Faking History

by Jason Colavito

  [262] Proclus, comment on Timaeus 22b; op. cit., 86.

  [263] Greaves, Pyramidographia, 87.

  [264] Ibid., 125.

  [265] Richard A. Proctor and A. Cowper Raynard, Old and New Astronomy (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1892), 23.

  [266] “Proclus informs us that the pyramid terminated at the top in a platform, on which the priests made their celestial observations.” (Richard A. Proctor, The Great Pyramid: Observatory, Tomb, and Temple [London: Chatto & Windus, 1883], 319.)

  [267] Proctor, The Great Pyramid, 143-147.

  [268] John Anthony West, The Traveler’s Key to Ancient Egypt: A Guide to the Sacred Places of Ancient Egypt, new edition (Wheaton, Illinois: Theosophical Publishing House, 1985), 91.

  [269] “… the Grand Gallery looks like part of a machine, whose function is beyond us. This is not a recent observation; the Neoplatonist Proclus draws our attention to this in his fourth century commentary on Plato’s Timaeus.” The authors’ endnote on this passage merely describes the content of the Timaeus. They provide no source for their assertion, though it is obviously Proctor, whose work they discuss immediately following Proclus in the same paragraph. (Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert, The Orion Mystery: Unlocking the Secrets of the Pyramids [New York: Three Rivers Press, 1994], 43.)

  [270] Colin Wilson, From Atlantis to the Sphinx: Recovering the Lost Wisdom of the Ancient World (Boston: Weiser, 2004), 63. His unstated source is obviously Proctor, whose 1883 Great Pyramid is discussed but one sentence later.

  [271] The Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx, English edition, edited by Giovanna Magi (Florence: Casa Editrice Bonechi, 2006), 12.

  [272] Al-Maqrizi, Al-Khitat, chapter 40; my translation.

  [273] Josephus, Antiquities 1.2.3, translated by William Whiston.

  [274] Al-Maqrizi, Al-Khitat, chapter 40; my translation.

  [275] Natural History 36.16.

  [276] Herodotus, Histories 2.124-134; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.63-64.

  [277] Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah, quoted in Al-Maqrizi, Al-Khitat, chapter 40; my translation.

  [278] Manetho, Book 2, as preserved in Syncellus, Chron., 54-59; Eusebius, Chron. 45-47.

  [279] Africanus, as preserved in Syncellus; translated in I. P. Cory, Ancient Fragments, second edition (London: William Pickering, 1832), 102. The 1876 Hodges edition of Ancient Fragments mistranslates the passage and incorrectly asserts that Suphis was “translated to the gods” like Enoch.

  [280] 1 Enoch 90:20-27, translated by R. H. Charles.

  [281] Mythologiae Librem Decem 6.8 (Venice, 1568); my translation.

  [282] Mythologiae Librem Decem 6.8 (Venice, 1581); my translation.

  [283] Winifred Warren Wilson, “Jason as ‘Dolomedes,’” The Classical Review 24 (1910): 180.

  [284] Abbé Banier, The Mythology and Fables of the Ancients, Explain’d from History, vol. 4 (London: 1740), 9, note (a).

  [285] Histories 2.102-111.

  [286] Histories 2.104-105, translated by G. C. Macaulay.

  [287] R. A. Jairazbhoy, “Egyptian Civilization in Colchis on the Black Sea,” in African Presence in Early Asia, eds. Runoko Rashidi and Ivan Van Sertima (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1988), 61-64.

  [288] Quoted in James E. Brunson and Runoko Rashidi, “Sitting at the Feet of a Forerunner: An April 1987 Meeting and Interview with John G. Jackson,” in African Presence in Early Asia, eds. Runoko Rashidi and Ivan Van Sertima (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1988), 198.

  [289] Patrick T. English, “Cushites, Colchians, and Khazars,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 18, no. 1 (1959): 49-53.

  [290] Martin W. Lewis and Kären Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley: University of California, 1997), 257n.66.

  [291] Translated in Francesco Saverio Clavigero, The History of Mexico, vol. 1, translated by Charles Cullen (London: 1787), 466.

  [292] Ivan Van Sertima, They Came before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (New York: Random House Paperbacks, 2003), 173-174.

  [293] Ibid., 181n.99.

  [294] Almagest 3.7.

  [295] Olaf Pedersen and Alexander Jones, A Survey of the Almagest (New York: Springer, 2010), 126-128.

  [296] Van Sertima, They Came before Columbus, 174 (= Clavigero, History of Mexico, 466).

  [297] Van Sertima, They Came before Columbus, 174.

  [298] “The Mexican year began upon the 26th of February…” (Clavigero, History of Mexico, 466 [= Van Sertima, They Came before Columbus, 173]).

