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Graham Hancock Discusses Getting High, Pyramid Myths, and Looking for Hidden DNA Messages

3/12/2016

50 Comments

 
At the end of January, our friend Graham Hancock appeared on the Bulletproof radio podcast, but I wasn’t aware of this until an excerpt from it was posted to Audio Burst this week and ended up getting shared on Facebook. At this point, I think it’s safe to say that there are too many podcasts and radio shows to keep up with. Bulletproof seems to be a bit of an odd duck, in that its primary business is selling diet guides, coffee, and health supplements but it augments this business with a New Age lifestyle brand. Its podcast has played host to medical quacks, diet gurus, and media personalities like NatGeo Brain Games host Jason Silva. Into this stew of holistic health claims and pseudoscientific mysticism, Graham Hancock arrived to discuss ancient mysteries. This is important mostly for revealing that Hancock has not quite outgrown the more ridiculous end of the pseudoscience he once promoted in Fingerprints of the Gods and intentionally downplayed in Magicians of the Gods.
The warrant for Hancock’s appearance is his advocacy of psychedelic drugs, which Bulletproof podcast host Dave Asprey, who is interested in altered states of consciousness because of their New Age mystical implications (he has used the same drugs as Hancock), but that is not really my area of concern. Nor am I interested in Hancock’s claims that MK ULTRA (yes, that again) was a failure because the “planet” speaks to us through hallucinogens and thus undermines conservative power structures that don’t harmonize with the earth.
 
Instead I’d like to focus on Hancock’s discussion of archaeology and history, right after I note that Hancock confesses to meeting with space aliens while taking drugs, presumably referring to his encounters with supposed interdimensional beings, since he later says he thinks aliens are from another dimension. Anyway, he begins with his usual upset about the education system, which he again feels has a death grip on the portrayal of history and thus on the minds of impressionable youths. He seems to have unresolved trauma from high school:
I think that the point here is that history is a story. It’s a narrative, which is being told to us, and that sole possession of that narrative has been handed over to a professional class, the historians and the archaeologists. They effectively have a grip on the story of our past, and they deliver it to us through the schools and through the universities, and it’s what we are taught is the fact about our past, but we should never forget that it isn’t a fact. It’s a story.
Notice that Hancock intentionally conflates facts and evidence with the interpretation of that evidence. Clearly, he has never taken a course in historiography—something offered at every university with a history program—but notice the emphasis on the university system and on the teaching profession as a source of special scorn. Perhaps the situation is different in Britain, but most people in the U.S. receive their history lessons from television and the internet, especially since all but the most basic historical narratives were long ago removed from many secondary schools’ curriculums, replaced with more nebulous “social studies,” nor is any detailed study of history required of university students.
 
Here in New York State, for example, a student attending a public university must complete seven of ten areas of General Education to earn a degree. Three of those areas are American History, Western Civilization, and Other World Civilizations. Depending on their choices, this might involve as little as four credits in history, or none at all since the State University of New York has approved courses in subjects like architecture or women in art to meet these requirements. Requirements vary greatly among private schools.
 
So why is Hancock so concerned about historians? He says that the narratives historians tell result in “mind control”: “If you’ve got a grip on history, if you’re controlling history and how history is taught, then that gives you amazing power in the present as well.” He believes this is an outgrowth of the Catholic Church’s pioneering work in exercising intellectual “control” over what people think. Why competing institutions, and those opposed to the Church, went along with it I can’t imagine, but for Hancock all current holders of power are trying to deny the everyman the ability to think for himself. He said that “there is a control structure and a power structure in our society, which is vested in keeping us asleep.”
 
In other words, like others who are discontented with modern society, Hancock perceives education as a battleground for instilling ideology and thus reinforcing social control. His mirror image, Mary Lou Bruner of Texas, believes the same thing. That’s why the creationist who believes Pres. Obama was a gay prostitute, is now a leading candidate for the Texas Board of Education. She promises to rewrite the textbooks, too, because she worries that history and science might encourage students to abandon evangelical Christianity and conservatism. Hancock wants to rewrite the textbooks to promote New Age neo-paganism and a libertarian-inflected social liberalism, or what he calls “progress.”
 
