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Graham Hancock (General / Compendium Thread On His Work)

Prescient to this discussion. News of a large meteor recently exploding above the Bering sea.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robina...res-everything-you-need-to-know/#249a72241911

The object was moving at 115,2000 kilometres per hour (71,600 miles per hour) and was obliterated at a height of 26 kilometres (16 miles). This explosion unleashed the equivalent of 173 kilotons of TNT.
This was the third-largest meteor event in modern times, second to Chelyabinsk and the mighty 1908 Tunguska event, the latter of which flattened tens of millions of Siberian trees over an area you could fit two-and-a-half New York Cities inside.
 
Jason Colavito casts a jaundiced eye on Hancock's 3 minutes.

The Science Channel bumped the next episode of America’s Lost Vikings by a week, perhaps because last week’s episode failed to register in the top 150 cable shows airing last Sunday, so in the meantime, I thought we should take a look at the book trailer that St. Martin’s Press has released for Graham Hancock’s America Before. The trailer is narrated by Hancock himself and offers a series of false and misleading statements designed to create the impression that scientific evidence supports his assertion that a lost civilization was destroyed by a comet that hit North America at the end of the last Ice Age, a notion made famous by Ignatius Donnelly in his Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel.


“Recent scientific discoveries have provided strong evidence that North America was peopled at least 130,000 years ago.”

In a word, no. Hancock refers to the 2017 paper in Nature by Steven R. Holden et al. alleging that mastodon bones found near San Diego show evidence of having been butchered by a hominin species. This paper is not “strong” evidence of a human presence in the Americas at such an early date for a number of reasons. First, the paper is highly controversial and has been criticized by experts in the field because the authors did not categorically exclude natural explanations or the results of disturbances to the site over time. Even supporters of the study conceded that the evidence was “equivocal” rather than convincing. But were we to accept the evidence at face value, it still doesn’t provide evidence of anatomically modern humans in the Americas (or Denisovans, for that matter) but rather for some species that used tools. While human species are the only ones known to have done so, the presence of tools doesn’t necessarily imply the presence of a specific species of human.

“There are powerful connections between the spiritual beliefs of the mound builder cultures of America’s Mississippi Valley and the spiritual beliefs of the Ancient Egyptians.”

In a word, no. Hancock suggests that the presence of pyramid-shaped structures connected to astronomical alignments of potentially astrological significance implies deep connection. On screen, he even uses images of birds in the art of both cultures to imply a similarity, as though birds were somehow unusual or rare. (The Holy Dove would disagree.) “How do we explain these connections?” he asks. Hancock recognizes that the American mound builders lived thousands of miles and in most cases thousands of years after the Old Kingdom of Egypt built the pyramids, so he concludes that America’s many different mound-building cultures shared a legacy of knowledge with Egypt descended from an Atlantis-like original, a claim made famous by Ignatius Donnelly in Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. The parallels, which have been part of alternative views of American prehistory since the colonial era, are largely superficial. Before the use of steel-frame construction, pyramid-shaped structures, for example, were the only way to build tall buildings and keep them stable and standing. Where there are seemingly more specific similarities, such as the use of astronomical alignments in architecture, this requires no master plan from Atlantis. The stars are freely available to everyone, and people everywhere have always looked up at the night sky in awe. Indeed, the fact that cultures around the world recognized different constellations and recorded heavenly cycles with different systems testifies to the emergence of astronomy independently in different areas. ...

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/analyzing-the-book-trailer-for-graham-hancocks-america-before
 
But were we to accept the evidence at face value, it still doesn’t provide evidence of anatomically modern humans in the Americas (or Denisovans, for that matter) but rather for some species that used tools. While human species are the only ones known to have done so, the presence of tools doesn’t necessarily imply the presence of a specific species of human.

Huh ?
 
But were we to accept the evidence at face value, it still doesn’t provide evidence of anatomically modern humans in the Americas (or Denisovans, for that matter) but rather for some species that used tools. While human species are the only ones known to have done so, the presence of tools doesn’t necessarily imply the presence of a specific species of human.

Huh ?

You could ask JC for clarification at: http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/analyzing-the-book-trailer-for-graham-hancocks-america-before

There are already eight comments on the article.
 
JC hasn’t read the book yet has he.

Hancock : In the turmoil, an advanced civilization, hitherto the stuff of myth and legend, was lost to history … until now.”
JC: There is no evidence that this civilization ever existed. No buildings, objects, or graves associated with it have ever been found. While it’s true that many cultures had myths about vanished cities, it’s also interesting to note that in ancient times, these were almost universally imagined as being pretty much the same as the civilizations of those writing about them.

