Review of Netflix's Ancient Apocalypse

11/11/2022

Graham Hancock has made this show before. Netflix’s Ancient Apocalypse is in substance and style very much like the Channel 4 / TLC series Quest for the Lost Civilization that Hancock made nearly twenty-five years ago, albeit with different archaeological sites. In the intervening decades, all that has really changed is the use of drones for better aerial footage, a lot more dramatic music to paper over gaps in logic, and a growing bitterness behind Hancock’s carefully rehearsed enunciation. Each episode, for example, starts with an angry rant about Hancock’s greatness and his critics’ meanness. He opens time and again with some variation on “many archaeologists hate me” and poses as a truth-teller who will singlehandedly overturn archaeology.

Graham Hancock in a promotional still for "Ancient Apocalypse" (Netflix)

Ancient Apocalypse is, loosely, an eight-part, four-hour adaptation of Hancock’s Magicians of the Gods, with a bit of his America Before, both of which I have reviewed at length and to which reviews I direct readers for more substantive criticism. [Note: Click the links to the reviews before criticizing me for not providing a point-by-point rebuttal; I already did that.] In this review, I will try to highlight what is new or different rather than what repeats the books, sometimes nearly line-for-line.

Hancock has not lost his ability to communicate clearly and engagingly. His series is slick, and his presentation could give the History Channel’s shaggy pseudo-documentaries pointers on being compelling. But beneath the surface level, the show feels very much like a score-settling vanity project. Hancock’s son, Sean Hancock, is an executive overseeing unscripted programming at Netflix, and perhaps this explains why the streamer allowed Hancock to show old clips of his “enemies,” edited to make them look like arrogant buffoons, while only Hancock’s point of view is presented as valid. It’s one-sided to the point of undermining its own credibility. [CORRECTION: Sean Hancock was not involved in decision-making regarding Ancient Apocalypse, and I apologize for repeating a false insinuation that first appeared in the Guardian.]

Each of the eight episodes centers on a different ancient site, followed by Hancock’s theorizing, a discussion of myths and legends of some Flood hero or another, and then supposed connections to other sites across time and space. There is a lot of overly dramatic music and golden hour aerial drone shots, a blatant appeal to pathos to lend portentous grandeur to the proceedings.

Part I: Once There Was a Flood
Gunung Padang, Indonesia

Immediately in the first episode, we see that Ancient Apocalypse is handsomely shot and filled with well-done CG, but, like every show of its kind, it assumes the viewer already knows the story and read Hancock’s books. I am not sure that people unfamiliar with his claims will be sucked in by the staccato, superficial storytelling and the lack of a buildup to what are supposed to be grand revelations.

The first episode focuses on Gunung Padang, the focus of part of Magicians of the Gods, the book this series loosely adapts. As in the book, Hancock celebrates the idiosyncratic ideas of Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, who became a laughingstock after trying to prove a natural hill was an artificial pyramid. Hancock believes all other scientists are conspiring against Natawidjaja’s revelations. He claims there are three underground chambers within the hill, though is unclear that the voids are artificial. Hancock claims archaeologists are refusing to investigate, and he accepts the unconfirmed claim that the site dates back to 9600 BCE. He similarly claims Gunung Padang’s architects sailed to Micronesia to build its stone structures, traditionally dated to recent centuries.

The episode sets the template for the series—angry, one-sided, impressionistic rather than factual, more intent on using rhetoric and implication than evidence, and overly enamored of Victorian notions of a lost imperial race, mostly because Hancock is tilting against Victorian ideas of “progress,” “civilization,” and academia that haven’t been current in more than a century. In this episode, Hancock implies heavy things can’t be carried by lazy, primitive Natives, which is why a superior imperial force must have civilized them with technical knowledge in the Ice Age, just as Ignatius Donnelly might have said, and did say in Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. In this show, Hancock does not use the word Atlantis to name his lost civilization, but since he did in America Before, I will employ it in this review for brevity, rather than the longer lost sea-faring, technologically advanced civilization of the Ice Age.

Hancock repeats his prior claim that the end of the Ice Age was the Great Flood of mythology, and with little discussion of the spread of mythology or the dependence of stories on one another (particularly remodeling due to contact with Abrahamic faiths), he repeats Ignatius Donnelly’s ideas about global flood myths representing a real catastrophe. Instead, he presents the only options as a real event or “coincidence.” False dichotomies quickly become the show’s stock in trade.

Part II: Stranger in a Time of Chaos
Cholula, Mexico

Hancock asserts that an ancient lost civilization built the great pyramid of Cholula, a claim Ignatius Donnelly once made. We hear that it is a “black hole” in Mesoamerican history, with an unknown origin. Archaeology tells us it began as a platform for a temple to Quetzalcoatl in the third century BCE. Instead, it quickly becomes evident that Hancock is reverting to Donnelly’s idea of a global pyramid-building Atlantean culture as he begins comparing the wildly different pyramids of cultures separated across time and space and asserting they were all developed from sacred mounds and platforms erected by the culture he won’t call Atlantis. This allows him to gloss over the differences in architecture and time to emphasize sanctity and “the ideas that underpin them.” He nevertheless pretends to be shocked that pyramids worldwide are tall and tapered—the only shape for high structures before steel-frame construction—and contain chambers, a feature so obvious its existence should be a given. Hancock relates a supposed Native story about the pyramid being the work of giants who survived the Flood and criticizes archaeologists for dismissing it as myth, without telling the audience that at least since the nineteenth century scholars have recognized it as a localization of Bible stories (the Flood and the Tower of Babel) by Christianized locals and recorded by Catholic priests. Hancock accepts the story and declares the Nephilim-Giants to be the “intellectual giants” of Atlantis.

Hancock then interviews Marco Vigato, author of Empires of Atlantis, a book about the white heroes of Atlantis’s Aryan empire with their superior white genes (75% Atlantean and 25% pre-human, he claims), and tries to redate various Aztec ruins to Atlantean times based on weathering. Most of the episode, though, merely summarizes Hancock’s familiar argument that (white) culture heroes from myth are survivors of Atlantis.

Part III: Sirius Rising
Malta

Hancock argues against Victorian ideas of linear progress, an idea scholarship has not endorsed in a century, in order to claim an advanced civilization could disappear. He spends quite a bit of time trying to argue that Malta’s great ruins are undatable and that Malta’s established history is an academic conspiracy to hide Atlantis. He claims there is no evidence of a learning curve and Malta was too small to justify big buildings. “Think about it: Could those farmers, who archaeologists tell us never built anything bigger than a shack, really have achieved all this?” Relying on a legend that a Giant built the temples, and he again rewrites the Giant to be someone of intellectual genius—something that has no real basis in logic except in the Nephilim stories of Enochian literature, where the Giants inherit the forbidden knowledge of the Watchers.

In 1917, some teeth found in the Maltese cave of Għar Dalam were identified as Neanderthal, and in 2016, a pediatrician wrote a book to suggest the initial identification was correct. Hancock uses this to argue, nonsensically, that archaeologists are obsessed with a false paradigm and therefore Homo sapiens came to Malta with the Neanderthals in the Ice Age, five thousand years earlier than thought, and built massive temples, which they aligned to Sirius in 11,000 BCE. There is no evidence Sirius was the target of any temple; the researcher who hypothesized it did so by making assumptions about the purpose and unity of Maltese temples for which there is no proof.

Hancock spends much of this episode arguing that native Maltese were too stupid, lazy, or ignorant to do think, build, and do, so only geniuses from another culture could pile rocks or watch stars. But Hancock is the ignorant one, falsely claiming that Malta is “linked” directly to Egypt because they paint the “Eye of Horus” on their boats. The eyes are not of Horus but at just eyes, continuing a tradition imported from either Phoenician or Greek times, when those cultures used eyes on their boats.

Part IV: Ghosts of a Drowned World
Bimini Road, the Bahamas

The Bimini Road, seriously. Hancock refuses to believe it is natural and says it is “reckless” not to try to prove it is an Atlantean wall, so he brings a marine biologist (!) with him to “prove” it is a “manmade structure.” This leads to a discussion of old maps allegedly showing Antarctica (they were the hypothetical southern continents from Greco-Roman myth) in which Hancock repeats old lies about the mapmakers admitting to relying on Ice Age originals. They said no such thing. The most famous such map literally says the opposite: “Behold!” Oronteus Finaeus wrote in 1531: “he presents for your gaze provinces, islands, seas, rivers, and mountains unseen before now, known neither to Ptolemy, nor Eudoxus, nor Eratosthenes, or Macrobius, but which have lain in shadows up to the present day.” Hancock did not read the Latin text and literally says in his show that it is based on older sources. He did not read the map he cites as evidence. Similarly, he repeats old clams about the Piri Reis map and adds a ridiculous one: that a clear set of mountains drawn on a rotated depiction of Cuba (much of the map is twisted to fit the vellum) is in fact the Bimini Road on a lost Ice Age island. We end with a recitation of Plato’s Atlantis allegory, which Hancock takes for history.

Part V: Legacy of the Sages
Göbekli Tepe

Hancock, still mired in his long-ago schoolboy lessons, seems think 1994, when Göbekli Tepe was discovered, is “recent” (and not nearly 30 years ago!) and therefore, like all aging schoolboys who rail against their hated lessons, crows that Göbekli Tepe challenges what “we’ve been taught”—as though knowledge wouldn’t or shouldn’t change over decades. Again, Hancock complains about “hunter-gatherers” being unable to carve or to build, as though one’s means of subsistence defined one’s intellect. Indeed, he even criticizes the “ambition” of “your average hunter-gatherer.” Yes, he called them lazy. He also alleges that stone carving emerged perfected, as though a gift from Atlantis, because there is no evidence of improvement, even while admitting that most of the similar sites beyond Göbekli Tepe are unexcavated. He also assumes that any potential connection to Sirius must be proof of a shared Atlantean heritage, though Sirius is the brightest and therefore most obvious target for naked-eye early astronomers.

Weirdly enough, while real scientists are happily studying how monumental architecture and settlement might lead to agriculture, Hancock rejects this revolution in our understanding of the origins of agriculture, instead insisting on the old twentieth century notion of agriculture yielding towns and monuments in order to defend his idea that only the Watchers and Nephilim—sorry, Atlantean sages—no, wait, sages with cute purses. For him, Göbekli Tepe is a “reboot” of Atlantis after the Flood.

The episode finishes with Martin Sweatman’s nonsensical interpretation of Göbekli Tepe’s iconography, itself based on Hancock’s own prior speculation. I have critiqued his bad ideas many times and need not repeat his Graham Hancock fan fiction here. Hancock calls Göbekli Tepe a “memorial” to the dead of Atlantis.

Part VI: America’s Lost Civilization
Poverty Point and Serpent Mound

Having mostly exhausted Magicians of the Gods, Hancock moves on to adapting his next book, America Before. It’s interesting that he again frames his argument around schoolboy lectures, complaining about the Clovis-first idea of the peopling of the Americas. He wrongly says this was the “dominant paradigm” until 2010 (he’s a decade late) and seems angry to have discovered that schools don’t teach it anymore because it gives him fewer reasons to argue archaeologists are resistant to evidence.

The episode looks at Poverty Point, Serpent Mound, and other mound sites, noting their astronomical alignments, which he attributes to Atlantis. He knows this sounds racist, so he offers a lengthy discussion on Native heritage and the atrocities committed against Native peoples and their cultures. “I’m not saying the ancient Americans living here weren’t capable of discovering and incorporating these astronomical observations into their sites by themselves,” he says, undermining his own argument for a lost civilization in the hope of not appearing racist.

