Ancient Apocalypse - Chapter 1 debunked

February 25, 2025 by Fredrik Trusohamn

Welcome to Digging Up Ancient Aliens! This is the podcast where we examine alternative history and Ancient Alien narratives in popular media. Do these ideas hold water when examined by an archeologist, or are there better explanations out there?

We are now on episode 80, and I am Fredrik, your guide into the world of pseudo-archaeology. This time, we are back again to tackle Ancient Apocalypse with Graham Hancock. Has he mellowed out recently, or will things go off the rails sooner rather than later? I won’t linger too long here, because we are in for a few new sites to visit, such as White Sands and the Amazon rainforest.

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Now that we have finished our preparations, let’s dig into the episode.

A species with amnesia

We are a species with amnesia, or at least that’s what we are according to Graham Hancock. I really wish this was accurate and that I could wipe away my memory after yet again watching Ancient Apocalypse. Watching this series and looking at the claims is like being Frodo, carrying the One Ring, with all of you as my Samwise - a burden I'm taking on so others won’t have to. Unlike Frodo, though, there's no glorious ending or peace to the Shire (in the books, the Shire was destroyed– just saying!). There is just the slight relief that the show is over, for now. The keys click clack whilst I look for answers, me thinking that not even Kerouac levels of whiskey will bring me to the amnesia Hancock mentions.

So, what are we dealing with in season two of Ancient Apocalypse? Was not everything said in season one? Well, according to us elitist archaeologists, I would say it was, but apparently, those in charge of Netflix programming thought otherwise. Netflix cancels great shows like they have a personal vendetta against joy and character development. Still, for some reason, Netflix keeps this garbage on. Even the GOOP lab only ran for one season.

In Ancient Apocalypse season two, we now have an overall theme—the Americas. A reason I see behind it is that it allows Hancock to reuse ideas from the previous season to spin a tale with a specific narrative. But as Penelope, we now need to unravel this weave and look at the facts Hancock presents and how it fits into the historical tapestry. So, let's dive into the tangled narratives and step into one of nature's most striking creations. Enter White Sands—a place where the story isn't written with an agenda but with gypsum.

White Sands

We now look out over a vast, captivating New Mexico desert landscape. The name really says it all. We see dunes that stretch for some 750 square kilometers and are gleamingly white. The color comes from the composition of the sand, gypsum. To make a quick overview of the area's formation, during the Permian era, starting around 298.9 million years ago, this area was underwater, but when it retreated, it left behind a calcium sulfate-rich area. Tectonic activities would later form the mountains Sacramento and San Andres. Fast forward, and rain and water pulled the gypsum out of these peaks, pouring out in what today is known as the Tularosa Basin. Once a large lake, this later dried out, leaving crystallized gypsum or Selenite left behind. Some water would travel further to the Hueco Basin, leaving leftover gypsum that would form into Akali Flat. However, the sand we see in the dunes comes from Lake Lucero and dries up each year. Wind erodes the Akali Flat crystals found here, creating the fine sand in the dunes.

So, from a geological perspective, the site is well understood, and the American National Park Service has a lot of material available to the public. This is not the reason why we are here. No, the real reason is that Hancock thinks this is an excellent example of where archaeology is wrong. He will use archaeology and geology to demonstrate this. Hancock claims that a secret has been found here that will overturn the accepted history of the Americas.

Something that Hancock leaves out of the series is that the accepted history has already changed. To be frank, Graham is a bit late on the ball here. What's hinted at is that mainstream archaeology thought that there was no earlier entry into the Americas than around 13 500 BCE. We have a slight hint at Clovis's first theory from the first season and his books. Things have changed during the last 30 years as more and more evidence exists for people settling earlier in the Americas. The earliest settlement found so far in North America is the Bluefish Caves in the Yukon territories. At this location, thousands of animal bones were found with butcher marks. The oldest bone so far dates back 24,000 years BP.

