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Disclaimer: I worked professionally as an archaeologist, specifically in related fields. He's pretty widely regarded as a crank. To some extent, we've done a t

Disclaimer: I worked professionally as an archaeologist, specifically in related fields. He's pretty widely regarded as a crank. To some extent, we've done a terrible job of educating the public / undergrad population about what the current state of knowledge is and so it's almost to be expected that people flock to these sorts of crackpot theories. I love sharing archaeology with people (it's our heritage!), but the state of public knowledge is so remedial that it's genuinely frustrating sometimes.

sebastialonso 6y ago
I'm intriged. > the current state of knowledge is Do you mean specifically to this site or to the profession in general?
- AlotOfReading 6y ago
  In general people should have at the least vague "red flag limits" of what's reasonable in a field. Let's use a hypothetical example: if I were to proclaim that I've found an overunity machine, most of the comments would (rightly) criticize and/or lecture me on how that's not possible without rewriting most of physics. The silurian hypothesis doesn't evoke nearly the same reaction, even accounting for the evidentiary strength difference between archaeology and physics. We can discuss why that is and so on, but most people just aren't equipped to differentiate crackpots from legitimate sources.
mootzville 6y ago
So, why don't archaeologists write more books as interesting and engaging as Graham Hancock's then that also offer refutations of his claims? I see many personal attacks such as stating he's a crank...prove it.
- pvg 6y ago
  For one thing, someone has to do actual archaeology. Debunking crank claims is not the primary job of researchers, there's simply too many of them - a lot of this is up to diligent consumers and that diligence involves a bit more work than demanding someone prove the crankery of every crank.
- californical 6y ago
  It's way less interesting to write a book titled "We don't really know very much" than "I know the key! This is it!"
  - snidane 6y ago
    Or: People are interested in possible hypotheses and explanations of phenomena and would love if the somebody could either provide more evidence or refute them. Definitely more interesting than the mainstream "We don't really know very much" together with " and we don't care, we are too busy doing real archeology".
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- AlotOfReading 6y ago
  There are lots of books, papers, blogs, etc out there that offer refutations of people like Hancock. The SAA Archaeological Record dedicated an entire section to one of his books (http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?m=16146&i=634462&p=10 http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?m=16146&i=634462&p...). Jared Diamond's books have prompted more than one seminar and rebuttal book, e.g. Questioning Collapse. Unfortunately, people are busy, have real research to do, and don't have time to deal with every crank out there. Some are even state sponsored, which opens up a whole world of problems. It's not fair to expect people to do extensive rebuttals of every crank out there. It's the academic version of Brandolini's law.
  - throwaway_kufu 6y ago
    > It's not fair to expect people to do extensive rebuttals of every crank out there. Yeah but this isn’t just any “crank” out there, in this case it happens to be someone who is more famous and well known for their ideas than the vast majority of academics. We are talking about stopping to engage the crazy homeless person on the street. This also happens to be what the egyptologists say about Robert Schoch and John Anthony West With respect to the Sphinx water erosion hypothesis. They can literally take time to hold press events to personally attack the people And state there is no evidence for these crazy ideas but refuse to address the Actual water erosion hypothesis.
    - AlotOfReading 6y ago
