Graham Hancock: Ancient Astronaut Theory Is a "Cult," Acts Like a "Religion"

9/7/2014

Today I have three brief topics to discuss. One is about ancient astronauts in Malibu, and another is about H. P. Lovecraft, who would probably have found it difficult to invent a story that could make ancient astronauts in Malibu sound remotely plausible, though the famous archaeological ending of Planet of the Apes was shot on its beaches. But so was Gidget. Finally, I’d like to talk a bit about Graham Hancock’s latest interview, in which he endorses the reality of ancient astronauts (sort of) and justifies his continued appearance on Ancient Aliens before stabbing them in the back as a “cult.”

Let’s start with Lovecraft since there is rather little to say.

Alan Moore is working on a new ten-part graphic novel set in the world of the Cthulhu Mythos. To help promote the series, to be called Providence, he recently discussed Lovecraft with Nick Talbot of The Quietus. Moore said that he has shelves filled with Lovecraft criticism, and Moore described using S. T. Joshi’s books on Lovecraft, particularly his philosophical criticism volumes, to develop the series. He then proceeds to regurgitate most of Joshi’s arguments, to which Moore adds practically nothing original. He sees Lovecraft as a provincial figure deeply in love with his hometown’s geography but cognizant of the decentralizing power of relativity and quantum theory and thus sought to balance his beloved local environment with the raging chaos of underlying reality. It was a rather disappointing interview with very little by way of insight.

And if you’re interested in even more insipid commentary, science fiction author Flint Johnson has a blog post on Lovecraft and “Heroic Mythology” that offers nothing about heroic mythology (by which he seems to mean superheroes) and professes to have discovered that Lovecraftian ideas are appearing more frequently in genre dramas, by which he seems to mean references to ancient astronauts. It’s not a good read.

Rise of the Silver Surfer: Ancient Aliens of Malibu
Since the fall of the Mubarak government, Egyptian tourism has been in a tailspin. The Egyptian government reported last month that revenue has fallen by 95% since 2010, down to just $17 million for this year from 2010 figures of $408 million. With fewer Americans queuing up for events like fringe theorist Scott A. Roberts’s conspiracy tour of Egypt, how can fringe figures keep the party going? Answer: Move the aliens and ancient mysteries over here! The Malibu Times reports that Jimmy Church of Dark Matter Radio and UFO writer Robert Stanley have announced that natural standing rock formations near Malibu, California are actually prehistoric monuments built by space aliens, and that geometric blurs on Google Earth images of the ocean off Malibu prove that an underwater alien base allows UFOs to fly through the earth via “portals.”

The so-called alien base is a known geological feature called a thrust fault, according to the Geological Society of America.

Malibu, the Los Angeles county area with the highest percentage of white residents, has been a UFO hotspot for decades but the area’s fringe theory promoters appear to be looking to make up for declining interest in flying saucers by hitching it wagon to the ancient astronaut theory. However, an effort to create an “Alien Woodstock” for the city, one of California’s most affluent, has not yet come to fruition, with major ancient astronaut stars and celebrities declining to confirm appearances at the proposed festival. I can’t imagine that the close proximity of the more established Contact in the Desert festival in nearby Joshua Tree helps matters any.

Graham Hancock and Ancient Aliens
Joshua Tree also hosts the Psyche & Matter Symposium where fringe writer Graham Hancock will soon be speaking about consciousness, hallucinogens, and lost civilizations. (What is it about Joshua Tree?) In anticipation, he gave an interview to Jill V. Mangino for the cover story in OM Times, conveniently divided online into 15 parts to maximize exposure to obtrusive video advertisements. There he endorsed the reality of the space aliens from Ancient Aliens, at least in their “otherworldly beings” / “nonhuman intelligences” form made famous by Phillip Coppens and William Henry:

I’ve got nothing against the entities our species presently calls “aliens”. These entities are real, in my view, although I don’t think we’re anywhere near understanding exactly what they are or where they come from. That being said, though, the fact is that I don’t need “aliens” – whatever they are — to explain any mysteries in our pre-history. Honestly I don’t need a single alien for the great pyramids or the Mayan calendar. I just don’t. What I need is a more advanced level of human civilization in that period than is recognized by historians.

Yes, it’s all about what he “needs”—i.e., what he emotionally desires. (Or, rather, it’s what he “needs” to promote his new book, a sequel to Fingerprints of the Gods.) He also endorsed the idea that Atlantis is a truthful representation of his lost Ice Age civilization, which is a change from the days where he would not speak the A-word. But here’s where it gets interesting, especially when we remember that Hancock has continued to appear on Ancient Aliens as recently as this season:

One of the problems I have with the whole ancient alien lobby is that at one level it operates like a religion or a cult, by which I mean its believers are resistant to, and often get furiously angry about, other possible explanations that challenge their faith. But at another level members of the “ancient astronaut cult” are also crassly materialistic, seeking to reduce everything to a simplistic material reference frame, projecting our present and imagined future levels of technology onto what are in fact deeply mysterious and unexplained phenomena, and sticking their heads in the sand when it comes the implications of the latest research into altered states of consciousness – for example Rick Strassman’s groundbreaking work with DMT and human volunteers. I’m not saying altered states of consciousness explain everything about the UFO/alien phenomenon. I am not saying there are no physical aspects to the UFO/alien phenomenon, because there are. I’m simply saying that if we neglect altered states of consciousness and focus solely on the physical, we will never solve the UFO/alien mystery.