The study was published in 2017, and the authors Lauriane Bourgeon, Ariane Burke, and Thomas Higham suggest a small standstill population lived in the area during the last Glacial Maximus. They estimate that the female population would have been around 1000 to 2000 people and probably never extended to more than 10,000 people. As the glacier melted around 13,000 BCE, those living at the Bluefish Cave started to move down. While it's among the oldest confirmed dates, many more sites exist dating from 16,000 to 13,000 BCE. A site that is controversial in a sense is Toca da Tira Peia, a rock shelter in Brazil. Stone tools have been found at the site. Unfortunately, there have not been any hearths or other objects that can be C14 dated. A team led by Christelle Lahaye performed thermal luminescence dating on stones found in the third layer at the site, indicating a date around 22,000 BP. As we have discussed previously in this show, thermal luminescence dating is a valuable tool, but sometimes dates can be unreliable. Without other dating methods, such as C-14, there will remain question marks regarding the date. But as always, more data will hopefully show whether this initial date is correct. This particular study was published in 2013. Even in the south of South America, we have dates at the site called Monta Verde, which has secure dates to around 14,800 BCE.

Why Graham Hancock is at White Sands is due to a rather fantastic find. Footprints of humans and megafauna are preserved in the gypsum. For thousands of years, this area has witnessed the footsteps of people walking, running, and hunting, leaving behind a rich tapestry of human history. The paths they trod are etched into the landscape, telling stories of survival, exploration, and connection to the land. A story that might go as far back as 23,000 years before our time.

In 2022, Mathew Bennet et al. published an article in Nature arguing that some footsteps preserved in the gypsum could be dated back to 23,000 BP. This data is based on the surrounding animal tracks and radiocarbon dating of macroscopic seeds from the aquatic Ruppia Cirrhosa. These seeds were found in situ within the tracks, suggesting they had been there since their creation. Here in this episode, I started to sense a shift in Hancock's demeanor; he seems to be softening compared to the aggressive persona we encountered in the show's inaugural series. He tries to sow the idea that there is this significant attempt to dismiss the find. We get a quote: "The carbon dating of the seeds was challenged. But the team confirmed their results, using other samples of pollen and sediment quieting their critics."

What Hancock describes here is The Scientific Process (™). You publish something, and others will look at it and ask questions. In this case, the team behind the original study returned and completed more tests, which could provide even better support for their initial claim. Criticism isn't always bad; sometimes, people find flaws, but if your theory is sound, you can use this to build an even better case for the theory. Hancock, however, isn't used to the scientific process; instead of looking at the criticism, he takes it as a personal insult. Instead of addressing the flaws of his arguments, the archaeology mafia is just out to get him. It sounds odd, but to some extent, science is about disproving a theory. We don't aim to do that out of maleficence but to test if the theory and methods are sound. If you only seek to prove an idea, then it's easy to miss things or get a sort of tunnel vision. By trying to disprove your theory, you will end up with a stronger argument for your case. That's why a hypothesis a scientist asks needs to be stated in a way that can be either confirmed or dismissed.

White sands may be an important site since it shows that some managed to get past the Glacial Maxiumus up north and walk down south. A question I have, that later got an answer, is why Hancock chose White Sands of all places. As I mentioned, we have an earlier date up in Bluefish Cave. A boon for Hancock would also have been that Jacques Cinq-Mars was one of those working at the site. Cink-Mars is one who, early on, questioned the Clovis-First Theory and got, to put it mildly, a lot of flack for it. The objections to his work were sometimes both harsh and unfair. Only proven right about his theory that the cave predates Clovis after his death. I mean, from Hancock's perspective, this should be a gold mine. He could go to town on the toxic Clovis First proponents that set an unreasonable high bar of the burden of proof. But why didn't Graham bite?

Well, the site can't be connected to his Younger Dryas Impact Theory. Evidence also suggests that some species the community here relied on were hunted to extinction, a point that will become more important in a moment. Why White Sands is the example is that it's older than the previous version of the Behringer Straight theory; as I mentioned, it's now fairly accepted that people came to the Americas pre-13,000 BCE. It also contains extinct megafauna. We are presented with the fact that those large animals hunted by the land's early inhabitants, according to Hancock, went extinct within a very narrow timeframe. Such a brief period that it could only be attributed to a meteoric impact, drastically changing the environment and wiping the animals out.

