A quest for the Grail

In his brilliant, labyrinthine novel Foucault's Pendulum, about the conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories, Umberto Eco's character Jacopo Belbo is explaining to the main character (Casaubon) the difference between cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics, and explains the last-mentioned as follows:

A lunatic is easily recognized.  He is a moron who doesn't know the ropes.  The moron proves his thesis; he has a logic, however twisted it may be.  The lunatic, on the other hand, doesn't concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits.  For him, everything proves everything else.  The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy.  You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.

I couldn't help but be reminded of this passage when I stumbled across an article in The Birmingham Mail about one David Adkins, a historian (I wasn't able to find out what his credentials are, but the article calls him that, so I'll go with it), who claims that the Shroud of Turin was actually a fourteenth-century tablecloth manufactured in Burton-upon-Trent, in Staffordshire, England.

So far, I sort of went, "Meh."  Back in 2018, scientists did a radiocarbon analysis on the linen cloth and found it dated from some time between 1260 and 1390 C. E., so whatever the Shroud is, it is conclusively not the burial cloth of Jesus.  And I guess it could as well have been manufactured in Staffordshire as anywhere else.

But Adkins wasn't content to walk well-trodden ground and just stop there.  No, he says, the image on the cloth isn't an imprint of the body of Jesus.  That would be silly.

The image is an imprint of the Fisher King.

Those of you who are into the Arthurian legends will undoubtedly know that the Fisher King is supposed to be the last in a long bloodline of custodians of the Holy Grail.  He was named "Anfortas" in Chrétien de Troyes's tale Perceval, written in about 1180, and was a nobly-descended king who had been wounded in the leg or genitals (or both) and left unable to do anything but sit in a boat outside his castle and fish in the river.  He was waiting for someone to heal him, and this was eventually accomplished by (depending on what version you read) either Percival or Galahad.

To be fair to Adkins, he's not claiming that it's an imprint of the body of the actual Fisher King (who, after all, was fictional); he says the Shroud was a linen tablecloth that had been used to wrap around an alabaster carving of the Fisher King, and stored in a cellar, where "the alabaster had reacted with chemicals in the mustiness of the cellar" and created the image.  The bloodstains, he says, were added later by monks to make it look like Jesus's burial shroud.  Conveniently for Adkins, the statue doesn't exist, or at least doesn't any more; he says that when the monks happened upon the idea of creating a fake burial shroud, they destroyed the statue so no one would notice the similarity.

As far as I can tell, his only support for this theory is that the Shroud contains alabaster dust.  "The presence of gypsum in the shroud confirms, in my mind, that the cloth was indeed originally used to wrap up a statue of the Fisher King in Burton-upon-Trent where the minerals alabaster - and particularly gypsum - originate," Adkins says.  "This can be the only explanation for finding it on a shroud."

Always perk your ears up when someone says "this can be the only explanation."  Here, there's another obvious explanation; that lots of Italian churches have marble and alabaster statuary, and the Shroud has been housed in Italian churches at least since the fifteenth century.  Burton-upon-Trent is far from the only place in the world to produce and/or use alabaster.

My curiosity was piqued, however, and I started digging into other claims Adkins had made.  He seems fixated on Burton-upon-Trent for some reason, and I found that he says there are other valuable archaeological finds to be made there.  In particular, he's interested in Sinai Park House, on the grounds of the ruins of Burton Abbey, which -- and apparently geologists have confirmed this is true -- sits on top of labyrinth of natural caverns and tunnels in the limestone bedrock.  These caverns, Adkins says, would be a great place to hide treasure, so down there somewhere are the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant, which were secretly brought to the site and hidden there by...

... wait for it...

... the Templars.

And you thought the final resting place of the Holy Grail was the Castle Aaaaaaaarghhh.  A lot you know.

Specifically, Adkins says the Grail and the Ark were brought to Burton-upon-Trent by Hugues de Payens (1070-1136), founder of the Knights Templar.  The problem with this assertion is there seems to be no particular connection between de Payens and Burton-upon-Trent; de Payens (who was French) did visit England and Scotland in 1128, but focused his attention on starting two Templar houses, one near London and the other in Midlothian, Scotland.

