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Scott Wolter and the Sinclair Family

3/13/2013

31 Comments

 
There’s an old saying in journalism, “follow the money.” In the case of the weird world of Scott Wolter and America Unearthed (hereafter AU), we’re going to follow the hidden connections between Scott Wolter and the people who directly benefit from his claims. It’s complicated, but I’m going to try to make what follows as simple as possible. The story is still a convoluted mess, but here goes nothing.

Regular readers will recall that Scott Wolter has made not infrequent mention of the Saint Clair/Sinclair family, a Scottish aristocratic family or French Norman descent best known today for being involved with the building of Rosslyn Chapel (the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew), the supposed connecting point between the Knights Templar, the Freemasons, and the Holy Grail. In AU episode 11, Wolter sought out Rosslyn Chapel because he believed a stonemason’s mark found within was related to the “hooked x” rune found on the Kensington Rune Stone, even though the two symbols are completely different. This chapel was constructed by William Sinclair, the first earl of Caithness, and an alleged Templar/Mason conspirator.

The family originated as the lords of Saint-Clair, and they came from Normandy with William the Conqueror in 1066. Two members of the family are listed in William’s famous Domesday Book. In 1068, William of Saint-Clair moved to Scotland and became the baron of Roslin (hence, later, Rosslyn Chapel). In the thirteenth-century Scottish-Norwegian War, the Saint-Clairs, now called the Sinclairs, helped repel the Norwegian invasion. A century afterward, in 1379, Sir Henry Sinclair, Admiral of Scotland, was made Earl of Orkney by the King of Norway. The family lost the Orkney earldom under James III of Scotland, but picked up one in Caithness. Sir Henry Sinclair’s grandson was the William Sinclair who built Rosslyn Chapel.

This is important because in 1784 the debt-ridden Johann Reinhold Forster, a German from a dispossessed Scottish noble family, identified Henry Sinclair as Prince Zichmni, a fictional character in the Renaissance-era hoax narrative of the Zeno Brothers’ voyage into the Atlantic in the years around 1380. His claim, obviously, had an emotional pull, especially since it served to show up the German-descended royal family of England, who had brought Scotland into political union with England in 1707, not to mention England in general, the ancient enemy of Scotland who were responsible for dispossessing Forster's lordly forebears. Forster saw specific place names in the Zeno narrative as being similar enough to place names in and around Orkney to justify identifying the fictional island of Zichmni with Orkney, and the word “Zichmni” as a corruption of “Sinclair.” Here’s how he explained it in a footnote:

Though this Friesland, together with Porland and Sorany, appear to be countries which have been swallowed up by the sea in consequence of earthquakes and other great revolutions in the above-mentioned element, yet I cannot help communicating in this place a conjecture, which has struck me whilst I was employed on this subject. Precisely in this same year 1379, Hakon, King of Norway, invested with the Orkneys, a person of the name of Henry Sinclair, who was one of the descendants in the female line from the ancient Earls of Orkney. This name of Sinclair appears to me to be expressed by the word Zichmni. The appellation of Faira, North Fara, South Fara, or Fara’s Land, have probably given rise to that of Friesland. Porland must be the Fara Islands (the Far-ver, or Farland) and Sorany is the Soderoe, or Soreona; i. e. the western islands. Add to this, that the names of the Shetland Islands correspond with many of those conquered by Zichmni in Estland: Bras is indubitably Brassa Sound, Talas appears to be Yell, or Zeal, Broas is Brassa, Iscant is Uuft, Trans is probably Trondra, and still more similitudes of this kind affording yet greater foundation for these conjectures. Nay, the amazing quantity of fish that was caught yearly off the Orkneys, or, according to Zeno’s account, off Friesland, and with which Flanders, Britania, England, Scotland, Norway, and Denmark were supplied, and the inhabitants of Friesland greatly enriched, relates doubtless to the herrings that are caught here every year in great abundance. Iceland was too powerful for Sinclair (or Zichmni) to conquer. Nicolo Zeno visited likewise East Greenland. But Estatiland and Drogio, which were discovered afterwards, appear to be some country that lies to the southward of Old Greenland. Perhaps Newfoundland, or Winland, where some Normans had settled previous to this, who likewise, in all probability, had brought with them from Europe the Latin books which were at this time in the King’s library there.

