes.pdf

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B L
2/24/2013 02:47:21 pm

Wolter pointed out the Cross of Lorraine several times during the episode, and used it as evidence of a Templar Knights connection.

A symbol like the Cross of Lorraine was used in ancient alchemy as the symbol for lead. All of the Tucson artifacts were made of lead. Maybe the symbol's use was more straightforward and less cryptic. Maybe the maker was just pointing out what he used to create the stuff with.

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J. Adamson
2/25/2013 12:52:18 am

Just out of curiosity, was there caliche present on all of the artifacts?

If so, at what depths were those artifacts found and how much caliche was present at what depth?

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Jason Colavito link
2/25/2013 01:22:31 am

Excellent questions. It would have been nice had Wolter published or at least posted his results to know that kind of information.

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J.
2/25/2013 03:35:10 am

I'm just getting to this episode a few days late, and have watched only the first 9 minutes of it. Then I paused it because Wolter's already come out swinging at the academic scarecrows he sets up each episode, and something already seemed off. So without seeing any more of this episode yet, and having read only Jason's first paragraph here, I'm going to take a leap and suggest that even if these were real artifacts from Europe, they could have been brought to Arizona at any time after Columbus or the founding of Columbus, Ohio, or after the first launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia, and planted to look like prior evidence of a European presence. I'm also guessing that this possibility won't be seriously entertained, if even raised.

But Jason's first paragraph about the artifacts' inscriptions already suggests yet another episode of disingenuous conspiracy-mongering where no conspiracy exists.

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B L
2/26/2013 10:51:00 am

Attention everyone interested in the America Unearthed drinking game: This weeks word is "caliche". Buy lots of beer because you will end up drinking it all.

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Lisa
3/18/2013 12:41:21 am

BL - I was just saying to my mates that this show is calling for a drinking game and it seems there is one already - Are the rules posted somewhere or can you elaborate?
I find booze helps when watching this show.

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tru leigh link
2/26/2013 11:40:52 am

I respectfully disagree with your analysis.
I thought the show did a fairly good job providing the details of Wolter’s research, without going into the controversy surrounding its inscriptions.
First of all, America Unearthed is a television show. Much of it is obviously scripted and recreated. Much like reality TV has little to do with actual reality. That, however, does not mean that facts presented are not true.
First, the artifacts were discovered in 1924. Not a whole lot of fakery going on then. The finders don’t seem to have been interested in profit, notoriety or any had any agenda. Nor do the grammatical errors in the Latin bother me too much. Latin was a learned language, a second language, if you will. People can speak English their whole lives and still make grammar errors. (Keep reading if you don’t believe me). As for the Latin being quotations from Cicero, et al., One thing comes to mind. These Greek writers lived at least 900 years before the date on the artifacts. As is it my understanding that any student with the education provided the elite would have studied the Greek philosophy and would have been very well versed in the subject. I notice you say nothing about the Hebrew inscriptions. Presumably because they are without error.
I have to defer to Dr. Wolter on his analysis of the geology of the area. He is a respected, experienced forensic geologist. You are not.
Because you cannot find any reference to Theodorus doesn’t mean Wolter must be wrong. Just means you can’t find it.
That lead wasn’t used for artifacts in Europe at the alleged time. Duh. They weren’t made in Europe, they were made in the area where found. That’s why Wolter could find lead mines only miles from the site.
As for the forked dinosaur image you make much of. To my mind, the image is looks an awful lot like a Gila Monster, a poisonous reptile with a forked tongue, native to the area. Sounds like a warning to me.
You say the Cross of Lorraine wasn’t a symbol for the Knights Templar. Wolter’s expert said it’s possible. Again, he’s the expert. You, not so much.
You’re a professional skeptic. I get that. No one should take anything at face value without research. Fox News comes to mind. In these instances, I think of Occam’s Razor, “competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected.” That the Tucson artifacts are elaborate fakes defies logic.
The most curious thing about this discovery is why no archeological exploration has taken place in the area where the artifacts were found. I think without the thorough scientific exploration that your thesis posits, you cannot with any certainty proclaim these artifacts are a hoax.


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T.
2/26/2013 12:05:50 pm

Scott Wolter does not have a Ph.D., and is not well respected. There has been plenty of analysis of the area, and the "artifacts" all of which has determined that these things are total nonsense. It would take too long to point out all the things that are wrong with your post. Please be quiet when the grown-ups are talking.

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tru leigh link
2/26/2013 06:31:10 pm

How rude.

Anyone who doesn’t believe in your anemic thesis, you dismiss as being childish.

So what is Wolter doesn’t have a Phd? Neither did Heinrich Schliemann. Neither did Howard Carter. Neither did Charles Darwin. Neither does this Jason guy. Neither do you, I’m willing to wager. If anything. it makes Wolter’s research more credible. As he is outside the rigid world of academia, therefore he doesn’t need to fear the stigma of questioning the status quo. What he does have is 27 years of experience. How long have you been a forensic geologist?

What was Wolter’s goal in researching these objects? To test the objects and the geology where they were found and see if they correlate. That’s it. He then opined that the objects were authentic. Kind of like what you are doing here. Only you have the obnoxious hubris that comes with the anonymity of the internet.

What I do have, that I am very confident is one thing I have over you, is an open mind. What I don’t do is say, “if every ‘i’ isn’t dotted and every ‘t’ isn’t crossed, then the whole premise if flawed.” If there are enough pieces of a puzzle, it’s pretty easy to put it together without the picture on the box.

I have no vested interest in the outcome of this case. I don’t give a shit one way or the other. I just like the show. Think it’s interesting. I like the theories presented. I just stumbled on this site and have no interest in dueling with internet pedants. Don’t worry, I won’t be back. You big boys can have the sandbox all to yourselves.

But there is ne thing I’ve noticed you are all silent on. If you all are all so convinced these artifacts are fake, then why? Why were they made? Who made them? How were they made? Why were they left in the middle of the desert? You can’t answer that because you have gotten much of anything to prove these artifacts are frauds. Just some typos in some an inscription made by some poor Latin scholar.

I go back to my original statement. Without an archeological dig, you cannot dismiss the evidence with a smug waive of your hand because it doesn’t fit in with your perceived notion of the world.

If you can’t have a civilized and respectable discourse without a dismissive wave of your hand when someone doesn’t agree with you, then why should anyone take your opinions seriously?

Jason Colavito link
2/26/2013 10:32:16 pm

According to a 2009 article in Southwest Archaeology, there were several reasons the artifacts were made. The most important was that they were meant to attract money to an economically-suffering Tucson by capitalizing on the craze for King Tut's tomb and archaeology in the early 1920s. Another reason these specific peoples were chosen to be represented on the artifacts is that a Roman-Jewish colony agreed with the timeline in the Book of Mormon, the holy book of a growing segment of the Western population.

T.
2/27/2013 04:01:25 pm

You're a another Kensington Runestone nut!? Why do guys you always have the same tone of persecution? Let it go already! It's called evidence. If you don't have it you can't play! BTW you do realize that when you call some a doctor in this context you're implying that they have a Ph.D., right? And you clearly don't know anything about academia that you don't get from conspiracy chat rooms. As for experience, it's not transferable for everything, you can have 30 years experience as a taxi driver but it doesn't qualify you to fly the space shuttle.

Delann
3/3/2013 09:21:19 am

Geologist Scott Wolter has authored eight books and has been president of American Petrographic Services since 1990 and is responsible for the independent petrographic analysis testing laboratory where the Kensington Rune Stone was brought for investigation in 2000. He's been the principal petrographer in more than 5,000 investigations throughout the U.S. and around the world, including the evaluation of fire damaged concrete at the Pentagon following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Jason Colavito link
2/26/2013 12:06:59 pm

I said nothing of the Hebrew inscriptions because I can't read Hebrew. The Latin quotations include pedestrian segments from obscure passages, such as Sallust's Catiline Conspiracy 60.4, not a curriculum text in Late Antiquity. 34 lines are copied directly from passages appearing in a single 1881 Latin primer. That's too much to be coincidence.

Wolter's geology is crap. A former U.S. government geologist studied the same site, discovered that the objects were embedded in Pleistocene strata and was able to duplicate the "caliche" in less than 24 hours using materials found on-site. This professional geologist's field tests and opinion were arrived at in consultation with a team of experts and carries much more weight than Wolter peering through a microscope.

The gila monster does not have a long neck, disproportionately small head, or squared-off feet.

I never said anything about the Cross of Lorraine being a symbol of the Templars, only that it's modern expression is irrelevant to 800 CE.

Please see my follow-up posts on the dinosaur and the caliche from this week for more on these topics.

My degree in archaeology is just as "expert" as Wolter's in geology, and my years studying ancient history match up against any of Wolter's self-described "experts."

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Don Hendrix
12/28/2019 06:03:52 pm

The Hell we can't proclaim these artifacts a hoax. Tru Leigh's post is absurd and shows nothing except ignorance about the artifacts. Everyone except the ignorant and gullible, are certain that this is a hoax.

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Joe
2/27/2013 04:37:22 am

"One cross has a dinosaur drawn on it. A dinosaur."

LOL! Possibly the greatest line you've ever written, Jason. That says it all. But it was entertaining when Wolter decided it was just a lizard.

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Andy
12/10/2013 12:44:04 am

Yes, agreed. Best line of the review. Made me laugh out loud.

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Joe
2/27/2013 04:58:49 am

I don't mind hearing about alternative theories. They can be entertaining and some might even have something to them--plenty of examples where the mainstream believed things to be one way, only to later discover they were wrong. But what I resent is a guy like Wolter who rails against people ignoring his alternative theories, only to totally ignore competing alternative theories that don't fit with his. Here, he finds supposedly genuine artifacts, but totally ignores most of what is inscribed on them to run with his own competing theory. Exactly what are we to believe Wolter was thinking? That the inscriber back in 800 AD was totally wrong about the parts concerning the Jews and Toltecs, but spot-on concerning everything that fit with Wolter's Knights Templar theory?

And here's the spot in the episode that really sums up Wolter in a nutshell: He's examining these artifacts he has concluded are genuine and had been buried since 800 AD. He notes one is broken. And his first thought isn't that it could have been broken when it was crudely dug out of the ground, or damaged when it was buried or at any other point when it was lying out there totally unprotected, but that "ritualistic breaking" was the likely cause. And it's not even presented as a possibility, but he specifically says that's the only cause he could think of!

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SN
2/28/2013 02:00:25 am

Patriarchal cross of the Orthodox churches (for example Greek) looks the same as the cross of Lorraine.

Knights Templar did not time travel to 800 AD Arizona.

It was embarrassing to watch this episode.

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J.
2/28/2013 06:51:15 pm

I was taking notes on all of this, and then had a crash and lost my notes. Gah! (save save save)

But three things --

Thing #1: For some reason I didn't think even Grant believed Scott Wolter's conclusions at the end of the show. It might just be his natural expression, but he looked incredulous.

