Stars: Graham Hancock, Joe Rogan, Danny Hilman Natawidjaja
Netflix's new hit Ancient Apocalypse is a strange duck: a docu-series filmed in many beautiful and historic locations that advances a provocative thesis aimed furiously at a single academic discipline. The argument is essentially this: authorities studying human prehistory are ignoring, or covering up, the true foundation of the world as we know it today. And the consequences could be catastrophic.
Graham Hancock, the journalist hosting the series, returns again and again to his anger at this state of affairs and his status as an outsider to "conventional archaeology," his assessment of how terrible "conventional archaeology" is at the time. of accepting new theories, and his insistence that all this evidence exists, but that "mainstream archaeologists" simply won't look for it. His bitter disposition, I'm sure, explains some of the interest in this show. Hancock, a fascinating figure with an interesting past as a left-leaning foreign correspondent, has been brewing variations on this thinking for decades: humans, as he puts it in the docuseries, have "amnesia" about our past.
An "advanced" society that existed about 12,000 years ago died out when the climate changed dramatically in a period scientists call the Younger Dryas. Before disappearing completely, this civilization sent emissaries to all corners of the globe, spreading knowledge, including construction techniques that can be found in use at many ancient sites, and sparking the creation of mythologies that are eerily similar across the globe. It's important that we think about this story, Hancock adds, because we also face an impending cataclysm. it is a warning
Scientists, Hancock says, don't want to believe any of this because they don't like to think about mythology or astronomy, both of which he often uses to prove his points. Accepting this paradigm shift would also shake the foundations of his discipline. Hancock, the scientists say, does not understand how enthusiastically they would pounce on this evidence if it really existed, in an empirical and reproducible form.
One of the strangest aspects of Ancient Apocalypse is just how absent these unsavory lead archaeologists are from its runtime. Joe Rogan, who has had Hancock on his podcast several times, makes a few appearances, praising Hancock's free-thinking ways. The other talking heads are either pro-Hancock or edited to look that way. Skeptic magazine's Michael Shermer, who discussed Hancock on The Rogan Show in 2017, deserves a 20-second appearance in which he manages to deliver a single argument against Hancock's theory: "If this civilization existed, where did it exist?" are your garbage heaps, where are your houses, where are your stone or metal tools, where is the writing? That's it, then back to Hancock, the "just ask questions," the rancor.
John Hoopes, an archaeologist at the University of Kansas, is one of the leading detractors of archeology of Hancock's type of targets without naming them. Hoopes has often written about the history of alternative pseudoarchaeology and about Hancock himself; his Twitter account has been abuzz, for the past week, with conversations between academic archaeologists about the specific claims in Ancient Apocalypse.
I called him to ask what people who aren't up to speed on Hancock's work should know if they watch this show. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Graham Hancock is not and does not want to be seen as a scientist or a historian. He comes from a metaphysical place. He is inspired by western esotericism. For him, the meaning of much of this information is intuitive and confirmed to him through his personal revelations.
There is a TEDx presentation that he did in 2013, called "The War on Consciousness," in which he explained that he had been smoking cannabis daily for 25 years and eventually stopped using it because he had an experience with ayahuasca and discovered that it was a more more meaningful and revealing experience than your daily cannabis use. So if it seems that, watching the show, his perspective has been influenced by drugs, that's because it has.
It's important to understand that he comes from a very subjective place. It's sort of the opposite of what science strives to do. It comes from his personal conviction of what is reality and truth. The problem is that he often frames it in such a way that people think he is presenting something scientific when he is not. But once you realize that it has a metaphysical purpose, not a scientific one, it's easier to place it.
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