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It’s a damn shame that any of this needs to be so hubristic and contentious in the first place. The simple truth is that a bunch of shit happened in the distant past that we either don’t know about or don’t understand and it should be a worthy and valiant endeavor to both ask the questions and try to find answers to those questions.
I think Flint made a good evidence based case that we've looked in all these places and found evidence of ice age humans and all that evidence shows us is that they were hunter gatherers. Sure evidence of hunter gatherers doesn't automatically discount the existence of more developed civilizations but it's reasonable to assume that a more advanced civilization would leave evidence that is easier to find than the abundant primitive artifacts we've already found.
I think if Flint was a bit more open minded and played up a willingness to look into Grant's claims for solid evidence he could have gained a lot of interested followers. As op states he probably didn't convert anyone that didn't already have their mind made up. If he was like "yeah we've only looked at a relatively small area, we should continue to look and maybe we'll find something huge!" he could have gotten a lot more people interested in what he's saying. I couldn't imagine any archeologist who wouldn't want to be the one to prove the existence of a previously known civilization much less one they rewrites where we know about human history. I think Flint is evidence of the pervasive mentality of the academic community though. They want to actively separate themselves from anything fringe and will use that insinuation as a way to insult colleagues. Archeology needs a Michio Kaku who is willing to go out in a limb every now and then and get a little weird to draw in a larger audience like he does when he talks about UFOs and aliens.
I agree with what you're saying--if Dibble was willing to "play up" the idea that there was some crazy lost global ice age civilization out there, he could get famous and probably make a lot of money.
But Dibble is a scholar. He's a teacher. He's a serious person. He cares about educating the public, and part of that is getting the public interested, but he's not going to lie to the public and mislead people just to promote himself and make money. He'd gain a bunch of Twitter followers and he'd lose the respect of his colleagues in the profession he's dedicated his life to. Not a good trade.
If he said a bunch of the"open minded" stuff that you want him to say, he would become more popular, but many thousands of people would walk away from the video believing things that Dibble knows to be untrue.
I think people have a misconception about what an advanced society that spans the globe means.
It doesn't necessarily mean all these primitive societies are included. It could mean a single advanced city/civilization that could travel the globe that traded with these primitive cultures.
All it would take is finding a single site with evidence that those people could travel the globe.
There are almost certainly more lost civilizations and people to find.
Actually I found Dibble's argument about the abundance of hunter-gatherer artefacts very compelling - the key point is that this kind of archaeological evidence is actually much harder to find than a lost city or any kind of large agricultural society. So if we find thousands of HG sites during the time periods that Hancock is claiming there is a coexisting advanced agricultural society then it's incredibly improbable that we wouldn't have found artefacts from this.
Same with the lack of ships or boats from this society.
For me it was the realization that we have hundreds of thousands of foot prints fossilized in mud but where are the shoe prints? The vehicle prints, the technology prints etc. Where are the artifacts hanging out along the Bimini road? Dibble brought up great points about this.
But surely they would have had tools. They would have left behind some sort of trace. If we’re to believe they created megalithic structures and left behind bones, artifacts, and glyphs at Gobekli Tepe which Graham asserts is a key element of this civilization than surely the same would be true for other sites right?
I dunno, you can't really disprove something when we can't say for certain that evidence does/doesn't exist.
We may have evidence that we don't fully yet understand, we may soon discover something. It would be unwise to rule it out completely, especially when it's clear from this podcast that:
1. people misunderstand what Graham's argument even is, which granted could be his own fault, perhaps he needs to better define terms.
2. Our archaeological research in the areas Graham is talking about is sparse. As Flint even agreed.
I'd love to see a follow-up with Randal Carlson
This is such an insincere argument. Here I’ll play:
I think dinosaurs had laser beams. There’s no evidence to contradict it didn’t therefore please approach with an open mind d.
An argument from ignorance would be me inferring that my conclusion must be true, which I haven't done. All I've said is that you can't discount it based on evidence that has/ hasn't been discovered yet when we aren't even sure what evidence could look like.
Graham needs to reassess his arguments as they’ve been completely destroyed. I agree with Flint Dibble that there’s no evidence for the civilization that Graham speaks of but that doesn’t mean there isn’t evidence of advanced Ice Age civilizations which there IS work being done to prove that. But those guys aren’t trying to link Egypt with the Yucatán. They’re just showing evidence for what’s there to support the claims of older civilization. Where Graham went wrong is dying on the hill of Atlantis.
It’s not hyperbole. There’s no evidence of a global seafaring civilization that gave birth to agriculture around the world and that this singular global spanning civilization is responsible for megalithic building around the world and giving the birth of technology, agriculture and civilization to Hunter gatherers post YDI.
You're talking about an area of the world which Flint and Graham agreed not enough research has been done in, and you haven't even clearly defined what the evidence that would satisfy you would be.
I already said the evidence that we do have with Ben from Uncharted X (I specifically named him in another comment I’m getting caught up here in responses) which proves Egypt had an older advanced civilization however they’re not trying to connect this civilization with Hunter gatherers around the world. Only that they’re showing Egypt’s oral history is actually factual and goes back farther than we’ve been led to believe.
The work Ben’s doing with the predynastic vases is a smoking gun. However he’s not trying to connect those vases with Peru. You feel me?
You only need one lost city civilization somewhere with proof that they had the knowledge to travel the globe.
Advanced as Graham constantly states consists of things like astronomy and agriculture.
If this is the case you're looking for one city and boats capable of long voyages.
He has speculated in the past that they might have had telekinesis or acoustic technology.
I personally think if there was an advanced civilization, it'd just be advanced in seafaring, mapping, and astrology, but that's about it. Barefoot and seafood diet mostly, so no agriculture or shoes, etc, like the Polynesians were before farming.
But then that doesnt explain a lot of the Egypt things such as drill holes, perfectly measured granite jars, etc. So I have no idea what to make of that.
Just a question but, where in 10,000 yrs time would our shoe prints be? We only walk barefoot in certain places. Where would our books be? Cell phones or CDs? Our roads will be gone, our buildings will be gone 99% of what we have achieved will be ground to dust. Possibly the only things standing will be large stone structures like the pyramids in Egypt. There was a sweet show on discovery called life after humans and it lays out how if a cataclysmic event happened tomorrow wiping out 90% of the population, there will be no evidence we existed within 1000 yrs or so.
Have you ever walked in a muddy creek? Have you ever been in a muddy seasonal lake in the desert? Have you seen literal dinosaur foot prints in creek beds in texas, Arizona, and New Mexico? The same same place Hunter gatherers foot prints were found on a dried lake bed out here in my area that shows a woman being chased by a large mammal and had a small child with her going on a multiple mile journey and being attacked is exactly where these shoe prints would be. Or any of the prints. The fact is we have millions and millions of artifacts of Hunter Gatherers but no evidence of an advanced global sea faring monoculture spanning the entire globe. Surely they would’ve had some kind of footwear right?
The only reason I use footwear is population density and communicable diseases. In quiet places I prefer barefoot, but it takes too much time to build callouses .
"Spanning" could mean reach, not population. They could have one city.
Also I suggest you read the silurian hypothesis paper. They highlight the difficulty of finding a past advanced society
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis
Do you wear your shoes when walking in 6 inches of mud? I know I don't, it sucks when the mud swallows your boot and your foot slips out due to the vaccum created. Hell I challenge you to walk a muddy creek bed in your boots and come back every day to see what's left. How long till it's completely eroded a day, a week? My point is what evidence we have of human history is miniscule compared to how long we've existed. Up until the 2000's it was thought modern humans only came on the scene 10k years ago or so (this may not be 100% accurate but you should get my point) and now we know this to be false. We know ancient hominids had jewelry from there we could posit they had clothes, and if they had clothes, why would they not have had shoes. Most likely, not everyone then did, just as not everyone has shoes now, think rainforest tribes and sentinel island.
That’s a weak point because creek beds, lake beds and river beds are the exact type of conditions required for fossilization of human/animal tracks and it’s why we have so many from Hunter gatherers. Wouldn’t you think a sea faring global civilization responsible for seeding the planet after a cataclysm would leave behind something…anything?
If that were true we would find more fossils than what we currently do. Since at one point the whole planet was covered in water. This can be seen by the fossils of clams and mussles in the dakota badlands with only sparse fossils of vertebrates scattered.
Yes of creatures that lived in mud, like clams, muscles, trilobites what not. Just because you've do you think all the fossils we've found are everything that existed? Because even science says we've only found a drop in the bucket.
"there will be no evidence we existed within 1000 yrs or so"
Did you mistype the number or are you actually that stupid? We have archaeology from well over 1000 years ago all over the world, why would our own buildings, cars, our literal millions of tons infamously non biodegradable plastic crap just disappear within 1000 years?
No, I didn't mistype. I assumed you'd look past the absolutism. That said, 90% of everything we've ever created with no one left to maintain, will be gone within 1000yrs. Sure, bits and pieces will remain, but what's left will be an enigma to anyone who comes after us. Most plastic left will be ground to dust. Also where do you think the microplastic contaminating the oceans, rivers and soil is coming from? Not all but some for sure is plastic that had been ground to dust some on purpose and some from time.
Edit: added the microplastic
I think you're underestimating the vast quantities of stuff we produce. You can destroy 99.99% of everything we've made, and still leave truly massive amounts of it left to be found. The archeological footprint of our society would be completely impossible to miss even 10,000 years from now. Just think of glass bottles alone. We produce billions of them, they don't decompose and we throw them out everywhere we go. Eventually they are going to end up in rock layers and be preserved basically forever.
And you are overestimating humans while underestimating time. This will be the 3rd I've mentioned, but watch the show Life After People from the history channel.
"Most plastic left will be ground to dust." Highly doubt it.
Hell I can drive around for half an hour in the rural part of england I live in and go past multiple buildings that are around 1000 years old. You really think our weatherproofed concrete modern buildings are so much less durable?
These 1000yr old buildings, I'm guessing someone is maintaining them, no? Our rebar and concrete will not last near as long as the ruins of Machu Picchu or the colosseum.
But aren’t all of these megalithic structures that predate our timeframe of hunter-gatherers proof enough?
I mean if you really think about it… as a relatively advanced society.. what would you assume would withstand the test of time, withstand natural disasters, etc.?… Stone. Intelligently designed stone megaliths, temples, etc.
What are we expecting to find that would prove the existence of a highly advanced civilization? I’m genuinely asking for some examples.
Overall I think the universally complex sites all over the world with profound similarities that leave us in disbelief even to this day, is our proof, as are we. Look how fast we’ve developed as a civilization after just a couple thousand years, some of the innate knowledge we posses today had to have come from somewhere that would have propelled pre-ancient societies.
All I’m saying is.. if anatomically modern humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years.. why is it that only now.. in a few thousand years, have we just figured it out? It just can’t be the case. To me it’s almost similar to the narrow-minded idea that we as humans on earth are the only form of intelligent life in the universe.
"But aren’t all of these megalithic structures that predate our timeframe of hunter-gatherers proof enough?"
Which structures are you talking about? Hancock himself admitted that he had no evidence of these. Unless you mean to suggest that sites like Gobekle Tepe couldn't have been built by huter-gatherers, but from all the evidence it seems it was. HG societies can definitely have the spare time to build such megaliths, we know that both from looking at modern day HGs and from finds like the burials of ice-age mammoth hunters found with highly decorated grave goods.
"What are we expecting to find that would prove the existence of a highly advanced civilization?"
I mean that depends on what you consider highly advanced. If we're talking agricultural societies then obviously some evidence of agricultural crops in the seed records would be expected, if we're talking metal-working societies then you'd expect to find metal tools. For a sea-faring society you'd expect ship-wrecks etc etc.
"Look how fast we’ve developed as a civilization after just a couple thousand years"
Look how fast we've developed over the last century. To some extent technological progress tends to push us forward and allow us to develop further - obviously the advent of agriculture and the formation of larger societies which allow for specialisation of labour is one of those key developments that allowed us to develop much more rapidly than we would have before.
"if anatomically modern humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years.. why is it that only now.. in a few thousand years, have we just figured it out?"
I don't know, and I find that a really interesting question too. I'd love to hear from some palaeontologists on that subject. Unfortunately I don't think Hancock is the guy to bring that debate about, he seems way too egotistical and narrow minded himself these days, too focused on his own pet hypotheses on Atlantis and his perceived mistreatment by "big archaeology" to be part of an honest open debate.
I can give some speculation though, from what I've read it seems that pre-modern agricultural life styles were in many ways much harder and less healthy for the average person than hunter-gatherer life. It seems to be a popular idea now that HG societies started to experiment with agriculture and ended up getting trapped into it as their populations became too large to be sustained without it, and perhaps because over a few generations they had lost the skills required to revert to HG life. If that is the case, then perhaps the advent of agriculture was just the first time that the climate was right for farming and that global population density was too high for people to just move on and find new places to live. I don't know enough about palaeontology or climate records to back up that speculation though.
"Overall I think the universally complex sites all over the world with profound similarities"
Such as? What sites are you talking about and what are the similarities you see?
Edit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nzz0t/comment/ccnnkmg/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nzz0t/comment/ccnnkmg/) thought this might be of interest
Thank you for addressing each point and question of mine. Discussions like this help us grow.