Thing #2: Wolter wasn't just creating a falsehood for the audience of the show; it seemed he was trying to impress one upon Chuck Bent, which is creepy.

Thing #3: The BBC reported this week on the discovery of an old Masonic temple that was built 130 years before Freemasonry was established in England. Don't be surprised if this becomes evidence for something or other in a future show.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-21577807

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Olan
3/1/2013 04:43:51 pm

Jason, thanks for giving me some hope regarding the frenzied uncritical ravings of a desperate and declining "American" majority,.Your writing style is excellent. I found your post after seeing the dinosaur. Hard to google when ROFL.

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Phrosst
3/1/2013 09:57:45 pm

I just watched this show. The Romans that made these artifacts belonged to the roman catholic church because of the cross etched on the paddle thingy and thek nights templar also used that symbol so there for the romans the that made might not be tied to the knights templar directly but indeed connected via the church so the assumption that is they were precursor of the knights templar are very valid theory be cause in fact the symbol is of the roman catholic church which the knights templar also used. Upon reading your article I never once saw that you mentioned this connection but if you did point me to it. Otherwise I have no reason to believe that you are right about the lies. So I side with the show about this subject.

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Jason Colavito link
3/1/2013 10:27:38 pm

Seriously? The Cross of Lorraine was invented in Lorraine, used by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and bestowed on the Knights Templar. Anyone, however, could draw it. If I scratch it on a rock today, am I therefore part of the conspiracy? Sometimes people just draw things by copying them out of books.

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Phrosst
3/2/2013 09:30:52 am

That is true but that doesn't mean its possible. Seriously, you of all people should know that roman catholic uses the Loraine cross as a symbol and if these were romans that means they probably were apart of the catholic church. I really see no proof as to they are not connect. I believe you are the kind of person to say random stuff is fake for attention. if you had proof that my information is a lie on wikipedia (where I got most of my info), as in figure out who typed the false info and tell me then I will believe you. Until i think your just another idiot. I mean Honestly I see more evidence that they are both connected via the cross than not. Good day to you mate.

Chris link
3/1/2013 10:38:30 pm

This show is junk-history. People 25-years from now will walk around thinking the crap they watched on America Unearthed and Ancient Aliens is crap that really happened.

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Elike
3/4/2013 05:34:42 pm

I'm wondering why this came to a racial point? People are people, big deal. The bigger issue I have is with Scott's seeming obsession with the templars? Now while I'm sure he's a good geologist or whatever he thinks he is, but I'm also sure he's NOT an archaeologist. What he seems like is a dog with a bone, or some mystical hooked bone. I'd be willing to bet that if the "HISTORY" channel put all the money and effort they put into fictional history and spent that on something real like the tombs, caves, and pyramids that are in america but without the conspiracy theory spin they'd probably have a pretty good show.

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Elike
3/4/2013 05:39:19 pm

After thought: If this show was called something like psuedohistory and the writers took scott's conclusions as individual episodes to say how history could have been that would probably also be a better show.

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Family Tree
3/9/2013 05:52:16 am

I just can't understand how this whole discussion came down to race?? Have any of you people studied your family trees? If so, you would understand that this country has been a melting pot for a very long time. Therefore, any alternative history that is unearthed probably would have something to do with your ancestry.... No matter what race you now classify yourself.. Grow up people!!!

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Howard
3/12/2013 04:31:20 pm

Let me just say, I've watched every episode of this show, and while I enjoy the entertainment value, I can see see right through it and recognize it as crap investigative revisionist history. And despite the credit given to Wolter (including himself patting himself on the back) as a "forensic geologist" I find him to be a hack. He continues to stumble and act almost as an amature in his investigation proccess. Clearly he avoids truth when it's convient.

Now that said, I'm not an ass kisser and I'd like to respectably add some objective counter argument to Jason's analysis and remarks.

First things first,
Point 1) Dr. Byron Cummings, dean of the Archaeological Department at the University of Arizona and the director of the State Museum, who "was" very well respected in Archeology academic circles, believed the artifacts were authentic. Also as did Dr. Andrew E. Douglass, father of dendrochronology, Dr. Frank Fowler, professor of classical languages, Arizona State Museum archaeologist named Karl Ruppert, Dr. Neil Judd of the Smithsonian Institution, Professor Charles T. Vorhies entomologist, C.J. Sarle, Ph.D., one of the eminent geologists of the
Southwest all believed it authentic.

Point 2) Jason claims that there is no archeological evidence at the site of anyone having lived there. Well, here in America we have National Parks with monuments, and guess what? No one lives there! These artifacts could have been left as a memorial or statement history.

Point 3) Someone here claimed that they chose the worst Latin scribe, and there some how had to be a scribe there at all? Maybe after a few centuries their Latin got progressively bad. Kind of like what Americans did with the English language LOL. Also, maybe as was listed in the inscriptions, there was a contant battle going on with the "Toltexus" tribe. There has been many MANY badly worded, grammactically wrong, historically confirmed engraved inscriptions through history.

Point 4) Jason claims they were Jews. I didn't see any evidence they were Jews. Just because there was a Jewish inscription in the Hebrew language doesn't make them Jews. In fact, many early Christians were Jews initially. Even those converted Greeks were Jews of the dispersion. Or converted gentiles from Jewish proselytisers. Even by 800 AD there continued to be quote "Jewish Christians". Even though they were persecuted by the Catholic-Roman church. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_invasion_of_Gaul

I propose that while the Crusades didn't start for a couple hundred more years (which Wolter did mention to his credit) the Muslim invasions of France were a precusor in the 700's. And it is very possible that the early Crusaders, and even more possibly the Knights Templar's had an associated history to this time. And, quite possibly, as has been proposed by those who say authentic to the artifacts, a connection to those of Gaul. The Knights Templars had a "French Connection" (pun intended). Could their symbology originated with the Gauls and early French? Much of it too came from a blending of Muslim, Egyptian, eastern symbology and mysticism. As Masonry has as well.

Point 5) The Caliche? A geologist here pointed out that the menerial developement could have occured in less than a few hundred years. Very true. Also, the caliche can be formed artificially with the proper ingrediants, true also. However, the caliche were the artifacts were found had not been disturbed, nor showed placement of the artifacts as to deceive. If in fact it was a hoax, who would go the the lengths of creating a caliche across an area of 2500 ft? And burying them down 6 ft? Jason claims to enhance the local economy, or because of they interest in King Tuts tomb. I find that hard to accept. No one profited from this. And the supposed monies from the U of Arizona never materialized. In fact, many of those involved had their reputations ruined and lives adversley affected.
There is a story on web and I took this paragraph:
I agree here with Dr. Covey. In the early days in Tucson, caliche deposits, sometimes called "desert cement" were a constant problem to those who needed to dig in the soil. (as they are today) Some of the "old timers" resorted to dynamite to break through the thick hard layers. I have personally used a jackhammer to dig holes large enough to plant small trees. (when I worked as a landscaper) here in Tucson. I find it hard to imagine that Timoteo Odohui buried 30+ heavy lead objects nearly six feet deep through solid caliche by himself, and then covered all the objects, simply to create a hoax. When the objects were excavated with University of Arizona supervision, It took a crew of several Mexican laborers using picks to forecefully hack their way down to the objects through the hard cement-like caliche. Also, some of the objects were personally witnessed to have been dug from undisturbed caliche and soil, by University of Arizona professors, . - Jack Andrews

Point 6) Jason snobbishly bl

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Howard
3/12/2013 04:38:00 pm

(cont)

6) Jason snobbishly blathered that American white audiences seek revionist history to soothe their fear of impending encroachment of other races. Wow, sounds like the fear of "Asian" encroachment in Great Britain. When my British brother in law told me about this, I thought he meant, you know Chinese, Japanese or some orientals of some kind when he said "Asian". No, he meant Pakistani and those of middle-eastern descent. Yea, there's no skin heads in Europe is there? And btw, the American colonies were the English colonies first, and that's when slavery started in America. Now I certainly don't defend racism in America. And as a white male married to a black female for 26 years I have seen it from both sides. It disgusts me that the US has such a horrible history in this regard. But I take offence when the obviously superior hypocritical attitude, based on some movie watching dumb hillibilly American stereotype is ascribed to those who watch this show.The whole "white fear" presupposition is an over simplification to a long term projection. And really based on some amature psychology. While I agree there are those elements in the white subconcious of Americans, I can also see some bias in the analysis.

All of that said, I really enjoy your site Jason. Keep up the good work. You've exposed Wolter and debunked a lot of his phony process and conclusions. I apologize for being long winded.

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Don Hendrix
2/3/2016 01:51:50 pm

Unlike most here, I have seen and examined these "artifacts" and the locatin where they were found, and the idea of anyone doing so and believing them to be authentic, is just silly. The only people who are claiming them to be real are looking for $$$.

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Howard
3/12/2013 04:39:42 pm

6) Jason snobbishly blathered that American white audiences seek revionist history to soothe their fear of impending encroachment of other races. Wow, sounds like the fear of "Asian" encroachment in Great Britain. When my British brother in law told me about this, I thought he meant, you know Chinese, Japanese or some orientals of some kind when he said "Asian". No, he meant Pakistani and those of middle-eastern descent. Yea, there's no skin heads in Europe is there? And btw, the American colonies were the English colonies first, and that's when slavery started in America. Now I certainly don't defend racism in America. And as a white male married to a black female for 26 years I have seen it from both sides. It disgusts me that the US has such a horrible history in this regard. But I take offence when the obviously superior hypocritical attitude, based on some movie watching dumb hillibilly American stereotype is ascribed to those who watch this show.The whole "white fear" presupposition is an over simplification to a long term projection. And really based on some amature psychology. While I agree there are those elements in the white subconcious of Americans, I can also see some bias in the analysis.

All of that said, I really enjoy your site Jason. Keep up the good work. You've exposed Wolter and debunked a lot of his phony process and conclusions. I apologize for being long winded.

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PaulN. link
7/4/2014 10:49:06 pm

Regarding your second point I would respectfully point out that at many of our national parks their is plentiful evidence of habitation. At least three come to mind, Sharpsburg, Gettysburg, and Murfreesboro. These are national parks with monuments and are still viable existing communities. For national parks that were formerly inhabited you have Mesa Verde, Chaco canyon, and any of the various Mound Builder communities.
To be honest your arguments have all the validity of a misinformed acolyte of a third rate Svengali.

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David B
3/15/2013 07:15:24 pm

Scott Wolter should be given alot of credit for what he is doing and give the man a chance. 50.8153 Lat. and 105.03153 Long. you will see a Viking.

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David B.
4/13/2013 05:52:16 pm

Scott Wolter is only one person covering an area of archeology and I was asked to do a weekly TV series on archeology as our North American Governments are covering up our medieval history and the media company wanted the truth out. Scott Wolter is doing that.. The Knights of Columbus were started in Quebec after the Jesuits pillaged every Culdee monk burial mound they could find.

