BackgroundIn its original run, forensic geologist Scott F. Wolter, who hosts the show, used the series to pursue a conspiratorial view of American history based on the belief that the land of the future United States had been repeatedly visited and colonized by Old World peoples. He followed the Da Vinci Code in claiming that a vast conspiracy from ancient times guarded a goddess-worshiping cult’s secret Egyptian-Jewish wisdom and the Holy Bloodline of Jewish royalty descended from Jesus Christ and his alleged wife, Mary Magdalene. The guardians of the conspiracy included, at various times, the Knights Templar and the Freemasons, who claimed the United States as the true kingdom of the Bloodline and who secretly run America in service of a goddess whom they worship via astrology. None of these claims had any factual support beyond a web of conspiracies theories and a network of fraudulent artifacts that Wolter endorsed as legitimate relics of antiquity. I analyzed his claims in each episode of America Unearthed during its original run, and my reviews contain lengthy discussions of the faults with each piece of his alleged evidence. During the H2 years, America Unearthed became controversial because of its extreme speculation and because of its host. The show’s claims found favor with white nationalists, who sang its praises on forums like Stormfront. After the second season in 2014, Wolter himself appeared on the podcast of Frank from Queens, whom New York magazine once described as a “racist,” where he accepted a made-up award on the show’s annual “World Solutrean Day” broadcast closest to Hitler’s birthday. Frank recognized Wolter as a “pioneer” for revealing the “truth” that Europeans were true First Americans, dating back 40,000 years. “That’s a high honor, and I sure appreciate it,” Wolter said. After H2 canceled America Unearthed, the History Channel signed Scott Wolter for a second series, Pirate Treasure of the Knights Templar, which was condemned by UNESCO in a devastating report compiled at the behest of the Madagascar government which concluded that Wolter’s History Channel team had violated archaeological preservation practices and sensationalized evidence. In the intervening years, Wolter, who is a practicing Freemason, has appeared in a variety of fringe media making outlandish claims about a number of subjects related to his interest in the imaginary prehistory of Freemasonry and its connection to Vikings, Templars, and conspiracy theories. In the most recent version of his evolving narrative of American history, he now envisions the Knights Templar integrating with Native American groups, interbreeding with them, and passing along the secrets of Freemasonry, which are preserved in Native lore. On a personal note, I have had more than my share of difficulties with America Unearthed and its host. Wolter developed a strong antipathy to me after I published a blog post questioning his claim to have received an honorary master’s degree from his alma mater. He conceded that the degree was not issued by the school. During the show’s original run, A+E Networks, claiming to act on behalf of Scott Wolter, sent me a cease and desist order in an effort to stop publication of my reviews of the show in book form, falsely alleging that Wolter owned the rights to the so-called “Hooked X,” a runic character used since the nineteenth century that appeared on the first version of the book’s cover. (I have a letter from the network’s attorney conceding that the rune is in the public domain.) Later, Wolter and his then-business partner in the defunct Xplrr media company threatened me with a libel suit, which necessitated me retaining a lawyer. The legal threats ended with an agreement to avoid direct personal interactions without going through lawyers first. Most recently, when I asked the Travel Channel whether they were concerned about the show’s support among white nationalists, instead of responding, the network blocked my access to their press website, which they silently restored sometime before the show returned to air. You can thank them for the promotional photography appearing in the review below. And now, to my great surprise, America Unearthed is back in all its shambolic glory, with the Travel Channel describing Wolter as a real-life Indiana Jones, adding in a promotional article that “like Dr. Henry Walton Jones Jr., Wolter has also searched for the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail.” So did Heinrich Himmler! During the show’s final H2 season, I made it habit to open each episode review with an essay discussing the true history of the subject under discussion in that episode. Back when the series hauled in 1.5 million weekly viewers and had a great deal of cultural influence, that seemed to be a productive use of time. The Travel Channel, however, has much lower ratings than America Unearthed used to bring in for H2, and based on the performance of similar series over the past six months on Discovery Networks stations, I imagine that the audience for the revived series will be significantly smaller than during its first run. Legends of the Lost brought in just 350,000 viewers, as did America’s Lost Vikings. America Unearthed will probably cross the half million mark if ratings for its reruns on Travel are any indication, but it doesn’t seem worth the effort to write an article-length essay to