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Quick: name an archaeologist!
Ah ah, hold on…a REAL archaeologist. Yeah, not so easy now, is it?
I ask this because I myself would have to pause and hem and haw a bit before finally coming up with Louis and Mary Leakey, end of list. And yes, the Leakeys did a lot of important work but I know for a fact there are many other archaeologists, living and dead, who have contributed major discoveries, and while I may know the sketchy details of those discoveries, I don’t necessarily know the people who worked very hard to discover them.
If you ask the average Netflix subscriber to name an archaeologist, there’s a very good chance that the first name they’ll grab hold of is “Graham Hancock,” and that would be even more disappointing than my own showing, because despite the fact that he has a very successful Netflix show about archaeology, Graham Hancock is NOT in fact an archaeologist. He is the opposite of an archaeologist. He is not a scientist at all. He is a pseudoscientist.
I’ve actually never made a video about Graham Hancock, despite the fact that he has been quacking his quackery for several decades now. Ancient archaeology isn’t really my thing, and I feel like there are a bunch of experts online who have done a great job addressing his claims. But last week, I made a video about the Foo Fighters spreading dangerous misinformation and in that video I very briefly compare Dave Grohl to Keanu Reeves, since both have enjoyed many years of positive “nice guy” PR online and in the mainstream media. And a LOT of you in the comments wanted to make sure I knew that Keanu’s comeuppance was also imminent.
And you might get where I’m going but yeah, Netflix has just released the trailer for Season 2 of Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse series, and you’ll never guess who’s in it.
Okay, okay, first of all, put the pitchfork down. This isn’t quite the disaster that was Dave Grohl funding an organization that caused hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths from HIV and AIDS for several years after scientists and activists publicly begged him to stop.
But it’s still not good: Keanu is definitely going to encourage more people to find and watch Graham Hancock’s silly fictional TV show, so it’s important that we pre-bunk it. Because if you don’t obsessively follow a bunch of scientists online, Hancock is actually really convincing.
According to the only piece of trivia about him on his IMDB page, Graham “considers himself to be a journalist, and not a scientist.” That’s such an interesting tidbit. It’s like me saying that I consider myself to be a YouTuber, not a brain surgeon. It’s like, yeah, nobody else considers you a scientist either. He’s written several books and appeared in a lot of TV shows and the Joe Rogan podcast, of course, in which he largely claims that archaeologists are big dumb jerks who HATE new ideas and REFUSE to change their minds when presented with new evidence, and also even though he has NO evidence for it, they should be more “open minded” about his OWN new idea that ancient civilizations were way too stupid to build impressive structures and that they must have received help from some OTHER ancient civilization that was far superior but which probably got completely wiped from the planet during the last Ice Age, like the people of Atlantis. Yes, the underwater city ruled over by Namor the Sub-mariner and/or Aquaman and protected by trained sharks with lasers on their heads.
Hancock’s big ideas are, when put that bluntly, obviously completely bonkers. But if you watch his show, he’s remarkably convincing. For instance, I want to cite a potholer54 video I watched and enjoyed last year. If you’re not familiar with potholer54, first of all, get familiar because he’s awesome. He’s not an archaeologist but he IS a geologist and a very smart guy, and he started watching the original season of Hancock’s shows in order to pick out some mistakes but after the first episode he had enough material for his longest video to date. So he destroyed everything Hancock said in that episode, and then did a bonus follow-up deconstructing the most popularly requested episode five.
Potholer54 points out many, many instances of Hancock straight up fabricating nonsense, which IS very persuasive to the average viewer who doesn’t suspect that a corporation like Netflix would let a guy go on their streaming service and just lie. That’s why when Netflix originally launched Hancock’s new show, the Society for American Archaeology wrote them a letter begging them stop airing it, or at least to stop classifying it as a documentary instead of, like, fantasy or whatever.
But Potholer54 points out that in addition to straight up lying about his facts, Hancock also engages in some sneaky manipulation. I have to admit, when I saw this, I was actually IMPRESSED. This is so sneaky that had I just watched the show without Potholer54 calling things out, I would have completely missed this sleight of hand.
(clip)
Did you catch that? Archaeologists know humans were hanging out in the area of Gunung Panang 7,000 years ago, but the evidence suggests Gunung Panang wasn’t constructed until about 2,500 years ago. But Hancock sneakily conflates those two populations separated by 6,700 years to make you think that the earliest known humans there are the ones who built it. That’s not just an error. You can argue that Hancock’s made up facts are things he actually believes, but this, to me, at least, seems like the kind of linguistic legerdemain that can only be done knowingly.
So yeah, it sucks that Keanu Reeves is going to lend his fame to this dweeb’s show–and I do mean dweeb. I know Potholer54 works hard to avoid ad hominem attacks but I’m sorry, watch the end of this trailer and tell me that this guy isn’t the biggest fucking dork you’ve ever seen.
Anyway, it sucks, but it IS understandable that Keanu fell for this grifter. Unlike the Foo Fighters’ favorite AIDS denialists, there isn’t a very loud contingent of activists and scientists in mainstream media pointing out that this guy is a kook. And I hope that we can be loud enough about him now so that Keanu and other celebrities will know to drop their support of his kookery now before he does more damage.
