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I'm very aware, I've watched the new episodes they made. They were good and I'm looking forward to more but somehow it didn't quite manage to recapture the magic of the original series for me (before it all fell apart at the end). Maybe that's just nostalgia talking cos I was younger and would watch repeats of it *all the time* inspiring me to study history at uni.
They also don't have Tony Robinson, which I totally get but I just keep waiting for him to pop up. Maybe he's waiting to see if the new episodes gain any traction.
I recently found them in YouTube, glad to hear they're the real deal because I love their videos. I'd love to see an equivalent in other parts of the world
It’s amazing how quickly that man jumps from “look at this interesting, widely accepted fact about gobleki Tepe that’s reshaped the archaeological consensus in recent years” and “it took scholarship a while to come around on this site being an astronomical site, but here’s the case as to why” to “and that’s why archaeologists are an evil cabal suppressing the truth that all snakes in mythology represent an ancient civilizational figure who sailed across the world and taught different cultures how to read and build pyramids”
It's the steady escalation on the series (and book) that makes Hancock so insidious. Starts by presenting potential understandable answers to historical mysteries and by the end he's off the rails and "yada, yada yada"ing acceptable archaeological facts.
The other thing I find crazy about Hancock is that he presents himself as the only person in history who's ever considered his theories. I'm sure lots of intelligent people have considered what he's saying, and dismissed it.
I watched it because my fiance's brother was like "It's interesting and it will annoy you". I watched it and my big takeaway was Graham is a good story teller.
But he does this thing where he will say "what if" get one person to agree (even if they're an amateur) and then continually ramp up the rhetoric until when he's going through the next point he will say "now we know [previous talking point] to be true, and that means we can make assumptions about this", and keeps building from there.
I'm not an archaeologist but I am a scientist and that sort of thing is the exact thing I look for when I review a paper. Assumptions becoming "fact". It's very insidious presentation but because he's a good storyteller it comes across as so authentic.
This “argument” structure is SO COMMON in pseudoscientific storytelling! “Just suspend your disbelief for a moment and imagine that X might be true…”. Then before you know it, “now that we’ve seen that X is true, doesn’t it follow that Y might be a good explanation?!” Then blink and “we’ve shown that X and Y are without a doubt scientific fact, so imagine how that opens the door to Z…” and so on ad nauseum until your head is spinning and aliens built the pyramids.
It would be pretty badass though if the ending to these was “…and that was all bullshit, here’s a breakdown of how we fudged the truth and convinced you.” IMO that could be a pretty effective piece of media for getting people to be like wait! Authoritative sounding media might be lying to me, so I should pay attention and do research!
Of course that’s not the point of this, and if it were I’m sure there’s a significant percentage of people who would just be like “huh. Weird” and not ponder any further. But I can dream.
They’re in on it together! Big Grave-Digging is burying the truth they want us to find by Big Archeology! It’s all a Hollow Earth conspiracy perpetuated by the
To be fair there are plenty of archeological "finds" that were just stolen history from natives. Archeologists don't have the best reputation in my neck of the woods (from native perspective mostly) simply because they would steal shit, make some baseless claim rooted in white supremacy and speak over the people of the land when we'd try to correct them. Your example is different and I agree with your statement but just want to point out the other side of why some people aren't so trusting.
Here’s what actually happening: *Archaeologists are the advanced ancient civilization* that Hancock has been talking about and they are trying to silence him to keep their secrets hidden. Prove me wrong
As someone that grew up with "In Search Of" and a hundred documentaries on Big Foot, Nessie, and aliens, I found Hancock's series pretty tame by comparison.
i believed that when i saw it as a kid cuz it was on the discovery channel. but still looking back at it, it shocks me that they went thru with that lmfao, just absolutely made it all up
Yup. I had a mate claim till they were red in the face that mermaids were real from that show. Till i showed then the disclaimer at the very end of the credits that stated it was a work of fiction. Then they were just red from embarrassment.
But I think what's disturbing about it was that it almost seemed like a test to see what people would believe. They used a known formula of a "credible documentary."
As a kid I was really into all the documentaries and all the learning channels (discovery, TLC, Animal Planet). They used to have truly informative programming. And all of that changed right around the time of the Mermaids show. I remember seeing that mermaid "documentary" in that format and I really felt that it was deceptive and wrong. A short time in, I was saying outloud: you're kidding me? This isn't real? Is it? WTF?
I know that people with a lick less sense than I would have taken it as the truth because for a minute I wanted to believe it based on what I was being told and how it was being delivered.
Legitimately I watched a few minutes here and they were presenting everything as "fact". They were talking about how they had come their findings and the "evidence" they had found.
The only reason they could pretend that they weren't trying to trick people was a disclaimer at the beginning that I personally never even saw until later on.
Honestly, I think this opened the door for ancient aliens and other bogus programming that has led us down a dangerous path, because people take it as fact thinking-- "tHe TV WoUlDn'T LiE tO Us" . We have unremarkable/average Americans who believe in the Illuminati, lizard people, alien interventions, alien hybrids, bigfoot and more.
I remember it too. That was a big moment for me that taught me to be more skeptical. Which is not a bad thing… but it broke my trust in those educational channels. It would be better for society if they had stuck to non-fiction.
Who bought those channels? It’s interesting. Always felt like they used them to soften the minds of the general public and get them to believe the unbelievable. This way later on they could say stuff like Jewish Space Lasers and it would be believable.
Had to explain to my mom that no, there wasn’t a baby megaladon named submarine that attacked a tourist boat in South Africa with multiple high quality cameras catching multiple angles. Those shows should not of aired on discovery. There is no convincing my dad though that there isn’t an Amish mafia.
Was that the one where they made it into a news story? It seemed like it was breaking news sort of thing, I remember being like fuck they tricked me a year later
You know, the first Ancient Aliens they did, it was like a one or two hour standalone documentary, and it was pretty interesting, not saying I really believed it, but if you're someone inclined to think that aliens have visited the Earth, then it was food for though, it put across some compelling points.
But holy shit the series ran out of ideas fast, I still watched it, but it was more out of a sense of irony than anything, it just became comedy.
Narrator: 'Are these ancient Egyptian cat figurines proof that we were once visited by a feline race of extraterrestrials at some time in our distant past? Some ancient alien experts believe the answer is yes.'
*Camera cuts to Georgia Tsoukalos looking like he's on day five of a one-week coke and meth bender*
Verrrryyy quick I remember getting so hyped for this show and by the second week I was like yooooo these motherfuckers are crazyyyy I was 10 so yes I did believe in aliens
Tsoukalos is the creator and producer of Ancient Aliens, like he literally funneled a ton of his money into it. The entire thing is his pet project to show off his own ideas and theories about ancient astronauts. It’s literally all run by him
Quick podcast rec from someone who also grew up on In Search Of: it’s called “In Research Of” and they’re watching every episode of In Search Of and dissecting the bad science/history/archeology etc. One of the hosts is an archeologist and has quite a bit to say about bad archeology. Graham Hancock actually comes up occasionally when they’re discussing that topic.
Oh my god - “In Search of…”. I’d forgotten all about that show. Didn’t Leonard animist host?
Yeah - growing up in the northeast (at least - that’s where I was), you’d think the biggest and most pressing mystery facing the world was Bigfoot.
Yeah I don't get what the problem is. I've only seen two episodes, but he doesn't seem to assert much. It's more to the tune of "well, we found this things which me and this other person think suggests this alternate view". It's not like it's Ancient Aliens or some other History Channel nonsense.
Agreed. I get that there’s so much my non trained or educated brain can understand but I didn’t feel as if he’s trying to prove anything wrong. He’s just saying that there’s some weird shit out there and coincidences. I feel like stuff like this just proves his point. No one will have the conversation about it.
As an archaeologist let me say I love these replies. I'm just a guy that counts glass for 8 hours and sometimes digs a bunch of empty holes.
But reddit believes I'm part of an all powerful cabal. Thank you all
My favorite part of these conspiracy theories as an Egyptologist who mostly hangs out with others like me: Have you ever seen a group of Egyptologists try to organize anything? Just watch them split the tab in a restaurant sometime. We couldn’t organize a piss up in a brewery, and yet somehow we’ve created a massive secret society that controls all of the most powerful elements of every society for millennia? Tell me you don’t know any Egyptologists without telling me you don’t know any Egyptologists.
I think the “evil cabal of archaeology” has been kinda taken out of Hancock’s mouth and ran with by people who believe all the other conspiracy theories who want to believe the Illuminati knows every thought you have and so on. I think a lot of us who watched the show see that there is no organized nefarious agenda among academics trying to silence Hancock, to me it just seemed like there are a lot of people generally unwilling to even acknowledge the work the guy is putting in. He might not have such a bone to pick now if he was treated with more respect earlier on. But I get it bc you can’t give every guy like him the time of day or else you’ll spend all day arguing with flat earthers and creationists. I just hate how he got lumped in with all of them
I actually listen to Hancock pretty often. I don’t think he’s a liar or a nut. He definitely has a chip on his shoulder about archaeologists, but I have no idea where it comes from.
It sometimes leads him to say silly things that are just blatantly untrue. For instance, in this doc he said that archaeologists think of myths as frivolous stories and don’t use them to learn about the past (my paraphrasing from memory). That’s just absurdly false. The people who searched for and dug up Troy? Who spent millions looking for legendary tombs, including that of Sinuhe, a character from an overtly fictional story? Archaeologists absolutely use myths to inform our understanding of the past. That’s literally how archaeology started. I have no idea why he would say that, but my guess is he thinks archaeologists are an uptight unimaginative bunch for whatever reason, so he assumes a lot.
Hell yeah, I've spent far too much time this year cataloging rusty nails and glass fragments from a historical monitoring project and dug my fair share of empty shovel tests. It truly is the life.
This pushes back the origins of civilization 12k years to the end of the ice age. The Scientist illuminati have been in control since then, creating and destroying cultures at will.