He goes on to attack scientists, too, for also being “of the materialist persuasion” and refusing to endorse the reality of non-material realms. Of course, Hancock also co-wrote The Mars Mystery (1998), which speculated about ancient aliens on the Red Planet and accused NASA of hiding proof of contact.

That said, he hasn’t really been watching the Ancient Aliens shows he appears on, has he? Ancient astronautics has become quasi-theosophical and, aside from die-hards like Giorgio Tsoukalos and Erich von Däniken, largely replaced nuts and bolts spaceships and technology with psychic invasion from parallel dimensions—you know, essentially the same thing Hancock talks about when he claims that while high on ayahuasca he battles demons who intrude into his consciousness.

There you have it, folks: After ufologist Nick Pope condemned the ancient astronaut theory as “borderline racist,” Graham Hancock is now condemning it as a “cult”! Clearly, those whose careers have taken a hit from the return of the ancient astronaut theory and its displacement of nuts and bolts ufology and Atlantis-like lost civilizations on the forefront of fringe culture are starting to strike back.

39 Comments

666

9/7/2014 02:18:49 am

>>>will soon be speaking about consciousness, hallucinogens, and lost civilizations<<<

There are the believers, the religionists, if you like

And then there are the anthropologists - who, hopefully, view and treat things objectively - but this is not guaranteed.

It worries me to see historians and anthropologists interpret poppy heads as pomegranates. Not all of us are offended by the facts.

If the origin of human civilization was kick-started by psychoactive flora, then I want to know about that fact - not to be "protected" from it.

Clint Knapp

9/7/2014 03:41:11 am

This would actually be Moore's third comic foray into the Mythos. 2003's The Courtyard was more or less an X-Files knock-off with a magical bend and a vague plot about a language-drug that makes men see Old Ones.

The Neonomicon, his 2010 attempt, was frankly terrible. It was a riff on The Shadow Over Innsmouth, with more Deep One sex. Full-frontal Deep One penis and ejaculate, even. Moore thought he was revolutionizing the Mythos by putting graphic sex into it where Lovecraft skirted the issue with euphemisms. He was wrong. It's just awful, derivative tripe.

Once upon a time, the man did great work that actually revolutionized the medium. Now he just spits out self-important nonsense like every other "occultist" with his head too far up his own ass and a hard-on for declaring the occulted truth of Lovecraft.

I've heard of the Malibu UFO base quite a bit in the last few months. It's been an interesting phenomenon to watch unfold. It's been everything from a landing platform that sank to an antediluvian temple (complete with Roman columns! Style not specified) built by aliens and abandoned, and finally a real-life UFO base still in operation! And to think; just a few miles off the coast and not all that far down, but no one found it until Google Earth came along.

Not sure there's much to say about Hancock that hasn't been said already, though. The irony of a man who believes in the mystical power of hallucinogens disagreeing with cultic behavior in others is rather amusing, though.

9/7/2014 05:19:33 am

Do Deep Ones have hemipenes?

spookyparadigm

9/7/2014 04:47:55 am

Pope's criticism may be pure sour grapes over sales interest, though it is also a fairly obvious criticism if one isn't invested in the idea, but are still willing to do almost anything for money (which seeing Pope's track record with conventions, video game promotions, etc. ...)

Hancock may be annoyed with having competitors. But I suspect it is more principled for him. He clearly does buy into the drugs=real magic belief (you know what would be amazing: if someone took the logic to the opposite. A movement that believed that if you took valium or a Mad Men-esque diet of martinis or other drugs stereotypically popular with the mid-20th century establishment, you could actually build jet packs and flying cars and such, or it would put you in touch with traditional flying saucers. Sort of like a drug-fueled version of William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum")

In comparison with Hancock's ideas and writing, the AA show is simplistic and stupid, it is aimed at rubes, and its message appeals heavily either to introductory types that believe in nuts and bolts, or to lapsed or searching evangelical Christians (hence the C2C style of populist right-wing American evangelical religiously-informed worldview that can also accommodate AA), who are almost certainly not Hancock's desired audience. Just as with your friend Knowles, Hancock is unhappy that his more storied occult scene is being invaded by idiots. It is the same reaction someone has when they find frat boys playing the smash single from their formerly favorite underground punk band. Or as a geek, what I imagine it must have been like when the rpg Vampire started getting popular, and sending hordes of D&D geeks into goth clubs.

9/7/2014 04:58:45 am

Speaking of, what IS Hancock's desired audience? I mean, who actually reads his books?

