Graham Hancock and the ancient civilization theory

[PainIsLIfe]

Link?

Would have been better off just posting the debunk, of course if the debunk also contains personal attacks, I am likely to turn it off.

That is what I call a self debunk, of the debunkers.

You don't need personal attacks if you are right.

I thought Hancock's constant attacks on academia in his last podcast with Joe was very off putting. I understood his motivation in it, but it came across as him marketing the illegitimacy of academia, instead of his rightful victory lap on some of his ideas coming into mainstream academia.

 

[VivaRevolution]

I'm not sure what you mean, metal artifacts have been found from millennia ago like, shields, swords and coins. The type of infrastructure needed to create 18th - 19th century technology like a steam engine is layered and complex and I don't see how this could be overlooked unless they were completely hidden from us.

I think if you watch the last video, and see the scale of devastation we are talking about, this would answer your question to some extent.

Part of the answer is that it is there, buried under a few hundred feet of top soil.

 

[Social Distance Warrior]

Thank you. Care to cite his credentials for me?

Dude, at least watch the videos and identify the points you have a problem with.

And the explain why you do. This is one has conversations/dialogue with others.

Lets have a discussion...

 

[Cuauhtemoc]

How advanced are we talking? One thing for sure is that it wasn't as advanced as ours current civilization. The proof is that they didn't pick the low hanging fruits of natural resources. No ancient civilizations tapped the silver mines of Argentina where you didn't even have to dig or the oil wells of Saudi Arabia.
We basically have no archeological or geological record of large mining in prehistoric times. And I believe we can agree advanced civilizations need minerals. Our it was so advanced they had warp power and could travel through dimensions but then I will not waste my time.
Maybe there was a civilization as advanced as ancient Egypt before ancient Egypt? Well, it's possible I guess. There is no proof but you can argue it was all destroyed in a cataclysm etc.

 

[PainIsLIfe]

Another lazy critique. Maybe you should check his end notes dummy, he's a journalist quoting published science in most cases. Why don't you pick at something specific so I can quote Hancock to embarrass and humble you a little. Have you ever read his books? If not, these critiques are ridiculous of you.

You're parroting the "psuedoscience" naysayer bullshit. He's not a scientist, nor does he claim to be one.

Im asking you to cite his qualifications to make the claims.... A little over 150 yrs ago Joseph Smith made claims about ancient "indian" forts across North America - he was wrong, but he created an entire religion.

 

[andnowweknow]

I'm not sure what you mean, metal artifacts have been found from millennia ago like, shields, swords and coins. The type of infrastructure needed to create 18th - 19th century technology like a steam engine is layered and complex and I don't see how this could be overlooked unless they were completely hidden from us.

Yes, in recorded history with relative continuity in the historical record.

Maybe this will help...Gobekli Tepe, the oldest megalithic site we have found, IS TWICE AS OLD as Stone Henge...with no other sites of particular significance in between the two in time that have been found. And those are made of stone, a much more robust material that metal, wood or composite synthetic rock (concrete). Now imagine what we should expect to find in the form of 15k year old coins and swords?

You know why they think old kingdom egypt only had copper? Because that's all they can find of metals...this is in the puzzling face of the fact they couldn't realistically acheive what we see today without iron and likely steel.

 

[Amerikuracana]

He's completely guessing and taking stabs in the dark. Could he get lucky and be close on one or two things? I guess..

 

[andnowweknow]

Im asking you to cite his qualifications to make the claims.... A little over 150 yrs ago Joseph Smith made claims about ancient "indian" forts across North America - he was wrong, but he created an entire religion.

Really?

 

[VivaRevolution]

How advanced are we talking? One thing for sure is that it wasn't as advanced as ours current civilization. The proof is that they didn't pick the low hanging fruits of natural resources. No ancient civilizations tapped the silver mines of Argentina where you didn't even have to dig or the oil wells of Saudi Arabia.
We basically have no archeological or geological record of large mining in prehistoric times. And I believe we can agree advanced civilizations need minerals. Our it was so advanced they had warp power and could travel through dimensions but then I will not waste my time.
Maybe there was a civilization as advanced as ancient Egypt before ancient Egypt? Well, it's possible I guess. There is no proof but you can argue it was all destroyed in a cataclysm etc.

