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I would be curious to hear author and researcher Graham Hancock’s take on this. His theories on human history based upon archeological evidence are very interes

I would be curious to hear author and researcher Graham Hancock’s take on this. His theories on human history based upon archeological evidence are very interesting. He predicted old new kingdoms were yet to be discovered in Amazon basin. Fingerprints of the Gods was one of his good reads

bee_rider 4y ago
Is he a well regarded expert on this kind of stuff? I've never heard of him, just -- title in the format "<Noun> of the <Dramatic Noun>" tend to set off little alarm bells in my head.
- rfwhyte 4y ago
  No, Graham Hancock is an anti-science charlatan. No actual archaeologists take him remotely seriously.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    describing people who publish original thought as "anti-something-important derogatory-name" sets off alarm bells for me. Is conformity really that precious? are public writings so black-and-white ?
    - nobody9999 4y ago
      > describing people who publish original thought as "anti-something-important derogatory-name" sets off alarm bells for me. Is conformity really that precious? are public writings so black-and-white ? In that case, I recommend you check out Erich von Danniken[0], Giorgio Tsoukalos[1] and Charles Dawson[2]. They have some original thoughts that have been wildly popular. Or are you saying that if something is "popular" that it's "conformity" and should be rejected for being conformist? If it's generally accepted (as bible dogma in the middle ages was), then it must be a false flag designed to hoodwink the masses into accepting false information, because no amount of consensus is enough. amirite? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_A._Tsoukalos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_A._Tsoukalos [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dawson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dawson
      - mistrial9 4y ago
        I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” -- Ozymandius by P.B. Shelley
  - aksss 4y ago
    Calling people “anti-science” now also sets off alarm bells for me. “Anti-science” is analogous to calling someone a “heretic” in the 1400’s, but with our benefit of hindsight into the fallacy of groupthink and servility to orthodoxy.
    - edmundsauto 4y ago
      Especially when the field is archaeology, which is a study and not a science. It has its rigor, but it is more of an interpretation of understanding rather than experimentation. Still valuable, still rigorous… but no ground truth is possible.
      - tonyg 4y ago
        > no ground truth is possible. Oof. I have bad news for you about science in general.
        edmundsauto 4y ago
        Eh, I'm not overly proscriptive that science answers all the questions, or that it has the precision people think that it does. OTOH, it has been important for civilizational science, so I'm pretty comfortable saying that it's a good option. More germane to the point, it's probably better to think about "ground truth" as "sufficiently reasonable approximation for the grain that I need to operate at".
      - anthk 4y ago
        >but no ground truth is possible. Carbon 14.
        edmundsauto 4y ago
        This is actually a really interesting situation. Carbon-14 resides only in organic matter, and so a lot of stone age artifacts found can only be dated based on what surrounds it. Humans have a tendency to dig down to bury organic matter, which makes it very difficult to understand if the C14 readings are associated with what artifacts. So while we can reasonably ascertain the age of (organic) artifacts, it does not answer the questions being asked.
  - icare_1er 4y ago
    There has been a lot of precedents of "actual scientists" not taking anti-science charlatans seriously: before the discovery of genes; before the discovery of DNA; before the discovery of tectonicsl before the discovery of the ultraviolet catastrophe. Etc, etc, etc....
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  No. He's widely regarded as a crank. However, he is quite popular. There's a bit of a split between archaeologists that merely think Hancock is an indication that Archaeology's public outreach is insufficient and those that think he's actively harming public perceptions of the field with misinformation. For the record, I'm more in the former camp. Anyway, the SAA (an archaeology trade group) devoted 27 pages of a magazine issue to discussing that split and picking apart the arguments in one of Hancocks's recent books. You can find the magazine here to decide for yourself: http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?m=16146&i=634462&p=3&ver=html5 http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?m=16146&i=634462&p... For fairness, here's Hancock's response: https://grahamhancock.com/saa-archaeological-record-response/ https://grahamhancock.com/saa-archaeological-record-response...
