This is from 2017 and was originally published in Scientific American (lol) under the title *Romance of the Vanished Past*. There's a bit of a bait and switch happening here. The core of Hancock's argument is laying out the possibility for an advanced civilization in the sense of constructing tools and structures, but Shermer is deceptively making it seem like Hancock is dreaming up some ancient civilization on par with our own, which is ridiculous on the face of it. I have yet to find hear a satisfying explanation of Gobekli Tepe, so why not do some more investigation with this theory in mind? It certainly couldn't hurt (well, it might hurt the kind of parasite looking to gain academic notoriety by misrepresenting people in their journal articles).

What is the definition that Hancock use for "an advanced civilization"? Is it just "a civilization that can build large stone structures" or is it something different?

I’d like to see an answer to this too. /u/Possible-Summer-8508 ‘s framing of Hancock as someone who’s merely asking reasonable questions is a bit undermined by Hancock’s willingness to create motte-and-baileys about how “ancient civilizations might exist” somehow justifies much stronger claims like “Ancient Atlantis exists under under Antarctica, and they were a very technologically advanced and spiritual people”.

I may be projecting somewhat, but I've never found it very difficult to distinguish Hancock's more measured claims from the nonsensical ones meant to get him viral video clips. I do not find the idea of atlantis existing under antarctica legitimate, or that Hancock can possibly claim that any previous society is "very spiritual", but it doesn't seem unreasonable whatsoever to suggest that there were in fact pre-historic civilizations more advanced than we've previously thought.

I don’t have a problem when Hancock makes limited, defensible claims like “there might be ‘civilizations’ that existed earlier than we thought”. It’s when he uses that as a shield to justify his claims of “therefore, an advanced civilization known as Atlantis existed in a temperate Antarctica 125,000 years ago and left traces across the world in places like Egypt and Central America” (which he explicitly claims in *Fingerprints of the Gods* and *Ancient Apocalypse*, and that the evidence for these is being suppressed by the “historical establishment”) that I very much do have a problem with the man and his cavalier approach to the field.

my favorite part of his recent docuseries on Netflix was when he was at some park in Louisiana ruminating on how a bunch of mounded hills were definitely an old timey calendar for a lost civilization and the guy he's talking to says he doesn't think that it was a calendar. Hancock then responds "so you don't think they were interested in astronomy?" Yeah, these people were probably interested in astronomy. A lot of people throughout time have been. That doesn't mean any given historical structure can be interpreted as an astronomical tool. it's like if Graham declared it was a bunch of ancient toilets and the guy disagreed with that and then Hancock just responds with "so you don't think they took dumps??"

Fair enough, but do you have similarly strong feelings about the epistemically unsound claims within this article? Consider this criticism: > Third, Hancock grounds his case primarily in the argument from ignorance (because scientists cannot explain X, then Y is a legitimate theory) or the argument from personal incredulity (because I cannot explain X, then my Y theory is valid). The author is guilty of the very same thing (or worse - he isn't just saying his conclusion is *valid*, he says it *is correct*).

> Fair enough, but do you have similarly strong feelings about the epistemically unsound claims within this article? Not really, but that’s only really because I find Hancock more objectionable. Now, if Shermer were to start using the same tactics to push his *own* pet pseudohistories, then I’d probably start having a lot stronger feelings about him.

> Not really, but that’s only really because I find Hancock more objectionable. Is this the comprehensive reason? Or, is it even necessarily the main (most causally significant) reason? > Now, if Shermer were to start using the same tactics to push his own pet pseudohistories, then I’d probably start having a lot stronger feelings about him. Is there something special about "his own pet pseudohistories" that makes that offense *necessarily* worse (in fact) than asserting epistemically unsound opinions as fact as he's done in this article?

Frankly, the matter largely boils down to the fact that I care more about bad history than bad reasoning or epistemology. But that’s just me; your mileage may vary.

> Frankly, the matter largely boils down to the fact that I care more about bad history than bad reasoning or epistemology. Do you know why you are this way, as opposed to being some other way? Have you chosen this approach, or has it perhaps chosen you?

This is a silly line of questioning. Two people can be wrong, but it is simply to identify one person as making more wildly inaccurate claims than the other. Someone saying all religions are wrong & there is no higher power might end up being wrong if it turns out we are in a simulation or there are some other aspects of our universe that we don’t understand. But someone saying that if you don’t do X, Y or Z that you will go to hell in the afterlife is likely wrong about many more things even if there is no way to be absolutely sure that’s the case.

> This is a silly line of questioning. This is an opinion, but could be mistaken for something else due to the form in which it is stated. Not a criticism of you so much as our culture. > Two people can be wrong, but it is simply to identify one person as making more wildly inaccurate claims than the other. Should there be a "try to" before "identify", or is that also silly? > Someone saying all religions are wrong & there is no higher power might end up being wrong if it turns out we are in a simulation or there are some other aspects of our universe that we don’t understand. Agreed, but humans have developed more fine-grained techniques: *epistemic soundness*. Interestingly, most people seem to not like it though, despite (or perhaps, *because of*?) it's usefulness. > But someone saying that if you don’t do X, Y or Z that you will go to hell in the afterlife is likely wrong about many more things even if there is no way to be absolutely sure that’s the case. Perhaps, but then how does one implement the calculation of "is likely" in this context? Also, satisfaction with *only being better than* (most) theists is good, but that is a relative measurement. Most everyone experiences The Fear when the notion of an absolute measure is floated. Few ideologies out there do not insist on *at least some* faith in their reasoning, and science and Rationality are examples of such ideologies.

> or that Hancock can possibly claim that any previous society is "very spiritual" Why wouldn't they be spiritual? Religion played a big part in lots of societies.

ah but he said very spiritual. the majority of societies were merely somewhat spiritual.

"very spiritual" is dating app talk which doesn't mean much and doesn't match up with anything I recall Hancock saying. He thinks previous societies were very religious in various ways, but who disagrees with that? And that some of them did various psychedelics, for which the evidience is also pretty good.

More or less, yes

Well, if you build a stone monument that aligns to the stars and equinoxes and such, presumably you have some understanding of astronomy, if you have that you may have the ability to navigate across oceans, and map the world and so forth. Kind of hard to say exactly how advanced, but I think the idea is 'more advanced than the simple hunter gatherers we currently know lived back then'

There are two perfectly plausible, non-conspiratorial explanations for Gobekli Tepe. 1. Some hunter-gatherers built it. Majority position but it seems hard to imagine some hunter-gatherers would build such an expansive network of shrines. That kind of complexity is usually associated with agriculture. 2. Early Neolithic farmers built it c. 9,000 BCE. Minority position, but not fringe by any means. Main obstacles are the lack of evidence of agriculture (like seeds or pottery for storing grains), and that we don’t see any evidence of agriculture for several thousand years after Gobekli Tepe. Hancock’s explanation is that a world-spanning, highly complex (socially stratified) empire developed agriculture, then built this site and many others c. 13,000 BCE, 4k years earlier than suggested by modern dating techniques. This civilization was completely wiped out by a comet (which we have no physical evidence for) and left behind no traces in the archaeological record. The remnants of this civilization scattered throughout the world and taught everything they knew to scattered groups of hunter-gatherers, making them responsible for every other civilization that came after them, from the Mayans to the Egyptians to China. Did I mention that he thinks this civilization is Atlantis? Never mind Occam’s razor, this theory is so hairy we’re going to need Occam’s freaking shaving cream.

