Graham Hancock
One of the most successful fringe writers of recent years, Graham Hancock is a leading light of a group of people who like to call themselves the ‘New Egyptologists’ to give a spurious sense of academic credibility. Others include his contemporary David Rohl, who has proposed a radical new chronology of Egyptian history to align it with the chronology of the Old Testament by reducing the dates of Egyptian kings. Hancock also tries to establish an alternative chronology, but it is one that pushes back some of Egypt’s most familiar monuments into a very distant past. Hancock’s body of work does not confine itself to Egypt; we see the usual suspects: Tiahuanaco, Mexican pyramids, early modern maps and so on – and we even see some new ones, such as flooded ‘cities’ in the Bay of Cambay, submerged ‘structures’ off the coast of Japan and even pyramids on Mars!
Among Hancock’s many complaints about orthodox Egyptologists and archaeologists is that they have consistently underestimated the scientific knowledge of ancient societies. Paradoxically, though, this persuades him that this knowledge was developed not by those societies already recognised by the archaeologists, but by an earlier civilisation not accepted by them. He claims to find evidence for his so-called ‘lost civilisation’ all over the world. The very vastness of his approach can make it difficult to deal with simply. A comprehensive analysis of his works would require a massive book, since it would need not only to refute his claims but also to present the comprehensive contextual evidence to show why his ideas cannot stand up.
Hi, genuinely interested in how archeology has dated the great pyramid. Far as I know, reliance is placed on the cartouche discovered in one of the internal chambers in late 1800s. But this article by archeologists seems to rely on flecks of wood and other datable material picked from the exterior of the pyramid. Which makes a huge assumption, that anything dropped there was dropped during the construction and not a thousand years later.
http://www.archaeology.org/9909/abstracts/pyramids.html
From what I understand of the page to which you’ve linked, the Great Pyramid wasn’t specifically targeted; instead, it looks like a programme of dating all the Old Kingdom pyramids. It was done not by using “flecks of wood and other datable material picked from the exterior” (your words) but on organic materials incorporated into mortars and plasters used within the structures. Contrary to what a lot of ‘alternative’ archaeologists assert, mortar was used in pyramid construction, although not between every block in the way that we use bricks and mortar. Flecks of carbonised wood, straw and so on can be extracted and dated.
I found the lost civilisations documentary very interresting and he provides some evidence of his own.
in my opinion he did nothing but state facts about astronomy, he didnt use carbon dating because it would make his story fail. he also states things like aliens and weird stuff like that, but he also says that the story doesnt fit for him.
i have read into a lot of this lemuria and other weird crap, but Graham does not say anything about the civilisation itself untill the last part, now i found that MU probably wouldnt have existed with help from your website and knowledge about the authors, but he does provide a lot of information about star systems and their position concerning the time they where built and the time that the star system would have been in the same line as the building. that for all of those things was 10.500 BC. i found that interresting, since the only thing he does is push back the dates of construction to 10.500 BC even with things that are created 800 years ago
i also found something about Göbekli Tepe, which is pretty interresting
theres no proof for most of these things but i found the Quest For The Lost Civilisation a very good watch and i think people should watch it with a skeptic eye. most things he does not state as facts but as a possibility. i found the information he provides as facts pretty interresting, i think it could be very possible that humans have lived longer on this planet, then previously thought, but i also think it is possible (this is more probable) that the people who sell these stories are merely trying to make money from their fantasy that they hope so badly to be true.
there is one thing i would like to know:
Do you Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews, think that there is a possibility for all this? or is it just a spin off from the truth?
and im not asking for only facts, but for a personal perception of all this.
Is it possible that all these people just ignore modern day science and geology, or is it actually possible?
Thank you for the video. Hancock´s research like some other authors is intended to accumulate evidence, pose questions and try some hypotheses. It is, as it happens in other branches of knowledge, a legitimate attempt to burst the bubble of official science and its rigid, boring and scholastic methods that pretend to discard anything that is not born from the method designed by Galileo (this pretention of uniqueness and absoluteness as one of its features inherited from its predecessor: the Christian Church).
It would be long just to quote many breakthroughs in current science that have been incepted from the plain curiosity and audacious open-mindedness (which have also been battled fiercely by the corresponding elites of those times). Western science is -apart from honest scholars- a body of elitism, corruption and participation in mass control, and no wonder that anything uncomfortable for its status and dogmatic foundations should be written off. This pretention to write off any other possibility is even more ridiculous in the case of sciences as Archealogy, Anthropology or Economics in which most of its main methods are mere worthless myths with enormous mass manipulative value and minuscule practical value.
