Here’s a great takedown of known crackpot Graham Hancock by one of my favorite archaeology YouTubers, Stefan Milo.

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Imagine losing your ring and someone finding it 800 years later

"Library" is a stretch. And, remind me which Pope was Islamic?

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How can we be sure Graham Hancock isn’t 12,000 years old and an immortal descendant of this ice age civilization? Why won’t he submit to DNA testing to verify his real age? Many are saying it’s because he is much, much older than he claims to be! Ancient Hancock theory is quickly gaining steam and calls for him to verify his blood contains ancient DNA will only grow louder.

It looked interesting at first glance. Then when the opening scenes was essentially a montage of clickbait media saying “the entire academic and research community condemns me but I’m here to tell the truth” I lost interest.

He seems to have something against archaeologists and uses a lot of time to tell so on this so called documentary.

I could only watch 1,5 episodes before giving up. It's crap.

Also, they didn't have large professional armies.

Up until the early 1900s, over 95% of all people worked in agriculture. Many of those men would help plant in the spring, go to war in the summer, harvest in the fall, and tend to their homes and farms in the winter.

I’m saying that you’re being disingenuous and playing fast and loose with the truth.

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It’s just an episode Ancient Aliens gussied up with endless drone shots and an obnoxious dun-dun-DAH! soundtrack. Same old “could it be possible? Some say… yes!” bs. Sucks that any cherry-picked pile of conspiratorial crap can be labeled a “documentary.”

at least 3 litres of water per day

the army must not necessarily deployed in one theatre less in one place

My favorite is the map of the ancient coastline and what looks like a fort of some type due east of the place they were looking at.

Would be worth throwing a expedition to scan that general area

>Given how these societies are far older, so less manpower would be needed elsewhere, a reasonable percentage could be 5%.

quite contrary, more manpower would be needed for less efficient methods

Leave that shit on the History Channel where it belongs.

I thought about it for one second, but now pseudoscience dribble. It's sad that people actually watch this crap and fall right into it. Then, have the audacity to bring it up in conversation. Oh well....

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I tried an episode of that show, it was soooo bad.

Worse, i could see how many people would see it as good by not seeing through Hancock’s weasel arguments- encouraging viewers to assume that the structures we actually see are far older than they really are and making up anything he wants in the spaces where there is no evidence.

Hancock is a dishonest, sleazy, turd.

Donnelly: “I’m not an archaeologist, but I play one on Netflix.”

also Donnelly, “I believe in alternate facts.”

The thing is that even primary sources from the period are likely unreliable. Between propaganda, translation issues, and transcription issues it is impossible to say with certainty how many men were actively under arms...

So, lets look at it from the other end. What is reasonable? Realistically it comes down to food. So the primary source of calories for all of those societies would have been bread. A 1lb loaf of whole wheat bread has about 1100 calories in it. An adult male needs between 2000 and 3000 calories/day. We'll assume a goal of around 2500 calories/day as necessary to keep your soldiers capable of actually fighting. Most of that will come from bread and it wouldn't be surprising if each soldier would have eaten about pounds of bread per day which would net them 2200 calories.

Also, I'm fully aware that Ramesses did not have access to modern food scientists, but the reality of it is, that he would have been aware of the fact that a starving army will not perform well, and as armies throughout history have discovered fucking around with food very quickly leads to finding out that bad things happen to said army.

Now, man cannot live on bread alone. Especially if you want them fit to fight. An oz of red meat has about 75 calories. we're short about 300 calories so that works out to about 4oz of red meat. You could probably cut this back a bit if you supplemented with other things, particularly veg but you also need to remember that unlike bread, meat spoils very quickly. This means salting or other pre refrigeration methods of food preservation or keeping your meat on the hoof for as long as possible which will in turn create a massive logistics train.

Also keeping in mind you need to provide your soldiers with something potable to drink and this likely meant watered down wine or beer. Again assuming reasonably strenuous physical activity in a hot climate like the fertile crescent you are looking at about 1.5 liters of water per day.

Now is when we break out the calculator. If you are fielding 1000 men this means that in order to keep them from starving you will need to provide 2000 loaves of bread plus about 150 lbs of meat and 1500 liters of drinkable water per day.

Now, if you are fielding 300,000 men... well you are looking at 600,000 loaves of bread, 75,000 lbs of meat, plus 450,000 liters of drinkable something.

That's a lot of food for a modern army to manage with shelf stable MRE's (only country in the world I would bank on being able to pull it off is the USA) nevermind the 'logistics' system of a pre-20th century army.

*Edit* fixed the numbers for meat requirements.

300 000 men army is absolutely impossible.

These seem like a good indicator. In 19th century Western Europe the population percentage that would be engaged in the military was about 2%, with the exception being the militarized Kingdom of Prussia with a percentage of 3,5% (if I remember correctly).

Given how these societies are far older, so less manpower would be needed elsewhere, a reasonable percentage could be 5%. Therefore, Rameses II's 100 thousand could easily translate into 2 million people, which seems a reasonable figure for the time (since the population fell in the Bronze Age Collapse, and how in Ptolemaic Egypt the figure was 3 million people).