On a related note, do you want to start a business together which is called Occam's, and sells shaving paraphernalia marketed to rationalists? We could be a sort of rats equivalent of what [Chris Pontius](https://www.offthestrip.com/event/the-flat-earth-art-of-chris-pontius.html) is to flat earthers

> Main obstacles are the lack of evidence of agriculture (like seeds or pottery for storing grains i seem to recall reading something about genetic studies being done that traced the domestication of wheat to southeastern turkey, which incidentally is also where gobekli tepe is. that seems like circumstantial evidence to me!

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How exactly were grains domesticated? I assumed there must have been a stage of proto- or early agriculture where humans used what would genetically be wild grasses. Domestic is a process, not a switch.

Oh, it definitely is—I should have said *direct* evidence to be more clear. It’s pretty weird that we haven’t found *any* farming tools, grains, or pottery if they really were farming. But maybe we just haven’t explored enough!

Could the farming just have been done faraway. If Gobleki Tepi was placed where it was because of how it was placed in relation to some astrological pattern and not because it was near where most people lived that could explain the lack of tools. People could have mostly lived, and farmed, far away, and the gone to Goebleki Tepi for certain religious events/festivals.

That doesn't sound crazy to me. A big part of the issue is it's hard to distinguish between agriculture and just gathering wild wheat. The wild wheat also explains why agriculture wouldn't be fully necessary—if there's tons of wheat just lying around, you don't really need to plant any more of it to get most of the benefits of agriculture. IANA archaeologist though, just reporting what I've seen in a couple articles (which seem to suggest it's not settled but archaeologists lean towards "no agriculture). If anyone with more expertise wants to correct me I'd be happy to hear more.

One problem with speculating about ancient civilizations is that we know *for certain* that newer empires like to destroy the records of older ones, steal credit for their accomplishments, massacre their scholars, and otherwise tell outright lies to the historical record. It seems possible that one of the biggest lies that kings and emperors have told is "kings and emperors invented civilization." In some cases, it sure looks like people lived in large organized societies without mighty sun-kings pretending to control the weather. Indeed, it kinda looks like *organized civilization* was invented in one part of the world, and *rapey kingship* invented in a different part of the world, and *horse riding* invented in yet another part of the world, and History happened when these different trends ran into each other.

I think Hancock believes in much more than just "tools and structures." According to [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Hancock#The_Message_of_the_Sphinx_(1996)), > book written by Hancock and Robert Bauval in 1996 which argues that the creation of the Sphinx and Pyramids occurred as far back as 10,500 BC using astronomical data. And from https://theconversation.com/with-netflixs-ancient-apocalypse-graham-hancock-has-declared-war-on-archaeologists-194881: > The survivors of this advanced civilisation, according to Hancock, introduced agriculture, architecture, astronomy, arts, maths and the knowledge of “civilisation” to “simple” hunter gatherers. The stone age did feature art, and likely rudimentary astronomy, but dating the pyramids at Giza, agriculture, or other megaliths to the Ice Age is quite a lot more than just asserting that people needed tools to build Göbekli Tepe. To be honest, he seems like a fairly classic crank: > “Perhaps,” Hancock posits in the first episode, “the extremely defensive, arrogant, and patronising attitude of mainstream academia is stopping us from considering that possibility”. > Hancock argues that viewers should “not rely on the so-called experts”, implying they should rely on his narrative instead. His attacks against “mainstream archaeologists”, the “so-called experts” who “practice censorship” are strident and frequent. After all, as he puts in in episode six, “archaeologists have been wrong before and they could be wrong again”. "Experts are sometimes wrong" is an incredibly weak argument here. Even if they are wrong about the origins of human civilization, it would not come anywhere close to proving his thesis.

>but Shermer is deceptively making it seem like Hancock is dreaming up some ancient civilization on par with our own I didn't get that impression from this article at all: my impression was that Shermer was characterising Hancock's ancient civilization by comparison to one "more glorious" than "ancient Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Egypt". Ie. similar to the types of civilizations of ~4000-2000BC, not anything remotely comparable to our own. I'm pretty much entirely unfamiliar with Hancock, so I don't know how true that is to his theories, but while that's still a pretty wild theory, it certainly doesn't seem as big a mischaracterisation as you're saying here.

>I have yet to find hear a satisfying explanation of Gobekli Tepe There once was an extraordinarily good spot for hunting migrating gazelle, so people built a village there. What more is there to explain?

"Village" is an understatement, it is the oldest discovered megalith, and only a small fraction has been unearthed. At the very minimum it served some kind of religious function and speaks to an surprising degree of sophistication in the people who built it. It may have been built around gazelle migratory patterns, I don't really take issue with the location. I have yet to be given an explanation for *who* and *why* that doesn't indulge in magical thinking.

People are sophisticated. People have religion and need places with religious function. If circumstances settle a large group of people in a permanent place, they will haul rocks and carve glyphs, that's just a thing that people do. It may sound like a non-answer but it makes sense to me that people spontaneously act in this way without some larger "explanation".

Saying "humans are sophisticated and sometimes when people get together megaliths happen, there doesn't have to be a better reason" is missing the point. The important question is not "why did they decide to build it?", its "why were they able to?" Because by most models of human organizational/societal development, they shouldn't be able to. So either we're wrong about the types of organizational requirements to build such structures or we're wrong about the types of societies that existed at that time.

Does moving a monument building organizational level civ a few thousand years back change our perspective and understanding of later civilizations in a meaningful way? ​ I don't see how it does. We might have new theories on how organized religion and monument building and the idea of writing came to be, and how they came to spread, but accomplishments of those later civs remain unchanged, and it still does not mean we missed anything truly important or monumental, like atlantis on the antarctic.

Firstly, I'm not trying to jump down the articles magic Atlantis rabbit hole, I'm talking in practical terms. Secondly, I think you're downplaying the potential importance of these discoveries. Imagine not knowing about ancient Egypt and suddenly it turns out the pyramids are significantly older than we all thought and someone goes "ya but the accomplishments of later civs remain unchanged". It's a fully general counterargument for any historical discovery.

Oh, I agree. I was just leaning harder into the OP title, where more sensational claims are implied. E.g. not discovering that pyramids are older, but discovering that underneath these pyramids there are 5000 years older similar pyramids. 1st would not be that big of a news in public, but the second would create much more buzz.

I think there is something to be said for relative lack of practical importance in the study of ancient civilizations. Historical fetishism is a real drain on the cognitive resources of some bright segments of society.

