Ancient Apocalypse reviewed
scottlocklin.wordpress.com
scottlocklin.wordpress.com
History has proven one thing: Science doesn't just get to win by being Science. Do you know how much I'd love to watch a Netflix (or Youtube!) series that point-by-point disproves or provides more reasonable explanations for the phenomena Graham proposes, filmed in a similar awesome style? Where is it?
Every field of science needs a Neil DeGrasse Tyson, or Bill Nye, or Carl Sagan. You need people who level with non-academics; who make the science fun, who know how to communicate, who are willing to admit when we don't know something but here's how we're trying to change that, and here's why pattern-matching One Grand Explanation into the holes is usually the wrong answer, who genuinely take the science and show, hey, those fantastical conspiracy theories are cool, but reality is WAY cooler, and here's why.
Why would any scientist have to descend into the mud to argue? Just let time run his course and wait for Graham to run our of ideas, people will forget about him.
There is no monolithic 'science'. Science is a big open debate fueled by verifiable evidence. Scientists hostility to speculation and hand waving is too often pointed to as evidence of arrogance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_principle
Also see how https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener have been ridiculed at the time.
Or washing the hands as suggested by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
But an outsider showing up and saying "academia is lying to you" and making a show aimed at a popular audience is... just not going to be the place where paradigm shifts come from.
https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/marchapril-2008/out...
https://www.medicaldaily.com/mad-scientist-6-scientists-who-...
https://bigthink.com/articles/a-brief-history-of-outsider-sc...
And much longer: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-revolutions/
Nowadays there are other means of doing 'citizen science', enabled by more, cheaper, and faster mobility, similar for access to information, and new technologies like LIDAR, drones, and much more.
In turn enabling the discovery of patterns which do not fit into the common wisdom.
What is so hard about understanding that?
Edit: Also 'institutional blindness', or if that's not a thing in english, the german 'Betriebsblind(heit)', meaning to be blind to things, because too far out to be recognizable, diverging too much from the established ways of doing things, and so on...
The only modern example from your second link is a case where a doctor performed a very interesting experiment to demonstrate their thesis, it successfully changed the expert consensus, and he was awarded the highest possible prize from the academic community two decades later. Not exactly a "ivory tower academics conspire to hold knowledge back" situation. The sole thing that makes this story so interesting is that he conducted the experiment on himself.
The first link is asking for amateurs to work with academics. Again, extremely different than "academia holding back progress." Academia is explicitly supporting outsider ideas in this case!
The third link is five paragraphs long and again does not discuss anything remotely modern. There's whole books about the history of science! Even specifically about scientific revolutions! And they tend to be written, gasp, by academics (that's who writes the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy)!
Absolutely none of this is meaningful evidence that the academic community is behaving in an unacceptable way to Hancock.
You don't get to point to people doing the latter and saying it taints the work of people doing the former. It makes no sense.
You should never believe anything or anyone who cannot back their claims with hard evidence, no matter which titles or traditions they hide behind.
98% of archeologists agree with whoever is funding them. The remaining 2% are shunned on social media.
— somebody on the internet
Is it really the position of mainstream archaeology that something like Gobekli Tepe was built by nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes who hadn't even invented the wheel? Some of the pillars weigh 22,000 lbs. There are intricate statues carved by people who supposedly didn't have metalworking or any metal tools. The entire thing is part of an even larger complex that has yet to be excavated and it was all planned out and coordinated by people who hadn't even invented writing or math. How plausible is this?
10 years ago, when these discoveries were much newer, mainstream archaeologists were still largely hung up on the idea that these ridiculous massive stone temples must somehow have been built by primitive hunter-gatherers. These days, it seems as though those attitudes have shifted, and that things like Gobekli Tepe call into question if we really have the right picture regarding the timeline of human development at all. It seems increasingly possible - even in mainstream archaeology - that humans 13000 years ago may simply have been further ahead than we thought.
One side effect of this paradigm shift is that people like Graham Hancock get to claim they were right all along. OK! Of course it this doesn't mean everything else he has ever claimed is right, but as far as I care, he can milk the "him vs the establishment" angle all he wants. He has a valid complaint - but more importantly, what institution is supposed to be able "debunk" him at a time when legitimate new discoveries are currently upending everything we thought we knew? You need to figure out what is actually going on first before you can hope to be Real Scientists "debunking" anything. Until you do, the notion that perhaps Gobekli Tepe was really built by people with a comparatively advanced level of civilizational development, rather than primitive hunter-gatherer cavemen, seems as decent a hypothesis to entertain as anything else. And if I were a betting man, I'd bet this really is the right hypothesis, in my view!
