Ancient Apocalypse.. of knowledge
Sources, resources and further reading suggestions
Transcript
Hello everyone! Before we start, a quick show of hands. How many of you have seen "Ancient Apocalypse" on Netflix?
Wow, what did you all do to deserve that? Don't you have better things to do? For those of you who made the far superior choice of not watching Ancient Apocalypse, it is a series over at Netflix where Graham Hancock claims that a group of white Atlanteans survived Atlantis's destructions. The Atlanteans built all the prominent monuments to warn coming humans about a future comet strike that would end the world. In the process, they also spread culture and civilization to the primitive non-Alanteans.
Who is this Graham Hancock, then? He is a journalist who, early in his career, realized that being silenced was a good marketing ploy. Since then, he has gone at every opportunity and claimed to be persecuted by those horrible archaeologists in their ivory tower, proclaimed being enemy number one among archaeologists. A bold and untrue statement. We all know that number one is our knees, and the second is our hate/love relation with the problematic Indiana Jones.
We don't have time to go into detail on Hancock's background and inspirations. But the short story is that Graham bases his ideas on theosophy writers such as Helena Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner. Both have some concerning theories on race, something Gram carries with him and mixes with the theses of Ignatius Donnelly. An American politician who was an Atlantis believer and Shakespear denier. Donnelly suggested that the primitive people worldwide could not have created all the wonders by themselves. So he stated there must have been an advanced culture, of course white, in prehistoric times. This civilization was then ended by a meteor strike. But a few survivors were left behind, traveling the globe. Didn't we just hear this? Well, Hancock added a few things and went with it.
Note here that Hancock only uses esoteric ideas for his foundation of the theory. A common mistake among critics is that they assume Hancock is a wannabe archaeologist or historian. Dr. Jeb Card Graham best: "He is a successful mythographer in a post-science age." Hancocks Atlanteans with superpowers are successors to elves or mythical beings. Graham searches for esoteric sacred knowledge from shamanic journeys fueled by psychedelic drugs like ayahuasca. Building a new origin myth built on perennial wisdom. From this starting point, he goes out and cherry-picks historical and archaeological sites that kind of fit in with his esoteric charter myth. So, criticizing Hancock solely from an archaeological or historical perspective is to miss his point. Much of the evidence is based on theosophy and the Sleeping Prophet Edgar Cayce.
But what's the harm then? Why not let Graham and the others drink ayahuasca, puke, and have their visions? The damage comes in many shapes and forms, and many of them affect the actual word. This includes the destruction of sites, state funding of psuedoscience, threats, and refusal to give indigenous people different land rights.
For example, we see the destruction of sites at Gungung Padang in Indonesia. Most scholars agree that the site is a Punden Berundak. But geologists Danny Hilman and Ali Akbar claim it's a pyramid up to 20,000 years old, a date based on problematic C14 samples. They used two core samples but didn't know what they tested, if it was contaminated, or been able to explain the sequence. There are just a few centimeters between extreme periods.
So, the team got money from the previous government, which wanted to create a new nationalistic monument. The excavation was dubbed "Operation to Honor Red and White," referencing the Indonesian flag. We know that the initial funding for the project was almost equal to the yearly budget of Bandung Archaeological Center. A budget that is supposed to cover preservation, research, and salaries.
The excavation seems to have been done poorly, lacking methodology, oversight, and publications. Uptowards 500 people worked the site, including conscripted soldiers. We don't know the damage this excavation has created, but it will make further research harder.
In Bosnia, we see a similar story where Osman Osmanagic claims a hill in Visoko is a pyramid. He is to receive funding for excavations in an area with known historic sites. It might be worth mentioning that the historical museum in Sarajevo was still struggling with funding for repairs from the Bosnian war.
These examples also include threats towards archaeologists and historians who criticize these projects. One of Bosnia's leading archaeologists, Kujundzic-Vejzagic, stood open in her critique was painted as an enemy of Bosnia. Unfortunately, we see this tactic often, from YouTube comments to trying to weaponize "rate my professor." Even Hancock is not below putting out contact info to the people who denied him a filming permit for his documentary. The Serpent Mound declined Hancock's team's multi-day filming permit, something Hancock has weaponized for extra media attention.
Then we have when pseudo-history influenced political decisions affecting indigenous people. A few such decision was based on the ideas of the Norwegian national hero Thor Heyerdahl, who might be most famous for his trip across the Pacific in a raft. But Heyerdahl also argued that the culture of Peru and South America originated from a white race who brought construction, art, science, and civilization to this area, just to be forced out by the primitive Inka. Heyerdahl partially got this belief from the idea of white gods in Meso and South America. However, these descriptions did not exist until the conquistador's chroniclers arrived. The first mention of white gods in America can be traced to Geronimo de Mendieta during the late 1500s.
The idea of gods like Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha being white influenced Heyerdahl and later Graham Hancock. This is an example of how the scientific racism of the early 1900s still survives due to the alternative historians. But Heyerdahl's theories of an original white people were used by then president Bustamente to turndown land-claim from the Quechua people. Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay also adopted this argument for the same reason. These ideas are, in turn, used today by alt-right and neo nazis to justify their views of being a "superior race" and denying the indigenous people land and rights.
But this is the grim reality of the effects of pseudo-history promoted by, among others, Hancock and, in turn, Netflix. But knowing these theories are based on esoteric ideas fueled by plastic shamanism and ayahuasca will improve our pushback.
Thank you for listening. All sources with a transcript can be found at diggingupancientaliens.com/skepticamp2023
Sources, resources, and further reading suggestions
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