9/7/2014 05:35:38 am

I don't know Hancock's material or interviews well enough to really say. What I do know is that he came into this with the solid reputation of a journalist. And while his most famous books have largely regurgitated earlier fringe ideas, it seems to me that he still tries to push for a sophisticated and detached approach, or something resembling one.

I would imagine his desired audience is at most optimistic, intellectuals, and more realistically, the educated middle class. In other words, the classical audience for real archaeology as expressed through popular books. One has to remember that there is a much stronger history of archaeology being consumed by the British public especially, and the European public more broadly, than in America. The reason is fairly obvious, that in Europe archaeology was largely constructed as a search for "us" including its role in nationalism, whereas in the US, once the mound builder myth was destroyed, archaeology was for the most part a search for "them", indigenous people. This is the nasty truth behind the line one often hears that in Europe archaeology is the handmaiden of history, while archaeology falls into anthropology in the US. American archaeologists have often taken that as a positive in terms of being more scientifically oriented than humanities. But the flipside of it is that American archaeology is more inherently colonial. Anyway, for this reason, there is a long history of British archaeologists writing and speaking in a popular way. Leonard Woolley wrote for popular audiences. Mortimer Wheeler was a media darling due to his TV work in the 1950s. The tradition continues to the present, with the strong success of Time Team for years, whereas the very well-meaning American Time Team had to be organized with the SAA, get an NSF grant, and has barely made it into a second season over five years (and this is no criticism of them, they are struggling against a radically different audience). Heritage tourism isn't exactly a winning lottery ticket career in Britain right now, but there is almost nothing comparable in the US that involves archaeology (most of our heritage tourism involves the Civil War or pre-Civil War plantations and similar settings, and to at least some degree has served a nationalism role for Southern identity).

That is, I believe, where he has aimed, and interestingly from the occasional quote I see, he has occasionally had success there. He also embraces elements of the New Age movement with his shift to shamanism etc., though that doesn't easily square with his Fingerprints style writing, though he's managed to merge them somewhat successfully. He still occasionally gets noticed in more serious book reviews and such in a way that Stanton Friedman, Loren Coleman, Lloyd Auerbach, or von Daniken (to take a trip around the fringe-ologies) would not.

But of course, who he has been embraced by especially in the US but also elsewhere, is the occult gutter including fringe political types who blend pseudoscience and conspiracy theory with racial and other radical beliefs, the more ridiculous parts of radical Christianity (as I suggest above), and the dweeb and geek fantasists in the paranormal world of ufos and other "fun"/"spooky" topics (this is where I would make emotional, if not professional, contact).

If you look at the history of pseudoarchaeology, this is not a new phenomenon. Half of it has usually arrived in the form of a book that does aspire to the style or appearance of academic archaeology (archaeologist don't usually write Big Secrets of History single books at aimed the public, but we once did and sometimes still do). These books typically have one major pet theory, often tied to a moralistic crusade, or very heavily tied to the identity of the author. The other half bubbles up from the occult underground, often created by many different hands stealing from each other in the unregulated fringe community, produced via a never-ending stream of low-end media. Ancient Aliens and its sibling/host body ufology are from this world.

9/7/2014 06:01:06 am

I must confess I didn't take into account him being British. I mean, they did give the world Colin WIlson - there is a market for fringe literature that is at least convincingly pretending to be intellectually sophisticated. And I guess if you have enough somewhat educated people who have more leasure than critical capacity, lengthy tomes like his can be explained...

Also, your comments make me wonder how different American archaeology, heritage tourism and the rest of it would be had Native American civilizations produced more lasting artefacts and impressive architecture... Not sure to what extent the situation would have mirrored its Latin American counterptart...

I hope you agree that there's nothing wrong with Big Secrets of History books aimed at the public. I wish more respectable academics would do it. Writing them responsibly seems to be something of a lost art.

9/7/2014 06:16:54 am

Re: popular books. As you will see from a project I'm working on, I agree.

Re: American monuments. Cahokia. Miamisburg. Moundville. Serpent Mound. Chaco Canyon. Mesa Verde. All of these are comparable with Latin American sites. Likewise, SW pottery, Missisippian materials of all sorts. Is it as iconographically complex, or in the quantities as Mesoamerican material? There is a difference, but it is less of one than most people think. But these are not treated like Latin American sites. And in turn, Latin American sites aren't treated like Eurasian sites. They are still "other", still much more likely to be "exotic", to be the home of aliens and such.

I teach 150-200 students each semester. When I ask at the beginning of the semester how many have heard of Cahokia, I would say that outside of my archaeology methods and theory course of 30, maybe 5, and maybe 5 within the course. That's about 3-4% of the general populace attending a four-year college, and maybe 20% of anthropology undergraduates taking a core archaeology course.

Do you think Avebury would get the same blank stares in Britain?

Re: sophisticated occultism. Colin Wilson is an excellent example of what I'm talking about.