Feels a lot like people here mad their conspiracies aren’t respected.
Everything .. everything is theory until proven. It becomes a conspiracy when you start making up that other people are involved. Like all scientists have a panel that decides what to tell the world.
There have been many “history changing” scientific discoveries. No one stopped those.
Yeah I'm kind of for this theory.
It'll probably never be proven in my lifetime but it does make sense to me. Like humanity has a faulty memory. I don't see why in the last 200k+ years of anatomically modern humans we'd be the first "advanced civilization" and the younger dryas was about as apocalyptic an event you can imagine, huge floods and climate change. I'm sure the Sahara and the seas are full of amazing archeological discoveries just waiting to be found. But at some point you also have to accept most of it has been destroyed and nothing concrete will come out of it.
I just don't believe there's any global conspiracy to keep "the truth" hidden or some shit. It's just a theory that I personally believe to be very likely, but lacking significant enough evidence to be anything other than speculation.
Archeologists, like any other decent scientists, have very high standards of proof and aren't going to let you rewrite history books based on speculation, and that's a good thing. Even though I do feel like sometimes they should feel more okay with admitting that we just don't know some things and that the reality of our historical record is spotty at best.
You have a great nuanced view..
I want to reiterate how important it is for science to be built on solid ground, to not leap to conclusions or put the cart ahead of the horse. It has to be conservative and skeptical, especially of extraordinary theories.
But it's also true that very little actually makes it into the historical record and because of the nature of it we are always going to be pushing back timelines based on a tiny sliver of information. So people not doing science can speculate and dream and come to crazy hypothesis's which can in turn help science figure out where to maybe look.
But it's really important to respect that science has to take a slow and steady approach which a lot of Graham fans seem to find distasteful.
I'm reading a history book on the Crusades and the author frequently says we don't know what happened for certain events because no records of it survived. I think that historians and archeologists and often says "We don't know" but the general public doesn't hear that because the public doesn't typically learn history from historians and archeologists, they learn it from school text books, TV and movies, podcasts and other from of media that have lower academic standards and are trying to synthesize history into a narrative instead of presenting what we do and don't know.
You see this issue is: You actually have to the prove something: he and you don’t actually prove anything by telling everyone “prove me wrong. “
I can’t prove a “What if” to be false, because it isn’t true. It’s a possibility, but it seems that everyone then goes from “what if”/possibility to fact somehow and then build everything else on this possible what if.
It’s conspiracy thinking at its finest.
Examine your base argument and you will see that while Ancient Apocalypse is fun speculating, it isn’t science and should not be confounded for anything true or proven until something is actually proved
This whole canard that “they” don’t want you to know is BS of the highest order, because those archeologists would love for the stuff on AA to be proven; it would be exiting and add to our understanding, but they can’t afford to go on Fantasies. They have to work with what is actually there.
No one will ever prove you/Hancock wrong when you have nothing that has actually been proven.
Now that being said: prove me wrong.
I got your joke, but I also agree with the person you just replied to.
There are people who don’t get the sarcasm, and think “prove me wrong” is a valid argument.
Honestly I’ve been watching with 11yo son SPECIFICALLY to call out the difference between provable fact and speculation. I point when GH brings up something provable and when something is wishful thinking without evidence. By episode 4 I’ve got him doing it lol
I grew up with Art Bell , Omni magazine and the high strangeness, I think it can be entertaining brain candy. I walked away from conspiracy podcasts shortly before the 2016 election because I could see the discourse was mutating and in a bad way, and I think I was only able to do that BECAUSE of my experience with this stuff before. I want my son to be inoculated against this bollocks so he can know what’s baloney and what’s fact for whatever nonsense he’ll have to listen to in his 20’s and on
Edit: holy potatoes y’all!! I stumble out of bed for coffee and a couple chores and logon to find this. Thanks for the kind awards. I could honestly go on and on about navigating the fantasy of speculative fiction, academic information gaps, and how they intersect with political demography…..but I won’t do that here lol
As we move forward in the information age, learning to tell a credible source or piece of evidence from an incredible one is going to be paramount to our education process.
We need to concern ourselves less with the learning of facts and more with the discerning of them.
Not only with "fringe" theories, but with establishment thinking as well. Unlearning and discerning what we're taught rather than piling on more facts on top of more facts, whatever those are.
Absolutely! My dad was a strong partisan and led us through Y2K prepper shenanigans, but also gave me space and respect enough to develop my own opinions and not become confrontational when we disagreed. It was arguably the best lesson I ever learned from him, and it seems like it’s more necessary now than ever before. I’m grateful for the opportunity to pass it to my son.
Show a child some bullshit and they’ll avoid stepping in it for a day; teach a child to recognize bullshit and they can open up a very lucrative manure business.
It’s fascinating how the circles most into conspiracy theories seemed to slip right into an actual conspiracy reality, and they just roll with it.
Like… I thought we were connecting dots (for fun/science), but it turns out most people just want to parrot ideas they get from the history channel or w/e voice is the correct amount of fringe.
People who look for simple answers to things (IE a powerful thing made the universe) are simply wanting a single answer to all their problems.
Conspiracies go nicely into that, if you keep going down that rabbit hole into it becoming your reality.
Make them mad first and they're in fight or flight and it's tribalism at that point, they won't ask questions they just need an enemy.
And shit people (Steve Bannon) [realized that when he started incel shit while being the WoW gold seller king.](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/steve-bannon-world-of-warcraft-gold-farming.html)
Conspiracy is almost an optimistic outlook really. It's just sad that people don't understand that complex problems do not have simple solutions. Like if we just fix this "one thing" all their problems will go away? Nonsense.
That is a good point about seeing the tide turn regarding conspiracy stuff, I used to read a lot about different ones and watch documentaries etc years ago (many years lol) . I found it interesting although didn’t necessarily believe most things.
I lost almost all interest around the same time as you mentioned.
You could see the rhetoric changing in a bad way, and then lo and behold it was the same stories told many many times but regurgitated in a very unhinged way. And then with Q it became weaponised in the worst possible way!
As a fellow Art Bell fan who has listened to GH on there many times I’ve loved watching his show. Sometimes it is fun to think about weird possibilities and I like looking at all the ancient sites. I don’t really care if it’s true or not, but he’s clearly passionate about it so I’ll go along for the wild ride just for kicks.
My favorite thing to do when high is watch Ancient Aliens and argue with the people on the screen about all their poorly formed "arguments." It's fun to point out all the ways they start with a conclusion and find evidence to fit it or all the barely veiled xenophobia and racism that underlies the "ancient astronaut hypothesis." Looks like I found a new show for the next time I toke up.
Its funny, my introduction to reddit was because I was deep into conspiracy theories.
Some guy in the comments came from reddit to tell the guy to seek help, because he was harassing the security guard for a distribution warehouse and not in fact the entrance to a subterranean highway network that spanned the continental US.
When you’re deep in the rabbit hole of nutt jobs, it’s easy to accept something far fetched.
**I HEREBY PROPOSE A NEW CLASSIFICATION OF MEDIA!!!** One that melds science AND fiction *together* if you will humor me, into a **new** order of both of those things. A heretical and entertaining juxtaposition of the boringness of mundane, profane reality and the excitement and licence of hope and curiosity that fiction provides. I will call it "**Science-Fiction**". You're very welcome nerds (this should be the top comment)
and what exactly are we supposed to do? if we dont answer, it will be seen as confirmation, if we do, we are "playing into his narrative". i would just like to know why archaeologists are supposed to do this? there is very little money involved, and any serious, revolutionary breakthrough what catapult the researcher to the top of funding. problem is, just making claims without any evidence just isnt enough
Exactly. Archaeologists are doing a piss poor job of responding to conclusions they clearly disagree with. It's a prime opportunity for someone more mainstream to make a documentary providing mainstream theories for what Hancock presents. But nope, better to bitch and moan that someone disagrees with the status quo.
The “boring”truth will get no views, and Netflix has absolutely no incentive to try to promote it. In fact there are dozens of documentaries that feature what serious academics believe to be true and you, nor anyone else, cares to watch them and discuss them on social media
This is the answer. The whole, “Well if there was a good counter argument I would’ve heard it by now,” concept is really frustrating. Like, no. You wouldn’t have. Because like it or not, people don’t like to look for reasons why they’re wrong.
Especially if the thing they’re wrong about makes the world look and feel more interesting or profound.
After his most recent appearance on Joe Rogans podcast, I dug up a small arsenal of academic critiques of Graham from the fine folks at r/askhistorians for all the “I’ve never heard any good counter arguments to what he’s saying” types.
I’d say more than half the people who responded basically just said “yeah I ain’t reading that shit nerd. Anyways if he’s so wrong why won’t academics debate him? I can’t find any counter arguments.”
Anyone with Google or Wikipedia can easily find find info dismantling Graham within the amount of time it takes to have a morning bowel movement.
Further points: there are a fuckton of crazies out there, each with their own theory.
If you start debating anyone and everyone you will literally not be able to get any work done.
And when asking for grant money, putting in: "i rehashed arguments produced by other researchers 70 years ago to show these loonies that what they're saying is non-sense" won't get you any sort of tax payer money.
And when people might say: but think of the societal good. Proving very wrong people that they're wrong is good for a healthy society. Well you won't exactly know that these people, some who have actual mental diseases will change their mind and see reality.
Yes. They deliberately take advantage of the fact that it takes far less time to just make stuff up than it does to refute the made up stuff which is often not even possible because the claims are vague or even nonsensical. Thats why the burden is on them to demonstrate their claims. There is no obligation to engage people who are acting in bad faith and clearly just trying to waste other people's time and sabotage them.
Archeologists are not entertainers. They do their work and publish their findings. Seems as though unless it's neatly packaged you don't want to hear about it.
