Colavito, Jason

Jason Colavito is an American sceptic who has written on a number of subjects such as alien gods, ancient Egypt and of course Atlantis^(a). Despite of his scepticism, I have found many of his blogs very interesting, particularly his book critiques, which I have frequently referred to in Atlantipedia (See: Gavin Menzies, Erich von Däniken, Frank Joseph, and John Kinnaman).

However, regarding Plato’s Atlantis, he also wrote ^(d) that “once you start admitting that parts of the story aren’t literally true, there’s nothing to suggest any of it is.” To me, this seems somewhat extreme as Colavito must know that the ancient Greek writers, in conformity with the literary conventions of the day, frequently mixed actual historical details with mythology. Sometimes distinguishing between the two may be difficult, but that does not justify ‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater’.

Two of Colavito’s short books are available as pdf downloads, Mysteries of Ancient America^[1128] and The Origins of the Space Gods^[1129]. His latest offering is The Mound Builder Myth ^[1723], in which he debunks the 19th-century white supremacist attempts to claim that the mounds “as the work of a lost white race of “true” native Americans.”

In spite of being a professional sceptic, Colavito describes Atlantis as a lost continent that is almost certainly fictional.^(b) Colavito’s review^(c) of 2017 is in turn both amusing and depressing, but definitely worth a read.

In August 2021 Colavito published The Legends of the Pyramids ^[1876], which is intended to look at the forgotten part of the story of ancient Egypt – the way people imagined (and outright fabricated) Egyptian history from Alexander’s conquest in 332 BCE down to the present.” Thorwald C. Franke has written a review of this book that includes a few criticisms of the book’s layout and lack of bibliography^(e). However, Franke has also taken issue with Colavito’s references to Atlantis, where he lists a number of errors. However, Franke ends on a fairly positive note suggesting that “if you are interested in the topic, Jason Colavito’s new book is an extremely rich collection of material that you won’t easily find anywhere else. With a healthy scepticism and an interest in doing your own research, your can do a lot with it. Really a lot. However, those who like things to be clear and easy will not be so well served.”

>>During the same year, Franke published a more extensive critique of Colavito’s work^(f), with a particularly interesting review of factual errors in Colavito’s commentaries on the subject of Atlantis over many years. Another of Franke’s complaints is that Colavito has moved towards political bias “It is not a problem to have a political opinion, but you can exaggerate everything. We found that Jason Colavito’s political zeal has become a problem for the quality of his statements concerning science and pseudoscience. The phenomenon is not new, but in recent years it has crossed a threshold: What once was a tolerable peculiarity has become a serious problem now.”<<

^(a) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/index.html

^(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/ufologists-declare-hillary-clinton-the-first-et-candidate-for-president

^(c) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-year-in-review-a-look-back-at-2017-in-fringe-history

^(d) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/a-1917-argument-for-atlantis-in-bronze-age-crete

^(e) Review of: Colavito, The Legends of the Pyramids – Atlantis-Scout

^(f) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis-jason-colavito-engl.htm *