This is why I like the idea of a society based on hallucinogens.

It would explain how it was advanced in many ways, and yet alien to us. A society that could accomplish advanced things, like building a mega-structure, but didn't mine large quantities of these metals we later found easy access to.

 

[Senzo Tanaka]

This is nothing more than a philosophical refutation that ignores the main logic of his reasoning. You can pick at the nuances and his speculation, he's not making the Younger Dryas up...nor is he making up the catastrophic bookends to it that support his theory.

You're also lazily explaining away particular constructions...certain constructions that some of the greatest minds to have ever existed have puzzled over throughout millennia. Modern society is the first iteration of puzzling over Giza for example, and coming up basically empty on a reasonable understanding of how it was done...nevermind why (tomb theory is a joke btw).

We'd have to get to specifics. With the Great Pyramid, I think it was done by gravity, water canals and ramps. There's a great video on YouTube (which I can't find right now) which shows a hypothesis in action. Rather than dragging the stones, you create a canal to the quary and let the stones "sail" down to the building site. There's evidence of this canal to this date and is similar to the Romans and their aqueducts.

The Egyptians apparently kept engineering records and how they built the pyramids in the Library of Alexandra. If not for the fire, we would likely have known exactly how they did it.

I highly recommend watching this clip. Josh is let into the upper chambers of the Great Pyramid which pretty much no one ever gets to see. You get to see graffiti from the workers that built the pyramid as well as how rough and unfinished the insides are. While the outside is nearly perfection, the inside where no one is supposed to see, shows the rougher side and workers trying different techniques. The entire episode is great but I'll link that part:

 

[ShinkanPo]

In that show on history channel life after humans.......there is basically nothing left of even cities in 5,000-10,000 years later.

We could have had many rises and falls in 200,000 years.

Very interwsting

 

[andnowweknow]

He's completely guessing and taking stabs in the dark. Could he get lucky and be close on one or two things? I guess..

Amazing

 

[BearGrounds]

Yea, I think that ancient sites such as the Great Pyramid, Teotihuacan, Gobekli Tepe, the Kailasa Temple, etc. are a good indication that humanity has likely experienced a cataclysmic reset event in our past.

I've read a couple of Hancock's books (The Mars Mystery, Magicians of the Gods), and have seen those podcasts. I don't necessarily agree with him on every interpretation but I think the guy does fantastic work exploring ancient sites, which is something I find interesting and enjoyable to read about.

Good documentary on The Great Pyramid:



It's not like the theory doesn't make sense at all. If a high civilization was wiped out by a cataclysm over 10k years ago, what do people expect to be left remaining other than perhaps some enigmatic megalithic sites?

 

[VivaRevolution]

I tried. I got 20 minutes in. Nothing wrong with what the BBC was saying from what I can tell, but it is very dated. 25 years of new discoveries that are not addressed here.

I mean, when that was made, was dinosaurs being killed by a meteor strike even accepted yet?

 

[ShadBo]

To me this reads like one big argument from ignorance.

"There are certain sites that were constructed by unknown methods, and anatomically modern humans have been around for a very long time so there must have been some advanced society that was wiped out during a known extinction event. What else could explain the existence of the pyramids etc?"

 

[andnowweknow]

We'd have to get to specifics. With the Great Pyramid, I think it was done by gravity, water canals and ramps. There's a great video on YouTube (which I can't find right now) which shows a hypothesis in action. Rather than dragging the stones, you create a canal to the quary and let the stones "sail" down to the building site. There's evidence of this canal to this date and is similar to the Romans and their aqueducts.

