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Review of America Unearthed S03E03 "The Appalachian Giant"

11/22/2014

62 Comments

 
In America Unearthed S03E03 “The Appalachian Giant” we offer a nod in the direction of Search for the Lost Giants and the current craze for hunting for giants across America. But the heart of the episode is about investigating rock art, particularly two petroglyph sites, Judaculla Rock in North Carolina and Red Bird Petroglyphs in Manchester, Kentucky. 

Background

The Red Bird Petroglyphs have a short modern history. Their origin is unknown, and until 1989, they were largely known only to locals around Manchester. (I did find a mention of them from 1964.) Experts have estimated their age at anywhere from 200 to 2,000 or more years. I will adapt here what I wrote about them when America Unearthed came to town to investigate the petroglyph site in April: The Red Bird Petroglyphs are on a chunk of sandstone that broke off of a formation in 1994, five years after being added to the National Register of Historic Places. The boulder was moved to a park near City Hall in Manchester. The resulting boulder is better known as the Manchester Marked Rock. The stone allegedly contains single-character carvings in eight Old World languages, including single letters in Punic, Libyan, South Semitic, Egyptian, etc., and a rebus in Ogham and a Christian monogram (with something that resembles and upside-down Hooked X®). In reality, the carvings bear little to no resemblance to the alphabets they supposedly represent and are geometric inscriptions. They could be Native or colonial or both; they have yet to be studies to determine their origin. Fringe theorists have simply scoured various Old World scripts looking for similarities, and didn’t do a very good job of it, either. Nevertheless, Manchester commemorates these fringe interpretations with its interpretive sign.

But while the Manchester government is happy to promote diffusionist ideas, our other petroglyph site has more critical guardians. America Unearthed raised some controversy earlier this year when they went to film Judaculla Rock, a petroglyph site, because Pisgah National Forest archaeologist Scott Ashcraft petitioned the Jackson County, North Carolina officials in charge of overseeing the site to deny the show access in March due to Scott Wolter’s fringe theories. At the time, Ashcraft accused the show of “purposely under-informing, misleading and misdirecting me along the way” to get him to support Wolter’s unorthodox claims. Wolter, you will recall, accused the National Forest Service of conspiring against him in the 2012 pilot episode of America Unearthed.

At the time, America Unearthed producer Maria Awes convinced county officials to allow the show to film at the rock by promising that Wolter would conclude that Judaculla Rock was a Native American and not a European artifact. Jackson County Manager Chuck Wooten issued the permit over the objections of Ashcraft and Keith Parker, a descendant of the rock’s former owners, and filming went ahead as scheduled.

Judaculla Rock is a large stone covered in petroglyphs whose meaning is unknown. The exact age of the rock is uncertain, and no one knows who carved it or for what purpose. It takes its name from the Cherokee Tsul ’Kalu, a supernatural giant who lived high up on Tsunegun’yi, the mountain known today as the Devil’s Courthouse because Europeans diabolized Tsul ’Kalu’s original mythological role as a supernatural judge who rendered his verdict from the judgment seat atop the mountain. According to ethnographic reporters, the “pioneers [said] it was regarded by the Indians as the special abode of the Indian Satan!” Tsul ’Kalu had a farm on the next mountain over, Tanasee Old Fields, and according to legend he owned all the game in the mountains. To the discredit of the pioneers, they made use of the sanctity of the Devil’s Courthouse and convinced the Cherokee that they had the divine favor of Tsul ’Kalu by making frequent trips to the Old Fields, where no Cherokee would tread, and thus were able to abuse the Cherokees’ trust by threatening them with divine sanction.

What is known of Tsul ’Kalu comes from a handful of accounts written by non-Cherokee hands. The oldest of these dates only to 1823, and the best known is the Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney, collected for the Smithsonian’s Bureau of Ethnology in 1897-1898 and published in 1900. It is from this text that the above reference to the “Indian Satan” comes. Mooney obtained the tale from two Cherokee named Swimmer and John Ax, and notes that it had also been related to another researcher by a “half-breed” named Charles Hicks. In the story, Tsul ’Kalu is called “a great giant, with long slanting eyes,” which has had the unfortunate effect of spawning diffusionist ideas that he was somehow an East Asian explorer deified by the Cherokee. A fair reading of legend shows that it is pure myth—the giant, for example lives on a mountain filled with ancestral spirits. In the story, Tsul ’Kalu tells the Cherokee that he can only be seen by hungry people wearing new clothes: “Go back, then, and tell your people that to see me they must go into the townhouse and fast seven days, and in all that time they must not come out from the townhouse or raise the war whoop, and on the seventh day I shall come with new dresses for you to put on so that you can all see me.” The Cherokee also prayed to him as a god of hunting.

Other versions of Tsul ’Kalu’s myth bear a Christian influence and were recorded by missionaries. One, told to a missionary named Buttrick, is essentially the Exodus story, in which the Cherokee are said to have wandered from another continent until God, here replacing Tsul ’Kalu, spoke to them like thunder from atop a mountain and, like Moses in the Golden Calf narrative, grew angry at their impiety.

As for Judaculla Rock, it was the place where Tsul ’Kalu hit when he jumped down to the earth:
…about ten miles above Webster, in Jackson county, is a rock known as Jutaculla rock, covered with various rude carvings, which, according to the same tradition, are scratches made by the giant in jumping from his farm on the mountain to the creek below.
Archaeologists think the rock was carved in the Late Woodland or Mississippian periods, perhaps as a map or astronomical chart.

