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Ancient Apocalypse
2022 · TV series · documentary · 35 min episodes · 2 seasons
Created by Graham Hancock
Journalist and writer Graham Hancock travels the globe hunting for evidence of mysterious, lost civilizations dating back to the last Ice Age. He attempts to prove that a climatic event 12,000 years ago wiped out an entire civilization far more sophisticated than the simple hunter-gatherers some archaeologists believe lived at that time.
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24 comments on Hacker News
Was this shown on Season 2 of the Ancient Apocalypse show on Netflix? Maybe S02E01 Or elsewhere? The deforestation of the Amazon has exposed some of these sites e.g the photo - "The Tequinho geoglyph site in Acre, Brazil"
I hate to suggest it but it’s extensively explored by Graham Hancock when discussing the Americas in season 2 of Ancient Apocalypse.
Even dismissing his ideas around an older civilization wiped away by a “younger dryas event”, the archeological findings in the Amazon were new to me.
The moai are half buried because that's just what tends to happen in erosive environments. Sediment buries things.
As for specifically debunking his LGM speculation, there isn't much because no one with public credentials wants to spend time and effort on it in the current academic environment. You can find debunkings in popular media (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iCIZQX9i1A) and a few scattered "popular" academic publications like the SAA's special edition on Hancock's pseudoarchaeology (http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?i=634462&p=10&view=issueViewer), but most of the information is buried in papers and books that don't discuss him at all.
There's just flat out no actual evidence for (virtually?) all of his speculation and you can't prove a negative. Hancock's MO is to take 1-2 anomalous results and spin out media around "these dates don't line up, so let's speculate about something entirely unrelated". The rapa nui episodes in Ancient Apocalypse S2 talk to one actual archaeologist, who doesn't even support the dates discussed in the episodes. They were just anomalous banana phytoliths that were present from sediment intrusions. Dating is hard and this stuff happens regularly, especially in areas without much active research like Rapa Nui. The standard understanding is post-1200, as documented in papers like https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2020.105094 and https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03902-8
Just finished watching "Ancient Apocalypse" on Netflix. They go over this kind of discovery
It's quite speculative, but also really fascinating. Even if what they claim is not completely right, it definitely shows how the current accepted understanding of the history of the Americas needs an overhaul and a lot more research
PS: if you like this stuff, also check out the movie "The Lost City of Z"
TLDR YDIH, if you watched Ancient Apocalypse this is what Gobekli Tepe episode was about. I thought it's debunked.
> I think the damage of making the wrong call when it's hard more than offsets the advantage when it's easy.
You seem to forget that Netflix already makes a wrong call by labelling "Ancient Apocalypse" as a "documentary".
The wikipedia page about the first documentary is quite frightening.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Apocalypse
Yep. My wife and I watched all of Ancient Apocalypse and it was really interesting as well as fun to talk about. Definitely some interesting points included as well.
Made us want to visit the Scablands in Eastern Washington, which we didn't even know existed.
It's worth a watch if nothing else. Ultimately, nothing in the documentary is going to change your life but it is very interesting all the same.
The response from Graham Hancock is an interesting read.
https://grahamhancock.com/hancockg22-saa/
Free link: https://www.wsj.com/science/netflix-ancient-apocalypse-cave-of-bones-science-documentary-debate-df63f403?st=pna4k6kdgksluer&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
No paywall, direct link: https://www.wsj.com/science/netflix-ancient-apocalypse-cave-of-bones-science-documentary-debate-df63f403?st=wbg04l0accsi724&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
https://archive.ph/2024.01.20-132700/https://www.wsj.com/science/netflix-ancient-apocalypse-cave-of-bones-science-documentary-debate-df63f403
To add to this — Ancient Apocalypse is a very popular Netflix series that was released in 2022 that goes into detail about this as well. Wikipedia is extremely derisive about the documentary because archaeologists think Graham Hancock is a total crackpot. He’s also done at least two interviews with Joe Rogan. In the newest one he goes into great detail about taking DMT and seeing serpents and weird stuff, he’s a wild dude.
Right, as noted in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38186510, this is not news. This writeup is covering activity from 2011 - 2015...
“The integrated surveys at Gunung Padang were conducted for 3 years, from November 2011 to October 2014...”
