Thoughts On Graham Hancock?

Controlled opposition all of them.



Who pays for his books? Who publishes them? Why can you buy them in Barnes and Nobles? Amazon? Where's he getting the money to gallivant around the globe?



Its fun to believe that the most powerful institutions in the history of mankind - would help someone "uncover" great "secrets" that have devastating real world consequences - is simply fiction.

Graham Hancock, like most in his field, has somewhat less of that carefully developed authoritative image that the shark tank of peer reviewed academia apparently trains mainstream academics radiate from their hair, from their clothes, from their tone of voice, etc, but unlike certain people in the field, he does not entirely lack it. On top of being British he has the advantage of being a journalist who actually goes where the story is.

I don't think it's fair to call him controlled opposition either, because what is he opposing? The idea that the Earth is 5000 years old? The idea that everything there is to know about history is already taught at Harvard? The idea that psychedelics can never cause a revolutionary change in understanding that redirects ones life? Nobody in a position to put Graham where he is would seriously believe or expect us to believe any of the above. As has been said, he's just enthusiastically ahead of the curve on where the mainstream is going to end up going, and though he probably will or has overshot the unknowable truth just a bit, he's roughly the same distance from it if not closer to it than the mainstream.

Above all though I don't doubt his sincerity for a moment. When I look at certain theorists and their hair who shall remain nameless, I can see that they're just a showman and they want anyone who isn't highly credulous to just roll their eyes and walk away without a discussion. I don't get that vibe from Hancock. He DOES want to argue with heavies because he knows his intellect is no less valid than theirs and that he's looking at the same evidence plus a few pieces they left out. The tradeoff is that he doesn't have their scientific training and institutional resources, but he holds his own well never the less.

I also noticed in his interviews on Coast to Coast that when he has to go a different way from a colleague he does it respectfully- specifically referring with his hesitation to go quite as far back with ancient civilizations as Robert Buval. That's a touch of class often missing in the conspiracy world, and reinforces that he is sincere, because the ones who fall upon their own kind are the ones who just say stuff, and they know that if everyone just says stuff they will contradict, therefore somebody has to be kicked out of the canon.

I haven't read his books though I've wanted to. I'm a lazy American and yet if I'm ever sitting still long enough to read a book I'm either driving or too intoxicated to digest a book, so I've gotten my dose of him through Coast to Coast, The Joe Rogan Experience, and Quest for the Lost Civilization mainly, and of course ATS.

Finally I like the fact that his narrative makes sense.

The official story as far as I've managed to read it (they don't teach it in schools because kids ask the most devastatingly simple questions) has massive gaps- modern humans, despite being less suited to the cold than their more compact burlier hairier cousins just happened to evolve right about the time the last glaciation began, and spent about 50,000 years learning to talk, draw, knap, skin, and sew, then just kept changing those technologies and not developing much new for another 40,000 years, then as soon as the ice disappeared it only took them around 6,000 years to learn how to build a pyramid- with no failed attempts or small scale models known to have survived... and it keeps running into things like Gobekli Tepe which force us to change the timeline.

His narrative takes you fairly smoothly from animal intelligence to civilized intelligence, spread out over the entire period of the record, with documented and extremely plausible explanations for gaps (glaciation, sea level change, etc)

originally posted by: Painterz
Modern day Erich Von Daniken.

I think that Von Daniken suffers from tunnel vision that I don't think Hancock has. Von Daniken sees every artifact as proof of aliens. Hancock will at least say, "This is a curious thing, and might have something to do with a previously unknown and advanced civilization. Let's take a look at it." He's more selective, and less likely to automatically jump to a conclusion.

originally posted by: Hanslune
We have learned from the civilizations that we know exist just how much stuff civilizations leave behind - his global civilization somehow left nothing. Interesting.

Yeah, that's a big problem. Yes, there are worldwide similarities between certain myths and forms of architecture. But that's because we're all human beings and have a tendency to process reality the same way. People in North America and China and the Middle East are all going to look up in the sky and see the three stars in Orion, and they're going think a certain way about them. That doesn't mean they had close contact with each other or were influenced by the same source. People tend to build pyramids so they can walk up them. They're not likely to build them upside-down, even if they could figure out how to do it.