Hancock, though, doesn’t see much progress in his own work. He’s still using nineteenth century ideas to support his claims. Take this recapitulation of a Victorian claim about the Great Pyramid:
Here’s the math. If you take the height of the Great Pyramid and multiply it be 43,200, which is not a random number […] If you take the height and multiply it by 43,200, you get the polar radius of the earth. If you measure the base perimeter of the great pyramid and multiply it by 43,200, you get the equatorial circumference of the earth. The Great Pyramid, whether by accident or by design, encodes the dimensions of our planet through those long, dark ages, in the Middle Ages and so on, when we didn’t even know we lived on a planet, let alone its dimensions, those dimensions were always there, encoded on a scale of 1 to 43,200 in the Great Pyramid.
This is only approximately true. The height of the pyramid was likely 146.5 meters when complete, which would yield 6,328,800 meters, or 6,327.8 km. The earth’s polar radius is 6,356 km. The number is close but not identical. The perimeter of the Great Pyramid similarly yields a figure that is off by several hundred miles. It’s the kind of thing that makes it seem more like a coincidence than a planned event. Given the malleability of Hancock’s precessional numbers—virtually any multiple of 12 or 72—and the variability of the Earth’s measurements due to its oblate spheroid shape, the measurements were bound to be close enough to something significant.
 
While these claims originate in nineteenth century pyramidology, particularly Charles Piazzi Smyth’s mystical accounts of the Great Pyramid, Hancock also continues to make use of medieval Islamic pyramid lore, which he now falsely claims to be ancient:
There are specific ancient traditions relating to Giza, which tell us that it was created as a repository from knowledge from before the flood. When they refer to the flood, I can't help thinking of meltwater pulse 1A that happened 11,600 years ago with a massive meltdown of the icecaps and the comet impacts and the rising of sea level.
The trouble is that those “ancient traditions” are known only from medieval texts, and these in turn were based on Late Antique Christian works, particularly those of Annianus and Panodorus. What’s interesting—and not known to Hancock—is that the oldest surviving version, preserved in later quotations from the work of Abu Ma’shar, the ninth-century astrologer, specify that the knowledge from before the Flood was preserved in the temples of Egypt, not the pyramids, something that only entered a bit later, when the Pyramids had become identified with the Pillars of Wisdom from Enochian lore.
 
Finally, I have no idea what to make of Hancock’s remarks that he speculates that our DNA has been coded with hidden messages or pre-programmed by interdimensional beings to help us have mystical visions while high on drugs. “Such ideas, in my view, are worth exploring,” he said, though conceding that such seeming possibilities might really be nothing more than being high on drugs and seeing things that aren’t there.
 
Hancock unintentionally gave us insight into himself when he imagined he was describing mainstream science: “The staying power of bad ideas is really quite astonishing, and this is to do with psychological factors. As human beings, we get invested in particular areas of thought.”
50 Comments
Only Me
3/12/2016 01:47:24 pm

One correction.

"The earth's polar radius is 6,356 meters." That should be kilometers.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
3/12/2016 03:18:59 pm

Fixed.

Reply
David Bradbury
3/13/2016 08:22:42 am

Are you a secret Clangers fan?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGH1z-f2YFc

David Bradbury
3/13/2016 08:27:12 am

PS: Louis Martin's "Evangiles Sans Dieu" is not the tidiest of books. I'll get back to you when I've figured out which bits in its 300 pages are helpful in understanding fringe claims.

Shane Sullivan
3/12/2016 02:42:16 pm

Hancock's pyramid math inspired me to conduct a little research.

Taking the polar radius and dividing it by 43,200, we wind up with a distance of approximately 147.129, which for our purposes I'll round to 147.1. Googling that number, I found a radio tower in Karnes City, Texas, which peaks at 147.1 meters above ground level.

So we have one of two possibilities:

Either the engineers who designed the tower were members of a mystical cult of sacred geometry who intentionally encoded the Earth's polar radius in its design, or, much more likely, it's a coincidence. And remember, the height of this tower multiplies much more closely to the polar radius, so it's actually less likely to be a coincidence than the height of the pyramid is.

