Just hours after the New York Times published an uncritical column reporting on the astrological New Year’s predictions of a Chinese geomancer, the paper of record offered a “fair and balanced” review of the controversy over claims that an Indonesian hill is really a prehistoric pyramid complex by extensively quoting Graham Hancock, who, by his own admission, is not an expert in Indonesia, hills, prehistory, or pyramids. In October, geologist and Atlantis believer Danny Hilman Natawidjaja published in an academic journal a faulty paper wrongly concluding that organic material buried in the hill of Gunung Padang proved the site a pyramid 27,000 years old. Natawidjaja and his team failed to provide evidence that the organic material had been used or deposited by humans or as the result of human activity. This failure of logic led to archaeological outrage and prompted the journal’s publisher to open an internal investigation. Instead of quoting archaeologists, or even explaining the nature of Natawidjaja’s mistake, Times reporters Mike Ives and Ulet Ifansasti gave the first response to Graham Hancock because—and this is true—he had a Netflix show more than a year ago. “This judge-jury-and-executioner model of archaeology, where they can define what is and what is not evidence — what is and is not acceptable as evidence — isn’t helpful in the long term for the progress of human knowledge,” Hancock told the Times. The reporters allowed Indonesian archaeologist Noel Hidalgo Tan to explain that Naawidjaja’s claims are a nationalist myth later in the article, after readers first received a Western TV star’s conspiracy theory perspective. Natawidjaja’s error is only described in the middle of the article. That section is very good, but the Times chose to make the story about Graham Hancock’s martyrdom by devoting the final third to his alleged battles with a conspiracy of archaeologists hellbent on destroying him: Mr. Hancock, who described himself on “Ancient Apocalypse” as “enemy No. 1 to archaeologists,” said that the program had surely contributed to the level of “vituperation and attack” that Mr. Natawidjaja now faces over the study. At least the Times gave the last word to an actual expert. Hilmar Farid, the director general of culture at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, told the Times there was no evidence of a 27,000-year-old pyramid structure. That, of course, forces us to ask the question: Why, then, did we need so much coverage of Graham Hancock in a story that every expert except one geologist is adamant lacks any evidence to support Ice Age pyramid claims?
That answer, sadly, tells us everything we need to know about the media’s priorities and their assumptions about their audience.
10 Comments
doc rock
1/3/2024 12:45:39 pm
Fascinating to me. My academic career overlaps heavily with GH's career in fiction. Honestly never heard of the guy or gave him much thought until I came across discussion of him here around the time of the Magicians book, Can't recall any other anthropologists who knew of him or gave him much thought until I started coming across the few who have developed niche interests in debunking him at around the same time or later. I still don't think that most anthropologists have heard of him or if they have they probably just see him as just another part of a mob of loonies going back to EVD and before.
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People cannot tell....
1/3/2024 07:18:05 pm
The difference between scepticism (putting things to the critical test) and just believing in pretty things....
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Boyan Tic
1/4/2024 10:27:13 am
Hi friends, learning is hard and boring, apparently.Skepticos,is Greek for "seeks other answers", not " I don't believe it" Sending you love from Vancouver Canada 🤗😽
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Kent
1/7/2024 03:25:41 pm
That's not quite correct, bless your heart. The proof is left as an exercise for you. Most people benefit from exercise.
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In The Beginning was.... The word
1/5/2024 08:28:23 pm
This word skeptic comes from ancient Greece, where a philosopher named Pyrrho taught his followers that we can never really understand the true nature of things, only how they appear to us. (So basically, we should stop searching for the meaning of life and just relax.) In Pyrrho's view, the true sage was someone who realized that it was impossible to be certain about anything. His followers were called Skeptikoi, or Skeptics; the Greek word skeptikos means “given to asking questions.”
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Require N Made
1/7/2024 02:58:24 am
Hi, everybody. Does anybody else remember Graham Hancock stated that the Bosnian Pyramids are natural hills? Why has he not said the same about the hill in Indonesia? The New York Times mentioned how efforts in Bosnia inspired the Indonesians.
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skeptic then.
1/7/2024 12:38:42 pm
Not really sure what your point is.
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An Over-Educated Grunt
1/7/2024 02:18:55 pm
Kind of hard for him to claim he never visited it, or for you for that matter to claim he's never visited or investigated Gunung Padang when that was the lead episode of his current claim to fame.
Prospero45
1/9/2024 06:53:37 am
What does it matter what old Hancock says about hills? He is no more an expert in geology than he is in dentistry or scaffolding. He is a writer of unoriginal, third rate pseudoscience, and a drug addict, nothing more.
Mount everest is a pyramid
1/7/2024 03:18:26 pm
Didn't Schoch also state that the Bosnian pyramid isn't a Bosnian pyramid?
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