It's very true that stuff gets destroyed. And once you get past 10,000 years, the chances of things surviving get pretty slim. But still... if this theoretical civilization was so pervasive, then bits of it would have an even better chance of surviving, right? So where is it?

a reply to: Blue Shift

That's the thing though, we do have bits of it- mostly huge bits that couldn't be washed away by glacial melt and were lucky enough not to get run over by the glacier itself. Why is the sphinx water damaged and the head small enough to have apparently been recarved into its now familiar egyptian form? How did structures get built on land that hasn't been above sea level at any point in the history of known civilization? How did primitive hunters without government or the wheel pull off something like Gobekli Tepe?

If a city is abandoned as the icesheet advances, or flooded when the icesheet melts, you're not going to get a neat little city to unearth with lots of potshards and other stuff together. You're going to get the occasional out of place artifact wherever nature brought it to rest, or wherever the first person to rediscover it carried it to.

a reply to: The Vagabond

I see what you're saying but:

Glaciers only covered a small fraction of the earths surface and even then items can survive both being under a glacial pack and being pushed down a valley by a glacier, especially stone tools.

The Sphinx erosion theory doesn't put it back far enough to be part of the global civ, plus the theory has serious flaws.

GT is not a sign of an 'advance global civilization', they had no pottery, no writing and were using stone tools, they were organized thou. However that site is not well known and we'll certainly find out more info in the future.

What structures are you referring to as not being above water? If you mean Yonaguni then that is just a rocky ridge. Did you mean something else?

My thoughts about Hancock is very much like many other ATS members mentioned. I much appreciate Graham Hancock and his friend Robert Bauval. These guys puch holes into the tightly fabricated fabrick of the mainstream attitude. In many cases the theories on which mainstream scientist develop their own thesis date from the 18 th century. Because these foundations were laid by respectable scientist of their day... and probably made sense in their day... nobody dared to correct them without distroying their own carreer. This way of carefully steering your future around the pilars of science does still exists today.

The beauty of it all is that these two men, Hancock and Bauval do not need to be careful. They are not part of the scientific communiy in which they do their research. They do not have to be afraid to destroy their scientific carreer with their progressive alternative theories.

What counts is the truth. The most horrible thing what can happen to history of mankind is the fabrication of history. They say that the victor writes the history. Can you imagine how much of what is taught on schools is false because of that?

Anyways, because people like Hancock and Bauval come with different angles and hard data there will come a time that the mainstream scientific community can not go around them. Hopefully their work will initiate a new look into the history of ancient civillisations by universities all over the world.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Yep that's the big problem with the AGC theory (advanced Global Civ) a startling lack of evidence. Plus we have seen that evidence does survive. and where there are finds from the period this AGC is thought to existed, say, 125,000 to 12,000 years ago show. Places like that show no sign of an AGC. A place like Bombos cave has a timeline from 100,000 to 3,000 BCE and it shows no indication of a n AGC.

Lack of use of resources, no mining from these periods exact small scale at obsidian and flint sources, no pottery, no agriculture, no domestication, no changes in sediments (from human interference), not habitations sites, burial sites, etc.

There is the NA sub theory that this AGC were all 'new age' vegetarians' or used mental powers but that is a tad hard to believe.

a reply to: zatara

18th century?

I think not, Western civ thought was fully dominated by Christian teaching well into the first part of the 19th century only with time and patience were the Biblical timelines and basis of the world shown to be wrong. Academic disagree with H and B because that is what the evidence shows.

Take a look at the change in our view of ancient history from 1814 to 2014 what ones sees is a steady pace of change based on scholarship and exploration not adherence to a set piece construction.

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It might be helpful for a H and B supporter to summarize their theories for lurkers. I would do so but don't want to be biased to their ideas so someone more neutral might wish to do so.

a reply to: Hanslune

It would be pretty hard to convince me that Yonaguni is natural, and it would take some googling for others, but I seem to recall threads about discoveries under the Med and the Black Sea as well.

As for "advanced global civilization" I think a lot of people just aren't going to be satisfied unless it's Edgar Cayce's Atlantis, but that is definitely not what I am talking about. I do not agree with Graham that such a civilization had to be particularly advanced or global.

I do believe that a level of civilization somewhere in the ballpark of Ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia was able to disseminate certain knowledge to a few places on earth without settling all that much of the planet, and that the vast majority of its progress was lost in the ice age, but not so much as to prevent a much faster rebuilding afterward.

It makes far more sense for megalithic construction to have been known but seldom capable of being practiced throughout much of the empty space in modern homo sapien history than to say that such discoveries required only a fraction of the time that it took to figure out clothing and spear making.