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CFC
3/17/2013 10:11:25 am

Give him credit for what; Misinforming the public? Not doing proper research? Promoting himself as an expert on topics he has no knowledge of? Acting like a jerk to Scott Dawson (and who knows how many others along the way)? Being a foul-mouthed bully? Discrediting the field of geology?

Mr. Wolter together with the producers have blown it!!! He is clearly not a person who has the intellect, temperment or credibility to be host of a program that MAKES THE CLAIMS this one does. If H2 doesn't see that then they will sink even deeper into being a very disreputable organization.

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Delann C.
3/17/2013 11:31:45 am

Come on people. Yes, I could unsubscribe to this post, but I was hoping maturity and professionalism would prevail. Does anyone else here have a television show? It is very easy to put others down using absolutes and superlatives, but I believe that just makes "you" (whoever you are) look bad. I think we all deserve a certain amount of respect, including Mr. Wolter. And for those of us who don't have a TV show, I suggest we not make ourselves look petty and small by trying to put anyone else down. Anyone with as many years "experience" and whatever else it took to end up with the TV show is worthy of respect in my book. Just my feelings. Sorry, but this is getting ridiculous.

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Jason Colavito link
3/17/2013 11:41:25 am

Investigating Mr. Wolter's claims is not about putting him down; it is about searching out the facts behind his claims. Having a television show is no longer a major achievement, nor is it connected to experience or professionalism. Other TV shows in the genre are or have been headed by ghost hunting plumbers, ghost hunting college students, a body building promoter, an X-Files actor, a Star Trek actor (two of them across three shows), etc. Wolter ended up with this show because he impressed producer Maria Awes with his theorizing, and she worked tirelessly since 2008 to get him on TV.

The difference is that Wolter says outright that he is PROVING his claims with science (not just speculating), which means that his claims need to be evaluated against science and the historical record. You don't get a free pass just for being on TV. If that were the case, our textbooks would be filled with UFOs, Bigfoot, etc.

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Delann C.
3/17/2013 11:49:36 am

Mr. Colavito, you obviously like to debate/argue. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like this so with no further comment or post, I bid you adieu.

Delann C.
3/17/2013 11:52:28 am

By the way, Mr. Colavito, is this you? <<I am an author, editor, and skeptical xenoarchaeologist specializing in the interesection of horror fiction, science fiction, and (pseudo)science. I am the author of several books, including The Cult of Alien Gods (Prometheus, 2005) and A Hideous Bit of Morbidity (McFarland, 2009).>> And you believe you are qualified to stand in judgment of Mr. Wolter. LOL

Jason Colavito link
3/17/2013 12:17:26 pm

Is that me? Well, yes, this is my website. You might also note that I have a degree in archaeology and have covered it as a journalist for the past decade or so. My first book was a 300-page study of pseudo-history and those that advocate it, "The Cult of Alien Gods." But if Wolter doesn't need qualifications to rewrite history, I don't need specialized qualifications to judge his claims, only the facts.

Paul Cargile
4/21/2013 02:58:47 am

"Having a television show is no longer a major achievement, nor is it connected to experience or professionalism. "

Case in point: "Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo", which is an embarrasement to us middle Georgians.

CMark link
5/21/2013 02:05:29 pm

I must admit, I too am a bit dissuaded by the scrutiny of Mr. Wolter's investigative skills. I've studied them at length, and they have proven very successful for me.

I am equally baffled that, of all of the minds that have studied these artifacts over the years, no one has openly acknowledged what is unquestionably the most historically significant engraving in the Tucson Artifact collection. Jason made small mention of it (one line) in his review. I had assumed he did not elaborate on the topic because, like so many others before him, he was either unwilling, or too afraid to rewrite history. However, I soon learned how difficult rewriting history could be.

While watching this episode, I was perplexed by one image in the artifacts that just didn't seem to fit. The image reminded me of an article I had read in 1994, which involved another (now) related discovery in the Arizona desert. And with a little Wolter-inspired sleuthing of my own, I soon had mountains evidence supporting my theory.

I believe I can now prove that, while the Pre-Templars who made these artifacts were visiting Arizona, teaching the natives how to make spiral cave drawings, grow corn, and design bead jewelry, something spectacular happened, which was promptly documented on one of the artifacts. The Pre-Templars, as depicted on one lead cross, bared eye-witness to a full grown dinosaur traipsing through the Arizona desert!

http://www.t-rat.com/Pages/PimaFamousDino.html

The Sonorasaurus specimen in the article above is the only one of its species to have been discovered in Arizona, or the world for that matter. Additionally it is the only dinosaur to have roamed Arizona that bears the exact likeness to the image on the cross. And since this specimen is the only one ever discovered, it is reasonable to assume it was probably the only one to have ever lived. Based on these truths, I can confidently state with a high degree of certainty, this Sonosaurus specimen, and the image etched on the cross are one in the same. Imagine seeing one of these great giants alive in the desert, 100M years after it had 'allegedly' succumbed to extinction. Truly an event of biblical proportion, and certainly worthy of documenting on a lead cross.

Consider this... For years paleontologists have 'taught' us that this Sonorasaurus lived around 100M BC. But what we've been taught is WRONG!

Here are facts the experts don't want you and I to know. FACT, The Tucson Artifacts were discovered in an Arizona desert encased in caliche. FACT, the Sonorasaurus' remains were discovered in an Arizona desert encased sandstone. What do these two encasing materials have in common? Thats right, they are both rocks. And as Kate described in her earlier post, rocks can be formed over varied periods of time under a variety of circumstances, which leads us to one conclusion; it is almost certain that the Sonorasaurus and the Tucson Artifacts would have been encased in rock around the same time. Thus supporting the likelihood that Theodorus the Pre-Templer, etched the dinosaur image onto the lead cross as it meandered past him in the desert sun.

Armed with these undeniable revelations, I proposed to the Arizona Museum Authority a simple test involving a Sonosaurus bone, a 3d microscope, and some fluorosulfuric acid, the results of which would undoubtably prove that their specimen was in fact the same Sonorasaurus seen frolicking in the Arizona desert by the Pre-Templers 1200 years ago. Expectedly, the museum authority REFUSED to provide a bone, demanding I file paperwork! in order to receive one. But I am unwilling to play their game. Just one more, in a slew of examples where the elitist experts and the Federal Government are determined to hide the truth from the general public.

I never would have imagined how vicious and unrelenting the historical, archeological, paleontological, and geological governing societies could be when it comes to hard facts that fly in the face of mainstream 'knowledge,' had I not witnessed it myself. And I am grateful that people like Wolter Scott are bravely leading this battle against such overwhelming adversity.

terry the censor
5/21/2013 06:24:01 pm

@CMark

You forgot to put a smiley at the end of your Poe.

CFC
3/17/2013 12:17:06 pm

Jason is an archaeologist and trained journalist. He is consistently diplomatic and fair in his assessments and does a great job of providing references. Also, he corrects errors when they are brought to his attention. He's holding the America Unearthed program accountable for the expectations raised by the producers.
He is certainly well qualified to review the program.

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Howard
3/20/2013 03:25:42 am

Here is a couple of possibilities with these lead objects.
1) Could be of Mormon Temple, Joseph Smith, origin. Not many know this, but most of the founders of the Mormon Church were Mason's.
2) Could be Rosicrucian. Some of the symbology looks erily Rosicrucian.
3)Could have been left by the followers of Jacob Frank. He was a Polish Jew deeply steeped in Cabala-Kabalah. He and his followers were treated harshly by the Rabinical leadership of his day. Eventually they converted to Catholicism and were ex-comunicated or expelled from Judaism. This conversion may have been to garner Papal support to exact revenge on the rabbi's. Eventually the catholic church found Frank and his followers were heritical. They were then dispersed.

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Howard
3/20/2013 03:29:38 am

Gila monster? Lizard? Dinosour? Well, how about a dragon? 7th and 8th century Knights often associated themselves with Dragons and dragon slaying. Dragon symbols were used quite a bit on crests of that day.

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yaffa gelb
3/26/2013 01:52:22 am

I'm from Israel and when I saw this program I was puzzled the Hebrew in the artifact does not mean anything I try to translate it to Aramaic but again it is not make sense Mainly because it is not written in Aramaic or Hebrew it is a mixture and therefore does not make sense !!!

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Jon Rothlander
5/18/2013 06:57:42 pm

I am curious why the Hebrew writing was ignored. I also saw what I thought look like Chinese as well. But the show made it look like there was only Latin.

Then again, even the Latin was ignored. They never once mentioned what it says in Latin, well other than one or two words about it.

I am certainly no scholar, but I have studied some of the ancient scripts including various forms of Hebrew, Phoenician, and Chinese. So I at least know enough to recognize them when I see them.

There are obvious Hebrew characters with the vowel pointings as well. So this is not an ancient Hebrew, paleo Hebrew, Phoenician, or Aramaic, but looks to be Hebrew block script. You mentioned Aramaic, but I do not see any Aramaic in the images I can find on the Internet, but you may have found a few that I did not. There is one vowel that looks Aramaic, but I can certainly see many dagesh markings, so other than the one, the vowel pointings are not Aramaic, but Hebrew. But the letters are a bit odd. Then again, it is carved into lead, so maybe it is just poor handwriting.

I have only studied a little Hebrew, and specifically biblical Hebrew. So I don’t know enough about this to say what the words might be. I wish I could see some better images. But from what I found of images online, I can see one well enough to see a letter that is maybe a bet or gimel and it has the dagesh. Then a holem-vav and yod is obvious. So maybe "gol" or "bol". Then I see that same b/g with the dagesh, then the vav, the the holem-vav and lamed, so maybe "b/gavol". In Latin there are names of "Gaul", would would seem similar to the Hebrew.

Another one I can see looks like "rhm" or "rahim". But I also see what looks like Chinese as this one as well. But in Latin we find "Rhoda"


What I was hoping was to see is a word written backwards, or a final letter used incorrectly, or maybe a dagesh placed incorrectly. But I didn't see that. At least they got that part correct.

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Jon Rothlander
5/18/2013 07:09:17 pm

Forgot to mention tha the "RHM" could be Rome. So it's possible that two of the Hebrew words say "Gaul" and "Rome", both of which are mentioned in the Latin inscriptions, and one of which is on the same artifact as the Hebrew. Some of the Latin I can see on the back says "terra incognito anno domine DCCLXXV" which I believe would say "the unknown land AD 775."

matt
5/18/2013 06:19:26 am

Tell'em Jason! Fucking evil white people, let's deport them!

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Jon Rothlander
5/18/2013 07:14:06 pm

>>[Update: I checked my Victorian-era natural history books, which
>>I am loathe to do because they are very fragile, and I found at
>>least one depicting a prehistoric monster similar to the one on the
>>artifact with the same telltale forked tongue. See follow-up here.]

Don't forget to check the 6th century BC Istahar Gate. It has a similar long-necked reptile (Dragon of Babylon) with a forked tongue. Maybe it was a monitor lizard.