Hancock makes much hay out of the administrators of Serpent Mound banning him from filming at the site, which Hancock calls “censorship.” Having been burned with shows like America Unearthed, they decided not to support fringe ideas about non-Native civilizations being responsible for Native sites. Hancock calls this “ideological” discrimination and he gets very mad about it.

Part VII: A Fatal Winter
Derinkuyu, Cappadocia

Archaeology says the massive underground cave city of Derinkuyu (and around three dozen others) in Cappadocia was built below ground with hand axes in the first millennium BCE, the date of the oldest artifacts found there. Xenophon discusses it in his Anabasis. Hancock, though, disagrees. In Magicians of the Gods he placed it in the Paleolithic, claiming with no particular evidence that the underground cities were bunkers to protect against a comet crash. He alleges that because hand axes were known to have been used at the end of the Ice Age in the region, “there is no reason” Derinkuyu couldn’t have been carved then. Vitruvius probably reported truly in On Architecture 2.1.5 when he said the Phrygian built underground because they inhabit a “country destitute of timber,” so they “choose natural hillocks, which they pierce and hollow out for their accommodation, as well as the nature of the soil will permit.” Hancock, though, tries to link Derinkuyu to a late Persian variant of the Near East Flood myth in the Zoroastrian Avesta (Fargard 2.21-43) in which Ahura Mazda orders Yima to hide animals and seeds in a stone enclosure against a fatal winter. Hancock says it describes an underground city like Derinkuyu, though in the text it is clearly a building with walls and a roof. Hancock says that the winter would be heralded by a celestial snake—a comet—but that detail he finds key doesn’t appear in the Avesta. Hancock has conflated the text with the Bundahishn, which speaks of the evil spirit and his demons moving “like a snake” as they rose up to heaven and returned (ch. 3). It’s not the same story, as Hancock knew when he discussed both in Magicians of the Gods, but here he purposely runs them falsely together to create a “stunning implication” that simply isn’t there.

Part VIII: Cataclysm and Rebirth
Scablands, Washington State

The final episode rehearses uncredentialed autodidact Randall Carlson’s claims about the catastrophic formation of Washington State’s scablands previously given in Magicians of the Gods. Nothing new occurs here, but the usual evidence for the alleged Younger Dryas comet, previously featured on Ancient Aliens after appearing in Magicians of the Gods follows. As I noted many times, even if the comet really did hit, there is nothing to connect it to the destruction of a lost civilization—except that Ignatius Donnelly wrote a book about it as his sequel to Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. Hancock does his best to argue that the constellations were known 10,000 years before evidence for their imagined shapes exist and that astrological codes can pinpoint when the next comet will hit. After all, Joe Rogan pops by to endorse the idea, so it must be as true as his vaccine denialism. The dramatic music swells, the rhetoric reaches a fever-pitch, and yet nothing more than a few stories and some rhetorical sleight of hand holds together Hancock’s efforts to play prophet and warn that our own new Atlantis is destined to fall if we don’t bow before nature and repent the hubris of our civilization.

161 Comments

Nicholas John Collyer

11/11/2022 07:13:09 pm

What a grifter that guy is! You’re right about the bitterness: every interview I’ve seen with him begins with a nasty rant about archaeologists and academia in general. Wouldn’t it be great if Netflix did a “right of reply “series?

John O

11/17/2022 01:47:58 pm

It has nice photography and music . It is quite fun spotting all the points where he tries to slip some false logic past the audience but the suggestion that nearly all archaeologist and historian are against disruptive theories because they are too invested in the status quo ( as if they are part of big pharma, or defence research or big oil where such arguments might have some traction) is of course ridiculous and soon becomes irritating.
Sometimes it is just damn lies : he states that because a legend is wriitten on a stone from 300 CE that archaeologist do not accept that the legend could be older than 300 CE! He then goes on to suggest it must therefore date to 12000 BCE.

Bezalel

11/21/2022 09:10:50 pm

"...but the suggestion that nearly all archaeologist and historian are against disruptive theories because they are too invested in the status quo...is of course ridiculous...."

Preach

Rock Knocker

11/11/2022 08:40:27 pm

I’ve never read any of Hancock’s books, and I’m intrigued enough by your review to watch at least a few minutes of Ancient Apocalypse. Perhaps I’ll stream it in the loo…..

11/14/2022 07:33:15 pm

I would bet big money that Jason never thought that his review of Hancock’s latest drivel would have solicited far more comments than most/all of his previous reviews. It has triggered both the wackos and the critical thinkers…kudos to Jason for formenting such a discussion. This is almost always a good thing, diverse viewpoints are usually interesting to read. Obviously I am not a Hancock fan, but exposing the depth of the belief in his type of pseudoscience is enlightening. Depressing, but enlightening.

Anthony G.

11/15/2022 02:16:48 pm

Jason also someone fantasizing about him sweating as he types. That has to be more unsettling than a pointed out reflection in eyewear.

Kent

12/11/2022 10:40:57 pm

Not as unsettling as the fantasy you just related.

To quote Jason: "Stop it."

Jefrem Ornal

11/11/2022 09:19:34 pm

He didn't come off angry. You sure it's him? It seems the better his evidence, the more you reach and more angry you become. Do you actually read your infantile reviews?

Bobby B

11/12/2022 11:55:15 am

"The better his evidence..." Stringing together more and more untruths doesn't count as better evidence, any more than shouting more loudly makes an argument stronger.

11/12/2022 11:59:03 am

"... destined to fall if we don’t bow before nature and repent the hubris of our civilization."

While I don't agree with Hancock's reasons for believing that, I do believe that is true - we have to start being better stewards of our planet.

Rusty RH

11/15/2022 07:53:26 pm

There literally is no evidence. I’m not saying yes or no, but there is a lot of guess work and most of all from what I see is he just doesn’t want to believe an earlier civilization was able to do what the Egyptian’s did. Probably with a lot of slaves and in the end that king died and said F that guy and didn’t even put him there because they didn’t find any bones. Not this guys idea that some super advance civilization lived. He’s all BS and no proof.

Tom Brand

11/16/2022 08:33:30 am

You seriously believe a ton of unskilled slaves built the most advanced building of the time, which we would struggle to build today due to the weight, volume and size of the blocks and the miraculous precision it was all cut and positioned?

Chris R. link

11/16/2022 09:43:19 pm

It's been well established that Egyptians built the pyramids seasonally with cyclical seasonal labor that was agricultural labor in growing season and became building labor when not. It appears to have been significant in their economy.

I'm not sure how that society could organize to both feed and control that many slaves; seems like more work than not having slaves...

E.P. Grondine

11/21/2022 12:22:03 pm

Tom -

U Chicago's Oriental Institute has been excavating the workmen's quarters for years.

12/3/2022 05:12:50 pm

"most advanced building of the time"

Yes, the Egyptians were excellent in pile-of-rocks technology.

It's not that we CAN'T build pyramids, it's that building pyramids is STUPID. We can do better. Forget us, the ROMANS did better. The Coliseum was the Madison Square Garden of its day. Hosted different events including naval battles.

Pyramids are piles of rocks built by stupid people. The coprolites of a culture. And the South Americans did it better, albeit later which kind of makes sense.

12/11/2022 10:54:05 pm

"You seriously believe a ton of unskilled slaves built the most advanced building of the time, which we would struggle to build today due to the weight, volume and size of the blocks and the miraculous precision it was all cut and positioned?"

You really don't understand. You get a bunch of pipe-hitting [Quentin Tarantino's word] to do the lifting and one smart [QT word] to do the math. It's not rocket science. It's literally a pile of rocks. People all over the world independently developed the pile of rocks technology. Babies develop this technology.

It's not that we can't build them today, it's because building a pyramid is STUPID.

You're a victim of the "It's big, it must be good" fallacy. Such a disappointment.

12/16/2022 03:29:22 am

Tom Brand: Your position appears to be "Since I don't know how to do it, those people from the ancient certainly couldn't know how to do it either." That's not a sustainable argument. Modern humans probably don't know how to do 90% of what ancient humans did, just as ancient humans wouldn't know how to do 90% of what we do today.

Steven Williams

11/12/2022 12:04:40 pm

The "alleged" comet? Wow, you can't even bring yourself to give Hancock something that has copious scientific literature behind it. How many of those "vaccines" have you had? You know the ones the scientific literature say are dangerous for healthy people? It's clear science isn't your thing. Hey, Oak Island is back next week. Stick to that.

Jon Coles

11/12/2022 07:10:58 pm

I mean, LOL. Graham Hancock has no credible peer-reviewed material behind his patently nonsensical claims. His science is rubbish, his understanding of cosmology and basic physics non-existent, and his understanding of the ancient world even less than that.
Let me give you an example: this is a basic concept called "the argument from ignorance". Because X doesn't account for all the available physical evidence or the physical evidence is incomplete, then Y must be possible, no matter how insane. That does not even pass the primary test of a reasoned argument, let alone a theory subject to academic rigour. The "sources" Hancock cites are discredited and he deploys even them only to support a concluded opinion (his own), rather than examining their transparent weaknesses. If you want an example of the sort of bunkum he relies upon, see Velikovsky and .von Däniken. Two crackpots - and in the latter case, a proven fraud - whose idea of rigour is to draw massive conclusions from zero evidence and misrepresent basic principles underpinning research by those who know what they're talking about in architecture, science, philology, archaeology, and history.
I'd say you couldn't make it up. But that's exactly what von Däniken, Hancock, and other snake oil salesmen do.

David North

11/13/2022 10:51:10 pm

I've read a few of his books and there are loads of peer reviewed work he cites. What I actually find interesting about your comment is that, although I understand your breakdown of how conclusions can be erroneously drawn, you don't actually offer a counter to any of his assertions.
Hancock is a journalist, something he is very clear about. He does not claim to be a scientist or archeologist. All he is doing is showing data and facts to come to his own conclusion. If you think it's "rubbish" that's fine, but exactly which part? Sea levels over time? Carbon Dating of ancient sites like Gobekli Tepe and Gunung Padang? Massive human populations in the Americas 10,000 years ago? Astronomical cycles like precession? Asteroidal impact evidence?

It really is OK for our history to be updated as we learn more. The hatred of Graham Hancock is so bizarre because I have yet to see or hear an argument that invalidates much of what he is saying.

Griff

11/14/2022 10:55:27 am

Graham Hancock has never published peer reviewed research to support his assertions. Rather he cherry picks published works that give the appearance of supporting whatever stupidity he is promoting at a given time.

10 years ago he was pushing a narrative that his version of Atlantis was in Antarctica and obliterated by earth crust displacement. Then it shifted to north America and obliteration by a comet, with the Hiawatha crater as validation.

He has been debunked so many times here and elsewhere that only the mentally ill and terminally ignorant continue to claim that he has not been invalidated.

Peter

11/15/2022 10:56:22 am

If u believe anything Graham says you are

“mentally ill and terminally ignorant“

Unfortunately for you Griff you’re talking about yourself.

11/21/2022 08:54:50 am

You can probably believe what Hancock says if he tells you the time or the day of the week or who won WW2. But when it comes to telling you about Atlantis in Antarctica or 8500 year old pyramids in Mexico or the notion that a comet impact caused an almost overnight megafauna extinction event in North America or that academics are involved in a global conspiracy to suppress the truth? Then your intelligence and sanity are being put to the test.

