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We disagree on Hancock's motives, but it's irrelevant to me and largely besides the point.
Agreed, he's made tens of millions compiling other people's work and I'm sure he's smiling all the way to the bank. His motives really don't matter to me anymore.
On point 2, perhaps I am lumping the most famous of archeological work (Egyptology) in with good field work done. Egyptology as it stands in the literature is generally a dogmatic religion. It's based on 19th century and early 20th century ideas. I am just going to assume you don't know what the "proofs" are for some of the assumptions made about Egypt specifically, because they are so bereft of substance in what they do assume that you're clearly uninformed if you use the line of logic "they know how to read hieroglyphics and you don't, thus they know more than you are"...99.9% of what we know has nothing to do with hieroglyphics, our understanding of their symbolic writing system is still largely considered mediocre, if not poor. Last on this, I don't mean to bash archeology or the people who do the work but their work is inherently difficult and they are largely guessing...and ideas are passed off as fact (i.e., Khufu built the great pyramid as a tomb for himself) when they are based on farcically little evidence from any normal "science" based perspective.
I am definitely not equating Egyptology with hard sciences where predictions are tested on a regular basis. I am though questioning your rigor and perhaps bias on this topic. Do you believe you have all the information and knowledge you require to make such a judgement on Egyptology?
I'm not going to relitigate the history of Overkill, it was the dominant theory for the longest time, period...you suggesting it wasn't is not even worth discussing really. There were always other theories, Overkill was always the dominant one, based on when humans SUPPOSEDLY (now incorrectly) populated the Americas. Regardless, it is now obviously a silly idea.
Why are you calling Overkill a theory? In Science there is a distinct difference between the two:
A hypothesis is a suggested explanation for an observable phenomenon, or a reasoned prediction of a possible causal correlation among multiple phenomena. A theory is a tested, well-substantiated, unifying explanation for a set of verified, proven factors. A theory is always backed by evidence; a hypothesis is only a suggested possible outcome, and is testable and falsifiable.
Sure it had a following but Overkill was never ever the accepted theory by consensus among the experts and has always remained a hypothesis.