      The post you're responding to literally links an SAA magazine section wholly devoted to rebutting just one of Hancock's books. You also mention that academics refuse to address schoch. Here are a few academics responding directly to Schoch: https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.3340100203 https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.3340100203 http://www.hallofmaat.com/sphinx/comments-on-the-geological-evidence-for-the-sphinxs-age-2/ http://www.hallofmaat.com/sphinx/comments-on-the-geological-... I'd like to point out that the conversation in this thread has covered topics from Gobekli Tepe to the silurian hypothesis to early agriculture to climatology to early mesoamerican architecture and now to pharaonic monuments. That's an incredibly broad range of topics and no single person is an expert in all of them. Cranks like Hancock BS about an astonishing range of stuff.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  Probably because made up stories about a cataclysm on a strict 12,000 year cycle sells a lot more books. The truth can be fascinating. But a lot of times, fiction is even more interesting. Especially if you try to pass it off as the truth.
  - deniscepko2 6y ago
    i dont think Hancock states he is saying the truth, he just offers an explanation of his own to some unaswered questions.
- Bayart 6y ago
  Mystery stories are easy to sell. The problem with history is that if you're intentionally shaping a narrative, you're perverting your own discipline.
- new_guy 6y ago
  > So, why don't archaeologists write more books as interesting and engaging as Graham Hancock's then that also offer refutations of his claims? I see many personal attacks such as stating he's a crank...prove it. They do. There's more books written on history than you could read in several lifetimes. Just the kind of people who follow Hancock don't really give a sh*t and if you try to educate them you get accused of being in some vast conspiracy, and they'd much rather believe in 'ancient aliens' and total crackpots. Here's the people working on Göbekli Tepe calling out Hancock https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/2017/06/21/what-you-get-is-what-you-want-to-see-for-example-goebekli-tepe-on-a-4th-millennium-seal-print-from-susa/ https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/2017/06/21/what-y... That site is worth reading because it's written by the people working there. Just follow and read actual professionals, even email and talk with them on Twitter, they're regular people and they'd love hearing from you if you're genuinely opening to learn.
nkoren 6y ago
> but the state of public knowledge is so remedial that it's genuinely frustrating sometimes. This, I believe! Although it's probably a true statement for virtually any scientific profession. That said: I don't know the first thing about Graham Hancock, and I'm quite comfortable dismissing Velikovsky and his ilk as cranks. Just because one can construct an absurd theory to explain things one doesn't understand, doesn't mean one should. And yet... I was reading about the Norte Chico civilisation the other day, and thinking that it was really quite weird that they started building ziggurats at pretty close to the same time as the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Chinese also started building ziggurats. Really, the global flourishing of that exact form at that exact time -- in sites separated by thousands of miles, with no possibility of communication between them -- is honestly quite weird, right? When I've mentioned these kind of thoughts to archaeologically-trained friends, I've often encountered a curious lack of curiosity -- "yes, obviously just a crazy coincidence, can't be anything besides that, let's talk about something else now" -- or asserting theories, as facts, about how ziggurats are just an inevitable step in the development of urban architecture (this is definitely untrue). Both of these reactions are troubling to me. Dismissing these sort of things as "not a mystery" is doing them a disservice. Imagine how many great discoveries would have passed us by if every piece of initially-baffling evidence were dismissed as "just a coincidence". And while it's clearly irresponsible to to go on yammering about aliens or Atlantis or whatever -- at least in the absence of much more extraordinary evidence -- I don't think that it's much more responsible to concoct theories which are prosaic but obviously false. Anyhow, minor rant there, sorry. I have absolutely no working theory as to why ziggurats started popping up all over the place 5,000 years ago. I just want to hear a non-crackpot archaeologist admit that yes, that's a legitimate mystery, and that if it's just a coincidence, it's a very weird one.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  > in sites separated by thousands of miles, with no possibility of communication between them Human walking speed is about 3.1mph. Walking 8 hours a day, it takes 40 days to cross a thousand miles. Communication's slow, but not that slow – especially if you've got horses. My working theory is that people walked.
  - 6y ago