Scientists are supposed to be open minded. Note the case with the vast majority. If it doesn’t fit into their neat little world view it can’t be. Heaven forbid it may have also been proposed by somebody in a different field. When Wagner presented his ideas on plate tectonics the scientific community destroyed him; how dare a meteorologist think he knows more than the geologists about geology?!. Guess what – he was right! When I was in high school we were taught that H. sapiens had been around only 30K years. Since it’s been steadily pushed back to at least 250K years. Likewise we keep pushing back the dates for cities and agriculture. Don’t dare stand up to global warming crowd. They don’t have a clue as to what’s really happening! Then there were the facts intentionally left out of their findings; previous mini-cycles like the one we’re experiencing, that fact the the SUN is getting hotter, the fact that average global temperatures have gone down not up! I spent most of my teens preparing to study Astrophysics -then I saw what science was all about – protecting you own little sphere of power from evaporating and kissing butts to get grants. Happily I became an engineer instead. We actually use the scientific theory with open-mindedness combined. You don’t like Hancock of some others theory then prove it wrong according to scientific method. That is what a lot of these “pseudo-insert-branch-of-science-here” are trying to say. There are holes in your science that need filling. You don’t believe it prove them wrong instead of acting like a bunch of whining childish liberals out to bring down the opposition at any cost!
Which is what archaeologists do. Hancock’s ideas avoid any use of the scientific method!
Ron’s accusation is that scientists ignore new evidence that contradicts standing theories – and then proceeds to falsify his own claim. If he was right, scientists would still reject Wegener’s hypothesis (which he apparently misunderstands). If he was right, scientists would still be claiming that modern humans appeared only 30,000 years ago.
His vehement climate-change denialism and his off-the-wall comment about the Sun getting hotter while Earth is getting cooler, leads me to suspect that his hostility towards academia is a result of his ideas being rejected.
Good thing he chose engineering. If you claim that you can build a bridge using daisies, you’d better have the blueprints to back it up.
I liked Mr. Hancocks website where he just accumulates interesting science and archaeology news articles. Better than my Google news filters can do, actually. I use past tense because science a while he is on this weird mission to legalize illegal drugs. Promoting marijuana leaves in btw archaeological finds and space explorations doesn’t make sense. His SciFi speculations mixed with history is one thing, but when supporting hallucinogenic drugs at the same time it gets really laughable.
So, as someone studying ancient human cultures he should have no interest or opinion on an activity that human cultures have been doing for tens of thousands of years at least? Modern western societies are one of the few cultures in history who do NOT incorporate hallucinogens into their society. You could argue whether that is a good or bad thing but why is it laughable to support the legalisation of the right to explore your own consciousness with psychedelics? That is all he’s supporting, not suggesting everyone rush out and get wasted.
If the purpose of this article is to debunk Hancock, you’ve done terribly. I saw him speak at Origins of Consciousness for 4 hours, and from the small amount of cross referencing i’ve been able to do on the plethora of intruiging anomalies within our knowledge of ancient civilisations I’ve no doubt he is on to something legitimate. He may not be an expert in your opinion nor the opinion of most archaologists if that is what you believe, but you should be ashamed as to discredit him so arrogantly. I have no doubt he has discovered more than either of you two, just because it is based in different conceptual circles and frames of perception does not mean it is wrong. Wake the fuck up guys.
Why do you have to be offensive? If you want a debate, please conduct it without swearing.
Okay buddy, sorry you can’t handle the word fuck. Otherwise, care to add any actual evidence contrary to Hancocks ideas? “A comprehensive analysis of his works would require a massive book, since it would need not only to refute his claims but also to present the comprehensive contextual evidence to show why his ideas cannot stand up.” Have you even begun to write this book? Does your body of work concerning Hancocks invalid claims and ideas even extend beyond the extremely limited (almost non-existent) quantity of evidence posted on this site?
Well, the whole idea for this website came about because I tried writing a short synopsis of Hancock’s claims with rebuttals. I couldn’t even get to the end of the first chapter and restrict myself to just a few thousand words. As a result, I put up some pages on my personal website in 1997. Things grew, despite your assertion that there is only an “extremely limited (almost non-existent) quantity of evidence posted on this site”! You evidently haven’t look at much of the site. I wish I could add more, but this is one of several hobbies and one that has to come after my real work in any case.
Why restrict yourself? You set up a site called “Bad Archaeology” only to refrain from posting any of the actual evidence you’ve accumulated personally? I’ve just been through every article on this site and find no valid contradiction to my earlier comment. Every article is a synopsis of opinion with literally next to no scientific evidence to support it, there is not the slightest hint of ‘comprehensive contextual evidence’ anywhere on this site. It’s 2013 buddy I think you’ve had plenty of time to maintain and update the site. I saw Graham speak last year in October. He continues to research within his field of interest and contribute relevant information regarding the topics he approaches. This page is highly unscientific in what it claims to give accurate information towards. It’s very sloppy. I don’t agree with most conspiracy/alternative theories, but I believe one should accompany any skeptical inquiry with as much factual citation and reasoning as possible and you have not done so. I think Graham would look at this site and laugh. Really think about all he has done (if you’ve actually bothered to look through it), and the quantity (not to mention quality!) of evidence regarding his work on this site. In contrast the huge amount of work he has done, this site is quite pitiful. If you do have a large amount of evidence, it’d help your case to show it. I’m not against evidence, only evidence I cannot see.
