The Megan Fox Pseudoarchaeology Show Gets a New Title

You may remember that I wrote back in April of the Travel Channel show expected to debut later this year with Megan Fox as a host. At the time, it was to be a four-episode series originally being promoted with the working title, Mysteries and Myths with Megan Fox.

The new title was recently announced to be, Legends of the Lost with Megan Fox, and we can probably assume she’s still an executive producer. We can also expect that it will probably be dripping with pseudoarchaeology since Fox has been quoted as having little regard for actual archaeologists and scientific rigor:

“History only gives us a one-sided view of the truth. I haven’t spent my entire life building a career in academia so I don’t have to worry about my reputation or being rebuked by my colleagues, which allows me to push back on the status quo. So much of our history needs to be reexamined.” 

–Megan Fox

The titles and dates of each episode according to the Travel Channel are below along with my quick guess for the content:

“Stonehenge: The Healing Stones” Episode 1 12/4/2018
Megan Fox travels to one of the most mysterious archaeological sites in the world to investigate why our ancient ancestors built this enigmatic monument and if the stones themselves possess supernatural powers.

My guess is that she’ll interview some token archaeologists to get the “mainstream” facts about Stonehenge like construction periods for various elements, historic explorations and investigations by people like Aubrey, etc. Then she’ll switch it up and go for the “healing angle” and feature Timothy Darvill. He and the late Geoff Wainwright proposed a few years back that the site wasn’t used as a holy place or calculating dates, but rather a place for people to come and heal.

I won’t be surprised if this episode ends with New Agers getting their heal on

While Darvill and Wainwright proposed that there was an underlying belief in magic, I won’t be surprised if Fox fully invokes the supernatural.

“Viking Women Warriors” Episode 2 12/11/2018
Megan Fox journeys to Scandinavia to investigate a bold new hypothesis that the Vikings, one of the most feared armies of their time, was actually comprised of powerful female warriors.

Viking women? Why not?

I don’t find this to be especially surprising unless she’s going to argue that Scandinavian armies and raiders where all-female as a general rule. There was some evidence recently in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology that a grave previously thought to be that of a Viking male warrior was actually that of a female. A 10th century Irish story talks about Inghen Ruaidh (“Red Girl”), who was a female Viking that invaded Ireland. And there are stories of “shield-maidens” that fought within the Viking ranks.

It’s difficult to say where Fox will go with this one. We’ll have to wait and see. Maybe it’ll be the one or two close-to-truth episodes.

“The Trojan War: Myth or Truth?” Episode 3 12/18/2018
Using one of the greatest Greek legends as her treasure map, Megan Fox examines high-tech data and the latest archaeological finds to finally put this enduring question to bed — Did the infamous Trojan War actually take place?

“Everyone thought Troy was a myth until Schliemann found it!” That’s what just about every Atlantis-believer will bring up at some point or another in any conversation about the historicity of Plato’s fictional account of Atlantis. But has Troy really ever been found? There’s a site that we commonly refer to as “Troy” that Schliemann dug in to originally in the 1860s and 1870s. It was owned, at the time, by Frank Calvert, who initially surveyed the farmland of his family and came across a hill called Hisarlik.

Most archaeologists today recognize that this is the location of the city once known as Troy in the Homeric narratives. Certainly there are levels with artifacts that date to the period. There are some fringe theories about Troy being elsewhere on the Anatolian peninsula (modern Turkey) or even in modern Herzegovina and England! But even though nothing has been found that says “Troy” on a coin or sign, it seems likely that Hisarlik contains Troy within its levels.

The site plan for Hisarlik, a.k.a. Troy

This is another episode I’m really not sure where Fox will go. It will probably depend on how fringe she wants to appear. But I bet a dollar the word “Atlantis” is used.

“America’s Lost Civilization” Episode 4 12/25/2018
New findings suggest humans arrived in America thousands of years earlier than originally claimed and that these first inhabitants may have not been modern humans at all. Megan Fox seeks to find out who — or what — these early settlers really were.

I suspect there’s a reason why this one is last. This is where Fox will probably reach far into the fringe world of pseudoarchaeology. There’s opportunity for her to start with Vikings and move on to Phoenicians and even Egyptians. She could make claims about Polynesians making regular trade to South America. The Kensington Rune Stone, the Ohio Decalogue and Holy Stones, and the Newport Tower could each make an appearance.

The Newark Holy Stones, a faked set of artifacts with a diffusionist mission. Photo courtesy Ohio State University.

But I have a feeling there will be a good bit of time spent on the Cerutti mastodon site where there was that bad archaeology claim for humans 130,000 years ago on the California coast. The drinking-game term to listen for is “Denisovan.” When you hear that, be sure to drink.

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I’ll be sure to watch the episodes and critique them here. I’ll go back and add a link to each of the sections above as I do and see how close my predictions are.

About Carl Feagans 396 Articles
Professional archaeologist that currently works for the United States Forest Service at the Land Between the Lakes Recreation Area in Kentucky and Tennessee. I'm also a 12-year veteran of the U.S. Army and spent another 10 years doing adventure programming with at-risk teens before earning my master's degree at the University of Texas at Arlington.

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