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MITCHELL DAY
5/27/2013 04:37:10 pm

Jason, this would be a good article if your racial paranoia didn't get the better of you. Just to set the record straight the people from the Iberian peninsula ARE White. Whether they're Jews or Gauls(actually from France) or Romans(actually from Italy where the Latins originate). Just a detail but an important one. I think you're letting some crackpot pop culture show rile you a little too much.

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Jason Colavito link
5/27/2013 11:28:04 pm

They are "white" by *today's* standards; by the standards of earlier generations, the Latin peoples were not quite at the same level as the Teutonic peoples in terms of their whiteness. I didn't say that Jews were not "white"; I said they weren't "Aryan," another Victorian term with a specific meaning.

I don't have racial paranoia; instead, I was trying to point to some underlying racial ideas that are hidden beneath the surface of the show. Pop culture tells us much about what interests the general public and what they fear.

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Kevbo
11/2/2013 07:37:39 pm

I think you're a little paranoid. Not saying there aren't White racists of this type, but the implication that this is in great distinction to other groups is getting old. (I mean in general, not just in your case.) That said, you may be on to something.

Jude
7/2/2013 01:24:00 am

It appears to me that the host of "America Unearthed", Scott Wolter, and the writer of this blog, Jason Colavito, each paint equally bizarro and contorted versions of the "historic record". If Wolter's version is spilled milk, then Colavito's is spoiled milk: And an empty or upset stomach is something I can do without...

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des
7/13/2013 08:34:36 pm

What I found "racist" of this "Desert Cross" program was the explanation to justify the account that the so-called escape of the Knight Templar of Southern France related to Islam. The Era of Charlemagne, which was crowned by Pope Leo III, December 25, that marked the dissension of Eastern and Western Churces, was stipulated in the program as the date of the Desert Cross was probably 1,900 years different of the possibility that The Knight Templar may have fighted the Moslem. A 1,900 years gap of lies is certainly the big hole that Wolter unashamely spread.

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Robert
8/22/2013 02:12:16 pm

I am a Master Freemason. I find the show entertaining - in the Indiana Jones sort of way. Yes, freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that has [ritual] secrets, but it is not a secret organisation. Yes, it has a long history, parts of which have become obscured over time. Yes, the First Nations peoples were not the first in NorthAmerica. Yes, there is more forgotten than known in History. Dig deep enough, and you never know what we'll find. Masonic spaceships buried in the desert that date back 50,000 years is unlikely, yet I am awaiting that episode anyway.

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Bob link
8/23/2013 08:18:34 am

I agree that this show would make for great material for an Indiana Jones series. I am not an archiologist, but it has always been of great interest to me. There is so much conjecture and many unexplained so called facts. Much of Mr. Wolter's theories are rather unbelievable. So it goes with the Da Vinci code cult absurdity.

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Jo
10/12/2013 03:30:04 pm

The Galls were in arizona tea land.! I no it. dont qweshton Scott Walter, hes smarter than you.!

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"C"ker
11/5/2013 03:28:54 am

I read this ENTIRE blog; I accidentally found it while randomly looking up a post on some designer who would have been 120 years old today if he were still alive. I didn't even start there, but my ADHD gift of being able to follow off after the next shiney object is sometimes overwhelmingly entertaining!
This one simple post, Jo, is absolutely hilarious and I believe sums up the entire blog!
No evidence needed, unless - - - O! look, there's an ad about "lead poisoning" BYE!

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Bryan link
10/12/2013 08:09:31 pm

Jason, after reading all of your comments and posts, it sounds like you have Scott envy. It's a television show, and is meant to entertain. You attack one person, fact or not who cares, personally I find some of it "funny", but it gives me entertainment. Stop hating on the dude, if it is so easy to get Television show (as in no accomplishment, or however you put it), go get one of your own and stop stalking his show to find mistakes and "lies", it's TV!

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Jason Colavito link
10/12/2013 11:35:10 pm

Yup, that's me, consumed with envy. That's why I've written more than 2,000 blog posts and five books over the past 10 years (some 2 million words), none of which have anything to do with Scott Wolter. Against that, I wrote a handful of reviews of TV show whose audience reminds me each week by a barrage of email that they believe this show is Absolute Truth and are *angry* that anyone would question their Hero.

If you believe that TV should not be taken so seriously, then you are in the minority, since studies show most viewers simply accept what they see on TV as true. You're welcome to believe otherwise, but you'll be going against facts... no, wait, that's Scott Wolter's job.

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joe
11/29/2013 04:37:53 pm

Even though the show is wrought with inaccuracies, so what? Finally, a show that does not cater to our pathetic and parasitic minorities who are destroying us. Finally, a show that does not try to embellish the wonderfulness of sub-humans.

Bravo!!

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joe
11/29/2013 04:41:37 pm

perhaps, to make everyone happy, Scott Wolter can spend an episode showing the incredible brain power the black man needed to develop the mud hut. He can then note they never invented the wheel, never cultivated a plant, never domesticated an animal, never developed a written language, etc.

I know this angers many, but 95% of every technology in use today was invented by the horrible white man.

Let's get back to our roots - roots that would require nearly a million years backwards to find a common ancestor between us and the bantu, or aboriginal. Let's do a jungle dance around the fire, pray to the juju man, mutilate our genitals, eat our young, and crap in our water supply.

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Mark Thogerson
11/8/2014 05:49:37 pm

Hmm. Wheels show up elsewhere in African culture, such as stones used for grinding grain, which, by the way, they did cultivate. In other places in Africa, cassava and sweet potatoes were cultivated, as I'm sure other crops were. Domestication of animals implies that there are animals in the area that can be domesticated. Try domesticating a zebra, cape buffalo, giraffe, impala, African elephant or cape hunting dog - it can't be done. Precursors of the Zulus were the first people in the world to smelt iron. Several advanced cultures developed in the area around Benin in the darkest days of Europe's middle ages, and DID have a system of writing. And look at the premier African culture - Egypt. They organized hundreds of thousands of people, built the largest buildings ever built (until the last 30 years or so), had a trading network wider than any group until the Mongols,used medical techniques not used until the last century in the West, had an advanced understanding of mathematics, and had one of the earliest systems of writing. You can't tell me that they are "subuman" in any way. And BTW, even Goebels would have called me an aryan had he seen me!

joe
11/29/2013 04:50:19 pm

Last but not least, Jason, you show your true motives by using the term Aryan. I guess you believe that term - associated with Nazi's, will make Scott Wolter look like a Nazi?

Scott Wolter is a journalist - and one a heck of a lot more truthful than ANY journalist at CNN, MSNBC, CBS or any of the other libtarded and, quite frankly, seditious networks.

I have no problem with using the lying, criminal tactics of those that seek to destroy America against the seditious liberals. Honest conservatives are essentially playing a sport where the opponent cheats and lies, yet penalties are never called, let alone enforced.

Bravo Scott - anything you can do to promote the FACTS that whites have made the world what it is today, is fine with me. Almost all technological advances, medical advances, as well as moral, ethical and cultural advances have been made by whites. Find me a non-whie country and I will show you a cesspool of violence, crime, and cultural malaise. Even Asian countries, populated by intelligent humans, had to copy the white man societies. Africa, with its population owning IQ's below 70, could not even exist without white charity. Remove that, and it is back to the jungle as populations with IQ's in the 50, s, 60's, and 70's cannot exist in what we would recognize as "human" societies.

Doubt me - check out South Africa post apartheid. Remove the white management and, voila, AIDS, murder, baby rapings, genital mutilation, and the juju man abound.

QED - sorry if you don't like the Latin, another white man invention.





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joe
11/29/2013 05:14:51 pm

Jason shows his true motives when he says, in one of his posts, that Scott Wolter does not give any credence to Sub-Saharan Africans visiting America.

That comment is a far bigger crock of crap than ANY comment Scott Wolter uttered EVER. Even today, the best a sub-Saharan African has ever come up with is a dugout canoe. And that, almost assuredly was never invented by the black but a white invention. The negro never invented a boat, let alone the sail. Most are terrified of water.

Too Funny!!!!!

Yes, Jason IS THE RACIST. To even say without hysterically laughing that negroes visited America is beyond the pale. Negroes were isolated for at least 50,000 years behind the barrier of the Saharan desert, and if left there for a few hundred thousand more years would surely have progressed not a shred farther. The stone age never happened in sub-Saharan Africa, let alone the discovery of metallurgy. But Jason give credence to negroes visiting America. Jason, your liberal agenda is so easy to see. Is Scott Wolter driving an agenda in order to make his TV show interesting - yes. Are you, some nameless loser with a blog trying to drive an agenda - YES YOU ARE!! Now, please - go sign up for the Obamacare you surely voted for.

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Jason Colavito link
11/29/2013 10:40:38 pm

I'm sure that Scott Wolter and America Unearthed are proud to have you as a viewer. You seem to be the demographic they're aiming for.

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joe
11/30/2013 02:33:32 am

Jason,

As a typical liberal, you simply sling arrows but of course cannot refute a single thing I said.

YOU are the racist, which is so patently obvious by your writings.

YOU cannot believe Scott Wolter gives no credence to negroes visiting America when they NEVER even progressed into the stone age. So, I guess SW's hypothesis is less likely than negroes traveling the high seas? If not, then why would you mention it other than to stir up race issues?

Jason, I realize you are a typical liberal who HATES the truth of the world, but I will repeat these truths for you just to make you mad. Liberals ALWAYS hate facts.

- 95% of all inventions and technologies used today were created by the white man - actually closer to 100% than 95%

- the white man has sent machines to the moon, mars, and even outside of our solar system

- the white man has unraveled the mysteries of the universe

- the white man has decoded the human genome

- the white man has eradicated diseases, extending the lifespan from a few decades to as much as a century for some lucky people

- the white man has created governments and societies that allow men, women and children to live life in peace and prosperity

I could write 100 more things, however, let's move onto the funny facts you hate.

Today (not 500 years ago but TODAY), baby rapes are common in Africa. Estimates are over 20,000 annually. Why? The barbarous "people" believe it will cure AIDS. I guess the juju man told them

There is nearly zero archeological finds EVER in sub-Saharan Africa. NOTHING was invented - not a metal tool, stone tool beyond what a Neanderthal could construct, no written language, no cultivation of plants nor domestication of animals. No pottery, no poetry, no writings, no inventions. Medicine still consists of witch doctors casting spells. Genital mutilation, lip rings, and disfiguring tattoos are the norm. There is no family structure. The men, to this day, sit around chewing hallucinogenic leaves while the women are left to work, and be raped when the mood strikes the drug addled male. The black man walks around, feet bare, crunching over diamonds yet he never could see them, apparently. Wild game abounds, but he never domesticated them. While watching the breeze move the tree branches, the thoughts of a sail never crossed his mind. In EVERY possible way, when the sub-Saharan negro was found by the white man, they lived nearly entirely like animals, walking around completely naked, living in mud huts the likes of which a beaver or bird could build. In fact, a beaver dam is FAR more engineeringly significant than a mud hut. And, btw, a sub-Saharan negro never built a structure that was more than one story.