As you might know, Hancock is one of those who suggests that a comet hit Earth some 12,000 years ago. This impact caused, according to the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, the Younger Dryas cooling of the Northern Hemisphere. This caused an enormous catastrophe and destroyed an extensive advanced civilization. Some remnants of this lost bygone society then traveled the world, spreading warnings and knowledge wherever they went.

Hancock seems to argue that White Sands, in this case, is evidence of this meteoric impact. The issue here is that while there is no credible evidence of this event taking place or the civilization existing, the extinction of animals took place over a long time. Some species died out before this hypothetical impact took place. Others lingered around until well after the impact had taken place. It is worth noting that the extinction of megafaunas does not look the same across the world.

Here in Europe, we have an extensive timeline for the cessation of megafaunas living there. If we look closely at how the megafauna started to go extinct, we see that it was not simultaneously. No, we see that each species has a unique pattern; some survive while others don't, as Stuart put it in a 2015 paper. The reason for the extinction is hard to map and most likely will differ from region to region. There are a few different suggestions, like the overkill hypothesis, that humans hunted the animals to extinction. Or the environmental change hypothesis, that ecological changes took place, changing the animal's environment to an extent they could no longer survive. Both of these have pros and cons, and none can really explain to a satisfactory level the extinction event that took place alone. A hybrid hypothesis could be a more adequate explanation, that environmental changes put a strain on the animal population and humans basically killed the smaller groups off. This could explain why pockets of these animals lived through the Paleolithic up to the Mesolithic.

Then we have a few more far-out ideas, such as the Y.D.I.H., but it's been, at this point, fairly disproven. I recommend reading Vance Holliday et al.'s paper "Comprehensive refutation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis" for a more detailed explanation. I'm also quite sure that we will return for a deep dive into this argument at a later point. We also have the hyperdisease hypothesis, the main issue being that no known disease would only affect large animals. Another problem is how it would spread globally at this point in history only among animals. We also have the Solar flare hypothesis, similar to the YDIH, in that a catastrophic event took place, causing a mass extinction. It suffers from the same problem as the YDIH; the extinction was staggered. It was not an event taking place at one point in time. Another issue is why megafauna, like giant ground sloths, are affected, and not bears or humans?

As you can see, the extinction of large animals roaming the earth is more nuanced than Hancock's explanation. In the program, Hancock also only brings up the overkill hypothesis as the only alternative cause for what happened. In an attempt to disarm that argument, Hancock simply notes that "humans won't hunt animals to extinction." While there are much better arguments against that over hunting animals are the only reason for the extinction, this comment is just plain wrong. A tempting example would be the classical Dodo. Still, the demise of this flightless bird previously found in Mauritius is a bit more complicated. While human hunting of the birds most likely didn't help. The actual death was at the tusks of feral pigs introduced by humans in the 1600s, as argued by Cheke and Parish in a 2020 paper. The feral pigs are known to eat eggs from turtles and would most likely have feasted on the ground-bound birds' offspring too. Combine these three elements: agriculture taking away habitats, humans hunting the birds, and a new invasive species eating the eggs. Altogether, it would have been a miracle that the Dodo had survived. Note also how humans are the underlying cause for all these three threats to the dodo.

A better example may be found in the case of the Zubr or, in English, the European bison. The bison was extinct in Britain in 1100 CE, and in France, it was gone by 1300 CE. The animal population survived until later in other parts of Europe, but around 1800, these populations disappeared in Germany and Transylvania. The only enclave left could be found in the Białowieża Forest on the border of Poland and Belarus. The reasons for the extinction were growing farmland and hunting. By 1857, some 1900 bison were roaming the Białowieża, a number that would quickly shrink with the start of the First World War. While there seems to be a bit of a discussion if the last Zubr was shot in 1919 or 1921 in Poland, we know the hunter was a man called Bartłomiej Szpakowicz. Again, while hunting was a huge factor, other human activities, such as farming, contributed to the extinction. Another example would be the Steller's Sea Cow or Hydrodamalis gigas. It was discovered in 1741 and gone by 1768, which is less than 30 years after the discovery.