Impressions on other nearby rocks are said to be the footprints of the giant, and in the nineteenth century these were sometimes wrongly ascribed as well to the petroglyphs at Track Rock Gap, where America Unearthed did its first ever investigation, looking for Mayans in Georgia. (Richard Thornton, featured on that episode, is still angry about my coverage of that episode and attacked me by name over my two year old review of it as recently as today, November 22.)

Tsul ’Kalu may have been one particular giant, but in the plural, his name was shared by a mythic race of giants who lived in the far west. According to Mooney:
James Wafford, of the western Cherokee, who was born in Georgia in 1806, says that his grandmother, who must have been born about the middle of the last century, told him that she had beard from the old people that long before her time a party of giants had come once to visit the Cherokee. They were nearly twice as tall as common men, and had their eyes set slanting in their heads, so that the Cherokee called them Tsunil’kälû’, “The Slant-eyed people,” because they looked like the giant hunter Tsul’kälû’ (see the story). They said that these giants lived very far away in the direction in which the sun goes down. The Cherokee received them as friends, and they stayed some time, and then returned to their home in the west. The story may be a distorted historical tradition.
Mooney believed, probably correctly, that this was an exaggerated memory of a time when the historically taller Native groups from the Plains may have pushed into Cherokee territory. Mooney noted the custom of Plains groups to pluck their eyebrows and wear their hair in weighted braids, which exaggerated the shape of the eyes into slants. 

The Episode

Segment 1
We open in a quiet forest as Native Americans run in terror from a giant whose seven-fingered hand claws into a rock as he pursues some men across a meadow. He roars, and we cut to the opening credits. Then we’re off to Sylva, North Carolina, in Jackson County, where Deliverance was shot in 1972. At a coffee shop, Scott Wolter badly acts as though he just wandered into the shop by chance and happened to come across a (white) storyteller named Tim Hall who shares Cherokee lore about Judaculla (Tsul’ Kalu) that he says he learned from research. Wolter plans to investigate whether Judaculla Rock and Red Bird Petroglyphs are evidence of an Old World visit to the ancient Americas, and whether the rocks (separated by hundreds of miles) are somehow connected.

Therefore, he begins at Judaculla Rock, speaking with Lisa Dawn Frady, described as the “tipster” who advised Wolter about the rock. She decided “Scott’s gotta see this” after viewing the large chunk of inscribed soapstone stone last year. Wolter does a little educational demonstration of meteoric iron with Frady, but this isn’t relevant to the soapstone Judaculla. Wolter is trying to make the point that space rocks are sacred to ancient people, but Judaculla isn’t a space rock.

Frady tells Wolter that some of Judaculla’s inscriptions could be Celtic Ogham, and Wolter recites the legend of St. Brendan, which does not contain the references to America Wolter thinks his story does—as I demonstrated in the past. Frady tells Wolter that the rock might be a Cherokee map, or writing left by space aliens, on which point we go to our first commercial break.

Segment 2
After an on-screen text recap, Wolter recaps again verbally. He dismisses the idea of a giant and also space aliens. Wolter declares the carvings “old” based on “gut feeling” (the rock is at least 300-500 years old by any account), and he does a geological demonstration to show the effects of weathering. Wolter then agrees with the suggestion that the rock was intended as a star map, and Frady offers more paranormal suggestions about the rock’s magical and supernatural power.

Wolter then returns to Sylva to hear more from storyteller Tim Hall, who is not a Cherokee, or originally from North Carolina, about Cherokee mythology. Hall repeats the information that the Smithsonian’s Mooney collected back in 1897-1898, in places quite close to Mooney’s wording, indicating his dependence on Mooney as a source, either directly or indirectly. Wolter compares the story of Tsul ’Kalu to the folktale of Paul Bunyan, and then he asks whether the Cherokee had legends of contact with other cultures, particularly from “other continents.”  Hall doesn’t offer any (despite the story of the Western giants being a rather obvious place to turn) and instead directs Wolter to Kentucky to look at the Red Bird Petroglyphs.

Segment 3
After the break, Wolter says he believes that the Cherokee carved Judaculla Rock (as we know from his producer he must), but will view the Red Bird Petroglyphs to gather more information. So we are now in Manchester, Kentucky. He meets with Kentucky historian Dave Shuffett, former host of Kentucky Life on KET-TV and Outdoors with Dave Shuffett on the Outdoors Channel, who tells Wolter that the rock may have eight different Old World languages carved on the rock, and he is dismissive of the idea that the Cherokee carved the rock. Wolter dutifully notes that there are no actual words carved on the rock, only single characters that Shuffett wants to interpret as letters. Wolter calls most of the symbols “classic Native American,” but feels that there may be “good evidence” of pre-Columbian contact on the rock. As we go to break, Wolter says he’s going to look at the carvings to explain the “relative age” of each. No doubt he will declare them “old.” For a show about pre-Columbian contact and giants, I am ready to declare this episode boring as we cross the halfway point.

