Graham Hancock: There is no doubt that the pyramids were built by a human race of enlightened psychics who lived during the ice age 30,000 years ago and used telekinetic powers to build megalithic sites all over he world.

Archaeology Professor: What proof do you have to substantiate these claims?

Graham Hancock: (Destroys archaeology professor with his psychic powers)

You really need to watch that show ancient apocalypse

You mean that show that platformed Graham Hancock's bullshit? No thanks, I already know that Graham Hancock is... well, full of shit.

How about you watch Miniminuteman's takedown instead?

This. YES, THIS. Wengrow hits the Hancock on the head. Wengrow is also one of the most wide-thinking of archaeologists.

Mythology has been described by Robert Graves as "the study of whatever religious or heroic legends are so foreign to a student's experience that he cannot believe them to be true. Hence the English adjective 'mythical,' meaning 'incredible.'

This strikes me as quite an accurate description of what most scholars who study myth think they are doing and also of their fundamental attitude towards their subject matter - i.e. that myths are 'incredible' fictions composed in the ancient world either "to answer the sort of awkward questions that children ask" or "to justify an existing social system and account for traditional rites and customs." In consequence, most published analyses of myth all the way back to Sir James Frazer tend to focus on its social, economic and psychological functions. There have been a very few notable exceptions, but as a rule those foolish enough to suggest that myths might in any way provide us with factual historical data have been ridiculed, abused and in some cases effectively excommunicated by their peers.

— Graham Hancock, Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization

I was talking to my colleague about how Graham Hancock has such a warped view of archaeologists in general. We're not Big Pharma, we're Pixar Theorists about pots, rocks and bones.

Like, there are so many respected and published archaeologists with totally wacky theories because they engage with the process in good faith. This isn't some big chess game, we're playing uno with pokemon, yugioh and playing cards. He's coming in with stolen chess pieces and warhammer minis and wondering why people don't take him seriously and getting pissy over it

Scholars and journalists have pointed out that Hancock’s ideas recycle the long since discredited conclusions drawn by American congressman Ignatius Donnelly in his book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, published in 1882.

Donnelly also believed in an advanced civilisation – Atlantis – that was wiped out by a flood over 10,000 years ago. He claimed that the survivors taught Indigenous people the secrets of farming and monumental architecture.

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”.

Hancock’s mirroring of Donnelly’s race-focused “science” is seen more explicitly in his essay, Mysterious Strangers: New Findings About the First Americans. Like Donnelly, Hancock finds depictions of “caucasoids” and “negroids” in Indigenous American art and (often mistranslated) mythology, even drawing attention to some of the exact same sculptures as Donnelly.

This sort of “race science” is outdated and long since debunked, especially given the strong links between Atlantis and Aryans proposed by several Nazi “archaeologists”.

Apparently there is new documentary on Netflix which is uncritically presenting wild, anti-academic theories about prehistorical peoples and societies in an attempt to prove the existence of Atlantis and explain how "simple" nomadic people could've possibly built large monuments and develop agriculture (Not aliens this time, now the theory is that there was an ancient industrialized civilization that passed on it's knowledge before going extinct during the last ice age, which there is inexplicably 0 trace of and that "archaeologists refuse to investigate" etc etc) The show even goes so far as to give a platform to an author with Extremely Questionable, Nazi-adjacent ideas about the origins of humanity??? (Idk that they platform these ideas of his or just bring him on to talk about atlantis specifically but uh...)

Anyway, while I don't think a significant number of people would actually fall for this (maybe I'm being optimistic) Here's a neat video debunking the whole series, and I recommend this channel to anyone with even a passive interest in pre-history and anthropology as he covers a lot of really interesting topics backed with proper research and evidence:

(this video is 2 hours long but most of his content is about 20 minutes in length!)

Duuuude, I watched that new Graham Hancock Netflix show, and half of this crybaby’s show is just him going “waaah waah, scientists were mean to me for just making stuff up about their entire field of study!! Waaaahh, how could they label me a “pseudo-scientist,” I’m not a scientist, I’m not mean like them!!”