... completed so long ago it served as an episode in last year's Netflix documentary “Ancient Apocalypse”, aka “the most dangerous show on Netflix”:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient-apocalypse-is-the-most-dangerous-show-on-netflix
New = 2011 to 2015
Old enough to have been the first episode in last year's Netflix documentary “Ancient Apocalypse”, aka “the most dangerous show on Netflix”:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient-apocalypse-is-the-most-dangerous-show-on-netflix
A video delving into the background on this when it featured in episode 1 of Hancock's Ancient Apocalypse.
https://youtu.be/zU-wQVAqQnk?si=WNb0Ht0Q647WfYub
tl;dw The lead investigator who published this new paper has books about Indonesia being Atlantis.
I visited a small archeological site on Corsica yesterday. This got us talking about this stuff which led to my gf asking to watch the gobekli tepe episode of ancient apocalypse last night.
Just after, as I was checking hn, this article was dropped. Same thing went through my mind.
There is a very recent analysis of Hancock's "Ancient Apocalypse" series. Well worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341Lv8JLLV4 by Stefan Milo. Case in point: Hancock presents _zero_ evidence.
Do you have any evidence for what you are saying? It sounds like the rabbit hole I went down after watching the recent Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse and discovering pretty much all of his assertions can be refuted by just reading the Wikipedia for each “ancient” site such as this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunung_Padang
This gives a very different picture of the site than the one in the episode.
And here, I think, we landed on a core piece of the matter. That there are some "ineffable truths" reserved and locked away in the High Tower of Academia. Oh, you're not An Academic? Ha, moron. We know the truth, how dare you question it?
Guess What? Graham also isn't in academia. Yet, he's been talking about this for 30 years, gained a following, and now has a Netflix special.
The ball is in your court. If you want to talk about failures, let's not focus on Graham. Let's focus on this High Tower of Academia. Why the hell doesn't the accepted side of the theory have a Netflix Special? What happened to PBS? Our public schools are a disaster. Published research seems to be more of a contest to see who can use the most complex, flowery, unintelligible language in the Race for Academic Recognition.
THIS is why Academia lost this one. We're on HackerNews, so here it is: You're an engineer with a brilliant idea; but you can't market it. What's the point of the idea? Ideas are nothing without marketing. Its the same fucking thing. If there's Truth out there, scientific truth, it doesn't mean shit unless its communicated intelligibly and repeatably. Academia has institutionally FAILED at this. But, hey, tenure must be nice.
My favorite part about Ancient Apocalypse isn't really anything about the Ancient Apocalypse. Its the fact that Graham spends minutes in every episode saying "mainstream academia hates this, they hate me" and if you have no context you might hear that and think "wow he's being dramatic"; but he's not! Every single reaction I've seen to this show has been one of absolute vitriolic derision. There's startlingly little attempt to educate, present accepted facts, criticize his presentation. Its just "he's racist, this is a crackpot show, fuck netflix for showing this." Its like we just assume, despite a failing educational system, that people should just know he's wrong; and you're dumb for thinking he's right. His theories are out there; YouTube is free; shoot him the fuck down. I want to see it.
One significant bit on information I don't see mentioned yet:
"Hancock’s son, Sean Hancock, coincidentally works at Netflix as a senior manager of unscripted originals."
https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/ancient-apocalypse-graham-hancock-to-present-netflix-original-docuseries/
I have 2 more episodes to go and I've been watching it with my kids. I've truly enjoyed it, even though I don't quite believe it.
To those that are interested, basically Hancock visits sites around the world that seem to show that humans had the technology to build megaliths much earlier than previously thought. Currently accepted archeology believes that human civilizations start around 6000 years ago, but some structures like Gobeki Tepe suggest that this actually happened much, much earlier, closer to 12,000 years ago. Hancock goes to various sites around the world and tries to build the case that if the technology to build these megalithic structures existed earlier than previously thought, then how is that possible? He then links ancient myths of great floods, and then links that to the Dryer Younger Impact theory, which is that around 12,000 years ago the Earth passed through a comet trail that cause catalysmic events and basically ended the Ice Age. He suggests that the civilizations that lived pre-cataclysm were able to pass technology onto human civilizations afterwards and then they died off or disappeared.