preface a review of a show that a much smaller audience will watch than in years past. However, that does not mean that I will avoid writing about the real historical background of this episode. That background however, is not really about the story of a Viking ship supposedly in the California desert—which Newsweek correctly reported a few years ago originated, according to a U.S. government publication, in an exaggeration of a story about a Civil War-era ship built in 1862 for a Colorado River mining company and left in the desert to rot when they discovered it would cost too much to transport to the river. It’s also not about petroglyphs near San Fernando de Velicatá in Baja California—some of which date back five hundred to a thousand years and one of which is sometimes said to resemble a Spanish galleon, and here will be mistaken for a Viking ship. In the past, Spanish chroniclers identified the petroglyphs as the work of Chaldeans, and in 1910 Arthur Walbridge North expressed amazement at their alleged similarity to Phoenician writing. Native lore, which North recorded on a 1906 trip, claimed them to be the work of a lost race of Giants who lived in Mexico before the native peoples. Instead, the background I’d rather discuss revolves around the issue of why people have come to believe that Vikings visited in Mexico. This claim was popularized by white supremacist writers of the middle twentieth century, particularly ex-Nazis and former Nazi supporters like Jacques de Mahieu—cited approvingly by Wolter in one of his books—who built upon the work of Heinrich Himmler’s Nazi archaeologists to propose that the Vikings had colonized the ancient Americas and held Aryan dominion over all the native peoples, which they passed on to the Knights Templar. (Wolter, writing in 2013, dismissed De Mahieu’s Nazi connections as “irrelevant and unimportant.” De Mahieu hired Joseph Goebbels’s former translator to translate his work from French to German.) I described De Mahieu’s history of Aryan America this way in reviewing Wolter’s citation of it in his 2013 book Akhenaten to the Founding Fathers: In his telling, the Vikings conquered the Americas in 967 when the Toltecs mistook them for Quetzalcoatl, the “white” god, and that Nordic people ruled over the Inca Empire down to the Conquest as White Gods, eventually totaling some 80,000 racially superior Aryans lording over the squalid millions of brown-skinned subjects. He conveniently also found Aryan swastikas wherever he looked in the Americas, alongside “runes,” proof that Nordic Aryans had once ruled where ex-Nazi German migrants now held sway. He also claimed that Native peoples had blue eyes and pale skin, legacies of miscegenation whereby they were bred with superior Aryan traits. In a much watered-down form, this is the same argument Wolter has made for his “interbreeding” of Knights Templar and Native Americans. But De Mahieu was far from the first to make the claim, only the most racist. From the earliest Spanish explorations of the Americas, racist Europeans have tried to connect American civilizations to European originals. Chaldeans, Jews, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and Irish were all popular choices in the first four centuries after Columbus. Claims for a Viking presence began in the 1700s and reached respectability with the (correct) conclusion by Carl Christian Rafn in the early 1800s that the Icelandic sagas reported a Viking voyage to North America. He wrongly believed them to have reached New England rather than Canada, but over the nineteenth century, as Vikings became identified with the whitest shades of the master race and manly exemplars of European virtue, the claimed sphere of their influence grew as well. The allegation that Vikings ruled over ancient Mexico were popularized by the pen of French scholar Eugène Beauvois, who had spent his entire racist career trying to prove that Europeans gave Mexicans their culture because he believed Mexicans were too inferior to have done it for themselves. He never quite settled on whether the Vikings or the Irish were ultimately responsible, but for him it didn’t matter too much. “With either alternative, the source will always be European,” he wrote in 1897. Beauvois is especially notorious among those who study fringe history because he invented the claim that the Knights Templar reached America, occupied the “Viking” cities of central Mexico, and served as the ruling class among the Mexicans from the late 1200s down to the Contact period. Beauvois’s claim, in a roundabout way, shaped that of De Mahieu and other authors on the “mysteries” of the Knights Templar in America, whose works helped shape Scott Wolter’s own ideas. The Templars, in Beauvois’s and De Mahieu’s telling, are descendants of the Vikings since many of their leaders came from Norman families, and the Normans were French descendants of Viking conquerors. They came to America on Scandinavian ships following old Viking maps. In short, far from being a fun lark, the specific claim that Vikings (i.e.