9/7/2014 06:35:50 am

I certainly didn't mean to suggest that North America contains no impressive monuments or sophisticated artefacts! However, it takes a certain sophistication (and priorities) to find them as valuable as the remains of Egyptian, Hellenic, Roman, Gothic, or Qin cultures. They are not as striking to the uneducated eye of broadly European heritage. Whoever invaded ancient Egypt or China could be as ruthless as they wanted, but they couldn't pretend that the people they were subjugating were savages.

You keep dropping hints about your project. I wish I could say they are tantalizing, but that would require actual details :)

9/7/2014 07:00:00 am

That's why I'd make the comparison with the megalithic sites of northern Europe. I understand why people see the art and monumental works of state societies differently than those of non-state societies (if you haven't seen them, go and google The Princeton Vase or the murals of Calakmul, which you can follow up by trawling through the Kerr database at FAMSI).

But megalithic sites are comparable to mounds and petroglyphs and other constructions (leaving out the pueblos of the SW for the time being) found throughout North America. And the vast, VAST, majority of Americans is either completely ignorant of them, or believes they were made by Europeans or a lost race of some kind. And for non-indigenous who do actually know what they are, a portion of that audience appropriates them for their own esoteric beliefs (see the folks who shoved small orgone collectors into Serpent Mound two years ago to open a rainbow bridge to another dimension. They said they left hundreds, though talking with some of those involved in the cleanup, luckily they've only found a few so far). This ignorance is partly on purpose. How many people know that major mounds, on the scale of Cahokia, were demolished in St. Louis proper in the early 20th century? What we center at Cahokia was almost certainly part of a larger cluster of powerful institutions or kingdoms or something else we don't entirely understand, in part due to these actions. This is a common story throughout the Midwest.

But even where such places have been protected by parks, how commonly are they visited? Every mound site I've ever visited I've either been there alone (or with people I was accompanying), or a family or two at most were there for a picnic. And this isn't that unusual. Visit Yucatan, and see where the Americans (vs. the Germans etc.) go. It may be Tulum as it is close to Cancun and cruises will easily take you there. But generally, Americans are there solely for Cancun's hotels and bars, whereas if you meet a foreigner away from the coast, unless they are a missionary, they likely aren't American despite the longer distance they've had to travel (I've not had the occasion to run into a Mormon in Mayaland, yet).

New World art, monuments, etc., can easily stand on a pure appreciation level with the Old. But the stories surrounding them are very different. If that wasn't the case, most of what Jason covers on this site wouldn't exist.

9/7/2014 07:17:27 am

"see the folks who shoved small orgone collectors into Serpent Mound two years ago to open a rainbow bridge to another dimension"

This is the worst of your many attempts to drive me to suicide though despair :)

"megalithic sites are comparable to mounds and petroglyphs and other constructions"

I'm sure you mean "comparable" in some suitable sense (as opposed to whatever is going on in the Bosnian pyramid thread...), but certain aesthetic and cognitive orientation is required to compare them in that sense. I guess we are in agreement about it. Moreover, I suspect that my relative willingness to be understanding of people's failure in this regard is helped by not being a professional in the field. But that is not to say that my relative willingness is misguided...

"New World art, monuments, etc., can easily stand on a pure appreciation level with the Old."

This is either trivial (disputes about taste and everything...), or we need to be more precise about conditions under which failure to place them on the same level calls for corrective action.

"If that wasn't the case, most of what Jason covers on this site wouldn't exist."

That sounds like an exaggeration. But I get what you're saying. Of course, if stories told about South Asian religions or Middle Eastern archaeology were different, most of the rest of what Jason writes about would'd exist either...

9/7/2014 07:36:52 am

I mean I can see why someone would be impressed more by the standing ruins of a city of carved masonry, vs. an earthen mound. From a pure "wow" stance, I would not expect people to treat them equally. Never minding aesthetics or taste or anything, there is simply more there, there. Larger societies, typically with greater inequality, concentrated more effort and resource into such things, leaving more material with greater amounts of effort poured into such objects or constructions.

In terms of what is literally left on the surface, as well as to the scale of society and to the amount of energy and effort involved, a megalithic site from northern Europe is more like a mound site in the American Midwest, than either is like Karnak or Copan, large standing masonry collocations covered in writing and iconography.

9/7/2014 07:59:31 am

As for the exaggeration, I don't think it is, really. Pseudoarchaeology and related mysticism largely serves to explain or to exploit wonderous aspects that cannot be directly explained via history. It is the product of the intellectual divide that occurred in the 19th century of prehistory and history. It is another variation on "X in the gaps"

Yes, there is a sort of pseudoarchaeology that does not rely directly on the colonial aspect of prehistory, and that is tribal pseudoarchaeology. Nationalist or religious claims of roots. So yes, without the colonial element, this would still occur in various forms of religious or ethnic archaeology. Biblical archaeology is the best known example, but there are eithers, and Nazi archaeology is the most infamous example of nationalist archaeology but only because the Nazis are the most infamous at, well, everything.