Source: Johann Reinhold Forster, History of the Voyages and Discoveries Made in the North (London: 1786), 181.

The English translator of the Zeno narrative, Richard Henry Major, picked up Forster’s suggestion and made it the centerpiece of his explanatory essay prefacing his influential translation. (In fact, the preface is five times the length of the translation, making the book rather a pseudo-historical argument with an appended translation.) He claimed that Zichmni’s Porlanda must have been the Pentland Firth astride Orkney, conflated with the land by ignorant Italians (who nevertheless correctly named every other island). His claim was that the Italians had such poor handwriting that confusion over spelling yielded all the variant names in the text. He also pleaded that the Zeno narrative had been significantly rewritten by its later editor, thus accounting for the otherwise unbridgeable differences between the life of Henry Sinclair and Prince Zichmni—special pleading that also sapped away any reason to accept any part of the Zeno narrative as real.

As I have previously discussed, the Zeno narrative is a hoax. The Nicolò Zeno mentioned above can be traced in Venetian records long past his “death” in the narrative; he and his brother were otherwise occupied during the years they supposedly ventured to Orkney. But I don’t ask anyone to take my word for things. I’ve posted a complete translation of the Zeno narrative on my website so you can read the original text and see if you find support in it for the identification of Zichmni with Henry Sinclair. A more troubling problem is that the Zeno narrative, if taken at face value, describes Zichmni’s voyage to Greenland and founding of a colony there, not in America. Worse, the text says Zichmni stayed in Greenland, but the real Sinclair was in Norway in 1379, Orkney in 1380, and back in Norway in 1389.

Based on Forster’s conjecture that Zichmni reached Vinland, later writers took this to mean that Henry Sinclair must have visited America in 1389. Because in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Vinland was assumed to have been New England—because scholars weren’t aware of climate change and did not know grapes could grow much farther north during the Medieval Warm Period—the secondary literature began referring to Henry Sinclair as having traveled to New England in 1389.

Writers like Christopher Knight—the writing partner of America Unearthed guest Alan Butler (both of whom tried to sue me for reviewing their book about how an Atlantis-like culture encoded secret math into stone monuments)—claimed that Henry Sinclair was a member of the Knights Templar, an order disbanded half a century before Sinclair’s birth. Worse, the Sinclair family is on record as having testified against the Templars at their trial in 1309, clear evidence they were not of the order. The only actual connection is that the Scotland’s first Grand Master of Masons, William St. Clair, shared a name with the noble Sinclairs. He was made Grand Master in 1736, having been a freemason for less than one year. An apocryphal history was concocted from spare parts by mythologizing masons retroactively making the Sinclair family the “protector” of masons since the 1440s, but this rested on nothing more than Sir David Brewster’s assertion in Lawless’s History of Freemasonry (1804) that it was so, which even in the nineteenth century was recognized to be a fabrication.

Why is any of this important?

It’s important because the two strands of Henry Sinclair claims combined to produce a narrative that regular readers will remember from AU episode 12: That the Templars came to New England and built the Newport Tower. The only connection between the Tower and the Templars is the fictitious voyage of Henry Sinclair, without which none of this speculation could exist.

Now here’s where the connection to Wolter really starts to come in.

There is a group of American descendants of the Sinclair family, calling themselves the Clan Sinclair U.S.A., who organize Sinclair-themed events in America. Among the American Sinclairs is a Steve St. Clair, who runs the St. Clair DNA Project. He believes that the Sinclairs came to America in the Middle Ages and bequeathed their very special Scottish DNA to Native Americans, whom he tests to “prove” that they have Scottish ancestry.