Mike Faccia

12/18/2022 09:16:03 pm

If you believe his claims are false and spreading misinformation, share research that contradicts his points and disprove the theory. While you archeologists jumping to deny his work since it can not be proven with certainty, none of you present contradicting points to disprove this. This leads us (the audience) to believe Hancock is on par when he says you dismiss anything that doesn't fit the status quo.

Knee jerk obvious

12/24/2022 11:41:58 am

Mike,

Asking for information already provided suggests that you didn't bother to read the article and are simply responding to the title. Try again, and this time attempt to rebut specific criticisms offered by Mr. Colavito.

11/12/2022 01:34:22 pm

I ate some bad nasi padang yesterday so I had the opportunity to stream Episode One. Apparently the poster above didn’t watch the episode - or he has anger management issues himself. The coded phrases “so-called experts” and “extremely defensive arrogant and patronizing attitude of mainstream academia” etc. are not words of affection and joy. SMH.

Jason is right, the episode was beautifully filmed and scored. Netflix clearly sees this series as a cash cow and is not afraid to throw some real money at it - unlike the History channel. But it fails in the same ways all such entertainment does - by leaping to conclusions not supported by evidence, misunderstanding basic concepts and purposely misrepresenting facts. If I stream any more episodes it will be with the sound off so I can enjoy the gorgeous visuals without the distracting drivel.

.

Gunnar

11/12/2022 03:15:30 pm

I have a bachelors degree in archaeology so I’m not an expert. This series is difficult to watch. The ignorance and logical fallacies are too much for me. It is very misleading to the general population who do not have experience with archaeology or mythology.

11/12/2022 11:42:51 pm

Bachelors degree in archeology is like me saying my bachelors degree in finance is credible and anyone than doesn’t understand finance is dumb because they don’t have degree in that subject… Complete cash grave scam to believe the way you do. Theres others ways to knowledge. Literally can goto the library for free. Or go watch Good Will Hunting. Get an idea. I would wager you went in debt for your archeology degree. No not me. I learned how this world worked a long time ago with money. Without faith, money means jack shit. The narrative is scripted as fuck. Why don’t you open your mind to other ideas you twisted sheep buffoon. The world where I come from, money doesn’t exists. It’s futile. Everyone gets along because there’s no automotive honking up your ass. We get around by train and horse. So no cluster fucking in traffic. I would wager your the type of person that shits em self in road rage. The whole premise of this show is to challenge the mainstream archeology.

Dave Jezovic

11/13/2022 03:37:53 pm

Their first sentence explicitly stated “I’m not an expert”. Yet you appear to be triggered by the expertise that you yourself have decided they have claimed for themselves, and respond with a bizarre free-form monologue. Most entertaining, but rather strange.

God save us from those who “do their own research” and scorn the wisdom of people who study and work for years in their chosen fields. This is in large part why the Covid pandemic was so prolonged.

Here’s an idea: I’m not a blacksmith or an engineer, and have no knowledge or training in either area. But I saw a couple of Youtube videos once. Would you let me shoe your horse or do an annual safety check on your train?

An Over-Educated Grunt

11/13/2022 04:16:43 pm

I have a master's degree and a license to practice in geotechnical engineering. This DOES make me an expert in that field, and it gives me great pleasure to use my expertise in structures and foundations to tell you that your ideas are structurally unsound and built on a foundation of nonsense.

Dick Young

11/14/2022 03:04:02 am

"The whole premise of this show is to challenge the mainstream archeology."

If you're going to challenge the mainstream, you need some significant and credible ammunition. Hancock generally has neither.

11/13/2022 11:00:09 pm

I'm curious what is so misleading to the general population. I have now read a fair few of these reviews and comments that claim Hancock is selling snake oil and presenting false information, yet there is not one thing being called out as wrong. There is a lot that has been taught in schools from history books with all kinds of categorically false information, and sometimes propaganda.

I just find it interesting that he talks to archeologists, scientists, and different types of experts to support his argument, so are they quacks as well? Are the people studying Gunung Padang and making new discoveries just shills and liars? If so, why?

Tim

11/16/2022 09:35:02 pm

You didn't bother reading the article you're commenting on? Or the two links that debunk Hancock's books?

He barely talks to any experts, just quack authors.

NAME

11/17/2022 08:28:22 am

It is highly unlikely that he read the entire review, Tim. You can often tell by the comments that the Hancock fans didn't make it past the title or first paragraph. They just know that it is criticism and offer much the same canned responses that they did the last time something critical of Grammy was posted.

Paul

2/1/2023 11:59:23 am

Hancock claims there was an advanced (whatever that means) civilization before the last ice age. There is literally zero evidence for this claim, and no reason at all to believe there was such a civilization, i.e. no artefacts that could not have been made (albeit sometimes very laboriously) using prehistoric technology. If you watch Ancient Apocalypse carefully, you will quickly realize that the evidence Hancock presents doesn't really support any of his claims.

I watched the last episode last night, frequently pausing to fact check. Much of the evidence to support a comet impact in 10.5k BC is highly disputed. The black mats Hancock talks about vary greatly in age and in many cases are not black at all. They contain no material that could not have been the result of well-known processes, such as forest fires. The YD Impact Hypothesis is an interesting idea, but the evidence seems very thin indeed.

Also in that episode, why did Hancock talk to an amateur geologist about the Channelled Scablands? Are conventional geologists all as untrustworthy as we are supposed to believe conventional archaeologists are? Smells of the anti-science sentiments we are seeing increasingly on social media

A good scientist creates a new hypothesis to explain new evidence that old hypotheses do not explain, and then looks for evidence that the new hypothesis is wrong i.e. they try to break it. Hancock isn't doing science, he is telling stories and then cherry-picking evidence to support them.

2/8/2023 03:53:48 pm

@Paul
Last paragraph =. Right on the money

This is why science is slow to change. We want it that way, so we know the body of scientific knowledge improves with time. And yes, true science must consider countervailing evidence, something amateurs never learn to do (seemingly)
Kudos

Henry

3/3/2023 06:28:43 am

Forest fires would not account for the glass microbeads numb nuts.

Ken Hamilton

11/12/2022 03:40:39 pm

Each episode doesn't begin with an "angry rant". Did you actually watch the episodes? You're starting to sound like Scott Wolter.

11/17/2022 02:00:17 pm

The first two do: he say nearly all archaeologist are too invested in the status quo to listen to his theories.
This argument may apply to big pharma or parts of the defence industry but it simply doesn't apply to the vast majority archaeologist or historians : nothing would excit them more than revolutionary theories that over turn the accpeted theories if their is good evidence. The truth is they listen to his theories and laugh.
It is fun waching this programme and spotting the logical fallacies but the constant carping at archaeologists is annoying.

Mark B Boslough link

11/12/2022 05:19:29 pm

This series was virtually unwatchable for me. It appears to be nothing more than a self-promotional vanity project by Hancock filled with scientific misinformation and continuous pot shots against "mainstream science" (aka "science").

I watched the first half of the first episode, and the last half of the last one, in which the discredited Younger Dryas impact hypothesis was promoted. Comet Research Group founder and director Allen West was quoted saying, "Scientists, unfortunately, are taught to be cynical about things." How would someone with no formal training in science know what scientists are taught?

I plan to blog about this too. See https://www.boslough.us/blog

2/1/2023 07:40:23 pm

The giveaway is West attaching "unfortunately" to the statement "Scientists are taught to be cynical about things." If West's preferred version of that statement is "Scientists, fortunately, are taught to be gullible about things," he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a keyboard or microphone.

ArchyFantasies

11/12/2022 05:33:50 pm

I honest to God just love the way you write. Also thank you for putting together all the little connections throughout the show. It's always fascinating for me to see how all this crap comes together.

Kendall Davis

11/12/2022 08:41:35 pm

Jason has jumped the shark. Name-calling, labels, and implying racism is the best he has anymore. He has become a parody. We'd all like to see you debate Carlson. Maybe you can call him some names.

11/13/2022 07:42:20 pm

Carlson doesn't debate, he rants, and calling him names is completely warranted.

Boris Amberthy

11/12/2022 08:47:43 pm

I can just see Colavito typing this angry, sweat pouring down his face, upset Netflix gave Hancock a show and not him. At least there are no aliens.

Jeff Knox

11/12/2022 09:58:48 pm

I just finished the entire thing, and boy do I feel like I need a mental enema after that utter drivel. Its 50 percent whining about how scared mainstream academics are against having their paradigm destroyed (the dumbest thing I have ever heard, and something people claim in many fringe fields like Ufology). No academic or scientist is scared of actual EVIDENCE that would change the way we understand things. NONE. They welcome it, but he spends half the show whining about that to get people to distrust what scientist actually say about this stuff. I found the last episode particularly bad, as someone who takes several geology field trips to the Scablands every single year and has an entire library on the Missoula Floods, Columbia River Basalt Floods, The Scablands, etc.. His misunderstanding and misrepresenting of the geology of Eastern Washington is just laughable, if it wasn't sad.

11/13/2022 10:36:48 am

"No academic or scientist is scared of actual EVIDENCE that would change the way we understand things. NONE."

The best argument I've heard why Economics is no real science so far ;)

Mick

11/25/2022 11:10:11 am

Will Rogers described "An economist is a man that can tell you...what can happen under any given condition, and his guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's too."

Tom

11/14/2022 10:56:27 am

"No academic or scientist is scared of actual EVIDENCE that would change the way we understand things. NONE. They welcome it,"

You don't know that. You are also wrong about that.

11/21/2022 09:18:58 pm

OK

"No well disciplined academic or scientist is scared of actual evidence" then.

The scientific process is very intentionally slow and gradual. It is only after a great deal of overwhelming evidence is analyzed and scrutinized that the knowledge base will change.

This is a good thing.

Graham Hancock's skewed view of what science actually is, what it does and what constitutes actual evidence points to what the primary problem with his work is.

I have read nearly every book he has written because they are well written they are very entertaining and they bring to mind many things that I like to study. But his view of what constitutes scientific evidence is flawed. He is not a scientist he is not an archaeologist; he knows that and yet he cannot admit that his ability to make grand conclusions should be questioned.

RickG

11/15/2022 03:10:32 pm

Academics and archeologists have to make a choice. Study and explore what the people with the money want to believe or make the masses believe or be pushed to the bottom of the hill. At the bottom there is no funding and there are a million detractors telling you to stay at the bottom while we get paid and get to work. There is plenty of plausible ideas and leading information into what Hancock is trying to get across but nobody will fund that research especially those who already are running the narrative. So there is plenty of actual scientists and archeologist and experts ready to back him up but only in secret for fear of losing funding or work and thats how the real world operates in many different fields until its deemed proper to move that direction or they cannot fight the truth anymore. One day i believe a lot of people in this comment section are going to be eating crow.

A shot in the dark

11/17/2022 07:20:36 am

A wild guess. You are neither an academic nor an archaeologist? Another wild guess, you don't know personally a lot of academics or archaeologists that have confided their experiences with you? Am I hot or cold?

11/17/2022 02:07:26 pm

"So there is plenty of actual scientists and archeologist and experts ready to back him up but only in secret for fear of losing funding or work . . ."

I'd be interested in seeing your data on that.

Jim

11/17/2022 06:06:28 pm

Must be true, Scott Wolter says pretty much the exact same thing.