Yet, these primitives - who lived at best the equivalent to the white man of 50,000 years ago, somehow invented sailing ships, traveled to America, then forgot how to build them and returned to the life of savagery?

Jason, YOU have an agenda. While SW's theories are clearly molded to fit his TV show, at least he has a legit reason to do so. It is like the Bigfoot shows or Ancient Alien shows. Only idiots believe this stuff, yet it is still entertaining.

YOU, on the other hand, have a pernicious agenda. YOU cannot handle the fact that the world is what it is nearly entirely because of the white man. You live a life of luxury, compared to dark skinned people, because of the white man, not because of negroes or any other dark skinned peoples. Without the white man, you'd be walking around naked, chewing hallucinogenic leaves, raping babies, and copulating with enormously fat disease addled black women carrying buckets on their heads because their civilization has such incredibly low IQs they could never even imagine the wheel.

For all that read this, just to stick another jab to this liberal doofus, please google "IQ by nation". Notice the bottom 20 countries are ALL sub-Saharan Africa. Notice the average of ALL sub-Saharan countries are an IQ that is retarded. Let me repeat, the average sub-Saharan black is mentally retarded by white and Asian standards. So, knowing this, is it hard to understand that they are primitives who never accomplished anything substantially greater than a chimp using a stick to snare a termite?

Rob
1/5/2014 01:22:40 pm

South Africa produced Nelson Mandela. The greatest politician of the 20th and 21st centuries. Post-apartheid South Africa is more prosperous than apartheid RSA. As a South African geologist I can assure you that Wolters is a charlatan and life today is better than it was under apartheid (a white Christian Calvinist plan). Thanks to 46 years of oppression and hundreds more of colonialism the country is now beset with a multitude of problems that have deep roots thanks to those preceding eras. My ancestors were all colonial.

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Matk Thogerson
11/8/2014 06:12:36 pm

Most "non-white" countries were doing just fine on their own before European countries claimed them as colonies. When the Europeans left, they didn't leave anyone in charge, leaving power vacuums that were filled by unscrupulous people. Look at Rhodesia, India and China for cases in point.

If you think that disease and violence are endemic and confined to the African continent, look at Western history after the collapse of the Roman empire - 500 years of what amounted to tribal wars, and a number of serious plagues and epidemics of bubonic plague, cholera, tuberculosis, smallpox and others. And if you want to talk about STDs, human syphilis originated about 3000 years ago in Greece and Macedonia, where humans and sheep (the source of syphilis) lived closely together.

Just because they didn't have big cities, major industries, etc. does not mean they didn't have advanced cultures. They lived in a different area, with access to different resources, native plants and animals, so their cultures developed differently from ours. It has nothing to do with their intellectual capabilites, which are comparable to any other human race. IQ tests are strongly culturally-biased, so it is no wonder that other races don't do quite as well. And the date for the last migration out of Africa is more like 20,000 years ago, not 200,000 yeas.

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joe
11/30/2013 02:40:25 am

Jason,

I will save you the time and respond for you.

Joe, you raycisssss. You hater. Scott Wolter loves Aryans. Scott hates dark skinned people.

Note, Joe, all the things you said I cannot refute. In fact, I know them to be 100% factual. But, alas, we must gloss over this or else my comments go limp. I shall just say raycissss a few times and that will cause all the guilty whites out there to shy away.

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joe
11/30/2013 03:01:54 am

Which of the highlighted countries does Jason think visited America???

Here is the source - http://www.statisticbrain.com/countries-with-the-highest-lowest-average-iq/

=============
An average person has an IQ of 100. The standard deviation for whites and Asians is about 8. So, 995 out of 1000 whites and Asians have an IQ of 73 or greater (actually for Asians it is 79 or greater).

So, the dumbest 5 whites out of 1000 are smarter than the average genius black country of The Sudan.

Imagine the intellectual conversations going on in Equatorial Guinea or Ethiopia?

1 Equatorial Guinea 59
2 Ethiopia 63
3 Sierra Leone 64
4 Democratic Republic of the Congo 65
5 Zimbabwe 66
5 Guinea 66
7 Nigeria 67
8 Ghana 71
9 Tanzania 72
9 Sudan 72

Now, just because I already know the hate coursing through the veins of Jason, watch and learn as he responds angrily to the facts.

REMEMBER, JASON WAS UPSET THAT SW DID NOT INCLUDE THE POSSIBILITY THAT IN HIS WORDS, "SUB-SAHARAN AFRICANS VISITED AMERICA."

From which country, Jason? Was it the genius Sudanese with their on average mental retardation? Or did the Ethiopians use their magic flying machines to get here?

Come on Jason, just look in the mirror, see the hate seething through your racist bones, and admit it. Whites made the world. They made the world because they are smarter and more adventurous than their competition of the day. I'm not religious but to anyone believing in God, then the only explanation is because GOD wanted it that way.

Now, due to our success, we have evolved so far we even give away our wealth to the savages still raping babies in Africa.

BTW, here is one of hundreds of articles on negroes raping babies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/18/africa-child-rape-crisis_n_3103558.html

Reply
Jason Colavito link
11/30/2013 03:08:04 am

You seem to be confusing me for an Afrocentrist, Joe. I don't believe that Africans, East Asians, or Europeans visited America prior to the Vikings. There is some evidence of Polynesians visiting South America. I pointed to sub-Saharan and other alleged voyages because other fringe theorists have advocated them, and Scott Wolter has not explained why he selected only one fringe idea from among many.

However, you really don't care what I think, and you are also unable to understand the purpose of pointing out the biases and prejudices in Scott Wolter's claims because you, as you have demonstrated, have a very specific race-based agenda of your own.

Reply
joe
11/30/2013 04:00:05 am

Jason,

Now we are getting somewhere. First, I have no agenda - that is by definition as I don't write a blog or have a TV show. I am not trying to influence anyone, unlike you and Scott Wolter.

I am just unafraid to point out the truth, and because I have no agenda you don't like my comments.

Does Scott Wolter twist the truth to make an interesting TV show - duh, of course he does.

Do the bigfoot hunting morons turn every forest noise into a squatch - of course they do. Otherwise, the story would be pretty boring as they find deer and squirrels.

Do you, Jason, dislike the fact that white Europeans created modern civilization? It appears so. In fact, I dare you to point out to me just one thing ever invented by sub-Saharan Africans in use today? Yet, you are angry that Scott Wolter gives ZERO credence to negroes traveling the high seas in sail boats they never even envisioned, let alone created! THOSE ARE YOUR WORDS, JASON. THEY ARE ON YOUR BLOG - YOU SAID THEM.

I, on the other hand, see the world for what it is. We evolved - each of us adapting to our environments. Some locations favored intellect - and some mixing of other species like Denisovans and Neanderthals have caused the races to be so very different. Some, might even say we are different species, but that is unimportant. Asians, Europeans and Negroes could not be more different in appearance, personality, and intellect. That explains achievement, and in fact it explains everything you need to know about the world.

Just google IQ by nation, or click on the link in my previous post. For the same reason cats have not traveled to the moon, and for the same reason chimpanzees are smart enough to use basic tools, we can see why Europeans have discovered DNA, sent machines to Mars, explored asteroids, and conquered many diseases. For these same reasons, we can see why black Africans cannot possibly ever accomplish anything like this, with IQ's ranging from the 50's to the low 70's. It also explains why the liberals among us are so happy with interracial breeding - it helps erase the intellectual issues.

Now, Jason, I realize I am your worst nightmare. 1. I am unafraid to speak the truth, and 2. I am informed, educated, and one of those dastardly white Europeans who dominate the planet Earth, and probably always will.

Steve
11/30/2013 12:17:39 pm

Jason & Friends, please read the following article carefully. Please note the date. Thank you!


> PUZZLING "RELICS" DUG UP IN ARIZONA STIR SCIENTISTS
> ================================================================
> Purport To Chronicle The Arrival Of Roman Jews There In 775 A.D.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> [New York Times, December 13, 1925]
>
> TUCSON, Ariz., Dec. 12 -- After investigation by a number of
> scientists, first announcement was made here today of the
> excavation near Tucson of cast lead swords, crosses and other
> objects bearing Latin and Hebrew inscriptions which, taken at
> their face value, are held to mean that Roman Jews crossed the
> Atlantic in the Dark Ages, penetrated to Arizona and founded a
> kingdom which lasted from about 700 A.D. to 900 A.D.
>
> The cast symbols and the engravings on them include crosses, a
> crescent, a seven-branched candlestick and certain Masonic-like
> representations.
>
> Opinions of scientists vary as to the authenticity of the
> objects. Neil Merton Judd, curator of American archaeology of the
> United States National Museum, said he believed that no hoax or
> fraud was involved, but he thought the date later than that of
> the Spanish conquest of 1540 A.D.
>
> Dr. Byron Cummings, Professor of Archaeology of the University of
> Arizona, vouched for the reliability of the discoverers of the
> objects, which, he said, "show Jewish and Christian influence and
> bear dates of 700 to 900 A.D."
>
> On the other hand, Dr. Bashford Dean, curator of arms and armor
> of the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, when
> consulted about the excavations, branded the objects as crude and
> childish forgeries.
>
> The first object to be found was a large metal cross, which was
> discovered by Charles E. Manier of Tucson, embedded in a
> limestone formation, five feet five inches below the surface of
> the land, near an old lime kiln. Further digging by Mr. Manier
> and Thomas W. Best uncovered the other objects. Analysis showed
> that they were made with lead mixed with antimony, silver and
> rome tin. This was described by Professor Cummings as a natural
> alloy.
>
> -+- Noted Scientists Examine Objects -+-
>
> The objects and site have been examined by Professor A.E.
> Douglass, noted astronomer and chronologist of the Lowell
> Observatory; Professor Frank H. Fowler of the College of Letters,
> Arts and Sciences of the University of Arizona; Dr. C.J. Saria, a
> geologist; Professor Cummings, Neil H. Judd and others.
> Descriptions of the objects and the texts of the inscriptions
> have been sent to scholars in many parts of the country.
>
> The combination of Christian cross, Moslem crescent, Hebraic
> seven-branched candlestick and Freemasonry emblems has imposed a
> heavy tax on the credulity of investigators, but their appearance
> of having been covered and embedded in stone by natural processes
> has puzzled skilled archaeologists. Some have arrived at the
> opinion that, whatever their origin, the objects lay for
> centuries in the earth where they were found.
>
> The inscriptions have been interpreted as describing the
> conflicts of the pre-historic Roman-Jewish kingdom in the
> Southwest with the Toltec Indians, forerunners of the Aztecs.
> >From the inscriptions it has been deduced that the mysterious
> invaders called their land "Calalus." Using the texts as a basis
> for the work, Laura Coleman Ostrander, historian of Tucson, has
> sketched the history of rulers of Calalus, her dynasty consisting
> of Theodorus, Jacobus, Isreal [sic] the First and Isreal [sic]
> the Second.
>
> Some scholars to whom the materials have been submitted have been
> slow to accept the finds as authentic because of the character of
> the objects and the frequency of archaeological frauds. The
> danger of indorsing another Cardiff [unclear] of a monument of
> the "Bil Stumpe His Mark(?)" type has generally caused
> investigators to be cautious, but it is alleged that those who
> have examined the site have come to the conclusion that the
> things were not planted as a hoax, but have been there for a
> considerable period of time. They were found in September, 1924,
> fifteen months ago -- a longer period than any motion picture
> press agent, as a rule, would allow for the incubation of a
> publicity dodge.
>
> -+- Finders' Story of the Case -+-
>
> A statement of the case in favor of the relics, as worked out by
> the finders and their co-workers, follows:
>
> "A chance discovery by Charles E. Manier and subsequent
> excavation by him and Thomas W. Bent, near Tucson, Ariz., has
> brought to light many relics t

Reply
shy
11/30/2013 05:53:41 pm

oh and look, one again wiki shines through. your quite an expert on using wiki, if nothing else it seems.