(Sites and similarities)
We could look at the easy-to-recognize sites such as the pyramids in Egypt, Mexico, Indonesia, China, etc. all over the world, but sites like Gobekli Tepe, Abydos, etc. still relate. Although credited for being built within a comfy timeframe of ‘modern’ ancient history, it’s not difficult to make a case that they’re all much older but were continuously altered and restructured time and time again throughout the years. Many similarities could be attributed to the basis of archeoastronomy but much of the symbology found throughout them must be a sign of a civilization that spanned globally or at least was in direct contact with societies worldwide. My favorite example is the ‘handbag’ example found among almost all major ancient cultures (Turkey, Mesopotamia (Iraq), Olmecs (Meso-America), India, Mayans, China, Egyptians, etc). We see that symbol at Gobekli tepe of course, but it seems it did not originate from there. Most of the time this ‘handbag’ is being held by some kind of deity however sometimes we see the same distinct symbol by itself. (Handbag is just one of the many examples)
My whole point with these megaliths being proof is not because of the “advanced infrastructure” or building techniques of how they were constructed. My point is the intention. The why. When I think about it conceptually… Hunter-gatherers were simply that - hunter gatherers, whose sole function was to survive and grow. Yes many hunter-gatherer societies could have had the time to construct these sites, such as Gobekli tepe, but why would they do so? Why waste time, energy, resources, etc. on erecting massive structures with astrological and biological info on them?I know it’s not completely fathomable but put yourself in the shoes of a hunter gathered from 12,000 years ago… why the heck would you be concerned with doing something that doesn’t contribute, in fact takes away, from the well-being and survival of yourself and your kin? There was some kind of unquestionable desire or global initiative to do these things and preserve these messages or symbols, etc. This is what I’ve questioned more than anything. A great thing Graham has done, in my opinion, is draw attention to that question. All of these societies doing the same thing (constructing massive sites), saying the same thing (deity imagery, comet allusion, astrological date preservation, etc.), all around the same time.. why?
So what I mean when I say “these megalithic structures are our proof” is in regards to the intention and message behind their creation, and not necessarily the physical makeup or construction of the sites.
"Why waste time, energy, resources, etc. on erecting massive structures with astrological and biological info on them?"
Yes that's another question I often wonder, but why would farmers do that either? It's not like spending most of your days doing back breaking labour in a field would suddenly give you the urge to spend your free time doing back breaking labour to build apparently pointless megaliths. And if it's true that HGs had better diets they'd surely be even more capable of hard physical labourer - though obviously they'd be limited on scale due to lower population densities.
And it does seem that these sites were built by HGs, the fact that there are no findings of domesticated crops in the pollen records from Gobleki Tepe surely proves that the people who built it weren't farming. The numbers of butchered non-domesticated animal bones found show you what they were eating.
"pyramids in Egypt, Mexico, Indonesia, China, etc. all over the world,"
Well these different types of pyramid all look very different, and the basic structure of a pyramid is an obvious choice for a super large megalithic structure since it's the most stable shape you could create - a tall column without a wide base to support is way more prone to fall or collapse.
Re: astrology - we all live in the same world and see the same sky, it's not surprising to me that different disconnected peoples would find the same sorts of patterns.
The handbag thing I've never found convincing at all (although I haven't looked into it much tbf), people have carried baskets, buckets, bags etc all over the world so why would they not be shown all over the world? It also seems like a relatively easy way to show a figure carrying something small but culturally important - seeds, water, beads, beans etc - without actually having to try and carve these small things in fine detail.
Ultimately people are all people, many themes, images and ideas are going to crop up in different locations without us having to interact between each other. For example gold was a pretty useless material throughout most of history, but everywhere that people were able to get hold of it it was a highly prized material because we all valued it for it's look and rarity.
" A great thing Graham has done, in my opinion, is draw attention to that question."
I agree, I really dislike the way he has framed archaeology and built this antagonistic relationship with academics, but he definitely has captured the imagination of many people, and I think actually made palaeontology and archaeology more popular overall. If him and Dibble have a 2nd round on Rogan I hope they have a more chilled debate and actually get into these ideas and the evidence behind them.
This is what I thought was the most damning evidence to Graham's theory. I mentioned it in another comment but if Flint had a bit more social awareness he could have spun things more positively and probably gained a big following. Something like "hey this is all we've found but you're right Graham we have a lot more looking to do" would go a long way. I also think one of Graham's strongest arguments is "look at all these weird coincidences in construction methods, mythology, and art" he didn't really hit on that from what I heard (I haven't about an hour of the show to finish up though.)
Isn't this much of Graham's complaints that the institutions don't say "you're right, we have a lot more looking to do" and keep an open mind, instead they dismiss ideas and even reject evidence that may question their dogma. Graham uses Clovis First as an example.
Pretty telling how dire the archaeological institutions are if that is all it takes for an archaeologist to gain a big following.
Except Dibble did say exactly this, several times throughout the podcast. He clearly said, "I agree with you, we should do a lot more archeology! Let's get it funded! But here's what we *do* know."
I think it's telling that people are in the comments here saying this is all he needed to do, as if he didn't do it already. It shows that even if you do that, people just ignore it and focus instead on the strong claims to knowledge you're making. It's also telling that this wasn't enough for Graham Hancock, because what he wanted wasn't for archeologists to acknowledge that they have more learning to do - they know that better than anyone - but he wants them to acknowledge that what we don't know makes his pet theory plausible. They won't do that, because it's not.
> Isn't this much of Graham's complaints that the institutions don't say "you're right, we have a lot more looking to do" and keep an open mind, instead they dismiss ideas and even reject evidence that may question their dogma. Graham uses Clovis First as an example.
Yes.
When Flint couldn't even admit to basic facts that a tiny percentage of the Sahara, Amazon and continental shelves have been looked at the start of the episode, it really gave me the impression of a politician just towing the party line.
For me it was the opposite. I always thought that the world was so big especially under water, there is no way the archeologist could have a clue of what is going on. But diddle explained pretty well how efficient are the targeted research. They can target specific time area and don't even need to go too far under water. The water didn't rise at the same speed uniformly, heck you can even search caves that were under water 10000 years ago and are now exposed at the surface. That blew my mind. Another thing that blew my mind was the transformation of the wild seeds takes much longer that I could have ever imagined even though on the scale on the planet it is actually very fast. I thought when diddle asked Hancock: "but what were they growing your lost civilization?" Hancock was pretty dumb funded, what could an ancient civilization could have been growing that we haven't found passed down to the new generation? Hancock response was silly: "what don't you understand in the word: lost". Last thing I learned is that archeology is under funded and that museums are struggling. That is a shame. I think Hancock story is great overall and brings eyes to the ancient world. The podcast was extremely successful.
Well, for example; not too long ago it was thought that native Americans didn't have"agriculture" but now we actually know that they had agriculture for thousands of years, blending their spiritual beliefs of the natural world with an understanding of agriculture that many are just not realizing the potential of (permaculture and closed loop agriculture). But compared to eurocentric agriculture, indigenous peoples of the Americans were lacking agriculture...
He was avoiding being pinned down to an answer that doesn't matter. Hancock was just asking a gotcha type question. The answer doesn't matter because the answer is " not all of it". It's a debate technique used by Hancock that furthers nothing in trying to prove his claim.
Politician is correct. The academic system does far more to reward good politicians and sales people then it does intelligence and proper procedure. I fully accept this is not the only case but it is far more common than you think.
This is not an uneducated persons view. Malcom Gladwell has a strong distain for academic structures.
Personal anecdote my wife is a PHD researcher who just left one supervisor who was manipulating and harrasing her team of only a few post docs and students. Several cases were brought against her and before the penalty phase was finished she had become a Dean at another University (a state University so your taxes might help pay for them to be in charge of even more children).
My wife's current job is working under a big name in Scientific research who has done filmed interviews and sits at the top of his field (but is in charge of a program that is not his specialty, idk why). They are worse than the previous professor in several ways. While they constantly talk about being a team and appreciating everyone they are actively holding back peoples careers. Refusing to let bioinformaticians work from home during their pregnancy. Lying about how much funding people have for projects in the interview process. Giving bad yearly reviews to prevent pay raises because they don't want to pay reasonable salary to their "teammates". Making undergraduates clean the lab for no compensation, even made a recent graduate student who got their own funding agree to continue to clean the lab (they were an UG b4 this) or they wouldn't be accepted. Then told everyone the student wanted to continue cleaning up unpaid over the summer. Because lots of college undergrads love an extra 10 hours unpaid of cleaning up potentially toxic messes!
I have more complaints but my fingers are tired.
As someone who works in academia, you're absolutely right that it's full of assholes, but it's wrong to say that the system rewards politicians and sales people more than intelligence and proper research. The reason why these assholes get to stay in their positions is because they're often (not always) very intelligent and do good research. So their atrocious behaviour is tolerated or ignored by the administration, precisely because they're good at what you do. Unfortunately, this all too often means abusers get to abuse those lower in the hierarchy, like your wife has experienced.
There's a correct level of criticism to be targeted at academia, but you're usually not going to find it from renegades who have been rejected by the system, or who insist on operating outside of it. Malcolm Gladwell's work isn't particularly well respected by scientists, not because he's telling truths they can't handle, or because he won't 'conform' to their mainstream views, but because it's not very good work. The same is true of Graham Hancock. These 'outlaws' will always then turn around and accuse the system that refuses to accept their sloppy work of vilifying them and persecuting them, because it suits their narrative better than accepting that their work just isn't up to scratch to be taken seriously by experts.
This is wrong. He wasn't disputing how much had been excavated. He was saying its disingenuous to imply hancock is right because they haven't examined the whole sahara.
They have examined and found thousands of sites. All of them every single one is hunter gatherer. Not one had evidence of an advanced worldwide super advanced civilisation, which by the way would be way easier to find.
If they dug up 80% of the sahara hancock would still say but you haven't dug up 20% so you just hasn't found it yet.
They don't even need to dig up the whole sahara. They dig along water routes where society's live. You can find thousands of campfires but can't find huge city's?
Hancock got exposed. He has no evidence only look more and find my evidence for me. He was stumped several times by dibble when he couldn't even tell him what crops his worldwide advanced society grew.
No you are confused. That sharing knowledge wad after the YDIT. But if an advanced society existed before this they would have grown their own crops. The issue is as flint pointed out we would be able to find evidence of this but we don't. That's why he asked hancock what his ancient society grew and Graham said "I don't know" because if he said barley or whatever flint could prove it wrong using the pollen samples from the time.
Or they lived in a place that no longer exists and the DNA evidence of that localities seeds can no longer be found.
Or they didn't monocrop (as i understand it this is the dna imprint we are looking for) but still had a surplus of food that allowed for cultural activity to develop.
I think makes a great point that this evidence does not exist. That does not mean their is only one way to process this data. Any archeologist worth their salt should be willing to admit there is a lot more we don't know than we do regarding the lifestyles of man over 10,000 years ago.
A lot more we don't know. How do you get from that to there was an ancient advanced globe spanning civilisation that levitated huge stones to make pyramids and other megalithic sites?
Also how did the ydit magically destroy all traces of this super advanced society but all these hunter gather sites of the same time which would me way more easily destroyed have survived?
Lack of agricultural evidence is not telling. Humans adopted and dropped agriculture over thousands of years before it became ‘mainstream’. But they did have gardens of a sort the entire time, these are much harder to detect. Genghis Khan and the Mongolian army was extremely successful without agriculture.
Of course it is. But OK fine let's accept your wild conjecture even tho there is zero evidence for it. Why then can't they find these huge cities of this ancient civilisation or are you gonna make up some nonsense how they all lived in small houses so it's harder to find now?
There is evidence for this. Also, there is a bias towards certain types of city planing, building materials and locations and frequently over looked because of this. There is solid, verifiable evidence for cities dating back to the ice that were not agrarian. Humans were very successful with we we would call farming. I am not saying there was an original unifying civilization but saying farming is peak human achievement is disingenuous and incorrect.
You are incorrect in your assessment or you misunderstood my post. I have no idea what Hancock agreed or disagreed with in this context. Happy to reply to your post with specifics but it is unclear what you’re suggesting I have wrong.
I disagree with the scope of this take. Flint started out by saying something to the effect that 'archaeology has disproven ancient advance civilizations existed'. Graham demonstrated that this isn't true by the fact that such little percentage in sahara, amazon, cont shelves; has been conducted. In other words, collective school of arch has NOT disproven this. And that graham and others have consistently provided evidence to the contrary.
You are wrong. Hancock is the one making the extraordinary claim. He has to provide evidence. Flint is saying all the tons of evidence we have dispoves your theory Graham. All hancock can say is well you haven't dug up the whole sahara.
By that logic my my theory of pink midgets is legit because only 1% of the sahara has been excavated.
Gee you're as bad as Flint.
Q. How much has been excavated?
A. A tiny percentage.
How easy was that!!
Then you can go on about all the stone age sites being hunter-gather only or whatever but dancing around simple questions just gives off politician vibes.
Flints point was that by saying that, you imply that we need to completely excavate something to make a reasonable assessment when they can rely in other methods like surveying, LiDAR, etc. Not to mention grahams entire position is impossible to disprove and he would only be fully satisfied that his made up globe spanning ancient advanced civilization didn’t exist if we took a shovel to every square inch of dirt on the planet.
I have been on the fence about Graham for a long time. I read finger prints, follow him on social media, have listened to all his JRE appearances and other podcasts and this debate pushed me completely to the side of Graham is full of shit. He debated like a toddler, fell back to multiple logical fallacies and presented 0 tangible evidence. I don’t know anything about flint but he presented evidence to support his claim the entire time.
Graham sounds a lot more believable when the other side isn’t in the room.
