My wife is a trained anthropologist so the second that the anthropology community got in an uproar over the new Netflix “documentary” Ancient Apocalypse, hosted by Graham Hancock, she insisted that we watch it.
It just reminded me that crazy people operate the same way across the board and this was no different.
I knew about Graham Hancock before, of course. I read his Fingerprints of the Gods book back in the late 90s and wasn’t impressed then. He just has no evidence for anything that he says.
It wasn’t until I watched this 8-episode “documentary” that it all started to make sense though. First off, he says that he’s not a scientist, he’s a journalist, then he spends all of his time challenging what the actual experts say. He has no evidence of any kind, he just says “I don’t buy it!” So what?
Secondly, he plays everything off as if it’s a giant conspiracy to keep him down. There were sites that refused to let him film because he’s a crank and he could only respond “what is it that they’re trying to hide?”
Third, and most importantly, he spent a lot of time just asking “what if it’s true?” Sorry, we don’t care about “what if”, we care about what is. You can’t get to “what if” without evidence and he doesn’t have any. Where else do we see this? Religion, of course.
He spent the entire thing trying to get to a supposed “super-advanced civilization” during the last ice age but never once did he present any evidence that it existed. He just made a lot of empty assertions and unsupported claims and then said “I have a different view…” and off he went on his crazy presupposition. The only thing I could think of was this image. These crazy people all start to look alike.
Something else that he did constantly was argue “I’m not saying that ancient people were stupid, couldn’t do anything on their own or were incapable but… they were stupid, couldn’t do anything on their own and were incapable, therefore they needed my imaginary super-advanced civilization to accomplish anything.” This is incredibly common among the kooks. “I’m not saying that they were dumb but they couldn’t do any of that stuff!” How do you know that? Because.
Therefore, Hancock spends most of his time accusing actual, reputable scientists of some grand conspiracy to keep him down. They won’t accept his unsupported claims because they’re biased. He interviews a bunch of crackpots who he can use to make a point and even some people who are probably more reasonable, but he reads things into every word. There was one park ranger guy who said “we don’t know” to his questions and Hancock immediately argued that he did. How, nobody knows, he just thinks he’s come up with an amazing idea that, conveniently, doesn’t require any corroboration of any kind.
Where else do we see that? Oh right, religion! This is the same thing that the cryptozoologists are doing and the flat earthers and all of the other kooks. They are convinced that they’ve got it all figured out, if only people would stop asking them to back it up.
Archaeologist Flint Dibble goes over the show and explains what Hancock does wrong. “If you look closely, Hancock doesn’t ever present any real evidence. Just a range of negative evidence: endless possibilities and suppositions, untested claims, and many explanations for why there isn’t evidence.” Again, that sounds very, very familiar. Just listen to the various theists who show up in my YouTube channel’s comments, they do the same thing.
“Hancock makes claims about some of the most famous archaeological sites in the world. Every single site he highlights has been intensively investigated. Archaeologists know a lot about them.” As I said, he spends a lot of time pretending that there’s a grand conspiracy to ignore his ideas, but his ideas have never been found to be credible. He thinks the experts take him seriously and he’s wrong. He’s a laughing stock, just like all of the religious apologists that we look at are. It’s pure ego talking and he’s incapable of understanding what he’s doing wrong. It’s really sad.
“The most important argument that Hancock needs to prove to be right is that all these famous monuments like Cholula or Poverty Point or Ggigantija date to the Ice Age. ” That was something I recognized immediately. His entire shtick is “what if…” “I think it dates earlier!” Great, what is that based on? He never says. This is blind faith and blind faith doesn’t get you anywhere. It’s why he’s such a laughable joke.
Now you might ask how this lunatic got a place on Netflix. After all, don’t they have to care about quality and viewership? Granted, this has wound up as a huge hit for Netflix, but who could have predicted insanity would explode like that? The real answer here is that Netflix’s director of unscripted television is Hancock’s son. Nepotism is a bitch, right?
I could go on and on and on about how stupid this whole thing was and if you want to see a perfect example of all of the things that the religious do wrong, go watch it. It just shows that the religious aren’t alone in their stupidity. It just proves you don’t have to believe in gods to be whack-a-doo.