Faking History

by Jason Colavito

  Thus, when the Byzantine princess Maria Argyropoulina, niece of Emperor Basil II, arrived in Venice in 1004 to marry the son of the Doge and brought with her a case of golden two-pronged forks, which had been in use in Constantinople for more than three centuries, the Venetians threw a fit. The local clergy condemned the fork as decadent and as diabolical—the very instrument of the Devil. When Maria died two years later of plague, the Venetian clergy proclaimed it God’s judgment on the infernal fork. St. Peter Damian preached that a Venetian princess (probably Maria, but perhaps another—she is not named by Peter) died a miserable death because she used “a certain gold prong [a fork] wherewith she actually conveys her food to her mouth, instead of using the fingers God gave her for that purpose.”[475] For the next four or five centuries, Western Europe kept its forks in hiding, using them only in private, though usually because of their association with the “effeminate” Byzantine Greeks than a fear of God. Medieval texts and woodcuts demonstrate that forks were used in private homes, despite clerical and political feelings. In 1573 the Holy Inquisition investigated Paolo Veronese’s depiction of buffoons in his Last Supper, and they specifically asked why he showed an apostle picking his teeth with a fork.[476] He was forced to rename the painting The Feast in the House of Levi to keep his fork and his buffoons.

  “God protect me from forks!” Martin Luther is said to have exclaimed in 1518 (or 1515), although this quotation is almost certainly a modern fake.[477] Protestant clerics would preach against diabolical forks down to the end of the Thirty Years’ War, symbols of unholy luxury and Italianate vice. One clergyman complained of using forks “as an insult on Providence, not to touch our meat with our fingers.”[478] Before they rode brooms, European witches were assumed to ride on the large fire-forks used in early baking.

  Catherine d’Medici eventually used a fork, and this vice was used to condemn her as a wicked witch of a foreign interloper in France. The fork, being Italian, was necessarily anti-French, made worse by its association with her son, the rumored homosexual King Henri III, known for his delicacy and effeminacy.[479] Eventually, Charles I of England declared it a useful device and acceptance soon followed. But even then adoption was not universal. In England, for example, the fork did not catch on until the eighteenth century, and even then more conservative types continued to denounce it as a miniature of the Devil’s own utensil, or at the very least, an ungodly luxury. But by then, these critics had begun to believe medieval propaganda true. By the 1850s, the fork had become a standard eating utensil, thanks largely to aristocratic and royal patronage, so much so that by 1850 The Spectator could confidently write that to “eat like a Christian” was to eat with a fork, in contradistinction to the practice of the uncivilized heathens of the East, who still “lift their food with their fingers.”[480] (Imagine what the Victorians would have made of McDonalds!)

  But to add another layer of intrigue to the story, the tale of the devil’s fork was apparently greatly embellished by modern scholars from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century as a way of casting the Middle Ages as a time of religious dogma and superstition.[481] Certainly, there was a symbolic association between the fork and the devil’s bident or trident, but it was apparently the scholars of the modern era who misunderstood the subtle use of demonic symbolism in the Middle Ages as a literal belief in the diabolical origin of the fork. Thus, the fabricated Devil’s fork became established as a fictious “fact” used to damn the Middle Ages as a time of ignorance, a fake history still repeated down to the present. In truth, medieval people associated the fork with foreigners, homosexuals, and women; the demonic aspect flowed from that, visual shorthand akin to drawing devil horns on the photograph of an unloved politician.

  The entire process of adopting the fork, an instrument now considered a given part of the dinner service, has been colored by early Christians’ decision that the “true” nature of the pagan gods was that they were demons and devils, and therefore later political and social critics were able to project religious ire as well as political opprobrium upon the fork due to its chance resemblance to the pagan/diabolical bident. Had this imagery not existed, Maria and Catherine would have been (and were) condemned on other grounds, but the fact remains: an “alternative” theory about the true nature of the ancient gods as demons impacted European dining for eight centuries. What effects would accidentally arise should we, with equally poor evidence, proclaim the gods were actually Atlanteans or aliens?