—ancestral Templars) were present in Mexico has long been a cudgel used by white supremacists, racists, and Nazis to lay claim to the Americas as a “white” homeland. Our host, Scott Wolter, has only the vaguest notion of any of this. (Remember, he dismissed De Mahieu’s racism as “irrelevant.) Too superficial in his analysis to consider the consequences of his claims, Wolter betrays no signs of being intentionally racist. Indeed, he sees himself as an advocate for the rights of Native American cultures, and each season of America Unearthed dutifully included an episode exploring a non-European culture’s supposed visit to ancient America. But the history of the Viking claim betrays its true purpose, which shines through even when the producers and host don’t realize what they are saying. The EpisodeSegment 1 The show opens on a pig wallow, which is probably appropriate since pigs are known for producing some of the rankest and smelliest feces in the world, and into the stew of shit we see a farm boy standing amidst the remains of a Viking boat in a fictitious reconstruction made from imagination and not much else. (Later we will learn that it is an extrapolation of the late in life testimony of a man who claimed to have seen a ship, though not necessarily a Viking one, in his youth.) The show recycles the 2014-2015 title sequence and onscreen graphics before cutting to Scott Wolter’s lab where the current incarnation of Wolter is noticeably older and grayer than the 2012 version seen in the clip shot by H2 and used in both the 2012-2014 and 2014-2015 title sequences. At Sky Ranch Lodge in Arizona, Wolter gives us a potted history of the Vikings, whose expansion westward he attributes to “one simple reason: overpopulation,” which I imagine is a vast oversimplification. In Arizona Wolter meets with Harry Atkins, Jr. who said that his father acquired some pieces of metal from a woman who claimed to have found them in the desert. The elder Atkins had hoped that Wolter would prove the artifacts to be Viking, but he died before the show came back on the air, leaving his son to fulfill his father’s unfortunate wish. Wolter blathers on about the Viking paradise of grapes and self-sown wheat known as Vinland—which in a previous season he identified as the area around Martha’s Vineyard—and now suggests that could be Arizona, a land that could not possibly be father from grape vines and wheat fields. Bonnie Engels is the current owner of the artifacts, and she shows them to Wolter. Wolter speculates that the items might have been Scandinavian and brought to America by artifact collectors or immigrants, or they could have been left by Vikings. Wolter further speculates that the Vikings discovered the Northwest Passage, rounded Alaska, traveled down to Baja, and then reached Arizona from the south via the now vanished Lake Cahuilla. This was a feat that Europeans were unable to accomplish after Columbus, and no European completed until Roald Amundsen in 1906. But the Vikings, in open boats unprotected against the Arctic winter, somehow accomplished this feat unmolested. Segment 2 Wolter uses an XRF gun to test the metal content of the artifacts, which he claims is consistent with Viking artifacts, and then he takes the artifacts to an expert at Oxford University, Dr. Jane Kershaw, an archaeologist specializing in the early Viking age. She examines the artifacts and declares them to be a grab bag of ancient antiquities, including a tenth century woman’s broach and a fourth century Roman man’s broach. Three artifacts are of the Viking age and eight more are from other time pieces. That these artifacts were all found in an old saddlebag suggests strongly—and Wolter calls it “plausible”—that they are a trove of artifacts brought by immigrants or a collector and then lost. At Travertine Point in Mecca, California, Wolter meets former mattress salesman and current Roswell UFO believer John Grasson, who was profiled in Newsweek two years ago for his unwavering belief that a Viking ship exists somewhere in the deserts of California. Grasson told Newsweek that he believed the ship to be a Spanish vessel, but for Wolter he now goes along with idea that it was a Viking one. In 2017, he was in talks with two different cable channels to bring his research to TV, including the History and Travel Channels, but the story did not make it to air until now. Wolter gives a lesson on rocks and then we cut to commercial. Segment 3 Grasson takes Wolter to listen to a reel-to-reel recording made by Elmer Carver who decades after the fact claimed as a farm boy to have seen a fence on a hog wallow that was made from wood held together with pegs, which led him to believe the wood had come from an ancient ship. He walked out into the desert and saw the skeleton of the ship sticking out of the dirt. As I mentioned above, the U.S. government concluded in the early twentieth century that the ship was actually a nineteenth century vessel that had been abandoned and left to rot. Wolter speculates that if the ship were a Viking vessel, then it “rewrites the entire history book.” Another commercial then follows. Naturally, the U.S. government explanation for the ship, and even the more common claim that it was a Spanish galleon, go unmentioned because America Unearthed only pretends to be an honest show and happily omits inconvenient material. Segment 4 In the fourth segment, Wolter visits the site in Imperial, Calif. where Carver claimed to have seen the Viking ship and secures permission from the property owner to begin scanning and digging for the ship. The segment is given over entirely to conducting the scan. Segment 5 The fifth segment sees Wolter and his colleagues dig a big hole in the hope of finding