11/21/2022 09:23:38 pm

The American people refuses to adequately fund archaeology, academia and science in general. Instead we fund the military to the tune of $800 billion. Do we invest that much in education? Do we invest that much money in public ownership of science? Do we invest that amount of money in our own health?

No

So yeah.

I take your point and I raise it 100 fold. Start throwing a lot more money into the public ownership of science and we'll get somewhere.

TGUT

11/27/2022 02:52:46 am

I’m sorry I just can’t…

Hancock has written at least a dozen books, many of which are best sellers, and he has been the star of multiple major documentaries. He has been a consultant on at least one major blockbuster (10,000 BC). His son is literally a manager at Netflix (oh what a coincidence). The man is not being silenced nor are his views. In fact I think you can make a pretty sound argument that these psuedohistorical ideas get far more credit amongst both the public and the powerful than they have ever warranted.

11/13/2022 07:25:48 am

SO SAD... Same Old Song And Dance. Virtually nothing new has come from this man since I first heard of him around age 5. "The human race has amnesia" was his main catch phrase as I recall.

The comment on the Piri Reis map was new and laughable. The Piri Reis map happens to be one of over 240 works of cartography depicting the North American Baptistry.

If Hancock wants to see ancient walls, he should look at the Marco Polo folio. It depicts the Great Wall of China as well as Korea. North of CIPANGU is a string of dots extending to the north and east. It's identified with the phrase TERRA PONS, literally meaning “land bridge.”

I have to admit to being guilty of buying a couple of his books in my youth. The last was "Heaven's Mirror". Stunning photography.

12/24/2022 07:08:12 pm

"ANTHONY G.
11/13/2022 07:25:48 am
SO SAD... Same Old Song And Dance. Virtually nothing new has come from this man since I first heard of him around age 5."

Hmmm. Here's why this is yet another Anthony Warren LIE.

The Sign and The Seal was published in 1997. By your account you're in your mid to late 40s (2 to 5 books a day, every day for 42 years, your main LIE.)

So you were 5 in let's say 1982 at the latest. Reading the Economist then were you?

You not only suck at telling the truth, you suck at lying. No wonder your wife got smart and kicked you to the curb.

Paul Gordon

11/13/2022 08:57:05 am

Graham Hancock has updated and retooled the old Erich Von Daniken trope – that the numerous vast and enigmatic archeological sites found across the globe cannot be explained by conventional science. And that there's a conspiracy among the archeological establishment to prevent the unsettling truth from being revealed (all very De Vinci Code). Von Daniken argued that visiting aliens had somehow jumpstarted the technological skills of early humans to create these wonders. He also claimed that ancient hieroglyphs and myths regularly depicted these ancient space travellers. Hancock has switched the aliens for some advanced ice-age civilisation – and like Von Daniken is making a truckload of money for peddling this tosh

Charles Verrastro link

11/13/2022 11:01:28 am

Enough production money and the decision to freely use bombast and unfounded speculation can make for a slick product aimed at the credulous.
People by now are conditioned to think the Marvel Multiverse is an actual thing, after all. And that Trump, JFK, Jr. & James Dean are the new Holy Trinity ushering in the End Times.
These shows are the digital media equivalent of those slick special magazine issues by Time, History, etc. that give us brief and often incorrect 'factoids' about Jesus, Christianity, Dead Sea Scrolls, Witches, Secret Societies, Celebrities, Conspiracies, UFOs, etc.

Sarah NaMaras

11/13/2022 12:55:52 pm

I’ve looked nearly everywhere for the answer so I’ll ask here- if you know of any archeologists that have thoroughly investigated the sites in question like Gunung Padang? Everything I’ve read says the Archeologists refuse to analyze and excavate themselves. If so, why is that? How can a profession refute something if they don’t do everything they can to analyze the facts of the site?

If Archeologists have thoroughly investigated this site and analyzed all the data, where are their findings? I would like to read their findings if so. Please provide your source. Thank you very much.

11/13/2022 04:19:20 pm

Same reason I wouldn't drill water wells on a volcano. You don't spend your hard fought grant money on a site unlikely to produce useful results.

Sarah

11/13/2022 07:49:47 pm

Archeologists, like my sister, spend money on far less important matters than something that could change history. At the very least we learn something fundamental about a culture.

11/14/2022 12:28:04 pm

“Archeologists, like my sister, spend money on far less important matters than something that could change history.”

Therein lies the real issue - how important is this site? Previous serious studies have show it’s not that important, not nearly as old as some vested interests claim and hardly groundbreaking. As for your sister (and I mean zero disrespect here) why don’t you ask her your question? Hancock says that “science should be open to new evidence” but he gives no peer-reviewed evidence, just conjecture, false claims and outright misrepresentations. Plus his disdain for “academics” is palpable in his rants. It is no wonder that he is not taken seriously by mainstream science.

Everett hitch

11/14/2022 10:22:32 am

The site has been investigated by multiple scholars in multiple fields going back a century. The vast majority of them dispute the claims made by the researchers that Hancock has borrowed from regarding dating of the site. Rebecca Bradley has discussed the matter at length on her blog.

11/14/2022 10:42:06 am

“Scholars in multiple fields”, “blog” and “a century” does not provide me or anyone data or knowledge. So, if these things happened, great, who are they, when did it happen, where are the reputable publications of their findings, and why is it so hard to find?

If anyone knows I’d be interested in reading, especially about an Archeology excavation and findings . If you don’t have any of these answers I’m not sure why you’re responding tbh.

11/14/2022 12:48:17 pm

If you can't follow the suggestion to read the information that Bradley has provided in summarizing the controversy then you probably don't belong in this conversation. This is the classic example of someone asking for information then continuing to argue without bothering to review the information provided to them.

11/14/2022 01:47:08 pm

EH- his suggestion was “read a blog by Rebecca”. Why are you responding? I asked a question, if you don’t have an answer you can save the mansplaining.

Rock- What important studies, excavations, publications are you referring to? That’s what my questions is and no one can answer. If you can’t answer then don’t respond. Put up or shut up.

My sister doesn’t know of any published research of any excavation at this site hence me responding to an article in the exact subject in question.

If you have a problem with me wanting to read the research myself then you have a problem with the scientific process.

11/15/2022 07:46:26 am

What part of published research don’t you understand? I’m floored you keep telling me to read a blog. Whether by an archeologist or not, it’s A BLOG. What if I read a blog by an archeologist that agrees with Hancock, would that be suitable? Absolutely not.

Seriously, can the mansplaining stop? If you don’t have the excavation or published research recommendations then don’t touch your keyboard. I literally feel sorry for your wives- listening seems like a feat here.

11/15/2022 10:31:19 am

She will go on and on arguing and playing the mansplaining card instead of taking 10 minutes to review the information provided. No wonder Hancock has made a fortune off of these dullards.

For those less dull, Rebecca Bradley has discussed this topic at length and has provided names of researchers involved in the matter. A good start and will have to suffice since nobody is going to waste time assembling a bibliography of relevant sources for the benefit of those who would not read them anyway and would just continue to argue.

Triggly puff can have the last word.

11/20/2022 03:38:09 pm

Let me get this straight. You complain about being directed to a blog... after coming to a blog... and you expect us to do a full fledged literature review for you outside billable hours? I recommend you talk to your sister the archaeologist about how this works.

Eric Plumrose

11/14/2022 03:00:59 pm

Graham Hancock is a former journalist with a Sociology degree. Rebecca Bradley is a novelist with a PhD in Archaeology.

To be fair to Sarah, Bradley's blog (skepticink.com) isn't easy to find due to there being another novelist (and former Detective Constable) who blogs by the same name.

Anyhow, here are the relevant links:

https://skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2016/10/06/pyramids-naturally-pt-1/

https://skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2016/11/12/pyramids-pt-2-gunung-padang/

https://skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2017/05/14/gunung-padang-open-letter-danny/

11/14/2022 11:16:59 pm

Thank you for finding this resource. Much appreciated.

11/15/2022 10:39:06 am

It took me 30 seconds to locate Bradley's blog writings on the topic via a Google search. Too much of a challenge for some.

11/15/2022 11:59:43 pm

Bradley's point by point rundown is exactly what I've been looking for since watching the first episode of the show, thank you for posting!

Charles L. Verrastro link

11/13/2022 04:25:09 pm

Nothing more mysterious than nationalist pride & tourist dollars. Same plot as Bosnian pyramids from before time itself. All promoted by a single individual with an agenda. It's not old and is just typical terracing around a volcanic cone.

11/14/2022 11:02:54 am

Thank God Charles is here to tell us for sure what happened in our past.

Nat link

11/13/2022 05:16:48 pm

You can join that group of synics dear reviewer, that are stuck in the current narcissistic way of thinking. Catch a wake up to the fact that its thinkers like Graham that are going to catapult the rest of us into a new world where we stop being so gullable and start questioning our past and future existence. Thank God for this platforn where our intelligences can be challenged and we can encourage society to take heed of the messages our ancestors so painstakingly etched for us in these beautiful wonders.

11/13/2022 07:45:57 pm

If you're paying serious attention to anything Hancock says, you're so deep into gullibility that you'll never get out - and listening to more from him just proves it.

11/14/2022 11:05:08 am

So you say nothing Graham says is accurate - nothing of his should be watched, looked into, researched for oneself. That makes a lot of sense.

11/20/2022 03:40:41 pm

No, just that every claim he makes that can be fact checked proves to be badly misrepresented. If Hancock told me the sky was blue, first thing I'd do is stick my head out the window and check.

Bob Jase

11/14/2022 08:15:13 am

Hancock has been peddling his shit for over 30 years, Von Daniken for more than 50 years - neither has yet to produce one actual bit of evidence to support their claims, go sit on a crystal ball & hatch it.

11/14/2022 11:07:31 am

"yet to produce one actual bit of evidence"

This is not correct.

Nate Brous

11/13/2022 08:49:20 pm

I had hoped for a an unbiased review. I did not get one.

Jens

11/15/2022 09:28:05 am

It is accurate however

Chris R link

11/13/2022 09:29:22 pm

Oddly I learned of Hancock from probably his least well-known book, "Lords of Poverty," which has nothing whatever to do with archeology mainstream, crackpot or otherwise, but a valuable insider's critique of the Bretton Woods institutions in which he worked. Only years after coming across that (in an English language bookstore in Nepal of all places) as the internet made author searches possible did I realize he had a whole other, larger & far better known publishing life.

My first message is regardless of what anyone thinks of the ancient sites material, "Lords of Poverty" is a quite an informative read, if you've interest in things like the (now long in the tooth!) 50 Years Is Enough campaign or debt critics like Dr Susan George, it should be on your reading list and not tossed with the bathwater. It seems likely that it was working as an international civil servant that enabled Hancock's travels to begin with, so there's that inconsequential connection.

I was under the general impression not having paid his other books any attention that Hancock was an ancient aliens guy & I'm relieved at least that much is wrong. I watched the series because I was curious about what a fellow who wrote a book I did like had to say, I love archeological sites & I'm just getting into astronomy, so I enjoyed learning some more about the sites and seeing the visuals if nothing else.

Some thoughts & Qs:

- Points against Hancock for ascribing to a central culture what necessity demands, specifically the fact that pyramids (or in fact ziggurats) occur as common forms because, yes, that was the easiest way to build something tall. Also with slight variation various cultures would observe the same sky with the same (if differently named) constellations. No central culture necessary. The Indonesian site does appear to be a form of (impressive!) terracing/terraforming rather than pyramid building. That said it could also be of substantial age and certainly could have had passages and chambers tunneled into it. If that's what the sonar says it seems to bear investigating.

