It took a few days, but our friend Scott Wolter has decided to weigh in on my conclusion that his new show, Pirate Treasure of the Knights Templar, is the same documentary series condemned by the UN’s culture arm, UNESCO, as unprofessional sensationalism masquerading as research. I was right! The series, which plans to claim that pirate ships found on Madagascar are associated with evidence of a Templar presence, is indeed the same show, and Wolter is very upset about the UN criticizing it. He discussed the issue on his blog Friday night: UNESCO hates Barry Clifford simply because he is the most successful pirate ship discoverer in history. A few months ago they displayed what I consider inexcusable unprofessionalism when they issued a press release filled negative statements about Clifford personally and about his underwater work a month-and-a-half before UNESCO set foot in Madagascar. Note that it was not a press release but a full report that UNESCO released. Wolter reached out to me by email Friday night to express his upset at Wikipedia and to ask whether I am working with his enemies to bias the online encyclopedia against his views. No, I do not concern myself with Wikipedia, though I have in the past corrected a few typos and added a couple of links to English translations of various documents. It appears that Wolter is closing ranks with Clifford and the History Channel in imagining a vast international conspiracy against them. More typically, aggrieved parties accuse UNESCO of anti-Israeli or Eurocentric bias, not bias against pirate ships. The trouble is that while Clifford has found a number of shipwrecks, he has a habit of making grandiose claims about them that the evidence doesn’t support. In 2014, for example, UNESCO sent a team of 12 experts to Haiti to try to confirm Clifford’s claim that he found Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria. “Nails and pins found on-site were those of a more recent ship, being of a copper alloy, while the Santa Maria should have had iron and/or wood fasteners.” They did not simply send an action team to swat down Clifford’s claims out of jealousy and hatred, but rather they investigated only after receiving an official request for assistance from the Haitian Ministry of Culture. A similar process occurred in Madagascar, where Clifford claimed to have found Captain Kidd’s treasure. Madagascar officials requested assistance, and the UNESCO team determined that the “silver” Clifford and the History Channel filmmakers claimed to have found was actually lead and therefore not a piece of the legendary treasure. What’s important to note is that the so-called “Templar treasure” claim of the Wolter-Clifford series includes the assertion that “Billy One-Hand” Condent’s pirate ship Fiery Dragon was also found in Madagascar. Clifford asserts that the Dragon was found near artifacts that show Templar and Masonic symbols. The UNESCO team examined the site where Clifford alleges he found the wrecked ship. They concluded that it was not the Fiery (or, more accurately, Flying) Dragon but was more likely an eighteenth century Asian vessel. Indeed, the analyses show that the possible axial keelson, the frames, the ceiling and both interior and exterior planking are entirely made of teak wood. We can therefore conclude that the ship was not made in a European shipyard, as the teak tree species does not grow in Europe. Teak is indeed a tropical tree found mainly in India, Burma, Laos, on the Philippines and generally in the Asian region. […] No historic sources have been found indicating that a European style ship, built in Asia, was captured on its return to Europe, therefore the STAB team suggests focusing on the identification of this wreck as a non‐European ship. The team suggests that the ship Clifford found was one of Condent’s, just not the one Clifford wants it to be. They believe it may actually have been a known Arab ship he had captured, looted, and sank around 1718-1720. That ship was never recovered, but two Arabic coins were discovered on board the ship Clifford found.
In other words, if UNESCO were actually biased against Clifford for finding ships, they wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of trying to help him out by looking at everything he got right in order to better understand how he came close to being correct. Also, the UNESCO investigation does not directly contradict Clifford’s allegation of Templar-Masonic influence on Madagascar. It’s Clifford’s self-aggrandizement and his growing History Channel conspiracy theories that are undercutting his work. Finally, in case you’re interested, Scott Roberts, John Ward, and Micah Hanks are asking for $50,000 on Go Fund Me to fund their new umbrella organization to “bridge the gap” between mainstream and fringe points of view.
39 Comments
Scarecrow
9/6/2015 11:12:58 am
Oh well, the Templar-Masonic Degree is not that ancient.
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Eric Baker
5/3/2020 03:56:42 am
I dont know if anyone here has tried to pick up an ingot of lead but an ingot of this size you would not be able to pick up with such ease as depicted in the documentary. Not a chance in hell. Lead is extrememly dense and someone of my own stature of 6' 4" and 230lbs has picked up many ingots of lead for machining. Its def not lead.
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Victoria Kresge
1/31/2021 09:15:02 am
Completely agree!
John
9/6/2015 12:50:50 pm
"Wolter reached out to me by email Friday night to express his upset at Wikipedia and to ask whether I am working with his enemies to bias the online encyclopedia against his views."
