The review is quite long, clocking in at nearly 8,000 words, and even that is a condensed version of my submitted draft. In addition to the review, I will present here one of the trimmings that got left on the cutting-room floor. It concerns Hancock’s interest in the agricultural techniques of pre-Columbian residents of the Amazon rainforest: Hancock is quite taken by the existence of terra preta, an artificial soil made from compost, charcoal (derived from slash-and-char forest management), and pottery fragments. The peoples of the Amazon developed it, probably through accidental accumulations of trash, to make agriculture possible in the basin’s relatively infertile soil, but Hancock believes that it “feels like the work of scientists” according to an obscure master plan, and he blasts archaeologists for imagining that the Amazonians lived “amid a shitscape” of their own waste (168). As a British subject, he surely knows about the fetid conditions of London and the river of sewage that was the Thames down to the creation of the sewer system after the Great Stink of 1858, and yet he finds it insulting to suggest that other peoples similarly lived under less than ideal conditions of sanitation. “I’d say it’s an unlikely story!” he writes. Medieval Englishmen used to literally dump their excrement out the window onto the street below, sometimes hitting passersby on the head.
29 Comments
Kent
4/23/2019 10:59:52 am
The review was Roganesque in length, but well done!
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An Anonymous Nerd
4/23/2019 07:27:30 pm
You seem to have treated his book with more charity than it likely deserved. Did he try to turn you into a strawman again in this book like he tried to in the previous book?
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Matt
4/23/2019 11:41:46 pm
It's a conspiracy by the non-mainstream media to silence you!
Dima
4/24/2019 12:02:50 am
Really ? don't get me wrong, I think Graham Hancock is a pseudo scientist, but that does not mean that Jason has no problems himself, like, presenting things in unfairly and manipulative way, for example, in the previous article* he suggested that Graham Hancock was a racist writing on the white race of the Atlantis. Graham Hancock is a lot of things, but a racist is not one of them. In his book The Fingerprint of the Gods, he did wrote about the myth of white birded man coming to america (stories that were recorded by the Spaniards, and, as some suggest, were in fact written for a political agenda), but he also talks about the statues of the Olmec heads representing African people** so according to Hancock, not all Atlanteans were white, they were mixture of recess, a multicultural civilization...so to speak. Even more so, anyone who read his other books knows that the way he talks about indigenous cultures in countries like India or Africa, his attitude towards them is way more complex than just an "Noble Savage" attitude, Jason should know this too ...
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An Anonymous Nerd
4/24/2019 08:40:27 am
Of course those of us who actually read the review with motives other than looking to defend a celebrity author we happen to like know that nothing you said is related all that much to the actual review.
Dima
4/25/2019 12:41:01 am
"Of course those of us who actually read the review with motives other than looking to defend a celebrity author".... Instead of speculating about my "motives" how about just reading what I wrote? To me Graham Hancock is a pseudo scientist, BUT, I don't agree with you that Jason treatment of him is with "more charity than it likely deserved", and I gave you an example, which is not part of his review on the Skeptic magazine’s website, but it is part of his comments about the book on this site.....unless, of course, You want to argue that all of Jason's posts about Graham Hancock's book "America Before" on this site are completely irrelevant to his "treatment"....of this book. "In the other article you cite, Mr. Colavito doesn't suggest Mr. Hancock is a racist. The quote is…." If you followed my link (and it seems that you did) I'm sure you read the following statement* : " I wonder, though, if this means that all of the evidence for “white” Atlanteans presented in Hancock’s many earlier books is now, to paraphrase Nixon’s press secretary, inoperative". And before that, he writes: "But it doesn’t make it better to swap out Native Americans for white people....his new version carries with it a dollop of the Noble Savage stereotype.... It’s an equally troubling—and almost equally ancient—leftover from the colonial and imperial era". So...according to Jason, Graham Hancock previously promoted the "white Atlantean" story ** and now replaced it with a "Noble Savage" story, a story that is still "almost equally ancient—leftover from the colonial imperial era". Now, how exactly this is not implying that Graham Hancock is a racist? But don't take my word for this, let's see what RationalWiki has to say about this: "The noble savage stereotype is generally considered racist, ethnocentric, or culturally insensitive at the very least due to its association with a long history of imperialism, colonialism, and scientific racism which attempted to "prove" that indigenous peoples were biologically inferior to whites".
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4/25/2019 06:49:50 am
Graham Hancock is not a racist. The issue is that he reuses old ideas from the nineteenth century that were racist without entirely considering their origins and implications. This transmits racist claims from the past even though it was not his intention.
Joe Scales
4/25/2019 09:48:54 am
A theory fails on its merits, or lack thereof. Not whether or not it is, or had been promoted by racists. Pointing out the latter to confront such theories is ad hominem in nature against its current proponents. Unless of course they were nice to you...