So, as I understand it, in the film, Hancock did not propose that these structures were built earlier than is commonly believed. He did state as fact that the layouts of these three structures align precisely with specific stars and constellations. Have any of you all verified the information that he has stated as fact (that the Sphinx, Giza and Angkor Wat all align with the stars that he specified in 10500 bc)?
If they do line up as he has stated, one surely must contemplate the possibility that this is not a coincidence. Why would that be so?… odd for sure.
I can’t help but think, judging by the comments, that someone linked this page on a Graham Hancock loving website.
I got into archaeology because as a kid I read Fingerprints of the Gods, and Quest for the lost Civilisation, and saw the TV show, it was exciting, I wanted to be the one to find and prove what he was saying. However, the more I learned the more implausible I realised the claims were. Perhaps instead of aspiring to find the lost civilisation I should instead write the book that educates those of Hancock’s fans who refuse to listen to accepted academic scholarship because it’s some conspiracy. Sort of like how creationists won’t listen to biologists evidence because they think they’re lying about everything to keep the truth suppressed. Of course they won’t buy it, and neither will mainstream historians or archaeologists because it’s all basic stuff they already know. So i’ll have written a book no one will read… I’ve talked myself out of it now.
It’s easy to see why these things are popular. There are legitimate gaps in knowledge and it’s tempting to fill them with speculation, but as Carl Sagan said, “We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads; but to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.”
Anyway, keep up the good work, I only just discovered this site and there’s lots of interesting stuff on here.
I think that Graham Hancock does a lot for recovering evidence needed to understand the past. His theories may seem off to some people because they do not want to alter their life’s work to include the new information.
Also, I can see that Hancock is very misguided as he leaves out a lot of data, like this website does, and goes for his own ideas, like this website does, and comes to conclusions that may not be plausible. He makes great points and the reason he uses the usual suspects is that the usual suspects are all we have to work with.
I see the owners of this website doing exactly what they claim Hancock does and that undermines their point of view. I think Hancock, and others like him, can be used to uncover the evidence so we get a better picture of the past and that their theories can be ignored without trashing the effort he is making.
The point of this website is not to provide “all the data”: it’s to show why the data that people Hancock misuse does not support the claims they make. If you want “all the data”, get a couple of good undergraduate level text-books.
This site provides NO DATA, and fails to even specify Hancocks methods and why they are incorrect. Worst skeptical site I’ve ever encountered. It would take about 20 minutes at best to read everything on this site.
Luke, that is simply untrue.
Keith, kudos for your extraordinary patiences. I wil be up all night reading through this site.
One thing I’ve noticed is that people who hold to a so-called “alternative” theory are often as bigoted and intolerant of disagreement as the scientists they condemn for the same flaws. In fact, I have quite often been sharply criticized, not for *denying* their tenets, but simply for *questioning* them.
What this tells me is that we’re not discussing science, but religion. The questions are based on faith (you have to *believe*), and not on evidence. It’s a holy war, not a scientific discussion or debate.
Hancock’s “The Sign and The Seal” was an excellent read and almost certainly his best and most believable work.
“Fingerprints of the Gods” started down a slippery slope but the actual stories are gripping (if cods wallop)
Keith, please, show me some evidence to refute or to support you claims.
*refute Hancock or to support you claims.
I admit i have only read this one article on your site but it is true that you have done nothing to debunk anything he says at all. I am a keen follower of graham hancocks work and recently found myself thinking of nothing else. I decided that maybe to get a bit of perspective I should search for articles that disprove what in my opinion are plausible ideas. Not many results so far and if this is the standard then I cant see myself changing my mind about him. Please do reply with any thoughts you have to debunk his ideas about the age of the Sphinx (due to the water erosion on the bedrock), the correlation between the pyramids and the constellation of Orion etc. I just dont see that hordes of slaves put together a structure of the stature of the pyramids with such precision relating to the astronomical alignments, especially given the sheer weight of some of the materials.
I’m not having a go at you at all by the way. I am genuinely looking for someone to argue cogently against these ideas as it seems to me that the traditional theories about the construction of all of these, in your words, usual suspects, are just as far fetched as you claim Hancocks theories to be.
You have the talking cushion…