Segment 4
After the break, we have a text recap followed by a verbal recap of the episode so far. I called it: Wolter declares the carvings old! But then Wolter decides that straight lines on the rock could be Ogham, though he makes no effort to prove it. He then lists some other so-called Ogham inscriptions in the Appalachians, but provides too little detail to support the assertion that they are Ogham. I presume that they are derived from Barry Fell, and the pictures shown do not look anything like actual Irish examples of Ogham. Wolter notes that the Judaculla Rock had circles he saw as stars, and here he points to a pentagram on the rock as an analog.

Wolter bitches angrily that “academics” are “probably” calling the rock a hoax and promises he will find the truth. From everything I’ve read, “academics” mostly tend to debate whether the rock was solely the work of Native Americans or whether local colonials added to it. With this mini-outburst, a pale imitation of those from seasons past, we go to yet another break.  

Segment 5
After the break, Wolter travels to Red Bird Cliff, from which the petroglyph rock fell in 1994. En route, he recaps the episode yet again. At the site, Wolter meets the descendant of the Cherokee Chief Red Bird for whom the rock is named. Betsy Roy is Red Bird’s thrice-great granddaughter. She believes that Red Bird, who was born in 1748, carved the rock sometime before his 1810 death. Wolter wonders whether the “Old World” symbols on the rock were carved by giants, and he relates this to his abortive investigation of Norse giants in season one, and as we go to break, Wolter is off to see a “giant” head, having given up on dating the Red Bird Petroglyphs.
Picture
The stone head from the Natural Winter Solstice Alignment Cave in Clay Co. Kentucky USA Facebook page.
Segment 6
As we enter our final segment, Wolter is meeting with a man who claims to have the head of an “actual giant,” picture above (source). This man is Jim Burchell, who moved the Red Bird petroglyph stone to its current site in 1994. He shows Wolter a 22-pound stone head in what looks like a crude Victorian style. (Actually, it looks like H. P. Lovecraft to me!) Burchell thinks that it is the petrified remains of a “young giant” that had been decapitated. But this is very clearly a statue, possibly a piece of Victorian decorative embellishment from a building, or maybe a chunk of an old statue. Wolter correctly recognizes it as a sandstone carving, but he decides that it might be “representative” of a giant. Many of the old mansions and churches around where I live have similar faces as decorative embellishments. Wolter, however, believes it was a symbolic Cherokee offering purposely entombed to pay reverence to the giants.

He ends by declining to declare any rocks Celtic. Instead, he declare Judaculla and Red Bird rocks to be Cherokee, but holds open the possibility that the Cherokee were versed in Ogham.
62 Comments
CHV
11/22/2014 02:10:07 pm

This episode was unusual in that it was light on Wolter's usual fringe theories. I think the closest it came was Frady suggesting the Judaculla rock carvings could be alien in origin - to which Scott genuinely seemed to give her a WTF look. Otherwise, the show was fairly vanilla in terms of content.

Reply
danny cottongim link
12/12/2014 03:53:04 am

danny son indains will va 1640 old 1130 ad be ky call9373862546

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Only Me
11/22/2014 03:03:28 pm

This was easily his most subdued investigation yet. I think he had no choice but to agree both stones were carved by the Cherokee because even he recognized that any proposed Old World connections were virtually nonexistent.

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EP
11/22/2014 03:07:54 pm

Holy shit, the stone head is H. P. Lovecraft!

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tm
11/22/2014 03:08:00 pm

So Ms. Roy's great, great, great grandfather was born almost 300 years ago?

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whazoo
11/23/2014 12:04:46 am

Ms Roy….. please list a web address or Facebook I am interested in hearing more of your story.

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Becca
5/4/2015 03:45:59 pm

Betsy is my mother and she has a Facebook page

EP
11/22/2014 03:11:51 pm

Also, Richard Thornton seriously scares me. Like, whenever I read him I get the feeling that he's one negative comment away from suicide by cop.

The man sounds like he has serious paranoia and anger issues.

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Only Me
11/22/2014 03:44:37 pm

I especially love his picture. DAT CANOE.

Reply
Kal
11/22/2014 03:44:05 pm

The Red Bird web site seems to have interpreted the symbols on the rock as oddly Christian symbols and other divination symbols, including Egyptian. It seems the carvings thus are colonial, not ancient. The settlers must have carved on the rock after the Cherokee. It has nothing to do with them then.

HP Lovecraft's head in stone. Excellent.

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Jerky
11/22/2014 04:03:23 pm

What's with most the episodes this season being about lost treasures (with the exception of the Crockett episode and this episode).

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John Moore
11/23/2014 02:24:41 am

Probably because American folklore has so many lost treasure stories.

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Jason Colavito link
11/23/2014 04:18:02 am

From what I've heard, the cable networks see treasure hunting as the next big trend, capitalizing on "Curse of Oak Island." "America Unearthed" is riding the wave.

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Jerky
11/23/2014 05:52:38 am

So, look forward to more searches for lost treasure I take it? I think I prefer the pre Columbian contact claims over these lost treasure searches.

EP
11/23/2014 06:06:58 am

I'm looking forward to more stupid people getting arrested for trespassing and vandalism, then blaming television and suing A&E for making them do it. Then, we are going to see these shows opening with disclaimers :D

Jerky
11/23/2014 11:42:54 am

They should already open with disclaimers. Did no one learn from the McDonalds coffee cup lawsuit? People will always be looking for a lawsuit.

betsy
11/22/2014 05:00:46 pm

There were 2 RedBirds,Sr and Jr. Jr is my 3rd greatgrandfather. He was born around 1748. And he died around 1810. Sr was born around 1721 and died 1797.