the “Viking” ship where a geophysical scan indicated an anomaly. They found a piece of rebar, not a ship. For no obvious reason, Wolter next arrives in Mexico to see the petroglyphs near San Fernando de Velicatá in Baja California discussed above. Wolter claims that the Seri people of Sonora claim to have a legend that blond-haired men arrived in a long ship whose prow was carved into a dragon. This story comes, as far as I could trace it in five minutes, from a 1978 book by William Corliss in the 1970s, but the story seems to be modern in origin rather than an ancient oral tradition. Strangely, this story was decidedly not recorded by visitors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who told tales of the petroglyphs being the work of a lost race of giants. Wolter compares the ship to a Viking longboat, but you really need to have some imagination to see it as a longboat. The symmetrical U-shaped base does not immediately suggest a ship with a dragon on the prow since both sides have the same square ends. You see what you want to see, I guess. [Update: As Carl Feagans pointed out, the ship petroglyph is much brighter than the surrounding figures, indicating it is likely younger, and historical records say that petroglyphs were added to the site down to the 1700s.] Segment 6
In the final segment, Wolter reports his results to Atkins, who is thrilled that the artifacts were Viking. Wolter says he believes the Vikings traveled to California but concedes that the artifacts might have arrived in some other way. The show ends inconclusively and, generally, inoffensively compared to past seasons, undoubtedly to create a palatable opening gambit in the hope of attracting new viewers. Overall, the Travel Channel debut of America Unearthed was noticeably toned down from the feverish original, and Wolter was at his most sedate and sober. The network hoped to find a successor to Expedition Unknown, which decamped to the Discovery Channel, and the influence of that program and History’s more successful Curse of Oak Island seems to have shaped this season of America Unearthed, or at least this episode, which was extremely light on facts and information and much heavier on socializing, digging, scanning, and other action-oriented visuals than past seasons. Wolter here appears more as the personal everyman than the wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, and his usual strident criticism of “academics” and “skeptics” is almost wholly absent. It might be called America Unearthed, but if it sticks with this neutered form, it will be little more than just another boring bit of cable TV wallpaper, albeit one with a penchant for fake history.
102 Comments
Paul
5/28/2019 11:47:37 pm
A grab bag of artifacts with no known provenance. No trace of a ship or any other activity for that matter. A petroglyph of uncertain age and definition. Typical Scottie, turning nothing into a vast conspiracy. Surprised Scottie did not find a deformed X out in the desert. What an idiot, another series of shows looking up his deformed, hooked nose. Hope he at least cleans the boogers out.
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white supremacist stuff again
5/29/2019 12:10:15 am
1491 was an example of white supremacy in real life issues
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Portuguese in South America
5/29/2019 12:14:47 am
The Portuguese took South American Natives to the Vatican so that the theologians could discuss whether or not they had souls. If we need to discuss examples of white supremacy there is no shortage of it in real history.
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Hilda Hilpert
6/4/2019 01:23:17 pm
yes, you are correct there. I have heard about the ship. Even heard that it was a 19th century ship, like a steamboat perhasp. The idea it might be a spanish ship does have some validity. The spanish were in mexico and down to South America.They were also in Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona, so the claims it was possibly of spanish origin makes far more sense, than it was a Viking ship. Absoultely no reason for the Vikings to even be in Arizonia or California. There is a lot of our american history we don't know, and I get that, but we shouldn't go off the deep end either.
An Anonymous Nerd
5/29/2019 11:22:57 pm
As Mr. Colavito has pointed out repeatedly, and as should be obvious, Fringe views of history that support the White Supremacy narrative have been of political importance. To pretend "it's just the Fringe, who cares" would be disingenuous -- and a tactical error.
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Doc Rock
5/29/2019 12:15:55 am
Just a wild guess, but Wolter and company simply dug a hole rather than sinking a test unit to investigate the "anomaly", right?
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Again
5/29/2019 12:19:47 am
Yeah, the pot calling the kettle
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Jim
5/29/2019 01:11:49 am
Wolter finds absolutely nothing, yet again. He's batting 1000 !
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Here's John Grasson's website
5/29/2019 06:00:26 pm
http://www.lostshipofthedesert.com/lost-ship-of-the-vikings-grasson/
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Jim
5/29/2019 06:23:24 pm
Yup, anyone expecting something original from Wolter will be waiting a loooooong time.