Some things I believe are fair broadly in his hypotheses which although I don't think prove a central global Ice Age culture are worthy of thought and investigation:

- I found Hancock's comments regarding colonial destruction of moundbuilder sites to be in line with his criticisms of modern neocolonial financing in "Lords..." He seems very much the anti-racist in that book, the only one of his I've read.

- We know sites are repurposed over centuries and millenia. Some sites might well be far older than their most recent laye(s)r implies. Archeoastronomy seems a great method of determining alignments to date sites and with computer processing power working those things out has never been easier. I'd like to see archeologists doing more of this; we had an incredible tour of an undervisited Mexican site with a mainstream, published archeologist associated with a credible US university who emphasized hard and repeatedly in possible the best tour of anything I've had in my life that pre-electric cultures were avid and expert, even obsessive stargazers and that their cultures and that body of knowledge long predated the physical stone astronomical observation sites we have, likely having begun with simple wooden poles and the like. Fascinating. Broadly although not in specifics I find myself leaning toward a Hancock-ian view that ancient peoples were smarter than we credit them for, particularly in astronomy, and we're missing massive amounts of pre-history. I wouldn't doubt far more travel, including seafaring navigation that we general credit earlier humans.

- We have reason to believe that various subspecies of human did inhabit the same places at the same time and doubtless had distinct cultures and aptitudes. That in itself isn't wackadoo, again baby/bathwater.

- It seems overwhelmingly likely that the post hole sites of the mound builders were used for astronomical observation and using modern software this has never been easier to test nor to use as a dating mechanism. More's the pity if anyone isn't applying for funding for that because their careers would be ended or because inquiries which possibly might come to a negative conclusion aren't getting funded. There's value in eliminating an area of inquiry. Seems rather better than telling visitors "We don't know anything about this incredibly important native North American site, most of which were destroyed, and we've stopped asking. But enjoy walking up the mound!"

- There is no substitute for years of academic study and I am weary especially in the wake of covid of people "doing their own research." That said, it remains true that a lot of academia is in fact haughty, cliquish, resistant to new information to an uncomfortable degree no one likes to admit, with egos and grant money etc tied up in plowing a well-worn row. It doesn't hurt to at least investigate remotely plausible

11/14/2022 06:41:49 am

Comment was cut owing to length, its remainder
--
It doesn't hurt to at least investigate remotely plausible hypotheses from intelligent people.

- Barring people from a site because you disagree with their interpretation of it is a form of censorship. If someone's making an ass of themselves, let them do so in a marketplace of ideas and expression. If nothing else it makes people less suspicious that someone is covering something up when they are not.

- Rarely do I see anyone interpret for the public that sea levels were different in the past, that most human habitation is usually in low lying areas near water and that we've not only lost large amounts of humanity's archeological heritage but that sites we do have need to be understood in terms of having been a different distance from the sea and deltas etc than they are now, and that many islands were not always so.

A couple of Qs:

- What is the debunking view of the presence of comet-style mineral content in that black layer? What's a good backgrounder read for that?

- What explanation is there for the shark ... mound?... at Bimini?
Thanks for the review.

Dr David Murray

11/24/2022 08:27:10 pm

So, back to the nub of your genralisation: what you are saying means your friends and family -- (so many academics!) 'are in fact a bunch of haughty, cliquish, resistant to new information to an uncomfortable degree no one likes to admit' -- or are they ALL convenient exceptions to your 'rule'. Because waht you are saying is most academics are dodgy, except ALL my friends/family who are academics. Really need to check the logic of your argument before posting Chris.- Academics, like any human occupation, if full of bitching and jealousy, doesn't mean academia is the closed shop you claim it is. I could compare your voluminous anecdotal evidence with stories and direct experiences that run absolutely counter.

11/20/2022 05:29:02 am

"That said, it remains true that a lot of academia is in fact haughty, cliquish, resistant to new information to an uncomfortable degree no one likes to admit, with egos and grant money etc tied up in plowing a well-worn row." ... so not making any crude generalisations then ... and you obviously have a lot of evidence to back-up your confident assertion I'm assume?

11/21/2022 12:39:18 pm

This is not the best way to establish what thick skins academics have if this is your intent.

Although I'm from a working class family & attended an Ivy, and spent some years as my initial comment on the Hancock book I have read implies in the socioeconomic research area. I have time in elite academia & an outsized % of my friends have doctorates in a wide variety of fields. Hardly anyone in my friends' circle at this juncture of life doesn't have an advanced degree in something, including archeology. Prior to my wife (who has an advanced degree) my long term significant other has a PhD in medical anthropology and taught at one of the most prestigious anthro/archeology departments in the US, as it turns out at the school I attended and where I took some classes in that area and spent a great deal of time in their museum.

One of my friends left archeology completely and went back to school in nursing in order to find my fruitful employment, despite being (as one of my friends with a PhD in American history asserts) the best-published individual in our friend circle. I have friends and through marriage family who teach medicine, nursing, I know research virologists with doctorates, I know multiple liberal arts PhDs, I have a friend with a PhD in Romance languages (I attended her doctoral defense) whose job, at one of the top 10 rated research universities in the US, is to help academics graduating from their programs find employment in academia. We all talk. MOST of us in my friend circle are from working class families, & find academia to be haughty, cliquish, resistant to new information to an uncomfortable degree no one likes to admit, with egos and grant money etc tied up in plowing a well-worn row.

Kind of how it is supposed to work

11/22/2022 09:39:55 am

Haughty, cliquish and resistant to new information= Confident in their subject matter based on a lot of soecialized training and research and skeptical of new ideas that are short on supporting data.

Funding agencies are not big on handing out blank checks to support looking for evidence of atlantis in an Oregon potato field.

Chris R

2/8/2023 08:28:20 am

"Confident in their subject matter based on a lot of soecialized training..."

Wouldn't that be nice? No, for the most part it's the attitude that they are confident experts based in being accepted to the program, if not accepted to (any) college, if not having done well in high school (or failing that being effective at grade-grubbing.)

There's little overlap between confident expertise and actually being a big thinker in a field. YMMV

kind of how it is supposed to work

2/14/2023 08:49:40 am

Since you have admitted to being in a social circle heavily weighted toward well-educated academics then statistically speaking at least some of them are grade-grubbers with no reason to have confidence in their trained expertise. How do you go about separating the wheat from the chaff at parties?

Doc rock

11/13/2022 10:38:54 pm

One could probably write a book on how badly GH and his ilk misrepresent the Clovis First matter to create a strawman argument against the credibility of archaeology in general. That model was getting holes poked in it 35 years ago. It is drifting toward the point where it has been out of vogue for as long as it was the dominant model for looking at the peopling of the western hemisphere.

Flake

12/1/2022 06:44:29 pm

Quite. I was an undergraduate archaeology student in the early 90s and even then, though "Clovis first" was presented as the most generally accepted model, it was never as dogmatic as critics like Hancock like to pretend. In class we discussed at length the possibility that older sites or cultures exist in the Americas and even other possible scenarios for the migration of humans to the continent.

12/4/2022 11:21:52 pm

The same was true in the 80s. In the course of undergrad and grad classes in archaeology at three universities I never encountered Clovis first taught or discussed as dogma. I never taught it as dogma. I'm still waiting on Hancock or his sycophants to produce any evidence for their assertions that "many" or "hundreds" of careers in archaeology were ruined for daring to challenge Clovis first dogma. Hell, I'm still waiting for any of that bunch to demonstrate even a rudimentary understanding of the history of the rise and fall of the clovis first model. It is the Energizer bunny of fringe lunacy factoids.

John G Arch

11/14/2022 10:07:20 am

His interpretations of the past may well be off the wall, but these are largely matters of idle speculation rather than actual scientific proof. The places he talks of are places of eternal speculation. Sort of like the attempts to predict future climate and weather. We will never understand prehistorical stuff, and we will never predict the future.
I wish people would be as cynical of predictions of future climate change as they are about conjecture about the prehistoric past.

Captain ayahuasca

11/14/2022 12:57:12 pm

It is not idle speculation for professionals to dismiss claims that natural geological formations were actually built by people from Atlantis or such like. Based on your logic it is idle speculation when a paleontologist tells you that a large bone came from a mammoth and not a 12 feet tall nephilim.

11/14/2022 05:42:53 pm

When I said "his speculations", I was referring to Graham Hancock's speculation. I was not referring to learned professionals who dismiss his speculations as being weird and unscientific
I would accept the paleontologist identification of the Mammoth legbone.
I do not accept assertions of 12 foot tall nephilim.
Captain you did not understand a word of what I wrote

captain ayahuasca

11/17/2022 10:16:34 am

Thank you for the much needed clarification on the point you were trying to make.

Cru Jones

11/15/2022 10:40:00 am

Jason - You resorted to name calling like “Uncredentialed Autodidact” and even pushed racism multiple times.

Hancock is angry because he presents his ideas and theories, many of which do seem logical and plausible, only to be shredded by guys like you. You are exactly what he’s talking about.

You are simply throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Hancock presents a compelling theory for an interesting and advanced civilization that existed before a catastrophe happened. It’s not a far fetched idea.

Hancock is a net positive in his ability to create interest in our ancient history and for his theories which challenge the mainstream.

Rad roscoe

11/15/2022 01:34:03 pm

Hancock is angry because he claims to just be asking questions but doesn't like the answers that he gets from those most qualified to answer them. His next step is to howl conspiracy.

If you don't like Colavito's critique then engage with him on the specific topics that he addressed. Depending entirely on tone policing is not a legitimate counter argument. Thus far that is has been the primary focus of the Hancock surrogates posting here. It has been the SOP here for as long as Colavito has been doing reviews of Hancock's work.

11/15/2022 02:12:09 pm

"Hancock presents a compelling theory for an interesting and advanced civilization that existed before a catastrophe happened. It’s not a far fetched idea."

I've been waiting over 40 years for him to produce one shred of solid evidence. It's been the same speculation for at least four decades. Followed by the same complaints of not being taken seriously.

"Hancock is a net positive in his ability to create interest in our ancient history and for his theories which challenge the mainstream."

He's good at sparking and stoking the imagination of children. Case in point, I was one of those children. I have grown up questioning and challenging some of the same academics. Instead of complaining, I produce evidence. All of which is testable and repeatable. Hancock has never presented anything but Cherry picked information and speculation.

11/15/2022 06:44:14 pm

The mythology, Platos account of Atlantis, the Astroarcheological dating in various structures and Gobekli Tepe alone make for a compelling narrative.

Id like to see his critics at least admit that there’s a possibility he’s correct. Denial of all his work seems equally absurd to thinking he’s 100 percent correct.

11/15/2022 04:42:25 pm

"Hancock presents a compelling theory for an interesting and advanced civilization that existed before a catastrophe happened. It’s not a far fetched idea."

I'd like to hear your reasons behind finding it compelling and for thinking it's not a far-fetched idea. Frankly, to me it's always sounded so much like the maunderings of Sitchin, Von Däniken, et al.