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tm
11/22/2014 05:31:26 pm

Thank you. Knowing that makes more sense.

Reply
whazoo
11/23/2014 12:10:55 am

i live in florida and i am interested in early american cuture and how they were treated after the europeon invasion.

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Cathleen Anderson
11/24/2014 05:23:32 am

Thank you for the information. I did not know this.

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zachary warren imler
12/5/2014 04:31:40 am

redbird was my 7th great grandfather was murdered in 1797 i have letters written to governor john Seaver and a few others is there any way i can contact you perhaps trade some information redbird has become some what of a hobby

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Sue Darnell
12/8/2015 12:57:30 am

Hi Betsy. I am related to Sr Redbird (Aaron Brock) through my Great Grandmother, Polly Ann Brock. Polly's daughter, Docia, was my Grandmother and Docia's daughter, Dixie, was my mother.

I would love to talk with you sometime.

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Richard B
11/22/2014 10:12:51 pm

St. Brendan was a priest and wouldn't use Ogham - plus the Celts & Irish rarely interacted. Scott could have easily used an Ogham dictionary which are widely available and was teached in Irish speaking schools until the 90s.

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The Other J.
11/26/2014 04:33:41 pm

Not quite. Ogham was used from the 4th through the 9th centuries, and St. Brendan lived in the 5th century, right in the sweet spot. Plus it wasn't uncommon for Irish monks to use Ogham -- St. Columbanus and St. Gall both left Ireland to establish monasteries on the continent, and wrote scripture in Ogham as well as other languages.

Take just one instance, the Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland: That was established by Irish monks in the 7th century, and in their scriptorium they wrote in Latin, Old Irish using Latinized letters, and wrote marginalia in Ogham. (Some of those texts were important to scholars for understanding early Irish lexicon, syntax, and etymology.)

So St. Brendan would very well have known Ogham. But no matter where he would have gone, it's unlikely he would have used it outside of an Irish context, like an abbey filled with other Irish monks. He would have known -- as a Christian -- that Latin was the lingua franca, and whether he got to the New World or just the Faroe Islands, if he was out to spread the gospel, he'd probably do it in the official language of the church he represented.

That somehow doesn't stop loads of Americans (including Wolter) who see scratched lines on a stone from thinking that any scratched line must be Ogham and proof of pre-Columbian Irish contact in the New World. For one thing, you don't see singular characters in Ogham -- it's not like runes, and it wouldn't be intelligible that way.

Fun Fact: The Irish monks use of Ogham helped usher in the use of inter-word spacing in all European languages, which we're all still using right now to makesureoursentencesdon'tenduplookinglikethis. That's got to be a more important legacy of Ogham than any tenuous chicken scratch on a stone in America, which, if it were true, still left no lasting impact on the continent.

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Titus pullo
11/23/2014 01:09:27 am

After a week of cold and snow up here in westerns New York, I enjoyed the scenic views in North Carolina. Yes it was a episode about nothing but what the heck, watching scot Walters facial mannerisms are entertaining. Please go back to the copper miners in Michigan. Love to see an episode where scott tries to recreate transporting a ton of copper through the Great Lakes to say the saint lawarence with technology from 1,500 bc. Keep paddling scot...

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RLewis
11/23/2014 01:22:09 am

So, other than 7 scratches on a rock, what exactly did this have to do with giants?
Also, I'm not a geologist, but I believe the small rock SW showed Frady was magnetic because it contained iron, not just because it was a meteorite.

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The Other J.
11/26/2014 04:42:06 pm

I think the most telling part of the episode was when Wolter compared Tsul' Kalu to Paul Bunyan -- tall tales used to explain natural phenomenon. It goes from the thing you want to explain in a fun way to the explanation, not the other way around. To go with the latter rather than the former assumes that a giant must have marked the stone.

I wonder if those same people also believe Bunyan made the lakes in Minnesota (which Wolter overshot by about 3,000 -- Minnesota has just over 11,000 lakes; meanwhile, their neighbors in Wisconsin have over 15,000 lakes TAKE THAT VIKINGS FANS).

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G
11/23/2014 03:16:53 am

After reading Thornton's article that was linked above, it's not clear where you were "attacked" in it? Mentioned? Yes. Attacked? No.

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Jason Colavito link
11/23/2014 04:17:06 am

You're right about the specific reference in that article, but it looks different if you read it in combination with his comments to me on this blog over the past two years, as well as his ongoing campaign to paint opposition to Scott Wolter (and thus Richard Thornton) as a government-funded conspiracy.

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jose simental
11/23/2014 03:23:17 am



Tsul ’Kalu? Tsoukalos? They sound very similar

Coincidence? I don't Think so.

:-)

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Alaric
11/23/2014 05:34:21 am

To me, the head looks like Spider-Man's Aunt May.

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The Other J.
11/26/2014 04:46:31 pm

YES.

Thank you, that was bugging me.

For reference: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ae/Auntmay.jpg

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Clete
11/23/2014 05:36:30 am

I was almost driven to distraction by watching that big CGI giant six or seven times during the episode. More so, since it had little to do with the actual "investigation".