I think Hancock might mention Gobekli Tepi and others in his book. That’s the point of his book.
 
JC hasn’t read the book yet has he.

Hancock : In the turmoil, an advanced civilization, hitherto the stuff of myth and legend, was lost to history … until now.”
JC: There is no evidence that this civilization ever existed. No buildings, objects, or graves associated with it have ever been found. While it’s true that many cultures had myths about vanished cities, it’s also interesting to note that in ancient times, these were almost universally imagined as being pretty much the same as the civilizations of those writing about them.

I think Hancock might mention Gobekli Tepi and others in his book. That’s the point of his book.

I have no idea as to what JC has read but he is responding to the youtube clip for Hancock's forthcoming book.

If you go to the link I supplied then you could raise those very points with him.
 
And as for the comments.
Hancock posits NEW theory to possibly explain NEWLY discovered ‘anomalous’ archeology.

Academic commenter acts incredulous and points to stack of books and papers they read 30 years ago to get PHD

“Well there’s nothing about that in those so it can’t possibly be correct”

edited to add ‘NEWLY discovered’
 
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And as for the comments.
Hancock posits NEW theory to possibly explain ‘anomalous’ archeology.

Academic commenter acts incredulous and points to stack of books and papers they read 30 years ago to get PHD

“Well there’s nothing about that in those so it can’t possibly be correct”

Well you now have a chance to dispute with them.
 
Colavito lays into Hancock once again.

Today, Graham Hancock’s new book America Before is officially published in the United Kingdom.

I am currently reading the book, and my review will be published by Skeptic on the book’s U.S. publication date of April 23. While I can’t share my review before Skeptic releases it, I can share with you some of what Hancock wrote in America Before. Today I’d like to highlight the major theme of America Before, which is Hancock’s deep sense of aggrievement against archaeologists. His upset and outrage at the workings of archaeology permeates nearly every chapter, at times distracting from the story he’s trying to tell. Nothing, I think, better sums up Hancock’s view of how he thinks science works than his prescription for how he would do real archaeology:

When, I wonder, will archaeologists take to heart the old dictum that absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence, and learn the lessons that their own profession has repeatedly taught—namely that the next turn of the excavator’s spade can change everything? So little of the surface area of our planet has been subjected to any kind of archaeological investigation at all that it would be more logical to regard every major conclusion reached by this discipline as provisional—particularly when we are dealing with a period as remote, as tumultuous, and as little understood as the Ice Age. (p. 153, boldface in original)
In another place, Hancock offers praise for genetics by denigrating archaeology: “In other words, genetics, unlike archaeology, is a hard science where the pronouncements of experts are based on facts, measurements, and replicable experimentation rather than inferences or preconceived opinions,” he writes (p. 113). Later, he complains that standard archaeological methods of analysis, including seriation and the use of stylistic differences to identify cultural changes are invalid since we moderns use so many different styles, so why should we not expect ancient people to have made objects according to their fancy?

With characteristic spleen, Hancock has made a foundational error between the methodology of archaeology, where indeed conclusions are provisional, and the kinds of declarative stories that appear in introductory textbooks, before students have learned about the sources and methods used to create narratives. Throughout the book, Hancock devotes an unwieldy amount of space to complaining about what he sees as dogma and a hidebound resistance to change in archaeology. Since he is continuing to argue for claims he made nearly 25 years ago in Fingerprints of the Gods, there are layers of irony here. ...

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/in-america-before-graham-hancock-attacks-archaeology
 
Given the general discussion on this Thread I think the following piece fits in here.

Believe in Atlantis? These archaeologists want to win you back to science
By Lizzie Wade Apr. 9, 2019 , 5:15 PM

In February, the popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience referred to an idea made famous by some books and TV shows: that an image of the Mayan King K’inich Janaab’ Pakal, carved onto the lid of his sarcophagus when he died in 683 C.E., shows him taking off in a spaceship. Host Rogan was skeptical of the notion, which has been used to argue that extraterrestrial visitors seeded sophisticated ancient societies like the Maya. He asked what mainstream archaeologists made of it.

For David Anderson, that request was a call to action. Anderson, an archaeologist at Radford University in Virginia, jumped on Twitter: “Dear @joerogan, speaking as a ‘mainstream’ archaeologist … it depicts [Pakal] falling into the underworld at the moment of his death.” The rocket-propelling “fire” below Pakal is a personification of the underworld, and the “spaceship” is a world tree, a common feature in Mayan art. Rogan retweeted Anderson’s thread, bringing him more than 1000 likes and many grateful comments—plus some angry ones.