  [299] Clavigero, History of Mexico, 466 (= Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus, 173).

  [300] Clavigero, History of Mexico, 466, unquoted by Van Sertima.

  [301] Van Sertima, They Came before Columbus, 175.

  [302] Ivan Van Sertima, They Came before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (New York: Random House Paperbacks, 2003), 161-162.

  [303] Ibid., 162.

  [304] Ibid.

  [305] Gordon F. Ekholm, “Wheeled Toys in Mexico,” American Antiquity 11 (1946): 222-228. Van Serima misspells Ekholm’s name in his sole reference, They Came before Columbus, 179n55.

  [306] Désiré Charnay, Ancient Cities of the New World, translated by J. Gonino and Helen S. Conant (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1887), 174-176.

  [307] Ekholm, “Wheeled Toys,” 223.

  [308] Ibid., 224.

  [309] Ibid.

  [310] Ibid., 225.

  [311] See, for example, Robert H. Lister, “Additional Evidence of Wheeled Toys in Mexico,” American Antiquity 12 (1947), 184-185.

  [312] Pliny the Elder, Natural History 2.67, discussing “certain Indians … sailing from India.”

  [313] Ivan Van Sertima, They Came before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (New York: Random House Paperbacks, 2003), 255.

  [314] Domenico Casella, “La frutta nelle pitture pompeiane,” Pompeiana: Raccolta di Studi per il II Centenario degli Scavi di Pompei, ed. Amadeo Maiuri (Napoli, G. Macchiaroli, 1950), 355-86.

  [315] Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski, Frederick G. Meyer, and Massimo Ricciardi, “Plants: Evidence from Wall Paintings, Mosaics, Sculpture, Plant Remains, Graffiti, Inscriptions, and Ancient Authors,” in The Natural History of Pompeii, eds. Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski and Frederick G. Meyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 81.

  [316] George Carter, “Before Columbus,” The Book of Mormon: The Keystone Scripture, ed. Paul R. Cheesman (Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1988), 151-163; accessed online at BYU Religious Studies Center.

  [317] E. D. Merrill, “The Botany of Cook’s Voyages and Its Unexpected Significance in Relation to Anthropology, Biogeography and History,” Chronica Botanica 14, nos. 5/6 (1954), 367.

  [318] Marc Monnier, The Wonders of Pompeii, English trans., Wonders of Art and Architecture (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1886), 75.

  [319] Roy P. MacKal, A Living Dinosaur: The Search for Mokele-Mbembe (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), 2. MacKal paraphrases the second sentence somewhat for clarity, but his translation does not change the essential meaning.

  [320] Michael Newton, Hidden Animals: A Field Guide to Batsquatch, Chupacabra, and Other Elusive Creatures (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2009), 44.

  [321] Les Missionnaires ont observé, en passant le long d’une forêt, la piste d’un animal qu’ils n’ont pas vu; mais qui doit être monstrueux: les traces de ses griffes s’appercevoient fur la terre, & y formoient une empreinte d’environ trois pieds de circonférence. En observant la disposition de ses pas, on a reconnu qu’il ne couroit pas dans cet endroit de son passage, & qu’il portoit ses pattes à la distance de sept à huit pieds les unes des autres. (Liévin-Bonaventure Proyart, Histoire de Loango, Kakongo, et autres royaumes d’Afrique [Paris, 1776], 38-39).

  [322] MacKal, A Living Dinosaur, 4-5.

  [323] Similarly, Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary of 1755 defined “monstrous” as being “unnatural, shocking.” Both the English and French words were drawing on the older Latin sense
of monstrum, referencing an unnatural birth, a sign from God.

  [324] Benjamin Radford, Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore (University of New Mexico Press, 2011).

  [325] History of Animals 21.2, translated by Richard Cresswell.

  [326] Natural History 10.56, translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley.

  [327] Radford, Tracking the Chupacabra, 4.

  [328] Otto Springer, review of Arv. Tidskrift for nordisk folkminnesforskning, Journal of American Folklore 60 (1947): 431.

  [329] Fasti 6.131ff., translated by James George Frazer.

  [330] Referring to the vampire bat: “At sundown the vampires, bats, and goatsuckers dart from their lonely retreat, and skim along the trees on the river’s bank.” So said Charles Waterton in his 1825 travelogue Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States, and the Antilles in the Years 1812, 1816, 1820, and 1824 (London: B. Fellowes, 1836), 11. The vampire (bat) Waterton refers to derived its name from the preexisting Slavic myth of the (human) vampire; thus, the supernatural vampire, the vampire bat, and the nightjar were all seen as similar bloodsucking nocturnal creatures. Waterton also compares the goatsucker’s plumage to that of the owl, reinforcing their frequent association.