GRASSON'S WEBSITE
5/30/2019 02:02:39 am
That first episode wasn't just 50 minutes of pseudo, it was 50 minutes of nothing. I am considering starting my own Scott Wolter response Blog, since this Blog does not address the content of America Unearthed the way it should.
Linus
5/30/2019 05:28:07 pm
I wish you luck if you start your own website. One piece of advice, ban Joe Scales. He will attempt to hi-jack it by flooding it with his comments and insulting and belittling anyone who disagrees with him or has any real knowledge of the topic.
Joe Scales
5/31/2019 09:51:25 am
Oh great... another cyber-stalker.
Jim
5/29/2019 10:32:38 am
Wolters Blog on this topic:
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Kent
5/29/2019 01:28:07 pm
Wet wool isn't the coldest thing in the world and I suspect the natives wore fur coats because there were no sheep or geese or Polartec. Were Amundsen and his crew going swimming? Was it raining?
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Jim
5/29/2019 01:59:36 pm
My main point was the helpful cooperation of the natives and many other advantages Amundsen and his crew had over any nonsensical Viking trip. They also were well prepared to spend a number of years to make the trip.
Nanooky of the North
5/29/2019 02:17:11 pm
Certain animal furs are desirable in cold climates because they shed water more easily than some other types of clothing and provide warmth more efficiently even when wet. Getting wet in an environment of ice, snow, and water is self-explanatory.
Kent
5/29/2019 09:57:07 pm
According to Ariel Tweto, an acrtual Eskimo, it is way different from meat you take out of your freezer. More like lutefisk.
Nanooky of the North
5/30/2019 09:50:05 am
He is probably referring to a process of making fermented meat which is considered to be a delicacy in the same way that lutefisk would be for people with that taste. That is different from preserving meat by freezing or other methods or simply serving someone meat that was just killed. The same way that lutefisk differs from fish that was frozen fresh, smoked, or was just caught and prepared.
Kent
5/30/2019 11:27:23 am
First, "he" is a "she" and smokin' hot, but don't worry, you will not get this!
Nanooky of the North
5/30/2019 12:02:09 pm
I don't understand why you are fixated on the notion that any meat consumed at that time could not have been frozen fresh or freshly killed.
Nanooky of the North
5/30/2019 12:27:08 pm
It was common for various species of seals to be hunted all year long with particular methods used during the winter.
Kent
5/30/2019 12:59:14 pm
I provided you ample clues to follow up on. You really don't understand. The buried meat and blubber confit is NOT a "delicacy".
Nanooky of the North
5/30/2019 02:52:02 pm
I'm saying things over and over and backing them up with sources. An eskimo chick saying that she doesn't like something has ZERO to do with the issue of the types of meat and their availability 120 years ago. Maybe she should travel to some more traditional areas where fermented seal is served as a special Christmas season meal.
Doc Rock
5/30/2019 03:47:51 pm
Just for general information; the Eskimo or Inuit are very diverse. What may be a common pattern of behavior in one group may be foreign to another. The only way to settle this spat would be to read the original documents associated with the expedition and identify which specific Inuit group or groups were involved. If that information is available. Ethnographic and historical data on those groups would then give an idea of just what was going on. Or you two can keep talking past each other. I don't suppose that you have a picture of this gorgeous Native woman? Asking for a friend.
Kent
5/30/2019 07:12:13 pm
Do they not have Google where you live?
Bezalel
5/31/2019 02:17:16 am
AmericanNegro/ACDD /(non-Clark) Kent
Kent
5/31/2019 02:43:23 am
I'm hard-pressed to see how I aroused your ire and elicited "I'm watching you."
Kent
5/31/2019 02:48:23 am
"A moot point anyway since the sources I cited document that fresh meat is obtainable even in winter."
Joe Scales
5/31/2019 09:54:23 am
Unfunny? Wow, that's just mean.
Normandie Kent
6/20/2019 08:41:42 pm
A heavily European admired Ariel Tweto is hardly the epitome of the “Traditional Inuit woman” Lol!! Her full European father and her half European mom are far removed from her ancestors Inuit Culture and Hunting/ Foraging/ Diet practices!
Joe Scales
5/29/2019 10:42:55 am
jYeah, old Scotty kinda had that senior center gaze in his eyes at times during the show. But yeah, it was just as if the show had never been gone and it was just another episode. Incredibly stupid. Chockful of non sequitur. Moronic conjecture.
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Jim
5/29/2019 11:02:24 am
" But yeah, it was just as if the show had never been gone and it was just another episode."
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Joe Scales
5/29/2019 11:29:17 am
"The show seemed watered down to me..."