Now pause for fringe theorists to regroup and start calling the Great Pyramid a radio tower.

Reply
Time Machine
3/12/2016 03:00:37 pm

Different generations of Egyptian priesthoods revised and altered the religious beliefs of Egypt. Ditto Stonehenge. Ditto Christianity and Judaism. No religious belief is set in stone for eternity.

This is where the likes of Graham Hancock and Scott F. Wolter miserably fall apart.

Reply
Time Machine
3/13/2016 08:11:53 am

Milton Wainwright is a British microbiologist who is known for his research into what he claims could be extraterrestrial life found in the stratosphere.

V
3/12/2016 05:01:32 pm

The problem with Mary Looney Bruner's concept of "rewriting the textbooks" to take out history and science is that it is very literally ILLEGAL to do so. All materials in schools are required by Federal law to be scientifically-based materials, used in scientifically-validated teaching methods.

It's the infamous No Child Left Behind Act.

....like courtesy and chivalry, more honored in the breach than the observance, unfortunately.

Reply
Time Machine
3/12/2016 05:03:22 pm

Except that there happen to be teachers who only do their jobs and don't believe what they teach to be "factual"

Reply
V
3/13/2016 03:32:37 pm

GTFO, you contemptible turd. You know nothing about factual and not factual, only your own deluded bullshit. You CERTAINLY know nothing whatever about the field of education.

Cretin.

Time Machine
3/13/2016 06:04:09 pm

>>>GTFO<<<

LOL !!

I have personal experience of lecturers who privately believe in the stuff that is debunked on this blog.

Clete
3/12/2016 05:56:08 pm

I too have a mathematical theory about the Earth. I once came upon a cow pie and measured it. I then multiplied its circumference by six hundred and twenty and found that it was the exact distance from the cow pie to El Paso, Texas.

Reply
anon
3/12/2016 07:36:42 pm

Introductory university courses on history that I've taken have been really good at open interpretation, attention to primary sources, understanding government propaganda from Romans to Soviets etc., creation of national myths....

My experience of uni history is pretty free of dogma, and teaches how to attack dogma if you so wish. Which isn't to say that historians at universities are dogma free, but they certainly give you the tools to attack them if you wish.

So I don't know what he's on about.

By the way, Randall Carson gets more into bloviating climate denial territory with his latest postings - and his writing on climate is like a bad junior school effort.

Reply
anon
3/12/2016 07:41:18 pm

Having said that, Hancock would be right to think the prohibition of hallucinogens prejudices the content and outlook of academic courses. As long as academics propose (with good reason) altered states as pivotal in the development of art and philosophy, then the inability of universities to directly explore these areas will remain a block to understanding.

Reply
David Bradbury
3/13/2016 08:24:48 am

Even in official terms, it's not a 100% inability to study altered states:
https://peerj.com/preprints/1202.pdf

Reply
V
3/13/2016 03:43:03 pm

I personally have yet to see anything truly convincing as evidence that hallucinogens has been "pivotal" to the development of art and philosophy. To be honest, hallucinogens and the production of anything solid in the way of artistic merit are just incompatible, for the simple fact that hallucinogens remove one's ability to EDIT. So please present "with good reason," because until that statement is proven, I remain of the opinion that nothing at all is being lost by refusing to let students kill brain cells in the name of art.

Not that art students let that stop them. They just usually find out pretty quickly that their out-of-control brains produce cow shit, not high art.

Reply
Time Machine
3/13/2016 06:00:59 pm

>>>I personally have yet to see<<<

Peter T. Furst (editor), "Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens" (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972)

anon
3/13/2016 09:46:30 pm

"I remain of the opinion that nothing at all is being lost by refusing to let students kill brain cells in the name of art."

...ahem ahem ahem....

"Researchers from the University of Florida recently published a study in the journal Experimental Brain Research that suggests specific components of psilocybin mushrooms have the ability to create new brain cells. The discovery can be used to develop ground breaking new treatments for severe mental conditions…even improve learning.

In fact, researchers suggest that when given to mice, psilocybin mushrooms proved successful in restoring crippled brain cells as well as easing the symptoms of conditions like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression -- sometimes even working as a cure."

