Has Joe Rogan never seen places like Arches National Park in Utah? A lost human settlement? Sorry buddy.
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I think it gives authentic Indiana Jones vibes.
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Archaeologist vs Graham Hancock: A Critical Review of Netflix’s Ancient Apocalypse
I have reviewed each episode of Graham Hancock’s Netflix series, Ancient Apocalypse, from the perspective of an archaeologist. Here are my, slightly unhinged, thoughts on the show.
Playlist:
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A physicist with wacky theories about other fields, you say?
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I might be mistaken, but I thought Graham Hancock’s theories centered around the idea that these ancient structures (pyramids, gobekli tepi, etc.) are just much much older than current archeology accepts. I did not realize he credits aliens with the construction. I have listened to a few interviews with him and he always mentions ‘Younger Dryas’, and cataclysms and global catastrophe and that these megastructures are from a period of time before this upheaval and ‘humanity reset’. I have not heard him say ‘aliens done it’.
Flint Dibble (it’s his real name…"
Milo Rossi did a decent series on Hancock’s twaddle; including that it only got made because Hancock’s son is a commissioning editor at Netflix.
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I didn’t sit through all four and a half hours of this, but I sat through a lengthy section in which Hancock takes much too long to make two rather uncontroversial points – (1) archaeologists are often hostile to new ideas, and (2) certain parts of the world are undersurveyed – and suggests that this implies the correctness of his theories, because “we cannot rule out the possibility of a lost civilization”.
This is Russell’s teapot stuff. My dude, we cannot rule out the possibility of dragons. Maybe there were fire-breathing lizards in some part of Amazonia that hasn’t been subjected to LIDAR mapping yet. But we don’t take the idea of dragons seriously or waste time looking for them, because nothing we have seen so far and no amount of scientific reason suggests that dragons are likely.
Moreover, we’re not talking about just any lost civilization here. Is archaeology’s knowledge of past cultures exhaustive? Certainly not. Are there still discoveries to be made? Absolutely. But my understanding is that when Hancock says “lost civilization”, he doesn’t mean undiscovered cultures whose technology and customs were comparable to those of other cultures of similar epochs and regions, he means a geographically-extensive culture with access to technologies that were dramatically ahead of their time, or ours (because aliens).
This is the same “God of the gaps” logic that religious people deploy: because science doesn’t have an answer to everything (yet), therefore there must be a God, and therefore it must be the precise God who is described in my favorite holy book (and who happens to share all my views on the subject of women and queer people). Hancock’s argument seems to be that gaps in our archaeological knowledge and the imperfection of archaeology imply that the precise thing he pretends to believe is true.
If the section I listened to is a representative sample of his arguments, then I think I feel justified in discounting whatever else he has to say. Because if you devote so much time to making such obviously specious points, it can only be because you don’t have any better arguments or actual evidence.
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He’s basically making the same meritless claims as the “aliens done it” folks except he’s swapping in some hypothetical race of technologically advanced humans instead of visitors from another planet.
Either way, the underlying message is “Surely there’s no way these [brown-skinned people] could have developed agriculture or architecture on their own.”
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Atlanteans.
If you research Graham Hancock and look at his books over time, as I have, one of the things that you discover about him is that he self-edits. He doesn’t use the word Atlantis now except very sparingly. He has also edited himself since 1995, when, in Fingerprints of the Gods, he came out and said that it was an ancient white civilization. He no longer says the “white” part in the series. If you pay careful attention, he does talk about “heavily bearded Quetzalcoatl” who arrives, according to myth, to give the gift of knowledge, but he doesn’t mention the other part of that trope, which all of us know about, which is that this visitor supposedly had white skin.
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Ok, wow. I don’t follow any of his stuff, and had heard “lost civilization” as a buzz on the periphery of my day-to-day. I have to say: “lost civilization” sounds like it could actually be pretty reasonable if you don’t use his definition. I was picturing something more realistic: a small set of settlements in a rarely-explored part of the world.
Yikes.
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If he outright said Atlantis, then someone might go check Plato to see what he said about it.
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I watched the whole debate on YouTube, I went into it with an open mind and rather enjoyed it.
Flint Dibble had a lot of interesting facts and information and he presented it in a clear concise way. I did find that he was often quite rude, and even snickered a couple times at Graham, which i found in poor taste.
Graham Hancock’s hostility towards Flint, although understandable after receiving a lot of abuse from the media and the archaeological community, overshaddowed a lot of his interestng theories. And he did at times come across as petulant.
I would like to see more discussions between Graham and archeologists or people from other fields of expertise who condem his work. Rather than seeing one sided arguments and hit pieces from either side of the debate.
The reason why i have created an account on here is because i wanted to say my piece and hear from people with different views to mine.
As you have probably guessed, I listen to Graham Hancock and find his theories interesting. I have read “fingerprints of the gods” and have listened to countless podcasts with him on.