Doc Rock
4/25/2019 01:47:33 pm
Things like scientific racialism and eugenics developed and flourished in particular places among particular people for particular reasons. When things that sound eerily familiar to these pop up any rational person should see red flags. Science is not always apolitical much as many people would like to thing.
Kent @ Dima
4/25/2019 05:33:22 pm
First, the Wikipedia article is far superior to the RationalWiki article in terms of length, sources cited, and attempted objectivity.
Dima
4/26/2019 01:45:07 am
KENT wrote :
Look KENT, I don't know what you hoped to @ with your comment, but you just took up space, didn't add anything of value to the discussion
4/26/2019 03:47:49 pm
First, the Wikipedia article is far superior to the RationalWiki article in terms of length, sources cited, and attempted objectivity.
John
4/24/2019 06:50:35 am
Any theory that excludes past alien intervention is incomplete.
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An Anonymous Nerd
4/24/2019 10:11:51 am
No. Not only is there no specific evidence for such an alien intervention (and the claims made are such that specific evidence would exist if it were true), but there's nothing for which such an alien intervention is required to explain. Rational explanations do just as well or better, and have better evidence.
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prospero45
4/24/2019 07:57:56 am
The subtitle to the book is "The Key to the Earths Lost Civilization" and the pre-publication blurb promised that Hancock has brought his decades long claims to a "stunning conclusion". Is there anything in the book's content which validates either of these two statements?
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An Anonymous Nerd
4/24/2019 10:13:28 am
[God alone knows how Mr Rogan endured it for hours on end. ]
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Naughtius
4/24/2019 11:20:53 am
“God alone knows how Mr Rogan endured it for hours on end.”
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Corey
4/24/2019 02:12:23 pm
Maybe Hancock brought some Ayahuasca to share!
Riley V
4/25/2019 02:23:16 am
I just listened to Mr. Hancock on Coast2Coast tonight. Your review was very kind.
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Doc Rock
4/25/2019 01:02:28 pm
Long story short, after 30+ years Hancock is still a joke who can't support his claims but is still taking in some decent coin off the 1 percent.
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Toad In The Hole
4/25/2019 06:01:39 pm
What 1% is that?
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Doc Rock
4/26/2019 10:08:44 am
The ten percent of the ten percent of course.
Nick the Limey
4/26/2019 07:00:24 pm
Jason.
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Kent
4/26/2019 07:23:50 pm
"All outcomes" are not possible. Counterexample: an outcome that is two contradictory outcomes.
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Reggie Wanker
4/26/2019 08:00:18 pm
Colavito has a B.A. in anthropology, an IQ above room temperature, and a demonstrated willingness to research topics in some depth. So he's probably overqualified when it comes to taking Hancock-up to task.
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Harte
5/8/2019 07:03:45 pm
Jason, you've given me an idea about when hats were invented.
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Jake Conner
8/6/2019 01:43:12 am
What a bunch of non-sense. Now I truly understand, someone views the use of their time on a review as productive can only operate as a critic of those who actually conduct experiments and do first person research of the topics they speak of. You find it more utilitarian to go around replying to comments massaging your ego on your website than being scientifically active.
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Jonny Bricks
5/26/2020 11:23:58 am
Ive watched about 7 hours of Graham Hancock and I can say that yes there is def some what I call gentle racism by him that is apparent. For example in a nearly two hour lecture he didn't mention ethnicity or skin color until the final 10 minute when he mentioned white skin and beards of these saviors that restored civilization. Then in an interview with Joe Rogan when Joe asked about the Olmec heads ethnicity Graham replied saying Polynesian as African was a second thought. Graham did this twice. Even when Joe asked about any heads without helmets Graham became slightly confused and said most of them had helmets. this is because the one that doesn't have a helmet shows a clearly an afro and a negro face. Also another Olmec head shows clear corn rolled hair style. Then Graham discusses the Lascaux cave art which he dates at 16,000 years and suggests that the sciences of Egypt came down from Europe. He wont touch on Nabta Playa in Nubia or the fact that the SLC45A2 and A5 gene variants for light - white skin don't even show up until 8000 years ago in rarity and only 5500 years ago in mass meaning all monolithic structures prior to 8000 years were built when not a single white skinned person walked Europe or Asia. These include of course Nabta Playa and Gobekli Tepe. The thing is Graham knows all of this too. If he was truly interested in finding the lost survivors of the cataclysm he would without doubt focus on the Nubians who were the Homo Sapien Sapien that brought divine science to humanity. If he was so perplexed by the building of the pyramids in Egypt why wouldn't he ever mention the documented historical person who was the accredited acrchitecht of the first pyramid IMHOTEP?? Who was a known Nubian man (look up Imhoteps mother) All of the answers are right there waiting for him to research like his buddy Robert Bauval but Grahams gentle British racism seems to not allow him to cross the racial line. His body of work when looked at from afar is partially an attempt to dismiss the "out of Africa" Theory. With that said I still enjoy his work. I will still listen to his lectures and interviews but I will do so knowing of his subtle bias
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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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