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My biggest take-away from Ancient Apocalypse is: This is out there now. Its popular. Graham makes a really big stink about how monolithic and hostile the archaeological community is, and the archaeological community has done absolutely nothing but prove him right on that every step of the way. This striates both groups further from each other, entrenching them in their beliefs about our history. As the article states: Graham is probably right about some stuff; and every time he's right, its fuel for his theories, and more likely than not he begins sliding even further into incredulity.
History has proven one thing: Science doesn't just get to win by being Science. Do you know how much I'd love to watch a Netflix (or Youtube!) series that point-by-point disproves or provides more reasonable explanations for the phenomena Graham proposes, filmed in a similar awesome style? Where is it?
Every field of science needs a Neil DeGrasse Tyson, or Bill Nye, or Carl Sagan. You need people who level with non-academics; who make the science fun, who know how to communicate, who are willing to admit when we don't know something but here's how we're trying to change that, and here's why pattern-matching One Grand Explanation into the holes is usually the wrong answer, who genuinely take the science and show, hey, those fantastical conspiracy theories are cool, but reality is WAY cooler, and here's why.
Seriously? It looks to me that guy is perfectly aware is talking bullshit. And disparaging archaeologists is part of the publicity game. He is just an entertainer trying to make money.
Why would any scientist have to descend into the mud to argue? Just let time run his course and wait for Graham to run our of ideas, people will forget about him.
Exactly. There is so much straw man going on. "They don't want you to know this, they say this is fantasy, but..."
There is no monolithic 'science'. Science is a big open debate fueled by verifiable evidence. Scientists hostility to speculation and hand waving is too often pointed to as evidence of arrogance.
And it is also understandably human to become frustrated when people do this kind of thing to your field. You spend your entire career working rigorously in Field X, learning proper methodology, performing original research, and communicating with other people who do so. This is hard work and is largely unrecognized by broader society. Then somebody comes in and says a whole lot of bogus stuff while saying that your community is deliberately malicious and gets a lot of popular press and success and people believe what they are saying. Pretty easy to understand how people would get upset. And then getting upset is seen as ivory tower arrogance.
Maybe. But there is also much inertia. As explained by:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_principle
Also see how https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener have been ridiculed at the time.
Or washing the hands as suggested by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
Sure, there is inertia. There are famous examples of people with ideas backed up by data who were treated very badly (notably - they tend to be from before the last 100 years). Academics do get things wrong, even in groups.
But an outsider showing up and saying "academia is lying to you" and making a show aimed at a popular audience is... just not going to be the place where paradigm shifts come from.
I disagree. Because:
https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/marchapril-2008/out...
https://www.medicaldaily.com/mad-scientist-6-scientists-who-...
https://bigthink.com/articles/a-brief-history-of-outsider-sc...
And much longer: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-revolutions/
Nowadays there are other means of doing 'citizen science', enabled by more, cheaper, and faster mobility, similar for access to information, and new technologies like LIDAR, drones, and much more.
In turn enabling the discovery of patterns which do not fit into the common wisdom.
What is so hard about understanding that?
Edit: Also 'institutional blindness', or if that's not a thing in english, the german 'Betriebsblind(heit)', meaning to be blind to things, because too far out to be recognizable, diverging too much from the established ways of doing things, and so on...
unless perhaps academia is lying to you
The problem with strictly following the sanctioned science community is that science follows the money (funding).
98% of archeologists agree with whoever is funding them. The remaining 2% are shunned on social media.
— somebody on the internet
I'm not sure much of the stuff really needs to be "debunked" at all. Let's look, for instance, at Gobekli Tepe.
Is it really the position of mainstream archaeology that something like Gobekli Tepe was built by nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes who hadn't even invented the wheel? Some of the pillars weigh 22,000 lbs. There are intricate statues carved by people who supposedly didn't have metalworking or any metal tools. The entire thing is part of an even larger complex that has yet to be excavated and it was all planned out and coordinated by people who hadn't even invented writing or math. How plausible is this?
10 years ago, when these discoveries were much newer, mainstream archaeologists were still largely hung up on the idea that these ridiculous massive stone temples must somehow have been built by primitive hunter-gatherers. These days, it seems as though those attitudes have shifted, and that things like Gobekli Tepe call into question if we really have the right picture regarding the timeline of human development at all. It seems increasingly possible - even in mainstream archaeology - that humans 13000 years ago may simply have been further ahead than we thought.