Anyway, pivotal isn't the same as virtuosal. Much ancient rock art is dots and patterns and stick-men, and it's the easy dots and squiggles that are the centre of most psychedelic hypothesising, I believe, David Lewis-Williams et al & etc.

Let's not forget that it's hard to recognise a phenomena if you've been taught to be avoidant of it. Gay sex between animals was unrecognised for a long time simply because it was an unspeakable and taboo subject. Now we know nature is well fruity.

But mistakes get made. Rock art that many shroom enthusiasts claim is of a mushroom man has been debunked.
It's fair point, people see what they want to see.
Some (supposed) shroom art nicely debunked here by Thomas Hatsis.

http://arspsychedelia.com/the-holy-mushroom-videos.html

anon
3/12/2016 07:45:12 pm

... but as anyone who has been to a student party knows, there are unofficial ways around all that - and it's not like it's a big secret.
It's a rather ridiculous situation. I'm on Hancock's side here - there is an official thought approval process at work. It's called the law, and universities have to obey it - much to the chagrin of many of them I think.
Except in Ecuador.

Reply
anon
3/12/2016 07:45:54 pm

...I mean Uruguay. Wherever :-)

Reply
anon
3/12/2016 09:31:37 pm

...so, to elaborate, if you are a university student studying christian mysticism, anthropology of religion, Plotinus, William James, Dostoyevsky, Schopenhaur, Buddhism and a vast whole load more - then there are certain experiences which will either take massive luck, long diligent practice, or a dose of acid to be able to comprehend fully.
Only massive luck is accommodated within a three year undergrad course on any of those subjects. Ten years in a monastery don't go very well even with a part time study course, and acid is a forbidden experience.
You can be an engineering student and play with dangerous nuclear equipment in the lab, but you can't study the equipment of the mind itself with the same freedom.

Hence academia has it's limits and politics has the upper hand on what can and can't be known and studied.

And hence it will be a while before we ever see a paper like "William James and Timothy Leary - Phenomenological Comparisons of the Ether and LSD Experiences", or, "Mushrooms - Do They Make You Paint Like A caveman ? "

And hence over 80% of philosophy students have tried drugs - because they know intuitively that the syllabus is a faint shadow of the subject.

And that's why Erowid isn't going away any time soon.

:-)

Reply
Time Machine
3/13/2016 07:25:37 am

>>>And hence it will be a while before we ever see a paper like "William James and Timothy Leary - Phenomenological Comparisons of the Ether and LSD Experiences", or, "Mushrooms - Do They Make You Paint Like A caveman ? "<<<

Shamanism is a nebulous subject matter.

Wasson correctly observed that while drugs and religion was easy to research in the Americas because it wasn't "secret" the same could not be said about Western and Eurasian Cultures where it was mega-secret.

Reply
anon
3/13/2016 09:46:18 am

On the other hand Google scholar is full of the goings-on of the Americans. It's one of my latter interests to read about what the natives of the Americas REALLY do, rather than what New Age hippies CLAIM they do, and anthropologists have recorded some hair raising stuff.
Anthropologists seem to get mashed on the local plant medicines as part of research, so it can be done, just not within certain national borders.
I suppose fieldwork on student drug use would have to be carried out in another city so as not to end up slumped on a sofa with people you know personally. I'm sure that would be bad research practice.
I'm assured that at Lampeter University in Wales, mushrooms grow on the lawns. Well, they do for a short while....

Time Machine
3/13/2016 08:13:56 am

>>> Erowid isn't going away any time soon<<<

I can't see that subject matter being introduced into the school curriculum.

Reply
anon
3/13/2016 09:23:59 am

Nor I.

V
3/13/2016 03:53:55 pm

1. No, you really can't play with "dangerous nuclear equipment in the lab" as an engineering student. The most you can play with as an engineering student is the safe parts, with no nuclear fuel available.

2. You don't need drugs to understand the topics you've listed, you need a reasonably open mind and some intelligence, plus a heavy tolerance for major depressive episodes. Thinking that you do need drugs shows a limitation in your own thinking, nothing more.