  50. Final Thoughts: The Sameness of It All

  There are so many interesting things to explore about the past, so much exciting and fascinating history, that the so-called “mysteries” of the ancient astronaut theorists and alternative historians pale in comparison. And yet, what is that we see on television, find on bookstore shelves, and stumble across on nearly every website? Aliens, Atlantis, Chupacabra, “new” chronologies, Phoenician world travelers, prehistoric nuclear bombs, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

  It’s tiresome, really. The false mysteries of fake history haven’t changed more than an iota in more than one hundred and fifty years. Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882) set the stage for “alternative” history (though it was not the first of its genre, only the most popular), and his work is a veritable buffet of scholarship compared to the imperfect carbon copies that followed during the twentieth century. All of the basic arguments later used by Erich von Däniken in the 1970s, David Hatcher Childress in the 1980s, Graham Hancock in the 1990s, and Ancient Aliens today can be found in Donnelly’s book. Most of the later versions are unchanged from their first presentation: that pyramids on both sides of the world are evidence of a common source; that the use of heavy blocks implies a centralized prehistoric civilization of superior organization and power; that similarities in myth speak to a common origin in real life history.

  Science has demonstrated the falsity of these claims—the impossibility of a sunken continent existing in the Atlantic; the wild dissimilarities in composition, purpose, and date of the Old and New World pyramids; the elaborate evolutionary tree of Indo-European myth and other myth cycles that explains so many similarities and coincidences.

  And yet… No matter how much work archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, history, biology, and every other discipline put in to explaining the human past, “alternative” theories never change. Sure, some may argue for Atlantis and others for aliens, or even an unidentified “lost” civilization in Antarctica or on the parts of continents sunken at the end of the Ice Age, but the claims and the evidence and the reasoning are always the same. They are immune to criticism. True believers will never surrender their beliefs because they are not founded on evidence.

  How else can we explain why “alternative” authors still rely on sources that were out of date when Donnelly used them in 1882? How else can we explain why “alternative” authors repeat the same discredited lies over and over again? Arguments that were speculative in the 1860s do not become suddenly true against facts simply by virtue of age.

  In 1882, Nature wrote that Donnelly made a mockery of the scientific sources he tried to marshal to his cause: “Our only reason for noticing this curious book is that the names of writers of authority which constantly appear in its pages may lead some readers astray. But the author, while quoting them, has neither assimilated their method nor understood the bearing of their facts.”[482] This situation has not changed with the likes of von Däniken, Childress, et al., who ape the language of science and its pretentions without caring a whit for its methods or its reasoning.

  The saddest thing is that a century from now, those who truly care about history will still be fighting the same battles against the same purveyors of false history. And I’ll be willing to bet the fight will still be over the same “evidence” that Donnelly used in 1882.

  About the Author

  Jason Colavito is an author and editor based in Albany, NY. His books include The Cult of Alien Gods: H. P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial P
op Culture (Prometheus, 2005), Cthulhu in World Mythology (Atomic Overmind, 2013), and others. His research has been featured on the History Channel, and he has consulted on and provided research assistance for programs on the National Geographic Channel (US and UK), the History Channel, and more. Colavito is internationally recognized by scholars, literary theorists, and scientists for his pioneering work exploring the connections between science, pseudoscience, and speculative fiction. His investigations examine the way human beings create and employ the supernatural to alter and understand our reality and our world.

  Visit his website at http://www.JasonColavito.com and follow him on Twitter @JasonColavito.

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  [1] Strabo, Geography, 11.13-14; Justin, Epitome, 42.2-3.

  [2] Justin, Epitome, 42.3; Strabo, Geography, 11.14.

  [3] Journal of the Senate, Dec. 7, 1830, 24.

  [4] Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1882).

  [5] Francisco López de Gómara, Historia general de las Indias, adapted from the translation appearing in Richard Eden, The First Three English Books on America (?1511-1555 A.D.), ed. Edward Arber (Westminster: Archibald Constable and Co., 1895), 347.

  [6] In Fingerprints of the Gods (New York: Crown, 1995) and Heaven’s Mirror: The Quest for the Lost Civilization (New York: Crown, 1998).

  [7] Fingerprints, 45, 105. The white skin of the lost civilization’s inhabitants is mentioned twelve times in Fingerprints.