Since beginning this DNA study, I've had no choice but to focus on the study of Native populations, on finding better ways to analyze the Jarl [Earl] Henry St. Clair story, on the mystery of the Newport Tower, on the crusades, on ancient navigation, on population statistics, on heraldry, and more. One result of this focus was the Atlantic Conference of August 2008, described as ‘the definitive gathering of world experts on early trans-Atlantic voyaging.’ Clearly this is an area that affects the history of our family, but I wanted to approach it from a more scientific perspective, examining the actual proofs and reasonable likelihoods that such voyaging was possible. This was not a ‘Prince Henry’ conference but, rather, a scientific gathering sponsored by a family that has a great interest in the subject as a whole. (Source)

Now, guess whom Steve St. Clair invited to the Atlantic Conference of 2008, and whose research he helped to support? Yes, Scott Wolter. Wolter presented a paper at the 2008 conference on the “hooked X” and its alleged connections to the Templars—and thus to Henry Sinclair. The two became close: The next year they appeared together on Coast to Coast A.M. (August 9, 2009) to promote the Committee Films production Holy Grail in America, airing on the History Channel that year, and to lay out the “evidence” that Henry Sinclair sailed to America, built the Newport Tower, and returned to Scotland to bequeath the secret to his grandson, who built Rosslyn Chapel. (Also: Wolter claimed at the time that the Newport Tower was aligned to the Kensington Rune Stone!) Wolter appeared in Holy Grail in America with Niven Sinclair, another organizer of the Atlantic Conference, and a Scottish adherent to the alternative theories of Henry Sinclair, as well as David Sinclair-Bouschor, a former grand master of Minnesota’s Freemasons. Both were brought into the program because of their connection via the Atlantic Conference to Wolter, whom Committee Films credited in 2008 production documents with proposing the concept for the film. Wolter was described as the “key expert” whose views guided the direction and claims of the film. Holy Grail became the template for America Unearthed. In 2008, producer Maria Awes identified Holy Grail as a pilot for a future series looking for Templar connections.

The Atlantic Conference was designed to explore, and I’ll be blunt, the theory that European people have lived in America since 9000 BCE and engaged in sexual relationships with Native Americans. That’s not me accusing them of racism. That’s what they say on their website, where they write that “Native traditions states…that the populations of Europe and North America are mixed.” To their credit, they also explore the idea that Native people returned the favor and “mixed” with European people in Scandinavia, part of a larger claim that trans-Atlantic contact occurred continuously since deepest prehistory.

Interestingly, the cosponsor of the 2008 Atlantic Conference was Ancient American magazine, the alternative history publication put out by Wayne May, the Mormon hyper-diffusionist, and Frank Joseph, the ex-neo-Nazi convicted child predator. Both work to support Mormon narratives that white Europeans were the original inhabitants of America. This same publication has also published Scott Wolter’s papers on the Bat Creek Stone, the Newport Tower Venus “alignments,” and other related subjects that, of course, all serve as “evidence” for pre-Columbian European colonization of America. The magazine is one of Wolter’s primary outlets for his written work.

Surely, Wolter owes his viewers disclosure about his connections to parties with a financial and personal dedication to proving Sinclair claims. It's a clear and direct bias that has a significant potential affect on Wolter's work. I, frankly, do not quite understand the Sinclair obsession with proving Henry's voyage. My distant family founded the Colavita olive oil and pasta companies, but I don't go around evangelizing for noodles. What is truly astonishing is the way false claims, based on little more than hot air, rattle down the centuries because of individuals' emotional attachment to them.

31 Comments
L Bean
3/13/2013 07:50:19 am

Well, you've thoroughly PWNED AU. What now? ;)

Great blog, Mr Colavito~

Reply
Jason Colavito link
3/13/2013 10:22:33 am

I hope after this week's episode I can go back to writing my usual round up of alien/alternative history material until they start again later this year. I could use the break.

Reply
cora
3/13/2013 10:40:47 am

Some things a shower will not wash off. Thank you for persevering. The more I look at it all (using your excellent articles and links) the more it raises an odoriferous mental cloud and one just wants to step away.

B L
3/13/2013 10:08:26 am

This whole line of discussion has become disturbing to me on many different levels. Is it Wolter's position simply that the Templars under the command of Henry Sinclair came to America before Columbus? Or is it that the Sinclair family has an ownership claim to all of America? Is it that the Sinclair family are direct descendants of Jesus? That Christians should turn away from their churches and hold the Sinclair family up as god-kings of the "new Jerusalem"? If Wolter were able to make a convincingly enough argument, one that I think he completely buys into, then what would the logical conclusion be? Is Wolter the "St. Paul" of the Sinclair church?

Reply
Jason Colavito link
3/13/2013 10:27:59 am

I'm not sure they've thought it through all the way, but the logic is inescapable: If the Rune Stone is a Templar land claim and Henry Sinclair led the Templar charge, then the Sinclairs therefore claim America as the rightful Grail kings.