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Your "for fairness" response article includes: > [Graham's blog post] Before closing, however, I’m understandably very happy to quote here the useful concise summary of America Before given by anthropologist Jeb J. Card in his contribution to the issue (pp 26-30): >> [Card's review] Attempting to critique America Before: The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilization by Graham Hancock (2019) using the criteria of professional archaeology is doomed to failure, as his goals are outside of the materialist practice of scientific archaeology. In a nutshell, Hancock argues that an ancient civilization of the Pleistocene emerged in North America that was based not on material technology but on psychic/spiritual knowledge. It became a global sea-based society comparable with the late pre-Industrial British Empire. These Ice Age Americans (spoiler: Atlanteans) foresaw a cosmic disaster and spread memetic seeds of sacred knowledge of geometry, astronomy, and the Otherworld and how souls may navigate it around the world. After this civilization was destroyed by impact events from a comet during the Younger Dryas, these advanced people came to be remembered as magicians and gods. Seeking this knowledge today is a path to truly understanding reality and the spiritual elements denied by materialist science.” > [Graham's blog post] Card’s precis of my arguments is fair, and in general I’d say that his analysis of my work and its function is much more carefully thought through than that of any of the other contributors. If the author thinks the reviewer pointing to psychic Atlanteans in his work is treating him more fairly than the rest, that doesn't bode well for the overall work.
colordrops 4y ago
He was also talking about Gobekli tepe years ago and now you see announcements about it like it's news. He is derided as he's a journalist rather than an academic but I don't think he ever pushed that his ideas are absolute truth. Also he's an Ayahuasca advocate, which unfairly brings further derision. He'll talk about more far out theories too if with the right audience.
silicon2401 4y ago
I came here exactly to share a related tidbit I learned through Graham Hancock: "terra preta". It's absolutely mindblowing to me and something I think any reader of HN would appreciate, too: > Terra preta [...] is a type of very dark, fertile artificial (anthropogenic) soil found in the Amazon Basin. [...] Terra preta owes its characteristic black color to its weathered charcoal content,[2] and was made by adding a mixture of charcoal, bone, broken pottery, compost and manure to the low fertility Amazonian soil. A product of indigenous soil management and slash-and-char agriculture,[3] the charcoal is stable and remains in the soil for thousands of years, binding and retaining minerals and nutrients.[4][5] [...] Terra preta soils were created by farming communities between 450 BCE and 950 CE.[10][11][12] Soil depths can reach 2 meters (6.6 ft). It is reported to regenerate itself at the rate of 1 centimeter (0.4 in) per year.[13] First paragraphs on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta Hancock has a gift for pointing out deeply fascinating aspects of human history. His personal conclusions based on things he brings up include things like advanced, pre-historic civilizations. Regardless of whether you care for those kinds of claims, I think it's almost undeniable that the tidbits he brings up in his discussions, like terra preta, are a real treat to read about. For any fan of history or intellectually curious person, I'd recommend at least watching a video or two of his on youtube, just as a starting point if nothing else, and going from there to read about the various things he brings up.
- greenonions 4y ago
  I don't really think of Graham Hancock as being a very good scientific source, but I think his ideas are a fantastic source of wonder about human history. It's simply fun to imagine advanced ancient civilizations.
  - silicon2401 4y ago
    Exactly. For me it's kind of like using wikipedia for grade school homework: the point isn't to use the article as your source, the point is to reference the wikipedia article's references. And I agree with your latter point as well: I don't really care whether his ideas about ancient pre-history are true or not, I just think they're really fun to think about. I love reading mythology even if I don't believe it, and Hancock's mythology is no different.
circlefavshape 4y ago
Fingerprints of the Gods? The one where he wrote the whole thing stoned? And then remained stoned for 20+ years until a hallucinatory snake on an ayahuasca trip told him to quit smoking weed.
- tomcam 4y ago
  How is this helping the discourse? Do you have anything of substance to add?
- rustybelt 4y ago
  Some of the best programmers I know are always stoned. Funny to see this take on HN of all places.