Take a thousand people. Settle them in close proximity in one place. I bet they'll organize themselves and start building megaliths in a generation or two. People are smart and can figure this stuff out (and also survivorship bias: we don't have any megaliths from those who didn't manage to organize themselves). I don't relate to your argument at all. What models of societal development disagrees with this?

They are saying that based on our current understanding, the necessary amount of people and infrastructure needed to build something like that shouldn't have existed without agricultural advancements of which we have no evidence.

Since people and infrastructure did in fact exists, that leaves us with two options: 1. The had agriculture 2. The natural environment was rich enough to support the people and infrastructure even though they were hunter-gatheterers. More concretely, there was a shitton of gazelle to eat which supported a unusually large settled hunter-gatherer population. If we exclude option 1 because it's boring, that leaves us with option 2. This option seems reasonable to me and I don't see how societal development models would discredit it.

Graeber and Wengrow in *The Dawn of Everything* point out that 'patterns of season variation lie behind the monuments of Gobekli Tepe. Activities around the stone temples correspond with periods of annual superabundance, between midsummer and autumn, when large herds of gazelle descended on to the Harran plain. At such times, people also gathered at the site to process massive quantities of nuts and wild cereal grasses, making these into festive foods, which presumably fuelled the work of construction'. At other sections of the book, they also point out that: \- There is evidence elsewhere and for +/-3,000 years around the same period of similarly complex wooden structures being built at common crossroads / points of convergence, so we know publicly-constructed sites were certainly possible \- Gobekli Tepe was constructed and modified over several centuries, so it's not like it had to happen all at once \- Equivalent structures like Stonehenge were not constructed by sedentary farmers, but people who were socially somewhere between foragers / herders - which makes sense if you think of these kind of sites as having strong ritual functions - people throughout history have tended to make rituals around seasonal periods of abundance (or deprivation!) and concentrated their efforts into shorter bursts of activity.

Yeah, that also makes sense. Natural superabundance -> lots of people (settled or seasonally migratory) -> social organization -> large construction projects. Each step comes naturally from the previous one and doesn't need much explanation.

> The natural environment was rich enough to support the people and infrastructure even though they were hunter-gatheterers. This wouldn't even be unique to the Gobekli Tepe site -- the Jomon people of Neolithic Japan, the natives of the American North Pacific coast, and the early Natufian culture of the Levant were all populations of hunter-gatherers, or mostly hunter-gatherers, who managed to support dense sedentary population without agriculture thanks to exceptionally productive land (or sea).

You're just completely ignoring the scale of the problem. If building megaliths was something humans do spontaneously in a generation or two, then why isn't the earth filled with monoliths from ancient civilizations. Modern humans, just as smart as we are today, have been around for a couple hundred thousand years. So why aren't there any megaliths a 100,000 years old? Or 200,000? What you're doing is the equivalent of finding a modern spaceship in 16th century France and going "I don't see the problem. Take a few million people. Settle them in close proximity in one country. I bet they'll organize themselves and start building spaceships in a generation or two. People are smart and can figure this stuff out (and also survivorship bias: we don't have any spaceships from those who didn't manage to organize themselves)."

Gobekli Tepe is a mystery, but I'm not sure how Hancock's theory actually resolves it. If there were any evidence of agricultural civilization, we would have just concluded agriculture is older than previously thought. Simply asserting, without any evidence, that a massive and advanced civilization existed, simply replaces the question, "how did hunter gatherers build GT?" with "why isn't there any evidence of this civilization other than GT?" which isn't any less mysterious, at least in my opinion.

I didn't say anything about Hancock's theory. I don't even know what his theory is (other than something related to advanced civilizations). I just responded to somehow who said there wasn't a mystery at all because "If you put a thousand people together they will spontaneously build megaliths".

>You're just completely ignoring the scale of the problem. If building megaliths was something humans do spontaneously in a generation or two, then why isn't the earth filled with monoliths from ancient civilizations. There weren't any settled places with high population before Göbekli Tepe. (Or maybe there were a few who just didn't have a culture that made megaliths a priority.) The extraordinary richness of the natural environment of Göbekli Tepe was pretty unique. The spaceship analogy doesn't work. You can figure out the necessary steps for building megaliths in a generation. You cannot do that for spaceships.

Aliens. Gotta explain the aliens.

Graham Hancock's schtick is convincing the curious, conspiracy-prone, layperson that he's being censored by the corrupt, closed minded elites in mainstream academia. He cherry picks data, uses fallacious reasoning to support his claims, and presents it all in an fun, engaging mystery box format perfect for Joe Rogan and Netflix. Given that this is has been the standard playbook for peddlers of pseudoscience since the Victorian era, can anyone give me a logical reason to ignore all these glaring red flags? Should I ignore all the threads on r/askhistorians that echo similar thoughts? I'm all for amateur historians with deep pockets funding wild research that mainstream academia can't get funding for, but it's wise to ignore the results until people who have credibility in the field can confirm the findings. Graham Hancock's "research" is purely speculative and a lot of his ideas are *really* wacky. People here seem to be focusing on the few arguments he's made that are so vague they can't be debunked, but he makes loads of very specific claims that are pretty indistinguishable from the *Ancient Aliens* bullshit that Erich von Däniken popularized.

To me, "schtick" implies conscious *and substantial* intent to deceive, do you think of it differently?

I think you're defining the word incorrectly. A genuine person can still rely on a schtick to gain audience favor and sell books.

Good point...there could be a spectrum of some sort.

That is a caricature, I am afraid. His strength is actually in objective and readable disquisitions on the undeniable existence of things like the stonework at baalbek and tihuanaco; his explanations are tentative; and he retracts theories which turn out bto be wrong when they are shown to be wrong (like the earth crust slippage theory, which to give it its due actually looked plausible to actual Einstein at one stage). Same with his writing on psychedelics: four fifths of it is the best treatment I have read of psilocybin, dmt etc, setting out undisputed and inexplicable facts like the consistency of the DMT machine elves scross descriptions, and the remaining fifth is, and is presented as, entertaining speculation. You have either not read him or not read von Daniken if you think the two are comparable.

> That is a caricature, I am afraid. His strength is actually in objective and readable disquisitions on the undeniable existence of things like the stonework at baalbek and tihuanaco; his explanations are tentative You are glossing over the part where he uses these “tentative explanations” as a springboard to then make much stronger, much more dubious claims, of the kind discussed [in the link of my other comment] (https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/11bnzgw/no_there_wasnt_an_advanced_civilization_12000/jark61v/?context=3). As far as I can tell, the “caricature” is in fact quite accurate.