This isn't the first time something like this happened. When Laurence Gardner investigated the "hidden lineage of Jesus" for his financial backer, Michael Lafosse, the self-styled Prince of Albany, he miraculously came to the conclusion that "Prince" Michael was in fact the last descendant of Christ and the legitimate king of Scotland. Oh, and as Jesus' descendant, that also made him a descendand of the gold-munching, blood-drinking aliens, the Anunnaki.

Reply
Thane
3/13/2013 03:38:33 pm

If you are correct, Jason.. then what?

Lots of people (and their families and clans etc) have claims they have lost for a variety of reasons over time. Other than claiming an imaginary title.....(The Templars no longer exist..and North America has been conquered and reconquered over time)...it's all essentially meaningless.

Well, not entirely, it's will provide fodder more books, "documentaries", series, tourism, fleeting fame.... but nothing that will significantly rewrite history or transfer "ownership" to the "rightful" owners.

So, other than money, what's the point?

Jason Colavito link
3/13/2013 11:27:40 pm

Well, for the "Prince" of Albany, it's about getting recognized as a member of the aristocracy and its attendant privileges. The Sinclairs seem to be in it for pride, I guess. You're right that it's meaningless beyond the damage it does to real history, and the chance that such claims could later be used to for money-making schemes.

Christopher Randolph
3/14/2013 06:48:41 pm

Of course one of the groups of people that lost a land claim would be the Scots in general for Scotland itself. The Scottish crown disappeared even before Scotland's total loss of political independence through Acts of 1706/07.

As mentioned on a related blog post, for the past 3 years or more I've been hounded by people of Scottish descent (interestingly most of them not residents of Scotland itself!) who are infuriated that I've pointed out the simple fact that the Kingdom of Scotland was joined to the Kingdom of England (which had previously swallowed Wales) and therefore lost it's country-hood, becoming a non-officially designated chunk of the resultant UK.

You'd think this would be rote, but there is a group of people that an ex-Provisional IRA friend of mine calls "kilties" who simply refuse to accept the notion of the UK as valid. I'm not talking about for example the Scottish Nationalist Party, at least one member of which has taken my side on internet debates on the issue, pointing out that the state of affairs as I describe it is the reason why there's an SNP to begin with & that's why he's a member. I'm not talking simply about people who wish Scotland to regain independence.

I'm talking about people who will claim in page after page of tortured logic and sketchy references that the UK has never happened, that the UK is not vaild and never was, in the same manner that some Americans will say that they don't owe federal income tax because Ohio wasn't properly a state when it ratified the Income Tax amendment to the US constitution.

No one of English nor Welsh descent has ever bugged me about stating in the same breaths that England and Wales - England in fact more than the other two; they have not even their own extremely limited parliamentary body - similarly ceased being separate countries when the UK was formed.

There's a peculiar cottage industry related to Scottish ancestry that likes to make up their own history, and as I've seen firsthand gets very bent out of shape when confronted with reality. As my degree is in political science (in point of fact I specialized at school in the area of study that takes up questions of comparative political systems) if I mention that or make reference to applied method of working through these questions using UK primary sources, these people get extremely bent out of shape. I'm an elitist, I'm part of some anti-Scottish pro-England conspiracy, or I'm a dupe of it, etc.

Christopher Randolph
3/15/2013 05:25:28 am

I wrote that in the wee hours. Let me explain 'non-officially designated' as I meant it.

There really isn't a word for what the parts of the UK are exactly. The Acts of 1706 and 1707 call Scotland and England (which includes Wales) "Parts." The capitalization is simply because this was written barely in the 18th century and most nouns in the document are capitalized.

For purposes of laws passed before 1966, "England" means "the Kingdom of England" which includes the Principality of Wales. Since 1966, because the Welsh were unhappy with this, the word "England" refers to the non-Welsh portion of the Kingdom of England, the border of which had to be worked out exactly because let's face it it didn't much matter. For many it still doesn't, as England and Wales still share a court system among other things and now laws are still regularly passed which apply to both, now the wording of new laws simply reads "England and Wales" instead of just England, and this is meant to appease the Welsh. Wales (as Scotland) has an extremely limited parliamentary body, with far fewer powers than a US state, and is allowed to pass a few laws on things like bilingual signs.

