Challenging “counterestablishment” archaeology: What really matters

Graham Hancock, a British writer and self-described seeker of the truth, has made a career of challenging centuries of accumulated knowledge about the human past collected by scholars that he labels “mainstream" archaeologists. According to Hancock, these "mainstream" archaeologists have, for decades, actively suppressed alternative theories of our past because they challenge their authority as experts.

Hancock’s most recent effort to discredit archaeological research is a television series, Ancient Apocalypse, which aired on Netflix in November 2022. Through eight episodes, visiting sites from Mexico to Indonesia to Turkey and elsewhere, he asserts that the world suffered an ecological catastrophe precipitated by the multiple impacts of comets around 12,800 years ago, a period known to geologists as the Younger Dryas. These impacts led to widespread flooding, plunging temperatures, and other disasters that coincidentally destroyed an ancient, highly advanced civilization unknown or unrecognized by “mainstream” archaeologists. The survivors of this apocalypse, described by Hancock as “culture heroes” celebrated in myths around the world, transmitted essential knowledge to the survivors of the more primitive peoples that coexisted with this civilization and that gave them the capacity to reconstruct their worlds and to create the cultures that we see in the recent archaeological record.

Response to the show was immediate: The Guardian called it “the most dangerous show on Netflix” (https://tinyurl.com/2xay6jpv); others, including many archaeologists, called it “bunk,” “racist,” “pseudoscience,” and “pseudoarchaeology.” The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) wrote a strongly worded letter to Netflix (https://tinyurl.com/bdfnetrw) demanding that the show be described as “science fiction” rather than a documentary and reiterated most of the negative comments about the show flying across the internet at the time. Mainstream experts on the archaeology of the sites described in the series or the geological context of the Younger Drayas have since offered pointed critiques of Hancock’s assertions (e.g., https://tinyurl.com/yt44yheu).

Why has Ancient Apocalypse generated such controversy? It cannot simply be just the content. Hancock has been writing books on this theme for decades, and archaeology has dealt with challenges of this sort for centuries—stories about Atlantis, giants who once roamed the earth, and, of course, aliens who have visited us multiple times. But the difference this time with Hancock, is the tenor of the times and the company people like him keep..

Michael Gordin (1) in his recent book about pseudoscience labels people like Hancock as promotors of “counterestablishment science.” As he describes them, “these are not simply anti-establishment, although that is sometimes how mainstream scientists present them and they are not anti-science. Rather, their adherents believe that the establishment is corrupting or blocking the truth…”

Hancock does not describe himself as a scientist but does use the findings of archaeology when convenient and dismisses them when they do not conform to the story he seeks to tell. He presents himself as a seeker of truth intent upon revealing the real story of the human past. One of his most effective rhetorical devices is to simply ask the question “What if?” What if mainstream archaeologists were not blocking research into some topic? What might we learn of the true story of the human past? What if this ancient civilization is warning us about a looming catastrophe similar to that of the Younger Dryas as is suggested by Hancock?

It is no coincidence that in the first, as well as final, episode of Ancient Apocalypse Hancock finds himself in conversation with Joe Rogan, the tremendously influential host of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Rogan is a complex figure; he has hosted guests as diverse as Bernie Sanders, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jordan Peterson, and Robert Malone, an infamous COVID vaccine skeptic. Many of his guests, as well as Rogan himself, have promoted conspiracy theories about the origins of COVID and that the January 6 assault on the Capitol was a “false flag” operation directed by the FBI. Rogan plays the innocent and often relies upon the “I am just asking the question” ploy, which allows conspiracy advocates free reign to present their beliefs as fact with no credible challenge from the host.

Hancock and others of this ilk are on the frontline of conservative challenges to scientific and scholarly expertise. Notable examples of these include assertions that mRNA vaccines used to treat COVID-19 will permanently alter your genome and the denial of the validity of the overwhelming evidence for anthropogenically driven climate warming. And now, we have a candidate running for president, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who claims that, despite voluminous evidence to the contrary, vaccines cause autism.

While archaeology may seem to be small potatoes in the grand scope of things, consider this: A recent column on The Federalist website (https://thefederalist.com/), a very conservative source of opinion (not to be confused with the Federalist Society), offered the following: “Ancient Apocalypse scares the media because it sets a threatening example for viewers to begin questioning authority in other realms” and “viewing it also has the delightful added bonus of giving a big middle finger to the lying propaganda press who think they own our minds” (https://tinyurl.com/3un68t98). Replace the word “press” or “media” with “science” and you see my point. These controversies in archaeology are simply a microcosm of the rapidly expanding mistrust of hard-won expertise in almost every scientific domain you can think of.

As of this writing, Ancient Apocalypse has not yet been renewed for a second season. But if it is, and you do decide to watch it or the episodes of season 1, remember what really matters— Ancient Apocalypse is a not-so-subtle challenge to legitimate scientific research about our collective history—one that has been created primarily to line the pockets of its creators and which has little regard for the research about our past, painstakingly recovered by those mainstream archaeologists so handily dismissed by Hancock and his fellow travelers.