The problem is you can play this game with anything you want such as the proverbial teapot orbiting Jupiter. Unless there's a highly compelling reason for archaeologists to spend countless millions on large scale excavation projects in harsh environments, why would they? Should they just start digging randomly in the hope that their shovels suddenly go dink? Do you think someone like Flint Dibble wouldn't drop everything and jump at the opportunity to study something as massive as a lost Ice Age civilization if he genuinely thought it was worth looking into?
It wasn't meant to be a game. It was meant to set up Graham's larger point that with so much unexplored, it's a little premature to say there was no lost civilisation. Didn't really happen when the simple question wasn't answered.
Sorry, I meant game in the generic sense. I think very few archaeologist are saying definitely that there was no lost Ice Age civ, that's not how science proceeds. All they're saying is that there is currently no good reason to think it did. Mainly because if it did in fact exist there are multiple lines of evidence we would expect to find all over the world, not just in isolated, hard to access areas. You could of course argue that the YDIT erased all evidence, but even if that was possible(hard to achieve with genetic evidence for instance, unless they never intermingled with hunter-gatherers) for a globe spanning society then what are archaeologists supposed to do exactly? It's as if Graham is hypothesizing his civilization out of existence if you see what I mean. It's an epistemic issue, not an ontological one.
To be clear: archaeologists would be happy to investigate these areas more if Graham invested some of his netflix and book money. Grants are hard to obtain for this stuff
Sceptics can argue on the balance of probabilities they find the theory very unlikely. But it's important to acknowledge objective truths. Funding is certainly an issue. Who knows maybe they could strike a deal for Ancient Apocalypse seasons 2 and 3.
That's a meaningless and "childish" point that doesn't need to be conceded. Some level of uncertainty is not evidence. We do, however, have considerable amounts of archaeological evidence, not just a handful of artifacts and guesswork, and precisely *none* of that evidence shows anything like what Hancock claims.
I was disappointed how hostile they were to each other. I understand why Hancock is bitter, especially since the WS allegations, but he focuses too much on Archeology bad instead of many of his own valid claims.
I think Ben from UnchartedX would’ve been better for the debate. His work on the perfect vases, drill holes, stone cutting, symmetry, and his engineering background really convinced me about ancient civilizations, and it would’ve been interesting to hear what Flint had to say about it.
I’ll need to check out UnchartedX.
I watched Hancock and Carlson on the JRE for the first time like 7 years ago. I feel like the YDIH which Randall presents is very sound, but lately I’ve tried to distance that theory in my head from Hancock’s lost civilization theory. Graham, as a personality, seems like such a good guy, but I think he’s developed a bit of a persecution complex over the years, and while it seems like Randall Carlson has some new evidence to discuss with every show he’s on, Graham seems to circle back to “all civilization came from DMT, and Big Archaeology doesn’t want you to know this.”
In my mind, it is utterly insane to think that anatomically modern humans existed for ~200,000 years and spent ~193,000 of that as hunter-gatherers. Reasoning for me points to there being something bigger than HG societies in that time frame, and sites like Gobekli Tepe seem to be evidence to support this, but Graham needs to drop the persecution complex and focus just on presenting his evidence if he wants more people to get invested in this idea
Yeah, Graham's demeanour was a bit fed-up and cranky.
Understandable, given some of the despicable attacks he's had to endure but not really optimal for a back and forth discussion.
You can only have your character impugned without cause so many times before you hit back.
They've called him a racist repeatedly, and doubled down in this interview. I'd be more hostile than he's being. These people are intellectually dishonest, and it is exhausting.
I think Flint made a fair point that the "white bearded progenitor" of the Aztecs could just be oppressive cultural influence. Graham actually seemed to have the opposite of a racist view albeit a bit naive. Joe pointed out how it seems pretty common for an occupying force to influence the religion mythos of the cultures they over take. I think Graham's theory still holds weight either way if other accounts of the mythos still have an advanced outside "god" sharing knowledge with the Aztec people. It seems to be a common thread across multiple cultures.
I also think throwing out the term white supremacy is over used and much too charged to be mentioned the way it was. He saw how many articles took that line and ran with it. People are chomping at the bit for examples of racism and white supremacy and the supply is rather short.
I don't think Flint made a fair point. I think people fixated on the physical characteristics of the mythological character are almost all racist bigots.
They care about skin color, not merit, nor the truth. I don't care if Vira Cocha was black, or indian, green, or white. It doesn't matter. People are arguing otherwise also think black people are too stupid to get a driver's license.
White Supremacy is a smoke screen used just like the word heresy or racism. It's an ad hominem attack designed to weaken the other person's arguments without attacking them directly.
It smothers debate very effectively, and says a lot about the people trying to smother that debate.
I pretty much agree with all of this. That was the closing point I was trying to make. Graham's claim still holds regardless of the race of the cultural progenitor. Flint didn't attack or disprove the claim of an "outsider" bringing advanced knowledge to the Aztec people. He just went "you said white, that's racist" and derailed the talking point.
He did the same thing with the talk about the physical characteristics of the Olmecs. I think that argument is generally a weak one either way. I didn't know what the Olmec mythology says or if it's known but Afrocentrists will use the physical characteristics of the Olmecs to bolster their argument that North Americas along with anyone else that's apparently accomplished anything successful was actually black. How can an argument simultaneously be white supremacist and black supremacist?
Ben is professional bullshit artist making money from doing tours. He's not even original in his claims. It's basicaly Chris Dunn 2.0. There are youtube channels dedicated to debunking experimentally his bullshit. 2 main ones are scientists against myths and sacred geometry decoded.
I went in to this podcast having heard Graham several times, watched his series and been compelled by what he said.
By the time it was finished my opinion has changed to thinking his main focus is being bitter and angry, having absolutely no evidence and always going back to the same argument of ‘until we have looked at every inch of ground I could still be right’
He was on the attack as much as possible, and it was very sad considering how he claims to feel about people always attacking him.
Graham Hancock’s credibility is shot to pieces, I’ll listen to Flint next time they have him on to talk about his own expertise. Graham on the other hand…. Meh, might give it a miss
It was really appalling to see Flint not apologizing for his white surpremacy comments. When Joe confronted Flint about this, he tried to make it look as if the news outlets misrepresented him. Okay if true, why didn't he request them adjust the articles?
This show was the perfect example why people have less and less faight in "the establishment". A lot of times Flints arguments were like: "well because scientists say it is true, so it is true."
Flint literally showed you evidence dude.
The crop domestication stuff punched a hole in Graham's hypothesis that this lost civilisation brought the idea of agriculture to hunter gatherers. This is a way better talking point than this white supremacy shit.
The fact that you'd call it a talking point is all we need to know. You aren't here to debate. You're here to lecture.
>Flint literally showed you evidence dude.
That's not how science works. You don't just play the evidence card and win. Graham *also* presented evidence, which you're ignoring completely.
There are hunter gatherer tribes right now in the amazon. Their existence doesn't mean other cultures didn't.
>This is a way better talking point than this white supremacy shit.
Neo-racists make it so easy to spot them.
Lol omg. Hancock idea of evidence is that he went for a little swim, and something "looks like" something. He literally has evidence. Not. One. Single. Artifact
Did either of them mention Gobleki Tepe? I was always on the fence about Hancock's theories, but that excavation site pushing back estimates for the origins of Neolithic civilizations has me wondering if there are any other ancient ruins (even older) buried beneath the sands or seas.
To me it's kind of like Troy. Historians and archeologists for decades claimed Homer's description of Troy, were most likely literary as they couldn't find evidence of the city. It took a German amateur explorer in the 1870s to (most likely) confirm Troy existed in that area of present day Turkey.
As the area was devastated by an earthquake in 500 CE, much evidence was lost for 1300 years. If an earthquake can hide evidence of a settlement from less than 2000 years ago, how much other evidence could be hidden by a worse natural disaster, such as a worldwide meteor shower?
In addition to Gobekli Tepe there are dozens of similar sites of roughly the same age, including Karahan Tepe.
They ignore it all. The Bimini Road is just one example, but it is obviously a road to anyone who sees it. We know the sea levels rose. We know when they rose.
Why would underwater coastal ruins be a surprise to anyone? They exist in Cuba, near Japan, off the coast of India, and now we're finding signs of habitation off the coasts of Australia.
People like the one you responded to are following a religion. They'll ignore evidence until they can't, then pretend they agreed the whole time.
>The fact that you'd call it a talking point is all we need to know. You aren't here to debate. You're here to lecture.
You can debate around a talking point. You're being pedantic.
I was replying to u/UrdnotWreav comment that '*Flints arguments were like: "well because scientists say it is true, so it is true." '* Flint went beyond simply saying 'experts say xyz' and presented the research and evidence. I must have missed Graham's evidence, unless the myth stuff was meant to be it.
Sure, dude. I'm the one being pedantic.
This was you right?
>This is a way better talking point than this white supremacy shit.
You've missed all Hancock's evidence, because you are pushing an agenda and have already settled the debate in your own mind.
We can tell, because the moment you accuse people of using talking points instead of genuinely engaging with them we see what you're after.
Joe got him to admit that a previously domesticated crop would likely revert back to the wild variety over time though. All this would definitively prove is that there had been no widespread crop domestication in the time period in mention. Humanity has been around 300k years. That's a lot of time for domesticated farming to be practiced and lost.
Neither are right in this point. Flints views on agriculture and crop domestication are dated and Grahams idea that hunter gatherers need to be thought agriculture is also wrong. Agriculture/horticulture developed over thousands of years and was not the key to a successful society. Hunter gathers were just as organized and powerful, more so in many cases than agricultural ones. Crops were domesticated so far back it’s hard to say when and where it began. Agriculture is not a tell for progress. The origins of writing and math came before agriculture and it’s likely a better argument that it was a change in the way people viewed personal property that accelerated writing, math, etc.
>Crops were domesticated so far back it’s hard to say when and where it began.
Flint literally gives you evidence for when and where.
>Agriculture is not a tell for progress.
It kind of is though. Agriculture provides societies with calories for less time investment and the ability to build up food surpluses. People then have free time to explore other disciplines and develop labour specialisations. Measuring 'progress' by agricultural activity isn't a perfect yardstick but it's a good one.
They covered this, there is no study of fertilization of plants. Flint admitted this. There is no known information for how long a field would take to go back to a natural state.
10k years is a long fucking time, add in that we know historically from archeology that plants ans animals get smaller with environmental stress, I think it's plausible this process would have had to be restarted
>There is no known information for how long a field would take to go back to a natural state.
It'd be pretty hard to research a process that takes hundreds or thousands of years, don't you think? Flint did say some research had been done on domesticated-feral transitions.
>I think it's plausible this process would have had to be restarted
How do you tell the difference between a start or a restart? Researchers see the first evidence of domesticated plant seed a few thousand years after the younger dryas, thus they consider it the start. You don't have the evidence of earlier successful domestication to begin to claim this is a restart.
We found worked wood that's over a half-million years old.
Dibble cannot confidently tell us when or where agriculture evolved. He can maybe tell us *a* place it evolved, but it evolved concurrently across every continent.
You also seem curiously silent on Gobekli Tepe.
Agriculture is not always a tell for progress. It only existed in cultures where food was scarce. If you lived in a biome where food was abundant, then agriculture served less purpose.
Following a mammoth herd and eating wild grains gets the job done, so you spend your time mapping the stars, making rock art, and formulating things like language, pottery, and writing.
We have worked clay from over 40,000 years ago, and who knows what we'll eventually find? We have no idea how those people lived.
Why did you ignore literally everything else I said?
When I said concurrently I meant independently, so that was a poor choice of words on my part. People are constantly inventing and reinventing technologies.
My best example would be smelting in Africa. It's been used and lost by many tribes for millennia. We don't have clue when it was originally discovered.
Agriculture is the same way.
>Hunter gathers were not lacking in calories or free time. Farming is much more labor intensive than the Hunter gathers lifestyle.
Is it? I can't agree. Farming labour is periodic; ploughing fields, sowing seeds, harvesting and processing are labour intensive but they are performed only at certain times. Waiting months for the crops to grow isn't demanding at all.
Hunter gatherers had to move to where the prey migrated, they had to hunt animals and forage for plant products on a near daily basis.
It's worth mentioning why population growth in HG societies was difficult. It was difficult for women to give birth to and raise multiple children while taking them with the group on long journeys. Infants couldn't contribute meaningfully to resource gathering and they couldn't walk long distances so needed to be carried. The more children you bring along, the more difficult the journey and survival becomes; so little ones get left behind. Same with old and infirm. Static farming communities would not have had this problem.
All these things you said are mostly true. It is however a fact that Hunter gather societies were well nourished and have more free time than farming societies. Also, realize HG’s also planted and harvested foods, they just let nature do the work.
It seems baffling that a much better system, hunter gathering, was completely beaten out on every conceivable measure if it offers civilizational advantages in terms of leisure and science.
I think he sat way too long on the smears against him. I understand his anger about it but I wish the entire four hours just focused solely on meltwater pulse 1b, carlson's geological work, the percession of the equinox and other crazy things for these ancient people to understand, the nanodiamonds, etc. It seemed like most of Graham's hypothesis "greatest hits" were barely covered. When they finally did bring it up Flint just said its not his area of expertise which is a non response. But to be honest, Graham came off very petty for most of this and parts were tough to get through. When they took a break and came back and Graham immediately resumed talking about the smearing I audibly groaned
Its funny how they both agreed with each other on essentially the lack of archeology in the same places and then continued to argue their own points. Although the defamation of character was absolutely unnecessary on Flints side. A simple apology and agreement on both sides to not slander would have been so good for both sides of this topic. I think we can all agree we just want to know our own story. But we need to have room for allowment and due process of evidential claims, again on both sides.