Reply
Steve
12/1/2013 03:11:59 am

Sorry, the article was so long that it wasn't completed in the comments. So here is part 2 and it looks like more to come. Thank you!


> -+- Finders' Story of the Case -+-
>
> A statement of the case in favor of the relics, as worked out by
> the finders and their co-workers, follows:
>
> "A chance discovery by Charles E. Manier and subsequent
> excavation by him and Thomas W. Bent, near Tucson, Ariz., has
> brought to light many relics that indicate an expedition of
> considerable proportion of Roman Jews in America during the
> period from 775 A.D. to 900 A.D."
>
> "The evidence unearthed appears to be the positive data for which
> scientists have been searching for many years. It is thought that
> these relics definitely establish the fact that European or other
> outside influence existed in America before the advent of
> Columbus and the Spanish conquerors. This influence was found in
> America among the Indians in their rites and ceremonials by the
> Spaniards, but until the present find no definite evidence had
> appeared to prove this theory."
>
> "The first article, a large metal cross, weighing sixty-five
> pounds, was discovered on Sept. 13, 1924, purely by accident. Mr.
> Manier and his family were returning from a trip to the historic
> Picture Rocks, just north of Tucson, Ariz., and had stopped to
> examine an old lime kiln along the road. While doing this, Mr.
> J.E. Manier noticed a peculiar object protruding from the bank to
> the north of the lime kiln. On examining the object he discovered
> it to be of metal, and firmly embedded in the bank, 5 feet 5
> inches from the top. Mr. Manier excavated the object and
> discovered that it was a large metal cross, consisting of two
> parts, that had been placed together and riveted with lead
> rivets. Between the two halves had been placed a wax
> preservative, and on the inner surface of both halves there was
> much Latin inscription. The cross was taken to the University of
> Arizona and the Latin translated by Professor Frank H. Fowler of
> the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences."
>
> -+- Objects Embedded in Strata -+-
>
> "Since the discovery of the first article in the present time
> there have been unearthed five complete crosses and one
> unfinished cross, all of which contain much Latin inscription,
> many pictures and numerous symbols of both a religious and
> historic nature. There has also been unearthed a cross with a
> crescent cross-arm, entwined with a serpent, upon which there is
> Hebrew script and many religious symbols. Another cross has a
> circle of metal, connecting the cross-arms, with a serpent
> entwined over all. This cross also contains the Hebrew script and
> several religious symbols."
>
> "The remainder of the discovery is made up of swords and spears,
> many of which are scarred as a result of having been used in
> battle. All the articles are of metal, and of a natural alloy of
> lead, silver, gold and antimony, with a trace of tin, and are all
> in a perfect state of preservation. None of the inscriptions has
> been obliterated and the war implements still retain a sharp
> straight edge, and are well balanced."
>
> "The articles have been found at about the same level, that is,
> between five and six feet below the surface, and in a well-
> cemented stratum of caliche, the caliche, or lime formation,
> being so hard that it is necessary to chop each piece out with a
> pick. There is no evidence of burial, either in recent or in
> historic times; in fact, the articles have been covered by a
> natural process of the washing down of the debris from above,
> until time has resulted in building up of from five to six feet
> of overhead."
>
> "The many scientists who have assisted in the research are
> unanimous in the opinion that the covering-over process has taken
> many hundreds of years; in fact, their conclusions tend to place
> the age of the relics at about the eighth century."
>
> "The placing of the articles in history is being done by Laura
> Coleman Ostrander, historian, of Tucson, Ariz. She has, through
> the Latin and Hebrew inscriptions and the many interesting
> symbols, woven a complete story covering the entire period of
> these peoples in America, or 'Calalus Land,' as they called it.
> It is a story that covers a period of 125 years, and is replete
> with hardships, wars and romance."
>
> -+- Fought the Toltec Indians -+-
>
> "The story commences in A.D. 775 with three people being carried
> forth over the sea to Roman Calalus, an unknown land. Here they
> found a people whom they called the Toltexus, the scientists
> agreeing that the people they found were the Toltec Indians. At
> this period Theod

Reply
Steve
12/1/2013 03:12:06 am

Sorry, the article was so long that it wasn't completed in the comments. So here is part 2 and it looks like more to come. Thank you!


> -+- Finders' Story of the Case -+-
>
> A statement of the case in favor of the relics, as worked out by
> the finders and their co-workers, follows:
>
> "A chance discovery by Charles E. Manier and subsequent
> excavation by him and Thomas W. Bent, near Tucson, Ariz., has
> brought to light many relics that indicate an expedition of
> considerable proportion of Roman Jews in America during the
> period from 775 A.D. to 900 A.D."
>
> "The evidence unearthed appears to be the positive data for which
> scientists have been searching for many years. It is thought that
> these relics definitely establish the fact that European or other
> outside influence existed in America before the advent of
> Columbus and the Spanish conquerors. This influence was found in
> America among the Indians in their rites and ceremonials by the
> Spaniards, but until the present find no definite evidence had
> appeared to prove this theory."
>
> "The first article, a large metal cross, weighing sixty-five
> pounds, was discovered on Sept. 13, 1924, purely by accident. Mr.
> Manier and his family were returning from a trip to the historic
> Picture Rocks, just north of Tucson, Ariz., and had stopped to
> examine an old lime kiln along the road. While doing this, Mr.
> J.E. Manier noticed a peculiar object protruding from the bank to
> the north of the lime kiln. On examining the object he discovered
> it to be of metal, and firmly embedded in the bank, 5 feet 5
> inches from the top. Mr. Manier excavated the object and
> discovered that it was a large metal cross, consisting of two
> parts, that had been placed together and riveted with lead
> rivets. Between the two halves had been placed a wax
> preservative, and on the inner surface of both halves there was
> much Latin inscription. The cross was taken to the University of
> Arizona and the Latin translated by Professor Frank H. Fowler of
> the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences."
>
> -+- Objects Embedded in Strata -+-
>
> "Since the discovery of the first article in the present time
> there have been unearthed five complete crosses and one
> unfinished cross, all of which contain much Latin inscription,
> many pictures and numerous symbols of both a religious and
> historic nature. There has also been unearthed a cross with a
> crescent cross-arm, entwined with a serpent, upon which there is
> Hebrew script and many religious symbols. Another cross has a
> circle of metal, connecting the cross-arms, with a serpent
> entwined over all. This cross also contains the Hebrew script and
> several religious symbols."
>
> "The remainder of the discovery is made up of swords and spears,
> many of which are scarred as a result of having been used in
> battle. All the articles are of metal, and of a natural alloy of
> lead, silver, gold and antimony, with a trace of tin, and are all
> in a perfect state of preservation. None of the inscriptions has
> been obliterated and the war implements still retain a sharp
> straight edge, and are well balanced."
>
> "The articles have been found at about the same level, that is,
> between five and six feet below the surface, and in a well-
> cemented stratum of caliche, the caliche, or lime formation,
> being so hard that it is necessary to chop each piece out with a
> pick. There is no evidence of burial, either in recent or in
> historic times; in fact, the articles have been covered by a
> natural process of the washing down of the debris from above,
> until time has resulted in building up of from five to six feet
> of overhead."
>
> "The many scientists who have assisted in the research are
> unanimous in the opinion that the covering-over process has taken
> many hundreds of years; in fact, their conclusions tend to place
> the age of the relics at about the eighth century."
>
> "The placing of the articles in history is being done by Laura
> Coleman Ostrander, historian, of Tucson, Ariz. She has, through
> the Latin and Hebrew inscriptions and the many interesting
> symbols, woven a complete story covering the entire period of
> these peoples in America, or 'Calalus Land,' as they called it.
> It is a story that covers a period of 125 years, and is replete
> with hardships, wars and romance."
>
> -+- Fought the Toltec Indians -+-
>
> "The story commences in A.D. 775 with three people being carried
> forth over the sea to Roman Calalus, an unknown land. Here they
> found a people whom they called the Toltexus, the scientists
> agreeing that the people they found were the Toltec Indians. At
> this period Theod

Reply
Steve
12/1/2013 03:12:24 am

Sorry, the article was so long that it wasn't completed in the comments. So here is part 2 and it looks like more to come. Thank you!


