Category: Atlantis

Graham Hancock Defender Claims Proof of the Atlantis Myth's Egyptian Origin

7/18/2024

In a posting on X today, Graham Hancock announced that “archaeologists aren't going to like” a new article Hancock posted to his website, implying that the argument convincingly challenges scholarly views. Written by Manu Seyfzadeh, a dermatologist who hunts for the Atlantean Hall of Records, the article seeks to prove that Plato drew on a genuine ancient Egyptian tradition of Atlantis when he ascribed the allegory of Atlantis to a story the Egyptians told his distant ancestor Solon in the sixth century BCE. However, Seyfzadeh admits to having no training in Classics or Egyptology, and his arguments are rather transparently ignorant of the broader context of Near Eastern cultures.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S19E19 “The Top Ten Mysteries of the Deep”

9/8/2023

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After a week off for the Labor Day holiday, Ancient Aliens returns with … another clip show. I could try to vamp for a paragraph or two about the philosophical background of claims of underwater civilization, draw connections to Atlantis, or even cite the influence of the 1936 Saturday morning movie serial Undersea Kingdom and its vision of subaquatic high technology and a hostile civilization beneath the waves. But I’ve done all of that before, and so has Ancient Aliens, and so did sister show The UnXplained last year in a very similar underwater-themed episode. This clip show contained previously broadcast segments surrounding ten topics vaguely connected by having something to do with water.

Not all of the segments match notes I have made about past episodes. It is possible some might include new talking head clips, or else the excerpts are from minor segments I did not mention in my reviews.

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Graham Hancock Tells Russell Brand Archaeologists "Despise" Ordinary People

1/11/2023

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In case you didn’t see it, Graham Hancock appeared on Russell Brand’s podcast this past week to promote Ancient Apocalypse and to attack archaeologists yet again for being mean to him by asking for evidence for his claims. Hancock looks tired and angry during the interview, and even Brand notes that he seems unduly dejected and downtrodden for a man with one of the world’s most popular streaming nonfiction series.

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This Was the Year That Was: 2022 in Review

12/26/2022

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This year wasn’t quite as bad as 2021, so I can’t be too upset at a year that, if nothing else, did not get appreciably worse. On the other hand, nothing really improved either. Between inflation and further work cuts in my failing industry, it’s been hard. When a prominent astrologer said this year would be the best of my life, I wasn’t sure whether that was a promise or a threat. It’s a good thing astrology is bunk, or else I would be painfully depressed to think this was the best things will ever get.

In a more general sense, this was a year devoted mostly to UFOs, which dominated the paranoid paranormal discourse for the first ten months, until Atlantis made a late run for the crown.

Here, then, is the year that was, edited and condensed from my blog posts and newsletter.

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Review of Netflix's Ancient Apocalypse

11/11/2022

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Graham Hancock has made this show before. Netflix’s Ancient Apocalypse is in substance and style very much like the Channel 4 / TLC series Quest for the Lost Civilization that Hancock made nearly twenty-five years ago, albeit with different archaeological sites. In the intervening decades, all that has really changed is the use of drones for better aerial footage, a lot more dramatic music to paper over gaps in logic, and a growing bitterness behind Hancock’s carefully rehearsed enunciation. Each episode, for example, starts with an angry rant about Hancock’s greatness and his critics’ meanness. He opens time and again with some variation on “many archaeologists hate me” and poses as a truth-teller who will singlehandedly overturn archaeology.

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Review of The UnXplained S04E03: "What Lies Below"

4/11/2022

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Normally I put an episode number here, but the show is listed as both S03E11 and S04E03. History appears to have started a new season last week, but production codes listed the new episodes as a continuation of season 3.

