The Mutual Reinforcement of Dubious Templar Documents; Plus: Travel Channel Teases Megan Fox's "Legends of the Lost"

​With the recent publication of alleged journals written by Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney in the late 1300s, it was only natural that Sinclair conspiracy theorist Scott F. Wolter would attempt to fold them into a unified conspiracy theory with the other dubious evidence he has used to support the imaginary idea that the Knights Templar brought the secret descendants of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene to North America  in the Middle Ages and set up an enlightened goddess-worshiping society based on the principles of Freemasonry. In a new blog post he does just that, suggesting that the supposed Cremona Document, which I have previously concluded is almost certainly fake, reinforces the equally dubious Sinclair journals like an ouroboros eating its own tail:

​There have been many times as I have spent time with [Cremona proponent] Don [Ruh], the artifacts, and the documents, that I sat back and marveled in amazement at what has been revealed to me that relates to my previous research and discoveries.  So much of it provides powerful evidence supporting my thesis of multiple pre-Columbian expeditions by the medieval Knights Templar order to North America, both before and after the putdown by Pope Clement V and the King of France in 1307.  Not only does the Cremona Document support that research, but it also introduces twelve new examples of the Hooked X™ symbol that connects directly to the Knights Templar and later traditions that embraced Templar ideology and philosophy.  

​I should be commenting on the ridiculousness of the claims, but I have outline before why the Cremona Document is most likely a hoax, not least in my review of Zena Halpern’s recent effort to prove it true. (See here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.) Since there is little to add here other than a notice that these dubious documents have become self-referential by building on the same hoax claims popularized by Frederick Pohl and Andrew Sinclair, none of which (to the best of my knowledge) existed before 1902, when the first hypothesis of Templars in America—based on bad linguistic claims and racism—saw print. There are not historical facts or ancient truths; it’s just a bunch of hot air built from conspiracy theories cobbled together in large measure in the middle twentieth century.
 
I just want to point out that Wolter has included the trademark symbol after the words “Hooked X,” something I began doing as a way to poke fun at Wolter’s trademark on the words “Hooked X” for “publications, namely, books in the field of historical artifacts.”
 
Having dealt with that, I wanted to note that in less than a month’s time, the Travel Channel will launch its newest assault on science and reason, Legends of the Lost, the new name for the four-part documentary series hosted by noted Ancient Aliens super-fan and popular actress Megan Fox. In anticipation of the show’s Dec. 4 premiere, the Travel Channel has released a listing of the topics Fox will cover, culminating in a depressing Christmas “present” that will sit like a lump of coal in my Christmas stocking. I almost compared it to fruitcake, but I am actually one of the few people who like fruitcake, or at least the homemade quasi-panettone type of it my grandmother used to make. Anyway, here is what we are in for:

Season 1, Episode 1
Stonehenge: The Healing Stones
Megan Fox travels to one of the most mysterious archaeological sites in the world to investigate why our ancient ancestors built this enigmatic monument and if the stones themselves possess supernatural powers.
 
Season 1, Episode 2
Viking Women Warriors
Megan Fox journeys to Scandinavia to investigate a bold new hypothesis that the Vikings, one of the most feared armies of their time, was actually comprised of powerful female warriors.
 
Season 1, Episode 3
The Trojan War: Myth or Truth?
Using one of the greatest Greek legends as her treasure map, Megan Fox examines high-tech data and the latest archaeological finds to finally put this enduring question to bed -- Did the infamous Trojan War actually take place?
 
Season 1, Episode 4
America's Lost Civilization
New findings suggest humans arrived in America thousands of years earlier than originally claimed and that these first inhabitants may have not been modern humans at all. Megan Fox seeks to find out who -- or what -- these early settlers really were.

​The inspirations for these episode topics are rather transparent. Carl Feagans broke it down a bit on his blog, but I will add a few more thoughts. Keeping in mind that the first incarnation of this series was to have been titled Mysteries and Myths, the first episode’s foundation seems to most likely be the claim made by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain around 1136 CE that Stonehenge was used as a magical bath bomb for giants:

They are mystical stones, and of a medicinal virtue. The giants of old brought them from the farthest coasts of Africa, and placed them in Ireland, while they inhabited that country. Their design in this was to make baths in them, when they should be taken with any illness. For their method was to wash the stones, and put their sick into the water, which infallibly cured them. With the like success they cured wounds also, adding only the application of some herbs. There is not a stone there which has not some healing virtue. (8.11, trans. Thompson and Giles)

​It's rather thin gruel to spin an episode around, though it would be remarkably easy to prove or disprove, providing that the British would be open to giving a stone a quick wash.
 
The second episode seems to be a pretty obvious effort to capitalize on the recent claim that a Viking warrior burial belonged to a woman. The weird episode description seems to imply that Fox will claim the Vikings to be Amazons, but I can’t imagine even a looney tunes show from an Ancient Aliens adept would go so far beyond the facts. It would probably not surprise you to learn that in the original promotional materials for the show, this episode was supposed to focus on the Amazons and not the Vikings. This accounts for the confused episode description, and probably some of the content, too.
 
The third episode exists in large measure because of Fox’s interest in the subject matter. Because the original concept for the show—since junked—was for Fox to explore the connection between myth and history, this episode was the one used to plug the series from its first announcement. Ever since Heinrich Schliemann created the myth that he had discovered Troy when no one else believed it possible, Troy has been a touchstone for those who believe that myth contains undigested chunks of real history. The trouble, as I have shown in the past, is that the location of Troy was never unknown. The Romans and medieval people knew it well, and European scholars had already identified the site now considered the remains of Troy decades before Schliemann started digging. He just happened to do so in a brief window when there was a surge of insupportable scholarly opinion that Greek myths were nothing but hot air. More interesting, to my mind, is Martin Nilsson’s work in the 1930s in The Mycenaean Origins of Greek Mythology connecting Greek myths to the geography and political divisions of the Mycenaean world, and predicting—accurately!—where Mycenaean archaeological sites would be discovered based on the appearance in myth of relatively unimportant places that could not otherwise justify their prominence.
 
But it is the fourth episode that raises the most red flags, not least because I have just finished writing a book about the dangerous and long-lasting myth of a “lost race” that preceded Native Americans. The inspiration for the episode is quite obvious, and it is also to be found in Graham Hancock’s similarly themed forthcoming book America Before: the Cerutti mastodon site, which has had made for it the controversial claim—heavily disputed—that an unknown human species butchered the mastodon 130,000 years ago. I have difficulty imagining that the Travel Channel—which recently aired an all but openly racist documentary in which an investigator cried tears of joy because he thought he found evidence of pre-Columbian white colonization of South America—will handle the cultural ramifications of their claims with sensitivity and respect. There is always the possibility of a surprise, but the safe money is on obliviousness.