11/20/2022 05:38:29 am

"Hancock is a net positive in his ability to create interest in our ancient history and for his theories which challenge the mainstream." ... Sorry CRU, but they are not his theories as such ... "Hancock’s ideas recycle the long since discredited conclusions drawn by American congressman Ignatius Donnelly in his book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, published in 1882." ... https://theconversation.com/with-netflixs-ancient-apocalypse-graham-hancock-has-declared-war-on-archaeologists-194881

Alexander

11/15/2022 12:39:56 pm

I like Hancocks work but I do see him reaching to the same old conclusion a lot. I am also aware that as an uneducated person - but with a lot of interest in history - I am a somewhat easy target for fancifull tales. So in order to keep myself balanced I read critiques like these. Still, a few thing about the hypothesis I haven't seen dismissed very convincingly yet.
IF homo sapiens has existed more or less in the same anatomical form of the last 150.000 years, it strikes me as unlikely that our current cultural timeline is the only one. Specifically the geology stuff and the asteroid impacts are less easily refuted than say, wishfull thinking on cultural connections regarding eyes on boats, for example. So barring the conclusion that Atlantis itself as a central culture existed, isn't it still likely many civilizations existed before the impacts of the taurid stream, 12800 years ago?
Because the dismissal of Hancocks work is usually a combination of that he sees cultural connections that aren't there, makes false accusations of forgery and does some forgery himself. But the geological component of his argument, ie the Younger Dryas, the impact that triggered it and the traces of comet impacts on earth aren't really open to interpretation as much. That combined with the age of the human species makes me still believe that there probably were civilisations during and before the last ice age, albeit maybe not civs with victorian level tech as Hancock thinks.
Thoughts?

gdave

11/15/2022 09:46:21 pm

Humans certainly had *culture* prior to the Younger Dryas. Did they have "civilizations"? Depends on what you mean by "civilization". If you mean things like sedentary agriculture, pottery, metallurgy, temples and monuments, then while it's logically possible that there *could* have been civilizations before the Younger Dryas, there's just no actual evidence for it.

There's an old dictum that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Except it often is. If we would expect to find evidence of something and that evidence is conspicuously absent, that absence becomes pretty good evidence.

Where's their stuff? People like stuff and they have stuff. They make stuff and build stuff, and then break it, drop it, lose it, and intentionally bury it. Everywhere humans have been, we find their stuff.

If there were "civilizations" before the Younger Dryas with pottery, where are the pottery sherds? If they had metallurgy, where are their tools and ornaments and forges? If they constructed temples and monuments, where are they? Where are their trash middens?

For centuries, the idea that the Norse came to the Americas centuries before Columbus was controversial. Then archaeologists found the remains of an entire village at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. They found their stuff. The Norse only had a small and transient presence in the Americas, and we still found their stuff 1,000 years later. Within a few years, all those "stodgy" archaeologists that supposedly refuse to change their "paradigms" universally accepted this revolutionary evidence and literally re-wrote their textbooks.

It's not that one or more human civilizations *couldn't* have achieved intensive sedentary agriculture, or pottery, or writing, or monumental architecture, or whatever else before the Younger Dryas. It's that there's simply no evidence of it.

And what's more, we have a *lot* of evidence of human activity and material culture dating back to the emergence of homo sapiens. We have stone tools and fire pits and shell beads and cave art and pigments and the butchered remains of game and obviously intentional burials of their dead. We have their stuff.

The Atlantis Expert

11/16/2022 02:22:08 am

The concept is that it was destroyed by a global flood.

The evidence is minimal because a global flood/comet impact destroyed it basically washed it all away into the oceans...save for a few remaining monuments.

That's Hancock's entire point.

You're only taking one of Hancock's points - the idea of a lost civilization while ignoring his other point - that there was a global cataclysm that destroyed all evidence of this civilization.

Sure the idea that a civilization basically as advanced as ours could be wiped away with nary a trace is hard to swallow.

But it doesn't mean it's not true.

Alexander Kappelhoff

11/16/2022 02:43:31 am

That last point is actually a good one, well in combination with the question of 'Where is their stuff'. I did a bit of reading after this as well and the last ice age was incredibly long, and even though it technically didn't prevent humans to develop sedentary culture before it, it is a whole lot less easy than in the favorable conditions we live in today. The argument someone like me would make in face of the 'where is their stuff argument' would go something like 'If we were hit by a global cataclysm that lasted almost a 1000 years, none of it would be left standing, especially all the stuff that would be under the sea.' But, since more simple remains did survive the Ice Age, that argument doesn't exactly hold. Unless the advanced Civ Hancock tells us about EXCLUSIVELY built their stuff on the shorelines of Antartica, but such a stark divide of cities by the sea and indigenous people inland seems unlikely. Also, I read in other places about the 'agricultural' revolution and apparently it was very much a slow and step by step process. That still doesn't answer all the 'mysteries' of ancient sites of course, but yeah, I guess we'll simply have to wait for more evidence.
I stand somewhat conviced, even though a part of me kind of wants to believe. Luckily, that's the harmless kind of ignorance.

11/16/2022 06:42:03 am

I think that Hancock would argue that a lot of the evidence pre YD era was destroyed by the event and that people should be investing more in LIDAR scanning.

However, he would probably also suggest that many things have been discovered which are way older than they are credited for - just they have been incorrectly dated.

I have been to see several cave sites in France which are c.25K years old and all the painting and expressions or human intelligence are clearly on show. For me it is not hard to believe that between then and 11-12K years ago, humans would have been able to accomplish great things.

They were as intelligent as we are now and whilst they might not have the knowledge we have, they had different types of knowledge and technologies.

I do agree more physical evidence is still required to prove Hancock's theories but my bet is that he will be proven correct in the coming years.

11/16/2022 08:48:54 am

You both seem to miss the part in my reply where I state I WOULD make the same argument as you (and echoing Hancock himself in doing so), but that I find that it doesn't hold up if arrowtips and barbecue sites from before 25000 years ago can be found but entire civs leave no trace. For that to be true it would have to be almost exclusively coastal cities, which seems unlikely, given that this civ supposedly spawned new civs all around the globe, including mountaineous and inland regios. The fact that one category of evidence survives and the other one doesn't AND the fact that the last ice age lasted almost 100.000 years do make the mainstream hypothesis more likely for me, that conditions before this interglacial period that we experience right now were simply not right for humanity to spawn sedentary civilizations. I'm not really a skeptic, mind you, I have all Hancocks books in my house. But he does kind of avoid to describe what this ancient civilization REALLY looked like, instead of just driving the mystery. In that, the style of communication is similiar to ancient aliens and ghost stories.

11/16/2022 09:23:30 am

@The Atlantis Expert:

There's simply no evidence of a "global flood". There's some evidence of a cometary impact. But the idea of some sort of global catastrophe that somehow removed all evidence of an "advanced civilization" save for a few isolated monuments is just not credible.

You've also conveniently only taken one of *my* points while ignoring my other point. It's not *just* that we don't have any of the stuff that the "Atlanteans" should have left behind. It's that we have a *lot* of other stuff. The stuff we do have is entirely consistent with creative, artistic, tool-using material cultures working in bone and shell and wood and stone and other "stone age" materials, with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. None of it is consistent with a material culture using intensive sedentary agriculture, pottery, metallurgy, monumental stone construction, or any of the other markers of a Hancock-style lost civilization.

Hancock's putative global catastrophe somehow scoured the globe of even the *trash* of his putative lost civilization, while leaving the material remains of "primitive" cultures. And it's not just durable stone tools. More fragile materials, such as bead shells, processed pigments, flutes made of bone, and much, much more survived intact. That's one hell of a simultaneously all-consuming-yet-carefully-selective global catastrophe.

Again, it's not that it's *impossible* that a pre-Ice Age human civilization *could* have existed with an "advanced" material culture. It's just that there is simply no evidence for it. And all of the physical evidence we *do* have *very* strongly indicates that pre-Ice Age human beings lived in small-scale, hunter-gatherer societies with a material culture of small-scale, personal manufacture of items from stone, bone, shell, hide, and other "stone age" materials.

Nick Collyer

11/17/2022 06:36:21 pm

Hancocks ancient civilisation only built below today’s current water line.

11/18/2022 09:59:52 am

@Nick Collyer:

>Hancocks ancient civilisation only built below today’s current water line.

That's certainly...convenient. Not just their cities, but their farms, their factories, their *trash middens*, were all conveniently below today's current water line? The peoples nearby, who lived above today's current water line, didn't have any trade goods from their "advanced" neighbors?

If they had an industrialized civilization, as The Atlantis Expert is claiming in these comments, we should be able to find evidence of it, even millennia later. Even if somehow all of their material culture had been scoured from the globe (while fragile remains of less "advanced" material cultures survived), or even if all of those remains are conveniently below today's current water line, we should still see evidence of their industrial activity in the climate and atmospheric record (ice cores, tree rings, plant matter, etc.). So, where is the evidence of industrialized civilization?

Where is their stuff?

Again, it's not *impossible* that there *could* have been some sort of "advanced" human civilization 10,000+ years ago. There's just no real evidence for it. There is a truly dramatic lack of evidence that should be there. What there *is*, is a *lot* of evidence of human activity and habitation at sites around the globe from the period of Hancock's purported lost civilization. And *none* of it is consistent with his claims.

And directly contrary to Hancock's claims, archaeologists and anthropologists and paleontologists and historians and other academics are constantly gathering new data, re-evaluating old data, and updating their models.

Clovis First was the dominant "paradigm" for the peopling of the Americas...until it wasn't. Because actual archaeologists and paleontologists found actual physical evidence, and subjected it to peer review, and debate, and criticism. And some of those arguments got pretty intense. But Clovis First is pretty much dead at this point in actual academia (although Hancock still rails against it as if it were the current academic consensus).

There were peoples in the Americas before the Clovis material culture. And we know that because we found their stuff.

11/21/2022 12:33:12 pm

gdave -

As near as I can make out, the most advanced culture at the times of the two impact events that started the present climate was located at what is now the Black Sea - X mt DNA.

By advanced, I am referring to their stone tool kit.

11/15/2022 10:57:33 pm

Reading the comments here, it appears there are two types of people in regard to Hancock - one type sees him as riding on the coattails of Zecharia Sitchin, Erich von Däniken, and Giorgio Tsoukalos, while the other type sees these people as unrecognized, unacknowledged, and unappreciated geniuses who would overturn the established science despite having few credentials in the disciplines at hand.

Neither of these groups will ever be convinced that the other could be correct.

Waiting to eat crow

11/16/2022 12:04:25 am

Only one of the groups has the burden of proof and goes about trying to provide it in such bumbling manner that they are walking punch lines. They and their followers have been telling the rest of us for decades that validation will come any day now and we will have to eat crow. We will starve to death waiting for that day.

Squishy

11/21/2022 09:22:26 pm

These are my two favorite comments! And they're spot on! I think people are forgetting two basic things 1 after a certain time period, especially if there is little remaining evidence, everything becomes speculation. 2 Unless someone can outright say I was there so I know it ALL becomes nothing more than speculation. Did I find the series interesting? Absolutely! Would i quote it as fact? Not at all. Can I speculate and come up with my own theories? Sure but it doesn't mean it's right. There's a reason we have so many myths and legends. 1 there wasn't a proper way to put what they were saying into words before the actual written word (not hyroglyphs? And 2 stories change all time. Details and facts are forgotten so people replace them. At this point everything regarding anything before the Ice Age is speculation and we will never actually know what happened

11/22/2022 10:10:13 am

@Squishy,

Here's the thing. There IS "remaining evidence" from the period Graham Hancock is speculating about. We have remains of tools and decorations and art and musical instruments and other items made from stone, bone, and other "stone age" materials. We have cave art, made with hand-processed natural pigments. We have fire pits. We have the butchered remains of animals, with clear butchering marks consistent with handmade stone tools. We have the actual remains of actual human beings who lived in the period. Everything from wear patterns of their teeth to the elemental composition of their bones to the goods buried with some of them, all of that consistently points to a Stone Age, hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Again, as I've repeatedly pointed out in this comment thread, we have their stuff.

