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For those unaware, OP is referring to a crackpot theory most recently advanced by the journalist Graham Hancock. The idea of sophisticated pre-ice age civilizat

For those unaware, OP is referring to a crackpot theory most recently advanced by the journalist Graham Hancock. The idea of sophisticated pre-ice age civilizations is universally regarded by the archaeologists and experts to be roughly on par with the "ancient aliens" hypothesis.

fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
This has nothing to do with the recent Netflix show, which I have never seen
zozbot234 4y ago
Crackpot theory? It's a straightforward inference from human behavioral modernity, and the fact that some places have always been resource-rich enough to allow for at least some effort to be spent on things other than brute survival. Those who suppose the contrary as a default are merely transporting our naïve, self-serving stereotypes about "savage" societies to the very far past.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  There's two different ways to interpret the GP post. Using the term "civilization" instead of "sophisticated societies", the first is that civilization == the traditional childe definition. The academic timelines around that sort of stuff are well-established and people like graham Hancock do push ideas best described as crackpot about these sorts of societies existing before the LGM. But there's also the redefinitional arguments that the Childe definition of civilization is wrong. That's the vein you're working in and where books like Dawn of Everything are arguing from. They're much more agreeable to modern archaeologists and most wouldn't disagree too strongly (if at all). Wengrow has a good opinion piece on this dichotomy in [1]. [1] https://aeon.co/ideas/a-history-of-true-civilisation-is-not-one-of-monuments https://aeon.co/ideas/a-history-of-true-civilisation-is-not-...
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    AIUI, Childe proposed a number of criteria for civilization, all of them correlating one way or another with 'increasingly complex society'. Some of those we'll never know if the very ancient past had them (and I think even Graham Hancock would acknowledge this), the others are pretty much in line with the article you link to. So I'm not sure how much genuine disagreement is involved, as opposed to scholars holding on to untenable viewpoints and neglecting to put two and two together.
    - AlotOfReading 4y ago
      It's a bit fuzzier. The popular model prior to Childe was Lewis Morgan's three stage Savagery->Barbarism->Civilization model. When Childe published his famous paper [1] laying out the criteria, he acknowledged Morgan (though I'm not sure it's cited in the paper itself) and was intentionally providing standardized criteria to recognize the last stage. Childe himself preferred the terminology of "city" and later archaeologists adopted the phrase "state", but really these are all the same broad concept with slightly different connotations. But aside from a few exceptions (people at USYD, Michael Smith), Childe's definitions are increasingly disagreeable to archaeologists. Most of the newer generations, myself included, find anti-evolutionist arguments significantly more persuasive and even those that don't aren't big fans of the original formulation of Childe's ideas. [1] http://www.jstor.org/stable/40102108 http://www.jstor.org/stable/40102108
      - zozbot234 4y ago
        So your point is that the disagreeable connotations and 'evolutionist' viewpoint is something Childe might have picked up from Morgan, and that what scholarship is finding out now is that complex societies might not necessarily have been all that state-like, or highly unequal/hierarchical?
tastyfreeze 4y ago
Ah yes, gatekeeping and name calling. The cornerstone of "established" science everywhere. There is no need to denigrate Graham Hancock's hypothesis as "crackpot" and it certainly isn't a proper theory. Science welcomes all ideas only to discard them with proof to the contrary. Unfortunately, much of archeology is inference not proven fact. The farther back we go the more inference and less fact we have. There is certainly a possibility that an advanced Pleistocene civilization existed and was destroyed by a cosmic impact. To dismiss these ideas as "crackpot" is one of the most unscientific claims I regularly encounter. We know there are human built megalithic structures that are dated at the end of the Pleistocene. We know that the Pleistocene ended abruptly with all North American megafauna perishing and immense amounts of meltwater entering the oceans. We don't know if there were a bunch of distributed civilizations with similar technology levels or if there was a global civilization that shared knowledge before or after cataclysm. We also don't know what caused the end of the Pleistocene. This is the realm of hypothesis on all sides.
- browserman 4y ago