3. "Mushrooms - do they make you paint like a caveman?" would be a very short paper. One word, in fact. "No." Even a passing knowledge of art history makes it super-clear that "painting like a caveman" takes enormous effort, enormous control, and a series of skills that taking drugs does NOT grant you. And quite likely torch- or lamp-light.

Reply
Time Machine
3/13/2016 05:54:37 pm

Drugs and human evolution - it's a myth. It's all wrong.
I know, because I am a fundamentalist Christian.

anon
3/13/2016 10:13:52 pm

Numbered points, sure sign of over confidence...... :-)

1. You speak for students in one country. Less people care about that country every day. And I don't believe you anyway. What about radiotherapy research ?

2. Yeah, fine, you can pass exams on lots of things without ever coming into contact with them. You can study sexology without ever getting your willy wet. But wouldn't it help just a little bit to have some first hand knowledge ? Just a little bit ? I think so. Same with drugs.

3. A better word is yes. You think every bit of cave art was a masterpiece worthy of Michaelangelo ? What ? When did this superhuman ability cease to be a general skill and become the preserve of a select talented few ? A kind of artistic Fall of Man in which the golden age of super-artists passed forever into myth.
Now, really, come on, drugs ruin your art skills ? Did you even bother with a google search for that? Talk about cursory....
I'm afraid that a lot of artists do highly skilled work while blitzed, and could easily knock off a few bison covered in squiggles.

And not all cave and rock art is of cleverly rendered animals. A lot of it is just dots and squiggles. What are they for, hm ? Bit of graffitti ?

anon
3/13/2016 10:26:12 pm

...ok...sigh....no art while under the influence eh ?....

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tabathaleggett/self-portraits-drawn-during-an-lsd-trip#.boayXVP3Or

...I think that lady could easily daub some cool gazelles and squiggles onto a cave.

anon
3/13/2016 10:32:40 pm

....and hm, number 5 - interesting use of dots. Possibly reminiscent of the dots drawn on cave art - all over and around the horses & etc.
Coincidence ? Maybe. Maybe a study dosing art students would help illuminate that question - but that can't happen.

...note number 6 drawn in "very dim light". Like in a cave ?

Time Machine
3/14/2016 03:10:28 am

Wasson once commented about how he understood the art of Goya after taking a certain drug.

Time Machine
3/14/2016 03:16:31 am

Besides, Coleridge Taylor bragged about how he composed Kublai Khan under the influence of opium, and everyone knows about how The Beatles went from Pop Music to Progressive Music (Sgt Pepper) through taking drugs. And who could have guided them except the Maharishi. Religious meditation the East was conducted under the influence of psychedelics.

Time Machine
3/14/2016 03:21:02 am

Actually, The Beatles met the Maharishi for the first time a couple of months after Sgt Pepper was released.

Time Machine
3/13/2016 07:30:33 am

Even those like Graham Hancock, Timothy Leary and Carlos Castaneda have to be regarded seriously in relation to drugs because like the ancient religions, these people regard drugs as being holy and a gateway to the origins of man, however batty and crazy they are/were.

Reply
anon
3/13/2016 11:30:38 pm

It's funny how so many people still believe in Castaneda despite being shown to be a fraud years ago. I remember telling a hippy this and getting "yeah, well, it's the philosophy that counts whether it's true or not.".
What can you do ?

Reply
Time Machine
3/14/2016 09:31:35 am

Wasson took Castaneda's accounts of his drug-tripping seriously and it would be interesting to see what Wasson would make of Hancock if he were still alive today. I am sure he would acknowledge the tripping side seriously, respecting it as an inspiration to Hancock's fantasy history and fantasy archaeology.

Tripping is tripping and it must be evaluated somehow and it cannot be dismissed just because someone happens to be a churchgoing Christian fundamentalist.ignorant of their own psychedelic background.


Time Machine
3/13/2016 09:13:41 am

Dr Don Morse, a Temple University science professor, DDS, PhD., thought he had a near-death experience after a run one day in 1983.

Obviously he had no such thing but witness the power of chemical effects on the mind without drugs.

Reply
Time Machine
3/13/2016 09:28:53 am

There are gangs of nutty professors who seriously believe in life after death and write batty books about this crap.