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Shane Sullivan
9/6/2015 12:50:54 pm
"To be blunt, this is nothing more than personally-driven, negative propaganda on par with another well-known entity that does bias and shoddy work: Wikipedia."
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tm
9/6/2015 01:33:25 pm
I noticed that the History Channel blurb about the show doesn't call Wolter a geologist. It identifies him as a historian. That makes sense in a convoluted way. "Scott Wolter" is to "historian" as "the History Channel" is to "history". Sigh...
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Clete
9/6/2015 01:43:03 pm
It is interesting that the History Channel has done no promotion of this series at all. It is also putting it on late on Saturday night. I mean that is a prime viewing time. It's like the executives of the History Channel are hoping that no one will watch, so it can be replaced by something more watchable, like a show about aliens who crash-land in Alaska, cut down trees, invent trucks to drive the logs to a site where they then put up power lines to small, isolated towns.
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Joe Scales
9/6/2015 09:21:28 pm
The problem with Wolter's new series, is that it's been debunked before it even airs. I can only hope they filmed it before realizing their silver ingot was a hunk of lead.
John
9/6/2015 08:20:20 pm
I just noticed that too. I wonder what Scott's excuse would be if someone questioned him about why is called a "historian." After all, he is according to himself a professional geologist.
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Jose S
9/7/2015 06:12:17 pm
John,
GirlNamedJake
4/21/2016 05:07:50 pm
Y'all are so mean! I LOVE Scott. He's soooo informative. And I learn soooo much from History! I mean, where ELSE would I have learned 'bout Melon Heads or Mermaids or Alien Autopsies or had Rock Hunters turned Templar 'Historians' yap about Pirates in Madagascar!? Sheesh!
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Tony
9/6/2015 01:42:04 pm
"In 2014, for example, UNESCO sent a team of 12 experts to Haiti to try to confirm Clifford’s claim that he found Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria."
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Tony
9/6/2015 01:43:33 pm
Oops, meant to write "considerable expense," not "considerable experience."
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Only Me
9/6/2015 02:30:42 pm
I love how fringe authors/researchers/etc. reflexively try to change the subject from their "work" to the motivations of academia and critics.
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Tony
9/6/2015 03:45:30 pm
"I totally ignore my critics yet spend 99% of my time slamming them" is a classic crank maneuver, along with "someday the phony academics will all bow down to my genius" and "refuting Einstein is easier than clipping my toenails."
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Scarecrow
9/6/2015 05:24:09 pm
Wolter is in perpetual crisis
Kal
9/6/2015 03:35:50 pm
Is it possible SW thinks it is someone other than JC, someone more powerful and who has mad blog skills? Did he call out JC by name? I'm not assuming a side. I just wonder why he would care about JC who has not been on TV as much and isn't really a threat.
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tm
9/6/2015 07:33:03 pm
I think Wolter is very threatened by Jason. Search for "Scott Wolter" on both Google and Bing and look where Jason's blog appears in the results.
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Scotty Roberts' Doppleganger
9/6/2015 07:57:23 pm
So Scotty Roberts and John Ward are at it again are they? Looks like they're out to make the scam a global enterprise. lol
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spookyparadigm
9/6/2015 08:55:45 pm
Ward works with his wife who directs an archaeological project in Egypt, so the archaeologist part is at least not an issue (his degreed background may not resemble that description, but if he's doing significant research/documentation work on the project ...). Sure he offers dowsing classes, promotes mystical/esoteric symposia, champions the Victorian and Edwardian pre-professional practices of the field (see his recent appearance on The Paranormal Podcast) etc., but that doesn't mean he isn't an archaeologist by a broad definition.
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Hypatia
9/7/2015 10:05:16 pm
It's interesting that there was a pirate named John Ward. He was English and active during the late 17th./early 18th. century. There is an old song about him, "Ward the Pirate". You can hear it on YouTube. Could there be a connection to the present day Hohn Ward?
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Scotty Roberts' Doppleganger
9/6/2015 10:24:21 pm
He's a FAKE. FRAUD. Just like you. He's not an archaeologist even in the broadest sense. He's a lacky on his wife's dig who makes grandiose claims.Your comment is like me saying that if I worked in the doctor's office with my wife who is a physician, that somehow makes me a doctor. Its called bullshit in the real world.
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Scott Hamilton
9/6/2015 10:35:12 pm
No, you're a little confused. Doctor is a title granted to someone who has a specific degree. There's is no governing body that grants the title of "archeologist," so anyone can claim to be one. In your doctor's office example, the wife is a doctor and a medical professional, and the husband could claim to the latter but not the former. Archeologist is the equivalent of medical professional, per your example, because so long as you claim the title, there's no governing body to prove you wrong.