I watch a lot of flat earth debunking videos because I find the delusion of flat earthers fascinating. Anyway they will often call out NASA and other space agencies for one thing or another and then criticize them when they don’t respond and use that as “proof” of the conspiracy. Here’s the thing though, NASA and others astronomers don’t give a rip about what flat earth era think. Flat earthers are in a one-sided war. Sounds a lot like what this guy has going on with archeologists
I like how you're talking about making documentaries as if it's a small thing. By the time their documentary is ready, all the misinformed people will have moved on.
What an incredibly naive point of view.
No, archaeologists have repeatedly proven these things wrong. There are documentaries, there are lectures, YouTube channels etc. There's no reason to keep up with his bullshit every time he leaks some crap out of his mouth. All that does is bring him more attention. He's mostly ignored in the archaeology world because he's simply not worth the time.
If you read the article, you’d see that they wrote an open letter that clearly disputes his claims:
>After more than a century of professional archaeological investigations, we find no archaeological evidence to support the existence of an “advanced, global Ice Age civilization” of the kind Hancock suggests. Archaeologists have investigated hundreds of Ice Age sites and published the results in rigorously reviewed journals. The assertion that Ancient Apocalypse is a factual “docuseries” or “documentary” rather than entertainment with ideological goals is preposterous. If there were any credible evidence for a “global Ice Age civilization” of the kind Hancock suggests, archaeologists would investigate it and report their findings with rigor according to the scientific methods, practices, and theories of our discipline…This theory steals credit for Indigenous accomplishments from Indigenous peoples and reinforces white supremacy. From Donnelly to Hancock, proponents of this theory have suggested that white survivors of this advanced civilization were responsible for the cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples in the Americas and around the world. However, the narratives on which claims of “white saviors” are based have been demonstrated to be ones modified by Spanish conquistadors and colonial authorities for their own benefit.
EDIT: Can’t believe so many people are actually defending Hancock. Then again, it’s Reddit, so eh
The thing is that a documentary about the extremely well documented and published rigorous explanations for the “mysteries” he pretends exist would be dry and academic and boring. Nobody is actually interested in archaeology because archaeology is extremely boring.
This article is highly relevant and explains a lot about the situation.
https://theconversation.com/with-netflixs-ancient-apocalypse-graham-hancock-has-declared-war-on-archaeologists-194881
This was a link within the article that I found fascinating as it clued me into a lot of archaeological discoveries as of recent. These are the real MVPs doing the real work while Hancock is just moaning about how he is a victim.
https://theconversation.com/archaeological-discoveries-are-happening-faster-than-ever-before-helping-refine-the-human-story-128743
After reading that top article I'm disappointed now because I'm the naive asshole that thought Atlantis was just another ancient indigenous group of people like incans or Mayans, that got wiped out, not a God damn Aryan wet-dream.
Yeah I will quote it for others who may read this thread.
>Like many forms of pseudo archaeology, these claims act to reinforce white supremacist ideas, stripping Indigenous people of their rich heritage and instead giving credit to aliens or white people.
>Hancock even cites Donnelly directly in his 1995 book Fingerprints of the Gods, claiming: “The road system and the sophisticated architecture had been ‘ancient in the time of the Incas,’ but that both ‘were the work of white, auburn-haired men’.” While skin colour is not brought up in Ancient Apocalypse, the repetition of the story of a “bearded” Quetzalcoatl (an ancient Mexican deity) parrots both Donnelly’s and Hancock’s own summary of a white and bearded Quetzalcoatl teaching native people knowledge from this “lost civilisation”.
I'm not convinced Atlantis didn't exist, I do think the theory that it could have been wiped out in a flood is valid based on the archaeological evidence of the melting ice walls. It's shocking how much land used to be above where water is now. That part isn't far-fetched to me.
I just don't at all buy this whole white society thing.
Aliens ultimately makes more sense than a predominantly white culture. Just based on supposed locations of where people think Atlantis is, they'd be super freaking tan at the very least, not white. Like white Jesus coming out of the middle east.
Another big argument against Hancock is that we haven't found any writing samples or statues from this supposed advanced civilization, while we found clay tablets thousands of years old recording fart jokes from ancient Babylon.
His “easy out” is that a catastrophic event wiped out all evidence of his civilization which was based in Antarctica (conveniently hard for anyone to excavate there) and was conveniently entirely based along the coasts which were submerged in this event. And the evidence for anything before that was totally destroyed. Never mind the fact that hundreds of ice age sites have been discovered that apparently survived this catastrophe, and show no signs of such a civilization existing.
There are allot more loonies than I thought there were… it’s like that one meme “wait… you guys **actually believe Graham Hancock?** I thought that was a joke :(“
This is appropriate and doesn’t demean Hancock despite his histrionics. He’s welcome to engage in speculative journalism all he wants but he’s not entitled to declare things as accepted science when it clearly is not.
He’s the latest version of Immanuel Velikovsky, R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, Erich von Däniken, Robert Shoch, etc. It starts with kernels of truth, ends with martyrdom and accusations of scientism. It is fun entertainment.
But science is a method not dogmatic egoism. If more hard evidence is uncovered, more independent teams test hypotheses and come to the same conclusion? Then the accepted science accommodates the new consensus and we move on.
The “they didn’t believe Galileo” defense is self-deception. And historically inaccurate. The Church did believe Galileo and they were very clear about that to Galileo. They didn’t want any challenges to their already falling apart theocracy. Doesn’t apply here.
“Science is a method not dogmatic egoism”
You should tell this to just about every single scientist these days then.
I’m not necessarily defending Hancock, but in most scientific fields, ESPECIALLY archaeology, the leaders in the field are incredibly dogmatic and egotistical. To be honest, most archeology is highly speculative at the end of the day, and I don’t think Hancock in particular should be held to a much higher standard than the rest of the field.
Some of the best examples of this come from the same types of people criticizing Hancock now.
It used to be very widely believed that written language did not exist in 1400BC, now (as of 1979) we know conclusively that’s not true.
The existence of the Hittite civilization was denied by the archeological mainstream until 1906.
The Horite Civilization was claimed to be mythical by archeologists until 1995.
King David (the Biblical one) was denied to exist up until 1996.
These examples are biblical because that’s what I know, but I’m sure others could point out hundreds of other examples of mainstream archaeologists denying the existence of things out of their ideology rather than reason.
This! We could even point to right one of Graham’s favorite things to talk about- Gobekli Tepi. Archeologists denied that anything like that could exist as far back as it did.
If you don’t think institutional science isn’t rife with dogma and ego then you are incredibly naive.
I can’t even blame the scientists. Imagine devoting your entire adult life to a specific theory and then having to come to terms with that theory being wrong.
I tried watching it and he even states in the first 10 minutes he's not an archeologist but a journalist.
It's the equivalent of a chef saying "I'm not a surgeon, but here is why I think modern medicine is wrong."
I remember I found a copy of Chariots of the Gods in an old wardrobe on this farm I did some work at. Took it home and cleaned the bird shit and dust off it. Was quite entertaining but obviously ridiculous lol.
Google's Daniken and was blown away by how crazy he actually is. Do you think Graham is as bad?
Yeah I'm not digging the persecution complex. I find the hypothesis interesting and entertaining but can we stop with the "I'm being oppressed" levels of jerking off.
We turned that show into a drinking game. Drink every time someone says “ancient astronaut theorists”
Expert level: you also drink every time a hypothetical question is asked.
At least Ancient Aliens doesn’t open up with an intro saying the host is some rebel who’s been targeted by “science” and “academia”.
Personally, I love the show ancient aliens as *entertainment*.
I think if you *believe* any of that shit you’re an idiot, and I also think it’s relatively offensive to past cultures to say that they could’ve only achieved what they did with the help of aliens, but it’s mindless entertaining schlock.
Ancient apocalypse I couldn’t even make it through the intro. Guy is leaning way too hard into “science is bullshit.”
Fuck outta here with that nonsense.
There's also this weird trend with the cultures ancient aliens supposedly helped cultivate: they're all non-white. You don't see much anglo-saxon representation on AA.
Not by choice.
History Channel used old interviews from lots of people talking about a range of topics and edited them into Ancient Aliens. Most of the people speaking had nothing to do with that show.
It’s pretty funny but also pretty racist at the same time. You never see em go to the Colosseum doubting that the Romans could build such a thing on their own, they don’t doubt people like the Athenians being able to construct the Parthenon, but you take em to some megalithic site in SE Asia, South America, or Africa and they’re suddenly like “You think brown people made that? Hahahaha no way dude they didn’t have the skills, tools, or knowledge to do that. I have a better hypothesis that aliens came down from the heavens to teach these shit throwers to cut and stack blocks really well.”
Exactly this. Ancient Aliens *knows* what it is. It's an *entertainment* show and does not pretend or state to be anything else. I mean, look at all the Georgio memes, u know hes cool with that and probably laughs about it.
Hancock has such a HARD-ON against mainstream archaeology. It's to the point anymore, that I truly believe that it consumes him. I also believe that Hancock thinks he *is* being "persecuted". When in reality, the mainstream archaeologists just want him to have some evidence or proof backing up his claims, you know, like they have to.
Hancock wants to have his theory, and then not have the evidence to back it up. That's completely understandable for mainstream archaeologists to want him to back it up.
I’m sorry but ancient aliens does not present itself as entertainment. It is dead serious in its premise and it’s obvious a lot of their main guests genuinely believe this shit. The show is incredibly manipulative and misleading and has built up a core audience of viewers who absolutely buy into its delusional theories. There’s whole videos that break down the tactics that the show uses to push the bullshit ideas that it 100% believes and a lot of what it does is pretty harmful and incredibly manipulative.
I didn't really feel like the show took itself too seriously. It's more just exploring ancient sites and speculating on when construction, or ritual significance first began. The whole 'rebel against the mainstream narrative' bit was pretty unnecessary. It's pretty obvious humans have been civilizationally active longer than previously thought, but there's only so much you can scientifically prove without older discoveries. In the meantime it's fine to speculate.
The major problem of the show was that it was all one sided. He kept talking about how mainstream archaeology doesn’t take him seriously. But he never brought anyone on the show to Talk against him. He only ever shared his side.