The connection between de Payens and Staffordshire, Adkins says, is via William Paget (1506-1563), a statesman who served under Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary I, amazingly enough outlived all three of them, and died of something besides losing his head.  Adkins claims Paget is a corruption of "de Payens," although they don't sound much alike even if you pronounce "Paget" the French way.  (Genealogists believe that the surname Paget was Norman, and was originally Pachet -- the name of the village in Normandy where they lived.  Certainly makes a lot more sense, linguistically, than it coming from de Payens.)  

In any case, Paget did purchase Burton Abbey in 1539 and then demolish it -- that part is accurate -- but Adkins says this is only explicable if you buy that Paget was looking for buried treasure.

There's that unfortunate word "only," again.  Paget's demolition of Burton Abbey couldn't, for example, be because Paget was working for Henry VIII at the time, and the purchase and destruction of the Abbey happened right in the middle of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, wherein King Henry decided that the Catholic abbots were entirely too Catholic, but mostly too wealthy, and proceeded to pull down most of the monasteries in England and annex the property to the crown.  No, that's just too far-fetched.

Must be Templars and the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant and so forth.

So you can see why I was reminded of the passage from Foucault's Pendulum.  What we have here is an elaborate conclusion about artifacts that are either fakes or simply don't exist, based upon the slimmest of evidential support (none at all, in the case of the Templar treasure underneath Burton Abbey).  I guess it falls into the "no harm if it amuses you" department, but he's got the current owner of Sinai Park House on board, and plans to explore the tunnels thoroughly.

I suppose something might turn up; tunnels are great places to hide things, even if they're not the Holy Grail.  So I wish them luck in their explorations.  And if he does stumble on the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, I'll be happy to eat my words.

But I'm not holding my breath.

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Templar cookie warning

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Nabisco creating a hermetically-sealed, bomb-proof vault on the island of Svalbard, with the sole purpose of storing a stockpile of Oreo cookies.  It's a little odd, but on first glance seems innocent enough; in the case of a global cataclysm, the company wants us still to be able to have tasty snacks to enjoy.

It will not surprise loyal readers of Skeptophilia to find out that there are people who ascribe more sinister motives to the company.  And one guy, in fact, thinks that the Oreo cookie vault is in place because when you eat an Oreo, you are unwittingly swearing allegiance to Our Illuminati Overlords, and the Bad Guys want us to continue being able to do that even if civilization collapses.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Robbgodshaw / Oreo, Vector Oreo, CC BY-SA 3.0]

At least, that is the contention of one Maurice "Moe" Bedard, over at the site Gnostic Warrior.  I looked in vain for any sign that he was joking, but alas, I fear that this guy is 100% serious.  Here's an excerpt from his "About" link on the site:

Let us help you on along your evolving path to enlightenment in order to assist you in connecting with your higher self and who you truly are on the inside.  Our global community is composed of reasonable men, and women of truth who seek to understand the world we live in by seeking the without being trapped by the darkness of lies, conspiracies and the masses who love them. 

Well, that's very nice and all.  But there are a lot of words I could use to describe the cookie claim, and "reasonable" is not one of them.  Here's a bit of it, so you can get the flavor (crunchy and chocolate-y and nice when dipped in milk, of course):

Almost 500 billion have been sold.  In fact, if you were to stretch out all the OREOs ever sold, you could circle the globe with OREO cookies 341 times.  But did any of these billions of people ever notice the hidden Knights Templar symbology etched into a Oreo cookie as they dipped their OREO's in milk; or licked off the white creamy filling from the Cross Pattée emblazoned cookies?

I know I didn't.  He goes on to tell us that the little marks on the cookie's surface are actually crosses and triangles that come right from the symbolism of the Templars.  This immediately brought to mind a quote from Umberto Eco's tour de force novel Foucault's Pendulum, from a conversation in which the two main characters, Casaubon and Belbo, are discussing how to define lunacy:

The lunatic... doesn't concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits.  For him, everything proves everything else.  The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy.  You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.

Which is spot-on.  And as far as the crosses and so forth on the surface of an Oreo, the problem is that any geometrically-patterned surface is going to have triangles and crosses and squares and such.  That's what being "geometrically-patterned" means.  If all of this was Illuminati symbology, then kids in math class would be participating in a cult ritual every time they opened a geometry text.