  There’s certainly no harm in indulging in wild, unfounded recreational speculation, as long as one is clear that’s what’s happening. Usually that’s not what going on with people who allude darkly to “[unspecified] political motivations for controlling the narrative around evolution and the birth of civilization”
- Tor3 4y ago
  There is a very recent analysis of Hancock's "Ancient Apocalypse" series. Well worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341Lv8JLLV4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341Lv8JLLV4 by Stefan Milo. Case in point: Hancock presents _zero_ evidence.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  It's worth noting that falsificationism really only applies to experimental sciences like physics and chemistry. The "historical sciences" like geology, paleontology, and archaeology don't work that way because of the arrow of time. I'd recommend Cleland's original [1] or most recent paper [2] on this topic. The upside is that we can differentiate between the quality of various competing hypotheses in a reasoned way. That's how we can say that the traditional academic narratives are epistemologically better than e.g. Tolkien's Silmarillion. [1] https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0987:HSESAT>2.0.CO;2 https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0987:HSESAT>2.0.C... [2] https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axq024 https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axq024
newaccount2021 4y ago
Naga 4y ago
I haven't seen the new documentary, but I read one of Hancock's books years ago. His book Underworld, which is about how evidence of ancient civilizations is underwater as the coastline has changed dramatically over the last few thousands of years. I think he draws way too many conclusions from way too little evidence, but that premise itself has always struck me as incredibly plausible. The issue is that a lot of the evidence is underwater now, and therefore hard to get to. But that doesn't really mean we shouldn't be looking for it though, right? Otherwise we're like the drunk looking for his keys under the street light because its easier, not because he dropped them there. As for the academy, Thomas Kuhn wrote "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", where he argues that most paradigm shifts happen in revolutionary leaps instead of incremental improvements. We've been pushing back the timelines of human expansion for a long time. It was impossible and just fables that Vikings were on North America, until it wasn't for example.
chubot 4y ago
Hancock is very questionable in motives and methods (talks a lot about how he is suppressed rather than what he thinks is true) But it’s true that narratives around past civilizations are controlled for political reasons Eg in China the winners want to paint the picture that the way they govern is inevitable and mandated, when really there was a lot of diversity, experimentation, and violence Including matriarchal societies!! I recommend reading Dawn of Everything by graeber and wengrow for peer reviewed info on past, ignored, alternative civilizations It does have an axe to grind but it’s a welcome contrast and asks good questions You don’t need to invoke hypothetical pre ice age societies for any of this However the book does give a good perspective on how much of history we simply don’t know, which leaves room for speculators like Hancock
- carapace 4y ago
  FWIW, I wasn't that impressed with "Dawn of Everything", I wish it had more data and less polemic. (I think the polemical argument would have been stronger if, paradoxically, it had been weaker.)
  - mhuffman 4y ago
    >I wish it had more data I mean that really seems to be the wish, and the problem, with a lot of historical and archaeological research.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    Its bibliography is very, very large. You can root around in there for a lifetime. I doubt you would find anything to contradict him.
    - carapace 4y ago
      That's kind of my point: there's so much fascinating and important work going on right now that the book just sort of gestures at in the rush to make their political points. FWIW, I'm sympathetic to their arguments, but I'd like to see them more well-supported (than they were in that book, IMO.)
Spooky23 4y ago
It depends on what advanced means. Humans appeared 160-250,000 years ago. We spread to Australia 45,000 years ago and to the Americas 15,000 years ago. We have evidence of agriculture in Turkey from about 9,000 years ago. Given the ability to travel for and wide, it seems weird that humans wouldn’t have sophisticated societies. Evidence is no doubt wiped out by time and prime land was flooded as the ice age ended. The global population was much lower in those days. I doubt there were large cities or magical technology. But I’m sure you had tribal societies with broad reach and social structures. We have a bias to assume that people in the distant past were quaint or unable to handle basic concepts. We benefit from standing on the shoulders of giants, but our forebearers were just as smart as we are. We have better tools.

