In his rebuttal, Hancock is notably more concerned with threats to his book sales than to the content of the criticisms against him, devoting significant space complaining about Carl Feagans’s negative review of America Before on Amazon than to any specific criticism of his work. He is upset that “319 visitors have upvoted Feagans’ hostile review,” making it the top review for the book despite “79 per cent” of reviewers giving the book five-stars. Having been involved with this project since the beginning, I can tell you that Hancock is wrong to think that the special section is a panicked response, a “sure sign that the archaeological establishment feels the ground moving under its feet.” Instead, it exists almost entirely because most archaeologists are not aware of or actively engaged with popular “alternative” descriptions of the past, and the section was intended to raise awareness of the growing gulf between academic and popular understandings of the past. I didn’t choose the topic of my article; John Hoopes asked me to write on the long, sordid history of the Mound Builder myth in the frame of America Before, tying my article to my upcoming book, The Mound Builder Myth. I also didn’t choose the term “pseudoaracheology,” and it is debatable how to define the difference between “pseudoarchaeology,” “alternative archaeology,” and whatever popular quasi-mystical reimagining of the past we find in some of Hancock’s more spiritual works. Instead, let me present what Hancock says about me: Meanwhile blogger Jason Colavito, who also contributes an article to the issue, strives mightily to accuse me of condoning white nationalist racism while being obliged to admit that: “Hancock is careful to attribute his lost civilization to a Native American origin.” I guess Hancock missed the important sentence that followed: “By building on a scaffolding of discredited nineteenth-century views like those I examine in my book, Hancock serves to perpetuate Victorian assumptions about the limits of Native potential, despite his own stated respect for indigenous peoples the world over.” In other words, I didn’t accuse him of condoning white nationalist racism. Instead, he is like my college classmate, ignorantly test-driving racism without fully understanding the origins of the claims he puts on offer. Remember, in Fingerprints of the Gods Hancock explicitly said he wanted to “pay tribute to Ignatius Donnelly,” who declared Atlantis the homeland of the white race, and twelve times described his lost civilization as belonging to “white” people. By America Before he had changed his tune and made them Native American, but that didn’t really change the history of the myths that he has upcycled into an upscale Pleistocene analog for globalization and climate change.
And Hancock knows this. Last year, he and I had a lengthy discussion about racism in the nineteenth-century pseudoscience and historical fictions he draws upon, and he read the manuscript for my The Mound Builder Myth, offering extremely kind words for the book. (I have the emails, and regardless of our differences in historiography, I have always maintained that he an excellent popular storyteller.) He felt strongly enough about the book to recommend it to his publisher, though his publisher declined to take it. This is the same book my article summarizes, and he knows the difference between me accusing him of condoning racism and explaining that perpetuating old ideas, largely uncritically, reinforces the constellation of beliefs that gave rise to them. The Mound Builder myth emerged from anti-Native American racism, and there isn’t any way around the fact that it existed largely to justify cultural and physical genocide and land grabs. In America Before, Hancock goes farther than in past books toward trying to reframe his ideas in opposition to the white nationalist assumptions of past versions promulgated by authors like Ignatius Donnelly, Pierre Honoré, and Jacques de Mahieu. He condemns anti-Native racism in the strongest possible terms. I’m not sure that this entirely erases the impact of the lost “white gods” of Fingerprints of the Gods, but it is a step in the right direction. Volkswagen undertook enormous efforts to cleanse the Beetle of its Nazi heritage, and it will take similar efforts to purge “alternative” archaeology of the racism and genocidal nationalism that birthed it. Given, though, that it lacks any scientific support, there isn’t really much impetus to reconstruct it on new lines. I give Hancock credit for trying, to a degree, by substituting one, possibly genetically distinct, subset of Native Americans for white people in the latest version, but it doesn’t do anything for the assumption implicit in the idea of a lost globalizing superpower that everybody else on Earth was too benighted to figure out how to pile up dirt or stone, or to look up at the night sky.