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Matt Mc
11/23/2014 06:38:32 am

That giant annoyed me. As an editor one of the things that really annoys me is continuity errors and that CGI insertion of the giant was a big one. The people show running across the field of tall grass were waist high in the grass and the giant was at least 3 times their height, if that is the case they why is the giant running through grass that is up to its knees. Only thing I can think of is that the giant lacked calves, which it did not when it was jumping. I realize it is really a minor flaw for most people but it annoyed the hell out of me.

I know everyone tends to praise the post production of the show but I find i very basic and this episode between scaling issues of the giant and the normal 16 x9 framing being cropped to academy ratio it really lacked for me. Framing and scaling are production101 things they should at least be getting that right. To me the show looks like someone in the post dept. just discovery After Effects and is trying to use it as much as possible. I always operate on a keep is simple technique and AU is exactly the opposite and each season gets worse. I wish they spent the time on good content instead of trying to make it flashy.

As for the show itself it really seems to me that the producers have really dial Wolter back from his pet theories and instead work on stuff that is less fringe and more folklore. To bad they have not worked on the pacing at all.

Reply
Screaming Eagle
11/23/2014 10:27:27 am

Matt, Maybe you and Jason could strike a deal with ScyFy or TruTv and do a show with awesome editing and truthful critiques of fringe theorists' BS. I would watch. Maybe you could explore whether there should be one or two spaces after a period and settle an ongoing argument in my house. Just kidding, I really enjoy your responses as someone with expertise in the video field, and Jason as well, for, you know...

Che
11/23/2014 02:38:29 pm

Knowing nothing of the industry, how much does CGI cost for really good vs just average. I am trying to get an understanding because I am certain they have budgets as you can confirm. If they do, would they not have to pick and choose what gets really good stuff and what gets just average?

Matt Mc
11/23/2014 02:49:02 pm

For the stuff in AU like the giant or the slow motion bullet hits in the Crockett episode no more than an extra day at the most but I am betting based on the quality just a few extra hours. Every effect they do can be easily replicated and there are many After Effect tutorials on how to them for free on the internet. In fact I am willing to be the editor of the show goes to videocopilot.com and has just modified the effect demonstrated there. That said it is not an uncommon practice. What is more costly is the post color correction effects they do to give the show a more shot on film look which can take a lot more time in rendering process.

So per episode I would guess the extra cost is maybe a grand or two but I am betting the show is contracted out as a season to the post house so there would be no additional cost to the episode.

Che
11/23/2014 03:03:23 pm

Thanks, good to know stuff.

Matt Mc
11/23/2014 03:10:41 pm

sorry it was http://www.videocopilot.net/ not .com.

Liam
11/23/2014 06:27:49 am

Did anyone else burst out laughing when Jim Burchell showed Scott his not so very "giant" head and declared it must be from a young giant? I agree with Alaric-It does look like the great Steve Ditko's drawings of Aunt Mae.

Reply
Ac
11/23/2014 08:41:19 am

I actually felt sorry for that guy. How he could think that was an actual fossilized head i'll never know...

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John Dunham
11/24/2014 06:11:52 am

For the life of me I can't even figure out why they put that there - maybe to give SW some credibility since at least he did not think that a modern cement bust was not a rock. Wow you don't need an honorary cup of coffee (er MS) for that.

PaulN. link
11/23/2014 09:43:41 am

In the second sentence of segment 3, you call it Manchester North Carolina instead of Manchester Kentucky. Had me confused for a moment.

Reply
Che
11/23/2014 12:13:44 pm

Well, regardless of the subject, the more you watch it, the more his ratings go up and the more money he make. History is as we know it until someone proves it to be otherwise. SW is an idiot but hey let's keep watching him and pretend to be shocked when his show comes back for another season. Oh, if he is cancelled, his shows will live on forever in DVD format

Reply
Jerky
11/23/2014 12:27:55 pm

I don't watch it. Sooooo I don't see how people like my self contribute to his ratings.

Reply
Matt
11/23/2014 02:52:36 pm

I found this show, as I do most of AU shows very dismissive of Native American culture. Wolter seems to think Native Americans were not capable of creating anything and were simply passive observers to a parade of "Old World" pre-Columbian explorers who created all significant archeological finds. Seriously?!

As far as the Red Bird petroglyhs, does Wolter understand that countles petroglyphs were defaced by pioneers and others who discovered and visited them? It's obvious the star and many other symbols were carved on top of the original
petroglyphs fairly recently! The original location of the Red Bird petroglyph near a travelled road makes this almost certain, as does the fact that the star and other "symbols" are freshly etched!




Reply
titus pullo
11/24/2014 01:29:42 am

While I view AE as entertainment, the consistent use of evaluating "evidence" as supportive of Mr. Wolter's or the producers theories will get a little old even for the true believers.

Look at Emily Thornberry in North London this weekend. Her political career is gone as she assumed some guy who runs a carpet instillation business and hung a few St. George's flags outside his flat was an anti immigrant racist. Turns out the guy is a member of labor and had the flags out for the World Cup. Sometimes the things you say, say more about who you are than anything else. "I beg to differ" as Mr. Wolter would say... :)

Reply
intelligentheating
11/26/2014 03:15:49 am

I saw the Emily Thornberry story.
It was fairly obvious in my opinion the guy was a soccer fan. England had just played Scotland in an international game, and one of the flags had a London soccer teams logo on it.

I guess if she had just knocked on his door and had a chat with him, she would have avoided the whole debacle.