fdgsdfogijq 4y ago

This has nothing to do with the recent Netflix show, which I have never seen

zozbot234 4y ago

Crackpot theory? It's a straightforward inference from human behavioral modernity, and the fact that some places have always been resource-rich enough to allow for at least some effort to be spent on things other than brute survival. Those who suppose the contrary as a default are merely transporting our naïve, self-serving stereotypes about "savage" societies to the very far past.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
There's two different ways to interpret the GP post. Using the term "civilization" instead of "sophisticated societies", the first is that civilization == the traditional childe definition. The academic timelines around that sort of stuff are well-established and people like graham Hancock do push ideas best described as crackpot about these sorts of societies existing before the LGM. But there's also the redefinitional arguments that the Childe definition of civilization is wrong. That's the vein you're working in and where books like Dawn of Everything are arguing from. They're much more agreeable to modern archaeologists and most wouldn't disagree too strongly (if at all). Wengrow has a good opinion piece on this dichotomy in [1]. [1] https://aeon.co/ideas/a-history-of-true-civilisation-is-not-one-of-monuments https://aeon.co/ideas/a-history-of-true-civilisation-is-not-...
- zozbot234 4y ago
  AIUI, Childe proposed a number of criteria for civilization, all of them correlating one way or another with 'increasingly complex society'. Some of those we'll never know if the very ancient past had them (and I think even Graham Hancock would acknowledge this), the others are pretty much in line with the article you link to. So I'm not sure how much genuine disagreement is involved, as opposed to scholars holding on to untenable viewpoints and neglecting to put two and two together.
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    It's a bit fuzzier. The popular model prior to Childe was Lewis Morgan's three stage Savagery->Barbarism->Civilization model. When Childe published his famous paper [1] laying out the criteria, he acknowledged Morgan (though I'm not sure it's cited in the paper itself) and was intentionally providing standardized criteria to recognize the last stage. Childe himself preferred the terminology of "city" and later archaeologists adopted the phrase "state", but really these are all the same broad concept with slightly different connotations. But aside from a few exceptions (people at USYD, Michael Smith), Childe's definitions are increasingly disagreeable to archaeologists. Most of the newer generations, myself included, find anti-evolutionist arguments significantly more persuasive and even those that don't aren't big fans of the original formulation of Childe's ideas. [1] http://www.jstor.org/stable/40102108 http://www.jstor.org/stable/40102108
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      So your point is that the disagreeable connotations and 'evolutionist' viewpoint is something Childe might have picked up from Morgan, and that what scholarship is finding out now is that complex societies might not necessarily have been all that state-like, or highly unequal/hierarchical?

tastyfreeze 4y ago

Ah yes, gatekeeping and name calling. The cornerstone of "established" science everywhere. There is no need to denigrate Graham Hancock's hypothesis as "crackpot" and it certainly isn't a proper theory. Science welcomes all ideas only to discard them with proof to the contrary. Unfortunately, much of archeology is inference not proven fact. The farther back we go the more inference and less fact we have. There is certainly a possibility that an advanced Pleistocene civilization existed and was destroyed by a cosmic impact. To dismiss these ideas as "crackpot" is one of the most unscientific claims I regularly encounter. We know there are human built megalithic structures that are dated at the end of the Pleistocene. We know that the Pleistocene ended abruptly with all North American megafauna perishing and immense amounts of meltwater entering the oceans. We don't know if there were a bunch of distributed civilizations with similar technology levels or if there was a global civilization that shared knowledge before or after cataclysm. We also don't know what caused the end of the Pleistocene. This is the realm of hypothesis on all sides.