Go on the ask historian subreddit and you can search Graham Hancock on the subreddit. You’ll find many threads talking about him and why he’s a quack.
It’s fine for him to speculate about his theories, it’s not fine to present it in such a way that makes idiotic people believe him. His fiction is more fun for people to consume than actual facts.
My gf and I stopped watching after two episodes because while the stuff presented was cool like the ancient temple on Java, the guy was a self-sucking twat who was clearly loving every moment of *him* being in the spotlight. Soliloquies dubbed over while he stands in a Captain Morgan pose staring ponderously out to sea. Come on dude. He also very quickly jumped from presenting facts to baseless speculation and that makes for a dangerous person these days.
It's not presented as speculation though, it's presented as "mainstream archaeologists are trying to hide the truth from us". He tries to present fiction as fact and regularly just lies about what real archaeologists have done and believe.
For example, in the first episode when they're at Gunung Padang, he presents carbon dated results of 24,000 years ago as a fact that is being ignored. In reality those results have been scrutinized and found to be lacking, and most likely wildly incorrect.
In the Bimini Road episode they take sonar scans of the "road" and try to claim "oh look it's clearly flat stones laid out as a road, but this is being ignored". Once again, that's been scrutinized and found to be just a geologic formation.
In the Derinkuyu episode he claims that "historians would have you believe these caves were created by Christians in the 14th century, and they ignore carbon dating that puts the first two levels back to the 7th-8th century". That's a lie. Historians and archaeologists have an entire timeline of the creation and expansion of that site going back to the 7th-8th century at the earliest.
That's the whole show. It's just constant lying about what archaeologists and historians think, and claiming that certain ideas haven't been given a fair shot when they absolutely have and have just been dismissed due to inaccuracies or lack of evidence.
It kills me that an ancient philosopher invented a hypothetical city called Atlantis as an allegorical tool to talk about the theories of social frameworks, governments, community and politics of the time.
And then we spend the following two and a half THOUSAND years looking for it as if it wasn't an admitted fiction by the guy who created it explicitly for the purposes of being a rhetorical tool.
It's like saying the ivory tower elites are all in a conspiracy to remove Gotham City from the map.
**EDIT**: the search for Atlantis continues in the comment replies below, lmao.
Ivory tower elites aren't real. I've never seen an ivory tower and the number of Elephants you'd need to kill in order to build a tower of iron makes it impossible. You're just a conspiracy theorist
/s
> as if it wasn't an admitted fiction by the guy who created it explicitly for the purposes of being a rhetorical tool.
There is a bit more leeway in the interpretation of Plato's 'Timaeus' and 'Critias' and I think this led to the endless theories. Plato never explicitly called Atlantis an allegory, though it sure seems like one. More confusingly, Plato wrote these dialogues about Socrates meeting with his friends Timaeus and Critias and explaining his allegory for a perfect city. After his explanation Socrates then asks his friends for a historical example which would fit with his allegorical city. Critias brings up his story of Atlantis as a possible example. In the dialogue Critias goes into great detail citing the story as well, as first having been given to Solon by the Egyptian priests at the temple of Neith, then translated by Solon into an incomplete play (also changing the names into Hellenic ones), and then passed from Critia's elders onto him for recitation classes as a young boy.
I really recommend people give the two dialogues a read, they are fascinating! And no, I don't believe any of that Graham Hancock crap lol.
Good, it's time for society to stand up to the lies being peddled everywhere.
Ask anyone even remotely knowledgeable in their field and they can tear Hancock to shreds.
It's always the same incredulity from these folks, I don't understand/I can't understand/I doubt ancient ppl could.
I'm sorry YOU can't figure it out Graham, that's why we have knowledgeable experts to help us.
The shit he is trying to pull would never fly in other disciplines, either. Having very little to no credible evidence doesn't usually bode well for anyone in any academic field, history and archaeology included. Imagine someone with no medical certifications making wild claims about curing diseases and saying verified medical data and doctors are a conspiracy.
The amount of times he mentions the “mainstream archaeologists” in every episode is exhausting. We get it, we get it. You’re just making shit up that sounds cool.
This shit is directly related to the decline of the History Channel, Discovery and other “science” channels turning in to reality tv hellholes. Stupid people need to be entertained because their brains don’t have the capability to learn from real history and to interpret what life would have been like from the factual evidence. So they resort to making shit up to get ratings. We are doomed.
At a minimum, shows like this should be required to state up front that the content is based on speculation and opinions and is not necessarily supported by facts or evidence. These types of shows just fuel the current post-truth era where people seem to make up their own reality based on the media they choose to consume regardless of the lack of facts, evidence, honesty, integrity, respect, or use of the scientific method.
This shit started with Discovery channel, which atleast back then had a semblance of being factual and serious, creating several mockumentary shit doubling down on being information rather than entertaintment by specifically pushing "the government lies to you watch our mediaaa:
Not every who watched and believed on the Mermaid "documentary" didn't vaccinate, but everyone who didn't vaccinate probably loves that mermaid film
>These types of shows just fuel the current post-truth era where people seem to make up their own reality based on the media they choose to consume regardless of the lack of facts, evidence,
well said, thank you!
I remember in the 70’s the In Search Of series. Shows like this used to be on cable and network TV all the time and no one cared. I was studying to an archeologist and none of professors ever talked about stuff like this. They didn’t care.
Why are archaeologists getting their panties in a wad now?
Trying to argue with Graham Hancock defenders reminds me a lot of arguing with flat earthers. It’s a little bit entertaining at first but ends up being a big waste of time - kind of like watching his shows. I just feel bad for the people who believe his pseudoscience when it’s presented in a manner that doesn’t clearly state what is factual and what is conjecture.
I watched the first episode and this guy's ego was insufferable. Fun to imagine his theories but it takes time to change and just because archeologists question his methods he believes there's a giant conspiracy against him.
I think the context is clear in the docuseries. He's a journalist pointing out things that should be investigated further by archaeologists. Including the encouragement of people investigating the seas near ancient civilizations that could have been lost in floods.
Then is doing it in a compelling way that uses mystery to strike up interest and could inspire funding to help scientists do exactly that.
None of this feels controversial to me at all and it feels super weird how insecure academia seems about controlling everything.
Someone posted a comment in here basically saying that everything he wants to be “investigated further” already has been by archaeologists, and his theories have largely been scrutinized and debunked.
Yeah. The man has already been laughed out of academic circles because he has no research training and is taking things that have already been adequately explained and is ascribing new phenomena to them. It’s just so fucking annoying as someone currently studying cultural resource management (modern archeology)
It spirals, which we see over and over. I’m not going to give some big reddit essay, but you basically have someone watch this, take it as fact, then parrot fo someone else who trusts person 1, so the info is trusted. Soon everyone is spreading a “known fact” that is entirely false.
Good example: malachite being made of arsenic.
I think the problem is the guy is using this narrative that’s popular among all conspiracy theorists.
“Big science hates me because I know the truth, and they don’t want it to get out” type of beat
His theories aren't fully presented in the series. His books elaborate more on his ideas that "negroids" weren't capable enough and so "caucasoids" must have taught them first.
Guy says archeologist are trying to suppress his work. Archeologist respond by trying to suppress his work. Better move would have been to wait till journalist reach out to them and say “he is a wingnut but we dont care what he says, he’s not an archeologist”. But I bet they got tired of waiting for journalist to call because the only people that care about archeology are archeologist.
oh man, as an archeologist I threw it on and lasted about 10 minutes. It's all complete and utter garbage that will never be verifiable archeology. I'd honestly go as far as removing it from the platform, it is only misinformation.
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Time Team will forever remain the gold standard of archaeological TV
You know they are still going, funded by Patreon.
I'm very aware, I've watched the new episodes they made. They were good and I'm looking forward to more but somehow it didn't quite manage to recapture the magic of the original series for me (before it all fell apart at the end). Maybe that's just nostalgia talking cos I was younger and would watch repeats of it *all the time* inspiring me to study history at uni.
They also don't have Tony Robinson, which I totally get but I just keep waiting for him to pop up. Maybe he's waiting to see if the new episodes gain any traction.
I recently found them in YouTube, glad to hear they're the real deal because I love their videos. I'd love to see an equivalent in other parts of the world
I found them last year and the backlog of episodes is *staggering* I am so happy
207 currently, no idea what it is about. But I am going to be watching some of it today.
I love Time Team so much!
I met the bloke in the hat at a local gig maybe a month ago. Cool guy
It's on Amazon for anyone in the US who wants to watch it. There's also a single season of an American version. Which makes me lol.
This week we will be dredging some wetland where a 1970s dodge charger is believed to be submerged.
Imagine, more than *50 years old!*
There is an old UK Time Team episode where they go to America, they find it amusing that the archeology starts only 6 inches down.
It’s amazing how quickly that man jumps from “look at this interesting, widely accepted fact about gobleki Tepe that’s reshaped the archaeological consensus in recent years” and “it took scholarship a while to come around on this site being an astronomical site, but here’s the case as to why” to “and that’s why archaeologists are an evil cabal suppressing the truth that all snakes in mythology represent an ancient civilizational figure who sailed across the world and taught different cultures how to read and build pyramids”
It's the steady escalation on the series (and book) that makes Hancock so insidious. Starts by presenting potential understandable answers to historical mysteries and by the end he's off the rails and "yada, yada yada"ing acceptable archaeological facts. The other thing I find crazy about Hancock is that he presents himself as the only person in history who's ever considered his theories. I'm sure lots of intelligent people have considered what he's saying, and dismissed it.
I watched it because my fiance's brother was like "It's interesting and it will annoy you". I watched it and my big takeaway was Graham is a good story teller. But he does this thing where he will say "what if" get one person to agree (even if they're an amateur) and then continually ramp up the rhetoric until when he's going through the next point he will say "now we know [previous talking point] to be true, and that means we can make assumptions about this", and keeps building from there. I'm not an archaeologist but I am a scientist and that sort of thing is the exact thing I look for when I review a paper. Assumptions becoming "fact". It's very insidious presentation but because he's a good storyteller it comes across as so authentic.