Then he drops the bombshell on us that even the name "Oreo" is full of secrets:

The etymology of the word OREO gives us two words. Or and Eo.  The Hebrew meaning of the word Or is light, and it can also mean dawn, daylight, early morning, lightning, star, sun, sunlight, and sunshine.  The word Eo has a similar meaning from the Greek word ēōs, meaning dawn. 

In the scriptures, we can then find a reference to fallen angels who are called the watchers, whom I believe are connected etymologically to the word OREO.  For example, the Greek word for watchers is ἐγρήγοροι egrḗgoroi, pl. of egrḗgoros, literally "wakeful".  This Greek word for "Watchers" originates in Daniel 4 where they are mentioned twice in the singular (v. 13, 23), once in the plural (v. 17), of "watchers, holy ones".  Hence, the Templars symbology of the OREO cookie and name are dedicated to the Morning Star, or Dawn Star of the morning.  Another Greek name for the Morning Star is Heosphoros (Greek Ἑωσφόρος Heōsphoros), which means "Dawn-Bringer."

All of this brings up a general rule of thumb, which is "don't fuck with a linguist."  My MA is in historical linguistics, and I can say with some authority that you can not simply subdivide a word any way you want, and then cast around until you find some languages with pieces that fit.  If that's the way etymology worked, then I could take Mr. Bedard's first name, "Maurice" and say that we can split it into "Mau" + "Rice."  From there, it's obvious that it derives from the Egyptian word mau meaning "cat"and the Old English word rice meaning, "strong, powerful, mighty."  So it's clear that Mr. Bedard is actually being controlled telepathically by his cat, who is inducing him to write reams of confusing nonsense so as to mislead us puny humans and keep us subjugated, i.e., bringing our Cat Overlords lots of canned tuna.

Actually, if you're curious, the origin of the name Oreo is unknown; the only idea I've seen that holds any water (besides the most likely explanation, which is that it was simply a short and catchy name), is that it comes from taking the "re" from "cream" and sticking it between two "O"s from chocolate, to make a symbolic sandwich.

In any case, I think you can safely enjoy your Oreos.  No worries that you're accidentally ingesting Templar symbology and an abridged version of the name "Lucifer."  So I'm just going to leave this here, because now I have to go off and investigate the claims of a guy who thinks that John F. Kennedy is still alive, and that he's the Great Beast from the Book of Revelation, and is soon to reveal himself and initiate the End Times.  The guy also thinks that Henry Kissinger is the "Second Beast."  This makes you wonder who the "Third Beast" is, doesn't it?  I'm thinking Mitch McConnell.

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is one that has raised a controversy in the scientific world: Ancient Bones: Unearthing the Astonishing New Story of How We Became Human, by Madeleine Böhme, Rüdiger Braun, and Florian Breier.

It tells the story of a stupendous discovery -- twelve-million-year-old hominin fossils, of a new species christened Danuvius guggenmosi.  The astonishing thing about these fossils is where they were found.  Not in Africa, where previous models had confined all early hominins, but in Germany.

The discovery of Danuvius complicated our own ancestry, and raised a deep and difficult-to-answer question; when and how did we become human?  It's clear that the answer isn't as simple as we thought when the first hominin fossils were uncovered in Olduvai Gorge, and it was believed that if you took all of our millennia of migrations all over the globe and ran them backwards, they all converged on the East African Rift Valley.  That neat solution has come into serious question, and the truth seems to be that like most evolutionary lineages, hominins included multiple branches that moved around, interbred for a while, then went their separate ways, either to thrive or to die out.  The real story is considerably more complicated and fascinating than we'd thought at first, and Danuvius has added another layer to that complexity, bringing up as many questions as it answers.

Ancient Bones is a fascinating read for anyone interested in anthropology, paleontology, or evolutionary biology.  It is sure to be the basis of scientific discussion for the foreseeable future, and to spur more searches for our relatives -- including in places where we didn't think they'd gone.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Templar satellite

It is a never-ending source of amusement to me how easy it is to get the conspiracy theorists' knickers in a twist.

The latest example of this surrounds the launch on January 12 of a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying the top secret NROL-47 satellite.  From this you can see that the phrase "top secret" is a bit misapplied, here, given that everyone up to and including the folks over at Mysterious Universe knows the satellite was launched.