secondcoming 6y ago
He may be a crank, but his theories are actually entertaining. There's a reason why The X-Files was super popular.
- AlotOfReading 6y ago
  Indiana Jones is just as ahistorical, but it's fine because no one thinks it's anything but fiction. The problem I have with Hancock isn't over whether it's entertaining, it's about the fact that he pretends his fictions aren't.
  - toomlien 6y ago
    I think that Hancock is very entertaining and I enjoy reading or listening to him. I don't believe a word he says of course, but I was still annoyed that TED banned his talk for example. My point is, it seems that we need to protect people because they are stupid and will believe anything they read, but that deprives me of my entertainment! Like a guy explaining why the earth is hollow is entertaining only if the guy is believing it. Don't ban the crazies, let them make their 8 hour monetized youtube videos on why elvis is still alive.
snidane 6y ago
He builds a lot on top of Robert Schoch's Sphinx erosion controversy. Ie that the egyptian sphinx must be much older than currently estimated because of geological findings of erosion around it is water based, not wind based. These "cranks" provide an explanation. How do "non-crank" tradition archeologist explain this? Just because somebody exaggerates means that he is a crank? In a world of ignorants perhaps the only option to be heard is to develop a fan base and exaggerate. That doesn't invalidate the few hypotheses presented by "cranks" which seem closer to be believable than mainstream explanations. https://www.robertschoch.com/sphinx.html https://www.robertschoch.com/sphinx.html https://youtu.be/zSjnvlDWwrE https://youtu.be/zSjnvlDWwrE
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mod 6y ago
  Every genius ahead of his time starts out as a crank. I'm not really speaking about this guy, I'm not at all qualified to say, but I think it's good we have people thinking differently from the crowd.
  - mellosouls 6y ago
    Every genius ahead of his time starts out as a crank. Also, and far more often, every crank starts out as a crank.
    - andrewflnr 6y ago
      Yes, but the point is not that being a crank is a guarantee of truth. The point is that it's not a guarantee of being wrong either. You have to look at the evidence either way. Ed: if you care, I mean. I'm the last person to deny the right to just not take a position on a non-actionable topic.
    - objektif 6y ago
      Also much more often every tenured professor starts as a conformist PhD student. Then some becomes cranks.
Alex3917 6y ago
> He's pretty widely regarded as a crank. So did the devil bury all the evidence of a meteor impact in order to trick us?
colordrops 6y ago
Disclaimer: The parent comment is by an anonymous person who has not provided credentials or identity and yet posits that they have authority to uniformly condemn someone without any reason, other than providing a label for this person, "crank". We are supposed to reel in horror at the terrible person he is, since he was labeled as such without a single source or specific example about how this person is wrong.
- tptacek 6y ago
  If you need credentialed sources to establish that archeologists are not warm to the theory that supernatural beings built the Egyptian Sphinxes, you can just consult any AskHistorians question about Hancock. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=Graham%20Hancock&restrict_sr=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=Graham%20Han...
  - AlotOfReading 6y ago
    Flairs on AH aren't checked for credentials (though many are indeed in academia). My username is the same there and I occasionally pop in to answer questions.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      You’re right, maybe historians really do take this person seriously.
  - colordrops 6y ago
    That's fine - it's not hard to believe that there are credentialed people out there calling Hancock's work out as specious. That's a different topic though and doesn't imply that the word of an anonymous internet stranger should be taken at face value without any evidence, especially if you haven't yet encountered any of these credentialed people, and this call of "crank" is the first you've heard. It's a meaningless distillation of a complex reality - "crank" is just a label without any explanation. One of the characteristics of so-called "cranks" is that they make claims and broad generalizations without sources or evidence. It's hypocritical in the extreme by the original poster to commit the same fallacy as the one they are labeling someone with.