One side effect of this paradigm shift is that people like Graham Hancock get to claim they were right all along. OK! Of course it this doesn't mean everything else he has ever claimed is right, but as far as I care, he can milk the "him vs the establishment" angle all he wants. He has a valid complaint - but more importantly, what institution is supposed to be able "debunk" him at a time when legitimate new discoveries are currently upending everything we thought we knew? You need to figure out what is actually going on first before you can hope to be Real Scientists "debunking" anything. Until you do, the notion that perhaps Gobekli Tepe was really built by people with a comparatively advanced level of civilizational development, rather than primitive hunter-gatherer cavemen, seems as decent a hypothesis to entertain as anything else. And if I were a betting man, I'd bet this really is the right hypothesis, in my view!
Wheels aren’t useful for primitive societies moving 10 ton stone pillars. Assuming you define them as large round objects with an axle between them. Placing various objects beneath them to reduce friction is, but it’s not actually needed either if you have enough manpower.
Metal tools would have been helpful but aren’t needed. We have many examples of actual stone tools used to shape similar objects. Ex: https://www.archaeology.org/news/6891-180813-easter-island-t...
Suggesting that hunter gathers can get together and do large works together is perfectly reasonable. Some Native Americans on the east coast did massive scale forestry without setting down in one place. This effort was rewarded because they would cycle through areas repeatedly. It wasn’t agriculture but something of an in between activity and was viable as other nearby cultures did practice farming.
Hunter gathering is migratory because they use up local resources faster than they replenish. But the rate this happens depends on natural abundance. It’s similar to why Texas cattle farmers need a lot more land to support a herd than east coast farmers assuming neither are supplementing their diets with feed.
> I'd love to watch a Netflix (or Youtube!) series that point-by-point disproves or provides more reasonable explanations for the phenomena Graham proposes, filmed in a similar awesome style? Where is it?
This is part of the problem. It's no-one's job to entertain you. As Mr DeGrasse Tyson has said, and I paraphrase the good thing about science is, it doesn't care about your opinions. Collecting and reasoning about evidence is hard enough. Don't ask serious professionals to prove the validity of their work by making flashy videos about it. It's ignorant and insulting.
An accessible messenger providing entertaining but accurate snippets and overviews is very useful to the sciences or other misunderstood disciplines. It inspires interest in future experts and the young. It raises a more general maybe shallower interest, but also general appreciation and funding. In some cases it’s also quite lucrative to the charismatic expert doing the outreach, I think “A Brief History” paid for decades of Stephen Hawking’s medical care.
The cool work only happens if industry pays when there’s a profit to be had, or when society as a whole pays because it inspires and seems culturally valuable. Someone has to present that case for sponsorship.
Yes good scientific content in the form of accessible documentaries is awesome. What I find debasing is someone pointing to a preposterous bundle of claims from a bad movie saying "this is entertaining! debunk this in a fun way and I will listen!". That's just entitled. The burden of having correct information about reality is on you.
David Wengrow (archeologist and co-author of The Dawn of Everything with the late David Graeber) wrote a piece on AA and Graham Hancock which was published last week:
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/ancient-apocalypse...
The Guardian also did a bit of a hatchet job on it a couple of months back: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient...
I like the ending:
'If you don’t like Hancock’s story about the super-intelligent advanced civilisation being wiped off the face of the planet, here’s another that might explain how Netflix gave the greenlight to Ancient Apocalypse: the platform’s senior manager of unscripted originals happens to be Hancock’s son. Honestly, what are the chances?'
I honestly don't care if this is correct or not. It's fun to watch even if this guy has negative charisma when compared to Georgio Tsoukawhatever or Randall Carlson. Don't really care for his whole schtick (at least he didn't do his "dude drugs" thing like he always does on Joe Rogan).
(I think he's probably not right, but following all these interesting archeological sites is enjoyable).
Incomplete without watching some https://www.youtube.com/@TheRandallCarlson
and some https://www.youtube.com/@BrightInsight and probably some others, which I'm not up to date to, or even unaware of.
Anyways, most interesting thing, and more relevant to me because relative 'near' to me, was something found and excavated on a scottish island near the shoreline.
Like a cabin/hut made out of stone, but absolutely Out-of-context because way too old for that level of sophistication of the way of building, and also the rest of artefacts found there. Unfortunately I can't find it anymore, because I can't remember those strange names of the Orkney Islands, or the Hebrides. (Where this was, way up north-east from the tip of Scotland)
At the time (about 10 years ago now?) I came across it over some branch of the Royal Society, which made it into a virtual museum, excellent web design btw. Spent about 4 hours there, and some more the following days. Crosschecked with other events of the time in that area, like Doggerland, Storegga slide, and so on.