On the other hand, nobody much knows what it does, so the sobriquet is appropriate at least in that sense.  "NRO" stands for "National Reconnaissance Office," which is a branch of the Department of Defense that oversees the network of spy satellites, but other than that, not much is known about it.

So far, no problem, given that the United States launches surveillance satellites pretty much every other week.  But what sets this one apart -- and what has the conspiracy theorists experiencing multiple orgasms -- is the logo for the mission:

Well, to a conspiracy theorist, this is considered tantamount to an admission by the NRO that "we are an arm of the Illuminati."  On the other hand, the slogan, "Mali Nunquam Praevalebunt," is Latin for "Evil Shall Never Prevail," which sounds to my ears like a pretty positive message, for Fiendish Agents of the New World Order.

Maybe they're trying to improve their image.  I dunno.

Paul Seaburn, over at Mysterious Universe, weighs in on the topic:

[T]he logo shows a Knight Templar waving his sword as he battles with a dragon...  Why a Knights Templar symbol and what evil is this high-flying knight being sent to battle?...  Why, if it’s a secret spy satellite, would the NRO call attention to it with the sinister slogan and symbol?  “Evil will never prevail” has obvious biblical connotations — here’s a similar passage in Psalms 21:11: “Though they intended evil against You and devised a plot, They will not succeed.”  Then there’s the Knights Templar – warriors of the Crusades , protectors of the finances of the Catholic Church and possible guardians of the Holy Grail.  Who is the NRO sending this kind of message to? 

The dragon is an obvious symbol of China and that country has been launching spy satellites of its own recently, but so have Russia, Japan and India.  What’s on THEIR mission patches?  Could it mean something else?  Are these nations building a satellite wall against some ‘evil’ dragon flying in from somewhere else?  In the galaxy?  Or beyond?  Why are they calling it “evil”? 

And why in Latin?  Have the powers that be already received an alien message in Latin?

Okay, just hang on a moment.

There are a variety of questions I have about this claim, not the least of which is, "Is your skull filled with cobwebs and dead insects?"  Here are a few that I can think of right off the bat:

1. Are you aware that the fleur-de-lis is not the symbol of the Knights Templar?  The Templars went into battle wearing white with a red cross in the middle.  Some of the members of the Knights Templar who were also French had a fleur-de-lis on their coat-of-arms in addition to the red cross, but the two really weren't interchangeable.  So the knight on the seal doesn't appear to be a Templar.
2. Second, why is "Evil Shall Never Prevail" a "sinister message?"  Would you prefer, "You're Screwed, Evil's Gonna Win?"
3. Third, do you seriously think that the NROL-47 satellite was launched in order to fight dragons?
4. And fourth, that these dragons might be coming from "the galaxy... or beyond?"
5. Last, why the hell would we expect that aliens would speak Latin?  As Eddie Izzard established, speaking Latin didn't work out so well for the Romans trying to fight Hannibal, so it's kind of a stretch to think that an alien race would spend their time teaching their children "Amo, amas, amat" and the proper uses of the dative case.  I can say from personal experience that it's hard enough to get Earth children to study ancient languages, although it did help when I taught a group of students how to say "you have a nice ass" in Ancient Greek.  (And then I taught them how to say "thank you," because obviously, if you have one, you need the other.)

You know, the insignia of this mission makes me wonder if the Department of Defense knew perfectly well what kind of effect this would have on the Alex Joneses and David Ickes of the world, and decided to do it deliberately.  In other words, they're fucking with us.  If this is the case, all I can do is doff my hat in their direction, and bow down to their superior trolling ability.

But even if that's not the case... you people really need to calm down.  Whatever NROL-47 is about, I can pretty much guarantee that it's not a Templar weapon to combat an evil Latin-speaking Chinese dragon from outer space.  Maybe I'm going out on a limb saying this, but I'm feeling strangely confident about it.

Templar cookie warning

With all of the controversy right now over the upcoming presidential election, the conflicts over gun rights and federal land ownership, and the fears over climate change and ecological mismanagement, I'm sure what's in the forefront of your mind right now is:

Am I unwittingly swearing allegiance to the Illuminati every time I eat an Oreo cookie?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

At least, that would be your primary concern if you were one Maurice "Moe" Bedard, over at the site Gnostic Warrior.  I looked in vain for any sign that he was joking, but alas, I fear that this guy is 100% serious.  Here's an excerpt from his "About" link on the site:

Let us help you on along your evolving path to enlightenment in order to assist you in connecting with your higher self and who you truly are on the inside.  Our global community is composed of reasonable men, and women of truth who seek to understand the world we live in by seeking the without being trapped by the darkness of lies, conspiracies and the masses who love them.