The rest of it, though, derives from the concept of prehistory as a mysterious place. Egypt is a perfect example of this. It was a mystical void, only hinted at, for centuries in the Western imagination. This allowed it to become the seat of magic and forgotten lore, and any other bullshit people wanted to claim was real and needed an ancient justification. Once Egypt began to be known, there was the overlap period of the 19th century where the old mysticism sat uneasily next to the new science, which is why our popular entertainment versions of Egypt focus so much on this period because it makes them interesting (and as per Jason's book, this falls in line with the importance of knowledge in horror stories). Once Egypt starts to get fairly well-understood, and that knowledge gets popularized in the wake of Tut etc., the old mysticism is much harder to support. Oh sure, it is still out there, be it Ancient Aliens or Rosicrucians or what have you. But with the vast amount of information pushed at the public on the topic, a pretender to knowledge can only get a foothold at the edges.

The ripest targets for Magic in The Gaps, if you will, are complex societies that produce impressive visible monuments and other remains that nonetheless fall into the "prehistory" side of things. This is partly dependent on whether there is writing (or very complex iconography). If there is, and it isn't deciphered, that's perfect as it provides a fertile soil, all the rhetorical power of the written word with no falsification. Secondly, if a society is not tied to self-images of the West, it will be considered less historical due to lingering popular linkage of non-white with primitive.

So on this spectrum, the most vulnerable to non-tribal pseudoarchaeology would be societies that have left behind complex monumental structures and artwork, but without a well-understood historical tradition, and whose descendants are ethnically or historically considered distinct from Europeans and their belief in Classical roots in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.

If we go around the world, things shake out this way. What is the number one most popular site for the tv show Ancient Aliens? Pumapunku, aka part of Tiwanaku. It is joined by long skulls from southern Peru, the Nazca lines from southern Peru, and Inka masonry.

There are exceptions (the unusual interest in Baalbek), but most non-tribal pseudoarchaeology exists because there is either a literal historical gap (no writing) or a psychological one (those people aren't part of history).

If for no other reason (and there are plenty), this is why the concept of human prehistory should be retired. It draws far too much on a select pre-professional archaeology understanding of human existence and encourages mystification of select elements of the past that reinforce colonialism.

9/7/2014 08:18:03 am

I think that neither archaeology or pseudoarchaeology was really needed to get the Ancient Astronauts ball rolling. Theosophy-style melting-pot occultism and Jungian association of modern and ancient myths (with direction of explanation reversed) suffice. That isn't to say that archaeology didn't (and doesn't) play a key role as a matter of fact, but we are considering counterfactuals here.

"the Nazis are the most infamous at, well, everything"

It is shocking how many things (and people) get a free pass thanks to the infamy of the Nazis.

"the concept of human prehistory should be retired. It... encourages mystification of select elements of the past that reinforce colonialism."

I'm curious what you make of the concept of protohistory, then. On a related note, it isn't clear to me that the concept of prehistory should be eliminated as opposed to supplemented.

9/7/2014 10:31:16 am

Theosophy arose because of the changing ground of ideas that science was modifying. Hence the importance of a bad version of evolution to Theosophy. Weird notions didn't need science and in this case archaeology, but the ones that emerged did.

I specifically work on what could be considered protohistoric, and the impact written dates has on how material culture is interpreted causes real problems. More than a few "early colonial" components I've seen reported on in Mesoamerica are identified by having the first Spanish material at that site, even though it is a type of material that appeared decades after Cortes. And yet the previous layer will be considered purely pre-Hispanic, when in all likelihood the transition is not being captured at the level of detail people wish to work at. At the same time, emphasizing so much the last phases of the pre-Hispanic as "protohistoric" has the prehistory impact of making the invaders the center of the show.

And that's the issue with prehistory. By framing it that way, it does impact how the past is approached, how it is related to the present, and what it is compared to. There are any number of ways this can be seen. Some are obvious. Indigenous material in the natural history museum or in the "ethnographic" section of the art museum, Greek stuff in the art museum, more recent white people stuff in the history museum or in the named artists parts of the art museum. Treatment until very recently of human remains. What is taught in schools and how. What is ok to make up bullshit about, and what isn't, as we've been discussing.

Even the technical elements of "prehistory" aren't really useful. What is to be gained by the term? If anything, historical research has borrowed some from traditional "prehistoric" techniques, studying large patterns of behavior rather than just in-depth biographical approaches to individuals. Looking more at the material nature of objects and how they tie into larger socioeconomic and technological systems than just as the belonging or residence of some person. And especially the decentering of understanding the human past from just the Classical World and then Europe.

There are downsides to rejecting the concept of prehistory. One is the impulse to go too far the other way, and project modern identity and ideology into a past where they don't fit. But history has figured out ways that can be handled with some sophistication, and doing so with the "prehistoric" would drain a lot of the sensationalism out of the rest of the human past.

9/7/2014 12:10:26 pm

"Theosophy arose because of the changing ground of ideas that science was modifying. Hence the importance of a bad version of evolution to Theosophy."