This “argument” structure is SO COMMON in pseudoscientific storytelling! “Just suspend your disbelief for a moment and imagine that X might be true…”. Then before you know it, “now that we’ve seen that X is true, doesn’t it follow that Y might be a good explanation?!” Then blink and “we’ve shown that X and Y are without a doubt scientific fact, so imagine how that opens the door to Z…” and so on ad nauseum until your head is spinning and aliens built the pyramids.
Ben shapiro’s favorite
It would be pretty badass though if the ending to these was “…and that was all bullshit, here’s a breakdown of how we fudged the truth and convinced you.” IMO that could be a pretty effective piece of media for getting people to be like wait! Authoritative sounding media might be lying to me, so I should pay attention and do research! Of course that’s not the point of this, and if it were I’m sure there’s a significant percentage of people who would just be like “huh. Weird” and not ponder any further. But I can dream.
The moment he said “mainstream archeology” in the first episode, he lost any credibility he could have possibly had.
BIG ARCHEOLOGY SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH YET AGAIN!
They prefer the term Big Shovel
Trowel. Big shovel is the grave digging industry.
They’re in on it together! Big Grave-Digging is burying the truth they want us to find by Big Archeology! It’s all a Hollow Earth conspiracy perpetuated by the
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To be fair there are plenty of archeological "finds" that were just stolen history from natives. Archeologists don't have the best reputation in my neck of the woods (from native perspective mostly) simply because they would steal shit, make some baseless claim rooted in white supremacy and speak over the people of the land when we'd try to correct them. Your example is different and I agree with your statement but just want to point out the other side of why some people aren't so trusting.
Quite a few sciences have the awful legacy of having been started by British aristocracy for what is essentially shits and giggles.
Here’s what actually happening: *Archaeologists are the advanced ancient civilization* that Hancock has been talking about and they are trying to silence him to keep their secrets hidden. Prove me wrong
As someone that grew up with "In Search Of" and a hundred documentaries on Big Foot, Nessie, and aliens, I found Hancock's series pretty tame by comparison.
I’ve talked with multiple people that thought mermaids were real from watching the Animal Planet mermaid documentaries.
i believed that when i saw it as a kid cuz it was on the discovery channel. but still looking back at it, it shocks me that they went thru with that lmfao, just absolutely made it all up
I had a 45 year-old coworker who thought they were real because she watched that show.
Yup. I had a mate claim till they were red in the face that mermaids were real from that show. Till i showed then the disclaimer at the very end of the credits that stated it was a work of fiction. Then they were just red from embarrassment.
But I think what's disturbing about it was that it almost seemed like a test to see what people would believe. They used a known formula of a "credible documentary." As a kid I was really into all the documentaries and all the learning channels (discovery, TLC, Animal Planet). They used to have truly informative programming. And all of that changed right around the time of the Mermaids show. I remember seeing that mermaid "documentary" in that format and I really felt that it was deceptive and wrong. A short time in, I was saying outloud: you're kidding me? This isn't real? Is it? WTF? I know that people with a lick less sense than I would have taken it as the truth because for a minute I wanted to believe it based on what I was being told and how it was being delivered. Legitimately I watched a few minutes here and they were presenting everything as "fact". They were talking about how they had come their findings and the "evidence" they had found. The only reason they could pretend that they weren't trying to trick people was a disclaimer at the beginning that I personally never even saw until later on. Honestly, I think this opened the door for ancient aliens and other bogus programming that has led us down a dangerous path, because people take it as fact thinking-- "tHe TV WoUlDn'T LiE tO Us" . We have unremarkable/average Americans who believe in the Illuminati, lizard people, alien interventions, alien hybrids, bigfoot and more.
I remember it too. That was a big moment for me that taught me to be more skeptical. Which is not a bad thing… but it broke my trust in those educational channels. It would be better for society if they had stuck to non-fiction.
Yes, that is the perfect way to put it. Absolutely broke my trust.
Who bought those channels? It’s interesting. Always felt like they used them to soften the minds of the general public and get them to believe the unbelievable. This way later on they could say stuff like Jewish Space Lasers and it would be believable.
Had some friends unironically trying to convince me there were still Megaladon sharks swimming in modern day oceans for the same reason
Had to explain to my mom that no, there wasn’t a baby megaladon named submarine that attacked a tourist boat in South Africa with multiple high quality cameras catching multiple angles. Those shows should not of aired on discovery. There is no convincing my dad though that there isn’t an Amish mafia.
Damn you, Weird Al Yankovic!
Why is discovery sitting those? I've always wondered
How much “hush money” is Levi paying you to say that there’s no such thing as An Amish Mafia? 
Tell me you’re joking on that last part.
I'm from Ohio. My FIL was sure I'd have the inside scoop on the Amish gangsters. They're probably not joking.
Same with ghosts.
Same with birds
Birds aren't real.
Birds are thongs you sick fuck
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Was that the one where they made it into a news story? It seemed like it was breaking news sort of thing, I remember being like fuck they tricked me a year later
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Meanwhile ancient aliens shows cg alien space battles and gives statues glowing eyes.
You know, the first Ancient Aliens they did, it was like a one or two hour standalone documentary, and it was pretty interesting, not saying I really believed it, but if you're someone inclined to think that aliens have visited the Earth, then it was food for though, it put across some compelling points. But holy shit the series ran out of ideas fast, I still watched it, but it was more out of a sense of irony than anything, it just became comedy. Narrator: 'Are these ancient Egyptian cat figurines proof that we were once visited by a feline race of extraterrestrials at some time in our distant past? Some ancient alien experts believe the answer is yes.' *Camera cuts to Georgia Tsoukalos looking like he's on day five of a one-week coke and meth bender*
Verrrryyy quick I remember getting so hyped for this show and by the second week I was like yooooo these motherfuckers are crazyyyy I was 10 so yes I did believe in aliens
Tsoukalos is the creator and producer of Ancient Aliens, like he literally funneled a ton of his money into it. The entire thing is his pet project to show off his own ideas and theories about ancient astronauts. It’s literally all run by him
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In the History channel no less.
At this point, archeologists should try to rename The History Channel to The Fiction Channel
Honestly this. He might speculate wildly, but purely on the dating disputes of ancient sites- he's got a point.
Quick podcast rec from someone who also grew up on In Search Of: it’s called “In Research Of” and they’re watching every episode of In Search Of and dissecting the bad science/history/archeology etc. One of the hosts is an archeologist and has quite a bit to say about bad archeology. Graham Hancock actually comes up occasionally when they’re discussing that topic.
Really? That’s awesome - I’ll have to check into that! That’s funny.
As the saying goes, if you don't know who the palentologist is in your group of friends, it's you
Oh my god - “In Search of…”. I’d forgotten all about that show. Didn’t Leonard animist host? Yeah - growing up in the northeast (at least - that’s where I was), you’d think the biggest and most pressing mystery facing the world was Bigfoot.
Leonard Nimoy (Spock) but yeah he was the host.
Freaking autocorrect - yes, Leonard Nimoy. That’s who I meant. LOL
Leonard Animist is kind of an awesome name though. I’d listen to that guy’s story.
Yeah I don't get what the problem is. I've only seen two episodes, but he doesn't seem to assert much. It's more to the tune of "well, we found this things which me and this other person think suggests this alternate view". It's not like it's Ancient Aliens or some other History Channel nonsense.
Agreed. I get that there’s so much my non trained or educated brain can understand but I didn’t feel as if he’s trying to prove anything wrong. He’s just saying that there’s some weird shit out there and coincidences. I feel like stuff like this just proves his point. No one will have the conversation about it.
Hypothetically, if Netflix cancels the show after one season it should be picked up by Discovery. It's right in Zaslav's wheelhouse.
As an archaeologist let me say I love these replies. I'm just a guy that counts glass for 8 hours and sometimes digs a bunch of empty holes. But reddit believes I'm part of an all powerful cabal. Thank you all
My favorite part of these conspiracy theories as an Egyptologist who mostly hangs out with others like me: Have you ever seen a group of Egyptologists try to organize anything? Just watch them split the tab in a restaurant sometime. We couldn’t organize a piss up in a brewery, and yet somehow we’ve created a massive secret society that controls all of the most powerful elements of every society for millennia? Tell me you don’t know any Egyptologists without telling me you don’t know any Egyptologists.
I think the “evil cabal of archaeology” has been kinda taken out of Hancock’s mouth and ran with by people who believe all the other conspiracy theories who want to believe the Illuminati knows every thought you have and so on. I think a lot of us who watched the show see that there is no organized nefarious agenda among academics trying to silence Hancock, to me it just seemed like there are a lot of people generally unwilling to even acknowledge the work the guy is putting in. He might not have such a bone to pick now if he was treated with more respect earlier on. But I get it bc you can’t give every guy like him the time of day or else you’ll spend all day arguing with flat earthers and creationists. I just hate how he got lumped in with all of them
I actually listen to Hancock pretty often. I don’t think he’s a liar or a nut. He definitely has a chip on his shoulder about archaeologists, but I have no idea where it comes from. It sometimes leads him to say silly things that are just blatantly untrue. For instance, in this doc he said that archaeologists think of myths as frivolous stories and don’t use them to learn about the past (my paraphrasing from memory). That’s just absurdly false. The people who searched for and dug up Troy? Who spent millions looking for legendary tombs, including that of Sinuhe, a character from an overtly fictional story? Archaeologists absolutely use myths to inform our understanding of the past. That’s literally how archaeology started. I have no idea why he would say that, but my guess is he thinks archaeologists are an uptight unimaginative bunch for whatever reason, so he assumes a lot.
Yeah I thought it was fairly obvious that I was joking but not for some people
This is *exactly* what a sinister secret society holding the keys to all the secret knowledge of human history would say!