 Well, that's very nice and all.  But there are a lot of words I could use to describe the cookie claim, and "reasonable" is not one of them.  Here's a bit of it, so you can get the flavor (crunchy and chocolate-y and nice when dipped in milk, of course!):

Almost 500 billion have been sold. In fact, if you were to stretch out all the OREOs ever sold, you could circle the globe with OREO cookies 341 times.  But did any of these billions of people ever notice the hidden Knights Templar symbology etched into a Oreo cookie as they dipped their OREO's in milk; or licked off the white creamy filling from the Cross Pattée emblazoned cookies?

I know I didn't.   He goes on to tell us that the little marks on the cookie's surface are actually crosses and triangles that come right from the symbolism of the Templars.  The problem is, of course, that any geometrically-patterned surface is going to have triangles and crosses and squares and such.  That's what being "geometrically-patterned" means.  If all of this was Illuminati symbology, then kids in math class would be participating in a cult ritual every time they opened a geometry text.

Then he drops the bombshell on us that even the name "Oreo" is full of secrets:

The etymology of the word OREO gives us two words. Or and Eo.  The Hebrew meaning of the word Or is light, and it can also mean dawn, daylight, early morning, lightning, star, sun, sunlight, and sunshine.  The word Eo has a similar meaning from the Greek word ēōs, meaning dawn. 

In the scriptures, we can then find a reference to fallen angels who are called the watchers, whom I believe are connected etymologically to the word OREO. For example, the Greek word for watchers is ἐγρήγοροι egrḗgoroi, pl. of egrḗgoros, literally "wakeful".  This Greek word for "Watchers" originates in Daniel 4 where they are mentioned twice in the singular (v. 13, 23), once in the plural (v. 17), of "watchers, holy ones".  Hence, the Templars symbology of the OREO cookie and name are dedicated to the Morning Star, or Dawn Star of the morning.  Another Greek name for the Morning Star is Heosphoros (Greek Ἑωσφόρος Heōsphoros), which means "Dawn-Bringer."

Well, at least now we're on solid ground for me; I'm a linguistics geek of long standing, and I can say with some authority that you can not simply subdivide a word any way you want, and then cast around until you find some languages with pieces that fit.  If that's the way etymology worked, then I could take Mr. Bedard's first name, "Maurice" and say that we can split it into "Mau" + "Rice."  From there, it's obvious that it derives from the Egyptian word mau meaning "cat"and the Old English word rice meaning, "strong, powerful, mighty."  So it's clear that Mr. Bedard is actually being controlled telepathically by his cat, who is inducing him to write reams of confusing nonsense so as to mislead us puny humans and keep us subjugated, i.e., bringing our Cat Overlords lots of canned tuna.

Actually, if you're curious, the origin of the name Oreo is unknown; the only idea I've seen that holds any water (besides the most likely explanation, which is that it was simply a short and catchy name), is that it comes from taking the "re" from "cream" and sticking it between two "O"s from chocolate, to make a symbolic sandwich.

In any case, I think you can safely enjoy your Oreos.  No worries that you're accidentally ingesting Templar symbology and an abridged version of the name "Lucifer."  So I'm just going to leave this here, because now I have to go off and investigate the claims of a guy who thinks that John F. Kennedy is still alive, and that he's the Great Beast from the Book of Revelation, and is soon to reveal himself and initiate the End Times.  The guy also thinks that Henry Kissinger is the "Second Beast."  This makes you wonder who the "Third Beast" is, doesn't it?  I'm thinking Ann Coulter.

Runes in Maine

Ready for a convoluted story?

Today's journey is about the twistiest trip through mythology, fakery, and pseudohistory I have ever seen, linking the Vikings, the Templars, 1st century Judea, and a farm in Maine.  It's the story of the Spirit Pond runestones, an alleged pre-Columbian runic inscription that one guy thinks proves that the Native Americans of the northeastern United States are direct descendants of Jesus Christ.