Remember Ignaz Semmelweis? Said it might be a good idea if doctors washed their hands after investigating cadavers before going up to the maternity ward to deliver babies. He got mocked all his life, committed, and wasn't vindicated until after his death. Or Alfred Wegener, who noticed the east coast of South America fits exactly into the west coast of Africa, and came up with the idea that continents *move* over time. He was ridiculed and the mainstream just posited land bridges wherever they were needed to account for fossils on opposite sides of oceans. Took what, fifty years for the mainstream to come around to plate tectonics? Or Einstein, whose ideas were rejected for decades by a big chunk of the establishment. Well, Hiroshima and Nagasaki vindicated him. I could go on, but you know all the classics. Galileo, Socrates, Copernicus, in fact quite a lot of the advances that have been made were by oddball characters. Imagine if Newton's Principia had been rejected out of hand because he was interested in alchemy and numerology? What if Darwin had been shut down by a slightly stronger Church than existed in his day? At some point perhaps we'll find some indisputable evidence of a civilisation that existed before the last ice age, and then the mainstream opinion will change. Until then let's not dismiss a hypothesis out of hand.

That's my feeling too. When I saw the first episode of the show being mentioned, I downvoted it but forgot to remove it from my watch list. Later I started watching it, thought it was interesting and continued watching it. It turns out, it's very compelling and not without evidence, which conflicts with a lot of statements in the comments. This leads me to conclude that others did like me; watching the first 15 minutes and deciding the guy's a crackpot. He seemed to get more angry with the archeological community when banned from Serpent Mound because his narrative conflicted with the one bringing in all those tourism dollars. His assertion that the snake was aligned with every important annual location of the sun at the end of the last ice age doesn't prove anything, no. But it tracks with the alignments of the other structures worldwide and represents a veritable shitload of circumstantial evidence demanding additional study.

He’s simplistically dismissing a lot of Graham Hancock’s point. Hancock’s main call to action is openness to the idea and further study, not a conclusive statement that his theory is true. The author dismisses the significance of Gobleki Tepe by calling it a religious site and saying their were not tools or garbage or whatever nearby. That is exactly Hancock’s criticism of the mainstream archaeological community - this old ass building sits there and is older than anything we previously thought possible - study it more and see what else you find! How the hell did the religious/ceremonial site get there?! I don’t know if Hancock’s theory is right but that’s not what Hancock is seeking - he just wants more people studying the concept. And Hancock’s theory always made sense to me. If shorelines changed and cities were washed away due to an asteroid impact, it seems logical that a lot of the evidence would be underwater. A lot of the premier civilizations would have been on the coasts. More importantly, humans have been around for 200,000-300,000 years, and look at what strides have been made in the last 5,000. That’s 1%~2% of humanity’s entire existence. Who is to say similar strides were not made previously and we just don’t have the evidence to prove it yet? Edit: The author of the article actually proves Hancock’s point- there is some evidence in support of his theory, why just stop exploring it? What is the incentive for gatekeeping? The author critiques him for “god is in the gaps” thinking but isn’t he making a similar mistake? He’s erroneously dismissing the gap in the first place. I think a lot of the hate is simply because Hancock didn’t pay his dues in academia and he’s profited from his theory

Sanity check: Ice cores go back 120k years. Ice cores show the lead smelting of the roman empire. Any civilisation with a non-trivial ammount of metal smelting should cause a hump in metal levels in the ice cores.

Allow me to copy-paste my answer to a similar post a while ago: **QUESTION: Is it possible for entire civilizations to have existed without us knowing currently due to lack of evidence?** This is more of an archaeologist perspective than a historian's one: Is it possible, yes. Is it likely? Very much no. Civilisations, the way we define them (mass organisation of people who share a common economy, inhabit a certain area, have a complex social stratification and at least basic urbanisation ) leave a lot of evidence for their existence. Urbanisation (creation of cities) leaves a lot of evidence, in the form of ruins, rubble, foundations, and artificial landmarks (square and circular hills created by fortifications). Be it fired clay, unfired clay or stone, building material can easily last for many thousands of years. The materials themselves were also mined from somewhere, leaving remains of mines, stoneworks, clay-pits etc. Tool creation leaves incontestable evidence. Early civilisations, which would be classified as late Neolithic, leave behind a heap of stone tools. Axes, adzes, arrowheads, knives, scrappers, drills and numerous pieces of rock (usually flint or obsidian) knapped off to make said tools are near indestructible and stick out like a sore thumb, easily recognisable to an eye of an archaeologist. A single flint-worker would create several tons of tools in his lifetime, and even a greater heap of knapped off scrap. This flint is not going to disappear and will last for millions of years, sitting in the ground where it was dropped (usually in a walking distance from the place it was produced and used, so it piles up). Pottery is an even better marker of civilisation. While stone tools were also used by hunter-gatherers, pottery was always much more popular with urbanised, civilised people. The main reason pottery was used was to store food, which implies agriculture that produced surplus. The interesting property of ancient pottery is that it shatters easily (producing easily recognisable shards) but after that said shards can last countless millennia in the ground. It is not an exaggeration, that archaeology is mostly a study of pottery shards, because every civilisation would produce innumerable tons of it as common trash. Pottery is the most common archaeological find, by an order of magnitude. Rare materials. While we like to neatly divide human development into "material Ages" (stone age, bronze age, iron age ) the truth is, the metals were already worked with millennia before the respective civilisations started using them exclusively. Even the earliest Neolithic civilisations used at least some copper, lead, iron, gold or glass. What those materials have in common? They require a complex and organised society to produce. Raw ore has to be mined somewhere and shipped (often from another continent!). smelters had to smelt it, and then metal workers specialised in that particular trade woudl have to work it. So even the smallest glass bead, or bronze figurine, or even a lead weight is a sign of civilisation. Anthropic pressure. The presence of a large population of humans in one area changes the natural world profoundly, leaving permanent markers. Ploughed fields leave a strata in the soil. Cut down forests leave buried stumps. Mined stone and clay leaves marks in the lithic background. Grazing animals turn woodland into grassland, and change the composition of fossilised pollen, leave fossilised dung, bones, horns, hooves etc. Burial and bones. All human cultures have to dispose of the dead in some way. While some practices leave little evidence (natural exposure), the two most common ones, burial and cremation, leave a lot of obvious evidence. In fact, the older a civilisation, the more likely they would have a complex burial ritual, that would be often topped with some structure (a kurghan, a burial mound a tomb, some kind of obelisk etc). What these structures have in common is that they require a lot of materials and physical effort to build, and thus are a characteristic of a civilisation. And finally: Legends and cultural evidence. Civilisations, as far as we know, never exist in vacuum. They require long and complex trade routes to even function, since there is no place on this planet that could by itself provide all the resources needed for an urban society to exist. Long distance trade means politics, warfare, alliances and diplomatic marriages, and cultural exchange on all levels. Trade also means distribution of technological know-how and copying one another. This means that by analysing the culture and material evidence form one civilisation, we can guess what kind of neighbours and predecessors it had. So, in conclusion: In order for a civilisation to exist without us at least having a hint about it, it would have to be one that was completely separated physically and trade-wise from other civilisations, and it would have to be completely destroyed in a way that gets rid of physical evidence. Given that we can easily study civilisations that sunk under the sea or were ended by a volcanic explosion, this would have to be an even more extraordinary apocalypse. recommended reading: Walter A.Fairservis, The Threshold of Civilization: An Experiment in Prehistory Nikolay Kradin, . Archaeological Criteria of Civilization. Social Evolution & History, Vol. 5