White Sands is a fantastic place and an important archaeological site. It gives us a better understanding of the past. The issue here is that it does not support Hancock's idea. As we can see, it does not support the idea of a global cataclysm. The only reason to bring this site up is for Hancock to argue against outdated ideas. The dates for the first people in America have been moved back, and this site is only one piece that fits in a larger puzzle. I hate to say this, but this would have been a brilliant segment if Hancock had only focused on the site and left out his YDIH nonsense. This is why if I had to read Hancock or any other pseudohistory author, I prefer Hancock. However, this little positive comment does not take anything away from all the misinformation we got in the part. For now, we will leave the White Sands and go further south into the Amazon.

Amazon and Civilizations

Graham Hancock takes us from the US down to Acre, a province in modern Brazil that shares a border with both Peru and Bolivia. We're told that archaeologists have long refuted the idea of a complex society living in the Amazon. To a point, this is correct; as Charles Mann, in a 2008 article in Science, points out, it was thought to be barren of civilization. I would prefer to use the term complex society instead of civilization; both terms are not great, but the former might be a bit less loaded.

People have lived in the Amazon for millennia, but what has not been found is a culture similar to the Inka or other South American cultures built in stone, etc. We are here, though, because there seems to have been a culture creating mounds and geoglyphs that have recently been discovered due to the logging in the region. Some of these structures were found in 1977 by Alccu Ranzi, a paleontologist today, as part of a survey. The discovery was not announced until almost a decade later by the National Program for Archaeological Research, sponsored by the Smithsonian. The announcement gained little attention, and not much happened until the early 2000.

Today, thanks to a team including Dr. Martti Pärssinen from Helsinki University, Alccu Ranzi, and Dr. Denise Schaan, we know more about these earthworks. Some 450 of these sites have been identified so far in the state of Acre. They can be linked by a similar ceramic culture that seems to be influenced, according to Pärssinen, by Western Amazonian Formative styles. The earthworks come in several different shapes, and according to Kalliola et al., the most common are trapezoid, rectangle, square, oval, and circular. Then there are the geoglyphs that are ditches inside embankments, and there are about 500 of them.

The earliest of these dates back to around 500 BCE or year 0. Some of those constructed later during the first millennium seem to have been used until the 1300s CE. One ceramic chard in one of the earthworks has been dated to 1211–942 CAL B.C.E. Still, the authors, Denise Shaan et al., are not sure if it's really connected to the construction. Other pottery found in the enclosure dates to around 2000 BP. The earlier pottery found within the earthworks is not strange. We know that sites are reused over time. As Pärssinen points out in a 2021 paper, there is a context issue with these earlier dates. They are not found within the embankment walls where most of the pottery is. They are often found at other locations that do not seem to be connected with the constructions of these rampart-like monuments.

Again, the sites are interesting and deserve more attention. But why is Graham Hancock here? Well, it's a good question, to be honest. The section is framed around that the site was first ignored, a somewhat accurate statement. Remember, Hancock loves to use old ideas to show that archaeology does not approve of new discoveries. Something that's frankly untrue about both of these locations. While the actual work on these geoglyphs and earthworks didn't start until early 2000, it's out there now. With the benefits of archaeologists being able to look at these structures with the tools and knowledge we have today for the first time. We can discover even more of these with LiDAR and other digital equipment. Then, we can apply modern standards to the excavations to get data people in 1977 could only dream of. The longer a site is left untouched, the more data we can pull out of it.

The second part is that Hancock sees a connection to Greece at the site, and recently, there might be evidence that the site has been used since 10,000 BP. This ancient date comes from a paper by Dr. Pärssinen that also appears in the episode. This was published in 2020 and suggests that there might be evidence of slash-and-burn agriculture in Acre. Pärssinen points out that this potential agricultural practice is not associated with the mounds themselves. They are separated by 1000s of years, but the site has been reused and occupied for a long time. The difficulty here is to prove it was a controlled swaddling of the area and not your run-of-the-mill forest fire. That can be tricky, but it could be done by showing it's in a confined area. Even then, it could be argued it was a local wildfire.