sebastialonso 6y ago

I'm intriged. > the current state of knowledge is Do you mean specifically to this site or to the profession in general?

AlotOfReading 6y ago
In general people should have at the least vague "red flag limits" of what's reasonable in a field. Let's use a hypothetical example: if I were to proclaim that I've found an overunity machine, most of the comments would (rightly) criticize and/or lecture me on how that's not possible without rewriting most of physics. The silurian hypothesis doesn't evoke nearly the same reaction, even accounting for the evidentiary strength difference between archaeology and physics. We can discuss why that is and so on, but most people just aren't equipped to differentiate crackpots from legitimate sources.

mootzville 6y ago

So, why don't archaeologists write more books as interesting and engaging as Graham Hancock's then that also offer refutations of his claims? I see many personal attacks such as stating he's a crank...prove it.

pvg 6y ago
For one thing, someone has to do actual archaeology. Debunking crank claims is not the primary job of researchers, there's simply too many of them - a lot of this is up to diligent consumers and that diligence involves a bit more work than demanding someone prove the crankery of every crank.
californical 6y ago
It's way less interesting to write a book titled "We don't really know very much" than "I know the key! This is it!"
- snidane 6y ago
  Or: People are interested in possible hypotheses and explanations of phenomena and would love if the somebody could either provide more evidence or refute them. Definitely more interesting than the mainstream "We don't really know very much" together with " and we don't care, we are too busy doing real archeology".
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
AlotOfReading 6y ago
There are lots of books, papers, blogs, etc out there that offer refutations of people like Hancock. The SAA Archaeological Record dedicated an entire section to one of his books (http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?m=16146&i=634462&p=10 http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?m=16146&i=634462&p...). Jared Diamond's books have prompted more than one seminar and rebuttal book, e.g. Questioning Collapse. Unfortunately, people are busy, have real research to do, and don't have time to deal with every crank out there. Some are even state sponsored, which opens up a whole world of problems. It's not fair to expect people to do extensive rebuttals of every crank out there. It's the academic version of Brandolini's law.
- throwaway_kufu 6y ago
  > It's not fair to expect people to do extensive rebuttals of every crank out there. Yeah but this isn’t just any “crank” out there, in this case it happens to be someone who is more famous and well known for their ideas than the vast majority of academics. We are talking about stopping to engage the crazy homeless person on the street. This also happens to be what the egyptologists say about Robert Schoch and John Anthony West With respect to the Sphinx water erosion hypothesis. They can literally take time to hold press events to personally attack the people And state there is no evidence for these crazy ideas but refuse to address the Actual water erosion hypothesis.
  - AlotOfReading 6y ago
    The post you're responding to literally links an SAA magazine section wholly devoted to rebutting just one of Hancock's books. You also mention that academics refuse to address schoch. Here are a few academics responding directly to Schoch: https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.3340100203 https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.3340100203 http://www.hallofmaat.com/sphinx/comments-on-the-geological-evidence-for-the-sphinxs-age-2/ http://www.hallofmaat.com/sphinx/comments-on-the-geological-... I'd like to point out that the conversation in this thread has covered topics from Gobekli Tepe to the silurian hypothesis to early agriculture to climatology to early mesoamerican architecture and now to pharaonic monuments. That's an incredibly broad range of topics and no single person is an expert in all of them. Cranks like Hancock BS about an astonishing range of stuff.
jjeaff 6y ago
Probably because made up stories about a cataclysm on a strict 12,000 year cycle sells a lot more books. The truth can be fascinating. But a lot of times, fiction is even more interesting. Especially if you try to pass it off as the truth.
- deniscepko2 6y ago
  i dont think Hancock states he is saying the truth, he just offers an explanation of his own to some unaswered questions.
Bayart 6y ago
Mystery stories are easy to sell. The problem with history is that if you're intentionally shaping a narrative, you're perverting your own discipline.
new_guy 6y ago
> So, why don't archaeologists write more books as interesting and engaging as Graham Hancock's then that also offer refutations of his claims? I see many personal attacks such as stating he's a crank...prove it. They do. There's more books written on history than you could read in several lifetimes. Just the kind of people who follow Hancock don't really give a sh*t and if you try to educate them you get accused of being in some vast conspiracy, and they'd much rather believe in 'ancient aliens' and total crackpots. Here's the people working on Göbekli Tepe calling out Hancock https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/2017/06/21/what-you-get-is-what-you-want-to-see-for-example-goebekli-tepe-on-a-4th-millennium-seal-print-from-susa/ https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/2017/06/21/what-y... That site is worth reading because it's written by the people working there. Just follow and read actual professionals, even email and talk with them on Twitter, they're regular people and they'd love hearing from you if you're genuinely opening to learn.

nkoren 6y ago

> but the state of public knowledge is so remedial that it's genuinely frustrating sometimes. This, I believe! Although it's probably a true statement for virtually any scientific profession. That said: I don't know the first thing about Graham Hancock, and I'm quite comfortable dismissing Velikovsky and his ilk as cranks. Just because one can construct an absurd theory to explain things one doesn't understand, doesn't mean one should. And yet... I was reading about the Norte Chico civilisation the other day, and thinking that it was really quite weird that they started building ziggurats at pretty close to the same time as the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Chinese also started building ziggurats. Really, the global flourishing of that exact form at that exact time -- in sites separated by thousands of miles, with no possibility of communication between them -- is honestly quite weird, right? When I've mentioned these kind of thoughts to archaeologically-trained friends, I've often encountered a curious lack of curiosity -- "yes, obviously just a crazy coincidence, can't be anything besides that, let's talk about something else now" -- or asserting theories, as facts, about how ziggurats are just an inevitable step in the development of urban architecture (this is definitely untrue). Both of these reactions are troubling to me. Dismissing these sort of things as "not a mystery" is doing them a disservice. Imagine how many great discoveries would have passed us by if every piece of initially-baffling evidence were dismissed as "just a coincidence". And while it's clearly irresponsible to to go on yammering about aliens or Atlantis or whatever -- at least in the absence of much more extraordinary evidence -- I don't think that it's much more responsible to concoct theories which are prosaic but obviously false. Anyhow, minor rant there, sorry. I have absolutely no working theory as to why ziggurats started popping up all over the place 5,000 years ago. I just want to hear a non-crackpot archaeologist admit that yes, that's a legitimate mystery, and that if it's just a coincidence, it's a very weird one.