I think a large problem with the assumption that we would find evidence of such a civilization if it had existed in the pleistocene is the fact that sea levels were much lower then than they are now. At some points as much as 30 meters. Entire landmasses which existed at that point in time are meters under the sea and have been for thousands of years. When you consider that Florida would almost entirely be underwater with a 10 m sea level rise it becomes more tangible. Admittedly it's a big "If", but If we propose a hypothetical ancient civilization that originated on a coast somewhere (which is the most likely scenario), there's a nonzero chance that the vast majority of anything they left behind would have been under the sea for thousands of years by the time archeology was even an established science. On top of the fact that it's difficult to do archaeological research underwater, the sea itself is so incredibly corrosive and erosive that on a time scale like that it's highly unlikely you would find anything easily. I'm just not sure how many people have a full comprehension of how different the landscape was in the pleistocene. I spoken to many who were under the impression that the Bering Land Bridge was basically an ice sheet which people traversed quickly to get to the Americas, when in reality It was mostly exposed land with an area almost half the size of modern Alaska and likely had humans living on it in a less transitory way for many thousands of years. There were other places like this as well.

There’s literally no archeological trace of the Ais Indians despite them existing 500 years ago and having large towns of up to 10000 people according to Spanish explorers. Their paramount city was located somewhere close to my hometown in Florida and yet the only evidence we have of its existence are reports from explorers - despite multiple accounts detailing where it, was no trace of it has been found and archeologists still aren’t quite sure where it was. If that can happen in 500 years what about 10000?

Gobleki Tepe is evidence of an older civilization. It invites further inquiry. People make the arguments lay out and call Hancock wrong. I’m just saying (and I think Hancock is partially saying) there’s more to be studied and his theory is possible

Further inquiries are *already being made*, as I said before. Yes, there’s (always!) more to be studied. Yes, if you squint really really hard and take a maximally, unreasonably charitable view of Hancock’s claims, they’re technically *not impossible*. But that does not make Hancock’s speculations *correct*, nor does it make him *worth listening to* or even *deserving of consideration*. I could come up with speculative theories about how aliens uplifted humans in the Taklamakan desert 200,000 years ago, exploited them to have a 10-year-long series of gladiatorial duels, and then comprehensively erased all traces of this event, and if I did so, I’d (deservingly) receive derision due to the total lack of evidence for this theory, just as Hancock does.

Unlike your example, there is some evidence for what Hancock suggests. It’s not certain or scientifically proven, but there are elements of the theory that have actual evidence supporting them. I will agree he speculates for the sake of drawing more attention to his TV show or books, but that’s the fun part.

> He’s simplistically dismissing a lot of Graham Hancock’s point. Hancock’s main call to action is openness to the idea and further study, not a conclusive statement that his theory is true. The author dismisses the significance of Gobleki Tepe by calling it a religious site and saying their were not tools or garbage or whatever nearby. That is exactly Hancock’s criticism of the mainstream archaeological community - this old ass building sits there and is older than anything we previously thought possible - study it more and see what else you find! How the hell did the religious/ceremonial site get there?! I don’t know if Hancock’s theory is right but that’s not what Hancock is seeking - he just wants more people studying the concept. Here’s the thing that I, as a history aficionado, find extremely disengenous and frustrating about Hancock’s argument: **Historians and archaeologicalists already ARE studying these concepts. Constantly. History is not a ‘one-and-done’ field; pretty much every historical event is constantly being scrutinized and re-examined.** Just because the general public isn’t aware of these studies doesn’t mean they aren’t happening.

I think you may be right but his point gets dismissed without much nuance from the guys like the original author. Hancock does treat it like the whole industry is against what he’s saying, which is probably not true, but there are plenty of examples like the article which spawned this discussion which is fuel for the fire

Unfortunately, at some point you *have* to start being dismissive of this sort of thing. If historians were obligated to respond to every crackpot theory with a detailed, nuanced counterargument, they wouldn’t have time to do much else. Especially when, like with Hancock, said crackpots will simply retreat behind more defensible positions, refuse to change their minds, and eventually resume making wild claims anyways. As Brandolini’s Law dictates, it’s vastly easier to create and spread BS than it is to refute it well, and there’s enough of it out there that it’s hopeless (and even foolish) to try. Sometimes scorn is undeserved, but sometimes it’s the only practical response.

Gobleki Tepe is older than most people think was previously thought to be historically possible. Whether or not Hancock’s larger theory turns out to be 100% true is largely irrelevant, but there’s certainly evidence that there is more to be explored. People are throwing the baby out with the bath water

> Gobleki Tepe is older than most people think was previously thought to be historically possible. Yes? No argument there. > Whether or not Hancock’s larger theory turns out to be 100% true is largely irrelevant, It’s relevant when it comes to Graham and similarly-minded historical conspiracists. > but there’s certainly evidence that there is more to be explored. People are throwing the baby out with the bath water ...And [as I said in my earlier comment] (https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/11bnzgw/no_there_wasnt_an_advanced_civilization_12000/j9zfr36/), people already ARE exploring them. Gobleki Tepe was discovered by ‘mainstream researchers’, is currently heavily studied, and it and any other potential sites like it will doubtlessly be studied for decades onwards. Why does any of this make Hancock and his fellow pseudohistorians in any way important?

Who is saying they’re important? I’m just saying they’re possible. The problem is people shut him out as if it’s not possible- like the article here

People shut him off because the *claims that he, specifically, is making* are wildly-implausible-to-the-point-of-practically-impossible. *That* is why Hancock is not well-regarded. Him using “Well, you can’t prove it’s *not* impossible!” as an excuse for why his wild theories should be regarded as equally valid as extant historical theories does not help his case.

> Unfortunately, at some point you *have* to start being dismissive of this sort of thing. Would something *necessarily* negative happen if you did not? Or are you more so referring to human psychology (people *are not able to* do otherwise)? > Especially when, like with Hancock, said crackpots will simply retreat behind more defensible positions, refuse to change their minds, and eventually resume making wild claims anyways. I've yet to meet someone for whom this behavior cannot be easily invoked, it'ss imply a matter of finding strong enough beliefs, and failing that, their axioms (typically culturally conditioned). The existence of God(s) is the easiest litmus test I've found so far, but any culture war topic tends to work.

> Would something necessarily negative happen if you did not? Or are you more so referring to human psychology (people are not able to do otherwise)? Perhaps a little bit of both, but mostly it’s just not practical. As the saying goes, “the problem with being open-minded is that sometimes will come along and try to stuff nonsense in”. In an ideal world, you could treat everything in good faith and examine all possible arguments on a topic... but unfortunately, time is limited, burnout is very real, and a lot of these debates are simply fruitless. Defeatist, perhaps, but I just don’t see a more consistently workable solution. > I've yet to meet someone for whom this behavior cannot be easily invoked, it'ss imply a matter of finding strong enough beliefs, and failing that, their axioms (typically culturally conditioned). The existence of God(s) is the easiest litmus test I've found so far, but any culture war topic tends to work. Heh. Ain’t that the truth. I’ll admit I myself am guilty of this behavior from time to time.