Again, there is no need to debunk the fringe world when there is more than enough insanity in the "normal world".

Reply
Time Machine
3/13/2016 09:57:57 am

Way back in the 1970s it was explained by sober rational people that so-called "Near-Death Experiences" in hospitals during operations were caused by the effects of anaesthesia on a minority of people.

Pacal
3/13/2016 04:21:39 pm

What is fascinating is just how old, predictable and thoroughly dull are Hancock's actual beliefs about the past. They are just recycled bromides much of which is over a century old. Yet Hancock claims repeatedly that that his ideas are new, daring and cutting edge, when there are in fact old and pathetic.

As for messages in DNA. Well it appears that Hancock has read / watched some Science Fiction. There is a episode of Star Trek TNG, (The Chase, Season 6, April 1993), that is about finding a alien message in DNA. Hancock's lack of originality is getting old.

Reply
anon
3/14/2016 06:17:18 am

Just looking at Wasson's wikipedia entry, looks like someone's had a dig at him (wasn't me).

"Robert Gordon Wasson (September 22, 1898 – December 23, 1986) was an American author, ethnomycologist, Intelligence Agent, lifetime actor and a vice president at J.P. Morgan & Co.[1][2][3] In the course of independent research, he made contributions to the fields of ethnobotany, botany, and anthropologyas well as participating in the CIA's infamous MKUltra program under SubProject 58. Several of his books were self-published in illustrated, limited editions that have never been reprinted."
Rebellion from the top ?

Aaaanyway, I'll stop banging on about that and simply ask whether anyone else has problems with Randall Carson's grasp of climate science ? And why doesn't he use references published after the year 2000 (except for one)? And why would Graham Hancock rest his case on the work of someone who can't add up basic units of CO2 ?

See here
http://sacredgeometryinternational.com/extreme_weather_pre-agw

Reply
Uncle Ron
3/14/2016 02:35:21 pm

Anon - this post is a little out of sync but with all the bloviating Time Machine adds to the thread it's hard to follow anyway. Earlier you asked, "<Do> You think every bit of cave art was a masterpiece worthy of Michaelangelo ? When did this superhuman ability cease to be a general skill and become the preserve of a select talented few ?" I assume by "superhuman ability" you are referring to the idea of creating art(?) What makes you think that painting was a general skill? I think it's more logical to believe that, like today, most "cavemen" couldn't draw or paint. In your favor, the ones who could may well have been shamans who DID use hallucinatory plants - whether that contributed to their artistic ability is debatable. But they were the FIRST artists so their work, which is often superb - as good as any modern impressionist - IS "worthy of Michelangelo" in the sense that the mental leap from thinking about the terror of stalking a dangerous beast like a bison (remember the idea of "majestic" nature only came about when it was no longer a threat to us), to representing a terrifying bison with pigments on a cave wall represents a milestone in the development of the human brain. I seriously doubt that it was a general ability.

Reply
Time Machine
3/14/2016 03:51:02 pm

Wasson commented how he understood that Goya's artwork originated from drugs.

So there, Uncle Ron

You missed that.

anoon
3/14/2016 07:43:21 pm

That's what I was getting at. I was combating the inference that because cave art is so great, it couldn't possibly have been done on drugs - and doing so by contradicting the assumption that it is indeed all great art.

On the other hand, where are the child drawings ? Even though they(cave paintings) are not all so great as to bring Picasso to tears, most of them don't look like the first attempt, and look like the work of someone post-infancy, at least.

So, yeah, where are the really crap ones, the practice efforts and the ones done by children ? You would have to be a brave five year old to venture into a dark cave on your own just to make doodles - especially when there really ARE man eating monsters around.

Obviously, I think, the depth and darkness were part of the attraction, and weeds out the casual drawer.

Was there a secret initiation path to weed out the really useless drawers ? And if so, when did art become a pastime of the general populace rather than of a skilled few ? Maybe general idle doodling was done on wood, or in the sand and left no record ?

