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From what I've heard, and read of Graham Hancock he has a lot of good thoughts on the subject of ancient/lost civilizations. He presents facts -- such as simil

From what I've heard, and read of Graham Hancock he has a lot of good thoughts on the subject of ancient/lost civilizations. He presents facts -- such as similarities between artifacts found in Egypt and the Mississippi Valley -- and goes on to tell what he thinks about them. I'd say overall he's pretty good about separating the facts vs his own ideas about things. Ultimately, he's a journalist and makes no scientific claims beyond those from the scientific community who have published peer-reviewed papers. He caught a lot of flack for changing his ideas over time -- even within his books -- yet it makes no sense as we -- humans -- figure things out by putting ideas out there and reflecting on them collectively. My favorite talk I've heard of his is the one on the use of psychedelics in ancient civilizations. In my opinion, modern society would benefit a great deal if we removed the stigma of altered states of consciousness, and more people began having these experiences...unfortunately, it would cut into big pharmas profits as less people needed lifetime prescriptions of anti-depressants.

ncmncm 6y ago
Hancock does suggest a few cranky ideas, not all his own. But he is quite, and unusually, careful to distinguish facts from speculation. Reading Graham, you always know which is which. You can safely read Hancock and quote out facts from it, even where you disagree with his conclusions, with no danger of propagating falsehoods. There really are hundreds of miles of tunnels carved into the rock under eastern Turkish towns. The monuments really are 11,000 years old. The designs on them might represent constellations, and if they do, might be the ones he picked. (My guess is yes on one, no on two.) The evidence for when the Sphinx and Giza pyramids were built really is a lot shakier than your tour guide will say. All we have reliable evidence for is that they are at least that old. Surface luminescence testing, what little has been done, puts bits of them 5000 years old, but not precisely enough to rule out the current guess of 4500 years. We also don't have any idea when the Giza pyramids were started. It would be possible to test surface luminescence of an interior stone, but nobody has. Cheops expanding an existing monument is equally as plausible as his building it from scratch. The Irish were building huge, astronomically oriented monuments at around the time the Egyptians may have done theirs. The Irish actually interred people in theirs, where nobody has found any hint that the Egyptians ever put a mummy in their own. (But there could be mummies anywhere under all that rock.) The entire lack of wall decoration in the pyramids does point to the idea that dimensional clues were the point, considering how distinctive so many of such details turn out to be. Meanwhile, the ancestors of Mayans were mining ochre at industrial scale deep underground at the same time as the Turks built their monuments, right at the end of the Younger Dryas cold spell 11,000 years ago. 2000 years later they were harvesting teosinte, ancestor to maize (Americans say "corn"). It is really true that huge swaths of what was coastal lowlands are now deep underwater, and if there were any cities or proto-cities there, they are there still, waiting to be found. It is true that anybody who lived there was obliged to move and, having moved, would bring along what they had developed, and have plenty of stories that would naturally have become legends of being flooded out. It is really true that there is extensive stonework deep underwater off India, not far from the Harappan cities we know about, that fishermen snag their nets on. It is really true that there is a thin layer of soot at many places all across North America, deposited at about the end of the Younger Dryas cold spell, suggesting a cataclysm of at least continental proportions. You can guess what all these things mean, as Hancock does, but his guesses don't taint the facts. If you have better ideas, you are equally free to publish them, or not to.

ncmncm 6y ago

Hancock does suggest a few cranky ideas, not all his own. But he is quite, and unusually, careful to distinguish facts from speculation. Reading Graham, you always know which is which. You can safely read Hancock and quote out facts from it, even where you disagree with his conclusions, with no danger of propagating falsehoods. There really are hundreds of miles of tunnels carved into the rock under eastern Turkish towns. The monuments really are 11,000 years old. The designs on them might represent constellations, and if they do, might be the ones he picked. (My guess is yes on one, no on two.) The evidence for when the Sphinx and Giza pyramids were built really is a lot shakier than your tour guide will say. All we have reliable evidence for is that they are at least that old. Surface luminescence testing, what little has been done, puts bits of them 5000 years old, but not precisely enough to rule out the current guess of 4500 years. We also don't have any idea when the Giza pyramids were started. It would be possible to test surface luminescence of an interior stone, but nobody has. Cheops expanding an existing monument is equally as plausible as his building it from scratch. The Irish were building huge, astronomically oriented monuments at around the time the Egyptians may have done theirs. The Irish actually interred people in theirs, where nobody has found any hint that the Egyptians ever put a mummy in their own. (But there could be mummies anywhere under all that rock.) The entire lack of wall decoration in the pyramids does point to the idea that dimensional clues were the point, considering how distinctive so many of such details turn out to be. Meanwhile, the ancestors of Mayans were mining ochre at industrial scale deep underground at the same time as the Turks built their monuments, right at the end of the Younger Dryas cold spell 11,000 years ago. 2000 years later they were harvesting teosinte, ancestor to maize (Americans say "corn"). It is really true that huge swaths of what was coastal lowlands are now deep underwater, and if there were any cities or proto-cities there, they are there still, waiting to be found. It is true that anybody who lived there was obliged to move and, having moved, would bring along what they had developed, and have plenty of stories that would naturally have become legends of being flooded out. It is really true that there is extensive stonework deep underwater off India, not far from the Harappan cities we know about, that fishermen snag their nets on. It is really true that there is a thin layer of soot at many places all across North America, deposited at about the end of the Younger Dryas cold spell, suggesting a cataclysm of at least continental proportions. You can guess what all these things mean, as Hancock does, but his guesses don't taint the facts. If you have better ideas, you are equally free to publish them, or not to.