That's politicians for you, same the world over ;)

Reply
Cathleen Anderson
11/24/2014 02:23:28 am

I don't watch the show either. I do enjoy reading this blog.

Reply
William
11/24/2014 02:27:15 am

b"h

Kevin Randle critiques the AU Davy Crockett episode here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.co.il/2014/11/america-unearthed-and-davy-crockett.html

Reply
Andrew
11/24/2014 06:04:55 am

This entire season has been a voyage from the sublime to the ridiculous. I watched the previous seasons, especially season 1, simply for entertainment purposes and to stretch my thinking beyond the ordinary in terms of at least contemplating other far-out theories. The 'acting' segment of this episode with its farcical cgi giant marked a low point in a program that was once at least mildly diverting and is now just boring and silly. I'm now simply hoping for someone to put this show out of its misery before it becomes too painful to even watch casually.

Reply
Ragnar Talos
11/24/2014 04:10:35 pm

I had high hopes for this show. Given last years Brad Meltzer like episodes though I didn't expect to be dazzled by this season, and I haven't been. Scott's "investigations" are getting lamer and lamer and its like he's not really trying to find anything. Just go through the motions to get the episode wrapped.

Pretty sad though. I don't think History channel would have let him break any real news.

Reply
keith
11/25/2014 06:28:26 am

The H stones that were so intricately cut were not cut. I saw the episode where they laser cut and diamond cut a piece of the stone. If you notice the surface in question has the same porocity of trapped air as if they were poured into a mold. With no way of machining the stones the obvious answer is that the stones were molded.

Reply
Mainqnc
11/26/2014 11:35:17 pm

To me the entire episode was a disappointment. It could have been just as effective, and frankly more interesting and less insulting to my intelligence if Mr Wolter had simply read the information listed on the historical marker at Judaculla Rock and then had a 57 minute commercial break. That was an hour of my time I will never get back. Showcasing the expensive CGI re-enactment of The giant landing on the rock over and over again seemed more important than whether the investigation had any real scientific integrity. Wolter comes across as an arrogant blowhard who just likes to hear himself talk.

Reply
BARBARA LOCKABY link
11/29/2014 04:32:03 pm

I have hundreds of artifacts , especially petroglyths, that were etched on small stones of various animals and people that these SE Kentucky Native Americans did. they are legal surface finds on private property, with permission, no cave, graves or any sacred site or objects were disturbed. I am part Cherokee, the story of my people are in these precious stones, I have so many artifacts that there is no way to even venture upon listing them. They fill my house and my yard, They are so interesting that they need to be shared and their story told with real objects that people used daily for survival. People will be able to see that the civilizations who created the star stone were great creators in real life the world, that people may see objects of magnificient manufacture from a greatly intelligent and talented people. I can send some pictures, if you are interested. I love your show and so agree with you, since I am a retired high school social studies teacher, I question much of what we are told, thanks so much, Barb.

Reply
EP
12/2/2014 09:45:56 am

Sounds legit. For real.

Reply
Jerky
12/2/2014 11:26:28 pm

And I used to wonder why we have students graduating from our high schools thinking Columbus came over here on the Mayflower.

David Harden
3/7/2015 06:12:40 am

I am a Cherokee storyteller of the Paint Clan and have a copy of the Cherokee sky-map. It shows the beings that are in the stars there are several that match the Judacalla figures. The boundary line could be either the line that marked the edge of the never-setting stars or the "Great Stream" which is a "path" through the Milky Way that has no bright stars and is said to be the path the canoe took on its way to the earth.

Reply
David Harden
3/7/2015 06:21:17 am

BTW. The Redbird petroglyphs are all the old Cherokee medicine signs which were used in story telling and sorcery. I can read the signs but they are considered dangerous magic and storytellers do not reveal their secrets. Most modern Cherokee storytellers and conjurors were never taught these signs.

Reply
Roni Braendle
5/4/2015 02:25:01 pm

I am sorry that the producers, did not check the documents on this women claiming to be Chief Redbird ggg grand daughter, all the info she claims can be refuted by official documents, and there is no children ever documented to be the children of Redbird, Sizemore or Brocks. very disappointed in false info, even the date of death on Redbird is wrong

Reply
Becca
5/5/2015 04:18:53 pm

Roni- first off you do know that there is two chief Redbirds ? Secondly, did you trace back my family? Has your family lived in that area for centuries? The last I checked not all Native Americans had birth certificates during that time, even my grandmother who is a Sizemore and was born in Manchester KY didn't have a birth certificate until she was in her 50s. Why would my mother lie about our ancestors when each generation has always stated relation to Chief Redbird? Get your fact right before writing statements like you did above.

Reply
Kenneth Slone
5/17/2021 06:03:48 pm

Are you talking about Alice Sizemore the same one who is kin to Johnny Depp?