  [331] L.D. Arnett, “The Soul,” American Journal of Psychology 15, no. 2 (1904): 145.

  [332] Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Jealous Potter, trans. Bénédicte Chorier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), chapter 3. Lévi-Strauss also notes that the Spanish for goatsucker was chotacabra.

  [333] Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods (New York: Crown, 1996), 115.

  [334] Ibid.

  [335] Charles Hapgood, Maps of the Ancient Sea-Kings (Stele, Illinois: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1997), 199-200.

  [336] Finding Atlantis, National Geographic Channel (March 13, 2011).

  [337] Simon Winchester, “Swallowed by the Sea,” Newsweek, April 4, 2011 and The Daily Beast [online], March 20, 2011.

  [338] Iliad 10:260-5. See note 6 on p. 63 for text.

  [339] “The wall, which is the only part of the ruins still remaining, is a work of the Cyclopes made of unwrought stones, each stone being so big that a pair of mules could not move the smallest from its place to the slightest degree.” (Pausanias, Description of Greece, 2.25.8, translated by W. H. S. Jones and H. A. Omerod.)

  [340] It was actually a Scot named Charles Maclaren who used Homer and other Greek authors to propose a location for Troy. Schliemann claimed credit for the method when another man, Frank Calvert, made a discovery he attributed to Troy and let Schliemann in on the dig. Schliemann was nothing if not good at self-promotion.

  [341] 2 Chronicles 9:21 (=1 Kings 10:22).

  [342] Jonah 1:3.

  [343] Edward Owen, “Lost City of Atlantis ‘Buried in Spanish Wetlands,’” The Telegraph [online], March 14, 2011.

  [344] Martin Sieff, “Book Review: ‘Atlantis,’” The Washington Times [online], February 25, 2011.

  [345] “Martin Sieff,” The Velikovsky Encyclopedia [online], April 11, 2009.

  [346] Sieff, “Book Review.”

  [347] Ronald H. Fritze, Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-religions (London: Reaktion Books, 2009), 193-201.

  [348] S. A. Paipetis, The Unknown Technology in Homer, History of Mechanism and Machine Science, Vol. 9 (Dordecht: Springer, 2010).

  [349] Ibid., 83.

  [350] Ibid., 46.

  [351] The author is oddly translating ungrammatically a phrase from Odyssey 12.109, which he misidentifies as 7.103-106, in which Circe advises Odysseus, in standard translation, to “drive thy ship past quickly.”

  [352] Ibid., 88.

  [353] Odyssey 7.91ff.

  [354] Paipetis, The Unknown Technology in Homer, 111.

  [355] Odyssey 8.266-366.

  [356] Paipetis, The Unknown Technology in Homer, 104.

  [357] Ibid., 117.

  [358] Odyssey 7.555-563, 13.76-92.

  [359] W. E. A. Van Beek, “Dogon Restudied: A Field Evaluation of the Work of Marcel Griaule,” Current Anthropology 32, no. 2 (1991): 139-167.

  [360] Christopher Penczak, Ascension Magick (Llewellyn Worldwide, 2007); R. M. Decker, 35 Minutes to Mars (Galde Press, 2004); Stephen S. Mehler, The Land of Osiris (Adventures Unlimited, 2002).

  [361] Robert Temple and Olivia Temple, The Sphinx Mystery (Inner Traditions, 2009).

  [362] See bibliography in The Skeptic’s Dictionary entry for the Dogon for a partial list of skeptical critiques and rebuttals.

  [363] Robert Anton Wilson, Right Where You Are Sitting Now: Further Tales of the Illuminati (Ronin Publishing, 1992), 78.

  [364] Judy Kennedy, Beyond the Rainbow: Renewing the Cosmic Connection (Buy Books, 2004), 149.

  [365] Lawrence R. Spenser and Carol Lee South, The Oz Factors: The Wizard of Oz as an Analogy to the Mysteries of Life (Lulu, 1999), n.p.

  [366] The RAS is “open to any person over the age of eighteen” with no formal qualifications or scholarly requirements, and membership does not imply the organization’s official endorsement or support of its members’ views (see “How to Join” at http://www.ras.org.uk/). The same applies to the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, the Egypt Exploration Society, and the Royal Historical Society, all of which Temple listed as affiliations in the 1998 revision of the Sirius Mystery.

  [367] Temple reproduces (reversed) one such image in the 1998 revision of Sirius and identifies the female figure with Medea, despite the obvious armor, aegis, and owl (not, as Temple claims, an oracular dove), Athena’s symbols. He also misidentifies Athena’s Medusa-head breastplate as a “serpent” and her armor as dragon scales. Temple confesses ignorance of the image’s meaning, implying that he neither recalled Graves’s interpretation of this image nor researched the scholarly literature, which had discussed the image since at least the nineteenth century. In another plate (again mirror reversed), he misidentifies a standard scene of Medea magically resurrecting a ram as an alchemical transmutation of a ram into gold and Pelias as Jason, demonstrating his lack of familiarity with the scholarly literature and Greek mythology in general.