However, there are attempts at developing techniques that can show if the fire is for swaddling or natural. Dussol et al. published a paper trying to establish a slash-and-burn baseline in 2021. In 2022, Heidgren et al. published a paper showing that agrarian fires were used in Germany around 9500 BP. This paper relied on pollen and charcoal analysis, among other things, and could show small but frequent fires, indicating that the population used fire to prepare their fields. While Pärssinen's paper that could show agricultural practices in the area dating back to 10,000 BP is very interesting, I have to agree with what Pärssinen wrote in the conclusion. "We are aware that the evidence presented here is not yet conclusive and that we require more archaeological data and additional radiocarbon and carbon isotope δ13C measurements from Western Amazonia."

As I mentioned, Hancock is trying to connect the sites in Acre with Greece. Now, he does not claim that the people of the West Amazon had contact with the Greeks. No, Graham is not that silly. He claims that they got their patterns and ideas of geometry from the same source: the traveling sages. Hancock tries to make the claim that historians think that the Greeks were among the first to create geometry. This is a strange claim since geometry was used in Babylon, the Indus Valley, and Ancient Egypt thousands of years before the Greeks. It's also an attempt to connect the pottery and the sites to the Geometric period in Greece. An issue here is that the Geometric period starts around 1025 BCE and is heavily influenced by Mycenaean pottery. Hancock attempts to draw a connection between the ceramics from the Acre region and Greek pottery by positioning them side by side. Yet, an examination reveals that they bear little resemblance to one another. Even when scrutinized closely, their differences stand out starkly. While both pottery styles showcase captivating geometric patterns, the influences that inspire them are strikingly divergent, reflecting the unique cultural narratives and artistic traditions from which they originate.

Hancock also mentions polychromatic pottery, or pottery decorated with more than two colors, as evidence for these wandering sages. From the episode, it almost seems as if this style suddenly appeared in the area around when the earthworks and geoglyphs were constructed. In reality, polychromatic pottery begins in Guyana, Venezuela, and Upper Madeira around 1500 BCE. This early formative period lasted until around 300 BCE. It was not until around 50 B.C.E. that we got certain proof of polychromatic pottery in the Acre region, with the possibility of an earlier date of 350 BCE. However, this is based on the vessel shape rather than the presence of color. Note here that the technology didn't suddenly appear out of nowhere. It developed and spread over 1000 years. Or maybe Hancock postulates that the wise sages liked the people in Guyana enough to teach them that you can use more than two colors on pottery but not enough to build earth walls in geometric shapes?

The site is an incredible discovery, and it will be interesting to see what comes next. As for evidence of a supposed lost civilization traveling the globe? It's really a miss. Don't get me wrong, the earthworks are impressive, but they are, in a sense, easy to construct. The layout can be quite simply created with ropes and sticks. Like how the Nazca lines were created, experimental archaeology shows that two people with string, sticks, and time could easily recreate the geoglyphs on the plateau. A circular earthwork can be made with a stick, string, and a walk around in a circle.

Hancock's theory brings forth a compelling inquiry regarding the original civilization, which he himself concedes lacks substantial supporting evidence—a point he acknowledged during his discussion on Joe Rogan's podcast. It is intriguing to ponder why this ancient civilization would distribute technology in such an erratic manner. For instance, some groups received the remarkable expertise to construct monumental structures like imposing pyramids, the elegant Parthenon, intricate metalwork, and astonishing megalithic structures. In stark contrast, others were provided with more basic tools, such as vibrantly colored ceramics and rudimentary instructions for building earthen walls. While the simplicity of these creations does not undermine the remarkable achievements of the peoples inhabiting Acre, it does cast a shadow of curiosity over Hancock's narrative, raising critical questions that he neither explores nor addresses.

Sources, resources, and further reading suggestions

Music

“Folie hatt” by Trallskruv

Lily of the woods by Sandra Marteleur