Reply



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    • Television Reviews >
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      • Search for the Lost Giants
      • Forbidden History Reviews
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      • Unexplained + Unexplored
      • Rob Riggle: Global Investigator
      • Ancient Apocalypse
    • Book Reviews
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      • Ancient Civilizations >
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    • Collection: Ancient Alien Fraud >
      • Chariots of the Gods at 50
      • Secret History of Ancient Astronauts
      • Of Atlantis and Aliens
      • Aliens and Ancient Texts
      • Profiles in Ancient Astronautics >
        • Erich von Däniken
        • Robert Temple
        • Giorgio Tsoukalos
        • David Childress
      • Blunders in the Sky
      • The Case of the False Quotes
      • Alternative Authors' Quote Fraud
      • David Childress & the Aliens
      • Faking Ancient Art in Uzbekistan
      • Intimations of Persecution
      • Zecharia Sitchin's World
      • Jesus' Alien Ancestors?
      • Extraterrestrial Evolution?
    • Collection: Skeptic Magazine >
      • America Before Review
      • Native American Discovery of Europe
      • Interview: Scott Sigler
      • Golden Fleeced
      • Oh the Horror
      • Discovery of America
      • Supernatural Television
      • Review of Civilization One
      • Who Lost the Middle Ages
      • Charioteer of the Gods
    • Collection: Ancient History >
      • Prehistoric Nuclear War
      • The China Syndrome
      • Atlantis, Mu, and the Maya
      • Easter Island Exposed
      • Who Built the Sphinx?
      • Who Built the Great Pyramid?
      • Archaeological Cover Up?
    • Collection: The Lovecraft Legacy >
      • Pauwels, Bergier, and Lovecraft
      • Lovecraft in Bergier
      • Lovecraft and Scientology
    • Collection: UFOs >
      • Alien Abduction at the Outer Limits
      • Aliens and Anal Probes
      • Ultra-Terrestrials and UFOs
      • Rebels, Queers, and Aliens
    • Scholomance: The Devil's School
    • Prehistory of Chupacabra
    • The Templars, the Holy Grail, & Henry Sinclair
    • Magicians of the Gods Review
    • The Curse of the Pharaohs
    • The Antediluvian Pyramid Myth
    • Whitewashing American Prehistory
    • James Dean's Cursed Porsche
  • The Library
    • Ancient Mysteries >
      • Ancient Texts >
        • Mesopotamian Texts >
          • Eridu Genesis
          • Atrahasis Epic
          • Epic of Gilgamesh
          • Kutha Creation Legend
          • Babylonian Creation Myth
          • Descent of Ishtar
          • Resurrection of Marduk
          • Berossus
          • Comparison of Antediluvian Histories
        • Egyptian Texts >
          • The Shipwrecked Sailor
          • Dream Stela of Thutmose IV
          • The Papyrus of Ani
          • Classical Accounts of the Pyramids
          • Inventory Stela
          • Manetho
          • Eratosthenes' King List
          • The Story of Setna
          • Leon of Pella
          • Diodorus on Egyptian History
          • On Isis and Osiris
          • Famine Stela
          • Old Egyptian Chronicle
          • The Book of Sothis
          • Horapollo
          • Al-Maqrizi's King List
        • Teshub and the Dragon
        • Hermetica >
          • The Three Hermeses
          • Kore Kosmou
          • Corpus Hermeticum
          • The Asclepius
          • The Emerald Tablet
          • Hermetic Fragments
          • Prologue to the Kyranides
          • The Secret of Creation
          • Ancient Alphabets Explained
          • Prologue to Ibn Umayl's Silvery Water
          • Book of the 24 Philosophers
          • Aurora of the Philosophers
        • Hesiod's Theogony
        • Periplus of Hanno
        • Zoroastrian Fatal Winter
        • Ctesias' Indica
        • Sanchuniathon
        • Sima Qian
        • Syncellus's Enoch Fragments
        • The Book of Enoch
        • Slavonic Enoch
        • Sepher Yetzirah
        • Fragments of Artapanus
        • Tacitus' Germania
        • De Dea Syria
        • Aelian's Various Histories
        • Julius Africanus' Chronography
        • Fragments of Bruttius
        • Eusebius' Chronicle
        • Chinese Accounts of Rome
        • Ancient Chinese Automaton
        • The Orphic Argonautica
        • Fragments of Panodorus
        • Annianus on the Watchers
        • The Watchers and Antediluvian Wisdom
      • Medieval Texts >
        • Medieval Legends of Ancient Egypt >
          • Medieval Pyramid Lore
          • John Malalas on Ancient Egypt
          • Fragments of Abenephius
          • Akhbar al-zaman
          • Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah
          • Murtada ibn al-‘Afif
          • Al-Maqrizi on the Pyramids
          • Al-Suyuti on the Pyramids
        • The Hunt for Noah's Ark
        • Byzantine World Chronicle
        • Isidore of Seville
        • Book of Liang: Fusang
        • Chronicle to 724
        • Agobard on Magonia
        • Pseudo-Diocles Fragmentum
        • Book of Thousands
        • Voyage of Saint Brendan
        • Power of Art and of Nature
        • Travels of Sir John Mandeville
        • Yazidi Revelation and Black Book
        • Al-Biruni on the Great Flood
        • Voyage of the Zeno Brothers
        • The Kensington Runestone (Hoax)
        • Islamic Discovery of America
        • Popol Vuh
        • The Aztec Creation Myth
      • Lost Civilizations >
        • Atlantis >
          • Plato's Atlantis Dialogues >
            • Timaeus
            • Critias
          • Fragments on Atlantis
          • Panchaea: The Other Atlantis
          • Eumalos on Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Gómara on Atlantis
          • Atlantis as Biblical History
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Atlantis and Nimrod
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • Atlantis and Hanno's Periplus
          • Atlantis and the Sea Peoples
          • W. Scott-Elliot >
            • The Story of Atlantis
            • The Lost Lemuria