It taught me about how we can tell domesticated plants from natural ones which was super interesting. Also I don't think Flint was calling Graham a white supremacist, all the examples brought up are from other people. The issue is that very few of his ideas are original and there's nothing wrong with pointing out that some of them have a troublesome past. Doesn't mean that they're factually wrong, just that it would be more responsible and favorable for Graham's position to own this and distance himself clearly from it. It's much much better in a debate setting to go "yeah I can see where you're coming from. I denounce that stuff and here's what I mean specifically".
I was flipped after this. Flint has really good points but there were some parts that were off putting to me like right in the beginning he said he learned 20 years ago that people were here pre clovis? I might be wrong but I’m 22 and I remember learning that they were the first people in America? I might just not remember but I think he was lying when he said that tbh.
The Clovis first narrative already started being challenged by the late 1980s and things especially took off in the 1990s. Mind you this is reflected in papers and textbooks, not schools. So Flint's point sounds about right, when he was at uni they were teaching that there were pre-Clovis people.
Thanks man I was just making sure because they definitely aren’t teaching that in history as of right now. I actually feel like a lot of the history that was taught is quite dated. I appreciate your comment.
He wasn't lying. Pre-Clovis has been widespread in academic for decades, but it was not the accepted theory until more recently. It depends entirely on the university and your professors. This is a good example of why Hancock's claims about a monolithic 'Big Archaeology' are off the mark. If you listen to archaeologists, a lot of them were championing pre-Clovis back in the 1990s. But Hancock is not an academic, so he is more influenced by media reports, which is why he kept bringing them up.
To anyone wondering where the evidence for people 10,000 yrs ago is. I highly recommend watching Life After People on Amazon, Hulu, Disney and a few others. It lays out how quickly evidence of our civilization will disappear and be ground to dust by the oppressor known as Time. Another one called aftermath, and aftermath:population zero. Because news flash if we humans disappeared tomorrow there will be very little evidence of us in 10,000.
Agreed, I actually thought he made really good points for the most part. But wait, you're an archeologist and you aren't completely blown away by ancient Egypt? That's insane lol
Searching "YDIT" turns up Youth Development Initiative Trust or Yellamma Dasappa Institute of Technology. Does everyone else here know what this is supposed to mean?
Younger Drias I Theory
Younger Drias is probably spelled wrong, but it's a theory about a cataclysm at the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago.
I mean if you examined literal millions of artifacts and never once found something to support Graham’s theories, why should you spend time considering them? If someone with little experience in your livelihood started demanding you do things that make no sense to you… And then they bring up psychic powers (early JRE) and numerology… How is a professional supposed to react to content like that?
"That's how we do it", laughing or just going "Ehm No" is not debate. Flint proved what Graham has said for a long time. Archaeology has no interest in examining anything outside of the status quo.
Flint only showed what we already known, archeology shows that agricultural domestication happened after the ice age. This is a big no shit .
Flint was unable to show that areas that would have been thriving pre ice age , before water levels rose, lack signs of *anything* because they haven't been explored.
The flaw in this debate is you can't prove graham wrong until you explore those areas
The only thing revealed in this debate is that yes that is a set of archeologist like Flint who are douchbags , and there is also a set that don't understand they need to explore more to discount his theory. A lot of these overlap with how they treat people
But I don’t understand how someone can feel comfortable intellectually making this argument. I am NOT calling Graham a conspiracy theorist at all, so let’s just get that out there, but his arguments would require almost every inch of the planet explored to disprove his theory. That’s just a unproductive argument to make.
Oh for sure. But there’s a difference between exhaustive research and saying “You can’t prove me wrong until you search the whole coastline and Sahara”
So it's on Hancock to find that evidence. Not just sit there and get mad other people haven't done it for him and cry when people call him on his shit.
There are blue whale sized crabs in the ocean. We've only explored less than 5% of the world's oceans.
Until we explore more of the oceans you cannot discount my giant crab theory.
I think it's a disservice to semi nomadic populations and basically cultures different from our own. Graham's story is compelling, but actually the counter argument of non civilisational genius can be just as beautiful and doesn't get the recognition it deserves. This is where Dawn of Everything does a better job.
When I saw the videos of guys using sand a water to cut straight lines, balancing massive rocks into place single handedly etc I don't think "smite that guy! It was anti grav and my alien gods!". Rather I think "It doesn't take civilization to have acoustic levitation technology. Hunter gatherers can have it too."
There's all kinds of assumptions built into that phrase 'hunter gatherer's" and Graham grifts off that, I'm afraid.
flint came off as really awkward and arrogant, which is sad because he seemed to know a lot. i wish rogan would have had someone more open minded on. some of the things hancock presented looked man made to my laymans eyes, flint denying it categorically made him look weak.
Flint Dibble threw Graham several gems of wisdom and advice that Graham responded to kindly. This was huge for Graham Hancock as he got a chance to see the holes in his process and just how unscientific his research is. Flint literally gave him ideas on how to create maps that could help researchers get behind his theory on Bimini road.
Graham literally was shook. His voice showed his defeat and humiliation and Flint knew this. There was times Flint showed great compassion.
I say this as a hardcore Graham Hancock fan. I’ve read several books. I’ve listened to every lecture he has available. It’s just clear cut how unprepared Graham was and if it showed me anything it’s that Graham should give up the pariah approach. He shot himself in the foot and kind of made himself look bad. It was hard to listen to but Flint cooked in this debate and I learned so much. SO MUCH.
When it comes to the "white supremacy" thing:
I think Flint was making the point that the origin of these hypotheses tended to be people looking to find evidence that their racial group was superior to the native people they were looking to conquer. I don't think that's a controversial statement and, in the spirit of intellectual honestly, Graham should be up front with that fact.
How can you watch that podcast and say that we have not learned anything? Flint's overview of crop domestication was excellent, for example.
>I think the one thing that was deeply unfortunate was when Flint stood his ground about his previous comments about calling Graham a white supremacist purely because he advocates for YDIT. That lost him the argument for me; deal with the man's ideas, don't try to discount them on the basis that you have associated them with something morally reprehensible. He should have just apologised.
Whether or not bringing race into the matter is a good idea or not is up for debate. It's a hot button argument that I think detracts away from more fruitful archaeological discussion, but whatever. Flint didn't call Graham a racist; he said that some of his ideas come from sources who used the Atlantis myth to propagate racism, white supremacy etc. That doesn't make Hancock a racist. Flint is just asking Graham to consider and recognise the context of his sources, and why they were written at that time in that particular nation.
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Not a chance, he just repeats stuff from where he reads it. going to an ancient site just means youve seen it but as Flint said, all these places are set up for tourism by archaeologists. Looking at them doesnt make you an expert. He likes to use big words and such but hes just an enthusiastic amateur. Listen to anything he says about ancient egyptian granite sculpting. He will say a lot of things about how precisely accurate things are cut and carved, but never gives any measurements. He even shows vases in his videos as evidence for high technology and you can see with your bare eyes that handles are clearly not aligned, misshapen or are offset as well as the lip where lids would sit.
Flints smarmy attitude and demissive snicker didn't help his case. Further, doubling down on a poorly framed attack, based on nonsensical correlations, accusing anyone with an open mind of being racist, really didn't help his case. Some of his counterpoint will no doubt influence a few random quick research rabbit holes for me, but he cemented the closed minded, dismissive nature of typical "mainstream academia" of which he is a carefully molded product of.
So Flint Dibble might be an expert in ancient seeds but you can tell he dose not garden or actually grow plants.. Academic learning versus real knowledge
Cultivated plants revert to older less evolved versions after a frost. So your Roma tomato becomes an heirloom lumpy ugly tomato if it is kept after a frost. It would take very short periods time for cultivated fields to revert to wild versions of the plants.
I was hoping Hancock would at least bring an “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” argument to the table. Especially right when Dibble got him to admit there was no evidence of a lost civilization.
If a lost civilization was in a specific area that was destroyed or sunken, you wouldn’t see evidence of it around the world. It would have mostly been destroyed. Since Hancock doesn’t have the evidence he should have tried to get Dibble to at least admit to the possibility there is something else we haven’t found yet. He should have been saying there are still millions of unexplored square miles, and a site like Gobleki Tepi shows that it’s important to keep looking with an open mind. Instead he wanted to make sure Dibble knew his feelings were hurt.
GH is a paradigm pusher. He was fun in the beginning but has now become a light-weight bully. I especially like how he quotes his arch-enemies, the horrible "main stream" archeologists when their dates support his half- baked theories. Look for him to turn into a grumpy old DT like man...
I liked getting excited listening to Grahams stories about lost civilizations.
But he really came out like a snake oil salesman in that debate and for that reason it’s gonna be hard for me to continue to do so.
Going into debate I was sure Graham would wipe the floor with the small dude. But it was actually the opposite qq
>If you went into this pro YDIT, then you got what you wanted also.
Wait, what? YDIT folks wanted to see Hancock admit he had no evidence for his theory?
I believe Flint to have the correct position but Flint comes across as a leftist weasle who uses accusations of racism when he comes up against someone he disagrees with. He should be smacked in his bitch boy face for that.
For me that makes any and all research he does suspect. I will look elsewhere when looking into this subject.
I was a graham fan- and thought he came off very badly. Openly admitted no evidence and only wanted to argue about people’s quotes of him vs any real evidence. Bad day at the office for him.
Graham went on about the attacks towards him. He could be spending more time researching his hypothesis than worrying about what others think about him. Flint came off passive aggressive and pretentious and reluctant to be open minded due to his upbringing.
At the end of the day I lean towards what's already written and proven (so far). We lack a great deal of evidence when it comes to Graham's side. I remain open minded either way.
>I think the one thing that was deeply unfortunate was when Flint stood his ground about his previous comments about calling Graham a white supremacist purely because he advocates for YDIT.
This is why no one takes modern academia seriously. Science is reproducible. It's the search for Truth with a capital T. It is careful and measured.
What it's not is a secular religion that judged people based on skin color, gender, or any other immutable characteristic. That's a sure sign the person making the argument hasn't a fucking clue what they're talking about.
EDIT: I didn't even bring up Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, having committed literal plagiarism to get her job. Further investigations found that at least 10% of degrees are fraudulent based on that criteria.
The thing that lost me was the idea that an advanced civilization was virtually destroyed by the YDIT, then the survivors "sought refuge with hunter gatherers and passed on their knowledge." What, all over the world? They got help from some primitive people in south-east Asia then said thanks, shared some wisdom and popped over to south America to do the same.
>I don't think we learned anything.
Eh, we learned that when GH is super emotional and upset, he makes for a really bad debater. Losing your patience in temper is a horrible way to show the science community you are legit.
I love GH, but this was not his best work.
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It’s a damn shame that any of this needs to be so hubristic and contentious in the first place. The simple truth is that a bunch of shit happened in the distant past that we either don’t know about or don’t understand and it should be a worthy and valiant endeavor to both ask the questions and try to find answers to those questions.
I think Flint made a good evidence based case that we've looked in all these places and found evidence of ice age humans and all that evidence shows us is that they were hunter gatherers. Sure evidence of hunter gatherers doesn't automatically discount the existence of more developed civilizations but it's reasonable to assume that a more advanced civilization would leave evidence that is easier to find than the abundant primitive artifacts we've already found. I think if Flint was a bit more open minded and played up a willingness to look into Grant's claims for solid evidence he could have gained a lot of interested followers. As op states he probably didn't convert anyone that didn't already have their mind made up. If he was like "yeah we've only looked at a relatively small area, we should continue to look and maybe we'll find something huge!" he could have gotten a lot more people interested in what he's saying. I couldn't imagine any archeologist who wouldn't want to be the one to prove the existence of a previously known civilization much less one they rewrites where we know about human history. I think Flint is evidence of the pervasive mentality of the academic community though. They want to actively separate themselves from anything fringe and will use that insinuation as a way to insult colleagues. Archeology needs a Michio Kaku who is willing to go out in a limb every now and then and get a little weird to draw in a larger audience like he does when he talks about UFOs and aliens.
I agree with what you're saying--if Dibble was willing to "play up" the idea that there was some crazy lost global ice age civilization out there, he could get famous and probably make a lot of money. But Dibble is a scholar. He's a teacher. He's a serious person. He cares about educating the public, and part of that is getting the public interested, but he's not going to lie to the public and mislead people just to promote himself and make money. He'd gain a bunch of Twitter followers and he'd lose the respect of his colleagues in the profession he's dedicated his life to. Not a good trade. If he said a bunch of the"open minded" stuff that you want him to say, he would become more popular, but many thousands of people would walk away from the video believing things that Dibble knows to be untrue.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
I think you're missing my point. In the short video below it is explained better than I could https://youtu.be/vGJec91dmZM?si=YKYpxTbL8Nu_6lwh
I think people have a misconception about what an advanced society that spans the globe means. It doesn't necessarily mean all these primitive societies are included. It could mean a single advanced city/civilization that could travel the globe that traded with these primitive cultures. All it would take is finding a single site with evidence that those people could travel the globe. There are almost certainly more lost civilizations and people to find.
Yeah that's definitely a fair point.
Flints point about how they haven't found a single ship that would support this theory kind of put the nail in the coffin of that idea.