I don't necessarily believe it, but it's a fun story to listen to, and after 3 years of COVID I'm desperate for stories that are intellectual, creative and new to my brain.
However the article above is pretty poorly written. As far as I've seen, he has not once declared things as "fact".
> Rather than presenting evidence of Atlantis from its existence, Hancock seeks to amend the legacies of existing ancient sites like the columns atop Gunung Padang in Indonesia, attributing them to advanced Atlanteans who survived their society’s purported destruction by comet.
I never once heard him mention that Atlanteans built Gunung Padang, but rather that civilizations earlier than believed had the technology to build large structures like pyramids.
> “Ancient Apocalypse,” however, crosses a line by claiming its hunches as fact.
This has never happened, as far as I can tell from watching. He is always suggesting, and building a case, but he never declares things as facts unless they have been agreed upon. For example, Gobeki Tepi was measured as 12,000 years old by German archeologists, not by himself.
I'm not an archeologist but everything he predicted the archeology community would do to him, they are trying to do. They are vilifying him for simply bringing up an alternative explanation. If they were better, they would just present their evidence but instead they attack him, try to ridicule his ideas, etc, and only make him look better. I don't understand why they have such a strong, predictable reaction to Hancock, but it definitely seems unwarranted. I would love to watch someone dispute the claims besides "This guy is stupid" or "Where is the evidence of this civilization?" I think he showed some pretty decent evidence to me, as an objective and open-minded viewer.
I watched a Youtube Q&A between Hancock and Hawass, and Hawass was so rude and arrogant, it wasn't even close. He just extremely rudely dismissed the question about Gobeki Tepe from an audience member. I haven't seen anything else useful but would love to see a real honest debate. My guess is no one is confident enough they can debate Hancock though, because he builds a pretty good case for his theory.
I think you've misinterpreted the parent commenter (gnz11). They were referring specifically to the Hancock Netflix documentary mention hence the "> Netflix Docu" quoting from GP's comment, and not at all suggesting that the Younger Dryas is Hancock's theory.
The "random link" to the Guardian article is about the Hancock documentary and reasonably valid to mention, even if it is an opinion piece. The article does not conflate the Younger Dryas theory with Hancocks pseudoscience, in fact there's no mention of the theory. Also if you read the Guardian article to the end it has an interesting observation:
"If you don’t like Hancock’s story about the super-intelligent advanced civilisation being wiped off the face of the planet, here’s another that might explain how Netflix gave the greenlight to Ancient Apocalypse: the platform’s senior manager of unscripted originals happens to be Hancock’s son. Honestly, what are the chances?"
I'm in the middle of watching Ancient Apocalypse, and, as a lifelong skeptic, I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
Hancock isn't a scientist, and has never claimed to be. He presents himself as an investigative journalist. What he explores in his work are a series of "what if" questions that science either can't disprove, or hasn't been actively researching, for whatever reason.
The show is beautifully shot and produced, and provokes some interesting thought experiments. Besides "free thinkers" making an appearance, there are also "mainstream" scientists from renowned institutions around the world, who seem to side with Hancock in many ways.
If the show does nothing but raise more public awareness about these topics, it might lead to funding actual scientific research in some of these sites, which would be a good thing.
So far from being a "dangerous show", it's actually an interesting and well-shot documentary. People who see it as proof of anything factual are likely already conspiracy theorists, and are a lost cause for logical thinking anyway.
I agree he is anti-establishment. I absolutely love that these people exist. They may not always be 100% right, but they are brave enough to risk their career and rock the boat leading to people starting to think critically and potentially leading to new discoveries. Science is not concluded, it is an ever evolving process. If an industry has built a business around established science then it's time for them to go.
I would add that nearly every industry could benefit from fearless people willing to risk their careers to shake things up. On a related note there is a Netflix series called Ancient Apocalypse based on the research of Graham Hancock, another person entirely despised by academics and HN has many academics. As with most Netflix series they drag out each episode to be much longer than required to cover the subject material and it spends 60% of the time just watching him walk against different backgrounds, but the primary subject material is thought provoking.
But that is my own take and my own preference. I can see how it would make industries and investors fearful, as it should.