bee_rider 4y ago

Is he a well regarded expert on this kind of stuff? I've never heard of him, just -- title in the format "<Noun> of the <Dramatic Noun>" tend to set off little alarm bells in my head.

rfwhyte 4y ago
No, Graham Hancock is an anti-science charlatan. No actual archaeologists take him remotely seriously.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  describing people who publish original thought as "anti-something-important derogatory-name" sets off alarm bells for me. Is conformity really that precious? are public writings so black-and-white ?
  - nobody9999 4y ago
    > describing people who publish original thought as "anti-something-important derogatory-name" sets off alarm bells for me. Is conformity really that precious? are public writings so black-and-white ? In that case, I recommend you check out Erich von Danniken[0], Giorgio Tsoukalos[1] and Charles Dawson[2]. They have some original thoughts that have been wildly popular. Or are you saying that if something is "popular" that it's "conformity" and should be rejected for being conformist? If it's generally accepted (as bible dogma in the middle ages was), then it must be a false flag designed to hoodwink the masses into accepting false information, because no amount of consensus is enough. amirite? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_A._Tsoukalos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_A._Tsoukalos [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dawson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dawson
    - mistrial9 4y ago
      I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” -- Ozymandius by P.B. Shelley
- aksss 4y ago
  Calling people “anti-science” now also sets off alarm bells for me. “Anti-science” is analogous to calling someone a “heretic” in the 1400’s, but with our benefit of hindsight into the fallacy of groupthink and servility to orthodoxy.
  - edmundsauto 4y ago
    Especially when the field is archaeology, which is a study and not a science. It has its rigor, but it is more of an interpretation of understanding rather than experimentation. Still valuable, still rigorous… but no ground truth is possible.
    - tonyg 4y ago
      > no ground truth is possible. Oof. I have bad news for you about science in general.
      - edmundsauto 4y ago
        Eh, I'm not overly proscriptive that science answers all the questions, or that it has the precision people think that it does. OTOH, it has been important for civilizational science, so I'm pretty comfortable saying that it's a good option. More germane to the point, it's probably better to think about "ground truth" as "sufficiently reasonable approximation for the grain that I need to operate at".
    - anthk 4y ago
      >but no ground truth is possible. Carbon 14.
      - edmundsauto 4y ago
        This is actually a really interesting situation. Carbon-14 resides only in organic matter, and so a lot of stone age artifacts found can only be dated based on what surrounds it. Humans have a tendency to dig down to bury organic matter, which makes it very difficult to understand if the C14 readings are associated with what artifacts. So while we can reasonably ascertain the age of (organic) artifacts, it does not answer the questions being asked.
- icare_1er 4y ago
  There has been a lot of precedents of "actual scientists" not taking anti-science charlatans seriously: before the discovery of genes; before the discovery of DNA; before the discovery of tectonicsl before the discovery of the ultraviolet catastrophe. Etc, etc, etc....
AlotOfReading 4y ago
No. He's widely regarded as a crank. However, he is quite popular. There's a bit of a split between archaeologists that merely think Hancock is an indication that Archaeology's public outreach is insufficient and those that think he's actively harming public perceptions of the field with misinformation. For the record, I'm more in the former camp. Anyway, the SAA (an archaeology trade group) devoted 27 pages of a magazine issue to discussing that split and picking apart the arguments in one of Hancocks's recent books. You can find the magazine here to decide for yourself: http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?m=16146&i=634462&p=3&ver=html5 http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?m=16146&i=634462&p... For fairness, here's Hancock's response: https://grahamhancock.com/saa-archaeological-record-response/ https://grahamhancock.com/saa-archaeological-record-response...
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Your "for fairness" response article includes: > [Graham's blog post] Before closing, however, I’m understandably very happy to quote here the useful concise summary of America Before given by anthropologist Jeb J. Card in his contribution to the issue (pp 26-30): >> [Card's review] Attempting to critique America Before: The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilization by Graham Hancock (2019) using the criteria of professional archaeology is doomed to failure, as his goals are outside of the materialist practice of scientific archaeology. In a nutshell, Hancock argues that an ancient civilization of the Pleistocene emerged in North America that was based not on material technology but on psychic/spiritual knowledge. It became a global sea-based society comparable with the late pre-Industrial British Empire. These Ice Age Americans (spoiler: Atlanteans) foresaw a cosmic disaster and spread memetic seeds of sacred knowledge of geometry, astronomy, and the Otherworld and how souls may navigate it around the world. After this civilization was destroyed by impact events from a comet during the Younger Dryas, these advanced people came to be remembered as magicians and gods. Seeking this knowledge today is a path to truly understanding reality and the spiritual elements denied by materialist science.” > [Graham's blog post] Card’s precis of my arguments is fair, and in general I’d say that his analysis of my work and its function is much more carefully thought through than that of any of the other contributors. If the author thinks the reviewer pointing to psychic Atlanteans in his work is treating him more fairly than the rest, that doesn't bode well for the overall work.