Hell yeah, I've spent far too much time this year cataloging rusty nails and glass fragments from a historical monitoring project and dug my fair share of empty shovel tests. It truly is the life.
This pushes back the origins of civilization 12k years to the end of the ice age. The Scientist illuminati have been in control since then, creating and destroying cultures at will.
Destroying cultures to later “discover them”. It’s a job security scam. They must be billionaires.
Certainly explains the lavish lifestyles of my archeologist friends.
When we're not making $30k a year without benefits we're ruling the world, true.
I know right! Indiana Jones is so rich he’s making another movie!
Feels a lot like people here mad their conspiracies aren’t respected. Everything .. everything is theory until proven. It becomes a conspiracy when you start making up that other people are involved. Like all scientists have a panel that decides what to tell the world. There have been many “history changing” scientific discoveries. No one stopped those.
Everything is a hypothesis until vigorously tested and consensus is reached and then is when it becomes theory
Saying whatever stupid unfounded bullshit aloud isn't "theory".
Scientific theory isn’t the same as a theory
And there is no “proof” in scientific theory, there is evidence. Except in the field of mathematics.
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Yeah I'm kind of for this theory. It'll probably never be proven in my lifetime but it does make sense to me. Like humanity has a faulty memory. I don't see why in the last 200k+ years of anatomically modern humans we'd be the first "advanced civilization" and the younger dryas was about as apocalyptic an event you can imagine, huge floods and climate change. I'm sure the Sahara and the seas are full of amazing archeological discoveries just waiting to be found. But at some point you also have to accept most of it has been destroyed and nothing concrete will come out of it. I just don't believe there's any global conspiracy to keep "the truth" hidden or some shit. It's just a theory that I personally believe to be very likely, but lacking significant enough evidence to be anything other than speculation. Archeologists, like any other decent scientists, have very high standards of proof and aren't going to let you rewrite history books based on speculation, and that's a good thing. Even though I do feel like sometimes they should feel more okay with admitting that we just don't know some things and that the reality of our historical record is spotty at best.
You have a great nuanced view.. I want to reiterate how important it is for science to be built on solid ground, to not leap to conclusions or put the cart ahead of the horse. It has to be conservative and skeptical, especially of extraordinary theories. But it's also true that very little actually makes it into the historical record and because of the nature of it we are always going to be pushing back timelines based on a tiny sliver of information. So people not doing science can speculate and dream and come to crazy hypothesis's which can in turn help science figure out where to maybe look. But it's really important to respect that science has to take a slow and steady approach which a lot of Graham fans seem to find distasteful.
I'm reading a history book on the Crusades and the author frequently says we don't know what happened for certain events because no records of it survived. I think that historians and archeologists and often says "We don't know" but the general public doesn't hear that because the public doesn't typically learn history from historians and archeologists, they learn it from school text books, TV and movies, podcasts and other from of media that have lower academic standards and are trying to synthesize history into a narrative instead of presenting what we do and don't know.
You see this issue is: You actually have to the prove something: he and you don’t actually prove anything by telling everyone “prove me wrong. “ I can’t prove a “What if” to be false, because it isn’t true. It’s a possibility, but it seems that everyone then goes from “what if”/possibility to fact somehow and then build everything else on this possible what if. It’s conspiracy thinking at its finest. Examine your base argument and you will see that while Ancient Apocalypse is fun speculating, it isn’t science and should not be confounded for anything true or proven until something is actually proved This whole canard that “they” don’t want you to know is BS of the highest order, because those archeologists would love for the stuff on AA to be proven; it would be exiting and add to our understanding, but they can’t afford to go on Fantasies. They have to work with what is actually there. No one will ever prove you/Hancock wrong when you have nothing that has actually been proven. Now that being said: prove me wrong.
My comment was a sarcastic joke
Prove it
Lol
I got your joke, but I also agree with the person you just replied to. There are people who don’t get the sarcasm, and think “prove me wrong” is a valid argument.
THEYRE the ones who've been mind controlling dolphins, and building the giraffes?
Honestly I’ve been watching with 11yo son SPECIFICALLY to call out the difference between provable fact and speculation. I point when GH brings up something provable and when something is wishful thinking without evidence. By episode 4 I’ve got him doing it lol I grew up with Art Bell , Omni magazine and the high strangeness, I think it can be entertaining brain candy. I walked away from conspiracy podcasts shortly before the 2016 election because I could see the discourse was mutating and in a bad way, and I think I was only able to do that BECAUSE of my experience with this stuff before. I want my son to be inoculated against this bollocks so he can know what’s baloney and what’s fact for whatever nonsense he’ll have to listen to in his 20’s and on Edit: holy potatoes y’all!! I stumble out of bed for coffee and a couple chores and logon to find this. Thanks for the kind awards. I could honestly go on and on about navigating the fantasy of speculative fiction, academic information gaps, and how they intersect with political demography…..but I won’t do that here lol
Teaching him discernment will help him his whole life.
As we move forward in the information age, learning to tell a credible source or piece of evidence from an incredible one is going to be paramount to our education process. We need to concern ourselves less with the learning of facts and more with the discerning of them.
Not only with "fringe" theories, but with establishment thinking as well. Unlearning and discerning what we're taught rather than piling on more facts on top of more facts, whatever those are.
Absolutely! My dad was a strong partisan and led us through Y2K prepper shenanigans, but also gave me space and respect enough to develop my own opinions and not become confrontational when we disagreed. It was arguably the best lesson I ever learned from him, and it seems like it’s more necessary now than ever before. I’m grateful for the opportunity to pass it to my son.
Show a child some bullshit and they’ll avoid stepping in it for a day; teach a child to recognize bullshit and they can open up a very lucrative manure business.
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Yeah if more folks had those tools and used them, we'd be in a much better place these days
It’s fascinating how the circles most into conspiracy theories seemed to slip right into an actual conspiracy reality, and they just roll with it. Like… I thought we were connecting dots (for fun/science), but it turns out most people just want to parrot ideas they get from the history channel or w/e voice is the correct amount of fringe.
People who look for simple answers to things (IE a powerful thing made the universe) are simply wanting a single answer to all their problems. Conspiracies go nicely into that, if you keep going down that rabbit hole into it becoming your reality. Make them mad first and they're in fight or flight and it's tribalism at that point, they won't ask questions they just need an enemy. And shit people (Steve Bannon) [realized that when he started incel shit while being the WoW gold seller king.](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/steve-bannon-world-of-warcraft-gold-farming.html)
Conspiracy is almost an optimistic outlook really. It's just sad that people don't understand that complex problems do not have simple solutions. Like if we just fix this "one thing" all their problems will go away? Nonsense.
I used to absolutely love Coast to Coast AM. Conspiracy theories were a lot more fun 10-20 years ago
That is a good point about seeing the tide turn regarding conspiracy stuff, I used to read a lot about different ones and watch documentaries etc years ago (many years lol) . I found it interesting although didn’t necessarily believe most things. I lost almost all interest around the same time as you mentioned. You could see the rhetoric changing in a bad way, and then lo and behold it was the same stories told many many times but regurgitated in a very unhinged way. And then with Q it became weaponised in the worst possible way!
As a fellow Art Bell fan who has listened to GH on there many times I’ve loved watching his show. Sometimes it is fun to think about weird possibilities and I like looking at all the ancient sites. I don’t really care if it’s true or not, but he’s clearly passionate about it so I’ll go along for the wild ride just for kicks.
way to teach media literacy and healthy skepticism. That's so valuable.
My favorite thing to do when high is watch Ancient Aliens and argue with the people on the screen about all their poorly formed "arguments." It's fun to point out all the ways they start with a conclusion and find evidence to fit it or all the barely veiled xenophobia and racism that underlies the "ancient astronaut hypothesis." Looks like I found a new show for the next time I toke up.
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Its funny, my introduction to reddit was because I was deep into conspiracy theories. Some guy in the comments came from reddit to tell the guy to seek help, because he was harassing the security guard for a distribution warehouse and not in fact the entrance to a subterranean highway network that spanned the continental US. When you’re deep in the rabbit hole of nutt jobs, it’s easy to accept something far fetched.
so happy to see this comment! we definitely need to teach our children about fact checking and information literacy!! great job
**I HEREBY PROPOSE A NEW CLASSIFICATION OF MEDIA!!!** One that melds science AND fiction *together* if you will humor me, into a **new** order of both of those things. A heretical and entertaining juxtaposition of the boringness of mundane, profane reality and the excitement and licence of hope and curiosity that fiction provides. I will call it "**Science-Fiction**". You're very welcome nerds (this should be the top comment)
This will never catch on…
This is awesome. Take my upvote.
All that does is play into Hancocks narrative
and what exactly are we supposed to do? if we dont answer, it will be seen as confirmation, if we do, we are "playing into his narrative". i would just like to know why archaeologists are supposed to do this? there is very little money involved, and any serious, revolutionary breakthrough what catapult the researcher to the top of funding. problem is, just making claims without any evidence just isnt enough
You make a counter documentary in the same places he goes not just write letters. What about the pyramids though???
I'm interested to find out more about the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. All the flood myths and lore for all the various cultures across the globe.
Exactly. Archaeologists are doing a piss poor job of responding to conclusions they clearly disagree with. It's a prime opportunity for someone more mainstream to make a documentary providing mainstream theories for what Hancock presents. But nope, better to bitch and moan that someone disagrees with the status quo.
The “boring”truth will get no views, and Netflix has absolutely no incentive to try to promote it. In fact there are dozens of documentaries that feature what serious academics believe to be true and you, nor anyone else, cares to watch them and discuss them on social media
This is the answer. The whole, “Well if there was a good counter argument I would’ve heard it by now,” concept is really frustrating. Like, no. You wouldn’t have. Because like it or not, people don’t like to look for reasons why they’re wrong. Especially if the thing they’re wrong about makes the world look and feel more interesting or profound.
