In lieu of a lengthy blog post today, I’m going to send everyone over to the journal of Paranthropology (vol. 4, no. 3) where my new article, “Ultra-Terrestrials and the UFO Phenomenon,” has just been published. The entire issue is available to read for free, so please enjoy my discussion of whether alien abductions and UFO sightings truly originate in another dimension. In a related note, you’ll also notice that the article immediately following mine is an interview with Graham Hancock where he espouses some strange ideas on prehistory. He claims, for example, that the Aztec misunderstood an ancient worldwide spiritual practice of “symbolic” sacrifice and, being dumb and brown and borrowing their culture from Atlantis, took it literally and started killing people, unlike the smart white folk in Europe. Do I even need to say that there is no evidence for this? In places as far afield as the Druids, the Tibetans, and the ancient peoples of India we find human sacrifices—there is nothing particularly special about Aztec sacrifice except for the extreme numbers, which were more of a function of Aztec imperial politics than a particular lust for blood. For Hancock, though, the existence of sacrifices and pyramids worldwide yields evidence of a prehistoric pyramid culture…blah, blah, blah…. Atlantis, but not really…blah, blah, blah. Hancock then asserts that “science” tells us that there is no afterlife, but he has glimpsed this other realm through drug use, able to see the spirit world where an “intelligence” is directing our every move. He thinks this intelligence is speaking to us now because we are destroying its home in the rain forest: “Personally, I think that there’s an intelligence there, an entity who cares for us and for our species. This is what I’ve felt after fifty or so ayahuasca sessions. But I can prove nothing. … And so it is an interesting coincidence that just as the Amazon is being destroyed, this spirit that has always been confined to the jungle is moving around the world to deliver these teachings. I feel that there is some intentionality behind this.”
However, he draws the line at “mushrooms,” because they led the Aztecs down “a dark path.” He then concludes by promising that the upcoming sequel to Fingerprints of the Gods, due out in 2015, will provide evidence that a lost civilization was destroyed by a massive comet impact in 10,500 BCE, thus abandoning finally Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882) as his model and instead recycling Donnelly’s claims from that book’s sequel, Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel (1883), which argued that a comet destroyed an ancient civilization, etc. Everything old is new again.
17 Comments
Jim
7/17/2013 06:40:10 am
I completely understand where Graham Hancock is coming from. I had many visions one night while suffering from a high fever and perhaps influenced by an over-indulgence of pre-reformulation vintage NyQuil Cold/Flu Multi-symptom Relief. “Science” stubbornly refuses to accept these visions, claiming instead that the various entities I encountered were nothing more than fever-induced hallucinations. Well, I say, “Screw you, ‘Science’! I will never reveal the secrets of the universe that were laid out before me that evening with the likes of you!”
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Tara Jordan
7/17/2013 09:23:06 am
William Rowlandson:"(War God) is a gripping and frank depiction of the very real horror that accompanied this period, and the reader is not shielded from visions of this harsh reality. There is a confident balance between historical realism,conversations, sights, smells, sounds, gore and inspired imagination...". I felt the same way reading Bartolomé De Las Casas & there is one major advantage with De Las Casas,no new age hippie lunacy....
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charlie
7/17/2013 12:06:04 pm
Jason,
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Brad
7/17/2013 02:55:35 pm
Dude you are sure obsessed with tsoukalos, why?
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7/17/2013 03:04:43 pm
Wow, that's a new one. Usually it's Scott Wolter I get complaints about. I'm not obsessed with Tsoukalos; we knew each other once and he still hates me. That's neither here nor there, however, since the article isn't about Tsoukalos, and neither is this blog post.
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Only Me
7/17/2013 04:17:52 pm
Oh, Jason, just admit it! You're an equal opportunity obsessive!
Varika
7/17/2013 05:21:08 pm
You misspelled Hancock pretty badly, there, Brad. And forgot the required capital at the beginning of a name, too. Maybe you should see your eye doctor.
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BP
7/18/2013 06:20:34 am
Draws the line at mushrooms!! But they've been such a help to Aaron Sorkin.
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The Other J.
7/20/2013 07:42:22 pm
Gotta admit, I'm intrigued by this "dark path" mushrooms took an entire culture down. If Sorkin's any hint, maybe the Aztecs became really snappy talkers while walking fast down hallway paths... dark hallway paths.
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7/20/2013 11:27:24 pm
To be fair, he was referring to how mushrooms allegedly were the undoing of Moctezuma specifically and through him all of the Aztecs.
terry the censor
7/22/2013 04:59:18 am
Nice article in Paranthropology.
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Stu Smith
7/22/2013 11:22:51 am
Jason can you post the link to the interview? I listen to alot of Graham Hancock and he is quite thorough of a presenter and he separates what he theorizes on what the evidence suggests versus facts he discovers that need explaining or discussion. In your article you isolate a few points that paint a picture of a man that is "crazy" and is not founded on any form of rational minded reality. It is a form of manipulation to report this on a very complex man as he. So if your agenda is to discredit him be specific on where you pulled your source and why you target this specific point of view to share with your readers. His view on Aztec's is clearly his "theory". He admits that. Just as many peoples' beliefs on ancient past are theories not facts. We look to many others in this field that are not even interviewed by Ancient Alien History channel ridiculous rendition of this theory.
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7/22/2013 11:35:02 am
The interview is printed in the journal of Paranthropology in the edition linked in my article. You're welcome to read it yourself. I don't think Hancock is crazy, but it's hardly a slur against him to present the point of view he has himself been advocating for a couple of years now. You'll remember that he wrote an essay talking about how he spent two decades high on marijuana and how that made him paranoid and prone to conspiratorial thinking. That was his admission, not mine, and if you feel that this insults him, then please do blame him for admitting it.
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mia
7/24/2013 09:37:18 am
If you had actually done any research at all on this human being, you would have found that he states that cannabis in fact helped him with his work as a writer. Graham is an educated and rational person.
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7/24/2013 10:05:34 am
Mia, I've read all of Hancock's (non-fiction) books since 1992, and it pains me to inform you that Hancock's sources are frequently old, outdated, and wrong.
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Tara Jordan
7/24/2013 01:08:17 pm
Mia is right,we need to "educate" & elevate ourselves, & she has the answer.In order to free ourselves from the crushing weight of ignorance (the sinister legacy of the bourgeois mentality),all we have to do is "love" more & take drugs....I am envious of Mia.She must be on the second stage of her spiritual & awakening.She moved from cannabis to Methamphetamine.
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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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