And while some things would survive being moved by a glacier, they'd probably be moved into the sea in the end, or deposited underneath boulders carried by glaciers, and if ever found at all, be found out of their proper layer and context so as to be completely uninterpretable under the strict standards of peer review. And nothing recognizable would survive the glacier actually running it over- glaciers transported a large quantity of Canadas good soil into the midwest and scored the bedrock- a spearhead or a potshard or a metal tablet would just be a smear of natural looking broken pieces left god knows where in relation to the site of their creation.

And as I understand it the water erosion on the Sphinx puts it well before the Egyptians or any other known civilization, which by definition does prove a lost megalithic civilization.

Also consider WHERE on Earth the glaciers covered. For example most of Europe and the northern half of North America- safe well funded places where it's easy to do archaeology. We're not going to dig the Sahara down to bedrock just to see, and as America recently learned it's no simple matter to just go poking around where ever you please in the middle east, nor are we going to be bulldozing any rain forests just to dig- we only bulldoze those to make money, which means any archaeological find will be casually ignored by a farmer or construction worker who doesn't want a bunch of suits coming and putting a hold on his project.

The extent and nature of such a lost civilization is probably borderline unprovable, but there are a hand full of monuments on Earth that do not fit the narrative put forward by academia, but prove that something was definitely lost.

a reply to: The Vagabond

We will probably find a number of smaller cultures that like Catalhuyuck and GT bigger than that you run into the lack of evidence.

As noted earlier the ice age never effected the majority of the earth, just about 10% of the earth land mass was covered and the area where the ancient civs arose was never touched.

Sphinx Schoch's theory holds it may have been built between 5-6k years ago well within the period were the proto-Egyptian tribes existed.

The extent and nature of such a lost civilization is probably borderline unprovable, but there are a hand full of monuments on Earth that do not fit the narrative put forward by academia, but prove that something was definitely lost.

Which are and how do they prove something was lost?

Ain't he hooked up with Ruth Montgomery....

both have roots in old time, but now defunct cutting-edge views on our world-society-&-place in the Astral/Psyche realm


the world has sped past their observations...
I can't recall the exact times they were both top selling authors...? was it 50 years ago? or at least it seems that long ago


I get a sneaky idea this thread is a sly way to get feedback...about a 'what IF' some Publisher should gamble that Mr Handcock will be a profitable book investment...
its not my call !




maybe.... even a thinly disguised attempt to get some public feedback , at least from an interested "conspiracy forum" population

I would also like to add that one of the reasons I like him is he genuinely believes in what he does and isn't throwing out BS just to fool people into giving him money/notoriety, etc. His theories/beliefs are after years and years of research and traveling and coming to conclusions based on those things. He said it was the Ark of the Covenant that brought him out of mainstream journalism and into what he's doing now, so to me, it seems he discovered some things that he thought were strange about the past and different than what was being taught as the truth and decided to seek out the answers to the questions that he had. He's one of the few people who do this kind of work who seems completely genuine in his pursuits.

a reply to: Hanslune

6k is fairly conservative on the sphinx as far as what I've heard from Schoch and company. 10,500k is just as plausible, i think more so given the astronomical alignments Hancock points out. But even if it's 6500BC, it's the very biggest single stone statue in the world, and therefore part of a pattern on the Giza plateau of the biggest and best stuff being the oldest, and that in and of itself would suggest the loss of earlier works or at least earlier failed attempts which it is hard to imagine things like the sphinx and pyramids being achieved without

The earlier stuff could be underneath Egyptian ruins we dare not disturb to look further, or it could be on an old coastline. (In Quest for the Lost Civ Hancock points out there IS a different style of temple beneath the level of everything else at Giza which the mainstream chooses to believe the egyptians dug down and built a little differently for some reason).

So bigger stuff in one single location or perhaps just a couple can be lost beneath known monuments we won't undermine and off the coast, leaving only smaller remote sites, such as GT (which just so happens to line up in dating with a Leo-aligned sphinx and with radical environmental changes which could have done in a civilization). These remote centers could have been built to attract interact with and establish authority over less civilized groups, explaining the lack of context and meaning that when the capital was gone, there would be a very small kernel of the civilization left, suddenly interdependent with less advanced locals, who would have needed quite some time to grow in number and become organized, but would then be able to hit the ground running and make some of their greatest achievements immediately, which is just what we see. This makes more sense than the idea that no significant advancement was made pryor to the end of the glacial and that not once but repeatedly things like GT and the ancient Egyptians just came out of nowhere fully formed and ready to go, with no other explanation for the gap between them or what was holding humanity back for the previous 90,000+ years.

a reply to: The Vagabond

The erosion theory has never to my knowledge featured a date as old as you suggest.