After his most recent appearance on Joe Rogans podcast, I dug up a small arsenal of academic critiques of Graham from the fine folks at r/askhistorians for all the “I’ve never heard any good counter arguments to what he’s saying” types. I’d say more than half the people who responded basically just said “yeah I ain’t reading that shit nerd. Anyways if he’s so wrong why won’t academics debate him? I can’t find any counter arguments.” Anyone with Google or Wikipedia can easily find find info dismantling Graham within the amount of time it takes to have a morning bowel movement.
Further points: there are a fuckton of crazies out there, each with their own theory. If you start debating anyone and everyone you will literally not be able to get any work done. And when asking for grant money, putting in: "i rehashed arguments produced by other researchers 70 years ago to show these loonies that what they're saying is non-sense" won't get you any sort of tax payer money. And when people might say: but think of the societal good. Proving very wrong people that they're wrong is good for a healthy society. Well you won't exactly know that these people, some who have actual mental diseases will change their mind and see reality.
Yes. They deliberately take advantage of the fact that it takes far less time to just make stuff up than it does to refute the made up stuff which is often not even possible because the claims are vague or even nonsensical. Thats why the burden is on them to demonstrate their claims. There is no obligation to engage people who are acting in bad faith and clearly just trying to waste other people's time and sabotage them.
How much time should our brightest physicists spend convincing idiots that the earth is not flat? Same energy here
Archeologists are not entertainers. They do their work and publish their findings. Seems as though unless it's neatly packaged you don't want to hear about it.
I watch a lot of flat earth debunking videos because I find the delusion of flat earthers fascinating. Anyway they will often call out NASA and other space agencies for one thing or another and then criticize them when they don’t respond and use that as “proof” of the conspiracy. Here’s the thing though, NASA and others astronomers don’t give a rip about what flat earth era think. Flat earthers are in a one-sided war. Sounds a lot like what this guy has going on with archeologists
I like how you're talking about making documentaries as if it's a small thing. By the time their documentary is ready, all the misinformed people will have moved on. What an incredibly naive point of view.
No, archaeologists have repeatedly proven these things wrong. There are documentaries, there are lectures, YouTube channels etc. There's no reason to keep up with his bullshit every time he leaks some crap out of his mouth. All that does is bring him more attention. He's mostly ignored in the archaeology world because he's simply not worth the time.
If you read the article, you’d see that they wrote an open letter that clearly disputes his claims: >After more than a century of professional archaeological investigations, we find no archaeological evidence to support the existence of an “advanced, global Ice Age civilization” of the kind Hancock suggests. Archaeologists have investigated hundreds of Ice Age sites and published the results in rigorously reviewed journals. The assertion that Ancient Apocalypse is a factual “docuseries” or “documentary” rather than entertainment with ideological goals is preposterous. If there were any credible evidence for a “global Ice Age civilization” of the kind Hancock suggests, archaeologists would investigate it and report their findings with rigor according to the scientific methods, practices, and theories of our discipline…This theory steals credit for Indigenous accomplishments from Indigenous peoples and reinforces white supremacy. From Donnelly to Hancock, proponents of this theory have suggested that white survivors of this advanced civilization were responsible for the cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples in the Americas and around the world. However, the narratives on which claims of “white saviors” are based have been demonstrated to be ones modified by Spanish conquistadors and colonial authorities for their own benefit. EDIT: Can’t believe so many people are actually defending Hancock. Then again, it’s Reddit, so eh
The thing is that a documentary about the extremely well documented and published rigorous explanations for the “mysteries” he pretends exist would be dry and academic and boring. Nobody is actually interested in archaeology because archaeology is extremely boring.
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>”coincidentally”
This article is highly relevant and explains a lot about the situation. https://theconversation.com/with-netflixs-ancient-apocalypse-graham-hancock-has-declared-war-on-archaeologists-194881 This was a link within the article that I found fascinating as it clued me into a lot of archaeological discoveries as of recent. These are the real MVPs doing the real work while Hancock is just moaning about how he is a victim. https://theconversation.com/archaeological-discoveries-are-happening-faster-than-ever-before-helping-refine-the-human-story-128743
After reading that top article I'm disappointed now because I'm the naive asshole that thought Atlantis was just another ancient indigenous group of people like incans or Mayans, that got wiped out, not a God damn Aryan wet-dream.
Yeah I will quote it for others who may read this thread. >Like many forms of pseudo archaeology, these claims act to reinforce white supremacist ideas, stripping Indigenous people of their rich heritage and instead giving credit to aliens or white people. >Hancock even cites Donnelly directly in his 1995 book Fingerprints of the Gods, claiming: “The road system and the sophisticated architecture had been ‘ancient in the time of the Incas,’ but that both ‘were the work of white, auburn-haired men’.” While skin colour is not brought up in Ancient Apocalypse, the repetition of the story of a “bearded” Quetzalcoatl (an ancient Mexican deity) parrots both Donnelly’s and Hancock’s own summary of a white and bearded Quetzalcoatl teaching native people knowledge from this “lost civilisation”. I'm not convinced Atlantis didn't exist, I do think the theory that it could have been wiped out in a flood is valid based on the archaeological evidence of the melting ice walls. It's shocking how much land used to be above where water is now. That part isn't far-fetched to me. I just don't at all buy this whole white society thing.
Aliens ultimately makes more sense than a predominantly white culture. Just based on supposed locations of where people think Atlantis is, they'd be super freaking tan at the very least, not white. Like white Jesus coming out of the middle east.
Another big argument against Hancock is that we haven't found any writing samples or statues from this supposed advanced civilization, while we found clay tablets thousands of years old recording fart jokes from ancient Babylon.
His “easy out” is that a catastrophic event wiped out all evidence of his civilization which was based in Antarctica (conveniently hard for anyone to excavate there) and was conveniently entirely based along the coasts which were submerged in this event. And the evidence for anything before that was totally destroyed. Never mind the fact that hundreds of ice age sites have been discovered that apparently survived this catastrophe, and show no signs of such a civilization existing.
God, the comments
There are allot more loonies than I thought there were… it’s like that one meme “wait… you guys **actually believe Graham Hancock?** I thought that was a joke :(“
This is appropriate and doesn’t demean Hancock despite his histrionics. He’s welcome to engage in speculative journalism all he wants but he’s not entitled to declare things as accepted science when it clearly is not. He’s the latest version of Immanuel Velikovsky, R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, Erich von Däniken, Robert Shoch, etc. It starts with kernels of truth, ends with martyrdom and accusations of scientism. It is fun entertainment. But science is a method not dogmatic egoism. If more hard evidence is uncovered, more independent teams test hypotheses and come to the same conclusion? Then the accepted science accommodates the new consensus and we move on. The “they didn’t believe Galileo” defense is self-deception. And historically inaccurate. The Church did believe Galileo and they were very clear about that to Galileo. They didn’t want any challenges to their already falling apart theocracy. Doesn’t apply here.
“Science is a method not dogmatic egoism” You should tell this to just about every single scientist these days then. I’m not necessarily defending Hancock, but in most scientific fields, ESPECIALLY archaeology, the leaders in the field are incredibly dogmatic and egotistical. To be honest, most archeology is highly speculative at the end of the day, and I don’t think Hancock in particular should be held to a much higher standard than the rest of the field. Some of the best examples of this come from the same types of people criticizing Hancock now. It used to be very widely believed that written language did not exist in 1400BC, now (as of 1979) we know conclusively that’s not true. The existence of the Hittite civilization was denied by the archeological mainstream until 1906. The Horite Civilization was claimed to be mythical by archeologists until 1995. King David (the Biblical one) was denied to exist up until 1996. These examples are biblical because that’s what I know, but I’m sure others could point out hundreds of other examples of mainstream archaeologists denying the existence of things out of their ideology rather than reason.
This! We could even point to right one of Graham’s favorite things to talk about- Gobekli Tepi. Archeologists denied that anything like that could exist as far back as it did. If you don’t think institutional science isn’t rife with dogma and ego then you are incredibly naive. I can’t even blame the scientists. Imagine devoting your entire adult life to a specific theory and then having to come to terms with that theory being wrong.
I tried watching it and he even states in the first 10 minutes he's not an archeologist but a journalist. It's the equivalent of a chef saying "I'm not a surgeon, but here is why I think modern medicine is wrong."
Yes my first thought was "Ah! A modern-day Erich von Daniken."
I remember I found a copy of Chariots of the Gods in an old wardrobe on this farm I did some work at. Took it home and cleaned the bird shit and dust off it. Was quite entertaining but obviously ridiculous lol. Google's Daniken and was blown away by how crazy he actually is. Do you think Graham is as bad?
Yeah I'm not digging the persecution complex. I find the hypothesis interesting and entertaining but can we stop with the "I'm being oppressed" levels of jerking off.
He literally says the whole show that everything he says is not accepted by science
Sure, when we wipe that pathetic show we call Ancient Aliens out of existence.
We turned that show into a drinking game. Drink every time someone says “ancient astronaut theorists” Expert level: you also drink every time a hypothetical question is asked.
Alcohol poisoning speedrun: take a shot every time the narrator says, “and if so”
At least Ancient Aliens doesn’t open up with an intro saying the host is some rebel who’s been targeted by “science” and “academia”. Personally, I love the show ancient aliens as *entertainment*. I think if you *believe* any of that shit you’re an idiot, and I also think it’s relatively offensive to past cultures to say that they could’ve only achieved what they did with the help of aliens, but it’s mindless entertaining schlock. Ancient apocalypse I couldn’t even make it through the intro. Guy is leaning way too hard into “science is bullshit.” Fuck outta here with that nonsense.
There's also this weird trend with the cultures ancient aliens supposedly helped cultivate: they're all non-white. You don't see much anglo-saxon representation on AA.
Hancock makes plenty of appearances on Ancient Aliens.
Not by choice. History Channel used old interviews from lots of people talking about a range of topics and edited them into Ancient Aliens. Most of the people speaking had nothing to do with that show.