I wouldn’t say i blindly agree with everything he has to say nor do i claim he has all the answers. I just find it refreshing when there are different views and ways at looking at things.
Without making this post too long winded i suppose my main questions are:
Why do people dismiss his claims using labels such as white supremacist, racist, misogynistic antisemitic and the like, when he clearly isnt any of these things? Because I follow him does that make me all these things too?
Why cant they both be right? Just because archeologists haven’t discovered something yet, does that mean it didn’t happen? Going by grahams statistics, only very small percentages have been looked at. 1% of the sahara, even less of the land that is now under the sea that wasnt 12000 years ago…
Thank you for taking the time to read
… who said that
besides you 
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Most of this stuff is from fiction. Vril to theosophy and Lovercraft to The Morning of the Magicians to von Däniken.
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Archaeology is a serious field of study, and in serious fields of study, claims about what happened have to be grounded in evidence. You cannot just fill in gaps in understanding with “what if” scenarios, even if they make for a good story. The story that Hancock spins flies in the face of everything that we know about how humanity developed, and there is simply no reason to entertain it without any kind of evidence. Coincidences, such as the existence of pyramids in Africa and South America, cannot be extrapolated to invent some kind of ancient super society that spanned continents because that is not even close to the simplest explanation.
He has toned it down recently, but he has made it clear in the past that he believes that this ancient super society was white of skin, and there is a historical background behind such claims that essentially boil down to this idea that non-white societies in Africa and South America could not possibly have developed any kind of advanced technology on their own. But there is an abundance of actual evidence that these societies did just that, and there is no good reason to ignore this evidence in favor of Hanckock’s fantasy.
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Apologies, i should have been clearer. These words were used in the open letter from the SAA to netflix and ITN about his documentary “Ancient Apocalypse.”
Some of which are repeated on this thread.
It won’t let me post sources on here as a new user
The thing that Hancock is doing (and that you are doing as his proxy) is arguing a god of the gaps approach. Yes, we have only looked at a certain percentage of the earth, but strangely that was enough to know a lot about all the other human societies we know about. The few “arguments” Hancock actually has in terms of concrete sites, such as Gunung Padang are easily disproven as soon as actual experts look at them.
Your argument about the sea floors and the Sahara is an interesting one as well: somehow, despite having looked at only a tiny bit of it, we have ample evidence of hunter-gatherer societies in both, despite the fact that these are much harder to find than a monuments-building civilisation.
(These popular articles are only meant as illustration, there is tons of published peer reviewed evidence)
So, in short, there is no way for me as an archaeologist to prove without a doubt that there wasn’t a world spanning civilisation of white people showing everyone what’s what, but there is also no reason to believe there was, considering there is no evidence for it whatsoever. The same applies for anything really. I also can’t disprove that we were taught to build the pyramids by talking dinosaurs, but again, I also have no reason to believe we were.
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A quick search using the phrase “why are Graham Hancock’s theories considered racist” will answer that for you.
One of many comments from actual archaeologists:
In other words, skin tone of the people who built the structure is a depressingly excellent predictor of the number of people who will say “Aliens must’ve helped them”.
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Thank you for your response.
I understand what you’re saying about archeology being a serious field of study and is very much evidence based.
Graham is a journalist and an author and, to my knowledge, has never claimed to be an archaeologist or scientist but is regularly labled pseudo archeologist/scientist.
People will always entertain the idea of alternative versions of anything, its human nature to question what we’re told, and to be inquisitive.
The way i see it, this is what Graham has done and is clearly very passionate about it. After “fingerprints of the gods” (nearly 30 years ago now) he was openly attacked by the archaeological and scientific communities. There was a bbc documentary (horizon) disputing his claims, some of which had to be amended after a complaint made by him.
I suppose what im trying to get at is:
Why was he attacked so vehemently and given labels such as pseudo this and that, when he is a journalist/author/reporter?
If it wasn’t for these attacks and labels, would he have the platform and audience he has now?
Whats wrong with questioning the narrative and opening up debates?
If the experts were to look at things through a different lens, would they discover previously missed links and new avenues?
I know through reading “fingerprints of the gods” that he does mention various myths of bearded Caucasians traversing the globe and passing on their knowledge to hunter gatherers, after a global cataclysm. Is this what youre talking about?
Is this not him repeating the story of the ancient myths? I thought this was included because it wasnt limited to just one region. The story was repeated throughout different regions and all were similar, mentioning the same thing?
Thank you again for your response, i find this topic fascinating and although there is plenty of evidence, its always fun to entertain the idea of a different version of history
Because he is a pseudoarchaeologist. How is that so hard to understand?
Yes, he’s not a trained archaeologist, but he engages in archaeology. Hence, and because his “research” is hokum, he’s a pseudoarchaeologist.
I have no medical degree. If I advertised backyard surgery, I’d be a pseudosurgeon.
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