The Egyptians apparently kept engineering records and how they built the pyramids in the Library of Alexandra. If not for the fire, we would likely have known exactly how they did it.

I highly recommend watching this clip. Josh is let into the upper chambers of the Great Pyramid which pretty much no one ever gets to see. You get to see graffiti from the workers that built the pyramid as well as how rough and unfinished the insides are. While the outside is nearly perfection, the inside where no one is supposed to see, shows the rougher side and workers trying different techniques. The entire episode is great but I'll link that part:

There is no evidence for the library of Alexandria comment, may or may not be true. I am skeptical of that.

There are plenty of theories that modern egyptologists (art historians) come up with regarding construction methods at Giza. They are all ridiculous as they are all supposing it was done in 20 years, which they say must be true due to it being done during the life of Khufu. The whole story of Egypt is plagued by this utter nonsense and ridiculous in the context of the tools they purport were used. You don't need aliens, but copper chisels and dolorite hammers is a joke, and when you look at what must have occurred every single minute of those 20 years to put the great pyramid together, it's ludicrous.

It's obviously murky and complicated, but it was likely a project in stages and it was probably a restoration project by khufu, not something he constructed...which again, there is literally no evidence for.

Many peoe think the upper relieving chamber cartouche claiming "gang of khufu" is a fraud by Howard Vyse.

 

[andnowweknow]

To me this reads like one big argument from ignorance.

"There are certain sites that were constructed by unknown methods, and anatomically modern humans have been around for a very long time so there must have been some advanced society that was wiped out during a known extinction event. What else could explain the existence of the pyramids etc?"

I'm not saying Hancock is 100% right at all, but this is hardly the extent of the argument.

Much of the evidence is circumstantial by nature, just as is the case with modern known history. 90% of the stuff we know about old kingdom Egypt is new kingdom egyptian reports to Greeks.

 

[VivaRevolution]

To me this reads like one big argument from ignorance.

"There are certain sites that were constructed by unknown methods, and anatomically modern humans have been around for a very long time so there must have been some advanced society that was wiped out during a known extinction event. What else could explain the existence of the pyramids etc?"

I think that is a bad characterization of his ideas currently.

To start, can you explain the fixed drilling Denisovan artifact found?

https://forums.sherdog.com/threads/...alpha-call-out-thread.3531405/#post-130006895

 

[Voodoo_Child906]

Yes, in recorded history with relative continuity in the historical record.

Maybe this will help...Gobekli Tepe, the oldest megalithic site we have found, IS TWICE AS OLD as Stone Henge...with no other sites of particular significance in between the two in time that have been found. And those are made of stone, a much more robust material that metal, wood or composite synthetic rock (concrete). Now imagine what we should expect to find in the form of 15k year old coins and swords?

Expect to find? Why would we expect to find 15k year old coins and swords in this area? Whoever built GT didn't need coins and swords to develop the site but to develop something like a steam engine a civilization is going to need a lot more than what current scientists believe ancient man had. And so far there has been no convincing evidence/artifacts found that will support this idea.

You know why they think old kingdom egypt only had copper? Because that's all they can find of metals...this is in the puzzling face of the fact they couldn't realistically acheive what we see today without iron and likely steel.

The copper age came before the iron for a few reasons but mainly because copper melts at a lower point than iron and is easier to work with. Once copper was developed iron came later when man learned how to smelt at higher temperatures. These discoveries are all built on top of each other and it is extremely unlikely that a group would learn how to smelt iron before copper.

 

[ShadBo]

I'm not saying Hancock is 100% right at all, but this is hardly the extent of the argument.

Much of the evidence is circumstantial by nature, just as is the case with modern known history. 90% of the stuff we know about old kingdom Egypt is new kingdom egyptian reports to Greeks.

I can accept an "advanced" society being wiped out by a cataclysmic event. I don't believe we have enough evidence to conclude it did happen, but I'm fine with the idea that it could have.

Suggesting this civilization had technology equivalent to the 18th or 19th century is, respectfully, absurd.