The virtual museum explained how they dug it out, how they prepared and reconstructed some artefacts, documented every step photographically, even with *.raw pictures if you wanted to, but without slowing the site down. All very snappy. So called 'experimental archeology'.
IIRC the strangest thing was that the building seemed like it has been 'thrown down' there, because a few meters away the ground was different, normal. And it lacked a roof, that was gone, and not found, not even parts of it, like it had been sheered away, with some parts of the building, slightly diagonally from its top. And some materials of the artefacts seemed to come from far away, agean sea, near east, I think.
Anyways, according to C14 dating, and other measurements I can't remember anymore, it must have been built 200 to 400 years after the glacier there melted away.
At the time I thought just wow, why isn't this in the mainstream media at all? This is sensational! Tried to find it again several times, some years later, to point others to it, but can't find it anymore. GRR!
Are you thinking of the Knap of Howar on the island of Papa Westray [1]?
No. The layout of the building was rectangular, maybe 6 to 8 meters on the sides.
Single room, with a few shelfs also made of stone embedded into the walls, a fireplace, and a bed/couch, also made of stone, but very smooth surface. Only one small window(almost quadratic(maybe up to a meter sidelength, and a doorway.
It stood on a slope, and the walls were cut into it up to a height of maybe 1.50 meters on the sides. Looking rather cozy, all in all. And a larger fireplace outside. And nothing else! Like that place had been cut out, somewhere else, and came to rest there.
But thanks for asking :-)
That's the diffuculty I remember for finding this place again. England, Ireland, Scotland and the many islands in the Orkneys and Shetlands are full of the stuff!
Looking at maps now, ISTR it was on a single small Island, like Ham, with an almost conical mountain in the middle. And Hebrides was a mistake, that is west of Scotland. Either Orkneys, or Shetlands.
I tried to imagine how that must have looked at the time, depending on the weather, maybe poking out of the mist, like something out of Lord of the Rings, or similar. Some Druid, on the edge of Doggerland in his cabin...
> There are civilizations in South America which are unknown to official archaeological science. Even I know of one not discovered by archaeologists yet: this despite my having never even visited South America.
What is the author referring to? It seems like the author might be full of shit himself.
Direct quote from the author:
“Archaeology is a wonderful subject, but it has an ideology, and it is presently mostly the kind of thing made to appeal to “Head Girl” IFLS types who memorized all the “correct” answers. Those sorts of people are always a squalid clerisy, and they almost never figure anything new out.”
Yeah, I’m inclined to agree with your last point.
Lile the bit about being right about some things. Easy if you throw enough BS atvthe wall, something is gonna turn out to be correct by pure chance alone. Nothing to be proud of, and totally meaningless without looking at how often peoole were wrong.
It’s amazing how much incorrect crap just gets passed around because people just accept it at face value.
Egypt for example only had non destructive flood myths yet they get lumped into the every culture has a flood myth trope. It’s true only in the way basically every culture also has a myth involving rain, dirt, trees, wild animals, death etc. The content of these myths generally have little in common beyond similarly broad categories outside of cultures in some form of contact with each other.
This is a good point. Do you think it is because of how much Egyptian agriculture relied on regular flooding of the Nile to replenish the soil?
That may be part of it but I think the predictable nature and local geology was probably more important.
It simply wasn’t killing people the way floods in many areas do.
I feel like people are missing the main point of this series, which is that it’s great for speculative fiction writers brainstorming. Like, just imagine cultists of the old gods trying to raise Tlaloc back to life, in order to flood the lands once again. And only the remnants of the Order of the Feathered Messenger, secretly run by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, can stop the rising tide. I’d watch that movie.
Come on people history is hard enough without fooling ourselves on purpose. Effing this up is a failure of empathy across time
Honestly, anything that makes ivory tower alphabet soup credentialed academics seethe is a good thing.
I'll make sure to add this one to my watch list.
What a toxic mindset. As long as it hurts the other team then it's good? You could have appealed to any virtue to celebrate it but instead you went for the most base tribalism of all.
“the other team” lol yeah ok lemme guess who you work for
Sounds like I triggered an academic. Do us a favor and get the COVID vaccines. It's "safe and effective" like running untested code directly on production.