This was posted on one of the videos on the channel of archaeologist Flint Dibble (yes that is his real name, his dad is also an archaeologist and his brother’s name is Chip).
As it said, he debated Graham Hancock on Rogan because he felt Rogan’s audience needed to hear from an actual archaeologist about the nonsense Graham Hancock was pushing and hopefully get them interested in real archaeology, which I feel is a solid reason for going on Rogan and doing what he did. Too bad more actual experts aren’t asked to go on Rogan.
I’ve literally never heard he name. Want to hit me with some of his most interesting theories?
Well the main one is that he posits there was a broad-reaching civilization on Earth that was effectively wiped out at the start of the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago.
Typically the Mesopotamians, around 6,000 years ago are considered the first civilization. So it’s not likely to get any support for the idea of “civilization” before that. Most of what a civilization had is usually wiped out after a millennia or three. (Or deliberately destroyed, thanks The Pope.) Connecting them is difficult, but he finds interesting parallels, examples, possible ways it could have happened, etc.
One of those ways is through paleoastronomy, which upsets basically everyone and their dog, but it says essentially earthworks created to point to or mirror astronomical features can tell us things like when they were built. Or, with enough like-examples suggest a common theme or purpose.
He’s engaging and intelligent, and pretty laid back about the wild theories which makes some people really dislike him. Here’s a set of specials he did in the 90’s? I think? Which are pretty thought provoking if you’re into that kind of thing.
What I don’t buy is that all of history has been discovered, correctly interpreted, and sewn up with a bow on top. But I understand he’s particularly annoying to academics because he wants to be an explorer, an educator, a theorist, an archaeologist, an anthropologist, an astronomer; and yet he hasn’t completed coursework or any other feats of strength to prove he knows anything about those things. Skeptics just hate him immediately on the face of everything. Which, yeah. That also makes sense.
First of all, Graham Hancock is a racist.
In a May 2000 essay published on his website, Hancock writes: “I have consistently argued that the Americas were inhabited in prehistoric times by a variety of ethnic groups – Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid … Such ideas have caused deep offense to some American Indians, who have long claimed to be the only ‘native’ Americans.”
He goes on to describe various prehistoric artifacts that he says prove the presence of Caucasians and Africans before Columbus landed on the continent in 1492. This includes his research into the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, who he says was described by the Aztecs as “tall, white-skinned and red bearded – sometimes blue eyed as well”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/01/netflix-ancient-apocalypse-canceled
Secondly, here’s why he’s just wrong. I wrote this in another thread:
There is a very simple reason that we can say with relative confidence that there were no earlier civilizations that vanished and that reason is domestication.
There is just no evidence of plant or animal domestication before a certain date range and, while that date range does keep getting pushed back, it doesn’t get pushed back in a way that suggests any sort of civilization even as advanced as Sumer existed before Sumer. It gets pushed back in the “they were planting and harvesting this crop but didn’t know how to make it very nutritious yet” sense.
We can see based both on morphology and genetics that there’s no sign of any sort of civilization that domesticated plants and animals which then went feral after the civilization collapsed and, even with massive sea level rise, there should be some evidence. Sea levels didn’t rise all of the sudden. There would have been people who had time to escape with their animals and seeds. Also, plants just have a habit of escaping on their own.
You need farming in order for a civilization to advance. You can’t feed a large population via hunting and gathering.
First of all, Graham Hancock is a racist.
I don’t see that - in the first example he’s saying different races existed in prehistory on the American continent. (Well “prehistoric” and “before Columbus” which seem pretty far apart. But regardless) I’m not seeing what the racism is there -? I could just be stupid, but it doesn’t seem to be proclaiming the superiority of one race over another?
In the second example, he’s talking about Quetzalcoatl which has several interpretations as being a white man - whether that was the Spanish creating a myth or not, it’s been a common one. And, again, it’s not one he made up so not sure how that makes him racist.
Here’s the titles of his first seven books:
Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order
- Africa Guide 1980 (1979)
- Gulf Guide and Diary 1981 (1980)
- Journey Through Pakistan (With: Mohamed Amin) (1982)
- Ethiopia (1985)
- AIDS (1986)
- Lords of Poverty (1989)
- African Ark (With: Carol Beckwith) (1990)
I just don’t buy that he’s racist, but open to new info.
As for the “there’s no evidence of agriculture” I’d guess that he’d say the many cataclysmic changes coincident with the last ice age may have wiped them out. (That’s a guess, I don’t know what he’d actually say.). The discovery of Gobekli Tepe does put a pretty robust culture in that time frame, in the are of modern Turkiye but that’s a very recent discovery.