Scotland has a separate court system, but all of its decisions can be reviewed by the Supreme Court of the UK. Like Wales there's a very tight area it can pass laws in. Even the arrangement of the Scottish Parliament itself is controlled from Westminster, through a UK organ called the Boundary Commission (which could technically if unlikely end the Scottish Parliament at any time!). Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland operate through something like the inverse of the Tenth Amendment in the US, in which there's a short list of things they are allowed to pass laws on, and everything else falls to the UK.

For example there's no such thing as a Scottish driver's license. There's a UK license issued to people who happen to reside in Scotland. One result of this arrangement is that anyone relocating from part of the UK to the other isn't affecting citizenship in any way, rather less affecting residence for most purposes than an American moving from one state to another.

There's no word for what Northern Ireland is as best as I can determine, it's just "Northern Ireland." They two have the very limited parliament, a separate court system reviewable from London, and their parliamentary body HAS been suspended from London and eventually reinstated. While Wales, NI and Scotland are on a short leash, NI is the only actor whose leash has been snapped back.

Wales so lost it's sense of place in 1706/7 that it isn't even mentioned in the Acts and isn't mentioned in the formal name of the UK. From a royalty perspective it's a "Principality."

England interestingly doesn't have an independent parliament or an independent court system. It has a majority in the UK parliament and makes up most of the 'England and Wales' court system and that seems to work for most people, although there is a tiny English independence movement that I didn't know about until I had to start researching everything in detail.

Thus the UK has 4 unequal parts with no consistent nomenclature for them, and one of those parts is for most purposes inside of another one. Try arguing through that logically with fanatics who don't want to believe it - not fun.

cora
3/13/2013 10:35:30 am

Nice job Jason. In efforts such as AE and Mr Walter, one should always follow the money trail. I was thinking the actor's fees covered that aspect. Seems there are hints of a more subtle plan.

Then again, one segment of alt history crowd apparently makes money rather simply from books, magazines,lectures and in my opinion, sometimes, through sales of dubious artifacts. Wolter's association with the conference might have been simply for lecture fees.

As to the Sinclairs, genealogy is rather popular. If they follow the facts and evidence, I think that family will draw the right conclusion.

The Sinclair page sounds reasonable to me. The only fault I see on their part is relying on " the honest group." without vetting those experts.

When it comes to something like faith, or perhaps a potential romantic, family history, people seem to be blinded to normal scientific method. They tend to believe because it supports their need. There are always some very skilled operators around more than willing to take some advantage of the situation.




Reply
StrongStyleFiction link
3/13/2013 11:35:01 am

Okay, here's what I don't get about Scott Wolter and America Unearthed. Let's just go ahead and say that he proves the Welsh, the Scottish or anyone else got to America before Columbus. He keeps saying that would completely rewrite history and change everything. But would it really?

The Vikings got to North America before Columbus, but the exploitation and the widespread knowledge of the New World didn't occur until after Columbus. At most, it would be an interesting footnote, but change little in the bigger picture of American history. Here's my question, would such a discovery even send the shockwaves through the history books that he seems to think it would?

Reply
The Other J.
3/13/2013 02:18:15 pm

I'm with you on this; I'm just not sure what establishing any link between the Sinclairs and Native Americans would get them. It's not like they would have any sort of political claims over any territory today, or even when England and France began colonizing the New World. Besides, before the Revolutionary War, there were already agreed-upon laws about percentages of bloodlines and tribal affiliations, which would legally make any Native American Sinclairs more Native American than Scottish. So are they claiming that their mixing with native tribes gives them privileges that wouldn't be similarly afforded to the native tribes that mixed with them? And would history as we know it and the present that it currently affects be any different than if we learned the Chinese really had arrived on the continent before Columbus ever set sail? Because whether we're talking the Chinese or the Sinclairs, the overall impact amounts to a whole lot of nothing.

I am kind of curious about the line of argument suggesting Europeans were coming here as far back as 9000 BCE. Kind of, but I dred the rabbit hole that argument would seem to lead down. Are they just trying to establish that east-to-west trans-Atlantic travel wasn't that big a deal, or that the bloodline thing goes that far back?

