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The Weird (but entirely plausible) World of Graham Hancock


pipnasty

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I enjoyed Fingerprints of the Gods when I read it about 20 years ago, and the Sign and the Seal. Tried a few others, the Mars one but couldn't' get on with them.

 

The basis premise that there was an advanced civilization before ours that was lost doesn't strike me as that far fetched and there's quite a bit of evidence around. If you like a historical treasure hunt, without the promise of a definitive answer, then you'll probably quite enjoy those two at least. 

 

He seems to have got bang into the Ayhuasca of late, there's a banned Tedtalk on youtube, and I think I read he'd had a stroke recently. He's an interesting writer and creative thinker, but can be hit and miss. 

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Read one of his about a common ancient civilisation, lots of 'wow' stuff with very little factual back-up. Like all those sort of books really.

 

I enjoy reading about that kind of stuff, but I find people who actually believe it to be very annoying.

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Ive read a few of his books, certainly

entertaining. The one with DMT at its centre piece was brilliant. Believable? About as much as any other religion. He had one on ancient civilisations buried at sea, once again a decent read but not sure i believe him.His recent one on Gobekli tepe was decent as well. Again he reaches a bit far for me to believe it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

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Pretty sure there isn't really.

 

Any cast iron examples?

The pyramids for starters. Modern science still doesn’t know how they cut the stone with that level of accuracy or built them.

 

There’s a load of ancient maps knocking about that are accurate despite predating latitude.

 

I’m not saying they were flying about in spaceships, but there appears to have been a bit of something in between that got wiped out/lost.

 

I’m going off reading them 20 years ago but there was quite a lot of examples given if I remember correctly.

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As I understand it most of these mysteries are only really mysteries to Graham Hancock, click-baity websites and the like. They make for some good stories but actually are either well understood by mainstream academia or actively misrepresented in the ancient/gods/aliens/civilisations/alt-archaeology scene.

 

Askhistorians on reddit has probably been asked many times about most of these topics, for example, of the subject of maps which show antarctica ice-free with incredible accuracy in ancient times: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7vhw7j/how_it_is_possible_piri_reis_map_depict/ Turns out they just don't, really.

 

Bad archaeology also contains a pretty comprehensive review of one of his books: https://badarchaeology.wordpress.com/tag/graham-hancock/

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I believe that all of Hancock's work is fully referenced and I think he has said that all he does is connect already existing scientific theories and disciplines and then draw his own conclusions from this. He uses the work of other scientists to form a narrative. Don't really see anything wrong with this to be honest. 

 

And Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews is the Archeology Officer for North Hertfordshire District Council - so who put him in charge?

 

I remember Julian Cope talking a lot about archaeology and dismissing certain parts of it for ignoring things like psychedelic drugs, which it appears played quite a large part in early civilisations. He says that an awful lot of academics don't talk about them because it doesn't fit in with their conservative world view. I think there is a lot of merit in that.

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I believe that all of Hancock's work is fully referenced and I think he has said that all he does is connect already existing scientific theories and disciplines and then draw his own conclusions from this. He uses the work of other scientists to form a narrative. Don't really see anything wrong with this to be honest.

 

Nothing wrong with it per se, lots of popsci writers doing essentially the same thing. Problem with Hancock is that he tries to weave a narrative out of a tiny tiny fraction of research of dubious academic credibility (to put it politely) while ignoring and basically obfuscating the vast majority of more credible research which tends to make more robust conclusions. Allbeit, not always so alluring as a hidden race of humans who lived in Atlantis or whatever. That bad archaeology blog illustrates the point that someone with even a passing familiarity with the body of evidence has a trivial time finding huge amounts of inconsistencies and basically fabrications in Hancock's work.

 

I would count Julian cope as someone with a fair degree of subject authority as well.

Edited by Damian_de
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Allbeit, not always so alluring as a hidden race of humans who lived in Atlantis or whatever. 

 

I would count Julian cope as someone with a fair degree of subject authority as well.

 

The problem with things like Atlantis is that it sounds more fantastic than Hancock actually describes it - which is actually quite mundane really. A hidden race of humans sounds far more exotic than a group of people who died in a flood due to climatic change. 

 

I think anybody who tries to piece together a narrative is going to do so with a certain amount of poetic license - even the fella from the Council. We simply don't know, and probably never will know, what went on 10,000 years ago but my guess is that what we think we do know is probably wrong.

 

My understanding of that period, which is very limited, is that there seemingly was nothing much at all and then all of a sudden (relatively speaking), the human race discovers art and maths. There are huge question marks about how we got to that point as it doesn't appear to have been that gradual. I'm not saying that Hancock is correct but we can literally only speculate and that is what Hancock is doing. All we have really are artefacts and a strong human desire to piece these together to aid our understanding. So I don't think that there is anything sinister or misleading about Hancock. I don't believe that he lies awake at night thinking that he has got away with it for at least another day. And that appears to be the insinuation from people like the fella from the Council.

 

Here is Keith's background - yet people on badarchaeology.com take is word as gospel. In a fight to the death, I'd go with Hancock every single time.

 

http://www.kmatthews.org/personal/work.html

 

Julian Cope is aces 

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Having read a bit more about Keith - I think he is a bit of a fraud who more often that not fails to substantiate his point. He is a pedant and very little of what Keith says actually negates the claims made by Hancock. It feels like Hancock says, this is what I think and here are the references and this is why I think this but Keith (the self proclaimed voice of reason) just says 'it's a load of rubbish' via pedantry. Again, not to say that Hancock is correct but I've got more time for his work than I have for Keith's.

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Ok, so am reading The Magicians of The Gods at present. There is a temple called Gobekli Tepe in Turkey that has been proven to be around 10,000 years old. Later, Hancock goes to Peru and notices that there are almost identical pictograms on the walls. He finds this odd to say the least. There are many other connections too. Keith would say 'But airplanes weren't invented until the 20th century' and would claim that he has debunked Hancock. I think that Keith misses Hancock's point in a spectacular manner.

 

Why don't I just marry him then?

Edited by pipnasty
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