This isn't mere "speculation." Many, many archaeologists, anthropologists and paleontologists have spent many, many decades literally digging up literal tons of material evidence of prehistoric humans, stretching all the way back to the emergence of homo sapiens as a distinct species. They've spent decades analyzing and arguing about the evidence, and painstakingly piecing together our past.

What we don't have is any of the stuff that we *should* have if there had been a global, industrialized, "advanced" civilization. Graham Hancock, and others of his ilk, are engaging in groundless speculation, selectively citing evidence which they *badly* misrepresent and misinterpret. And they create a fog of confusion around human pre-history. No one really knows, so one guess is as good as another, right?

Except, again, actual academics and scientists *aren't* just speculating. They're out there, doing the work, and finding stuff. If you're curious, you can find that stuff in museums, and described online. And all of that stuff, that actual remaining evidence, *all* of it, is entirely consistent with Stone Age hunter-gatherers. *None* of it is consistent with some sort of global, "advanced" civilization. *That* bit is *entirely* groundless speculation.

11/16/2022 02:13:21 am

It's really two paradigms.

Thomas Kuhn said it best when...competing paradigms are incommensurate. There's no common language from which to evaluate evidence across the two paradigms. So we are destined to talk past each other.

Maybe the disagreement stems more from temperamental differences.

I maintain that there are basically two different types of people. People who instinctively defend the existing order and people who wish to tear it down. There is always a conservative and a radical to oppose them. I personally have always been an opponent of the existing order whether it be political, intellectual, or religious. I suppose there are others who defend the existing order with as much fervor as I oppose it.

Only time will tell which paradigm will win.

Those who believe an ancient advanced civilization destroyed by a cataclysm sincerely believe it - we believe it with as much certainty as the fact that the sun will rise and many including myself would bet a million dollars or even our lives on its factuality.

We don't just believe.

We believe beyond reasonable doubt with absolute certainty and conviction. To us, it is obvious.

And history will prove we are right.

11/16/2022 09:41:45 am

@The Atlantis Expert:

Thank you for your intellectual honesty.

I think you're *badly* wrong with your "two paradigms" model. Just as a personal example, I used to accept the "Clovis First" model of the peopling of the Americas. But I now freely accept the presence of human beings in the Americas long before the Clovis material culture. We've found their stuff.

Similarly, I'm open to the *possibility* of the existence of a pre-Ice Age "high civilization". We just need to find their stuff.

But you've made your position very clear, and also made it very clear that a reasoned discussion of the evidence with you is pointless - you "believe beyond reasonable doubt with absolute certainty and conviction." So, I'll leave it at that.

11/16/2022 11:21:31 am

So you're saying it's a matter of faith, not evidence. What do you suppose this "advanced" ancient civilization would look like - hover cars, or Wright Flyers? Internal combustion engines, or bullocks pulling carts?

I suspect there are as many different concepts of what it takes to qualify as an ancient advanced civilization as there are people who hold those concepts.

11/16/2022 02:41:15 pm

An industrialized civilization with steam engines that was at least as advanced as Victorian Britain in the mid 19th century, but not as advanced as we are now.

I'm saying that the evidence to me seems so conclusive that I would be willing to put my money where my mouth is - it's not merely an intellectual debate that's leaning strongly to one side, but one that's basically settled as far as I'm concerned...kind of like the theory of anthropogenic climate change or the theory of evolution.

It's settled science in my view.

11/16/2022 10:03:45 pm

Belief is not evidence. You sound like a member of an uncompromising cult but I appreciate your evidence.

You claim Atlantis was "An industrialized civilization with steam engines that was at least as advanced as Victorian Britain in the mid 19th century, but not as advanced as we are now." And that it is settled science in your view. So where is your evidence because that sounds fascinating and I would love to belief it.

So just point me to the definitive, undeniable evidence and you've got yourself a new member of your maligned cult.

11/20/2022 03:56:47 pm

Sincerity is worth quite a bit less than evidence.

11/16/2022 02:27:29 am

One key point of disagreement between the mainstream paradigm and the alternative one is that the former believes that myths are either fictional or only partially inspired by actual events while the latter believe that myths are basically true - period, no ifs, and or buts and more besides that they are basically the only way of reconstructing out past and understanding our future.

These perspectives are irreconcilable.

One is true and the other is false.

11/20/2022 04:00:05 pm

If myths are fundamentally true, then by all means demonstrate their factuality. Offend Athena and be turned into a spider. Make wax wings and fly from Crete to Athens. Transform into an eagle and steal poetry from the giants. I really don't care which of these you do. PROVE THAT THEY ARE EVEN POSSIBLE, or accept that they are allegory.

Rando

1/18/2023 02:44:29 am

... and on cue, argument from contempt proves the point.

11/16/2022 06:36:00 am

I wholeheartedly disagree that nothing has changed in the intervening time since Fingerprints of the Gods was written and this documentary series.

For a start:

- several species of hominid have been found, changing our view on our own species' evolution and timings

- several pre-ancient sites have been discovered and they have changed our view on when humans were creating sophisticated monuments and buildings. Notably, those in Turkey and in Mexico / South America and parts of Asia. To Hancock's point though - much more needs to be done using LIDAR including under-water as many sites are below sea level

To Hancock's credit, he never appears 'angry' but is probably (and rightly!) frustrated that he and other people present evidence which archaeologists are unwilling to engage with, and instead just say Hancock isn't a 'proper' archaeologist.

Yet he has spent 30 years travelling around the world, physically visiting sites, speaking to experts and putting forward very rational arguments.

Chas

11/17/2022 07:47:46 am

Tom,

For the most part those discoveries have been made by the very professionals that Graham Hancock says are opposed to new discoveries and are suppressing the truth, and can't be trusted. None of them are clear evidence of his lost civilization. Some like Gobekli Tepe actually work against him if you read up on the site. But he selectively embraces those discoveries that at first glance give the appearance of supporting his current viewpoint.

Very strange that they can discover skeletons that are millions of years old but cant find any material evidence of a global high tech civilization that existed 14k years ago. Very strange that we allegedly aren't digging deep enough to locate material evidence of a lost civilization but can often find equally ancient materials on the surface of the ground or by accident in the process of mining, dredging, or erosion. Again, new discoveries tend to work against Hancocks various assertions.

11/21/2022 09:25:40 pm

Not necessarily. I know people, who I refuse to associate with anymore, who refuse to do things or believe something if it wasn't their idea first. Its an ego thing and is very frustrating

11/16/2022 05:52:53 pm

And another actual archaeologist weighs in:

https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2022/11/graham-hancocks-ancient-apocalypse-a-review-of-episode-two/?fbclid=IwAR2JsAoRvXylRvLATntAYdKQltSw4tUFN8aiqEKd5OwYT1YjGqOd6BpDMAc

PROFESSOR CAROLINE MALONE

11/18/2022 04:38:40 am

As one the rubbished "Archaeologists" who has spent over 35 years, gleaning data about Malta's prehistoric past, and sharing that scientific knowledge, it is always irritating to see how this charlatan passes off your data as his, and then pours scorn on the proven interpretations. If only he would actually read our massive detailed publications that demonstrate not only the primary levels of Ggantija, but also Santa Verna and other sites, over 350 AMS Radio Carbon dates now properly reveal that mysterious timeline that Hancock fails to comprehend. Oh keep the amateurs out of the media.... and read instead our reports, located here: https://www.repository.cam.avedavathybalan@aol.comc.uk/handle/1810/312497
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/315523

musician

11/24/2022 04:17:39 am

The link you've provided doesn't work. could you check and repost, please?

Iviin

11/18/2022 09:40:04 am

every day i get more convinced that the philosophy of science should be taught to everyone in school. I'd argue that's even more important than science knowledge since knowing how (good) science works can help recognize good science knowledge to learn from

11/18/2022 11:02:37 pm

"IVIIN
11/18/2022 09:40:04 am
every day i get more convinced that the philosophy of science should be taught to everyone in school. I'd argue that's even more important than science knowledge since knowing how (good) science works can help recognize good science knowledge to learn from"

[No period "." in the original though proper punctuation is one of the pursuits of a civilized gentleman.]

"The Philosophy of Science"? That sounds like something far more philosophy than science, like economics. Looking at you, Paul Krugman you crazy-eyed midget freak.

Who do you propose teach this course, Graham Hancock? Might as well.

11/20/2022 05:27:41 am

Well im no gentleman so youll just have to deal with my punctuation

I meant stuff like "just because something is within the realms of possibility you can't say its proven without evidence supporting your claim" and honestly i dont think Graham Hancock is fit for that job

philosophy has a bad reputation in the sciences (i also dont like the state of economics) but while the way you think about something might not make a red apple blue, you cant tell me it wont affect the way in which the data on the apples color is collected or said data is interpreted

11/20/2022 03:45:44 pm

Well, no I don't and if you choose to portray yourself as a stupid idiot that is really not my problem. Portray away!

11/18/2022 10:51:17 am

I always knew not to trust reporters and journalists, because they all have an agenda and usually fail to report accurately. So when Hancock described himself as a journalist, I knew that I should disregard his commentary, and do my own research. Doing my own research is a quick google search, a quick look at the Wikipedia page, and further reading if I am interested in more info.
I did learn some things from Hancock. I never knew about the sites in Indonesia, Malta, and Cholula.
Television (and streaming services) has always been a vast wasteland, and this series is no different.
I hope Hancock is around when the Antarctic ice sheets melt so he can expound on structures to be found there!

11/18/2022 05:17:27 pm

Hi GDave, Yes, that was my point. Sarcasm doesn’t come across well in written comments 😁 The ancient aliens must have known about future sea level rises over thousands of years, because they left nothing archaeologists have ever been able to access.

11/18/2022 06:11:16 pm

Ah, sorry. Poe's Law is in full effect here.

c r sant link

11/20/2022 04:03:45 am

Declaration: Advertising info. Re Megalithic temples, actually calendars.

See here how to use Mnajdra calendar to predict solstice day, in advance which is necessary for sowing cereal crop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIhT65GdjgI

Read book, here:
https://www.amazon.com/Calendars-Megalithic-Malta-Resolving-Functions/dp/1502726572

11/20/2022 04:03:10 pm

"See here how to use Mnajdra calendar to predict solstice day, in advance which is necessary for sowing cereal crop."

Hmm. What puzzles me is how and why your parents did not drown the obviously brain damaged product of their hideous union at birth.

Predicting in advance (redundant) some date in summer, really not relevant to crops.

"Stupid idiot" does not even begin to describe this malign spectacle of walking brain damage or something that should simply be returned to Amazon.

11/24/2022 01:30:22 pm

These types of comments should not be allowed.

Max

11/20/2022 08:36:13 am

About Part VI: Do you have anything to add to the astronomical findings? Does the shape of the serpent only make sense for the stars like they were this long time ago or not?

11/20/2022 01:45:51 pm

Just ran across this article from the Times of Malta, disputing Hancock's claims about the megalithic structures on the archipelago:

https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/maltese-archaeologists-push-back-netflix-show-s-temple-claims.995910

11/21/2022 12:44:58 pm

I'm really surprised no one has brought up the Martian angle. The reason there's no evidence on Earth of the high civilization prior to the ice age...The advanced humans were actually refugees from Mars. Hancock wrote about this at least one time. Obviously not an original thought of Hancock as this has been portrayed in movies and sci-fi for a long time. Jason likely knows where it all originated.

