Graham Hancock: Advanced Ancient Civilizations?

[Pentagathus]

Sup crackers.
I watched another Joe Rogan podcast that threatens to blow my mind. He had Graham Hancock and some other dude who's name I've forgotten on, and they were talking about the evidence for catastrophic meteorite collisions in the past (around 12000 years ago, or maybe 12000bc, can't remember) and subsequent flooding and whatnot, and the possibility that these would have destroyed ancient civilizations (at a time when humanity is supposed to be only a hunter gatherer society) and quite possibly even the very evidence of their existence. They made a lot of interesting and apparently valid points, although I don't know much about meteor collisions or geology so maybe they were just talking armadilloe but whatever. The idea of catastrophic collisions and the damage this would cause certainly seems plausible, and could explain some weird armadillo. Would advise checking it out (is a portugaling long podcast though).
Anyway, that got me to look into Graham Hancock's theories a bit, starting with the ideas he proposed back in 1995 in "Fingerpints of the Gods", which seems  be before he had any suggestions as to what would have destroyed these civilizations. Still some very interesting proposals so far, and I'd never heard of or thought about  the apparent contradiction with what we classically think about (for example) the ancient Egyptians and the actual sophistication of architectural of the pyramids, let alone the logistics of building the bastards.
Some of the armadillo he was suggesting seems to be based on very circumstantial evidence, but it certainly is making me question what we really know about all this. And it's pretty awesome to think that Atlantis might have actually been real, even if there's no actual evidence. I know that even in medical science it's not exactly been uncommon for many researchers to stick to a largely accepted model even when there's a evidence that pokes big ole holes in it, and the idea that the same s true in archaeology certainly wouldn't surprise me. For example the idea that Gobekli Tepe (a large city of some kind with fairly sophisticated architecture made from pretty portugaling huge chunks of stone, that carbon dating has shown to be at least as old as about 11,000 years) was built by hunter gaverers just seems utterly absurd to me. Even if you take the founding of the place to be shortly after the advent of farming (which apparently would push back the consensus on when agriculture began I think) it still seems somewhat implausible that their society would reach such a stage so quickly.
Anyway, I haven't gotten around to any fact checking yet, but I wanted  share this crazy sounding armadillo, and I wondered if anyone here has looked into this shizzle?


Tl;dr Atlantis was real!!!! Jet fuel can't submerge a large landmass!

[Jubal]

It's pretty possible to build a pyramid with relatively little tech, it's a matter of organisation more than anything else. And I think that's one of the things with a lot of these monuments; actually you can have a pretty sophisticated society with relatively little "tech" or labour specialisation as we'd understand it. Doing a bit of research on Hancock, he apparently has a tendency to backdate things a lot earlier than they happened, to never get his stuff peer-reviewed, and to otherwise just generally be quite sloppy with his scholarship (see eg this post on his failure to actually read the early modern maps he cites in the start of "Fingerprints".

It is likely that some early civilisations got further than we imagine with some technologies etc before getting knocked back or diverted - like the Santorini eruption may have caused the demise of the Minoan civilisation (and one possible origin for the Atlantis myth). I guess there may be similar situations with meteor impacts hypothetically though I've not read of any examples. Classical civilisations (admittedly a milennium or two later than some of the older stuff we're discussing had pretty decent clockwork calculating kit and invented open-valve steam engines (but seemingly didn't realise that they might be useful for more than basically office toys).

Or in short; we should probably assume a less "primitive" idea of what ancient civilisations were actually like than most people do, but we can probably do that without some of Hancock's rather bad archaeological theorising to underpin it!

[Pentagathus]

Ah thanks, that post you linked was the kind of shizzle I was looking for.
Just looking at his blurbs for magicians of the gods and fingerprints was enough to raise alarm bells, he was claiming that there was "overwhelming evidence" to support his theories, when in actuality there was perhaps some circumstantial evidence that the mainstream narrative needs revising. I'd like to see an archaeological/paleological interpretation of the consequences of these supposed meteor impacts on our current ideas of historic/prehistoric human development since there seems to be pretty strong evidence that they did happen. Unfortunately I think Hancock's determination that this data gives substantial credence to his theories would probably make actual academics somewhat hesitant to study it.


Edit:
Also jooblywoobly, why don't you write more stuff about historical stuff on here?

[Jubal]

I ought to - I guess I've been kind of distracted from history by the mess of the last few months, and when I've tried blogging my research etc people often don't seem to reply/engage much. I'd like to post more about history though, especially as I'm now set to start a PhD, so hopefully I'll do more in future