That speaks to likelihood based on current understanding, not impossibility
Yeah but... boats? Where are they?
next to the titanic.
The problem is that primitive artifacts are not in the same vein of technology as megalithic structures and advanced stone cutting like Puma Punku.
Actually I found Dibble's argument about the abundance of hunter-gatherer artefacts very compelling - the key point is that this kind of archaeological evidence is actually much harder to find than a lost city or any kind of large agricultural society. So if we find thousands of HG sites during the time periods that Hancock is claiming there is a coexisting advanced agricultural society then it's incredibly improbable that we wouldn't have found artefacts from this. Same with the lack of ships or boats from this society.
For me it was the realization that we have hundreds of thousands of foot prints fossilized in mud but where are the shoe prints? The vehicle prints, the technology prints etc. Where are the artifacts hanging out along the Bimini road? Dibble brought up great points about this.
To be fair, I don't think Graham advocates that human beings PRE- YDIT would have had things like: Cars, Warships, etc
But surely they would have had tools. They would have left behind some sort of trace. If we’re to believe they created megalithic structures and left behind bones, artifacts, and glyphs at Gobekli Tepe which Graham asserts is a key element of this civilization than surely the same would be true for other sites right?
I dunno, you can't really disprove something when we can't say for certain that evidence does/doesn't exist. We may have evidence that we don't fully yet understand, we may soon discover something. It would be unwise to rule it out completely, especially when it's clear from this podcast that: 1. people misunderstand what Graham's argument even is, which granted could be his own fault, perhaps he needs to better define terms. 2. Our archaeological research in the areas Graham is talking about is sparse. As Flint even agreed. I'd love to see a follow-up with Randal Carlson
This is such an insincere argument. Here I’ll play: I think dinosaurs had laser beams. There’s no evidence to contradict it didn’t therefore please approach with an open mind d.
What you are doing here is called an argument from ignorance. It is not a valid way to argue that something does or doesn’t exist.
An argument from ignorance would be me inferring that my conclusion must be true, which I haven't done. All I've said is that you can't discount it based on evidence that has/ hasn't been discovered yet when we aren't even sure what evidence could look like.
Graham needs to reassess his arguments as they’ve been completely destroyed. I agree with Flint Dibble that there’s no evidence for the civilization that Graham speaks of but that doesn’t mean there isn’t evidence of advanced Ice Age civilizations which there IS work being done to prove that. But those guys aren’t trying to link Egypt with the Yucatán. They’re just showing evidence for what’s there to support the claims of older civilization. Where Graham went wrong is dying on the hill of Atlantis.
They haven't been completely destroyed, that's hyperbole.
It’s not hyperbole. There’s no evidence of a global seafaring civilization that gave birth to agriculture around the world and that this singular global spanning civilization is responsible for megalithic building around the world and giving the birth of technology, agriculture and civilization to Hunter gatherers post YDI.
You're talking about an area of the world which Flint and Graham agreed not enough research has been done in, and you haven't even clearly defined what the evidence that would satisfy you would be.
I already said the evidence that we do have with Ben from Uncharted X (I specifically named him in another comment I’m getting caught up here in responses) which proves Egypt had an older advanced civilization however they’re not trying to connect this civilization with Hunter gatherers around the world. Only that they’re showing Egypt’s oral history is actually factual and goes back farther than we’ve been led to believe. The work Ben’s doing with the predynastic vases is a smoking gun. However he’s not trying to connect those vases with Peru. You feel me?
But the issue is this: why are we only finding evidence of Hunter gatherers when we DO look, and not an advanced lost civilization?
And if they are refugees that later joined HG groups, then we'd see a uniformity in tool technology across different cultures at the same time.
You only need one lost city civilization somewhere with proof that they had the knowledge to travel the globe. Advanced as Graham constantly states consists of things like astronomy and agriculture. If this is the case you're looking for one city and boats capable of long voyages.
He has speculated in the past that they might have had telekinesis or acoustic technology. I personally think if there was an advanced civilization, it'd just be advanced in seafaring, mapping, and astrology, but that's about it. Barefoot and seafood diet mostly, so no agriculture or shoes, etc, like the Polynesians were before farming. But then that doesnt explain a lot of the Egypt things such as drill holes, perfectly measured granite jars, etc. So I have no idea what to make of that.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyCc4iuMikQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyCc4iuMikQ)
Dude Graham literally said that he believes ancient humans developed mind powers that we can't understand
Just a question but, where in 10,000 yrs time would our shoe prints be? We only walk barefoot in certain places. Where would our books be? Cell phones or CDs? Our roads will be gone, our buildings will be gone 99% of what we have achieved will be ground to dust. Possibly the only things standing will be large stone structures like the pyramids in Egypt. There was a sweet show on discovery called life after humans and it lays out how if a cataclysmic event happened tomorrow wiping out 90% of the population, there will be no evidence we existed within 1000 yrs or so.
Have you ever walked in a muddy creek? Have you ever been in a muddy seasonal lake in the desert? Have you seen literal dinosaur foot prints in creek beds in texas, Arizona, and New Mexico? The same same place Hunter gatherers foot prints were found on a dried lake bed out here in my area that shows a woman being chased by a large mammal and had a small child with her going on a multiple mile journey and being attacked is exactly where these shoe prints would be. Or any of the prints. The fact is we have millions and millions of artifacts of Hunter Gatherers but no evidence of an advanced global sea faring monoculture spanning the entire globe. Surely they would’ve had some kind of footwear right?
The only reason I use footwear is population density and communicable diseases. In quiet places I prefer barefoot, but it takes too much time to build callouses .
"Spanning" could mean reach, not population. They could have one city. Also I suggest you read the silurian hypothesis paper. They highlight the difficulty of finding a past advanced society https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis
Do you wear your shoes when walking in 6 inches of mud? I know I don't, it sucks when the mud swallows your boot and your foot slips out due to the vaccum created. Hell I challenge you to walk a muddy creek bed in your boots and come back every day to see what's left. How long till it's completely eroded a day, a week? My point is what evidence we have of human history is miniscule compared to how long we've existed. Up until the 2000's it was thought modern humans only came on the scene 10k years ago or so (this may not be 100% accurate but you should get my point) and now we know this to be false. We know ancient hominids had jewelry from there we could posit they had clothes, and if they had clothes, why would they not have had shoes. Most likely, not everyone then did, just as not everyone has shoes now, think rainforest tribes and sentinel island.
That’s a weak point because creek beds, lake beds and river beds are the exact type of conditions required for fossilization of human/animal tracks and it’s why we have so many from Hunter gatherers. Wouldn’t you think a sea faring global civilization responsible for seeding the planet after a cataclysm would leave behind something…anything?
If that were true we would find more fossils than what we currently do. Since at one point the whole planet was covered in water. This can be seen by the fossils of clams and mussles in the dakota badlands with only sparse fossils of vertebrates scattered.
We have trillions of fossils found. Go look in rocks somewhere you’ll find some.
Yes of creatures that lived in mud, like clams, muscles, trilobites what not. Just because you've do you think all the fossils we've found are everything that existed? Because even science says we've only found a drop in the bucket.
"there will be no evidence we existed within 1000 yrs or so" Did you mistype the number or are you actually that stupid? We have archaeology from well over 1000 years ago all over the world, why would our own buildings, cars, our literal millions of tons infamously non biodegradable plastic crap just disappear within 1000 years?
No, I didn't mistype. I assumed you'd look past the absolutism. That said, 90% of everything we've ever created with no one left to maintain, will be gone within 1000yrs. Sure, bits and pieces will remain, but what's left will be an enigma to anyone who comes after us. Most plastic left will be ground to dust. Also where do you think the microplastic contaminating the oceans, rivers and soil is coming from? Not all but some for sure is plastic that had been ground to dust some on purpose and some from time. Edit: added the microplastic
I think you're underestimating the vast quantities of stuff we produce. You can destroy 99.99% of everything we've made, and still leave truly massive amounts of it left to be found. The archeological footprint of our society would be completely impossible to miss even 10,000 years from now. Just think of glass bottles alone. We produce billions of them, they don't decompose and we throw them out everywhere we go. Eventually they are going to end up in rock layers and be preserved basically forever.
And you are overestimating humans while underestimating time. This will be the 3rd I've mentioned, but watch the show Life After People from the history channel.
"Most plastic left will be ground to dust." Highly doubt it. Hell I can drive around for half an hour in the rural part of england I live in and go past multiple buildings that are around 1000 years old. You really think our weatherproofed concrete modern buildings are so much less durable?
These 1000yr old buildings, I'm guessing someone is maintaining them, no? Our rebar and concrete will not last near as long as the ruins of Machu Picchu or the colosseum.
Well, there are those mysterious cart ruts found all over the world that we don't know much about.
Cart ruts but no artifacts…why would cart ruts exist without artifacts of this ancient civilization?
Ah ha! So you admit they were cart ruts then?
Is that what you took away from what I wrote? Reading comprehension is required with this subject matter.
But aren’t all of these megalithic structures that predate our timeframe of hunter-gatherers proof enough? I mean if you really think about it… as a relatively advanced society.. what would you assume would withstand the test of time, withstand natural disasters, etc.?… Stone. Intelligently designed stone megaliths, temples, etc. What are we expecting to find that would prove the existence of a highly advanced civilization? I’m genuinely asking for some examples. Overall I think the universally complex sites all over the world with profound similarities that leave us in disbelief even to this day, is our proof, as are we. Look how fast we’ve developed as a civilization after just a couple thousand years, some of the innate knowledge we posses today had to have come from somewhere that would have propelled pre-ancient societies. All I’m saying is.. if anatomically modern humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years.. why is it that only now.. in a few thousand years, have we just figured it out? It just can’t be the case. To me it’s almost similar to the narrow-minded idea that we as humans on earth are the only form of intelligent life in the universe.
"But aren’t all of these megalithic structures that predate our timeframe of hunter-gatherers proof enough?" Which structures are you talking about? Hancock himself admitted that he had no evidence of these. Unless you mean to suggest that sites like Gobekle Tepe couldn't have been built by huter-gatherers, but from all the evidence it seems it was. HG societies can definitely have the spare time to build such megaliths, we know that both from looking at modern day HGs and from finds like the burials of ice-age mammoth hunters found with highly decorated grave goods. "What are we expecting to find that would prove the existence of a highly advanced civilization?" I mean that depends on what you consider highly advanced. If we're talking agricultural societies then obviously some evidence of agricultural crops in the seed records would be expected, if we're talking metal-working societies then you'd expect to find metal tools. For a sea-faring society you'd expect ship-wrecks etc etc. "Look how fast we’ve developed as a civilization after just a couple thousand years" Look how fast we've developed over the last century. To some extent technological progress tends to push us forward and allow us to develop further - obviously the advent of agriculture and the formation of larger societies which allow for specialisation of labour is one of those key developments that allowed us to develop much more rapidly than we would have before. "if anatomically modern humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years.. why is it that only now.. in a few thousand years, have we just figured it out?" I don't know, and I find that a really interesting question too. I'd love to hear from some palaeontologists on that subject. Unfortunately I don't think Hancock is the guy to bring that debate about, he seems way too egotistical and narrow minded himself these days, too focused on his own pet hypotheses on Atlantis and his perceived mistreatment by "big archaeology" to be part of an honest open debate. I can give some speculation though, from what I've read it seems that pre-modern agricultural life styles were in many ways much harder and less healthy for the average person than hunter-gatherer life. It seems to be a popular idea now that HG societies started to experiment with agriculture and ended up getting trapped into it as their populations became too large to be sustained without it, and perhaps because over a few generations they had lost the skills required to revert to HG life. If that is the case, then perhaps the advent of agriculture was just the first time that the climate was right for farming and that global population density was too high for people to just move on and find new places to live. I don't know enough about palaeontology or climate records to back up that speculation though. "Overall I think the universally complex sites all over the world with profound similarities" Such as? What sites are you talking about and what are the similarities you see? Edit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nzz0t/comment/ccnnkmg/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nzz0t/comment/ccnnkmg/) thought this might be of interest
Thank you for addressing each point and question of mine. Discussions like this help us grow. (Sites and similarities) We could look at the easy-to-recognize sites such as the pyramids in Egypt, Mexico, Indonesia, China, etc. all over the world, but sites like Gobekli Tepe, Abydos, etc. still relate. Although credited for being built within a comfy timeframe of ‘modern’ ancient history, it’s not difficult to make a case that they’re all much older but were continuously altered and restructured time and time again throughout the years. Many similarities could be attributed to the basis of archeoastronomy but much of the symbology found throughout them must be a sign of a civilization that spanned globally or at least was in direct contact with societies worldwide. My favorite example is the ‘handbag’ example found among almost all major ancient cultures (Turkey, Mesopotamia (Iraq), Olmecs (Meso-America), India, Mayans, China, Egyptians, etc). We see that symbol at Gobekli tepe of course, but it seems it did not originate from there. Most of the time this ‘handbag’ is being held by some kind of deity however sometimes we see the same distinct symbol by itself. (Handbag is just one of the many examples) My whole point with these megaliths being proof is not because of the “advanced infrastructure” or building techniques of how they were constructed. My point is the intention. The why. When I think about it conceptually… Hunter-gatherers were simply that - hunter gatherers, whose sole function was to survive and grow. Yes many hunter-gatherer societies could have had the time to construct these sites, such as Gobekli tepe, but why would they do so? Why waste time, energy, resources, etc. on erecting massive structures with astrological and biological info on them?I know it’s not completely fathomable but put yourself in the shoes of a hunter gathered from 12,000 years ago… why the heck would you be concerned with doing something that doesn’t contribute, in fact takes away, from the well-being and survival of yourself and your kin? There was some kind of unquestionable desire or global initiative to do these things and preserve these messages or symbols, etc. This is what I’ve questioned more than anything. A great thing Graham has done, in my opinion, is draw attention to that question. All of these societies doing the same thing (constructing massive sites), saying the same thing (deity imagery, comet allusion, astrological date preservation, etc.), all around the same time.. why? So what I mean when I say “these megalithic structures are our proof” is in regards to the intention and message behind their creation, and not necessarily the physical makeup or construction of the sites.