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V
9/6/2015 11:52:29 pm
But the husband would still be a fake if what he did at his doctor-wife's office was maintenance and janitorial and he called himself a "medical professional." There are, in fact, certain minimum credentials that you need in order to actually call yourself an archeologist legitimately, just like there are certain credentials you need to call yourself an engineer or a computer programmer or an astrophysicist. None of those fields have active licensing, but you still can't get away with just calling yourself one of those when you can't actually do the job, and especially not just because you work at your wife's business. The dude's an amateur pot-hunter at best, unless he can produce either a bachelor's in archeology or a work history of at least fifteen years of archeological work AND published, peer-reviewed papers in his own name. Until then, he is not legitimately an archeologist, no matter what his wife is.
spooky[paradigm
9/7/2015 08:54:59 am
V, out of curiosity, are those your own personal criteria or are you getting some of that from somewhere else (they seem valid, just curious)? Also how would you take into account CRM/heritage work? Personally, I'd find the bachelor's to be a low entry bar if one wasn't then undertaking any archaeological practice, but a lot of field techs or crew chiefs in the CRM world have a bachelor's or less (never mind the classic case of the long experienced "excavator" in quasi-colonial work who has no formal training but has worked for national or foreign projects in archaeology work rich areas for decades and therefore have large amounts of experience and skill in field work, and yes they absolutely still exist). They aren't writing, but I'd hesitate to exclude them from the descriptor of archaeologist.
John Ward is a fraud
9/7/2015 12:09:23 pm
He also claims to be an anthropologist and Egyptologist. The man is none of the above. He's a scuba diver. Thats it.
John
9/6/2015 11:03:00 pm
I decided to ask Scott why he is called a "historian" on the History Channel website and he gave the following response to me:
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John
9/6/2015 11:37:09 pm
"Anonymous September 6, 2015 at 8:12 PM
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John
9/7/2015 03:16:52 pm
"Anonymous September 6, 2015 at 9:07 PM
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Only Me
9/7/2015 04:49:45 pm
"Having a degree in history makes you an 'historian' or a 'scholar of History' or a 'Professor of History', but that doesn't guarantee competence..."
tm
9/7/2015 01:17:48 am
"What you will learn in this series very few historians know anything about"
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David Bradbury
9/7/2015 08:38:34 am
Does anybody know if this John Ward (from Herefordshire) is a descendant of John Ward FSA, the archaeologist and curator of Cardiff Museum around 1900?
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Scotty Roberts' Doppleganger
9/7/2015 12:12:31 pm
All you need to really know about John Ward is right here:
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judi farjmer
9/19/2015 04:10:46 pm
Stupid show, he never finds anything and knows he won't, just a tease to make a show.
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K.B.
1/11/2016 08:20:07 pm
Did it make anyone else uncomfortable to see BC wandering around the beach, picking up rubble, seeing Masonic and Templar signs in every fragment? Even some of his colleagues looked uncomfortable and in a state of disbelief. It was always only him who descried these fragmentary symbols. My research has focused more on the American Civil War and Vlad III Dracula, and I am not an art historian, but that ivory messiah seemed much later than 12th century, at least 300-400 years. Alas, I did not even finish the third episode. It would seem that SW sees Templar signs in his dreams, and BC, Masonic emblems in the clouds.
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Susan
11/8/2016 12:33:02 pm
Honestly anybody can decide one day to become anything. Scott studied, practiced and clearly has at least somewhat of an understanding about what he's talking about. His show on Netflix clearly is meant to break your boundaries about what you think you know about history. I do wish that they would continue episodes farther and show the struggle of proving these points to the world. He has been cited in many books and papers for his theories, that clearly there is evidence to back up most of. He is clearly on TV so they leave out a lot and make episodes more interesting. He asks a lot of questions so everyone can understand. Clearly they don't show all of the research that goes into things like searching the world for things. When he doesn't know something or needs a second opinion he always gets one. Open your minds a little, you can't actually think we know everything about every even that has taken place on this planet...
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1/17/2017 09:59:01 pm
Regarding Clifford's claim of the Santa Maria, Manuel Rosa, a Columbus historian came right out and claimed Clifford could never have found the Santa Maria because the ship never sank. Columbus left it on shore and lied about the sinking.
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Jacki Williams
12/9/2017 06:15:25 pm
Screw you Unesco. At least they went and looked for something. What did you do but go after them.
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alan
12/26/2019 03:12:30 am
I have always enjoyed when any person that has spent so much time looking for these types of sunken or lost Treasures. The amount of time, money, dedication and effort is amazing. For the few who find a massive treasure, people apparently do not realize how many hours led to nothing but a expense. When people jump on the hate wagon, when the person or team that devotes their life searching and when the world is told they may have found a lost chunk of history, out comes the do nothings, crying, entitled spoiled rotten put zero effort into anything worthless virus's.
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