Uncle Ron
3/14/2016 08:16:46 pm

anon- Good questions. I will make a hypothesis: It has been suggested that cave art was used for "mystical" purposes, e.g. pre-hunt ceremonies or coming-of-age initiations, and the like (proto religion). As such they would only have been allowed to be made and used by special persons, i.e. "shamans", who had demonstrated their power and ability. The juvenile and "practice" art - such as it was in a society that spent most of its time just staying alive - was done outdoors and/or in places where it has not survived, except for some stone and bone carvings, shell jewelry, etc., which do not deteriorate as easily.
As for the quality - it's jaw-dropping in my opinion. Most of it would be classed as minimalist ala' Picasso's line drawings; and think about how terrible Medieval and Ancient pre-perspective paintings are (by today's standards). Work like that would get you kicked out of art class today. It's necessary to keep in mind that these cave artists lived at the very conception of creating representational objects. Even a stick-human figure was a huge leap of imagination - with or without drugs.

Reply
Time Machine
3/14/2016 08:40:26 pm

Uncle Ron belongs to the "drugs are to be ignored" camp.
Live with it.

anon
3/15/2016 08:19:09 pm

I agree, some of it is very moving. Would you believe I actually shed a tear looking at some horses ? It's true, I feel a bit pathetic admitting. But I don't think that's necessarily because of the quality of the work, rather the profundity of the gap of time to, and simplicity of, our ancestors.

But it's not all like that, and frankly some of it I could do myself.

Just like cheap wine with an expensive label slapped on it tastes better (it's true, studies show this), I think art that has early on been labelled great will retain that cache - cuz that's what clever people with taste say, and they must be right.

It would be interesting to dig out early criticism of this, and see if it took a reputational uptick as soon as people like Picasso started to voice an opinion.

anon
3/15/2016 08:23:34 pm

We see a similar thing happening with the work on Gobeklie Tepe. People seem to be getting confused with the amazingness of the fact of the discovery, and the quality of the work itself.

I saw a documentary where a presenter went into a garage with a block of stone and made a close copy of one of the Gobekli Tepe animals in about six hours - with no training.
So much for "oooh, the master pieces of Gobekli Tepe!" Anyone can knock one out in a few hours. Pretty sure it's like that for much cave art.

anon
3/15/2016 08:36:41 pm

Here you go look, Gobekli Tepe carving, easy as pissing in the shower.

https://youtu.be/jsQGNaMoOCE?t=9m30s

anon
3/14/2016 01:57:44 pm

"Wasson took Castaneda's accounts of his drug-tripping seriously and it would be interesting to see what Wasson would make of Hancock if he were still alive today. I am sure he would acknowledge the tripping side seriously, respecting it as an inspiration to Hancock's fantasy history and fantasy archaeology."

Don't know that particular bit of history. But if Wasson had a mushroom PR campaign in mind then all that would matter is that Castaneda was popular.

Pretty interesting what an establishment figure he was, considering how the establishment is supposed to be at war on it all.

http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/5829/CIA-RDP80B01676R003700110086-8.pdf