So pop yourself some popcorn, sit back, and let me tell you a tall tale.

In 1971, Walter Elliott, a carpenter from Phippsburg, Maine, claimed that he had found a stone with some odd inscriptions near a place called Spirit Pond.  The inscriptions, he said, looked like Norse runes, so could this possibly be proof that the Norse explorers of the 11th century, especially Leif Eriksson and Thorfinn Karlsefni, had made their way to New England?

Part of the inscription on the Spirit Pond runestone [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The claim came to the attention of Einar Haugen, Harvard University professor of linguistics, and one of the world's experts on Norse runes.  Haugen pronounced the inscription a fake, claiming that the inscription has "a few Norse words in a sea of gibberish."  Specifically, he said that the use of the "hooked X" or "stung A" character (it can be seen in the top right word above, the second character from the right) was inconsistent with verified 11th century Norse inscriptions, and in fact was eerily similar to the inscription on the Kensington runestone, found in Minnesota in 1898, which is universally considered to be a modern fake.

Pretty decisive, no?  But as we've seen over and over, a silly old Ph.D. and professorship in a subject doesn't mean that amateurs can't know more.  So the Spirit Pond stone has gained quite a following amongst the Vikings-in-the-Americas crowd.

And as we've also seen, there is no wild theory that can't be made even more bizarre.

Enter geologist Scott Wolter.  Wolter thinks that the Spirit Pond runestone is a genuine archaeological find, but it doesn't mean what its finder claimed -- that it was proof that Eriksson, Karlsefni, et al. had made it to North America in the 11th century.  He claims that it was brought to what is now Maine in the 14th century...

... by the Knights Templar.

Yes, the Knights Templar, that fertile source of speculation for aficionados of secret societies, which was forcefully disbanded in 1314 and has spawned wacky conspiracy theories ever since.  The Templars ran afoul of the powers-that-be, especially Pope Clement V and King Philip IV of France, mostly because of their money, power, and influence, and Clement and Philip had the leaders arrested on trumped-up charges of sorcery.  (To be fair, some of their rituals were pretty bizarre.)  Templars who weren't willing to confess -- and this included their head, Jacques de Molay -- were burned at the stake.

So, so much for the Templars.  Except for the aforementioned conspiracy theories, of course, which suggest that the main body of the Templars escaped, letting de Molay take the fall (some say de Molay willingly sacrificed himself to let the others get away).  But the question remained; get away to where?

Scott Wolter has the answer.

To Maine, of course.

So they sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to Maine, bringing along Cistercian monks who (for some reason) wrote in Norse runes, and the monks inscribed the Spirit Pond stone.  And Wolter says he knows what the runic inscription means.  Haugen, and other so-called experts, are wrong to say it's gibberish.  The Spirit Pond stone is an incredibly important artifact because it tells how the Templars came to North America, bringing with them the Holy Grail.

And you thought that its final resting place was the "Castle Arrrrggggghhh."

But that's another mistake people make, Wolter said.  The "San Greal" -- Holy Grail -- is actually a mistranscription of "Sang Real" -- meaning "royal blood."  In other words, the bloodline of Jesus.  Which means that the Templars were Jesus's direct descendants.  So they arrived in Maine, carrying the Sang Real, and proceeded to have lots of sex with Native women, meaning that the Native inhabitants of eastern North America are descended from Jesus Christ.

All of this is just jolly news for me, because I am descended through my mom from various members of the Micmac and Maliseet tribes of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.  So here's yet another branch I can add to my family tree.

Of course, the linguistic world isn't paying this much attention, which pisses Wolter right off.  "These archaeologists have all been programmed [to believe the stones are fakes] and they can’t think outside the box," he said.

Well, sorry, Mr. Wolter.  "Decades of scholarly study" does not equal being "programmed," it equals "knowing what you're talking about."  Haugen's work in the field of Norse linguistics is the epitome of careful research and thorough study.  So I'm not ready to jettison his expertise because you'd like the northeastern Natives to be Jesus's great-great-great (etc.) grandchildren.

In any case, I hope you've enjoyed today's journey through time.  It's not bad as fiction; kind of the bastard child of The DaVinci Code and Foucault's Pendulum.  But as a real historical claim, it's a bit of a non-starter.