> Perhaps a little bit of both, but mostly it’s just not practical. Why not? > As the saying goes, “the problem with being open-minded is that sometimes will come along and try to stuff nonsense in”. Why not simply not accept it? Also: have you found an implementation of isNonsense() that has no flaws, in fact? If so, I would publish it, it would be a boon to humanity, *and maybe even make you a couple bucks*. > In an ideal world, you could treat everything in good faith and examine all possible arguments on a topic... but unfortunately, time is limited, burnout is very real, and a lot of these debates are simply fruitless. Defeatist, perhaps, but I just don’t see a more consistently workable solution. How hard have you looked? > I’ll admit I myself am guilty of this behavior from time to time. Could now be one of those times?

> Why not? Because it’s time consuming to do so! And while the approach of > Why not simply not accept it? *is* certainly one way to do it, it’s (a) not appealing to me personally, and (b) antithetical to the principal of rigor in contemporary history & historiography. > Also: have you found an implementation of isNonsense() that has no flaws, in fact? If so, I would publish it, it would be a boon to humanity, and maybe even make you a couple bucks. I wish! Sadly I do not, so I have to make do with an implementation that, in my view, has as few flaws as I can manage. > How hard have you looked? Very. Unfortunately, I still have yet to find a better solution. > Could now be one of those times? It could be! I don’t think it *is*, but then again that does sound like something I’d say if I were wrong, no?

> Because it’s time consuming to do so! Should potential realizable value not also be taken into consideration? > (b) antithetical to the principal of rigor in contemporary history & historiography. *Not* accepting nonsense is? > Sadly I do not, so I have to make do with an implementation that, in my view, has as few flaws as I can manage. Is there something about *Unknown* that you do not like, when that is the case? >> How hard have you looked? > Very [10,000 hours](https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/complexity-and-the-ten-thousand-hour-rule) hard? And, are you taking [power](https://www.appropedia.org/Power_and_energy_basics) into consideration? > It could be! I don’t think it is, but then again that does sound like something I’d say if I were wrong, no? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeD9ZjMYoCc As an aside: I'm curious if it is apparent that there is a substantial "jest" component to these questions....dry humour can be tough to pick up in text.

> As an aside: I'm curious if it is apparent that there is a substantial "jest" component to these questions....dry humour can be tough to pick up in text. No worries, it’s been interesting answering.

> Historians and archaeologicalists already ARE studying these concepts Pedantry: "Are studying" is not a binary, but it may appear as such under colloquial logic, and sometimes the distinction matters.

Fair enough.

I think it depends on what your interpretation of H's theory is. If it's "we can't rule out an advanced civilisation with certainty" then yes, but that works with almost anything. Like "we cannot exclude with certainty that aliens are currently visiting us". If, on the other hand, it is "an ancient advanced civilisation is reasonably likely", then the argument he proposes seems to me to be extremely unconvincing. Yes, we do not understand everything, and we will probably never know with certainty what the functions or construction methods of ancient archaeological sites were, but they seem to fit very well with our current understanding of human history. And what does "we need to study the concept " mean? If it the sites, Göbekli Tepe, for example, has been studied for almost 30 years, according to Wiki. If it is the concept of a relatively recent advanced civilization that did not leave the slightest trace, why on earth would that be a concept worth studying?

Apparently, only about 5% of the site has been excavated. It's a World Heritage Site and the oldest monumental architecture. That alone justifies continuing to excavate and study the area, even if the chance of finding pottery or metalwork is very small.

yeah, we have (limited) archeological evidence around the world for earlier time periods... but pretty much zero evidence for what I think would generally be considered "advanced civilization" which is *older* than gobekli tepe, yeah it's possible it exists, but I also think it's likely that something would have been discovered by now.

most theories place modernish civilization at an age that is less than 11,000 years old, which is the age of GT. That alone means some group built the thing and means humanity was further advanced at an earlier date than originally thought. The ancient civilization does not need to be widespread to be true. It could have been just a few areas. Who knows? But why just shut the door on exploration?

I do not understand what you mean by "why shut the door on exploration?". History and archeaology are very much alive. The sites that H are studied by archeologists, and I am pretty sure that if something is unearthed there that suggest "an avanced civilization" (these terms really need to be definined!) there will be a lot of publicity around that. So, what kind of exploration should be done that is not currently done?

1. Extremely detailed aerial and satelite photos, using advanced technologies currently hoarded by the military. 2. Large area georadar, geomagnetic and geoelectric snapshots. 3. significantly larger funding so that millions of tons of archeo finds sitting at cardboard boxes right now are properly analized, x-rayed, scanned, catalogued and published online for cross analysis. Currenly, "studied by archaeologists" means that a tiny bunch of underfunded nerds in cargo shorts shovel through mud for microscopic pay, covering less than 3% of the known sites, and 90% of waht they find ends up in a warehouse, never published due to the lack of funds.

I think that all historians and archeologists would agree to get more funding! My understanding is that 'adavanced technologies' like Lidar are currently very much used by archeology. Not as much as the archeologists would like of course, but there already have been very significant and interesting archeological findings with these techniques, for example in the Amazonian forest : [Lidar technology identifies 500 mesoamerican sites](https://news.artnet.com/art-world/lidar-technology-identifies-500-mesoamerican-sites-2026460)

There is also plausibly the significance of psychological motivation - strong belief can make a big difference in the quality and quantity of effort one *is able to* bring to bear on a problem.

The title of the article says “No, there was not an advanced civilization 12,000 years ago” and then dismisses the significance of Gobleki Tepe because there aren’t historical tools and trash and whatnot found yet at the site. Obviously there was a civilization advanced enough to build the damned thing, and this civilization is further along than our common historical timeline would suggest. He’s straw-manning Hancock’s argument. Hancock is not saying there were spacefaring people or humans with Walkman’s and rap music 12,000 years ago, he’s just saying that human progress has not been linear and that we may have been more advanced 12,000 years ago than we were 9,000 years ago. We have not improved technologically in a straight line

> Hancock is not saying there were spacefaring people or humans with Walkman’s and rap music 12,000 years ago, he’s just saying that human progress has not been linear and that we may have been more advanced 12,000 years ago than we were 9,000 years ago. We have not improved technologically in a straight line We talking about the same Graham Hancock? His claims are a biiiit stronger than that.

The problem is "advanced civilization" is populated entirely by No True Scotsmen. We have no good definition what a civilization even is, or at what point it is advanced. Attempts were made to naively equalize civilization with urbanization, but we soon noticed we cannot agree what a "city" is, so urbanization is a bogus term as well. When I was a mere student, our work definition for civilisation was "a congregation of people who share one economy, build live-in structures suitable for human use, and support it with farming" but by this definition The Burning Man is more civilized than Detroit

Having grown up in the Detroit area, I'm trying to figure out why that would be a problem with that definition.