39 Comments
Jim Davis
11/26/2019 09:53:05 am
I think you are missing Hancock's point. Using your own analogy, one cannot accuse an Atlantis believer of racism because the Atlantis myth is grounded in racism any more than one can accuse a Volkswagen owner of being a Nazi because of Volkswagen's origins in Hitler's regime. Both have outgrown their origins, however reprehensible.
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Joe Scales
11/26/2019 10:20:40 am
I took quite a bit of grief for expressing similar sentiments last week. Racism is a smear used quite haphazardly these days, and almost always with political motives. In a historical sense, it is of course relevant when Jason points out that some alternative historical ideas ran alongside racist ideologies when conceived. However, the past is rife with ignorance, as is our present, unfortunately.
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Jim
11/26/2019 11:26:41 am
" unfortunately. Jason simply needs to squelch his emotional political leanings when he goes after these people."
Joe Scales
11/26/2019 12:44:57 pm
Jim won't stop. Jim can't stop. He's obsessed with Wolter, so he pesters him nonstop creating multiple new screen names to do so on his blog. He's also obsessed with Patrick, whose facebook site Jim visits regularly, then Jim comes here to report on it despite having nothing to do with any topic Jason is currently covering. Likewise with his unhealthy fixation on Jovan Hutton Pulitzer. And these are just the ones we know of. Where else is this trolling and cyber-stalking taking place by this lunatic?
Joe Wilson
11/26/2019 01:21:33 pm
Joe Scales, to which Patrick are you referring? Not Chouinard perchance?
Jim
11/26/2019 01:59:39 pm
Joe Wilson,
Joe Scales
11/26/2019 03:52:33 pm
Jim won't stop. Jim can't stop. He's obsessed with Wolter, so he pesters him nonstop creating multiple new screen names to do so on his blog. He's also obsessed with Patrick, whose facebook site Jim visits regularly, then Jim comes here to report on it despite having nothing to do with any topic Jason is currently covering. Likewise with his unhealthy fixation on Jovan Hutton Pulitzer. And these are just the ones we know of. Where else is this trolling and cyber-stalking taking place by this lunatic?
Corey Herrmann
11/26/2019 11:30:14 am
I'm reminded of Rene Descartes' quote: “Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company.”
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Joe Scales
11/26/2019 12:50:05 pm
"Substitute idiots for racists/white nationalists..."
Chris Jones
12/9/2019 10:26:28 am
Analysts, political pundits, bloggers, and other editorial sources are invoking the race card extremely recklessly and often without any basis. By way of example, Nick Pope, a regular on Ancient Aliens, contends that the belief that ancient civilizations couldn't build megalithic structures is rooted in racism. 11/26/2019 12:05:53 pm
I agree with this reasoning.
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11/26/2019 09:54:37 am
Is it that Hancock is only seeing it about him or did I fail? He writes that I'm annoyed that his book rose to the best seller list. I was hoping that my annoyance at a lack of top ten best sellers in legitimate archaeology would be the thing that came through.
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Jim
11/26/2019 11:33:14 am
Hancock probably still uses an Icebox.
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gleaner63
11/26/2019 12:55:26 pm
..well, Carl, you should be well versed in calling others "racist", as you leveled that charge against the authors of "Denisovan Origins". As Sam Harris has noted, the term "racist" has simply become a conversation stopper, when all else fails. I'm speculating of course, but between you and Jason CoBluto, how are your combined book sales going? Oh wait.....:). But yes, I do believe a person who bills himself as "internationally recognized" (Colavito), and another who calls himself a "professional archaeologist" (Feagans, who works for the Kentucky Forestry Service, wink, wink), might be a little jealous of Hancock's success...
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gleaner63
11/26/2019 01:56:11 pm
Carl Feagans seems like a good fella, but this Jason Bluto dude, especially with his "F Tucker Carlson" comments seems like a political hack "my way or the highway type".... 11/27/2019 01:41:35 pm
I'm pretty sure I've never stated I work for the non-existent "Kentucky Forestry Service."
Rancid Crabtree
11/28/2019 09:04:31 am
Hancock spends more time whining about his lack of acceptance by anthropologists than he does defending his work based on its own merit. Sounds like jealousy to me.