Metal tools would have been helpful but aren’t needed. We have many examples of actual stone tools used to shape similar objects. Ex: https://www.archaeology.org/news/6891-180813-easter-island-t...
Suggesting that hunter gathers can get together and do large works together is perfectly reasonable. Some Native Americans on the east coast did massive scale forestry without setting down in one place. This effort was rewarded because they would cycle through areas repeatedly. It wasn’t agriculture but something of an in between activity and was viable as other nearby cultures did practice farming.
Hunter gathering is migratory because they use up local resources faster than they replenish. But the rate this happens depends on natural abundance. It’s similar to why Texas cattle farmers need a lot more land to support a herd than east coast farmers assuming neither are supplementing their diets with feed.
This is part of the problem. It's no-one's job to entertain you. As Mr DeGrasse Tyson has said, and I paraphrase the good thing about science is, it doesn't care about your opinions. Collecting and reasoning about evidence is hard enough. Don't ask serious professionals to prove the validity of their work by making flashy videos about it. It's ignorant and insulting.
The cool work only happens if industry pays when there’s a profit to be had, or when society as a whole pays because it inspires and seems culturally valuable. Someone has to present that case for sponsorship.
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/ancient-apocalypse...
(I think he's probably not right, but following all these interesting archeological sites is enjoyable).
Anyways, most interesting thing, and more relevant to me because relative 'near' to me, was something found and excavated on a scottish island near the shoreline.
Like a cabin/hut made out of stone, but absolutely Out-of-context because way too old for that level of sophistication of the way of building, and also the rest of artefacts found there. Unfortunately I can't find it anymore, because I can't remember those strange names of the Orkney Islands, or the Hebrides. (Where this was, way up north-east from the tip of Scotland)
At the time (about 10 years ago now?) I came across it over some branch of the Royal Society, which made it into a virtual museum, excellent web design btw. Spent about 4 hours there, and some more the following days. Crosschecked with other events of the time in that area, like Doggerland, Storegga slide, and so on.
The virtual museum explained how they dug it out, how they prepared and reconstructed some artefacts, documented every step photographically, even with *.raw pictures if you wanted to, but without slowing the site down. All very snappy. So called 'experimental archeology'.
IIRC the strangest thing was that the building seemed like it has been 'thrown down' there, because a few meters away the ground was different, normal. And it lacked a roof, that was gone, and not found, not even parts of it, like it had been sheered away, with some parts of the building, slightly diagonally from its top. And some materials of the artefacts seemed to come from far away, agean sea, near east, I think.
Anyways, according to C14 dating, and other measurements I can't remember anymore, it must have been built 200 to 400 years after the glacier there melted away.
At the time I thought just wow, why isn't this in the mainstream media at all? This is sensational! Tried to find it again several times, some years later, to point others to it, but can't find it anymore. GRR!
It stood on a slope, and the walls were cut into it up to a height of maybe 1.50 meters on the sides. Looking rather cozy, all in all. And a larger fireplace outside. And nothing else! Like that place had been cut out, somewhere else, and came to rest there.
But thanks for asking :-)
That's the diffuculty I remember for finding this place again. England, Ireland, Scotland and the many islands in the Orkneys and Shetlands are full of the stuff!
Looking at maps now, ISTR it was on a single small Island, like Ham, with an almost conical mountain in the middle. And Hebrides was a mistake, that is west of Scotland. Either Orkneys, or Shetlands.
I tried to imagine how that must have looked at the time, depending on the weather, maybe poking out of the mist, like something out of Lord of the Rings, or similar. Some Druid, on the edge of Doggerland in his cabin...
What is the author referring to? It seems like the author might be full of shit himself.
“Archaeology is a wonderful subject, but it has an ideology, and it is presently mostly the kind of thing made to appeal to “Head Girl” IFLS types who memorized all the “correct” answers. Those sorts of people are always a squalid clerisy, and they almost never figure anything new out.”
Yeah, I’m inclined to agree with your last point.
Egypt for example only had non destructive flood myths yet they get lumped into the every culture has a flood myth trope. It’s true only in the way basically every culture also has a myth involving rain, dirt, trees, wild animals, death etc. The content of these myths generally have little in common beyond similarly broad categories outside of cultures in some form of contact with each other.
It simply wasn’t killing people the way floods in many areas do.
I'll make sure to add this one to my watch list.