The most popular “Native American” documentaries on YouTube utilize AI voices, eclectic film clips and inaccurate information.

Their creators obviously know next to nothing about the subject and none of the images or videos were actually made by the creator.

“Someone” is manipulating the algorithms in YouTube and Google to give such junk prominence on the viewing public’s computer monitors and Smartphones!

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect and City Planner

There is a disturbing trend on the internet. Increasingly, “junk documentaries” filled with junk advertising, are given priority over serious educational documentaries without ads . . . produced by qualified experts on the subject. This smells of the type things that organized crime, cults and extremist political groups have done in the past to manipulate the stock and commodities markets for the benefit of certain groups of investors.

Scamming the public with a “new archaeological discovery” has a long tradition in the United States. The photo above is of ethnologist Mathew Stirling. In 1938, he and his secretary-new wife went on a vacation in southern Mexico. Stirling paid a Mexican photographer to photograph him next to stone sculptures and massive heads, unearthed by Mexican archaeologist, Alfonso Caso.

Once back in Washington, DC at the Smithsonian Institute where Stirling worked, he wrote an article for National Geo, whereby he claimed to have discovered a new civilization, older than the Maya Civilization, which he inaccurately labeled the Olmec Civilization. The Olmecs did not arrive in southern Mexico until around 1100 AD. The photographs within his article inferred that HE had unearthed the large stone sculptures, when in fact, up to that time, Stirling was an ethnologist.

The reality is that Mexican archaeologists had known about this civilization since at least 1911 and had sponsored several international archaeological conferences on the subject prior to the Stirling couple taking their vacation in Mexico. Because the civilization involved SEVERAL ethnic groups, the Mexican archaeologists called it La Cultura Madre (The Mother Culture).

That was the title of the first book, published on this civilization by my fellowship coordinator, Dr. Román Piña Chán. It was republished in English for the 1968 Mexico City Olympics under the title, “The Olmecs.” North American and European visitors wouldn’t have had a clue what “The Mother Culture” was. You ask why?

Stirling did the equivalent of an algorithm by mass-marketing his fake Mexican history via the international subscriptions to National Geographic and Smithsonian Magazines. The primary role of Mexican archaeologists in these archaeological discoveries was erased.

Stirling also created the myth that “Olmec civilization suddenly died and its people disappeared around 500 BC.” The truth is that most of the cultural achievements accredited to the Olmec Civilization occurred after that date . . . and some major cities of this civilization were still thriving when the Spanish arrived.

This myth became an international fact because of Stirling’s mass marketing of his claimed discoveries. Nowadays all of the TV network documentaries . . . and the You Tube junk documentaries replicate that false statement.

How to detect Artificial Intelligence junk documentaries

• The creator of the documentary does not introduce his-or-herself at the beginning, plus provide their educational and professional qualifications for producing the video.

• The creator does not provide proof that he or she has actually been to the Indigenous American site or region being discussed.

• You do not hear the creator’s voice, but instead hear a slick, somewhat monotone, AI Midwestern English voice track . . . or else an AI British accent.

• The entire program consists of 5 to 10 second film clips lifted from earlier TV programs or else images, purchased from from Getty or Shutterstock. (no photos or videos actually made by this documentary’s creator)

• Relevant video clips are interspersed with generic nature scenes that are irrelevant to what is being discussed.

• The video’s discussion of one archaeological site or historical building includes several film clips of archaeologists working at entirely different archaeological sites.

• The video presents radically different interpretations of the past without providing any scientific or visual evidence to support their theories.