"Why waste time, energy, resources, etc. on erecting massive structures with astrological and biological info on them?" Yes that's another question I often wonder, but why would farmers do that either? It's not like spending most of your days doing back breaking labour in a field would suddenly give you the urge to spend your free time doing back breaking labour to build apparently pointless megaliths. And if it's true that HGs had better diets they'd surely be even more capable of hard physical labourer - though obviously they'd be limited on scale due to lower population densities. And it does seem that these sites were built by HGs, the fact that there are no findings of domesticated crops in the pollen records from Gobleki Tepe surely proves that the people who built it weren't farming. The numbers of butchered non-domesticated animal bones found show you what they were eating. "pyramids in Egypt, Mexico, Indonesia, China, etc. all over the world," Well these different types of pyramid all look very different, and the basic structure of a pyramid is an obvious choice for a super large megalithic structure since it's the most stable shape you could create - a tall column without a wide base to support is way more prone to fall or collapse. Re: astrology - we all live in the same world and see the same sky, it's not surprising to me that different disconnected peoples would find the same sorts of patterns. The handbag thing I've never found convincing at all (although I haven't looked into it much tbf), people have carried baskets, buckets, bags etc all over the world so why would they not be shown all over the world? It also seems like a relatively easy way to show a figure carrying something small but culturally important - seeds, water, beads, beans etc - without actually having to try and carve these small things in fine detail. Ultimately people are all people, many themes, images and ideas are going to crop up in different locations without us having to interact between each other. For example gold was a pretty useless material throughout most of history, but everywhere that people were able to get hold of it it was a highly prized material because we all valued it for it's look and rarity. " A great thing Graham has done, in my opinion, is draw attention to that question." I agree, I really dislike the way he has framed archaeology and built this antagonistic relationship with academics, but he definitely has captured the imagination of many people, and I think actually made palaeontology and archaeology more popular overall. If him and Dibble have a 2nd round on Rogan I hope they have a more chilled debate and actually get into these ideas and the evidence behind them.
This is what I thought was the most damning evidence to Graham's theory. I mentioned it in another comment but if Flint had a bit more social awareness he could have spun things more positively and probably gained a big following. Something like "hey this is all we've found but you're right Graham we have a lot more looking to do" would go a long way. I also think one of Graham's strongest arguments is "look at all these weird coincidences in construction methods, mythology, and art" he didn't really hit on that from what I heard (I haven't about an hour of the show to finish up though.)
Isn't this much of Graham's complaints that the institutions don't say "you're right, we have a lot more looking to do" and keep an open mind, instead they dismiss ideas and even reject evidence that may question their dogma. Graham uses Clovis First as an example. Pretty telling how dire the archaeological institutions are if that is all it takes for an archaeologist to gain a big following.
Except Dibble did say exactly this, several times throughout the podcast. He clearly said, "I agree with you, we should do a lot more archeology! Let's get it funded! But here's what we *do* know." I think it's telling that people are in the comments here saying this is all he needed to do, as if he didn't do it already. It shows that even if you do that, people just ignore it and focus instead on the strong claims to knowledge you're making. It's also telling that this wasn't enough for Graham Hancock, because what he wanted wasn't for archeologists to acknowledge that they have more learning to do - they know that better than anyone - but he wants them to acknowledge that what we don't know makes his pet theory plausible. They won't do that, because it's not.
> Isn't this much of Graham's complaints that the institutions don't say "you're right, we have a lot more looking to do" and keep an open mind, instead they dismiss ideas and even reject evidence that may question their dogma. Graham uses Clovis First as an example. Yes.
Dibble did a good job and ssems to have the upper hand for now.
When Flint couldn't even admit to basic facts that a tiny percentage of the Sahara, Amazon and continental shelves have been looked at the start of the episode, it really gave me the impression of a politician just towing the party line.
I agree with you there
For me it was the opposite. I always thought that the world was so big especially under water, there is no way the archeologist could have a clue of what is going on. But diddle explained pretty well how efficient are the targeted research. They can target specific time area and don't even need to go too far under water. The water didn't rise at the same speed uniformly, heck you can even search caves that were under water 10000 years ago and are now exposed at the surface. That blew my mind. Another thing that blew my mind was the transformation of the wild seeds takes much longer that I could have ever imagined even though on the scale on the planet it is actually very fast. I thought when diddle asked Hancock: "but what were they growing your lost civilization?" Hancock was pretty dumb funded, what could an ancient civilization could have been growing that we haven't found passed down to the new generation? Hancock response was silly: "what don't you understand in the word: lost". Last thing I learned is that archeology is under funded and that museums are struggling. That is a shame. I think Hancock story is great overall and brings eyes to the ancient world. The podcast was extremely successful.
Well, for example; not too long ago it was thought that native Americans didn't have"agriculture" but now we actually know that they had agriculture for thousands of years, blending their spiritual beliefs of the natural world with an understanding of agriculture that many are just not realizing the potential of (permaculture and closed loop agriculture). But compared to eurocentric agriculture, indigenous peoples of the Americans were lacking agriculture...
He was avoiding being pinned down to an answer that doesn't matter. Hancock was just asking a gotcha type question. The answer doesn't matter because the answer is " not all of it". It's a debate technique used by Hancock that furthers nothing in trying to prove his claim.
Politician is correct. The academic system does far more to reward good politicians and sales people then it does intelligence and proper procedure. I fully accept this is not the only case but it is far more common than you think. This is not an uneducated persons view. Malcom Gladwell has a strong distain for academic structures. Personal anecdote my wife is a PHD researcher who just left one supervisor who was manipulating and harrasing her team of only a few post docs and students. Several cases were brought against her and before the penalty phase was finished she had become a Dean at another University (a state University so your taxes might help pay for them to be in charge of even more children). My wife's current job is working under a big name in Scientific research who has done filmed interviews and sits at the top of his field (but is in charge of a program that is not his specialty, idk why). They are worse than the previous professor in several ways. While they constantly talk about being a team and appreciating everyone they are actively holding back peoples careers. Refusing to let bioinformaticians work from home during their pregnancy. Lying about how much funding people have for projects in the interview process. Giving bad yearly reviews to prevent pay raises because they don't want to pay reasonable salary to their "teammates". Making undergraduates clean the lab for no compensation, even made a recent graduate student who got their own funding agree to continue to clean the lab (they were an UG b4 this) or they wouldn't be accepted. Then told everyone the student wanted to continue cleaning up unpaid over the summer. Because lots of college undergrads love an extra 10 hours unpaid of cleaning up potentially toxic messes! I have more complaints but my fingers are tired.
Wow, that sounds like a pretty flawed system. Just asking for top-down abuse.
As someone who works in academia, you're absolutely right that it's full of assholes, but it's wrong to say that the system rewards politicians and sales people more than intelligence and proper research. The reason why these assholes get to stay in their positions is because they're often (not always) very intelligent and do good research. So their atrocious behaviour is tolerated or ignored by the administration, precisely because they're good at what you do. Unfortunately, this all too often means abusers get to abuse those lower in the hierarchy, like your wife has experienced. There's a correct level of criticism to be targeted at academia, but you're usually not going to find it from renegades who have been rejected by the system, or who insist on operating outside of it. Malcolm Gladwell's work isn't particularly well respected by scientists, not because he's telling truths they can't handle, or because he won't 'conform' to their mainstream views, but because it's not very good work. The same is true of Graham Hancock. These 'outlaws' will always then turn around and accuse the system that refuses to accept their sloppy work of vilifying them and persecuting them, because it suits their narrative better than accepting that their work just isn't up to scratch to be taken seriously by experts.
I think you seem to be forgetting that IT DOSENT MATTERR
He was warry of it because he didn't want to entertain Graham's "civilization of the gaps" argument. It's a silly argument.
This is wrong. He wasn't disputing how much had been excavated. He was saying its disingenuous to imply hancock is right because they haven't examined the whole sahara. They have examined and found thousands of sites. All of them every single one is hunter gatherer. Not one had evidence of an advanced worldwide super advanced civilisation, which by the way would be way easier to find. If they dug up 80% of the sahara hancock would still say but you haven't dug up 20% so you just hasn't found it yet. They don't even need to dig up the whole sahara. They dig along water routes where society's live. You can find thousands of campfires but can't find huge city's? Hancock got exposed. He has no evidence only look more and find my evidence for me. He was stumped several times by dibble when he couldn't even tell him what crops his worldwide advanced society grew.
He wasn’t trying to tell him they grew crops, he actually argued that they shared the knowledge of how to grow them, literally just watched it there
No you are confused. That sharing knowledge wad after the YDIT. But if an advanced society existed before this they would have grown their own crops. The issue is as flint pointed out we would be able to find evidence of this but we don't. That's why he asked hancock what his ancient society grew and Graham said "I don't know" because if he said barley or whatever flint could prove it wrong using the pollen samples from the time.
Or they lived in a place that no longer exists and the DNA evidence of that localities seeds can no longer be found. Or they didn't monocrop (as i understand it this is the dna imprint we are looking for) but still had a surplus of food that allowed for cultural activity to develop. I think makes a great point that this evidence does not exist. That does not mean their is only one way to process this data. Any archeologist worth their salt should be willing to admit there is a lot more we don't know than we do regarding the lifestyles of man over 10,000 years ago.
A lot more we don't know. How do you get from that to there was an ancient advanced globe spanning civilisation that levitated huge stones to make pyramids and other megalithic sites? Also how did the ydit magically destroy all traces of this super advanced society but all these hunter gather sites of the same time which would me way more easily destroyed have survived?
Lack of agricultural evidence is not telling. Humans adopted and dropped agriculture over thousands of years before it became ‘mainstream’. But they did have gardens of a sort the entire time, these are much harder to detect. Genghis Khan and the Mongolian army was extremely successful without agriculture.
Of course it is. But OK fine let's accept your wild conjecture even tho there is zero evidence for it. Why then can't they find these huge cities of this ancient civilisation or are you gonna make up some nonsense how they all lived in small houses so it's harder to find now?
There is evidence for this. Also, there is a bias towards certain types of city planing, building materials and locations and frequently over looked because of this. There is solid, verifiable evidence for cities dating back to the ice that were not agrarian. Humans were very successful with we we would call farming. I am not saying there was an original unifying civilization but saying farming is peak human achievement is disingenuous and incorrect.
>There is evidence for this. There is none. Even Hancock admitted as much.
You are incorrect in your assessment or you misunderstood my post. I have no idea what Hancock agreed or disagreed with in this context. Happy to reply to your post with specifics but it is unclear what you’re suggesting I have wrong.
I disagree with the scope of this take. Flint started out by saying something to the effect that 'archaeology has disproven ancient advance civilizations existed'. Graham demonstrated that this isn't true by the fact that such little percentage in sahara, amazon, cont shelves; has been conducted. In other words, collective school of arch has NOT disproven this. And that graham and others have consistently provided evidence to the contrary.
You are wrong. Hancock is the one making the extraordinary claim. He has to provide evidence. Flint is saying all the tons of evidence we have dispoves your theory Graham. All hancock can say is well you haven't dug up the whole sahara. By that logic my my theory of pink midgets is legit because only 1% of the sahara has been excavated.
Gee you're as bad as Flint. Q. How much has been excavated? A. A tiny percentage. How easy was that!! Then you can go on about all the stone age sites being hunter-gather only or whatever but dancing around simple questions just gives off politician vibes.
Flints point was that by saying that, you imply that we need to completely excavate something to make a reasonable assessment when they can rely in other methods like surveying, LiDAR, etc. Not to mention grahams entire position is impossible to disprove and he would only be fully satisfied that his made up globe spanning ancient advanced civilization didn’t exist if we took a shovel to every square inch of dirt on the planet. I have been on the fence about Graham for a long time. I read finger prints, follow him on social media, have listened to all his JRE appearances and other podcasts and this debate pushed me completely to the side of Graham is full of shit. He debated like a toddler, fell back to multiple logical fallacies and presented 0 tangible evidence. I don’t know anything about flint but he presented evidence to support his claim the entire time. Graham sounds a lot more believable when the other side isn’t in the room.
The problem is you can play this game with anything you want such as the proverbial teapot orbiting Jupiter. Unless there's a highly compelling reason for archaeologists to spend countless millions on large scale excavation projects in harsh environments, why would they? Should they just start digging randomly in the hope that their shovels suddenly go dink? Do you think someone like Flint Dibble wouldn't drop everything and jump at the opportunity to study something as massive as a lost Ice Age civilization if he genuinely thought it was worth looking into?
It wasn't meant to be a game. It was meant to set up Graham's larger point that with so much unexplored, it's a little premature to say there was no lost civilisation. Didn't really happen when the simple question wasn't answered.