wizzwizz4 6y ago
> in sites separated by thousands of miles, with no possibility of communication between them Human walking speed is about 3.1mph. Walking 8 hours a day, it takes 40 days to cross a thousand miles. Communication's slow, but not that slow – especially if you've got horses. My working theory is that people walked.
- 6y ago

secondcoming 6y ago

He may be a crank, but his theories are actually entertaining. There's a reason why The X-Files was super popular.

AlotOfReading 6y ago
Indiana Jones is just as ahistorical, but it's fine because no one thinks it's anything but fiction. The problem I have with Hancock isn't over whether it's entertaining, it's about the fact that he pretends his fictions aren't.
- toomlien 6y ago
  I think that Hancock is very entertaining and I enjoy reading or listening to him. I don't believe a word he says of course, but I was still annoyed that TED banned his talk for example. My point is, it seems that we need to protect people because they are stupid and will believe anything they read, but that deprives me of my entertainment! Like a guy explaining why the earth is hollow is entertaining only if the guy is believing it. Don't ban the crazies, let them make their 8 hour monetized youtube videos on why elvis is still alive.

snidane 6y ago

He builds a lot on top of Robert Schoch's Sphinx erosion controversy. Ie that the egyptian sphinx must be much older than currently estimated because of geological findings of erosion around it is water based, not wind based. These "cranks" provide an explanation. How do "non-crank" tradition archeologist explain this? Just because somebody exaggerates means that he is a crank? In a world of ignorants perhaps the only option to be heard is to develop a fan base and exaggerate. That doesn't invalidate the few hypotheses presented by "cranks" which seem closer to be believable than mainstream explanations. https://www.robertschoch.com/sphinx.html https://www.robertschoch.com/sphinx.html https://youtu.be/zSjnvlDWwrE https://youtu.be/zSjnvlDWwrE

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mod 6y ago
Every genius ahead of his time starts out as a crank. I'm not really speaking about this guy, I'm not at all qualified to say, but I think it's good we have people thinking differently from the crowd.
- mellosouls 6y ago
  Every genius ahead of his time starts out as a crank. Also, and far more often, every crank starts out as a crank.
  - andrewflnr 6y ago
    Yes, but the point is not that being a crank is a guarantee of truth. The point is that it's not a guarantee of being wrong either. You have to look at the evidence either way. Ed: if you care, I mean. I'm the last person to deny the right to just not take a position on a non-actionable topic.
  - objektif 6y ago
    Also much more often every tenured professor starts as a conformist PhD student. Then some becomes cranks.

Alex3917 6y ago

> He's pretty widely regarded as a crank. So did the devil bury all the evidence of a meteor impact in order to trick us?

colordrops 6y ago

Disclaimer: The parent comment is by an anonymous person who has not provided credentials or identity and yet posits that they have authority to uniformly condemn someone without any reason, other than providing a label for this person, "crank". We are supposed to reel in horror at the terrible person he is, since he was labeled as such without a single source or specific example about how this person is wrong.

tptacek 6y ago
If you need credentialed sources to establish that archeologists are not warm to the theory that supernatural beings built the Egyptian Sphinxes, you can just consult any AskHistorians question about Hancock. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=Graham%20Hancock&restrict_sr=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=Graham%20Han...
- AlotOfReading 6y ago
  Flairs on AH aren't checked for credentials (though many are indeed in academia). My username is the same there and I occasionally pop in to answer questions.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    You’re right, maybe historians really do take this person seriously.
- colordrops 6y ago
  That's fine - it's not hard to believe that there are credentialed people out there calling Hancock's work out as specious. That's a different topic though and doesn't imply that the word of an anonymous internet stranger should be taken at face value without any evidence, especially if you haven't yet encountered any of these credentialed people, and this call of "crank" is the first you've heard. It's a meaningless distillation of a complex reality - "crank" is just a label without any explanation. One of the characteristics of so-called "cranks" is that they make claims and broad generalizations without sources or evidence. It's hypocritical in the extreme by the original poster to commit the same fallacy as the one they are labeling someone with.