Jim
5/29/2019 01:35:43 pm
Wolter just seems less of a zealot than before, maybe it's just me.
Joe Scales
5/29/2019 01:57:45 pm
Well, he's been out and about for a few years now saying whatever nonsense would get him booked on a radio show or podcast. Now that he's been gifted the veneer of credibility by Travel Channel, he may be playing down the zaniness of his more recent endeavors. But not all his past shows were that animated to begin with, nor did they all have the dark themes and scary music. Some were just as boring, farfetched and moronic as this new offering. Wolter just looks a lot older too.
Holy Bloodline
5/29/2019 02:11:26 pm
Someone should tell Wolter that the Line of David fizzled out in 587BC when Jerusalem was invaded by Babylon. Those genealogies in the Gospels may as well be those of Luke Skywalker because the Line of David was never restored.
HOLY BLOODLINE
5/30/2019 02:13:56 am
Of course, the existence of the Line of David itself is disputed, since there are those who dispute the very historical existence of David (there being no archaeological evidence for the historical existence of David). The Line of David having been fabricated some centuries after its apparent existence.
Kent
5/30/2019 10:44:05 am
It sounds like you're making stuff up. The Davidic line continued at least through his son Solomon.
HOLY BLOODLINE
5/30/2019 11:08:18 am
Meet the Real King David, the One the Bible Didn’t Want You to Know About
Tel Dan Stele
5/30/2019 11:17:29 am
"Solomon's Jerusalem: The Text and the Facts on the Ground," in: A.G. Vaughn and A.E. Killebrew (eds.), Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology: The First Temple Period, (Society of Biblical Literature, Symposium Series, No. 18), Atlanta, 2003, pp. 103-115
Doc Rock
5/30/2019 07:06:31 pm
Jim,
Jim
5/30/2019 07:50:45 pm
Doc,
Doc Rock
5/31/2019 12:05:52 am
Jim,
Kent
5/31/2019 01:17:45 am
And the hoaxes he defends as "FACT"....they've been debunked but anyone who says so is "lying".
Jim
5/31/2019 01:53:35 am
Kent,,,
Unnamed archeololgist
5/31/2019 04:28:21 am
There was no such thing as an "unnamed archaeologist" on the said documentary.
Jim
5/31/2019 11:14:59 am
Unnamed archeololgist:
Jim
5/31/2019 11:55:30 am
Unnamed archeololgist:
Homer Sextown
5/29/2019 11:30:09 pm
So you're saying both scientists were hard?
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6/21/2019 11:17:59 am
I am unfamiliar with Ms Tweto and am not addressing either her or the argument about frozen foods. But having lived my entire life literally on the border of two Native American reservations as diverse as the Tonawanda Rez in Western New York and the Seminole/Miccosukee and having close relations and friendships with both in Florida I am always a little ticked off when these pseudo-researchers trot out people with vague tribal connections to 'prove' oral traditions of space people or ancient white visitors. The few times I've been able to track down their bios they either belong to the MUFON camp of Ancient Alien 'theorists' or ancient diffusionist pseudo-archaeology and their bona fides as far as representing actual native traditions of tribal Wisdom Keepers suspect.
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B L
5/29/2019 10:45:58 am
After months, Wolter finally posted a new blog entry on his own site regarding this new episode. It is remarkably light on expanded content, and is basically just a collection of photos. Not normal for him. I wonder what that could mean.
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Accumulated Wisdom
5/29/2019 02:38:40 pm
"the so-called “Hooked X,” a runic character used since the nineteenth century"
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Joe Scales
5/29/2019 03:36:22 pm
"In all fairness, this symbol is far older than what you're letting on."
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Linus
5/29/2019 04:48:04 pm
How dare you have an opinion or even express it. Joe Scales, AKA Mister Know-it-all has made his pronouncement. You are an imbecile, take it as gospel. After all, he knows all. Compared to him, Albert Einstein and Leonardo Da Vinci were pikers.
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Joe Scales
5/29/2019 05:06:46 pm
Well Linus, now that you're encouraging Anthony's painful and rather unbalanced imbecility, your lot has been cast accordingly. You imbecile.
Rain Gorgeous
5/29/2019 10:12:41 pm
To be fair, the majority of stuff Crazy Boots posts is either wrong or insane.
Joe Scales
5/29/2019 09:29:09 pm
Wolter is arguing with Delbert now, on his blog. Not sure of his "end game". Uh Wolter… you imbecile, he's already stated his end game. It's to try to talk sense to a high school teacher who claims to be teaching children about the "lies" of mainstream history.