Pakal’s supposed seat in a spaceship is just one example of what Anderson and others call “pseudoarchaeology,” which ignores the cultural context of ancient artifacts and uses them to support predetermined ideas, rather than test hypotheses, about the past. Common beliefs include that aliens helped build the Egyptian and Mayan pyramids, that refugees escaping Atlantis brought technology to cultures around the world, and that European immigrants were the original inhabitants of North America.

These outlandish beliefs have been circulating for decades, but archaeologists like Anderson are now mobilizing to counter them. They are taking to Twitter, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, and newspapers to debunk false claims and explain real archaeological methods, and they plan to compare notes this week during a symposium at the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) meeting here. “My profession … needs to do a better job of speaking out,” Anderson says. ...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...ly_2019-04-09&et_rid=394299689&et_cid=2759149
 
Hancock posits NEW theory to possibly explain NEWLY discovered ‘anomalous’ archeology.

Academic commenter acts incredulous and points to stack of books and papers they read 30 years ago to get PHD

“Well there’s nothing about that in those so it can’t possibly be correct”

Do you have an example of this happening? It can't be anyone currently working in the field - never get away with being out of date!
 
Sound like a good SF/Fantasy book


Graham Hancock Describes the Telekinetic Powers of His Lost Civilization
4/10/2019


I wasn’t going to say anything about the ending to Graham Hancock’s America Before until the book is released here in the United States on April 23, but Skeptic magazine publisher Michael Shermer spilled the beans on Twitter and shared Hancock’s speculative description of the lost civilization. So now that it’s in the open, I feel like we should talk a little about how Hancock views the imaginary lost civilization that he believes occupied North America down to a 21-year period surrounding the year 10,803 BCE. Frankly, it’s a bit of a doozy.

According to chapter 30, Hancock believes that the lost civilization possessed the following characteristics:

  • It had global maritime capabilities, including seafaring and longitude calculation.
  • It had technological and infrastructure development equal to that of Western Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
  • It had “transcended” the need for physical manipulation of building materials and instead “learned to manipulate matter and energy by deploying powers of consciousness” unknown to Western science today.
  • It employed telepathy, telekinesis, remote viewing, and psychic healing.
  • Its population was Native American.
  • It “adopted” the Clovis people and the inhabitants of the Amazon rainforest as most favored nations and bestowed specific technological and intellectual gifts on them.

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/g...e-telekinetic-powers-of-his-lost-civilization
 
Not to get into the 'debate' over Hancock's recent ideas about America and ancient peoples....(btw, I have read several of his early books/tomes years ago..)but it seems to me that he has a nice cottage industry going in selling these ideas that our ancient histories are wrong and that mankind is much more ancient...either naturally (or the old alien connection). Kind of a modern day version of Von Daniken.
I suspect that while he may actually believe some of what he peddles , he knows it's a money maker in books and lectures.
I hope that doesn't sound too cynical.....I did enjoy reading several of his books in the past.
 
Not to get into the 'debate' over Hancock's recent ideas about America and ancient peoples....(btw, I have read several of his early books/tomes years ago..)but it seems to me that he has a nice cottage industry going in selling these ideas that our ancient histories are wrong and that mankind is much more ancient...either naturally (or the old alien connection). Kind of a modern day version of Von Daniken.
I suspect that while he may actually believe some of what he peddles , he knows it's a money maker in books and lectures.
I hope that doesn't sound too cynical.....I did enjoy reading several of his books in the past.
A scientist he's not. In agreement with that last sentence after reviewing his material. What gets me is he clouds the issue of moving back the clock for actual scientist like Klaus Schmidt at Göbekli Tepe and Robert Schoch at the Sphinx to name a few.
 
A scientist he's not. In agreement with that last sentence after reviewing his material. What gets me is he clouds the issue of moving back the clock for actual scientist like Klaus Schmidt at Göbekli Tepe and Robert Schoch at the Sphinx to name a few.
Been a while since I read much ancient archaeology material....what is the mainstream consensus on dating Gobekli and The Sphinx?
And what do the others want to push it back to? And do they have any science as in carbon dating to prove it, or is it just based on their ideas..?
 