colordrops 4y ago

He was also talking about Gobekli tepe years ago and now you see announcements about it like it's news. He is derided as he's a journalist rather than an academic but I don't think he ever pushed that his ideas are absolute truth. Also he's an Ayahuasca advocate, which unfairly brings further derision. He'll talk about more far out theories too if with the right audience.

silicon2401 4y ago

I came here exactly to share a related tidbit I learned through Graham Hancock: "terra preta". It's absolutely mindblowing to me and something I think any reader of HN would appreciate, too: > Terra preta [...] is a type of very dark, fertile artificial (anthropogenic) soil found in the Amazon Basin. [...] Terra preta owes its characteristic black color to its weathered charcoal content,[2] and was made by adding a mixture of charcoal, bone, broken pottery, compost and manure to the low fertility Amazonian soil. A product of indigenous soil management and slash-and-char agriculture,[3] the charcoal is stable and remains in the soil for thousands of years, binding and retaining minerals and nutrients.[4][5] [...] Terra preta soils were created by farming communities between 450 BCE and 950 CE.[10][11][12] Soil depths can reach 2 meters (6.6 ft). It is reported to regenerate itself at the rate of 1 centimeter (0.4 in) per year.[13] First paragraphs on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta Hancock has a gift for pointing out deeply fascinating aspects of human history. His personal conclusions based on things he brings up include things like advanced, pre-historic civilizations. Regardless of whether you care for those kinds of claims, I think it's almost undeniable that the tidbits he brings up in his discussions, like terra preta, are a real treat to read about. For any fan of history or intellectually curious person, I'd recommend at least watching a video or two of his on youtube, just as a starting point if nothing else, and going from there to read about the various things he brings up.

greenonions 4y ago
I don't really think of Graham Hancock as being a very good scientific source, but I think his ideas are a fantastic source of wonder about human history. It's simply fun to imagine advanced ancient civilizations.
- silicon2401 4y ago
  Exactly. For me it's kind of like using wikipedia for grade school homework: the point isn't to use the article as your source, the point is to reference the wikipedia article's references. And I agree with your latter point as well: I don't really care whether his ideas about ancient pre-history are true or not, I just think they're really fun to think about. I love reading mythology even if I don't believe it, and Hancock's mythology is no different.

circlefavshape 4y ago

Fingerprints of the Gods? The one where he wrote the whole thing stoned? And then remained stoned for 20+ years until a hallucinatory snake on an ayahuasca trip told him to quit smoking weed.

tomcam 4y ago
How is this helping the discourse? Do you have anything of substance to add?
rustybelt 4y ago
Some of the best programmers I know are always stoned. Funny to see this take on HN of all places.