> -+- Finders' Story of the Case -+-
>
> A statement of the case in favor of the relics, as worked out by
> the finders and their co-workers, follows:
>
> "A chance discovery by Charles E. Manier and subsequent
> excavation by him and Thomas W. Bent, near Tucson, Ariz., has
> brought to light many relics that indicate an expedition of
> considerable proportion of Roman Jews in America during the
> period from 775 A.D. to 900 A.D."
>
> "The evidence unearthed appears to be the positive data for which
> scientists have been searching for many years. It is thought that
> these relics definitely establish the fact that European or other
> outside influence existed in America before the advent of
> Columbus and the Spanish conquerors. This influence was found in
> America among the Indians in their rites and ceremonials by the
> Spaniards, but until the present find no definite evidence had
> appeared to prove this theory."
>
> "The first article, a large metal cross, weighing sixty-five
> pounds, was discovered on Sept. 13, 1924, purely by accident. Mr.
> Manier and his family were returning from a trip to the historic
> Picture Rocks, just north of Tucson, Ariz., and had stopped to
> examine an old lime kiln along the road. While doing this, Mr.
> J.E. Manier noticed a peculiar object protruding from the bank to
> the north of the lime kiln. On examining the object he discovered
> it to be of metal, and firmly embedded in the bank, 5 feet 5
> inches from the top. Mr. Manier excavated the object and
> discovered that it was a large metal cross, consisting of two
> parts, that had been placed together and riveted with lead
> rivets. Between the two halves had been placed a wax
> preservative, and on the inner surface of both halves there was
> much Latin inscription. The cross was taken to the University of
> Arizona and the Latin translated by Professor Frank H. Fowler of
> the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences."
>
> -+- Objects Embedded in Strata -+-
>
> "Since the discovery of the first article in the present time
> there have been unearthed five complete crosses and one
> unfinished cross, all of which contain much Latin inscription,
> many pictures and numerous symbols of both a religious and
> historic nature. There has also been unearthed a cross with a
> crescent cross-arm, entwined with a serpent, upon which there is
> Hebrew script and many religious symbols. Another cross has a
> circle of metal, connecting the cross-arms, with a serpent
> entwined over all. This cross also contains the Hebrew script and
> several religious symbols."
>
> "The remainder of the discovery is made up of swords and spears,
> many of which are scarred as a result of having been used in
> battle. All the articles are of metal, and of a natural alloy of
> lead, silver, gold and antimony, with a trace of tin, and are all
> in a perfect state of preservation. None of the inscriptions has
> been obliterated and the war implements still retain a sharp
> straight edge, and are well balanced."
>
> "The articles have been found at about the same level, that is,
> between five and six feet below the surface, and in a well-
> cemented stratum of caliche, the caliche, or lime formation,
> being so hard that it is necessary to chop each piece out with a
> pick. There is no evidence of burial, either in recent or in
> historic times; in fact, the articles have been covered by a
> natural process of the washing down of the debris from above,
> until time has resulted in building up of from five to six feet
> of overhead."
>
> "The many scientists who have assisted in the research are
> unanimous in the opinion that the covering-over process has taken
> many hundreds of years; in fact, their conclusions tend to place
> the age of the relics at about the eighth century."
>
> "The placing of the articles in history is being done by Laura
> Coleman Ostrander, historian, of Tucson, Ariz. She has, through
> the Latin and Hebrew inscriptions and the many interesting
> symbols, woven a complete story covering the entire period of
> these peoples in America, or 'Calalus Land,' as they called it.
> It is a story that covers a period of 125 years, and is replete
> with hardships, wars and romance."
>
> -+- Fought the Toltec Indians -+-
>
> "The story commences in A.D. 775 with three people being carried
> forth over the sea to Roman Calalus, an unknown land. Here they
> found a people whom they called the Toltexus, the scientists
> agreeing that the people they found were the Toltec Indians. At
> this period Theod

Reply
Steve
12/1/2013 03:22:16 am

Part 3 Final part of article.

> -+- Chronicle is Specific -+-
>
> Another of the texts is translated as follows:
>
> Benjamin was king of the people. They came from Seine to Rome.
> The bravest of the Gauls. He came to the assistance of the
> people to lay the foundation of the city. He built a wall
> around the city to resist the enemy. Benjamin mighty in
> strength he filled the multitude with religion. He was slain
> by the Thebans. I heard this from my father five hundred years
> after, behind the mountain. In memory of his father.
>
> 860 A.D. Israel the 3rd was banished since he had liberated
> the Toltesus. He first broke the custom. The earth trembled.
> Fear overwhelmed the hearts of mortals in the third year after
> he fled.
>
> They betook themselves within the city and kept themselves
> within their walls. You shall not bury or burn a dead man in
> the city.
>
> Before the city extended a plain, hills encompassed the city.
> It is a hundred years since Jacobus was king. Jacobus was busy
> in the front line. He attended to everything, fought much in
> person and often struck down the enemy. Israel gave his
> attention to the appointment of priests. Life is to us a
> people of extensive sway.
>
> An unknown land A.D. 895. May I be able to accomplish my
> endeavors to serve the king. It is uncertain how long life
> will continue. There are many things which may be said. While
> the war was raging three thousand men were slain, the leaders
> with their chiefs were taken, nothing but peace was sought.
> God ordains all things.
> O.L.
>
> A brief inscription which bears no signature refers briefly to
> the transatlantic voyage of the Dark Age Arizonians as follows:
>
> We are carried over the sea to Roman Calalus, an unknown land.
> They came in the year 775. Theodorus ruled the people.

Reply
Andy
12/10/2013 01:48:05 am

I can't wait until Wolter authenticates an artifact with a "BC" date inscribed on it. That's going to be awesome.

Reply
Andy
12/10/2013 02:10:20 am

Wolter: "Since we have no evidence of fakery AT ALL . . ." Oh geez.

Reply
Andy
12/10/2013 02:20:42 am

I just finished this episode. It is a new "worst one yet." I felt bad for the grandson at the end.

Reply
Daryl L. Hunter link
1/4/2014 03:25:47 pm

I don't watch often but when he spoke of the nights templer in 800AD and knowing the came about during the Crusades, I had to go to google and that is how I ended up here.

Thanks.

Reply
Greg
1/4/2014 07:31:43 pm

Jason, I feel bad that you have to spend so much time doing such an excellent job debunking pure hucksterism. I feel worse that this guy Wolter is laughing all the way to bank.

Reply
Davis
2/15/2014 04:08:54 pm

Reading this blog, the writer needs to remember that the conversos were Spanish. They would have been light skinned not dark skinned like Native Americans. The Hispanic peoples get their skin pigmentation from a mix of Spaniards and local Indians. This created class warfare in early mexico between the light skinned Spaniards and the darker skinned peoples from mixed backgrounds. The comment about trying to bring the white race to the continent first is moot. It doesn't matter whether they were white christians or Spanish conversos, they would have both probably been light skinned. Remember Spain is a European country not a Latin American country.

Reply
carolyn
3/15/2014 12:28:14 pm

What's with the CE AD was good enough for over 2000 years what is up with people who think they need to change it to be more politically correct. America Unearthed at least used the right context wrong or right about the artifacts

Reply
Jason Colavito link
3/15/2014 12:42:07 pm

BCE and CE are the standard abbreviations used in scientific literature because the majority of the world's population are not Christian. It is an effort to be inclusive and to respect that religions have their own calendars, which differ from the Common Era used by Western Civilization. I use those abbreviations because I am following consensus practice.

Reply
Jon
3/16/2014 04:18:27 am

What is the difference? Isn't BCE and CE both based on an estimated date for the birth of Christ at the year 0. Wouldn't these supposed non-Christians that take offense at using BC/AD take offense at using any of them?

Besides, 32% of the world is Christian and it is the largest religion. After that you have Islam at 23%. Both claim Christ as a central figure and they just disagree about who and what he was. Then you add in Buddhist and Hindus and you are over 70% of the population of the world. I know Buddhist respect Christ and have teachings about him.

But besides all of that, the fact that world history did pivot on his birth. Regardless if you hold to the Christian faith or not, the historical evidence cannot be denied. For that point alone, it provides the best of any date available to pick from.

Jon
3/16/2014 04:18:32 am

What is the difference? Isn't BCE and CE both based on an estimated date for the birth of Christ at the year 0. Wouldn't these supposed non-Christians that take offense at using BC/AD take offense at using any of them?

Besides, 32% of the world is Christian and it is the largest religion. After that you have Islam at 23%. Both claim Christ as a central figure and they just disagree about who and what he was. Then you add in Buddhist and Hindus and you are over 70% of the population of the world. I know Buddhist respect Christ and have teachings about him.

But besides all of that, the fact that world history did pivot on his birth. Regardless if you hold to the Christian faith or not, the historical evidence cannot be denied. For that point alone, it provides the best of any date available to pick from.

Jon
3/16/2014 04:18:46 am

What is the difference? Isn't BCE and CE both based on an estimated date for the birth of Christ at the year 0. Wouldn't these supposed non-Christians that take offense at using BC/AD take offense at using any of them?

Besides, 32% of the world is Christian and it is the largest religion. After that you have Islam at 23%. Both claim Christ as a central figure and they just disagree about who and what he was. Then you add in Buddhist and Hindus and you are over 70% of the population of the world. I know Buddhist respect Christ and have teachings about him.

But besides all of that, the fact that world history did pivot on his birth. Regardless if you hold to the Christian faith or not, the historical evidence cannot be denied. For that point alone, it provides the best of any date available to pick from.

Jason Colavito link
3/16/2014 04:44:45 am

There is no year 0 in the BC/AD system. Most scholars no longer believe Christ was born in AD 1 (1 CE) but instead sometime around 7-4 BC/BCE. That's another reason that conventional dates are called the "Common Era." You might note, too, that Islam has its own calendar, which renders dates from Muhammad's flight to Medina, the Hijra.

Jon
3/16/2014 07:51:41 pm

@Jason Colavito

Yeah, I said year 0 more as figure of speech and a non-date starting point than a date. Note that I did not say year 0 AD, or 0 BC, or 0 CE, etc.

Most Scholars? No one believers Christ was born at year 1 CE. being that Herod died in 4 BC it would be a bit hard to place Christ after that. Most scholars date it to 6 to 4 BC range, with 4 BC being the most popular date. Then again, there are many so called "scholars" that say he never existed. It's not hard to find a scholar these days. Anyone with a college degree is consider a scholar. With over 300+ hours, I guess I'm a scholar! Although I would not claim it, as I am far from a scholar of anything.

Reply
Don Hendrix
3/19/2014 12:59:00 pm

There is considerable evidence, for those who wish to seek it, that the Tucson "artifacts" are modern fakes. There is very little evidence that supports their authenticity. The "artifacts" are currently on display at the Arizona Historical Society, and the museum appears to be attempting to cash in on the History Channel association by placing labels on the exhibit, which read, "Fact or Fiction?" Having first read about them in a book while I was in high school in the 60's, I had been hoping to examine them ever since, and, last Monday, I was able to do that. By far the most complete account of the history of the "artifacts" occupies the complete Spring 2009 issue of Journal of the Southwest. I recently purchased what was thought to be the last remaining back issue of the publication, but was told, upon arriving to pick it up, that another box of the issue had been found. It may be obtained from the publishers at the University of Arizona for $15. A Google search of Journal of the Southwest will provide the necessary contact information. You will not find a more complete history of the "artifacts" or more photographs than in this publication. The author is Don Burgess, and he appears to have done a very thorough job of research. I don't believe that anyone who reads it can possibly maintain the position that the "artifacts" are genuine.

Reply
Don Hendrix
3/19/2014 02:56:54 pm

I just watched the History Channel "documentary", and
I couldn't stop laughing. The History Channel should be embarrassed to show this. Jason was way too easy on Wolter. The explanation that the artifacts were genuine was ridiculous. I hope that Chuck Bent did not really buy this nonsense, as he appeared to do during the broadcast. That people actually believe this crap says a great deal about the current state of critical thinking in America.

Reply
Don Hendrix
3/19/2014 02:57:05 pm

I just watched the History Channel "documentary", and
I couldn't stop laughing. The History Channel should be embarrassed to show this. Jason was way too easy on Wolter. The explanation that the artifacts were genuine was ridiculous. I hope that Chuck Bent did not really buy this nonsense, as he appeared to do during the broadcast. That people actually believe this crap says a great deal about the current state of critical thinking in America.

Reply
Don Hendrix
3/19/2014 02:57:13 pm

I just watched the History Channel "documentary", and
I couldn't stop laughing. The History Channel should be embarrassed to show this. Jason was way too easy on Wolter. The explanation that the artifacts were genuine was ridiculous. I hope that Chuck Bent did not really buy this nonsense, as he appeared to do during the broadcast. That people actually believe this crap says a great deal about the current state of critical thinking in America.