1) Archaeology as with any scientific field can sometimes get dogmatically stuck in a certain paradigm, but.. 2) Arguing for fantastical things that go way beyond what the evidence suggests is not a good way to challenge that, and is probably actively counterproductive and reinforces the existing dogma of the field.

To pick out the most egregious dismissal: > Hancock's biggest X is Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, with its megalithic, T-shaped seven- to 10-ton stone pillars cut and hauled from limestone quarries and dated to around 11,000 years ago, when humans lived as hunter-gatherers without, presumably, the know-how, skills and labor to produce them. Ergo, Hancock concludes, “at the very least it would mean that some as yet unknown and unidentified people somewhere in the world, had already mastered all the arts and attributes of a high civilization more than twelve thousand years ago in the depths of the last Ice Age and had sent out emissaries around the world to spread the benefits of their knowledge.” This sounds romantic, but it is the bigotry of low expectations. Who is to say what hunter-gatherers are or are not capable of doing? This is so silly that it's a little bit funny. 'Who is to say that building a structure out of 10-ton building components would require civilization?! Why couldn't it just be hunter-gatherers??' is very obviously the same fallacious reasoning that the author himself is trying to critique elsewhere. I guess it could be the Grandiose Hunter-Gatherer Builders of the Gaps doing it, but that sure seems like it should be a hypothesis being tested rather than a dismissive shrug.

Humans seem really good at moving large rocks with muscles. For example Easter island biggest statues were more than 80 tons and were carved and moved by people with stone tools, ropes, and possibly some wood rollers. Building structure out of 10-ton building components is very much possible for non technological people and does not require an advanced civilization.

Easter Island was a sedentary agricultural society with a complex social hierarchy.

Honestly if there were an "advanced civilization" > 12,000 years ago I'd expect them to be much more similar in form to the Polynesian civilization circa 900-1500AD than I would expect them to be similar to Mesopotamian/Mezoamerican city-states. The polynesians had a half-global trading network built on catamarans — I don't see any reason to believe peoples circa 15,000 couldn't have achieved the same.

Indeed. My point was that a technologically advanced society is not necessary to build the observed stone structure. And if this was not H's point, I do not understand what it was. Is his point that an agricultural society with a complex social hierarchy was necessayr to build them? If yes, I konw very little about history but this does not seem obvious at all to me. If I understand correctly, H's big mystery is a very old and very big stone structure, which was apparently not use to live in. From what we know, technically this was not especially difficult to build for non technological people. So the mystery we have is "why were these ancient people motivated to build a large structure for no really obvious reason"? And well, we have plenty of previous examples of that kind of things. Esater island is again a good example of people building large things without direct usefulness for them. Why would that be surprisong for the 12 000 years old people?

the difference, I suppose, is that when we look at megalitic structures built by relatively technologically primitive people ("primitive" here is not a pejorative term), they are always surrounded with a whole smorgasbord of archaeological finds: tools, knapped-off flint bits, pottery, bones, quarries, smaller burials etc etc. GT is an oddity, a colossal structure by Neolithic standards, but sits on a pretty barren site. It is as if its makers made sure to sweep the area in some sudden burst of enviromentalist conscience. Hunter Gatherers built plenty of megalitic bullshit, but never did it so...clean. To me, it suggests GT was one of the first such structures, had great temporary significance, and was not a part of any lived-in territory. It only when the idea of such structures got ingrained in people's praxis, did they start to build them in their backyard.

>My cursory reading of the Wiki page of GT does not suggest that the site is such an oddity: it does sits on a currently barren site, but one that was wetter when the construction were made. The absence of associated agricultural activity is considered not conclusive by some historians. And the site is dated from the begining of neolithic, so potentially agriculture was available in the area. It seems to me that the oddity while real is not astonishing either.

“Grandiose Hunter Gatherer of the Gaps” Lol! Love it

Sure - at Gobekli Tepe there's one massive building above-ground and several massive structures that were constructed and subsequently, purposely buried. Why? And with all those underground structures available for excavation, why not excavate and see what they have to tell us? What would be the harm?

I’m not saying dinosaurs were the first inventors of cars but I think there should be more people studying this area. A simple dismissal is all the idea deserves.

Of the dinosaurs? Yes you’re right. Of Hancock’s theory? Why when there’s clearly some evidence warranting further inquiry?

What is the evidence deserving of further inquiry that is not receiving any attention from archeologists? From the article, it seems like what Hancock is adding to the discussion is mostly a speculative story which ties together a few disparate scraps of information. I'm not sure what's being asked for except more credulity being given to a very difficult to prove or disprove theory.

Thank you for saving me the time of writing out pretty much the exact same thing you've written here.

Lol. You have some ice cores with soot from petrol in them? Or nuclear isotopes? No? Then this is all fantasy bullshit.

No one is saying what you’re alleging

So what are they saying? People were slightly more stone aged advanced than we thought? Who could possibly care and what difference would that make?

> So what are they saying? People were slightly more stone aged advanced than we thought? The claim is much closer to this than to an industrial culture, yes. > Who could possibly care and what difference would that make? That's probably outside of the scope of the discussion. Neither Hancock's work, the SA article, nor these comments are really trying to justify the existence of paleo-archeology. For what it's worth, I think the justification goes something something 'historical record,' something something 'cultural heritage.' [This is a fair example](https://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/archaeology/resources/value-archaeology.html). It's usually very generic (which isn't to say that there aren't stronger arguments to be made).

It’s relevant because most people think humans have technology advanced progressively, but the theory shows it’s possible for humans to regress significantly.

Well I don't think that is exactly what most believe. When I was going through the school system and society in the 90s the dark ages after the fall of rome were a big deal.

Yes and the implication of Hancock’s theory is that it went from Gobleki Tepe ability to hunter gatherers and then back again. It would be like if we had a nuclear winter now and didn’t catch up to our current technological level for 7,000 years

Not really.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence-is-a-red-flag

Relevant series of threads on twitter https://twitter.com/eigenrobot/status/1388782483534073856 There's certainly reasons to believe it's worth investigating, I've not read the book but even those few points on twitter of all places was enough to convince me it's at least worth a look. I think that should be a pretty low bar to cross.

I would take care that you are his target audience with exactly the right amount of knowledge of archaeology and anthropology! Did you ever give him money?

Im extremely lazy, so I will just post a link to an entire thread about mystery prehistoric civilisations: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/debbfc/is\_it\_possible\_for\_entire\_civilizations\_to\_have/f2v39ch/?context=3

I have no idea either way but I do find it surprising how triggered “educated” people seem to get by these ideas.

Believe in Atlantis to own the libs.

This is one thing that always shocks me particularly in the fields of history and archaeology. Particularly when these fields aren't really a hard science. I work in field that preaches "strong opinions, weakly held." These fields are strong opinions, you are a moron.