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Jim
5/29/2019 10:24:27 pm
Wolter:
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Jim
5/30/2019 12:41:19 am
Still giggling,,,his blog is more entertaining than his show,
Joe Scales
5/30/2019 09:25:02 am
If it weren't for Wolter's blog, I may have still given him the benefit of the doubt that he was simply a dishonest huckster making a buck. But with each and every blog post he makes, and most importantly his responses, he shows he is the imbecilic poseur. A moron. A buffoon. An absolute idiot. A very, very stupid man. The "forensic geologist" who is actually dumb as a rock.
Accumulated Wisdom
6/1/2019 07:55:16 pm
JOE SCALES
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kent
6/1/2019 10:25:08 pm
In college at age 16 AND 3 high school championships. And still found time to read 2-5 books a day, every day.
Accumulated Wisdom
6/2/2019 10:37:50 am
dan is clearly KENT
Kent
6/2/2019 11:36:51 am
"When she arrived, she asked why, I lived with my Mom, not the dorms. When, I told her, I was 16...She floored it! She asked me out at a college party. My age had never come up."
Accumulated Wisdom
6/2/2019 12:31:02 pm
I first met Abby at a college party. I was a high school student who had been invited. She assumed, I was in college too. Probably because, I brought beer. Was blessed to make out with her for a while, and get asked out. When she came to pick me up for the date... She realized, she had made out with a 16 year old sophomore high school student.
Joe Scales
6/2/2019 04:27:49 pm
We are all Dan. Except for you Anthony. You are an imbecile.
Kent
6/2/2019 06:04:06 pm
What books did you read yesterday and the day before?
Tudlaw
6/3/2019 11:32:55 am
"Once, I reached College myself, I understood what must have been going through Abby's mind. "16 will get you 20"."
Accumulated Wisdom
6/4/2019 02:08:31 pm
"I am not sure who would sit at your table, joe. Not when it reeks of loneliness, kitty litter, and
Joe Scales
6/4/2019 03:53:51 pm
You have nothing to offer here Anthony. Absolutely nothing. You are a crazed imbecile who simply doesn't belong here. As such, you are solely a menace and will likely be banned before too long.
Kent
6/4/2019 07:04:13 pm
Still wondering what books did you read yesterday and the day before.
An Anonymous Nerd
5/29/2019 10:34:22 pm
The fact that he's on television at all is extremely depressing.
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Future episodes of America Unearthed SE4
5/30/2019 02:22:08 am
http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news/2019/04/30/scott-wolter-excavates-americas-lost-history-in-america-unearthed-on-travel-channel-443314/20190430travel01/
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Jim
5/30/2019 09:12:58 am
ArchyFantasies watches America Unearthed S04E01 pt1
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Joe Scales
5/30/2019 09:30:30 am
Though they don't have as many American Unearthed reviews as this site, the ones they do have are most excellent reads:
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Jim
5/30/2019 01:42:13 pm
Part 2
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Doc Rock
5/30/2019 03:41:20 pm
I give her an E for effort but the first video is kind of painful to watch. Not the fact that she is criticizing SW just the way she wanders around in her presentation.
Jim
5/30/2019 01:39:23 pm
Review of Scott Wolter’s Pseudoarchaeology Show-Vikings in AZ
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Jim
5/31/2019 12:42:37 pm
Fakey Wolter with more foot in mouthitis in his blog comments:
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Jim
5/31/2019 02:24:16 pm
Wolter (blog):
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robert gordon
6/2/2019 12:04:16 am
well there was an ocean going boat found in the salton sea----left by dutch pirates in an intriguing lost treasure story----they raided spanish pearl operation in the sea of cortez----loaded with stolen pearls then 3 spanish galleons gave chase---the dutch ran north into the colorado river at flood stage----into the river they sailed----and the spanish merely waited for them to come back out-----the colorado river had flooded into the salton sea---the dutch sailed in and around the sea looking for the exit--and the river changed course leaving them stranded---dutch sailors buried the loot--abandoned the ship--with pockets full of pearls they walked to los angeles and sought jobs on other ships there---the fortune was never found----early setlers reported the abandoned ship aground in the drying sea--people stole wood off the boat for houses--fire wood and such---that ship disappeared----that story one of the top ten lost treasure stories in america.....
