Travel Channel Releases Episode Descriptions for Revived "America Unearthed"

​Graham Hancock’s America Before entered the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list this week at #6. Hancock took to Twitter to congratulate Joe Rogan for driving sales with his three-hour interview of Hancock last week, and he said that the success of the book was a rejoinder to the “mainstream” who preferred to see the book “ignored.” Hancock’s America Before is one of the rare archaeology-theme titles to make the Times’s list, and it is the first book by a major fringe history writer to have cracked the top ten that I can remember seeing in several years.

​As though we didn’t have enough evidence that the media are in the throes of a fringe history revival, the Travel Channel released episode descriptions for the first batch of new episodes of America Unearthed, which will debut at the end of the month. It’s a mixed bag, but there is some good news. The topics, while still more Eurocentric than not, have decidedly fewer Templar conspiracy theories than the three seasons that aired on the H2 channel, and the topics seem designed to steer more toward mainstream topics than the esoteric. The bad news, of course, is that host Scott Wolter will be investigating bullshit claims that have already been debunked many times before.
 
I’ll give you the descriptions straight from Discovery Communications’ press release:

In the premiere episode, “Vikings in the Desert,” premiering Tuesday, May 28 at 10 p.m. ET/PT, Wolter receives a call about alleged Viking artifacts found in the Arizona desert. Using state-of-the-art XRF (X-ray fluorescence) identification technology and insight from a Viking historian, Wolter starts his search in the southwestern desert. From there, new leads take him to California to excavate a supposed buried Viking ship that might have once sailed America’s vast inland sea and to Mexico to examine a petroglyph depicting what could be Viking travelers. The episode produces some unexpected results and opens the door to further expeditions into where the Vikings went and why.
 
“Alien Artifacts” – Premieres Tuesday, June 4 at 10 p.m. ET/PT
Scott Wolter receives artifacts unearthed in central Mexico and is intrigued by the scenes they depict: Mesoamerican people worshipping what can only be described as aliens. After learning they’re over 9,000 years old, Wolter heads to Veracruz, Mexico, to investigate for himself. The hunt leads him into caves with strange inscriptions hinting that an unknown ancient society may have had contact with alien life.
 
“Cave of Secrets” – Premieres Tuesday, June 11 at 10 p.m. ET/PT
Scott Wolter visits a mysterious cave in rural Pennsylvania that made headlines when it was first discovered in the 1980s for reportedly having cultural connections to pre-revolutionary America. Wolter’s investigation leads to the discovery of a strange artifact that may be the remnants of a fraternal society that used the cave for rituals. During his search, he interviews local historians and members of the community, discovering that throughout time, the cave may have been home to some of America’s most important historical events as well.
 
“The Ripper Unmasked” – Premieres Tuesday, June 18 at 10 p.m. ET/PT
The identity of Jack the Ripper has captivated the world for over 100 years. What we know about the infamous killer is that he brutally murdered women with medical precision, wrote taunting letters to the authorities and was able to evade capture. However, shocking new evidence of a potential Freemasonic connection, as well as extensive medical research into a 19th century disease, proves pivotal, launching Scott Wolter on an epic hunt. Wolter wants to prove whether or not Jack the Ripper was actually a famous writer who is still beloved today.

​Ugh.
 
Those with sharp memories will remember that the “Viking ship” in the desert claim appeared in Newsweek in 2017 when the magazine profiled a man described as a working class white man (the article emphasized the racial aspect of fringe history) having a “grievance” against mainstream archaeologists for refusing to believe that a Viking ship is buried in the desert. As I wrote at the time, “According to a guidebook produced by the U.S. government before World War II, the legend of the desert boat was inspired by a real abandoned vessel, built in 1862 for a Colorado river mining company and abandoned in the desert when the cost of transporting it to the Colorado River was too great. Not coincidentally, sightings of the ‘Spanish’ or ‘Viking’ ship began shortly after, in the 1870s.”
 
The episode on aliens seems to be the one per season episode devoted to debunking an obviously false claim to bolster Wolter’s alleged credibility as a straight-shooter.
 
The other two topics don’t interest me at all. Unless Jack the Ripper turns out to be a Templar murdering claimants to the Holy Bloodline’s Magdalene Throne, this seems like another waste of time. Off the top of my head, I’m not sure what Pennsylvania cave is being referred to, but I assume that someone reading this will know. The colonial era isn’t all that exciting for me, so this looks like another snooze, even if it descends into Masonic conspiracies.
 
So we now know the topics for these four episodes plus the Haymarket Riot episode, which total half of the ten-episode season. To judge from these episodes, it looks like the new season is steering away from the paranoid conspiracies of the H2 run toward a more general-interest speculative history closer to the Discovery Communications family of networks’ other documentary and pseudo-documentary series. I’m sure, though, that they’ll find a way to get Templar bloodlines into the show somehow.