The VW Thing
11/26/2019 10:49:59 am
Your anecdote about your classmate reminds me of the old joke about the definition of short-term memory ... A Jewish doctor tooling around in his Mercedes-Benz while his wife drives her new Porsche.
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max
11/26/2019 12:52:29 pm
jason has issues...
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White nationalist
11/26/2019 12:55:03 pm
Black men run faster.
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Corey Herrmann
11/26/2019 01:00:52 pm
https://gph.is/1Em40g4
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Joe Wilson
11/26/2019 01:50:04 pm
Warmer climates naturally select for longer limbs in relation to overall height (to promote heat loss). Cooler climates select for shorter limbs in relation to height (to promote heat retention). Since their ancestors came from a warm part of Africa, the stereotype of African Americans as particularly fast (and good jumpers) is a side-effect of the ancestral climate promoting long limbs. It is NOT correlated with race writ large, since other geographic zones where the same so-called racial demography have distinctive limb proportions in relation to body size. Anyone whose ancestors came from cold climates (including a non-white person) has shorter limbs in relation to body length. Anyone with long limbs in relation to body can run fast (regardless of skin color).
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Kent
11/26/2019 10:07:45 pm
Sounds like you've cracked the Pygmy Code and the Samoan Enigma.
Bill B.
11/26/2019 01:24:10 pm
Ugh. Jason. With all due respect, the very last line of your article says "how to pile up dirt or stone, or to look up at the night sky" as if that is all the Native Americans did. That is super insulting to their intelligence and accomplishments. The mound communities like Cahokia were sophisticated accomplishments that involved real engineering principles; their astronomy involved celestial tracking and calculations. I don't subscribe to the Atlantis story either, but now to debunk it you'd have us believe that the Native Americans just piled dirt and rocks, and looked up at the sky now and again?
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thinkaboutit.gif
11/26/2019 01:34:17 pm
"Actually Jason, have you considered that *you* were the racist the whole time?"
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Jim
11/26/2019 03:33:14 pm
Not to mention Jason said:
SAA ARTICLES
11/26/2019 04:40:06 pm
Oh yes, those SAA Articles
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Doc Rock
11/26/2019 05:01:17 pm
There is a running theme in Louis L'Amour novels about ancient people inhabiting North America who werent white but were different from Native Americans too but still kind if like them. Haunted Mesa was probably the best example if this. . I wonder what influence he may have had on fringe writers or what influence they may have had on him?
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How ?
11/26/2019 05:06:24 pm
How can you stop believers from believing ?
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Jim
11/26/2019 06:26:18 pm
Didn't "Haunted Mesa" have a portal into other worlds or dimensions, something like that ?
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Doc Rock
11/26/2019 06:57:49 pm
Yes and the sort of Native people as well as Sasquatch could travel thru it. In other books there was just vague references to ancient people who "came before".
Jim
11/26/2019 07:26:45 pm
Maybe they got it from Tolkien.
Kent
11/26/2019 08:25:42 pm
ProudFEET!
Iskanander
11/26/2019 10:29:03 pm
Well, I'll bet that L'Amour knew about "Texas Ranger" Nelson Lee. I'm going to skip linking to anything biographical about him, but he wrote this:
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Jim
11/26/2019 09:37:21 pm
Either and or.
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Kent
11/26/2019 10:14:10 pm
Pretty sure Tolkien didn't write the screenplay.
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Jim
11/26/2019 11:02:09 pm
LOL
Gordon Lightfoot
11/30/2019 06:47:40 am
My feet are huge
Keith Fotheringham
1/17/2020 05:44:44 am
To Jason Colavito: your idea that Hancock is a racist is beyond ridiculous but not surprising. Your attempts to tie Hancock's ideas to Victorian ideas is an interesting attempt to discredit a more advanced thinker and writer. Your feelings of inferiority further reveal themselves as you lovingly lick the anus' of modern mainstream 'archeology'. Losers like you always turn up when truth clashes with dogma. Character assassination is the crutch you lean on when you have nothing intelligent to say.
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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