Not quite sure what you mean here. Which "bad version"? What do you mean by "changing ground", more precisely?

"Weird notions didn't need science and in this case archaeology, but the ones that emerged did."

I'm not sure if you're just restating disagreement, but I really don't see how the actual notion of Ancient Astronauts *needed* archaeology. Archaeological stuff helped popularize it, but I don't see how it's essential to its content. And Theosophy specifically didn't really emerge from archaeology - the closest contributing factor I can think of is mythography and "Oriental studies".

"emphasizing so much the last phases of the pre-Hispanic as "protohistoric" has the prehistory impact of making the invaders the center of the show."

I defer to you about the facts of the matter (who is the center of the show), though here as always when it comes to the traditionally marginalized I wonder where the equilibrium lies and how we are to determine it. But I don't understand why emphasizing these things as "protohistoric" is the culprit. I don't think you've really addressed that at all.

"By framing it that way, it does impact how the past is approached, how it is related to the present, and what it is compared to."

I would have thought that once we discard the fantasy of some purely objective standpoint, the most useful way of framing things is in relation to where we are, to the perspective from which the investigation is conducted. Sure this perspective is the inheritor of a factually wrong and morally pernicious ideology (colonialism, racism, etc.), but we should be wary of closing our eyes to this fact even if our intentions are most laudable.

"the decentering of understanding the human past from just the Classical World and then Europe."

This is related to what I just said. Things outside our traditional cultural orbit should not be ignored or misrepresented, but I don't see why expanding our understanding should come with decentering. Not sure what you mean by that, whether it's a good idea, and indeed whether it's even possible.

"the impulse to go too far the other way, and project modern identity and ideology into a past where they don't fit. But history has figured out ways that can be handled with some sophistication"

Which "ways" do you have in mind? I'm generally wary of mistaking sophistication for exactitude and informativeness when it comes to these things...

9/7/2014 03:23:11 pm

You're taking a number of things I'm talking about re:protohistory at too high a theoretical level, rather than a more pragmatic investigatory one.

Re: decentering. Europe is important after 1500 largely though not entirely due to its hitting the jackpot of finding a whole other world to exploit, fueling some phenomena that were already underway. Before that, any attempt to understand world history would focus on other places (for much of the millennia before 1500, China technologically and culturally and the Indian Ocean economically, with various period having that focus shift into parts of the Middle East, for example).

Taking it much further back, look at how much of Paleolithic archaeology is focused on Europe, because that record is best known. This has begun to change, in no small part because of mtDNA giving information that archaeology hasn't been as successful in finding outside of the intensive work in Europe, though finds like Blombos Cave have helped. A traditional nutshell history of the Paleolithic reads like the most important development is when modern humans finally start entering Europe. Once we decenter from the places where traditionally history "happens," there start to be knock-on effects like this. And it doesn't just come from the data, changes in perspective do open up new data. Monte Verde finally smashing "Clovis first" 20 years ago opened up legitimate research into other examples, and now we have them popping up all over to the point that it really isn't news anymore.

As for Theosophy, I presume you would agree that the discovery of deep time and the wildfire recognition of evolution (even if one disagreed with it) are both significant parts of the Theosophy Blavatasky produced a decade after Origin of Species. While this does not directly arise from archaeology specifically or solely, attempting to separate archaeology, paleontology, etc. isn't easy. And even then, Blavatsky and more importantly those who followed operationalized their ideas by using the concept of the ruined city and the lost civilization in the archaeological form they had in the second half of the nineteenth century. LePlongeon, Churchward, and others who took the baton and ran with it certainly took it that way. Most of Theosophy looks like a countercultural reflection of popular themes of the day ("cutting edge" science such as evolution, deep geological time, sunken continents used as a canvas for marrying spiritualism to eastern philosophy from the British colonies in Asia, a blend we'd see a century later in the 1960s and 1970s but this time taking quantum and psychedelics and ecology and marrying it to both Asia as well as the shamanic philosophies from the US' colonized peoples in the Americas).

9/7/2014 04:14:01 pm

"You're taking a number of things I'm talking about re:protohistory at too high a theoretical level, rather than a more pragmatic investigatory one."

Yep, sounds like something I would do :)

"hitting the jackpot"

I'm sure it's unintended, but this is really tendentious. It almost sounds like swinging to the opposite extreme and denying Europe too much.

"focus on other places"

I completely agree. In fact, I think we need to pay attention not just to whoever happened to be "world leaders" at a given stage, but to those who weren't - especially because it is just as important to understand *why* they weren't.

"Taking it much further back, look at how much of Paleolithic archaeology is focused on Europe, because that record is best known."

"A traditional nutshell history of the Paleolithic reads like the most important development is when modern humans finally start entering Europe."

Given that Europe is best known, and given that quite a few earliest known examples of watershed achievements are from Europe, it is no surprise that Europe is at the center of both the historiography and the ongoing archaeological work. This situation may have its roots in all kinds of regrettable things, but that is a different matter altogether.

