what an incredible article. i love how it’s able to say so much while saying nothing at all.

And why does it have to be aliens. Out forbears thousands of years ago were just as intelligent, clever and resourceful as we are today. And they had an intimate understanding of their surroundings and how to utilize what was available built over centuries that we can't even begin to match when we parachute in for a bit to get some video for our latest Netflix show.

"Must be aliens!"

>Tldr - He isn't making that outlandish of a claim. Particularly in a field that has little hard evidence to go by, it's very difficult to shift the accepted interpretation of the past.

Yes! I watched the show, and it's not the outlandish claims, it the lack of evidence. Like dude, just find evidence for your theories. It honestly reminded me of astrology, which I'm a fan of, but know so well the billion theories astrologers have and claim their opinion is evidence....like bye.

Same junk, different day (and channel). The heart and soul of the Ancient Aliens pseudoscience has allways been the same: racism. Brown people could not possibly have built huge megastructures while my ancestors were still working out bronze smelting! So it must have been aliens!

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Because he's a professional writer meaning he knows how to captivate the general audience with his bs no matter how true it actually is

A lot of these concepts would be really fun for a work of fiction.

While there is some pushback against new thought in history and archaeology, Hancock uses it as an excuse for why his batshit insane and evidence free theories aren't being considered by academics. He is a journalist, not a historian or archaeologist and has no real idea on how any of this works.

Hancock is nothing but a science-fiction writer with a huge victim complex.

Nah, he’s a crackpot with flawed methodology who keeps spreading ideas rooted in anti-intellectualism while repeating the same theories that already has a century-old connection to nazis and white supremacy. He’s not as outlandish as the ancient alien nutjobs, or as racist as the German nazi regime that bought into Atlantis theories because they convinced themselves that the superior, advanced Atlantians were the ancestors of the aryan race who taught the ”inferior” cultures how shit is done; but he sure as hell keeps fueling the anti-intellectual, conspiracy-theory-obsessed fire while chipping away at the public’s critical thinking skills one missleading argument at a time. People like him is why more and more people are convinced that the earth is flat, vaccines are micro-chipped, and that Q soon will reveal himself as JFK reincarnated. He’s not the diagnosis, but he’s absolutely a symptom. Watch any long-form interview with the guy (like many people who find the Netflix show fascinating most likely will) and he’ll spend just as much time fearmongering about mainstream academia being a homogenic, dogmatic institution out to brainwash the public as he will making his insane arguments

At the end of the day, his hypothesis just doesn’t hold up to even the most basic scrutiny, which has been shown again and again and again. And each time he’ll just brush off any legitimate criticism from experts as ”personal attacks” or ”censorship”. The guy’s a grifter who knows that it’s in his best interest to undermine the public’s trust in actual research. We can joke about shows like Ancient Aliens all day long, but they truly have done real damage not only to people’s understanding of history and their trust of scientists and academia, but to their critical thinking skills as a whole.

Clovis First started getting challenged in the last decade or so and is now considered totally outdated.

Yeah, I started to watch this and stopped after 15 or so minutes, he never even mentions the possibility that the ruins were built by the later group to inhabit the site, it's the worst logic I've ever seen.

100% would need more. Soldiers are marching, building camps, hauling gear, etc. Hard work, and tiring, would need at least 4 L per day and 3000+ calories imo, unless you want your army to be emaciated and exhausted in a couple of weeks.

I got about 5 minutes in before going 'yeah this dude is a nutjob'

You seem a little dramatic

What I really appreciate about that show was that Hancock made it very clear in the first few minutes of episode one that he was absolutely not credible, so I didn't have to waste any more of my time.

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Out of morbid curiosity I watched episode one and my jaw hit the floor. The death of expertise is wrapped in petty Netflix packaging, ready to be consumed by the masses.

Anytime someone tries to tell me that aliens built whatever ancient megastructure, I ask them where the cement is.

PhD in History here.

It's sadly not quite that simple. There are often paradigms that are difficult to shift. Disproving one theory/interpretation or showing how something was different than we previously understood can be fantastic for one Historians career, but st the same time it is detrimental to (typically) numerous Historians whose work has revolved around what is being "discredited." Thus, people can get very defensive over a given interpretation of the past.

Even in fields covering more recent history, such as mine, where it is widely understood that our understanding of the past will change repeatedly as new information is retrieved (personal papers being accessiblr after people die, old folks not caring anymore and spilling the beans, government document declassification, etc.), you still get some very... aggressive defense of one's work from people.

So, if you are looking at a peer reviewed journal, for example, you won't see this conflict from just taking a look from the outside. But if your article is going against the tide of the field's accepted interpretation of an event, behind the scenes you may have trouble. Your article is going to be sent out to two of the field's leading Historians to review. When they read your article basically saying that their past work is wrong, they will review your article poorly and tell the editor not to print it. The editors go off the reviewers, then you don't get printed.

On the outside, you only see articles being printed with new stuff in it, but you would never know that all those articles are bringing in new stuff that doesn't go drastically against the grain of leading Historians who are reviewing those articles.

This is the same process with university published books. It's really hard to get a high quality publication in general if you are going radically against the accepted narrative for these reasons, and thus, you don't get paradigm shifts often. It can sometimes take scholars retiring and a new generation who is less attached and defensive to become the new batch of senior scholars doing reviews.

Tldr - He isn't making that outlandish of a claim. Particularly in a field that has little hard evidence to go by, it's very difficult to shift the accepted interpretation of the past.

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I thought the narrative was great. Then again I love yelling invective at trashy TV personalities to make me feel smart

I second this! Any articles or books for recommendation?! That would be great!!

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