Part of the way the family seems to be clutching at history here reminds me of the decline of the ascendancy class in the British Isles. I know the Anglo-Irish ascendancy best, and one thing that came with their decline was a movement within that class to over-identify with the lost traditions, customs and culture of the island, lost to even most of the Gaelic-speaking outlanders in Munster and Connacht. In short, it was an attempt to remake themselves as more native and original than the aboriginal people, and that led to shedloads of cultural production (Yeats was part of that, and it strongly influenced Bram Stoker -- Dracula is a metonym for fall of the ascendancy, among other things).

Whether it's through the Sinclair family or Middle Americans who, rightly or wrongly, feel dispossessed from their own land, there seems to be a similar attempt to over-identify with the origins of the land in a way that locates themselves as the more original people. In the past, that led to things like the Mormon Church. I'd like to say the contemporary version is just a harmless dalliance because it seems so stupid on its face to many people, but it's coinciding with the wild west of the internet and the ability to turn a buck off it, and my sense is that it may not be as harmless as it seems. These aren't LARPER's or Civil War re-enactors, these are ideology-programmers.

Reply
Thane
3/13/2013 03:32:41 pm

Right, it would add a few more tidbits to history...some additional color...prove that some small groups ranged far and wide but had minimal impact on anything....even if they did intermarry with people from the groups they encountered.

A curiosity.

Christopher Randolph
3/14/2013 06:59:08 pm

Among other things, if you claim that Native Americans are neither native nor American (at this point I feel like I'm writing for a Wayne's World sketch!), and if we claim that northern Europeans are actually part American, we're then getting Europeans off the historical hook for genocide.

Mormons of course have their obvious motivation here, 'proving' the Book of Mormon either correct or at least plausible.

Reply
B L
3/13/2013 02:21:43 pm

Was recently killing time and ran across this Amazon customer review of Wolter's Holy Grail in America show on DVD. It's the one good review of the show. Fans of this blog, please take the time to shake your heads in disbelief at Wolter's rebuttal at the end.

Reply
B L
3/13/2013 02:25:15 pm

Here is the link:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2I4P1K166AW6V/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R2I4P1K166AW6V

Reply
Sean
3/13/2013 04:06:52 pm

Here's that Amazon comment from Scott Wolter:

"This review is a classic example of a person armed with a little bit of knowledge who then thinks they know it all. Mr. Raymond obviously missed the important points of the film; one being the classic history he's reading might not totally accurate.
I really can't take this review seriously..."

And that, boys and girls, is irony.

Reply
Sean
3/13/2013 04:18:14 pm

Here's another Amazon comment thread on a review of Wolter's book in which he argues with a Ph.D. Geologist. Enjoy.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1LR8R024WZH7D/ref=cm_cr_pr_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0878393129&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=#wasThisHelpful

Reply
Gunn Sinclair link
3/13/2013 10:42:26 pm

Stumbling to the fridge in a fog early this morning, I realized that I could start naming some of the stoneholes I've been telling folks about here...kind of like how newly-discovered heavenly bodies are named. What a good reason to re-visit the blog, after all.

So this first one, obviously aged and triangulated, I will dubb the "Jason Colavito Stonehole," because this is the stonehole I've been OCDing him to at least look at and possibly comment on. Obvious to anyone, this stonehole is not perfectly round and modern, though Jason wants to believe it is...for some reason.

http://www.hallmarkemporium.com/id4.html

This next stonehole, to be seen at the link below, I will name the "Scott Wolter Stonehole," because this is the obviously aged and triangulated stonehole I discovered in 2010 that Mr. Wolter told AU was modern, for whatever reason. A slab was cracked off the rock using this stonehole and most likely a medieval plug-and-feathers device.

http://www.hallmarkemporium.com/id19.html

So, again folks, a strange thing is going on here about stoneholes, which cannot be denied. Visitors here like to be evidence-based in their discussions, but when I present evidence, I am thwarted. Are my photos lying? Are the stoneholes aged and not perfectly round? If all these stoneholes stood by themselves (so to speak), it could be more puzzling. But the fact of the matter is that the Kensington Runestone also was found here, as well as many medieval-era iron weapons, and even several Scandinavian-related carvings, such as a drinking horn and table knife, and of course the Copper Harbor Norse-type ship carving. Bottom line: these many stoneholes are actual evidence and can and should be taken in context with all the other medieval oddities found in this area. There are many.