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Doc Rock
6/2/2019 12:32:40 am
I think that is a different spin on the old tale of a Spanish pearling expedition ship that ended up in the desert.
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robert gordon
6/2/2019 11:29:16 am
if you google salton sea you will notice the sea currently is below sea level---and they say the colorado river has filled it during flood stage for eons of time-----when full the salton sea is fresh water---also when the spanish controlled california the climate was sub tropical--the effect of a full salton sea---think of chicago with lake effect snow----the last time the colorado river flooded to an extent to enter the salton sea was 1905--there might be a picture of it---in 1920 california had a referenum to refill the drying salton sea because scientists knew it had an effect on the regions rainfall----the effort failed because of efforts by people that owned the rivers water rights and that 10,000 people would have to be relocated.....and the spanish were not on an expedition---they discovered the indians were pearling in the sea of cortez---the spanish enslaved the indians and put them in full production--------the dutch pirates were expecting to hit spanish gold with their attack----they were surprised it was pearls which also had value-------the pearl fishery died out from over fishing and they believe now a virus was the result.......
Doc Rock
6/2/2019 01:18:48 pm
Robert,
Charles Verrastro
6/2/2019 10:53:44 am
I love the way these shows build to such a feverish pitch every time they turn over a shovel of dirt, then get tired and frustrated and give up and move on to the next "find".
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Jim
6/2/2019 12:09:45 pm
It's certainly all scripted fakeness. As I noted in a post above, they also go the other direction and have people fake ignorance.
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Kent
6/2/2019 12:29:51 pm
Think about those shots on American Pickers where the pickers knock on the door and the camera is shooting from INSIDE the house.
Doc Rock
6/2/2019 03:02:51 pm
All these shows are scripted and at least a bit contrived. Some are really scripted and contrived. Just imagine if Scott Wolter did an appearance on Pickers.
Jim
6/2/2019 09:27:45 pm
Doc,
Doc Rock
6/2/2019 11:03:41 pm
Go for it. Trying to have an intelligent conversation with the likes of Wolter is like stopping and trying to reason with the crazy homeless guy on the street corner who is raving about the underground alien lizard people who use mind control to rule the US.
Kent
6/2/2019 06:54:41 pm
I note that Mr. Wolter is getting an Anthony Warren* amount of pushback on his silly unbelievable claims over on his blog.
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Jim
6/2/2019 09:55:19 pm
I submitted a few facts, but it looks like he won't publish my comment.
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Kent
6/3/2019 07:02:09 am
Jim,
Joe Scales
6/3/2019 10:07:47 am
Now he's back clinging to Alice Kehoe; a woman whose advice he roundly ignored in crafting his fraudulent history. A woman who scrubbed him from her follow-up book in regard to the Kensington Rune Stone and publicly berated the History Channel for its Templar nonsense.
Jim
6/3/2019 12:25:51 pm
Joe:
Joe Scales
6/3/2019 09:07:39 pm
Oh, it gets better Jim. Wolter is still sticking with his dumb-ass Mustang Mountain imbecility, insisting "the runic inscription is 13th-14th Century". This despite Henrik Williams finding the guy responsible. Still alive, even.
Poodleshooter
6/2/2019 08:19:01 pm
GEORGE: So, what's happening with the TV show? You come up with anything?
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Richard Rogers
6/3/2019 10:47:14 pm
Jason, You are such a skeptic and don't know the facts. Aren't you aware by the time of the Vikings that the aliens had completed their transnational landing strip, which we know today as I-70? If the Vikings put wheels on their boats and used the batteries that they confiscated in their conquest of Baghdad to power the motors attached to the wheels, they would have had no problem getting a boat to the Southwest.
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Jim
6/4/2019 09:10:31 pm
This guys sketch (page 213) really takes the wind out of Wolter's "sail'.
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12/30/2019 07:58:48 pm
Greetings,
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Anne Ashera
5/2/2024 02:48:40 am
Well, let's be honest. You appear like a vole with a complex and Scott Wolter has fame. Your opinions are simply that, opinions. You are not even educated enough to understand the country you live in and why it is here. You will figure it out eventually, but until then, you stand on your soap box ( because I recognize you likely need the height) and lick your wounds that the best you have is a silly little blog. Awww the cries of the over educated in mythology. They never could hold a real job so they wail at others while sitting around thinking too much and getting angrier and angrier. One step from mommy's basement. It is written all over your web pages. It is pretty clear the kinds of peple academia has turned out so I would not be too proud of any letters behind your name. The curtain has been pulled and we see you.
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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