Dr. Schoch uses mainly geological techniques for his dating of the Sphinx vs other Egyptian structures of antiquity i.e.: the pyramids - Karnak, which appear to have been built at a much later period. The mainstream camp is headed by Dr. Zahi Hawass who rejects newer finding out of hand. He and others traditionalist refuse to consider anything that doesn't fall in line with previously established Egyptology.
https://www.dailygrail.com/2018/06/...talks-to-joe-rogan-about-a-lost-civilization/

Dr. Klaus has evidence using C14 dating, as well as architectural, urban design, urban planning, demography and art evidence. Some claim that he pursues a false archaeology. An interesting read follow concerning theories for the age of the Göbekli Tepe complex.
https://mariobuildreps.com/gobekli-tepe-true-age/

The subject is a bit hard to discern since some very valid science has strong evidences which moves back the clock on civilization - proto-civilizations to ~ 10000 BC or earlier. As with many sciences the truth is obscured by hucksters with non-scientific claims and die hard traditionalist who refuse too accept review anything which rocks the boat.
 
hischn.jpg
 
Not to get into the 'debate' over Hancock's recent ideas about America and ancient peoples....(btw, I have read several of his early books/tomes years ago..)but it seems to me that he has a nice cottage industry going in selling these ideas that our ancient histories are wrong and that mankind is much more ancient...either naturally (or the old alien connection). Kind of a modern day version of Von Daniken.
I suspect that while he may actually believe some of what he peddles , he knows it's a money maker in books and lectures.
I hope that doesn't sound too cynical.....I did enjoy reading several of his books in the past.

I would agree with you there, Fingerprints of the gods back in 1995 was an excellent book and really opened my eyes to alternative possibilities for ancient history, unlike Von Danniken who I just viewed as entertainment.

There are videos of some of GH's lectures on youtube which are well worth a look and also 4 or 5 episodes of a TV series he made when he was a lot younger.

All things considered GH is one of the more credible writers / researchers in the "everything you know about ancient history wrong" space imo.

EB
 
I would agree with you there, Fingerprints of the gods back in 1995 was an excellent book and really opened my eyes to alternative possibilities for ancient history, unlike Von Danniken who I just viewed as entertainment.

There are videos of some of GH's lectures on youtube which are well worth a look and also 4 or 5 episodes of a TV series he made when he was a lot younger.

All things considered GH is one of the more credible writers / researchers in the "everything you know about ancient history wrong" space imo.

EB
I did enjoy his first 2 or 3 books ....and I have sen him talk on a few t v shows some years ago.
I think there's nothing wrong with questioning the current ideas on mainstream human origins and civilizations but when one starts making blanket claims with out any hard evidence it's time to say wait a minute. It is somewhat unfortunate that mainstream science doesn't at least look at these ideas before dismissing them out of hand....unless they already have.
 
At last: the review

American Atlantis
BY JASON COLAVITO

In 1552, the historian Francisco López de Gómara became one of the first to suggest that the American continents were in fact Atlantis. America was, he said, greater than Africa and Asia combined, and the peoples of Mexico even called water “atl,” the very name of Atlantis, in memory of the sunken capital of ancient times. Nearly five centuries later, the new book America Before opens with its author, Graham Hancock, telling readers that after decades of ignoring the “obvious clue” of Atlantis because of the stigma attached to Atlantis research, he had come to believe that Atlantis “does sound a lot like America” (xiv).



America Before is the story of Hancock’s search for proof that Atlantis—or a civilization so similar as to be identical in all but name—flourished in the Americas prior to the end of the last Ice Age. His new book is handsomely produced by St. Martin’s in the United States and Coronet in the U.K., well written and copiously illustrated.

In his early books on ancient mysteries, such as The Sign and the Seal(1992) and Fingerprints of the Gods (1995), Hancock wove a compelling narrative from sparse facts and heady speculation. These books were written as adventures in which Hancock cast himself in the role of a tweedier Indiana Jones, traveling the world in search of evidence of the impossible. Regardless of the conclusions he drew, the personal narrative of discovery created a compelling through-line that made these books engaging even for those who disagreed with the author’s ideas.

https://www.skeptic.com/reading_roo...FX7I7-No9DVLzT9ritiItR6NEnlLENTzn75f5Cd80wH8w
 
Hancock strikes back!


Graham Hancock Reacts to SAA Archaeological Record Articles on "America Before"

In his rebuttal, Hancock is notably more concerned with threats to his book sales than to the content of the criticisms against him, devoting significant space complaining about Carl Feagans’s negative review of America Before on Amazon than to any specific criticism of his work. He is upset that “319 visitors have upvoted Feagans’ hostile review,” making it the top review for the book despite “79 per cent” of reviewers giving the book five-stars.