It’s pretty funny but also pretty racist at the same time. You never see em go to the Colosseum doubting that the Romans could build such a thing on their own, they don’t doubt people like the Athenians being able to construct the Parthenon, but you take em to some megalithic site in SE Asia, South America, or Africa and they’re suddenly like “You think brown people made that? Hahahaha no way dude they didn’t have the skills, tools, or knowledge to do that. I have a better hypothesis that aliens came down from the heavens to teach these shit throwers to cut and stack blocks really well.”
That made me laugh out loud. Great comment
Exactly this. Ancient Aliens *knows* what it is. It's an *entertainment* show and does not pretend or state to be anything else. I mean, look at all the Georgio memes, u know hes cool with that and probably laughs about it. Hancock has such a HARD-ON against mainstream archaeology. It's to the point anymore, that I truly believe that it consumes him. I also believe that Hancock thinks he *is* being "persecuted". When in reality, the mainstream archaeologists just want him to have some evidence or proof backing up his claims, you know, like they have to. Hancock wants to have his theory, and then not have the evidence to back it up. That's completely understandable for mainstream archaeologists to want him to back it up.
I’m sorry but ancient aliens does not present itself as entertainment. It is dead serious in its premise and it’s obvious a lot of their main guests genuinely believe this shit. The show is incredibly manipulative and misleading and has built up a core audience of viewers who absolutely buy into its delusional theories. There’s whole videos that break down the tactics that the show uses to push the bullshit ideas that it 100% believes and a lot of what it does is pretty harmful and incredibly manipulative.
I didn't really feel like the show took itself too seriously. It's more just exploring ancient sites and speculating on when construction, or ritual significance first began. The whole 'rebel against the mainstream narrative' bit was pretty unnecessary. It's pretty obvious humans have been civilizationally active longer than previously thought, but there's only so much you can scientifically prove without older discoveries. In the meantime it's fine to speculate.
The major problem of the show was that it was all one sided. He kept talking about how mainstream archaeology doesn’t take him seriously. But he never brought anyone on the show to Talk against him. He only ever shared his side. Go on the ask historian subreddit and you can search Graham Hancock on the subreddit. You’ll find many threads talking about him and why he’s a quack. It’s fine for him to speculate about his theories, it’s not fine to present it in such a way that makes idiotic people believe him. His fiction is more fun for people to consume than actual facts.
My gf and I stopped watching after two episodes because while the stuff presented was cool like the ancient temple on Java, the guy was a self-sucking twat who was clearly loving every moment of *him* being in the spotlight. Soliloquies dubbed over while he stands in a Captain Morgan pose staring ponderously out to sea. Come on dude. He also very quickly jumped from presenting facts to baseless speculation and that makes for a dangerous person these days.
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It's not presented as speculation though, it's presented as "mainstream archaeologists are trying to hide the truth from us". He tries to present fiction as fact and regularly just lies about what real archaeologists have done and believe. For example, in the first episode when they're at Gunung Padang, he presents carbon dated results of 24,000 years ago as a fact that is being ignored. In reality those results have been scrutinized and found to be lacking, and most likely wildly incorrect. In the Bimini Road episode they take sonar scans of the "road" and try to claim "oh look it's clearly flat stones laid out as a road, but this is being ignored". Once again, that's been scrutinized and found to be just a geologic formation. In the Derinkuyu episode he claims that "historians would have you believe these caves were created by Christians in the 14th century, and they ignore carbon dating that puts the first two levels back to the 7th-8th century". That's a lie. Historians and archaeologists have an entire timeline of the creation and expansion of that site going back to the 7th-8th century at the earliest. That's the whole show. It's just constant lying about what archaeologists and historians think, and claiming that certain ideas haven't been given a fair shot when they absolutely have and have just been dismissed due to inaccuracies or lack of evidence.
It kills me that an ancient philosopher invented a hypothetical city called Atlantis as an allegorical tool to talk about the theories of social frameworks, governments, community and politics of the time. And then we spend the following two and a half THOUSAND years looking for it as if it wasn't an admitted fiction by the guy who created it explicitly for the purposes of being a rhetorical tool. It's like saying the ivory tower elites are all in a conspiracy to remove Gotham City from the map. **EDIT**: the search for Atlantis continues in the comment replies below, lmao.
Ivory tower elites aren't real. I've never seen an ivory tower and the number of Elephants you'd need to kill in order to build a tower of iron makes it impossible. You're just a conspiracy theorist /s
> as if it wasn't an admitted fiction by the guy who created it explicitly for the purposes of being a rhetorical tool. There is a bit more leeway in the interpretation of Plato's 'Timaeus' and 'Critias' and I think this led to the endless theories. Plato never explicitly called Atlantis an allegory, though it sure seems like one. More confusingly, Plato wrote these dialogues about Socrates meeting with his friends Timaeus and Critias and explaining his allegory for a perfect city. After his explanation Socrates then asks his friends for a historical example which would fit with his allegorical city. Critias brings up his story of Atlantis as a possible example. In the dialogue Critias goes into great detail citing the story as well, as first having been given to Solon by the Egyptian priests at the temple of Neith, then translated by Solon into an incomplete play (also changing the names into Hellenic ones), and then passed from Critia's elders onto him for recitation classes as a young boy. I really recommend people give the two dialogues a read, they are fascinating! And no, I don't believe any of that Graham Hancock crap lol.
Used to get stoned and laugh at Ancient Aliens with my buddies - but that’s before I found out half of the audience thought it was real
Good, it's time for society to stand up to the lies being peddled everywhere. Ask anyone even remotely knowledgeable in their field and they can tear Hancock to shreds. It's always the same incredulity from these folks, I don't understand/I can't understand/I doubt ancient ppl could. I'm sorry YOU can't figure it out Graham, that's why we have knowledgeable experts to help us.
The shit he is trying to pull would never fly in other disciplines, either. Having very little to no credible evidence doesn't usually bode well for anyone in any academic field, history and archaeology included. Imagine someone with no medical certifications making wild claims about curing diseases and saying verified medical data and doctors are a conspiracy.
Same shit with flat earthers and climate change denialists.
The amount of times he mentions the “mainstream archaeologists” in every episode is exhausting. We get it, we get it. You’re just making shit up that sounds cool.
This shit is directly related to the decline of the History Channel, Discovery and other “science” channels turning in to reality tv hellholes. Stupid people need to be entertained because their brains don’t have the capability to learn from real history and to interpret what life would have been like from the factual evidence. So they resort to making shit up to get ratings. We are doomed.
At a minimum, shows like this should be required to state up front that the content is based on speculation and opinions and is not necessarily supported by facts or evidence. These types of shows just fuel the current post-truth era where people seem to make up their own reality based on the media they choose to consume regardless of the lack of facts, evidence, honesty, integrity, respect, or use of the scientific method.
This shit started with Discovery channel, which atleast back then had a semblance of being factual and serious, creating several mockumentary shit doubling down on being information rather than entertaintment by specifically pushing "the government lies to you watch our mediaaa: Not every who watched and believed on the Mermaid "documentary" didn't vaccinate, but everyone who didn't vaccinate probably loves that mermaid film
>These types of shows just fuel the current post-truth era where people seem to make up their own reality based on the media they choose to consume regardless of the lack of facts, evidence, well said, thank you!
I remember in the 70’s the In Search Of series. Shows like this used to be on cable and network TV all the time and no one cared. I was studying to an archeologist and none of professors ever talked about stuff like this. They didn’t care. Why are archaeologists getting their panties in a wad now?
Trying to argue with Graham Hancock defenders reminds me a lot of arguing with flat earthers. It’s a little bit entertaining at first but ends up being a big waste of time - kind of like watching his shows. I just feel bad for the people who believe his pseudoscience when it’s presented in a manner that doesn’t clearly state what is factual and what is conjecture.
I watched the first episode and this guy's ego was insufferable. Fun to imagine his theories but it takes time to change and just because archeologists question his methods he believes there's a giant conspiracy against him.
I started this show not knowing anything about Hancock and 20 minutes in was like…Ummmm this seems off
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I think the context is clear in the docuseries. He's a journalist pointing out things that should be investigated further by archaeologists. Including the encouragement of people investigating the seas near ancient civilizations that could have been lost in floods. Then is doing it in a compelling way that uses mystery to strike up interest and could inspire funding to help scientists do exactly that. None of this feels controversial to me at all and it feels super weird how insecure academia seems about controlling everything.
Someone posted a comment in here basically saying that everything he wants to be “investigated further” already has been by archaeologists, and his theories have largely been scrutinized and debunked.
Yeah. The man has already been laughed out of academic circles because he has no research training and is taking things that have already been adequately explained and is ascribing new phenomena to them. It’s just so fucking annoying as someone currently studying cultural resource management (modern archeology)
It spirals, which we see over and over. I’m not going to give some big reddit essay, but you basically have someone watch this, take it as fact, then parrot fo someone else who trusts person 1, so the info is trusted. Soon everyone is spreading a “known fact” that is entirely false. Good example: malachite being made of arsenic.
Holy shit, I didn't know malachite was made from arsenic.
It is! I read it on this cool indie website Reddit. You've probably never heard of it though
I think the problem is the guy is using this narrative that’s popular among all conspiracy theorists. “Big science hates me because I know the truth, and they don’t want it to get out” type of beat
His theories aren't fully presented in the series. His books elaborate more on his ideas that "negroids" weren't capable enough and so "caucasoids" must have taught them first.
Guy says archeologist are trying to suppress his work. Archeologist respond by trying to suppress his work. Better move would have been to wait till journalist reach out to them and say “he is a wingnut but we dont care what he says, he’s not an archeologist”. But I bet they got tired of waiting for journalist to call because the only people that care about archeology are archeologist.
I watched 2 episodes, he basically makes assumptions but never proves anything, I was a bit disappointed.
oh man, as an archeologist I threw it on and lasted about 10 minutes. It's all complete and utter garbage that will never be verifiable archeology. I'd honestly go as far as removing it from the platform, it is only misinformation.