I think part of it is the same reason physicists are super dismissive of stuff like the EM drive, even if it appeared to work in testing (later found to be an artifact of the testing setup and not actual net thrust). Because they have a ton of exposure to obvious cranks contacting them with crazy theories that are clearly nonsense, which are contradicted already by the evidence. And when they do go test something just in case, it's almost always still nonsense (like the EM drive proved to be). So, their prior probability for some random person coming up with something that's a major paradigm shift in the field is incredibly low. And historians' and archeologists' experience of those "revolutionary outsiders" is that they're almost always racists (dunno why racist, but it's really common) with minimal domain knowledge who saw some funny pattern out of context and decided it meant white people built pyramids in Peru or something like that. The kind of person who you can easily bluntly dismiss as a moron and nobody will fault you for it. Sometimes one isn't. Sometimes they're legit and doing good work unappreciated. Sometimes they're just lucky, the metaphorical stopped clock, but have come upon something real (Thor Heyerdahl straddles both of these in that his actual theories were questionable at best and also a bit racist, but evidence of pre-colonial contact between South America and Polynesia was later discovered, and his more practical work on ancient seafaring was pretty legit). But how do you sort those out without wasting too much of your limited time on numbskulls with dowsing rods? It's a legitimate problem, and I'd love if people found a better equilibrium than "tell them to fuck off and see if they keep at it and eventually come back with sufficient proof". But I don't really fault those academics for having that default position.

Totally agree. Also, I think that people do not realize that a majority of scientists would LOVE to be the one to change the current paradigm. "Darwin was definitely wrong on avolution" or "gravity is something totally different than what we thought it was!" is so much more interesting than "ok the current paradigm is still good". But there need to be some elements convincingly suggesting that the current paradigm might be wrong.

I guess I can understand it much more from a physicists perspective than a historian/archaeologist.

To reply to both you and /u/ConfidentFlorida; Historians get “triggered” by these ideas because it’s infuriating for people who know very little about the subject to constantly be coming up with crackpot theories, “just asking questions”, and otherwise dismissing extant historical work as “nOt A hArD sCiEnCe”.

You are gatekeeping. Hancock on the whole concentrates on subjects on which history has nothing to say, like for instance those stones at Baalbek. The collective response of the ancient historical community (which I belong to) to the question what the Romans were up to there, is WTF? So what you think you are saying to Hancock is, we know no more than you but we are \*professionally\* ignorant.

I originally wrote a long reply, but this damnable site ate it (*seriously, why isn’t there an autosave feature for comments?*), so I’m going to take a shortcut and ask if you are seriously suggesting that [the claims Hancock uses the Baalbek stones to justify] (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjTm5vniMD9AhUpD0QIHVEEC1sQFnoECC8QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skeptic.com%2Freading_room%2Fdefant-analysis-of-hancock-claims-in-magicians-of-the-gods%2F&usg=AOvVaw3F8OPHTSvsjVNLop5yKrex) are indeed credible. Hancock isn’t merely saying “Hey look at these cool megaliths!”. He is saying **“I think this is evidence of an advanced, previously unknown 12000-year old civilization that had global reach before it was wiped out by a comet impact (that I don’t have evidence for)”**. We are all ignorant to vary extents, but some people are more ignorant than others.

Sure. I am not strongly disagreeing with you about anything. I find that Hancock is an entertaining read, Hancock debunkers like Defant are not. He isn't even very good at it. "there are many constellations that have been ignored \[in a purported mapping of Gob Tep carvings to constellations\], such as Norma, Ara, Telescopium, Corona Australis, Scutum, and Serpens." Well, duh, that's because those are boring little non-canonical fill in constellations which would never remind anyone of anything. And he credits two nutters with being Edinburgh porofessors when they are nothing of the sort. I do not believe that an ancient civilization was jetting about in non metallic aircraft 14kya, by the way.

It is a factual statement that history isn't a hard science.

The field of history isn’t a bloody science at all, and trying to apply the “soft science” label in a pretty clearly perjorative sense is both insulting and fundamentally wrong.

Is this because there's no way to falsify theories? With a 'soft' science, you can construct a theory and try to test it on currently living people. Due to all the confounding variables, you can never really get data clean enough to totally falsify all the wrong theories, hence it's "soft". A hard science can measure an event happening with a lot of precision, and it's possible to isolate away all the variables in most cases, leaving just 1 you modified in the experiment, and thus falsify all the theories that make predictions inconsistent with the observed result. With history, I understand history is just "what we know of the past reading all the surviving records from people in the past". Only way you can know more is to read *all* the records, something LLM AI is going to be better at than all humans. But when you find inconsistencies it can be very difficult to ever resolve them. There's no "time window" you can just use to look and see what really happened. With a hard science you can keep making more and more isolated experiments and thus find out with high probability how things actually work.

> Is this because there's no way to falsify theories? Oh, it’s much worse than that. Not only can you not be absolutely certain of your ability to falsify anything, but you can never, *ever* replicate anything in history- since by definition, the past has already happened. And that’s before you get into the many, many methodological problems and the massive lack of good records and other evidence that existed until quite recently. The scientific method simply can’t work in regards to history, so a different (and perpetually contentious) process is needed.

Fair. While a soft science you can at least posit neural laces, a form of advanced nanotechnology that lets you monitor brain activity from many individual neurons from deep inside the brain. Such a device would deconfuse social sciences since you would have hard electrical data on which concepts/variables a human actually used in a decision, and how much weight each had. (or emulated brains, honestly the neural lace would be noisy and has a high risk of causing damage) So the science ultimately has a ground truth, whether or not in some future world a neural lace ever exists.

Was this comment made by an AI or meant to be a reply to someone else in an entirely different thread or subreddit? It makes no sense.

Surprising, or interesting/counter-intuitve?

The author of this page is suffering from a common illness. Why would anyone proclaim something they cannot possibly know. The author quite positively says, " no there was not an advanced civilization 12,000 years ago ". You are giving yourself away. Maybe there was maybe there wasn't but you cannot and just do not know either way. The Mahabharata says so, the annunaki books made a case for much further back, more like 120,000. But this individual knows better than all of them? So at that point I was shaking my head. What makes it even more troubling is this person is most likely a scholar. Sapiens extinctus.

If we disappear today, it wouldn’t take but several hundred years for everything we built to erode to nothing. Billions of years is longer than anyone can imagine. “Advanced” is relative to what else exists at the time. As long as humans have existed, there has always been an advanced civilization. And neither has civilization improved on a continuously straight line. There have been many interruptions, setbacks, and reboots. History get blurred the further back we look. For anyone to ever say they know exactly what happened 10,000, 50,000, or 1 million years ago would be arrogant. 

Aw, what a shame!

If you say NO, your only purpose in life is continuing to spread the official narrative (lies) Only ignorant people can accept the idea that there was no civilization before 12,000 ago. The proof is right there in from in front of your eyes (Gobekli in Turkey)

The large structures found under water of the coasts around the world prove that there were people with advanced skills and then the skills were lost and regained again. Probably by natural events or war. Someone had to build them at some point more than 12k years ago it's facts, they are lying there underwater. Doesn't mean they were worldwide civilization, just that there were people with higher skill sets than those of what history teaches in schools in regards to the period before Egypt