Dear Earth, apart from the many terrible things we have done historically, we, the British, are most recently sorry for David Icke, Andrew Wakefield and now Graham Hancock. We have tried to balance this out but one David Attenborough only goes so far.
I’m OK with this dickhead claiming the things he’s claim but he doesn’t have EVIDENCE just speculation.
That’s what’s frustrating
“Isn’t it a cool idea that we might have lost the details of an ancient human civilization?”
“Yes, absolutely, and we keep finding new evidence that behavioral modernity started earlier than thought, so it’d be awesome to find proof that-”
“THE PROOF CAME TO ME IN A DREAM (OF GETTING A NETFLIX SPECIAL)”
Fffffffffff… :(
This is the danger of celebrity endorsement. It will bring so much more attention to an unworthy ‘cause’, and so many fans will now absorb this information without critical thought. It is truly a situation where a well-intentioned person does not know enough to understand that this supposed expert is talking nonsense and the world at large slips that much further into disinformation.
At least it’s not Taylor Swift.
But I mean nothing Graham Hancock says is that damaging. He suggests that there really was an ancient Atlantis type civilization, which has been suggested by thousands of people including Plato. No one who listens to him talk is actually gonna be swayed against their beliefs one way or the other
Anyone else remember when Joe Rogan was a harmless comedian?
I remember when he was a fuckin’ gameshow host.
I was just talking about this the other day. Absolutely incredible.
The belief in the existence of a super-race (or whatever term Hancock uses) is dubious. While the idea on its own may seem harmless, it opens the door for racist idealogies. Everything has to be taken in context, and crackpot archeologists have been making this argument for ages in order to justify later arguments for eugenics.
I know it may appear that Hancock questioning the established historians and “big archeology” is above suspicion, but it is done in an unambiguously dishonest way. He refuses to acknowledge sound logical arguments put forth by multiple well-respected sources and hand waves things away as common sense. Essentially, he is frustrating because his arguments muddy the waters of logical discussions and introduce doubt in a community that certainly does not get paid enough for this shit.
He never talks about a super race
The survivors of the cataclysm that brought their advanced knowledge to the ancient peoples is the super race.
Right, cause super race is when people travel and share knowledge
Yes, if those people are technologically so advanced as to be indistinguishable from wizards. In Graham Hancocks mythology, these people brought the secrets of agriculture and advanced maths to indigenous peoples around the world. A lot of his evidence for this comes from ancient religious texts and artifacts. So, if these people are so advanced that they are worshiped by the natives I think it’s fair to say he is describing a super race.
technologically
Not only that, according to his lore they also had psionic powers and could make stuff levitate.
Wonder if they were friends with the lost civilization on Mars (yes, he also believes this)…
Sure techno wizards sound cool AF. Still don’t see how this is a super race when its just people who travel to other places after their civilization gets flushed. If we collapse and I move to south america am I a “super race” or did I just move a bit lol
Plato did not suggest ancient Atlantis existed. He was very clear that he was illustrating a hypothetical “great society” to discuss his views on effective and beneficent government.
When he discussed it sinking it was a divine punishment from the gods of Olympus because they had strayed from a righteous path. All of it is meant to be a parable.
I mean that’s our interpretation of a translation of something said thousands of years ago. But if they want to they can choose to believe what they want. IMO an ancient island sinking due to gods is no different than saying “high tech civ nuked itself out of existense” but with less context. I’m not saying this really happened, but its not like its impossible, just extraordinarily unlikely to be true.
I’m not sure if you’re arguing that it being fictional is an interpretation or that its demise from the ire of the Gods is an interpretation.
If it’s the former, you are incorrect. The single best primary source being his own protege and student Aristotle who also makes it clear the whole thing is didactic invention. (There are debates that some individual events within the story are inspired by actual events in Egypt and Athens, but its existence is never presented as fact. The entire idea that this was some historical account came mostly from a judge writing his own history books in the 19th century.)
This is also not debatable due to translation. It’s Plato. The best scholars of all time in both language and history have studied this, literally for centuries. There is not any serious or scholarly debate about his intentions with this story. And multiple, equally capable translations of Aristotle corroborate that.
If you’re talking about the destruction of Atlantis, it’s been too long for me to argue that specifically, but the idea that it was divine punishment is the prevailing view of that story.
Even if all the scholars think it wasn’t literal doesn’t mean he didn’t mean it literally, that could just be how we have been interpreting it
Plato wasn’t writing in some long-dead obscure language that we only have vague translations of, it was Greek. It’s not a matter of interpretation.
You can’t even intrepret my English correctly, how can we assume we know what was going through some dudes head several thousand years ago?? Also I’d like to see where Plato wrote “I made it all up about Atlantis” cause AFAIK we just assumed this is the case
It’s damaging because it adds doubt to any kind of scientific consensus.
“They” don’t want you to know that vaccines are dangerous.
“They” are only pushing chemo for big pharma.
“They” don’t want to admit that this was where ancient civilizations had some global empire.
It’s the same kind of attitude of “fantastical claim you can believe if you just dismiss all the evidence that you don’t like”
And that is very damaging because it further erodes understanding of the scientific method.
A slight distrust in government is healthy I think
Distrusting the government is not the same thing as believing baseless gibberish just because it disagrees with science that has been used to inform government decisions.
I’m out of the loop, who is the guy?
Keanu Reeves is an actor who has starred in a number of popular movies including Speed, The Matrix, and John Wick. He is revered in the online community for being a wholesome person who tends to do the better thing, or at least avoids being terrible.
So if he is actually supports the charlatan who made this series then that would be disappointing.
Ah! The old Lemmaroo!
Hold my Rufus, I’m going in.
We need a switcheroo community so there is something to dive into.