Reply
Don Hendrix
3/19/2014 02:57:18 pm

I just watched the History Channel "documentary", and
I couldn't stop laughing. The History Channel should be embarrassed to show this. Jason was way too easy on Wolter. The explanation that the artifacts were genuine was ridiculous. I hope that Chuck Bent did not really buy this nonsense, as he appeared to do during the broadcast. That people actually believe this crap says a great deal about the current state of critical thinking in America.

Reply
Don Hendrix
3/19/2014 02:57:25 pm

I just watched the History Channel "documentary", and
I couldn't stop laughing. The History Channel should be embarrassed to show this. Jason was way too easy on Wolter. The explanation that the artifacts were genuine was ridiculous. I hope that Chuck Bent did not really buy this nonsense, as he appeared to do during the broadcast. That people actually believe this crap says a great deal about the current state of critical thinking in America.

Reply
DM
11/17/2014 10:29:10 pm

In which state(s) in America is there critical thinking? Getting hard to tell.

Reply
liz chartier
8/21/2014 04:19:58 pm

I wonder why it seems so hurtful to some people that it is a possibility that white people were in the Americas a very long time ago? It seems like a foolish political agenda instead of a fact finding truth. Some of the things said by the writer were inaccurate. A example is the worry about spelling and verbiage I find foolish because it is not known if these were minded and produced in what generation of descendants of the fleeing people. Anything is possible but to say it isn't seems truly foolish. Why?

Reply
Seb
9/22/2014 01:20:19 pm

It's crystal that this is just an opinion about a tv show.
What Jason Colavito is not saying to his readers is what means the word "America" or "New World", also he's so away from what he is talking about that he writes "Columbus" but he doesn't tell the name of the navigator.

Note 2 Jason: "Columbus" is a name created by modern and creative novelists.

Reply
Mark Thogerson
11/8/2014 05:12:31 pm

As to the production of crystalline malachite and azurite, it can happen *relatively* quickly - in weeks or months. It only requires that the substrate be (a) something that can oxidize copper (meaning in the chemistry sense that it can remove electrons - and lead is highly electronegative), (b) there is a source of carbonate or bicarbonate (the limestone and caliche), and (c) that a slightly acidic solution (like rainwater) completely immerse the substrate for a period of time. Raindrops pick up CO2 from the atmosphere on their way down making weak carbonic acid that slightly dissolve the limestone and provide an electrolyte for a redox reaction between the lead and copper. As the water slowly evaporates, concentrations of copper carbonate salts precipitate as azurite and malachite. Voila! crystals.

And then there is the caliche. The only difference between caliche from Arizona and Florida is the inclusion of trace minerals, which were never mentioned. Caliche can form quickly, filling up drain pipes and encrusting all sorts of things.

He goes to the supposed lead mine, but galena (PbS), anglesite (PbSO4) and cerussite (PbCO3) were never shown or mentioned. These are the main ores of lead, and cerussite in particular should have been present at the site. Tin, antimony and molybdenum are common trace minerals found with lead, and are usually incorporated as alloys when lead from a particular source is smelted. It would have behooved Wolter to check for proportions of trace minerals to confirm whether or not the lead came from that region. But then, in another episode involving copper from the UP being found in Phoenecian sites, he makes a big mistake - he confirms that the *purity* of the copper at both sites is the same (and implies that this supports the Michigan-Phoenecian connection), when the fingerprint is actually the proportion of trace elements to each other, not the purity.

Reply
DM
11/17/2014 10:26:56 pm

What a blight of a series!! My first and last question, though the answer is plain, remains: how do people like Wolter get to go on TV?
I can only conclude that the History Channel either can't or won't distinguish between adequately scientific work and fantastical skullduggery. Is it that desperate for viewers, or too cheap and impatient to get the real thing? As you point out, there are other truly fascinating bona fide historical subjects to be covered.

Reply
temet
12/29/2014 03:21:31 pm

"we can’t know how fast caliche was forming in the place where they were deposited without knowing about the water table, capillary action, rainfall, etc."

Regarding this point. You are completely correct in your doubts. One particular facet about Tucson and the surrounding area is the yearly monsoons that we go through (I live half an hour south of Tucson). Entire geographical features disappear from rapid erosion from such heavy and intense storms during the late summer storms.

And I can also verify that we have alot of issues with caliche as runoff collects in various places; eventually hardening into cement-like blocks.


'“The Desert Cross” explicitly state in Latin and Hebrew that they were created by a mixture of Romans, Gauls, and Jews who came to early America and suffered a war with the Toltecs'

As for the claim about meeting toltecs, that's also dubious. From my own personal knowledge of surrounding histories, if any such meeting did occur it would have been most likely with the Pasqua Yaquis. Although they are descended from Uto-Aztec origins. Their culture is vastly different than what you'd expect an Aztec culture to be. And they weren't too invested in warfare. They were primarily Agricultural and settled around the Rio Yaqui. Any notable conflict didn't occur until they were forced out of their lands in the late 1800's .

That's my take on it at least. It really pisses me off that this individual is using the native history of the land I grew up in to what amounts to glory-seeking.

Reply
Ron Bull
10/30/2015 04:20:13 pm

Wouldn't the show have been just as fascinating if it used real facts and evidence? Even though the objects were fake? I would love to watch that show.

Reply
David
12/15/2015 08:32:26 pm

Am watching this program as a rerun on netflix. The only people who might take what Wolter says as complete truth are probably watching the Kardashians anyway. Its entertainment. This guy is making good money producing something that way to many people are taking way to serious. I appreciate sceptics and fringe thinkers alike. I found this blog looking for more info on the lead artifacts because they are interesting... Fake or not. Keep up the good work, but dont take this stuff so seriously. Anyone who watches this type of program and takes it seriously without looking at other evidence and opinion is no threat to anyone anyway.

Reply
John Marks
10/11/2016 09:21:48 am

These shows have just been published on Netflix and I am seeing them for the first time, so hence my late postings.

I have a few problems with the work done on the show.

First is the EXXO/Knights Templar/Freemason connection. If I recall correctly the original name was ESSO this was to be changed to EXON but due to a sitting governor with the name Exon it was modified to EXXON. The original logo mimicked the ESSO signage without the linked X's. Also Raymond Lowery was Catholic (easily researched). Catholics even today are forbidden by the Pope to join Freemasonry. (See http://bustedhalo.com/questionbox/can-i-be-a-catholic-and-a-freemason) This quashes the "rumor" that Lowery was a Freemason.

Assuming the narrative to be true, brings me to the second problem, that all the artifacts were lead. Lead makes a poor choice for military weapons. Surely, the original "precursor" to the Templars in 800AD would have had iron/steel weapons. Also, the same group would have had silver and gold church emblems. So why hide/bury only the lead objects? Why were no traces of other materials found. At the very least one would expect pewter. The nearby location of the lead mine lends not credibility to the find but rather detracts from it. Anyone at any time can have produced lead artifacts.

Thirdly, is the caliche. Scott Wolters often repeats that it would take hundreds of years to produce the crystal growth of the various minerals. Given we are lead to believe the find dates from 800AD, The hundreds of years growth does not lend any credibility to the date, but rather gives rise to the possibility this could be fake and still have caliche. BTW: I have lab grown crystals in a kitchen lab in weeks not years.

Fourth, no research was given to age of the mining site. When was it first used? Even if the surrounding substrate was rife with ore; someone would have to recognize it as lead bearing ore. Given our supposed population of proto-Templars would have been priests and knights, possibly smiths; it is doubtful the ore would have been recognized for what it was. One casts with lead, one does not forge it, so having smiths does not immediately mean the ore was recognizable.

My fifth issue is the date. Any one with the correct knowledge could have written Latin inscriptions and added a date. The proof offered in the episode for the time of the relics was the inscribed date. This is in no way proof positive. Recall it was mentioned that the caliche could have formed in hundreds of years this does not necessarily indicate a date of 800AD.

The sixth issue is that the supposed reason for the colony was to escape the Templar persecution. Wolter alludes to this in a cut scene. Yet later calls them them the precursor to the Templars in order to put things in the correct timeline. The Templars formed in 1100AD not 800AD. Thus the cross of Loraine has little bearing on anything Templar related.

There are also unanswered questions that one must answer before jumping the certainty that this was genuine:

1. Is there anecdotal evidence from local tribes of legends of the knights?
2. Where are the remains of stone works and building sites?
3. Is there ancestral DNA evidence in the local native population that would have had ancestors back in 800AD?
4. If the proto-Templars traveled to the new world Arizona would seem a very unlikely spot for them to end up. Given the sailing craft of the time, from France or (any where else in Western Europe trade winds would put them on the East Coast or the Caribbean (like Columbus). So what would compel them to trek hundreds of miles into Arizona?

Reply
Ron Daromdom
11/28/2016 06:20:59 am

I enjoy the show for its fantasy. I can see through the poor science (and that is only with my poor high school science), the lack of research and investigation. I treat it the same way as as a Mad Max movie. It is just fun TV, nothing more. I don't get wrapped around the axle with the pretend science, as it is too obvious. Great fakes for the tourist dollar for those that need a reason to get out in the great outdoors.

Reply
Xavier Proctor
12/24/2016 04:30:24 am

Your ((())) is showing. I cant believe anyone would buy into your joocentric garbage any more than wolters' BS, I see youre also one of those kikes who openly boasts about the west become multiracial and multicultural(anticultural) while your beloved israel builds a wall and maintains some of the strictest immigration laws in the world, which israeli leaders openly say is to preserve their unique identity. Always they same story with you hooked nose scum, waaaaaaa were victims now give us weapons and money, i see why every european country kicked you out at one point or another. Burn in hell marxist filth.

Reply
justice prevails
6/26/2018 03:27:54 am

<b/>Why would Jews, Romans or Gauls have anything to do with christ the cross or what ever this article claims ... Jews and the cross ... get a grip Romans and Jews ... together in a colony ... are you on medication ?</b>

Reply
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DON HENDRIX
12/28/2019 05:50:59 pm

After driving on Silverbell Road several times, I can report that it appears that the original excavation site now lies beneath the road.
Improvements to the old two lane, dangerous road had no respect for this "important" archeological site.










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        • The Many Wives of Jesus
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      • Giants in the Earth >
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          • Fossils, Myth, and Pseudo-History
          • Man During the Stone Age
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          • Fossils and Myth
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        • Fragments on Giants
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        • Alfonso X's Hermetic History of Giants
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      • Extreme History >
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        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
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        • Phoenicians in America
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        • Prince Henry Sinclair
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        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
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        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
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        • Noah's Ark Cables
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        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
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      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
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        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
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    • The Supernatural >
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    • Classic Fiction >
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      • The Novel of the Black Seal
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      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
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      • H. P. Lovecraft >
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        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
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    • Miscellaneous Documents >
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      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
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      • Position of Viking Women
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      • James Dean's Scrapbook
      • James Dean's Love Letters
      • The Amazing James Dean Hoax!
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