I have been trying to do two things in the past few years:

1. Show that the many stoneholes in this area were not for mooring Viking ships.

2. Show that the Viking period was over by 250 years by the time the Kensington Runestone was carved and left in MN in 1362.

Simple food for thought: If the Viking didn't carve the runestone, who did? We have a few clues to go on, don't we? We know 8 were Gotalanders (Swedes), but who were the other 22 Northmen?

BTW, Gunn Sinclair is only a pen-name. I thought it sounded pretty catchy for a book I wrote. And just for the record, I don't subscribe to any of the holy bloodline nonsense, nor am I a white elitist. I'm a Christian who believes everyone has the same value.

Reply
Tara Jordan
3/13/2013 11:26:55 pm

Too bad for Wolter & his sinister fixation on Templars, there is not a single historical record that documents they ever traveled to America.
I`d go further,anyone who doesnt read & or speak French fluently & pretends to be an "expert" on the subject,is a total wanker.

Reply
C.C.
3/15/2013 03:14:07 am

You got that right,but why bother with such petty details when you can make something up and make a lot of money doing it? The obvious reason these " theories" are out there from Wolter is the $$$$$$.

Reply
CFC
3/14/2013 01:37:59 am

BL and Sean - Many thanks for the links you provided above. I read them carefully. The reviewers were articulate and accurate in their assessments. Wolter's responses were disrespectful and immature.

Reply
The Other J.
3/15/2013 05:23:45 am

Calling it:

We can now start calling Scott Wolter by his new Sinclair title, Sir Wolter Scott.

Reply
Christopher Randolph
3/15/2013 05:35:06 am

Ha! Didn't he write Rob Roy..?

Reply
The Other J.
3/15/2013 10:13:21 am

Ayup. And Ivenhoe.

The Other J.
3/15/2013 10:14:59 am

Ivenhoe = Ivanhoe.

My typing hands aren't working today.

Cathleen Anderson
3/15/2013 07:05:10 pm

Henry Sinclair's trip to America is ficticious. You've already discussed a lot of these points but this guy does a pretty good job too.

http://www.alastairhamilton.com/sinclair.htm

Reply
William M Smith
3/16/2013 05:48:24 am

This show did show the length one will go to make a movie. Put yourself in the shoes of the so called people that made the money pit in Oak Island. (John Wayne and Arrow Flinn). Today we have the H2 and (Steve Sinclair and Scott Wolter). I know both of these men and will tell you a fool is born every day and two to take him. The show stinks like all the others and has produced no facts at all in all the H2 programs presented. I sure hope they do not land a contract with our school system.

Reply
Christopher Knight link
1/16/2014 05:25:36 am

You should really reconsider changing the name if your site to what best describes you and your audience of closet fags....uummmmm lets see.... how about. "Angry Closet Fags Suffering From White Guilt' ? Or how about ' George Constanza Lookalikes Too Arrogant To Admit They're Wrong'?

Reply
Rob Dreiser
2/17/2014 10:19:29 am

Well there certainly has been plenty of Scottish DNA contributed to North American natives. Scots manned most of the Hudson Bay trading posts across the north and were notorious for "marrying into the land" so to speak.

As for this guy, Wolter, a 'forensic geologist' really? He's not even entertaining and he seems to struggle to fill out his show with lame speculation.

Reply
John
3/17/2014 03:39:37 pm

I have been reading Ancient American Magazine for about a year now, and watching Wolter's show. Something had been bothering me about both for a while as I feel they take away from the skill and ingenuity of the indigenous peoples that lived in N. America. I had written a paper on diffusionism in grad school and began to suspect an underlying theme to both the magazine and the show. After looking into it further, my suspicions were correct in the fact that both highly support the foundational beliefs of the Mormon Church...and Frank Joseph (correspondent for the magazine) a whole different can of worms.

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          • 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
        • Isidore of Seville
        • Book of Liang: Fusang
        • Agobard on Magonia
        • 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
        • 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
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • 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
        • 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
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
        • 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
        • 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
        • 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
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • 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
        • 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
        • 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
      • 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
      • James Dean's Scrapbook
      • James Dean's Love Letters
      • The Amazing James Dean Hoax!
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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