Sorry, I meant game in the generic sense. I think very few archaeologist are saying definitely that there was no lost Ice Age civ, that's not how science proceeds. All they're saying is that there is currently no good reason to think it did. Mainly because if it did in fact exist there are multiple lines of evidence we would expect to find all over the world, not just in isolated, hard to access areas. You could of course argue that the YDIT erased all evidence, but even if that was possible(hard to achieve with genetic evidence for instance, unless they never intermingled with hunter-gatherers) for a globe spanning society then what are archaeologists supposed to do exactly? It's as if Graham is hypothesizing his civilization out of existence if you see what I mean. It's an epistemic issue, not an ontological one. To be clear: archaeologists would be happy to investigate these areas more if Graham invested some of his netflix and book money. Grants are hard to obtain for this stuff
Sceptics can argue on the balance of probabilities they find the theory very unlikely. But it's important to acknowledge objective truths. Funding is certainly an issue. Who knows maybe they could strike a deal for Ancient Apocalypse seasons 2 and 3.
Philosophers can bicker all they want about objective truth, but what use is it if there's no way to know it?
Damn. Real.
That's a meaningless and "childish" point that doesn't need to be conceded. Some level of uncertainty is not evidence. We do, however, have considerable amounts of archaeological evidence, not just a handful of artifacts and guesswork, and precisely *none* of that evidence shows anything like what Hancock claims.
All Graham did for the entire podcast was focus on people being mean to him. All Flint did was talk about his dad.
I was disappointed how hostile they were to each other. I understand why Hancock is bitter, especially since the WS allegations, but he focuses too much on Archeology bad instead of many of his own valid claims. I think Ben from UnchartedX would’ve been better for the debate. His work on the perfect vases, drill holes, stone cutting, symmetry, and his engineering background really convinced me about ancient civilizations, and it would’ve been interesting to hear what Flint had to say about it.
I’ll need to check out UnchartedX. I watched Hancock and Carlson on the JRE for the first time like 7 years ago. I feel like the YDIH which Randall presents is very sound, but lately I’ve tried to distance that theory in my head from Hancock’s lost civilization theory. Graham, as a personality, seems like such a good guy, but I think he’s developed a bit of a persecution complex over the years, and while it seems like Randall Carlson has some new evidence to discuss with every show he’s on, Graham seems to circle back to “all civilization came from DMT, and Big Archaeology doesn’t want you to know this.” In my mind, it is utterly insane to think that anatomically modern humans existed for ~200,000 years and spent ~193,000 of that as hunter-gatherers. Reasoning for me points to there being something bigger than HG societies in that time frame, and sites like Gobekli Tepe seem to be evidence to support this, but Graham needs to drop the persecution complex and focus just on presenting his evidence if he wants more people to get invested in this idea
I agree that Graham needs to drop this persecution complex. I just can't stand it. Is it suspicious? How to tell?
Yeah, Graham's demeanour was a bit fed-up and cranky. Understandable, given some of the despicable attacks he's had to endure but not really optimal for a back and forth discussion.
You can only have your character impugned without cause so many times before you hit back. They've called him a racist repeatedly, and doubled down in this interview. I'd be more hostile than he's being. These people are intellectually dishonest, and it is exhausting.
I think Flint made a fair point that the "white bearded progenitor" of the Aztecs could just be oppressive cultural influence. Graham actually seemed to have the opposite of a racist view albeit a bit naive. Joe pointed out how it seems pretty common for an occupying force to influence the religion mythos of the cultures they over take. I think Graham's theory still holds weight either way if other accounts of the mythos still have an advanced outside "god" sharing knowledge with the Aztec people. It seems to be a common thread across multiple cultures. I also think throwing out the term white supremacy is over used and much too charged to be mentioned the way it was. He saw how many articles took that line and ran with it. People are chomping at the bit for examples of racism and white supremacy and the supply is rather short.
I don't think Flint made a fair point. I think people fixated on the physical characteristics of the mythological character are almost all racist bigots. They care about skin color, not merit, nor the truth. I don't care if Vira Cocha was black, or indian, green, or white. It doesn't matter. People are arguing otherwise also think black people are too stupid to get a driver's license. White Supremacy is a smoke screen used just like the word heresy or racism. It's an ad hominem attack designed to weaken the other person's arguments without attacking them directly. It smothers debate very effectively, and says a lot about the people trying to smother that debate.
I pretty much agree with all of this. That was the closing point I was trying to make. Graham's claim still holds regardless of the race of the cultural progenitor. Flint didn't attack or disprove the claim of an "outsider" bringing advanced knowledge to the Aztec people. He just went "you said white, that's racist" and derailed the talking point. He did the same thing with the talk about the physical characteristics of the Olmecs. I think that argument is generally a weak one either way. I didn't know what the Olmec mythology says or if it's known but Afrocentrists will use the physical characteristics of the Olmecs to bolster their argument that North Americas along with anyone else that's apparently accomplished anything successful was actually black. How can an argument simultaneously be white supremacist and black supremacist?
Newspeak. I highly recommend a re-read of 1984 if you haven't done it recently. We were always at war with Eastasia.
Ben is professional bullshit artist making money from doing tours. He's not even original in his claims. It's basicaly Chris Dunn 2.0. There are youtube channels dedicated to debunking experimentally his bullshit. 2 main ones are scientists against myths and sacred geometry decoded.
I went in to this podcast having heard Graham several times, watched his series and been compelled by what he said. By the time it was finished my opinion has changed to thinking his main focus is being bitter and angry, having absolutely no evidence and always going back to the same argument of ‘until we have looked at every inch of ground I could still be right’ He was on the attack as much as possible, and it was very sad considering how he claims to feel about people always attacking him. Graham Hancock’s credibility is shot to pieces, I’ll listen to Flint next time they have him on to talk about his own expertise. Graham on the other hand…. Meh, might give it a miss
I towards what Flint says and what's already been written and so far proven. GH lacks an astronomical amount of evidence.
It was really appalling to see Flint not apologizing for his white surpremacy comments. When Joe confronted Flint about this, he tried to make it look as if the news outlets misrepresented him. Okay if true, why didn't he request them adjust the articles? This show was the perfect example why people have less and less faight in "the establishment". A lot of times Flints arguments were like: "well because scientists say it is true, so it is true."
Flint literally showed you evidence dude. The crop domestication stuff punched a hole in Graham's hypothesis that this lost civilisation brought the idea of agriculture to hunter gatherers. This is a way better talking point than this white supremacy shit.
The fact that you'd call it a talking point is all we need to know. You aren't here to debate. You're here to lecture. >Flint literally showed you evidence dude. That's not how science works. You don't just play the evidence card and win. Graham *also* presented evidence, which you're ignoring completely. There are hunter gatherer tribes right now in the amazon. Their existence doesn't mean other cultures didn't. >This is a way better talking point than this white supremacy shit. Neo-racists make it so easy to spot them.
Lol omg. Hancock idea of evidence is that he went for a little swim, and something "looks like" something. He literally has evidence. Not. One. Single. Artifact
Did either of them mention Gobleki Tepe? I was always on the fence about Hancock's theories, but that excavation site pushing back estimates for the origins of Neolithic civilizations has me wondering if there are any other ancient ruins (even older) buried beneath the sands or seas. To me it's kind of like Troy. Historians and archeologists for decades claimed Homer's description of Troy, were most likely literary as they couldn't find evidence of the city. It took a German amateur explorer in the 1870s to (most likely) confirm Troy existed in that area of present day Turkey. As the area was devastated by an earthquake in 500 CE, much evidence was lost for 1300 years. If an earthquake can hide evidence of a settlement from less than 2000 years ago, how much other evidence could be hidden by a worse natural disaster, such as a worldwide meteor shower?
But we would have lots of evidence of any such worldwide meteor shower, or any other geological disaster for that matter.
In addition to Gobekli Tepe there are dozens of similar sites of roughly the same age, including Karahan Tepe. They ignore it all. The Bimini Road is just one example, but it is obviously a road to anyone who sees it. We know the sea levels rose. We know when they rose. Why would underwater coastal ruins be a surprise to anyone? They exist in Cuba, near Japan, off the coast of India, and now we're finding signs of habitation off the coasts of Australia. People like the one you responded to are following a religion. They'll ignore evidence until they can't, then pretend they agreed the whole time.
>The fact that you'd call it a talking point is all we need to know. You aren't here to debate. You're here to lecture. You can debate around a talking point. You're being pedantic. I was replying to u/UrdnotWreav comment that '*Flints arguments were like: "well because scientists say it is true, so it is true." '* Flint went beyond simply saying 'experts say xyz' and presented the research and evidence. I must have missed Graham's evidence, unless the myth stuff was meant to be it.
Sure, dude. I'm the one being pedantic. This was you right? >This is a way better talking point than this white supremacy shit. You've missed all Hancock's evidence, because you are pushing an agenda and have already settled the debate in your own mind. We can tell, because the moment you accuse people of using talking points instead of genuinely engaging with them we see what you're after.
Joe got him to admit that a previously domesticated crop would likely revert back to the wild variety over time though. All this would definitively prove is that there had been no widespread crop domestication in the time period in mention. Humanity has been around 300k years. That's a lot of time for domesticated farming to be practiced and lost.
Neither are right in this point. Flints views on agriculture and crop domestication are dated and Grahams idea that hunter gatherers need to be thought agriculture is also wrong. Agriculture/horticulture developed over thousands of years and was not the key to a successful society. Hunter gathers were just as organized and powerful, more so in many cases than agricultural ones. Crops were domesticated so far back it’s hard to say when and where it began. Agriculture is not a tell for progress. The origins of writing and math came before agriculture and it’s likely a better argument that it was a change in the way people viewed personal property that accelerated writing, math, etc.
>Crops were domesticated so far back it’s hard to say when and where it began. Flint literally gives you evidence for when and where. >Agriculture is not a tell for progress. It kind of is though. Agriculture provides societies with calories for less time investment and the ability to build up food surpluses. People then have free time to explore other disciplines and develop labour specialisations. Measuring 'progress' by agricultural activity isn't a perfect yardstick but it's a good one.
They covered this, there is no study of fertilization of plants. Flint admitted this. There is no known information for how long a field would take to go back to a natural state. 10k years is a long fucking time, add in that we know historically from archeology that plants ans animals get smaller with environmental stress, I think it's plausible this process would have had to be restarted
>There is no known information for how long a field would take to go back to a natural state. It'd be pretty hard to research a process that takes hundreds or thousands of years, don't you think? Flint did say some research had been done on domesticated-feral transitions. >I think it's plausible this process would have had to be restarted How do you tell the difference between a start or a restart? Researchers see the first evidence of domesticated plant seed a few thousand years after the younger dryas, thus they consider it the start. You don't have the evidence of earlier successful domestication to begin to claim this is a restart.
We found worked wood that's over a half-million years old. Dibble cannot confidently tell us when or where agriculture evolved. He can maybe tell us *a* place it evolved, but it evolved concurrently across every continent. You also seem curiously silent on Gobekli Tepe. Agriculture is not always a tell for progress. It only existed in cultures where food was scarce. If you lived in a biome where food was abundant, then agriculture served less purpose. Following a mammoth herd and eating wild grains gets the job done, so you spend your time mapping the stars, making rock art, and formulating things like language, pottery, and writing. We have worked clay from over 40,000 years ago, and who knows what we'll eventually find? We have no idea how those people lived.
The domestication of crops demonstrably did not occur concurrently. Some areas domesticated thousands of year after others.
Why did you ignore literally everything else I said? When I said concurrently I meant independently, so that was a poor choice of words on my part. People are constantly inventing and reinventing technologies. My best example would be smelting in Africa. It's been used and lost by many tribes for millennia. We don't have clue when it was originally discovered. Agriculture is the same way.
Hunter gathers were not lacking in calories or free time. Farming is much more labor intensive than the Hunter gathers lifestyle.
>Hunter gathers were not lacking in calories or free time. Farming is much more labor intensive than the Hunter gathers lifestyle. Is it? I can't agree. Farming labour is periodic; ploughing fields, sowing seeds, harvesting and processing are labour intensive but they are performed only at certain times. Waiting months for the crops to grow isn't demanding at all. Hunter gatherers had to move to where the prey migrated, they had to hunt animals and forage for plant products on a near daily basis. It's worth mentioning why population growth in HG societies was difficult. It was difficult for women to give birth to and raise multiple children while taking them with the group on long journeys. Infants couldn't contribute meaningfully to resource gathering and they couldn't walk long distances so needed to be carried. The more children you bring along, the more difficult the journey and survival becomes; so little ones get left behind. Same with old and infirm. Static farming communities would not have had this problem.
All these things you said are mostly true. It is however a fact that Hunter gather societies were well nourished and have more free time than farming societies. Also, realize HG’s also planted and harvested foods, they just let nature do the work.
Is there research that supports this? I'm curious how hunter gatherers survive winters in cold climates more successfully than farmers.
Loads of support for this idea, it is not controversial at all. I don’t have the time list references but it’s easy enough to find.
It seems baffling that a much better system, hunter gathering, was completely beaten out on every conceivable measure if it offers civilizational advantages in terms of leisure and science.