Well no the 'best' stuff comes after a period of development peaked fell off and never fully recovered from the first Intermediate period. You might want to look at the second round of C-14 dating for AE monuments.

Egyptologist often disturb AE ruins sending excavations downwards, they tend however to be built on bedrock.

You have some interesting speculations but they are not supported by what we presently know. It is difficult to imagine AGC that could have arisen with deficiencies it would have had. GT and Catalhuyuck show a certain level of organization and the twenty or so ceremonial buildings at GT may have been built at different times so the need for labor would have been much less. A traditional meeting time of related clans. At the time in question you'd have problems feeding large amounts of people.

None of the cultures 'came out of nowhere' they all slowly arose, the fastest was probably the Sumerians but even they went from village to city in a period of around 300 years. Blindingly fast when compared to our previous development but still some 15 generations.

You do realize that GH made up a lot of his stuff and it isn't based on anything but his imagination and wishful thinking?

a reply to: Hanslune

I thank you for your obviously very well read input, and you've given me some to chew on. I have not much more to add and again disclaim that I'm no expert and don't really know.

That being said, I'm not prepared to accept that GH simply made things up simply because that is the assertion of academics you've read whose work sits on the uneven foundation laid by tomb raiders several generations ago. Those academics would afterall have to go back to school to continue making their salaries if it turned out that they had interpreted their scientific results in the light of turn of the last century dogma and they were suddenly forced to explain even one iota of Graham's theory being true.

At the end of the day, it comes down to this in my mind- either for tens of thousands of years of people just like you and me with no education running around trying to live and entertain themselves, nobody ever thought to put one stone on top of another until very very recently, and then all of a sudden genius entered man and it was a mad dash to civilization. Or for the whole history of the species we have been taking two steps forward and one step back, and the trail is just a little too confusing to be followed without a little assistance from the imagination. I choose to believe the later, since there's no money riding on it anyway, it's more fun, and it just does better on the smell test to me.

a reply to: Hanslune

If I say denial.. you will probably say.. no, that's a very big river in africa.

I like to think that in the prehistoric past (just like now) there were individuals who had the wandering bug and were never satisfied until they saw what was past the horizon. They traveled tremendous distances in unusual conditions, were lucky or skillful at not getting killed by the locals, and occasionally found themselves in strange, faraway lands where the people looked different and spoke a different language than the one they grew up with. And they brought little bits of things with them to trade. Then they either died where they ended up, or managed to make it back home with some interesting tales to tell.

But one stray visitor here and there is unlikely to have much of an influence on a tribe or a culture. They might leave a stray artifact behind, but finding something like that would be practically impossible.

These weren't organized expeditions conducted by kingdoms or anything. Not a global civilization. Just a few intrepid wanderers. I think that could have happened.

Love the guy, cant wait to get his next book. I missed him earlier in the year when he was here on a speaking tour, follow his FB page for tour dates:
www.facebook.com...

originally posted by: zatara

What counts is the truth. The most horrible thing what can happen to history of mankind is the fabrication of history. They say that the victor writes the history. Can you imagine how much of what is taught on schools is false because of that?

Hardly anything taught in schools is false.

Ironic that you state that "What counts is the truth" and that the OP mentions "Fingerprints of the Gods," a book filled with lies that Hancock knew (or should have known) were falsehoods.

That book basically rehashes other people's ignorant claims concerning ancient civilizations and ancient alien intervention. Two flat-out lies told by Hancock in the book involve "flash-frozen" mammoths and the artwork on the cover of Pacal's sarcophagus in Palenque (supposedly shown in some sort of "space vehicle.")

The mammoth tale is a purposeful mischaracterization of an old study on several mammoths found frozen in tundra in Siberia. The Pacal lie completely ignores the fact that what we see on the sarcophaguis cover is explained in detail by the glyphs on the walls of the very same tomb.

There are a multitude of other lies in the book. I can provide them on demand.

Hancock himself, years later, admitted that he did a very poor job on the supposed "reseach" he did for that worthless book.

Other than that, he seems to be a nice guy (at least,) and he is quite a good writer.


Harte