  [368] David Sacks, Oswyn Murray, and Margaret Bunson, A Dictionary of the Ancient Greek World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997),125; C. J. Mackie, “The Earliest Jason,” Greece and Rome 48, no. 1 (2001), 1-17. In fact, Iolcus was a Mycenaean center with an extensive shipyard, which is perhaps why the Jason legend begins there.

  [369] Robert Temple, The Sirius Mystery: New Scientific Evidence of Alien Contact 5,000 Years Ago (Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1999), 95-96.

  [370] Ibid., 120.

  [371] Ibid., 154, 156.

  [372] Ibid., 220.

  [373] Ibid., 118-119.

  [374] Steven Jackson, “Apollonius’ Jason: Human Being in an Epic Scenario,” Greece & Rome 39, no. 2 (1992):155-162.

  [375] Mackie, “Earliest Jason,” 2. Mackie informs me that “appeaser” is “a very secondary etymology” that does not appear in the scholarly literature about Jason (personal communication, July 30, 2009).

  [376] Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (New York: Penguin, 1993), 602.

  [377] Ibid., 497.

  [378] Ibid., 451.

  [379] H. J. Rose, Review of The Greek Myths by Robert Graves, The Classical Review 5, no. 2 (1955): 208.

  [380] J. Macpherson, Review of The Greek Myths by Robert Graves Phoenix 21, no. 1 (1958), 17.

  [381] Temple, Sirius Mystery, 146.

  [382] Graves, Greek Myths, 581.

  [383] Patricia Turner and Charles Russell Coulter, Dictionary of Ancient Deities (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 59.

  [384] Cf. the frequent ancient practice of using a round number like 1,000 or 10,000 as a synonym for an uncountable number (as we do with “zillions”), or the frequent appearance of triads and trinities in myth. Some numbers apparently are more poetic than others and need not refer to alien sky science.

  [385] Temple in
cludes these authors in his bibliography, but while his endnotes cite passages from Hesiod and Pindar, these are not passages related to the Argonauts, a striking omission given the admitted centrality of the Argonaut story to The Sirius Mystery. I was unable to find a single direct citation of Apollonius (or Hesiod’s or Pindar’s Jason tales) unmediated through Graves.

  [386] Apollonius, Argonautica 3.956-957; translated by Richard Hunter in Jason and the Golden Fleece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 88.

  [387] Johann Burkhard Mencken, The Charlatanry of the Learned, translated by Francis E. Litz (New York, London, A.A. Knopf, 1937), 82-83.

  [388] A.T. Fomenko and G.V. Nosovskij, “New Chronology and New Concept of the English History: British Empire as a Direct Successor of Byzantine-Roman Empire” [online], 1998, http://lib.ru/FOMENKOAT/engltr.txt

  [389] Ibid.

  [390] Ibid.

  [391] Ibid.

  [392] Ibid.

  [393] Tacitus, Germania 40, calling them “Anglii,” i.e. people of the Angli.

  [394] Fomenko and Nosovskij, “New Chronology.”

  [395] Delamere Resources, “Publisher Announces 10,000 USD Cash Reward.” PR Web [online], January 14, 2004.

  [396] Ibid.

  [397] Gary Kasparov, “Mathematics of the Past,” New Tradition [online], n.d.

  [398] Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods (New York: Crown, 1995), 503-4.

  [399] Gods, Goddesses, and Mythology, vol. 11 (Tarrytown, New York: Marshall Cavendish, 2005), 124 (s.v. “Apocalypse Myths”).

  [400] Bob Frisell, Something in This Book Is True, second ed. (Berkeley: Frog Books, 2003), eBook edition.

  [401] Joey R. Jochmans, Rolling Thunder: The Coming Earth Changes (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Sun Books, 1980), 110-115.

  [402] Frank Waters, The Book of the Hopi (New York: Ballantine, 1963), 408-409.

  [403] Sandra Corcoran, Between the Dark and the Daylight: Awakening to Shamanism (Bloomington, Indiana: Balboa Press, 2012), 84-86.

  [404] Armin W. Geertz, The Invention of Prophecy: Continuity and Meaning in Hopi Indian Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

  [405] Bruce Bradley and Dennis Stanford, “The North Atlantic Ice-Edge Corridor: A Possible Paleolithic Route to the New World,” World Archaeology 36, no. 4 (2004): 459-478.