11/24/2022 07:46:40 pm

"I thought it might be fun to take a look back at one of Graham Hancock's most embarrassing books, "The Mars Mystery" (1998), written with Robert Bauval and John Grigsby. The book was inspired by the 1996 claim of microbial life on Mars, which led Hancock to conspiracy theories."
Jason Colavito

From Jason Colavito's Twitter feed near bottom of page

That's exactly what I was talking about! Thank you! Hancock and Hoagland. Sounds like a law firm or a shady money manager service.

I noticed further the Quetzalcoatl reference.
Quetzalcoatl being a comet bouncing off the magnetosphere came from the book "Exodus to Arthur".

Happy Thanksgiving!

New Theory: The Atlantis people were assholes

11/21/2022 06:25:19 pm

Guys, I just came up with another theory!

The Atlantis people, who I guess were drowning, took to their boats, and sailed and pillaged every one in their way.
My sources: I just listened to a Carlin podcast about the mysterious seafaring people who possibly contributed to some crazy unexplained disappearances or halts in civilization. Sooooo maybe 🤔 the comet heated the earth and then the water somehow almost killed everyone advanced, except people who were on boats and then they went on and killed everyone else? And then everyone was just stupid. I don’t know how many of the smart people were before and how many survived and how many stupid ones were left.

Can someone please send me money on patreon so I can research my theory?

C R SANT link

11/24/2022 03:08:16 am

Further to the earlier post, and in connection with the megalithic temples cum calendars which were studied in mentioned book, the site in link below has additional evidence from various fields of research that corroborate what is stated in the book. All are fresh evidence that has become available in the past seven years since publication.

The megalithic temples indicate a different history of the Holocene, and a different earth dynamics than has been assumed for the past two centuries.

Link: https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/

11/25/2022 12:48:26 pm

I'll bet Plato would have put a disclaimer in his writings about "Atlantis" being a fictional device if he knew people would spend the rest of eternity looking for it. They might as well be looing for Middle Earth or Westeros.

11/26/2022 01:20:33 am

Plato did put a disclaimer in the Timaeus. It is a very important one, in that it reflects and throws a very important light on the history of the Earth in general and the fate of humanity in particular.

The disclaimer is fact; the rest of the story is, as Plato says clearly, a made up story to glorify Athens, but based on much earlier natural events. One may find verification of the factual part in Herodotus, in Mela, and in the work of Berossos.

Glenn Kreisberg link

11/27/2022 06:00:07 pm

"Graham Hancock's Ancient Apocalypse"
by Jon Epstein, PhD

In 1994-95 I was teaching sociology at Wake Forest. Since my then wife, Margarete, was in graduate school at Kent State she and my daughter Helena stayed in Kent, and my son Jacob and I came to North Carolina to stay with my in-laws who lived near Clemmons. My sister in-law Stephanie was a manager at Atticus Books in Greensboro and would bring me stripped copies of books she thought I would enjoy reading. That was very kind of her, you know? One day in early 1995 she brought me a copy of Graham Hancock's now classic Fingerprints of the Gods and told me "I thought you'd get a kick out of this one." She had NO idea:)

Fingerprints is not a light read; the material was dense and complex, with references to multiple sources, and the books thesis regarding the possibility of an ancient advanced civilization existing prior to, and in some sense through, the last ice age some 20,000 years ago was thought to be a fantastical story kept alive by crackpots and pseudo-scientists of the highest order.

To be honest, even though up to that point I had not paid much attention to this sort of thing, I assumed that it was bullshit as well. However, I have never been big on assumptions so I took it upon myself to dig deep and investigate. I had that kind of time. I began by looking into the easiest and obvious of Hancock's assertions; that many megalithic structures, specifically those on the Giza Plateau in Egypt, aligned with various constellations HOWEVER a number of them only aligned to those constellations late in pre-history.

Since I was working at a University, and way ahead of the curve on computers at the time, checking these assertions was pretty straightforward. I went to the library to find photos taken of the megaliths from above (there were no drones at the time, hence fewer photos). I then found a star chart archive online.... it might have been from the NASA site..... and began to systematically compare them with the photos, which I had scanned and stored on my hard drive. After hours of overlaying every single chart with every single related photo I could only conclude that Hancock was correct, or at least on very solid ground, and next turned to every academics favorite/dreaded method of verifying references.

In todays digital world this is largely done with search engines from the comfort of your office chair. Back then the only way to do this was what we had begun to refer to as "sneaker-net", taking a list of all Hancock's references and going to the Wake library to try and find them. That was one hell of a chore because Fingerprints of the Gods has hundreds of references from a wide and diverse array of sources and disciplines. Many of the nonacademic sources he cited were not easy to track down back then, but every single reference he made to academic/professional publications were in the Wake library. Because I was faculty. I was able to take all of them to my office, which took several trips and the help of a couple students, and began an extremely deep dive into subject areas I had at best a laymans' grasp of at the time. It was slow going and required me to pester the hell out of my colleagues in archeology, anthropology, geography, geology and history who were very patient and to whom I am still grateful.

After about a month I had been through all the material and drew the only conclusion that one could draw, as unpopular as the idea was at the time, Hancock's work was solid, his methods ethical, his sources were legitimate, and his interpretations of the works were logical and not manipulated in any way. This was journalism of the highest order, and Hancock was unquestionably asking very important questions that academics were unwilling to ask.

My lifetime interest in the possibility of a forgotten civilization buried somewhere in pre-history (but very obviously not forgotten in myth and religious texts from across the globe) began. I took it upon myself to learn everything I could about archeology, anthropology, and cartography and began researching on my own. How's that for a hobby?

Eventually I found myself grappling with a whole bunch of questions to which I could not find an answer. Tenaciousness being one of my character defeats, I could not abide that at all, and dropped Graham Hancock an introductory email, and asked him if he could point me towards anything I may have overlooked. that email lead to years of emailing back and forth, sometimes regularly, sometimes not for months at a time and eventually lead to us striking up a friendship.

Then, in the late 1990s through the early 2000s reports began to appear about an archeological excavation in Turkey that was uncovering some amazing artifacts at a site called Gobekli Tepe which were in no way aligned to our current vision of human prehistory. But they existed never the less. Gobekli Tepe was ultimately dated to before 8000bc, when it was buried and abandoned for rea

Kent link

11/29/2022 04:13:49 pm

"way ahead of the curve on computers"
"tenaciousness"

Of course dear.

"sneaker-net" -> means handing someone a physical floppy disk, not "going to the library".

Sociology. Hmm. Along with art history and criminology, one of the unholy trinity of easy majors.

I'll finish the last sentence: "buried and abandoned for reasons."

Is Stephanie hot? Why do we need to know her name?

L binford

12/3/2022 02:21:34 pm

If Hancock's work was solid he would not have been consistently debunked every time he cranks out another book. You can search this very blog and find multiple examples of major holes being poked in pretty much every claim he has made.

Hobby is an apt description for your efforts.

Nick

12/20/2022 12:15:46 am

Spot on. I spent a few years sifting through his books in order to find the flaws in his argument. I have been studying history for over 30 years and was keen to find a flaw in his argument. Turns out he was pretty much spot on and the constant attempt to cancel him really shows how modern archeologists operate. I find the Maltese argument against his theory to be most flawed. Just because they haven’t found any evidence doesn’t mean it’s not their. Do a quick search for an ice age map of Europe and you realise Malta was basically a large hill considering it was connected to Italy and 140 meters above sea level. Take into consideration modern human remains have been found in Italy dating back over 40000 years ago it’s absurd to say they didn’t at least visit the area to hunt. Also looking at Gobekle tepe and karahan tepes age as well as other sites dating into the ice age you could have had massive complexes in the now under water land mass that joined Italy disappear under 140 meters of water. Note the cart ruts leading into the ocean. During the time of Magicians of the gods everyone screamed “show me proof of a cataclysmic event!” Now we have the comet research group. Then it was “we have no evidence of megalithic structures past the Sumerians! He’s spreading mis information!” Then we find the sites in turkey. Good luck with canceling him. The louder you shout the more popular he becomes and the more you validate his opinion of the establishment.

12/24/2022 11:56:47 am

Please provide the specific source regarding the quote about Sumerians and Hancock being nuts.

But of course by your own logic you have to be open to the possibility that Hancock could be nuts. Just because you don't think there is evidence that he is nuts it doesn't mean that he isn't nuts.

How has the Hiawatha crater thing or earlier assertions about a lost civilization in Antarctica been working out?

11/29/2022 09:21:34 am

Some comments on the section 'Sirius rising" with evidence of their validity.

1) " an advanced civilization could disappear". This is so. It is evidenced in the megalithic calendars. As far back as 5200bce the oldest form of calendar could tell with some precision the solstice day, days in advance.

Now to correct some earlier comments by others, sowing of the cereal crop is done in autumn in Mediterranean latitudes, a few weeks before the solstice. One only needs to hear Hesiod (Works and Days) " But if you plough the good ground at the solstice, you will reap sitting, grasping a thin crop in your hand, binding the sheaves awry, dust-covered, not glad at all ". Knowing the time of year, the solar year, is essential to avert famine.

Compare that to what Wiki says at 'Solstice determination' at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solstice

That simple 6000yr old method was lost for millennia. Found by accident.

2) " there is no evidence of a learning curve and Malta was too small to justify big buildings" The archaic form of calendar predates 5200bce. The last built postdates 3200bce with modification post 2346bce. In between there is a series of design modifications for improvement, via two methods but same science. The evidence of a learning curve is undeniable.

3 " claiming that Malta is “linked” directly to Egypt because they paint the “Eye of Horus” on their boats".
A far more ancient metaphorical representation exists, knowledge in parable form, that diffused all over the 'Old World' in the shape of a 'Dual Women and Child' figurines or statuettes. It is traced back as far as the sixth millennium, and in Malta/Gozo to, definitely, the mid fourth; and much earlier than in Egypt.
See https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/the-world-of-the-two-queens/
And https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/2019/04/19/the-world-of-the-two-queens-2/

But, as always, newfangled customs arise and gain popularity from much older ones from elsewhere. The 'Horus eye' has to first provide lineage or roots.

C R SANT

11/30/2022 06:27:06 am

Small correction to above:
"It is traced back as far as the sixth millennium BCE, and in Malta/Gozo to, definitely, the mid fourth BCE;--"

windhill

12/16/2022 03:37:32 am

I tried to like Graham. I really did. His first books were interesting, and were filled with excellent photographs. And then...he turns into a paradigm pusher with a conspiratorial bent. He's the seeker of truth, and the "mainstream academics" are for some reason closed- minded people who cannot think outside what they were taught in their college coursework., and have some conspiratorial purpose for not revealing the "real truth".
So, in his first episode about Gunung Padang, he is shown poking about the ruins- and then, a very realistic picture of his idea of what the original structure looked like pops on the screen with no mention that it was not an actual archeological rendering. Back to Graham, and then the rendering shows up again. It would not surprise me if a less attentive viewer would, by then,, take for granted that the picture was the real thing, complete with two underground chambers.
The other thing is, Graham will freely quote a date established by his foes, the mainstream folks, when it suits his needs.
But...the reason I REALLY turned it off? The music. The dramatic music was repulsive...