Because yeah, Hancock’s quackery isn’t as dangerous as AIDS denialism, but there IS still harm in pseudoarchaeology. In his second video on the topic, Potholer54 points out the damage done in Indonesia, where Hancock says a vast structure lies beneath Gunung Padang. The president of Indonesia agreed, and encouraged amateurs to grab some shovels and run to that world heritage site and start digging, leading to damage to the site and a redirection of funds away from real archaeologically important projects.
But it goes further than that. Let’s go back to that letter from the Society for American Archaeology–they don’t JUST argue that Hancock shouldn’t be on Netflix because he lies about archaeological findings. He also, they point out, is spreading racist, white supremacist talking points. They note that Ancient Aliens, a show that Hancock has also appeared on, is racist enough because suggesting that indigenous cultures are too stupid to produce complicated cultural works “robs (them) of credit for their cultural heritage,” but Ancient Apocalypse takes it a step further:
“The assertions Hancock makes have a history of promoting dangerous racist thinking. His claim for an advanced, global civilization that existed during the Ice Age and was destroyed by comets is not new. This theory has been presented, debated, and refuted for at least 140 years. It dates to the publication of Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882) and Ragnarok: The Age of Ice and Gravel (1883) by Minnesota congressman Ignatius Donnelly. This theory steals credit for Indigenous accomplishments from Indigenous peoples and reinforces white supremacy.
“From Donnelly to Hancock, proponents of this theory have suggested that white survivors of this advanced civilization were responsible for the cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples in the
Americas and around the world. However, the narratives on which claims of “white saviors” are
based have been demonstrated to be ones modified by Spanish conquistadors and colonial
authorities for their own benefit. These were subsequently used to promote violent white
supremacy. Hancock’s narrative emboldens extreme voices that misrepresent archaeological
knowledge in order to spread false historical narratives that are overtly misogynistic,
chauvinistic, racist, and anti-Semitic.”
They also point out that Hancock contributes to this racist thinking by doing serious damage by tarnishing the entire field of archaeology. We may have a current stereotype of the archaeologist as an old white man in a pith helmet plundering cultural artifacts, but the present state of the discipline is actually very diverse, “extremely diverse. Our membership represents a
wide range of nationalities, ethnicities, genders, and beliefs. We do not always agree with each
other. However, Netflix and ITN Productions are actively assaulting our expert knowledge,
fostering distrust of our scientific community, diminishing the credibility of our members in the
public eye, and undermining our extensive and ongoing efforts at outreach and public education.”
Along those lines, I found a great article by archaeologist Carl Feagans at University of Texas, who points out that pseudoarchaeologists like Hancock drag the public view of the field back to the days of the colonizer in the pith helmet: “More aptly described as antiquarians, these early archaeologists sought the treasures and portable works of art from ancient cultures the world over. Much of their loot (and I use the term in its most accurate context) is still available to be viewed in museums around the world. Gradually, in the last decade or so, many of these collected pieces of “art” are beginning to find their way back to their home countries,” and as an example he cites the Parthenon Marbles, which were stolen from Greece and still remain in the British Museum.
He goes on to write…
“For all its majesty and prestige, I would highly doubt that the British Museum has a display of the pollen found in archaeological levels excavated from the same period. Yet the data gleaned from placing a bag of dirt in a bucket then skimming off the stuff that floats to the top tells more about the culture’s diet, subsistence, and trade than perhaps the most valued of marble statues.
“The real treasure of an archaeological site is information: whether that information comes from the story told on a frieze or the pollen found at the same depth and in the same unit as a marble statue.
“The “harm” of pseudoarchaeology, therefore, is the sacrifice of information about a culture for the sake of promoting bad and wrong ideas, often at the expense of the very cultures that are central to them. Some pseudo archaeological claims actually disenfranchise or marginalize the people responsible for wonderful achievements ranging from pyramids in Egypt, to stone temples in Peru, to magnificent mounds in North America. There is much to learn about ancient human cultures, and their narratives deserve to not be clouded and obscured by claims of “giants,” space-aliens, or lost tribes of Israel, especially when evidence for these are spurious to non-existent.”
That’s something Potholer54 touches on as well: the harm here lies in allowing our society to glibly accept shiny lies instead of a more complicated, but also more beautiful, truth about the history of our species.
At the start of this video I told you I haven’t talked about Hancock before because archaeology isn’t really my bag. But I have to say that I spent several days watching videos and reading articles by archaeologists, and…I think it’s becoming my bag? It wasn’t at all relevant to this video’s focus on pseudoarchaeology, but through my research I stumbled upon Dr. Brittany Brown, who not only studies the history of African Americans in the Southeast US, but also MARITIME sites, diving the wrecks of slave ships and collecting data that has gone ignored for centuries. I am ENAMORED, you guys. Check out her Instagram, @theblackarchaeologist and give her a follow if you’re like me and getting into this stuff.
And on that note, I KNOW that when I opened this video and said “quick, name an archaeologist,” some of you smarty pants were ready to go. Hell, you probably left a comment with your answer before the 10-second mark. So go edit that comment, or leave a new one, telling us about an archaeologist, living or dead, who you think should be more famous than Graham Hancock and why. Maybe we can find a better person for Keanu Reeves to get to know.