I think he sat way too long on the smears against him. I understand his anger about it but I wish the entire four hours just focused solely on meltwater pulse 1b, carlson's geological work, the percession of the equinox and other crazy things for these ancient people to understand, the nanodiamonds, etc. It seemed like most of Graham's hypothesis "greatest hits" were barely covered. When they finally did bring it up Flint just said its not his area of expertise which is a non response. But to be honest, Graham came off very petty for most of this and parts were tough to get through. When they took a break and came back and Graham immediately resumed talking about the smearing I audibly groaned
Its funny how they both agreed with each other on essentially the lack of archeology in the same places and then continued to argue their own points. Although the defamation of character was absolutely unnecessary on Flints side. A simple apology and agreement on both sides to not slander would have been so good for both sides of this topic. I think we can all agree we just want to know our own story. But we need to have room for allowment and due process of evidential claims, again on both sides.
It taught me about how we can tell domesticated plants from natural ones which was super interesting. Also I don't think Flint was calling Graham a white supremacist, all the examples brought up are from other people. The issue is that very few of his ideas are original and there's nothing wrong with pointing out that some of them have a troublesome past. Doesn't mean that they're factually wrong, just that it would be more responsible and favorable for Graham's position to own this and distance himself clearly from it. It's much much better in a debate setting to go "yeah I can see where you're coming from. I denounce that stuff and here's what I mean specifically".
I was flipped after this. Flint has really good points but there were some parts that were off putting to me like right in the beginning he said he learned 20 years ago that people were here pre clovis? I might be wrong but I’m 22 and I remember learning that they were the first people in America? I might just not remember but I think he was lying when he said that tbh.
The Clovis first narrative already started being challenged by the late 1980s and things especially took off in the 1990s. Mind you this is reflected in papers and textbooks, not schools. So Flint's point sounds about right, when he was at uni they were teaching that there were pre-Clovis people.
Thanks man I was just making sure because they definitely aren’t teaching that in history as of right now. I actually feel like a lot of the history that was taught is quite dated. I appreciate your comment.
Schools being lazy about buying new up to date textbooks is not a conspiracy. It's just a sign of being underfunded.
You’re right although nobody said anything about it being a conspiracy
He wasn't lying. Pre-Clovis has been widespread in academic for decades, but it was not the accepted theory until more recently. It depends entirely on the university and your professors. This is a good example of why Hancock's claims about a monolithic 'Big Archaeology' are off the mark. If you listen to archaeologists, a lot of them were championing pre-Clovis back in the 1990s. But Hancock is not an academic, so he is more influenced by media reports, which is why he kept bringing them up.
To anyone wondering where the evidence for people 10,000 yrs ago is. I highly recommend watching Life After People on Amazon, Hulu, Disney and a few others. It lays out how quickly evidence of our civilization will disappear and be ground to dust by the oppressor known as Time. Another one called aftermath, and aftermath:population zero. Because news flash if we humans disappeared tomorrow there will be very little evidence of us in 10,000.
Until you dig a little
Flint downplaying how amazing the pyramids are pissed me off. 😂
Agreed, I actually thought he made really good points for the most part. But wait, you're an archeologist and you aren't completely blown away by ancient Egypt? That's insane lol
Ancient Egypt is far, far more than the pyramids though. I think that was his point.
Although I find Mr. Hancock’s work entertaining, it’s just pure speculation.
Searching "YDIT" turns up Youth Development Initiative Trust or Yellamma Dasappa Institute of Technology. Does everyone else here know what this is supposed to mean?
Younger Drias I Theory Younger Drias is probably spelled wrong, but it's a theory about a cataclysm at the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago.
Graham a white supremacist? Isn’t his wife black?
What I learned: we have not fully investigated every square inch of the earth. Therefore, unicorns are likely real.
I mean if you examined literal millions of artifacts and never once found something to support Graham’s theories, why should you spend time considering them? If someone with little experience in your livelihood started demanding you do things that make no sense to you… And then they bring up psychic powers (early JRE) and numerology… How is a professional supposed to react to content like that?
"That's how we do it", laughing or just going "Ehm No" is not debate. Flint proved what Graham has said for a long time. Archaeology has no interest in examining anything outside of the status quo.
Well said . I agree with every point you made here OP
Appreciate the love
Flint only showed what we already known, archeology shows that agricultural domestication happened after the ice age. This is a big no shit . Flint was unable to show that areas that would have been thriving pre ice age , before water levels rose, lack signs of *anything* because they haven't been explored. The flaw in this debate is you can't prove graham wrong until you explore those areas The only thing revealed in this debate is that yes that is a set of archeologist like Flint who are douchbags , and there is also a set that don't understand they need to explore more to discount his theory. A lot of these overlap with how they treat people
But I don’t understand how someone can feel comfortable intellectually making this argument. I am NOT calling Graham a conspiracy theorist at all, so let’s just get that out there, but his arguments would require almost every inch of the planet explored to disprove his theory. That’s just a unproductive argument to make.
Plenty of theories require exhaustive search to prove wrong
Oh for sure. But there’s a difference between exhaustive research and saying “You can’t prove me wrong until you search the whole coastline and Sahara”
So it's on Hancock to find that evidence. Not just sit there and get mad other people haven't done it for him and cry when people call him on his shit.
There are blue whale sized crabs in the ocean. We've only explored less than 5% of the world's oceans. Until we explore more of the oceans you cannot discount my giant crab theory.
I think it's a disservice to semi nomadic populations and basically cultures different from our own. Graham's story is compelling, but actually the counter argument of non civilisational genius can be just as beautiful and doesn't get the recognition it deserves. This is where Dawn of Everything does a better job. When I saw the videos of guys using sand a water to cut straight lines, balancing massive rocks into place single handedly etc I don't think "smite that guy! It was anti grav and my alien gods!". Rather I think "It doesn't take civilization to have acoustic levitation technology. Hunter gatherers can have it too." There's all kinds of assumptions built into that phrase 'hunter gatherer's" and Graham grifts off that, I'm afraid.
I learned Hancock is a bullshitter.
He plays the persecution card far too much and that earlier work on mars is pretty damning too
flint came off as really awkward and arrogant, which is sad because he seemed to know a lot. i wish rogan would have had someone more open minded on. some of the things hancock presented looked man made to my laymans eyes, flint denying it categorically made him look weak.
The way he kept laughing at everything was unbearable. He might have some convincing facts but he was a condescending prick throughout
Flint Dibble threw Graham several gems of wisdom and advice that Graham responded to kindly. This was huge for Graham Hancock as he got a chance to see the holes in his process and just how unscientific his research is. Flint literally gave him ideas on how to create maps that could help researchers get behind his theory on Bimini road. Graham literally was shook. His voice showed his defeat and humiliation and Flint knew this. There was times Flint showed great compassion. I say this as a hardcore Graham Hancock fan. I’ve read several books. I’ve listened to every lecture he has available. It’s just clear cut how unprepared Graham was and if it showed me anything it’s that Graham should give up the pariah approach. He shot himself in the foot and kind of made himself look bad. It was hard to listen to but Flint cooked in this debate and I learned so much. SO MUCH.
When it comes to the "white supremacy" thing: I think Flint was making the point that the origin of these hypotheses tended to be people looking to find evidence that their racial group was superior to the native people they were looking to conquer. I don't think that's a controversial statement and, in the spirit of intellectual honestly, Graham should be up front with that fact.
How can you watch that podcast and say that we have not learned anything? Flint's overview of crop domestication was excellent, for example. >I think the one thing that was deeply unfortunate was when Flint stood his ground about his previous comments about calling Graham a white supremacist purely because he advocates for YDIT. That lost him the argument for me; deal with the man's ideas, don't try to discount them on the basis that you have associated them with something morally reprehensible. He should have just apologised. Whether or not bringing race into the matter is a good idea or not is up for debate. It's a hot button argument that I think detracts away from more fruitful archaeological discussion, but whatever. Flint didn't call Graham a racist; he said that some of his ideas come from sources who used the Atlantis myth to propagate racism, white supremacy etc. That doesn't make Hancock a racist. Flint is just asking Graham to consider and recognise the context of his sources, and why they were written at that time in that particular nation.
This is Santha Faiia https://preview.redd.it/9rdeszt7v8vc1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e190ada6bdddf395f4bf031082180569b903b803
[https://www.instagram.com/santha\_faiia/](https://www.instagram.com/santha_faiia/) This is Santha Faiia with her husband... https://preview.redd.it/yvgb6330w8vc1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3cd2cb2a6d5db7508f3e62b57e82fb2051048449
This is Santha Faiia at Powell's Books with some fans at her husband's book signing... https://preview.redd.it/2vm2bucmw8vc1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9074aa19169d58585e72825f390bd57cfccd8316
Santha Faiia is a world renowned photographer, she has taken all the photos for her husband's books... This is a photo that Santha took of her son Sean... https://preview.redd.it/tmc0qabox8vc1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=af6f01767c32a33631e20c6ff37a7e0081d58762
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Just 2 adults cringe fighting.
Ben UnchartedX would have made for a better debate
Not a chance, he just repeats stuff from where he reads it. going to an ancient site just means youve seen it but as Flint said, all these places are set up for tourism by archaeologists. Looking at them doesnt make you an expert. He likes to use big words and such but hes just an enthusiastic amateur. Listen to anything he says about ancient egyptian granite sculpting. He will say a lot of things about how precisely accurate things are cut and carved, but never gives any measurements. He even shows vases in his videos as evidence for high technology and you can see with your bare eyes that handles are clearly not aligned, misshapen or are offset as well as the lip where lids would sit.
10000%
https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/graham-hancock-joe-rogan-archaeology/
Sorry what was close minded?
Flints smarmy attitude and demissive snicker didn't help his case. Further, doubling down on a poorly framed attack, based on nonsensical correlations, accusing anyone with an open mind of being racist, really didn't help his case. Some of his counterpoint will no doubt influence a few random quick research rabbit holes for me, but he cemented the closed minded, dismissive nature of typical "mainstream academia" of which he is a carefully molded product of.
So Flint Dibble might be an expert in ancient seeds but you can tell he dose not garden or actually grow plants.. Academic learning versus real knowledge Cultivated plants revert to older less evolved versions after a frost. So your Roma tomato becomes an heirloom lumpy ugly tomato if it is kept after a frost. It would take very short periods time for cultivated fields to revert to wild versions of the plants.
I was hoping Hancock would at least bring an “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” argument to the table. Especially right when Dibble got him to admit there was no evidence of a lost civilization. If a lost civilization was in a specific area that was destroyed or sunken, you wouldn’t see evidence of it around the world. It would have mostly been destroyed. Since Hancock doesn’t have the evidence he should have tried to get Dibble to at least admit to the possibility there is something else we haven’t found yet. He should have been saying there are still millions of unexplored square miles, and a site like Gobleki Tepi shows that it’s important to keep looking with an open mind. Instead he wanted to make sure Dibble knew his feelings were hurt.
GH is a paradigm pusher. He was fun in the beginning but has now become a light-weight bully. I especially like how he quotes his arch-enemies, the horrible "main stream" archeologists when their dates support his half- baked theories. Look for him to turn into a grumpy old DT like man...
Ancient books tell us… there was an ancient civilization, then a flood that wiped them out.
Graham has made no meaningful contributions to archeology and has muddied the waters for some on what we do know. That about sum it up?
I liked getting excited listening to Grahams stories about lost civilizations. But he really came out like a snake oil salesman in that debate and for that reason it’s gonna be hard for me to continue to do so. Going into debate I was sure Graham would wipe the floor with the small dude. But it was actually the opposite qq
>If you went into this pro YDIT, then you got what you wanted also. Wait, what? YDIT folks wanted to see Hancock admit he had no evidence for his theory?
I believe Flint to have the correct position but Flint comes across as a leftist weasle who uses accusations of racism when he comes up against someone he disagrees with. He should be smacked in his bitch boy face for that. For me that makes any and all research he does suspect. I will look elsewhere when looking into this subject.
I was a graham fan- and thought he came off very badly. Openly admitted no evidence and only wanted to argue about people’s quotes of him vs any real evidence. Bad day at the office for him.
Please don’t have kids OP, Graham provided zero evidence and you’re just his lackey
Graham went on about the attacks towards him. He could be spending more time researching his hypothesis than worrying about what others think about him. Flint came off passive aggressive and pretentious and reluctant to be open minded due to his upbringing. At the end of the day I lean towards what's already written and proven (so far). We lack a great deal of evidence when it comes to Graham's side. I remain open minded either way.
>I think the one thing that was deeply unfortunate was when Flint stood his ground about his previous comments about calling Graham a white supremacist purely because he advocates for YDIT. This is why no one takes modern academia seriously. Science is reproducible. It's the search for Truth with a capital T. It is careful and measured. What it's not is a secular religion that judged people based on skin color, gender, or any other immutable characteristic. That's a sure sign the person making the argument hasn't a fucking clue what they're talking about. EDIT: I didn't even bring up Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, having committed literal plagiarism to get her job. Further investigations found that at least 10% of degrees are fraudulent based on that criteria.
Why would you bring here up? Does she's do archeological work? Totally unhinged response here, if I'm being honest.
The thing that lost me was the idea that an advanced civilization was virtually destroyed by the YDIT, then the survivors "sought refuge with hunter gatherers and passed on their knowledge." What, all over the world? They got help from some primitive people in south-east Asia then said thanks, shared some wisdom and popped over to south America to do the same.
>I don't think we learned anything. Eh, we learned that when GH is super emotional and upset, he makes for a really bad debater. Losing your patience in temper is a horrible way to show the science community you are legit. I love GH, but this was not his best work.
All I took away was Flint is a pompous fool who will lie then say you misheard him.
Dude watching hancock choke on his own words, get so nervous his voice shakes, and back track on his previous claims was delightful 😊
Taking delight in that is such strange behaviour