Since I am not a robot, I was not able to review the latest episode of The UnXplained this weekend, but it was certainly a doozy. I hadn’t expected the show to return to the well of lost prehistoric super-civilizations quite so quickly, but here we are again. I guess that explains why William Shatner has been so insistent on battling archaeological criticism on Twitter this past week with petty insults. This time, the Ancient Aliens remix hour in which Shatner presides over recycled material from Prometheus Entertainment’s other nonsense fake science shows goes hunting for lost continents and sunken civilizations. Not a word is spoken about the many hoaxes and frauds that undergird the show’s claims, and if you think anyone involved will so much as whisper that the modern versions of Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu were born in racism and celebrated a white master race that civilized the world, you don’t know how propaganda works.

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Review of "The Empires of Atlantis" by Marco M. Vigato

1/18/2022

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Everything you need to know about The Empires of Atlantis, a new book by Italian Atlantis research Marco Vigato, can be summed up in one of the blurbs that opens the volume. It’s from Frank Joseph, the former head of the American Nazi Party and a convicted child molester, who can nevertheless only bring himself to tepidly praise the author for having a “different perspective.” That anyone thought this endorsement was a good idea tells you exactly how careful and ethical the brain trust behind Bear & Company’s latest foray into recycling Ignatius Donnelly is. (Bear & Company is an imprint of Inner Traditions, the publisher of occult and pseudoscientific books.) Vigato goes on to thank Graham Hancock, the Ancient Origins website, and conspiracy theory podcasts for inspiring and encouraging him.

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Beam Me Up: The Year in Review 2021

12/27/2021

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Writing my annual year in review article used to be amusing, if not actually fun, because there was at least some entertainment value in seeing the wild claims and fantastical speculations that passed for history and science. But each year has been a little darker than the one before, and the job is less an exercise in tut-tutting foolishness than it is a depressing reminder that wealthy and powerful people are pushing conspiracies whose real-life consequences are no longer hypothetical but manifest every day in ways large and small, from the halls of Congress to hospital ICUs.

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Leslie Kean Claims Current UFO News Coverage "Unprecedented"

8/27/2021

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There is no new episode of Ancient Aliens tonight, which is a relief to me, since previous episodes from this season have been nothing but repackaged reruns. It seems that viewers are noticing, since each episode for season seventeen has seen a ratings decline. After hovering around the one million viewer mark, last week’s episode fell to just 810,000 viewers, with only 130,000 in the 18-49 demographic. Slightly more young people actually watched the 12 AM rerun.

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Review of Hunting Atlantis S01E01 "Mystery of the Golden King"

7/21/2021

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The much-delayed premiere of Hunting Atlantis is finally upon us. After the show was quickly pushed from Discovery’s schedule following an online dustup over accusations that racists, colonialists, and imperialists used the Atlantis story to push oppressive agendas (it was, after all, popular with the Nazis), the series debuted at the unusual time of 9:09 PM ET, following an extended edition of the popular series Expedition Unknown, whose padded runtime was intended to boost Atlantis’s debut audience.

The series follows the fabulous European vacation of screenwriter and sci-fi novelist Stel Pavlou and volcanologist Jess Phoenix, neither of whom have any relevant expertise in Classics and therefore approach Atlantis as a historical problem of Copper Age culture rather than a question of Plato’s Classical Greek philosophy. Pavlou operates Atlantipedia, the online encyclopedia of Atlantis speculation. Phoenix is best known as a failed congressional candidate and cable talking head.

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<<Previous

Graham Hancock Defender Claims Proof of the Atlantis Myth's Egyptian Origin

Review of Ancient Aliens S19E19 “The Top Ten Mysteries of the Deep”

Graham Hancock Tells Russell Brand Archaeologists "Despise" Ordinary People

This Was the Year That Was: 2022 in Review

Review of Netflix's Ancient Apocalypse

Review of The UnXplained S04E03: "What Lies Below"

Review of "The Empires of Atlantis" by Marco M. Vigato

Beam Me Up: The Year in Review 2021

Leslie Kean Claims Current UFO News Coverage "Unprecedented"

Review of Hunting Atlantis S01E01 "Mystery of the Golden King"

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