Moreover, Europe (at least Western Europe) has the right combination of public interest, academic infrastructure, resources, and relative political non-interference to keep its record best known. It's not exactly the fault of the archaeological community that China and Russia, to say nothing of India and Africa, are not on par.

"using the concept of the ruined city and the lost civilization in the archaeological form"

I agree, just as I agree that von Daniken did the same thing. However, I maintain this is incidental and moreover pertains to the formation of Theosophical (or AA) ideas even less than to their content.

I agree that evolutionary theory was crucial, however. But evolutionary theory of the time wasn't really built around paleontology (to say nothing of archaeology).

9/7/2014 05:15:30 pm

re: Evolution. No, you're correct, but it they were tied it was just the other way around. Paleontology can only really become what it becomes when some kind of evolution (an idea that predates Darwin/Wallace's natural selection of course) exists. Archaeology as handmaiden to history, focused on either the Classical Civilizations (and then things that looked like them elsewhere like Mesoamerica) or antiquarianism, predates evolution.

But the field splits when deep time becomes more accepted, and you have two basic forms of archaeology appear: "historical/Classical" (to contrast it from the current use of historical archaeology to refer to the last 500 years and the globalization of the Early Modern world), and prehistoric. The former was seated in the humanities and focused on art, iconography, literature, linguistics, and other products that came from study of the Classical cities and empires of the greater Mediterranean world. At least in the US, if one visits a university, you will rarely find an archaeology department or program, and if you do, it is either focused on local affairs, is a CRM non-profit, or specializes in historical archaeology (and could be all three). There are quite a few exceptions, often named Programs or Institutes that cross-disciplines (the Cotsen and the Joukowsky come to mind). But more typically, one will find most of a university's archaeologists in the anthropology department, working in some legacy of the cross-cultural "prehistoric" model, and/or working on state societies in the New World. Then there will be the other set of archaeologists who study Rome, Greece, Egypt, and the Near East, housed in Classics. And I can tell you from experience, these two groups rarely talk much if there isn't an institution in place that joins them. I went to a grad school with at any given time 10-20 archaeology students in residence focused on New World complex societies mostly. Only myself and a friend of mine ever went to the Classics sponsored colloquia, and I never saw any Classics people at our colloquia on the Classic Maya or the Andes.

The Classical wing of archaeology in its formative decades worked as I said. The other wing, the prehistoric wing, embraced evolutionary theory and anthropology's early focus on cultural evolution (and then when Boasian anthropology ditched cultural evolution, it embraced his direct historic approach), etc.

One could argue that Theosophy and other forms of early alternative "prehistory" was taking the one kind of approach to humans, an emphasis on the mythic and spiritual, on art and aesthetic, blending in the concerns of the day (race and nation), and using these to fill the gulfs of deep time that had opened up.

Blavatsky wants to take her modified form of Hinduism and other traditions and push them deep to fill up the past. Other romantics did the same with other traditions, pushing supposed pagan survivals, national identity, or other hobby horses into the blind abysses that geology and then paleontology and paleolithic archaeology said were there, but which there were no answers. And in the Americas, all the lost tribes and races and hyperdiffusion were attempts to put something more familiar into those gulfs.

I don't like the glib answer of "there be dragons here" but there is some truth to it. As time opened up, the ascended masters were placed there. Then when the air opened up, followed by space, airships and then flying saucers emerged. And when quantum mechanics allowed for alternative dimensions and spooky effects, ultraterrestrials and machine elves and chaotic reality bending emerged. I could be glib and point to social media as the first major exploration by the majority of people of cyberspace, and Slenderman, but you get the idea.

9/7/2014 05:57:11 pm

I agree once again that "deep time" has a lot to do with the rise of Theosophy and other occultism, but in much the same way as did "deep space" (astronomy) and secular study of religious texts - by filling the niche created by an unprecedented combination of spiritual void and information overload. As far as I understand, "deep time" emerged out of geological sciences (and astronomy), and in turn enabled archaeological and paleontological inquiry to shed stifling cosmological constraints. It also gave grist for the mills of Theosophy and various new religious movements (as well as some of the more cringe-inducing philosophical speculation of that era).

I don't know if it's accurate to describe Blavatsky as *explaining* things located in the new "deep time", as opposed to using them as window dressing (in the same way in which I sometimes get the impression that Vedic religions use large numbers).

And I think that the "glib answer" is in fact a good starting point. The trick is to make it not be glib through proper development. And that's been bugging some of the brightest minds for over 150 years now.

Duke of URL

9/8/2014 05:12:21 am

spookyparadigm -- "even where such places have been protected by parks, how commonly are they visited?"
Has it occurred to you that this may be because they're so boring? After all, once you've seen a crude stone/mud structure put up by Stone Age savages who never even got so far as to invent the wheel, you've pretty much seen them all.
"New World art, monuments, etc., can easily stand on a pure appreciation level with the Old."
Oh, come now - the stuff by Amerinds, although sometimes pretty good, can no way be compared to real art from Europe/Asia.