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          • Plato's Atlantis Dialogues >
            • Timaeus
            • Critias
          • Fragments on Atlantis
          • Panchaea: The Other Atlantis
          • Eumalos on Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Gómara on Atlantis
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • Atlantis and the Sea Peoples
          • W. Scott-Elliot >
            • The Story of Atlantis
            • The Lost Lemuria
          • The Lost Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Africa
          • How I Found Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Termier on Atlantis
          • The Critias and Minoan Crete
          • Rebuttal to Termier
          • Further Responses to Termier
          • Flinders Petrie on Atlantis
        • Lost Cities >
          • Miscellaneous Lost Cities
          • The Seven Cities
          • The Lost City of Paititi
          • Manuscript 512
          • The Idolatrous City of Iximaya (Hoax)
          • The 1885 Moberly Lost City Hoax
          • The Elephants of Paredon (Hoax)
        • OOPARTs
        • Oronteus Finaeus Antarctica Map
        • Caucasians in Panama
        • Jefferson's Excavation
        • Fictitious Discoveries in America
        • Against Diffusionism
        • Tunnels Under Peru
        • The Parahyba Inscription (Hoax)
        • Mound Builders
        • Gunung Padang
        • Tales of Enchanted Islands
        • The 1907 Ancient World Map Hoax
        • The 1909 Grand Canyon Hoax
        • The Interglacial Period
        • Solving Oak Island
      • Religious Conspiracies >
        • Pantera, Father of Jesus?
        • Toledot Yeshu
        • Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay on Cathars
        • Testimony of Jean de Châlons
        • Rosslyn Chapel and the 'Prentice's Pillar
        • The Many Wives of Jesus
        • Templar Infiltration of Labor
        • Louis Martin & the Holy Bloodline
        • The Life of St. Issa (Hoax)
        • On the Person of Jesus Christ
      • Giants in the Earth >
        • Fossil Origins of Myths >
          • Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephants
          • Fossil Elephants
          • Fossil Bones of Teutobochus
          • Fossil Mammoths and Giants
          • Giants' Bones Dug Out of the Earth
          • Fossils and the Supernatural
          • Fossils, Myth, and Pseudo-History
          • Man During the Stone Age
          • Fossil Bones and Giants
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
        • Fragments on Giants
        • Manichaean Book of Giants
        • Geoffrey on British Giants
        • Alfonso X's Hermetic History of Giants
        • Boccaccio and the Fossil 'Giant'
        • Book of Howth
        • Purchas His Pilgrimage
        • Edmond Temple's 1827 Giant Investigation
        • The Giants of Sardinia
        • Giants and the Sons of God
        • The Magnetism of Evil
        • Tertiary Giants
        • Smithsonian Giant Reports
        • Early American Giants
        • The Giant of Coahuila
        • Jewish Encyclopedia on Giants
        • Index of Giants
        • Newspaper Accounts of Giants
        • Lanier's A Book of Giants
      • Science and History >
        • Halley on Noah's Comet
        • The Newport Tower
        • Iron: The Stone from Heaven
        • Ararat and the Ark
        • Pyramid Facts and Fancies
        • Argonauts before Homer
        • The Deluge
        • Crown Prince Rudolf on the Pyramids
        • Old Mythology in New Apparel
        • Blavatsky on Dinosaurs
        • Teddy Roosevelt on Bigfoot
        • Devil Worship in France
        • Maspero's Review of Akhbar al-zaman
        • The Holy Grail as Lucifer's Crown Jewel
        • The Mutinous Sea
        • The Rock Wall of Rockwall
        • Fabulous Zoology
        • The Origins of Talos
        • Mexican Mythology
        • Chinese Pyramids
        • Maqrizi's Names of the Pharaohs
      • Extreme History >
        • Roman Empire Hoax
        • American Antiquities
        • American Cataclysms
        • England, the Remnant of Judah
        • Historical Chronology of the Mexicans
        • Maspero on the Predynastic Sphinx
        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
        • Fortean Society and Columbus
        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
        • The Skyfort Document
        • Whirling Wheels
        • Denver Ancient Astronaut Lecture
        • Soviet Search for Lemuria
        • Visitors from Outer Space
        • Unidentified Flying Objects (Abstract)
        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
        • Ancient Astronaut Society Telegram
        • Noah's Ark Cables
        • The Von Daniken Letter
        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
        • UFOs in Ancient China
        • CIA Report on Noah's Ark
        • CIA Noah's Ark Memos
        • Congressional Ancient Aliens Testimony
        • Ancient Astronaut and Nibiru Email
        • Congressional Ancient Mars Hearing
        • House UFO Hearing
      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
        • Premodern UFO Sightings
        • The Moon Hoax
        • Inhabitants of Other Planets
        • Blavatsky on Ancient Astronauts
        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
      • Interdimensional Flying Saucers
      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
      • Sublime and Beautiful
      • Voltaire on Vampires
      • Demonology and Witchcraft
      • Thaumaturgia
      • Bulgarian Vampires
      • Religion and Evolution
      • Transylvanian Superstitions
      • Defining a Zombie
      • Dread of the Supernatural
      • Vampires
      • Werewolves and Vampires and Ghouls
      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
      • King Solomon's Mines
      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
      • Sredni Vashtar
      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
      • The Corpse on the Grating
      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
      • James Dean's Scrapbook
      • James Dean's Love Letters
      • The Amazing James Dean Hoax!
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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