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By sheer coincidence, I was reading Graham Hancock's "Magicians of the Gods" right before logging into HN. His thesis is that there was an advanced civilizatio

By sheer coincidence, I was reading Graham Hancock's "Magicians of the Gods" right before logging into HN. His thesis is that there was an advanced civilization - "Atlantis" - that was wiped out by a comet impact around 10,000 BC. I honestly don't know what to make of this book. It has rigorous research and several references and citations about the younger dryas impact hypothesis. He brings in multiple folk tales, tribal origin stories and mythologies that suggest that the comet impact and the subsequent flooding are recorded in oral traditions. Then he goes off into the deep end with History Channel's ancient aliens style conjectures about the Pyramids of Giza and various references to "the seven sages" who bring advanced knowledge from Atlantis to reboot civilization post comet-impact. It's totally entertaining in the same way that watching serious people talk about crazy UFO stories is interesting. And like any conspiracy theory, there is enough room to have fun thinking about how much truth could really be lurking underneath it all. Pure fun, if you have absolutely nothing better to do with your time.

akomtu 5y ago
Iirc, the name "Atlantis" was given by Plato to the last piece of that big continent that sank around that time. Per other sources, that civilisation called themselves "Lanka people".
rfwhyte 5y ago
Graham Hancock is an utter charlatan who willfully manipulates and mispresents the truth for profit. There are so many gaping holes in his theories he purposefully ignores because addressing them would require him to completely discard his profitable pseudo-scientific nonsense. I get it though, I too went down the rabbit hole of the whole "Lost ancient civilizations" thing, but the deeper I got, the more I realized the whole notion is utterly missing any kind of real scientific underpinnings. YouTuber / archaeologist Stefan Milo made this pretty comprehensively damming rebuttal video to Hancock's so called "Theories" that does a far better job explaining the specifics than I ever could, and I highly recommend watching it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwTkDkSbO-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwTkDkSbO-4
- dilippkumar 5y ago
  > YouTuber / archaeologist Stefan Milo made this pretty comprehensively damming rebuttal video to Hancock's so called "Theories" that does a far better job explaining the specifics... I just finished watching the video and unfortunately I don't buy it at all. Now Graham Hancock is clearly peddling some hard-to-believe theories, but this rebuttal video doesn't do much to refute him. He takes the weakest possible interpretation of Graham's work and asks "where is the evidenc?" in multiple ways. I think the same rebuttal would be stronger if he addressed why the track record of archeologists so far have been very credible and that they have a history of testing out falsifiable theories by looking for negative results. For example "we don't expect to find any evidence for human activity below this depth in this region - and look, we didn't find anything". Graham's argument rests heavily on archeologists not doing a good job and the easiest way to dismiss him is to show otherwise. This is easy to do with Physicists looking for particles that would poke holes into the standard model for example. I'd love to see a solid rebuttal for Hancock's theories that doesn't rest upon "consensus among archeologists" without showing why the same archeologists are credible.

akomtu 5y ago

Iirc, the name "Atlantis" was given by Plato to the last piece of that big continent that sank around that time. Per other sources, that civilisation called themselves "Lanka people".

rfwhyte 5y ago

Graham Hancock is an utter charlatan who willfully manipulates and mispresents the truth for profit. There are so many gaping holes in his theories he purposefully ignores because addressing them would require him to completely discard his profitable pseudo-scientific nonsense. I get it though, I too went down the rabbit hole of the whole "Lost ancient civilizations" thing, but the deeper I got, the more I realized the whole notion is utterly missing any kind of real scientific underpinnings. YouTuber / archaeologist Stefan Milo made this pretty comprehensively damming rebuttal video to Hancock's so called "Theories" that does a far better job explaining the specifics than I ever could, and I highly recommend watching it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwTkDkSbO-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwTkDkSbO-4

dilippkumar 5y ago
> YouTuber / archaeologist Stefan Milo made this pretty comprehensively damming rebuttal video to Hancock's so called "Theories" that does a far better job explaining the specifics... I just finished watching the video and unfortunately I don't buy it at all. Now Graham Hancock is clearly peddling some hard-to-believe theories, but this rebuttal video doesn't do much to refute him. He takes the weakest possible interpretation of Graham's work and asks "where is the evidenc?" in multiple ways. I think the same rebuttal would be stronger if he addressed why the track record of archeologists so far have been very credible and that they have a history of testing out falsifiable theories by looking for negative results. For example "we don't expect to find any evidence for human activity below this depth in this region - and look, we didn't find anything". Graham's argument rests heavily on archeologists not doing a good job and the easiest way to dismiss him is to show otherwise. This is easy to do with Physicists looking for particles that would poke holes into the standard model for example. I'd love to see a solid rebuttal for Hancock's theories that doesn't rest upon "consensus among archeologists" without showing why the same archeologists are credible.