9/8/2014 07:51:23 am

Really? How many visitors does Stonehenge get a year?

Half a million at Stonehenge in six months. Possibly due in part to major spending on presenting the site.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-wiltshire-27912655

Cahokia, a massive pyramid city within sight of St. Louis, with a solid visitors center full of "savage" artwork I guess, gets 1/5th the visitors

http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1065

No need to address the colonialist remainder.

9/7/2014 04:53:38 am

Passages like

"The Japanese have their own otherworld, filled with all nature of monsters and godlike creatures. It isn't quite what Lovecraft saw, but it is remarkably dark and similar to his vision."

strongly suggest that Flint Johnson wasn't even trying. I mean, come on! This is, like, sub-Knowlesian level of writing.

Dave Lewis

9/7/2014 02:25:09 pm

Good one!

If someone's writing is really, really, really bad we could call it sub-666-ian!

9/7/2014 02:39:02 pm

Or .-ian (not sub-.-ian, since that's physically impossible).

Mark E.

9/7/2014 06:04:26 am

I have to wonder if the popularity of Joshua Tree for fringe events has something to do with its reputation for being an area of spiritual power, specifically for artists who like to participate in psychedelic drug use. The association with U2, The Eagles, The Doors, and various other music figures certainly sets a tone for the area.

You throw in the "alien" landscape, peyote cactus, the crystal clear skies (famous for stargazing) and what would be a better place for paranormal meanderings.

Greg Little

9/7/2014 06:35:23 am

Hancock's pro hallucinogenic drug use stance is more than questionable. But I suspect that he actually hasn't watched the show much, if at all. I know for example that the first of the AA shows Andrew Collins saw was in February of this year when he visited the USA for 3 weeks.

9/7/2014 06:47:58 am

Wow, you got *two* articles in AP this month?!

http://www.apmagazine.info/index.php/component/content/article?id=566

http://www.apmagazine.info/index.php/component/content/article?id=570

So... are Moundbuilders giants, or are they aliens? I'm confused...

amadeusD

5/18/2015 07:23:39 pm

I'm a friend of Graham's, and as of 2014 he'd not watched an episode.
Graham's hallucinogen-centered work is actually probably more credible than his ancient history stuff. Its pretty solid research where he claims it to be, and interesting speculation and assimilation where he claims it to be imo.

9/7/2014 09:02:55 am

>>>nationalist archaeology

There is no such thing as "un-nationalist" archaeology.
The further back in time you go in history, the more evidence exists that each country was "racist" (I thought this was straightforward)

9/7/2014 09:10:44 am

And of course, archaeology can be manipulated to suit contemporary political situations (whichever way it's put)

Only Me

9/7/2014 10:27:08 am

AAT is a racist cult? Man, that's so not groovy. Pass me some of that peace offering, my brother from another mother :)

9/7/2014 10:35:46 am

You speaking figuratively, man? Or are you talking to Pacal? Been dipping into Bruce Fenton's stash again? :)

BillUSA

9/7/2014 11:04:47 am

I know these hucksters are shameless, but I don't know how they can lecture on the subjects of hallucinogens and lost civilizations (as they present them) with a straight face.

The trouble with telling (and believing) yourself that the rest of the world doesn't know as much as you do, is that doing so "opens the windows and draws back the drapes" on one's actual level of intelligence.

It's always struck me as ironic how closely related religions and fringe theories are to each other. Not to suggest that some mainstreamers don't approach the Beautiful Method with a religious fervor in clinging to a pet theory. At least the sane among them reason their way to a logical conclusion.

But these fringe jokers seem to believe anything that can be put into words.

9/7/2014 11:46:30 am

"The trouble with telling (and believing) yourself that the rest of the world doesn't know as much as you do, is that doing so "opens the windows and draws back the drapes" on one's actual level of intelligence."

Speaking of ironic...

9/7/2014 01:49:12 pm

I *knew* you couldn't resist, EP.

@BillUSA

"It's always struck me as ironic how closely related religions and fringe theories are to each other."

I agree that the two share much the same reaction when challenged by "non-believers". Both also share the same trait when it comes to alleged evidence...it's irrefutable proof in their eyes, even when it can be proven otherwise. Just peruse the Bosnian "pyramid" thread, for example.

9/7/2014 02:40:58 pm

Hey, we should ask BillUSA what he thinks about Tomy :)

E.P. Grondine

10/6/2015 02:29:59 pm

As Le Plongeon and Blavatsky were relatively recent living people, there is no point in confusing who did what, nor how they worked.
For the modern theosophist cult archaeology industry, see:

http://www.danieljglenn.com/the_podcasts/Stelle/Documentation/He Walked Among Us Part 1.pdf

http://www.danieljglenn.com/the_podcasts/Stelle/Documentation/He Walked Among Us Part 2.pdf

http://www.danieljglenn.com/the_podcasts/Stelle/Documentation/He Walked Among Us Part 3.pdf

grab copies and share them with your friends and colleagues.You may want to make them required reading for your students.