          • The Lost Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Africa
          • How I Found Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Termier on Atlantis
          • The Critias and Minoan Crete
          • Rebuttal to Termier
          • Further Responses to Termier
          • Flinders Petrie on Atlantis
          • Amazing New Light (Hoax)
        • Lost Cities >
          • Miscellaneous Lost Cities
          • The Seven Cities
          • The Lost City of Paititi
          • Manuscript 512
          • The Idolatrous City of Iximaya (Hoax)
          • The 1885 Moberly Lost City Hoax
          • The Elephants of Paredon (Hoax)
        • OOPARTs
        • Oronteus Finaeus Antarctica Map
        • Caucasians in Panama
        • Jefferson's Excavation
        • Fictitious Discoveries in America
        • Against Diffusionism
        • Tunnels Under Peru
        • The Parahyba Inscription (Hoax)
        • Mound Builders
        • Gunung Padang
        • Tales of Enchanted Islands
        • The 1907 Ancient World Map Hoax
        • The 1909 Grand Canyon Hoax
        • The Interglacial Period
        • Solving Oak Island
      • Religious Conspiracies >
        • Pantera, Father of Jesus?
        • Toledot Yeshu
        • Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay on Cathars
        • Testimony of Jean de Châlons
        • Rosslyn Chapel and the 'Prentice's Pillar
        • The Many Wives of Jesus
        • Templar Infiltration of Labor
        • Louis Martin & the Holy Bloodline
        • The Life of St. Issa (Hoax)
        • On the Person of Jesus Christ
      • Giants in the Earth >
        • Fossil Origins of Myths >
          • Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephants
          • Fossil Elephants
          • Fossil Bones of Teutobochus
          • Fossil Mammoths and Giants
          • Giants' Bones Dug Out of the Earth
          • Fossils and the Supernatural
          • Fossils, Myth, and Pseudo-History
          • Man During the Stone Age
          • Fossil Bones and Giants
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • History of Paleontology
        • Fragments on Giants
        • Manichaean Book of Giants
        • Geoffrey on British Giants
        • Alfonso X's Hermetic History of Giants
        • Boccaccio and the Fossil 'Giant'
        • Book of Howth
        • Purchas His Pilgrimage
        • Edmond Temple's 1827 Giant Investigation
        • The Giants of Sardinia
        • Giants and the Sons of God
        • The Magnetism of Evil
        • Tertiary Giants
        • Smithsonian Giant Reports
        • Early American Giants
        • The Giant of Coahuila
        • Jewish Encyclopedia on Giants
        • Index of Giants
        • Newspaper Accounts of Giants
        • Lanier's A Book of Giants
      • Science and History >
        • Halley on Noah's Comet
        • The Newport Tower
        • Iron: The Stone from Heaven
        • Ararat and the Ark
        • Pyramid Facts and Fancies
        • Argonauts before Homer
        • The Deluge
        • Crown Prince Rudolf on the Pyramids
        • Old Mythology in New Apparel
        • Blavatsky on Dinosaurs
        • Teddy Roosevelt on Bigfoot
        • Devil Worship in France
        • Maspero's Review of Akhbar al-zaman
        • Arabic Names of Egyptian Kings
        • The Holy Grail as Lucifer's Crown Jewel
        • The Mutinous Sea
        • The Rock Wall of Rockwall
        • Fabulous Zoology
        • The Origins of Talos
        • Mexican Mythology
        • Chinese Pyramids
        • Maqrizi's Names of the Pharaohs
      • Extreme History >
        • Roman Empire Hoax
        • America Known to the Ancients
        • American Antiquities
        • American Cataclysms
        • England, the Remnant of Judah
        • Historical Chronology of the Mexicans
        • Maspero on the Predynastic Sphinx
        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Remarkable Discoveries Within the Sphinx (Hoax)
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • The Shaver Mystery >
          • Lovecraft and the Deros
          • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
        • Fortean Society and Columbus
        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
        • The Skyfort Document
        • Whirling Wheels
        • Denver Ancient Astronaut Lecture
        • Soviet Search for Lemuria
        • Visitors from Outer Space
        • Unidentified Flying Objects (Abstract)
        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
        • Ancient Astronaut Society Telegram
        • Noah's Ark Cables
        • The Von Daniken Letter
        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
        • CIA Search for the Ark of the Covenant
        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
        • UFOs in Ancient China
        • CIA Report on Noah's Ark
        • CIA Noah's Ark Memos
        • Congressional Ancient Aliens Testimony
        • Ancient Astronaut and Nibiru Email
        • Congressional Ancient Mars Hearing
        • House UFO Hearing
      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
        • Premodern UFO Sightings
        • The Moon Hoax
        • Inhabitants of Other Planets
        • The Fall of the Sky
        • Blavatsky on Ancient Astronauts
        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
      • Interdimensional Flying Saucers
      • Poltergeist UFOs
      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
      • Sublime and Beautiful
      • Voltaire on Vampires
      • Demonology and Witchcraft
      • Thaumaturgia
      • Bulgarian Vampires
      • Religion and Evolution
      • Transylvanian Superstitions
      • Defining a Zombie
      • Dread of the Supernatural
      • Vampires
      • Werewolves and Vampires and Ghouls
      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
      • King Solomon's Mines
      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
      • Sredni Vashtar
      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
      • The Corpse on the Grating
      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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