  [8] In From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (New York: Harper Collins, 2000).

  [9] In 1421: The Year China Discovered America (Harper Perennial, 2004).

  [10] Charles G. Leland, Fusang: Or, the Discovery of America by Chinese Buddhist Priests in the Fifth Century (London: Trübner & Co., 1875).

  [11] The conservative Jewish scholar Richard Freund, for example, has employed pseudoscientific methods to appropriate Atlantis as the Biblical kingdom of Tarshish in order to “prove” the Bible’s King Solomon narrative true, a theory he shared in the 2011 National Geographic Channel documentary Finding Atlantis. (See Chapter 41.)

  [12] The Chinese National Science and Technology Department staged an exhibition in Beijing in July 2012 endorsing supposedly 100-million-year-old extraterrestrial jade sculptures. See Yin Yeping, “Unraveling the X-Files,” Global Times (China), June 25, 2012 and “Carved ‘Aliens’ in Ancient Times,” People’s Daily Online, July 18, 2012.

  [13] See A. D. Dikaryov, “Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) in Ancient China,” Narody Azii i Afriki, July-August 1989.

  [14] See James A. Herrick, Scientific Mythologies (InterVarsity, 2008), 49, 67.

  [15] Jacques Bergier, Extraterrestrial Visitation from Prehistoric Times to the Present (New York: Regnery, 1973), 133.

  [16] U.S. Moscow embassy airgram to U.S. Dept. of State, “Flying Saucers Are a Myth,” February 20, 1968.

  [17] The simultaneous return of religious conservatism can also be attributed to many of the same forces arising from a crisis of confidence in the secular culture of the 1960s and 1970s, and sparked, in part, by popular culture, particularly the movie version of The Exorcist (1973). See Michael W. Cuneo, American Exorcism (New York: Broadway Books, 2001).

  [18] As he put it, “There’s no reason to say Jesus came from space.” (Erich von Däniken, interview with Timothy Ferris, Playboy, August 1974, 151.)

  [19] “Pop Theology: Those Gods from Outer Space,” Time, September 5, 1969.

  [20] Erich von Däniken to Gerald Ford, January 8, 1976. This extraordinary document is housed in the National Archives in College Park, Maryland but was released upon my request, and I have posted it on my website, JasonColavito.com.

  [21] See Erich von Däniken, Twilight of the Gods (Pompton Plains, NJ: New Page Books, 2009).

  [22] See my “Golden Fleeced: The Misuse of the Argonaut Myth in Robert Temple’s Sirius Mystery,” eSkeptic, May 2010.

  [23] See Walter E. A. Van Beek, “Dogon Restudied: A Field Evaluation of the Work of Marcel Griaule,” Current Anthropology 32 (1992): p. 139-167.

  [24] Robert Temple, The Sirius Mystery: New Scientific Evidence of Alien Contact 5,000 Years Ago (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1998), 7-10; Robert Temple, “Who Was Moses,” New Dawn, special issue 8, Winter 2009, 53.

  [25] “Aliens and the Undead,” Ancient Aliens, History Channel, October 26, 2011.

  [26] “The Doomsday Prophesies,” Ancient Aliens, H2, February 17, 2012.

  [27] “Aliens and Mega-Disasters,” Ancient Aliens, H2, March 2, 2012.

  [28] This article contains some material that originally appeared in “Charioteer of the Gods,” Skeptic 10.4 (2004). This version first ran in Dark Lore 7 (Daily Grail, 2012).

  [29] Kenneth L. Feder, “Skeptics, Fence-Sitters, and True Believers: Student Acceptance of an Improbable Prehistory,” in Garrett G. Fagan (ed.), Archaeological Fantasies (New York: Routledge, 2006), 78.

  [30] H. P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu,” in The Fiction (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2008), 367.

  [31] H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness, in The Fiction, 769.

  [32] Ibid., 771.

  [33] Helena Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2: Anthropogenesis (Point Loma, California: The Aryan Theosophical Press, 1917), 115.

  [34] W. Scott-Elliot, The Lost Lemuria (London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1904), 34-44.

  [35] Ibid., 36.

  [36] Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1919), 66.

  [37] Ibid., 118, 124, 164.