browserman 4y ago
There’s certainly no harm in indulging in wild, unfounded recreational speculation, as long as one is clear that’s what’s happening. Usually that’s not what going on with people who allude darkly to “[unspecified] political motivations for controlling the narrative around evolution and the birth of civilization”
Tor3 4y ago
There is a very recent analysis of Hancock's "Ancient Apocalypse" series. Well worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341Lv8JLLV4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341Lv8JLLV4 by Stefan Milo. Case in point: Hancock presents _zero_ evidence.
AlotOfReading 4y ago
It's worth noting that falsificationism really only applies to experimental sciences like physics and chemistry. The "historical sciences" like geology, paleontology, and archaeology don't work that way because of the arrow of time. I'd recommend Cleland's original [1] or most recent paper [2] on this topic. The upside is that we can differentiate between the quality of various competing hypotheses in a reasoned way. That's how we can say that the traditional academic narratives are epistemologically better than e.g. Tolkien's Silmarillion. [1] https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0987:HSESAT>2.0.CO;2 https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0987:HSESAT>2.0.C... [2] https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axq024 https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axq024

newaccount2021 4y ago

Naga 4y ago

I haven't seen the new documentary, but I read one of Hancock's books years ago. His book Underworld, which is about how evidence of ancient civilizations is underwater as the coastline has changed dramatically over the last few thousands of years. I think he draws way too many conclusions from way too little evidence, but that premise itself has always struck me as incredibly plausible. The issue is that a lot of the evidence is underwater now, and therefore hard to get to. But that doesn't really mean we shouldn't be looking for it though, right? Otherwise we're like the drunk looking for his keys under the street light because its easier, not because he dropped them there. As for the academy, Thomas Kuhn wrote "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", where he argues that most paradigm shifts happen in revolutionary leaps instead of incremental improvements. We've been pushing back the timelines of human expansion for a long time. It was impossible and just fables that Vikings were on North America, until it wasn't for example.

chubot 4y ago

Hancock is very questionable in motives and methods (talks a lot about how he is suppressed rather than what he thinks is true) But it’s true that narratives around past civilizations are controlled for political reasons Eg in China the winners want to paint the picture that the way they govern is inevitable and mandated, when really there was a lot of diversity, experimentation, and violence Including matriarchal societies!! I recommend reading Dawn of Everything by graeber and wengrow for peer reviewed info on past, ignored, alternative civilizations It does have an axe to grind but it’s a welcome contrast and asks good questions You don’t need to invoke hypothetical pre ice age societies for any of this However the book does give a good perspective on how much of history we simply don’t know, which leaves room for speculators like Hancock

carapace 4y ago
FWIW, I wasn't that impressed with "Dawn of Everything", I wish it had more data and less polemic. (I think the polemical argument would have been stronger if, paradoxically, it had been weaker.)
- mhuffman 4y ago
  >I wish it had more data I mean that really seems to be the wish, and the problem, with a lot of historical and archaeological research.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  Its bibliography is very, very large. You can root around in there for a lifetime. I doubt you would find anything to contradict him.
  - carapace 4y ago
    That's kind of my point: there's so much fascinating and important work going on right now that the book just sort of gestures at in the rush to make their political points. FWIW, I'm sympathetic to their arguments, but I'd like to see them more well-supported (than they were in that book, IMO.)

Spooky23 4y ago

It depends on what advanced means. Humans appeared 160-250,000 years ago. We spread to Australia 45,000 years ago and to the Americas 15,000 years ago. We have evidence of agriculture in Turkey from about 9,000 years ago. Given the ability to travel for and wide, it seems weird that humans wouldn’t have sophisticated societies. Evidence is no doubt wiped out by time and prime land was flooded as the ice age ended. The global population was much lower in those days. I doubt there were large cities or magical technology. But I’m sure you had tribal societies with broad reach and social structures. We have a bias to assume that people in the distant past were quaint or unable to handle basic concepts. We benefit from standing on the shoulders of giants, but our forebearers were just as smart as we are. We have better tools.