This shit’s really pathetic.

On the topic of Graham Hancock and Ancient Apocalypse...

Long post!

I do not understand how so many people are willing to dismiss the ideas of Graham Hancock’s because he call’s out modern archeology academias & Joe Rogan was sprinkled in the Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse

When we think about the oldest religion being Hinduism and they’re advanced ancient knowledge on the age of the universe and very specific cycles they uncovered were exceptionally precise - how is it we only now discovered they’re calculations true and still call ancient people simple/ uncivilized humans.

When we know the importance of astronomy to ancient human’s. How people navigated the seas using the stars as maps, how civilizations took astronomy seriously, how often they studied them, it’s not a coincidence so many cultures studied the stars and have standing evidence preserved of the same studies - why is archeology so quick to dismiss astronomy when viewing ancient sites?

When we know mythology, lore, and the power of story telling. We know the influence these stories carry for thousands of years passed on to this day. Modern day academia will not listen to the people of the land. Story telling becomes extremely skewed or forgotten due to unimportance.(I know Graham Hancock got some of these stories grossly inaccurate, he’s not a savior)

Graham Hancock only offers suggestion and a different view on the massive evidence of a missing time period we choose not to acknowledge. He’s not saying he’s 100% right, even the stories he reiterates are grossly simplified to match some of his ideologies (he’s not the only one to do that). He’s offering an open minded story of something that could have been very real. There’s too much evidence in our modern world to try to dismiss any discovery we do not yet understand.

If we do not fully understand something we cannot just keep dismissing ideas. That doesn’t do anything good. It doesn’t preserve anything. It doesn’t progress us to keep it in a box.

Paleontology proves to us, with every new discovery, that our original idea on dinosaurs were wrong! Because that’s what science is - it’s expanding the view of the world.

We know the historical discoveries/inventions/ideas, made by minorities, have been taken from them and skewed/killed/buried/paid off - over time to shine light on terrible people. This story is not uncommon to humanity.

The day people of the world realize that we know nothing of the world will be the day that humanity expands. If humanity only decides to go with “what we know” that’s a limited box. Archeologist, scientist, historians, medical, astronomers - they have ALL been wrong before. It’s is so crazy to believe we are at “the pinnacle” of all modern knowledge. WE KNOW NOTHING.

New article discoveries about ancient humans come out everyday. A more recent one I read was about a very prehistoric skeleton that showed evidence of a very modern surgical amputation practice that was thought to not have existed in that time period and if it was the likelihood of survival was remarkable. On top of this discovery they noted that this amputation was eariler in this human’s life (childhood) and the human survived his full life time with this amputation, meaning there was disabled assistance - which was thought to have not been a common behavior with ancient humans.

The reason I bring up this article is because we truly do not know anything about our prehistory and it’s a progressive attitude to consider humanity has been far more advance than we give credit to. There is a reason to put time and effort into the idea that there was a advanced anxiety civilization. It’s only now “crazy” to observe and talk against things that do not add up and call them conspiracies. In history some conspiracies are/were proven right, it just needed more investigation.

There's a war on consciousness in our society. And if we as adults are not allowed to make sovereign decisions about what to experience with our own consciousness while doing no harm to others, including the decision to use responsibly the ancient and sacred visionary plants, then we cannot claim to be free in any way

-Graham Hancock

.

Fundamental Objections to Graham Hancock

I noticed Graham Hancock was on Joe Rogan again. Although I haven't listened to the podcast yet I have a basic idea of what was probably discussed based on what Graham Hancock believes. So I will put it out there that although I think Graham is a nice guy, at least until you start picking apart his ideas then he accuses you of making personal attacks and being part of some conspiracy, I have some fundamental objections to his theories.

Now I could do a big write up critiquing his theories, but fortunately Stefan Milo did a video on it a while back that 100% lines up with my thoughts.