  [38] Ibid., 164.

  [39] Scott Roxborough, “Ridley Scott, Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace Tease ‘Prometheus’ at CineEurope,” The Hollywood Reporter [online], June 28, 2011.

  [40] Jason Colavito, The Cult of Alien Gods: H. P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop Culture (Prometheus, 2005).

  [41] Richard L. Tierney, “Cthulhu in Mesoamerica,” Crypt of Cthulhu no. 9 (1981).

  [42] Robert M. Price and Charles Garofalo, “Chariots of the Old Ones?”, in Robert M. Price (ed.), Black, Forbidden Things: Cryptical Secrets from the “Crypt of Cthulhu” (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1992), 86-87.

  [43] Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians, trans. Rollo Myers (New York: Stein and Day, 1964), 104.

  [44] Jacques Bergier, Extraterrestrial Visitations from Prehistoric Times to the Present (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1973), 8.

  [45] Ibid., 67.

  [46] Ibid., 86

  [47] Ibid., 95-96.

  [48] Ibid., 29, 34.

  [49] H. P. Lovecraft, The Fiction, ed. S. T. Joshi (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2008), 1009, 1010.

  [50] Lawrence Wright, “The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology,” The New Yorker, February 14, 2011.

  [51] Religious Technology Center v. F.A.C.T.Net, Inc., et al. 95-B-2143. US District Court, 1995.

  [52] “OT-III Scholarship Page,” Operation Clambake [online]; Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (Michael Joseph, 1987), 206.

  [53] “OT-III Scholarship Page.”

  [54] H. P. Lovecraft, The Fiction, ed. S. T. Joshi (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2008), 366.

  [55] David G. Bromley, and Mitchell L. Bracey, Jr., “The Church of Scientology: A Quasi-Religion,” in Sects, Cults, and Spiritual Communities: A Sociological Analysis, edited by William W. Zellner and Marc Petrowsky (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), 144.

  [56] “The Golden Age,” The L. Ron Hubbard Site [online], Church of Scientology, 2004.

  [57] Lovecraft, 354.

  [58] “L. Ron Hubbard,” Secret Lives, Channel 4 (UK), (November 19, 1997).

  [59] Martin Gardner, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1957), 272.

  [60] George Malko, Scientology: The Now Religion (New York: Delacorte Press, 1970), 39.

  [61] Mikael Rothstein, “‘His Name Was Xenu…He Used Renegades.’: Aspects of Scientology’s Founding Myth,” in S
cientology, ed. James R. Lewis (New York: Oxford, 2009), 369.

  [62] Letter to William Frederick Anger, August 14, 1934; reproduced at “Quotes about the Necronomicon from Lovecraft’s Letters,” HPLovecraft.com [online], April 13, 2004.

  [63] L. Ron. Hubbard, audio recording of “Class VIII Course, Lecture #10, Assists,” October 3, 1968, “Hubbard Audio Collection,” Operation Clambake [online].

  [64] Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah, 112-130.

  [65] Published online by DragonKey Press in October 2004 and later republished as an eBook in 2011.

  [66] Rod Serling, foreword to In Search of Ancient Mysteries, by Alan Landsburg and Sally Landsburg (New York: Bantam, 1973), viii-ix.

  [67] Guilelmi Neubrigensis, Historia, sive Chronica Rerum Anglicarum, Oxon. 1719, lib. i. c. 27. (Keightley’s note.)

  [68] Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, new edition (London: H. G. Bohn, 1850), 281-283.

  [69] Lord Raglan, The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth and Drama (Mineola, New York: Dover, 2003).

  [70] John Boardman, The Archaeology of Nostalgia: How the Greeks Re-Created Their Mythical Past (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002).

  [71] Adrienne Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

  [72] Acts 19:35

  [73] Plutarch, Greek Questions 45

  [74] Arrianus, Alexandri anabasis 1.11.7-8

  [75] Iliad 10:260-5. “Meriones found a bow and quiver for Ulysses, and on his head he set a leathern helmet that was lined with a strong plaiting of leathern thongs, while on the outside it was thickly studded with boar's teeth, well and skilfully set into it; next the head there was an inner lining of felt” (translated by Samuel Butler).