Reverse nepotism baby that wants to play archaeologist on Netflix. He’s also extremely paranoid that “big archaeology” (lmao) is out to get him because he cannot handle criticism from people that know what they’re talking about. Tldr weirdo on Netflix that thinks he’s a martyr.
Ha, now I wanna watch it. Might be fun if you treat it like it’s Cunk on Earth.
Damn minions of orthodoxy, I’ll keep my cells from getting bored and then what?
Such a strange episode
what is reverse nepotism?
One of his kids is a Netflix exec apparently.
When you have a famous kid, I’d guess, but I don’t know.
the show is fun to watch if you realize it’s just him tearing through the strawmen he set up for himself
Ancient Aliens is fun because the crazy people are so excited and engaged. They promote willful ignorance and antiscience stuff too, but at least we got Stargate out of the ancient astronaut malarky.
This guy is boring and smugly antiscience. When the show came out, before I knew who he was and without warching a preview, it seemed like it was going to be about ancient cultures that atalled because of climate change or something along those lines. Nope, took a hard left into stupid territory.
It is frustrating that these jerks ruin actual discussion about ancient cultures being older than we think. Especially when we keep finding older evidence of innovation or oceanic travel that double our estimates on the earliest examples. Like there had to be a significant period of human innovation prior to the oldest sites we know of with massive stone megaliths. The smaller pieces are just harder to find, or may not be recognizeable as intentionally carved!
I want to call him Don Quixote, but that almost feels like a compliment.
Don’t have a boat in this race, but banning him from otherwise open historical sites because they don’t like his ideas is not scientific, but more like the mediaeval Catholic church.
Science is full of bigoted thinking as any other discipline. If you don’t already know this, you have never met a scientist.
Having said all that, it is a silly idea, but I enjoy the incidental geology that he employs to illustrate his argument. Not that I buy into the argument itself.
My recent favorite is anthropology ignoring all evidence of women hunting because it didn’t fit social morals of the researchers. Even finding women buried with shields and weapons and people still making excuses.
That’s a good example. Another is from my country, Australia. The idea that the Aborigines were just nomad hunter gatherers was seriously upset by the discovered fish farming settlements in the north of the country as well as the remains of basic stone buildings. Settler farmers have been destroying the evidence of these artifacts for 150 years because they upset the politics of “peaceful European settlement”.
Who was ever turning to Keanu for scientific knowledge? Lost him? We never had him! Chill dude, entertaining actor, but absolutely wrong person for science.
Wow, Graham Hancock is still around?
Unfortunately.
Keanu must really believe in this stuff because we know he’s no good at pretending.
Fine by me. I enjoy a good hypothesis. And I enjoy getting academics all riled up over theory.
Lay on, MacDuff!
You’ll love Milo Rossi’s MiniMinuteman
Here’s his series on Hancock’s last “special”
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXtMIzD-Y-bMHRoGKM7yD2phvUV59_Cvb
And the shorts are a good quick “riled up session” about some of the stupid things people “postulate” online
Those meddling Google Debunkers!
I don’t see how getting more people interested in ancient history and geology is a bad thing. Part of the reason Graham has the wiggle room to make the claims that he makes is that the subject is relatively unstudied.
Obviously there is actual science taking place in the field and has been forever but funding for that kind of thing is notoriously difficult to come by compared to many other fields. Getting grants to study the distant past for essentially no reason other than curiosity is not a priority within an economic system that prioritizes profit over all else. The best way to break through that particular obstacle is getting more people to pay attention and ask questions. If we need a benign conspiracy theory about “big geology” hiding the truth from us to make that happen then where’s the harm in that? The vast majority of people prone to conspiratorial thinking are already farther down that rabbit hole than Hancock’s ideas will take them.
Additionally, actual scientists would do well to learn something from Graham about presentation. Despite what you may think of him, the way he talks about the subject resonates with people. People don’t want hear a regurgitation of facts in a research paper. Speculate a bit and get people excited about your future work. You don’t need to go to the extremes that he does but don’t refuse to branch out from what can be conclusively proven today either. Talk about your theories and what you’re hoping to find / learn just as much as you talk about the results of your research.
“What if every star was a human soul?” is not an interesting astronomy question to get people into astronomy. “Big Astronomy” not awarding grants to study that, is not a conspiracy. It’s due diligence.
Using a platform to say “What if [random speculation that has no basis and can’t be tested]” is not useful science outreach. It’s someone pretending to be science-y.
A person’s sole redeeming aspect being “being an engaging speaker” doesn’t make them a useful object lesson, it makes them yet another snake oil salesman. That’s not new or unique. That’s being a charlatan. Which is what people don’t like about Graham.
You’re ignoring the interesting questions he asks in favor of the easy to hand wave away stuff and that’s exactly what I’m talking about. To be clear, I’m not defending the things he says. I’m pointing out that his more outlandish theories gain more traction because the scientific community doesn’t lean into the softballs and use them as an opportunity to both teach people actual science and understand what different groups of people want to learn about.
Ignore the star / soul example and focus in on the possibility of an ancient and semi advanced civilization existing. That’s the part grabbing people’s attention. Talk about what that would change about our understanding of the past and what sort of evidence we would expect to find if it were true. Showcase people working in related fields and what they have found already. Propose other locations we could look for that evidence and discuss other topics we could study while looking for that evidence in those places. Engage the curiosity, don’t dismiss it. Anyone listening to Graham is likely uneducated in science but interested in it so use that as your jumping off point instead of judging those people for not being farther down the path.
- It’s not understudied.
- It causes us problems when we do try to educate people.
- We’d do better with funding to do these kinds of things. It’s very expensive to do it right.
I’m not one for Joe Rogan, but cannot recommend the interview with Handcock and Flint Dibble enough if you want to see how quickly his narratives fall apart. The real story is a lot cooler anyway.