Having been involved with this project since the beginning, I can tell you that Hancock is wrong to think that the special section is a panicked response, a “sure sign that the archaeological establishment feels the ground moving under its feet.” Instead, it exists almost entirely because most archaeologists are not aware of or actively engaged with popular “alternative” descriptions of the past, and the section was intended to raise awareness of the growing gulf between academic and popular understandings of the past. I didn’t choose the topic of my article; John Hoopes asked me to write on the long, sordid history of the Mound Builder myth in the frame of America Before, tying my article to my upcoming book, The Mound Builder Myth. I also didn’t choose the term “pseudoaracheology,” and it is debatable how to define the difference between “pseudoarchaeology,” “alternative archaeology,” and whatever popular quasi-mystical reimagining of the past we find in some of Hancock’s more spiritual works.

Instead, let me present what Hancock says about me:

Meanwhile blogger Jason Colavito, who also contributes an article to the issue, strives mightily to accuse me of condoning white nationalist racism while being obliged to admit that: “Hancock is careful to attribute his lost civilization to a Native American origin.

I guess Hancock missed the important sentence that followed: “By building on a scaffolding of discredited nineteenth-century views like those I examine in my book, Hancock serves to perpetuate Victorian assumptions about the limits of Native potential, despite his own stated respect for indigenous peoples the world over.” In other words, I didn’t accuse him of condoning white nationalist racism. Instead, he is like my college classmate, ignorantly test-driving racism without fully understanding the origins of the claims he puts on offer. Remember, in Fingerprints of the Gods Hancock explicitly said he wanted to “pay tribute to Ignatius Donnelly,” who declared Atlantis the homeland of the white race, and twelve times described his lost civilization as belonging to “white” people. By America Before he had changed his tune and made them Native American, but that didn’t really change the history of the myths that he has upcycled into an upscale Pleistocene analog for globalization and climate change. ...

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/g...haeological-record-articles-on-america-before
 
Once again Colavito is not impressed by Hancock's half hour.

This week, Graham Hancock celebrated a recent scientific article announcing that a LiDAR survey demonstrated that two previously known archaeological sites in the Bolivian Amazon were larger than previously known, with extensive pyramid mounds around a ceremonial center. Archaeologists have known for decades that the western Amazon had been home to a large population before the Spanish arrival, and articles about the mounds of these collapsed cultures have appeared at regular intervals since 2000. Hancock describes the mounds as “the remnants of a truly monumental civilization.” However, he is not so thrilled with the dating of the sites to 500-1400 CE and implies that some previous culture must have had still greater civilization in the deeper past: “such a sophisticated civilization – no lesser word will do — does not simply spring up out of nowhere. There must be a background to it, either beneath the earliest platform buildings or in the as-yet unexcavated sites that the LiDAR survey has pinpointed in the surrounding jungle.” We don’t know where this particular culture came from, whether it emerged indigenously or from nearby highlands. Nothing about this suggests a hypothetical Atlantis in 10,500 BCE influenced Amazonian mounds in 1000 CE.

Jason Colavito's Newsletter (email) • Vol. 20 • Issue 23 • June 5 2022 •
 
I've enjoyed some of Hancock's work. I find it interesting to wonder about ancient civilisations, and the suggestion that some ancient artwork depicts a guy in a spaceship doesn't seem much crazier than a dead guy going to the "underworld" in a "world tree". I mean, do we need to debunk everything? Can't there be SOME magic in the world?
 
I've enjoyed some of Hancock's work. I find it interesting to wonder about ancient civilisations, and the suggestion that some ancient artwork depicts a guy in a spaceship doesn't seem much crazier than a dead guy going to the "underworld" in a "world tree". I mean, do we need to debunk everything? Can't there be SOME magic in the world?
Yes, that's why we're here.
 
I've enjoyed some of Hancock's work. I find it interesting to wonder about ancient civilisations, and the suggestion that some ancient artwork depicts a guy in a spaceship doesn't seem much crazier than a dead guy going to the "underworld" in a "world tree". I mean, do we need to debunk everything? Can't there be SOME magic in the world?
Yes of course there can, indeed I would say there MUST be magic in the world. However stating that an ancient artwork depicts a dead king shooting off into the cosmos in a spaceship isn't magic, at best its a willful misunderstanding of the artwork and at worst a deliberate lie to force the said artwork into a discredited theory
 
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