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Ancient Apocalypse Season 2 Review - Part 1 - Ep 291
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Well, we finally did it. On today’s episode we cover Netflix’s Ancient Apocalypse Season 2 with Graham Hancock. We actually have so much to talk about that it takes two episodes. This is episode one where we make it to talking about Rapa Nui.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Archaeology Show Episode 291
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to The Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast.
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Archaeology Show, episode 291. Today's show is part one of our review of season two of the Netflix show, Ancient Apocalypse.
Graham Hancock's Theories and Skepticism
00:00:26
Speaker
Let's dig a little deeper, but not as deep as Grant Hancock goes with his crazy theories. Let's dig a little deeper, but not as deep into the younger drives. Let's dig a little deeper, but maybe not so far below the footprints. Let's dig a little deeper. and Not as deep, but not as deep. Just not as deep. Just not as deep. just's not that deep
00:00:51
Speaker
still a little deeper Deep subject for a shallow mind, Graham Hancock. Let's take a little deeper into the heads below the surface. No, that's dumb. I'm bad at this. Yeah, you're bad at this.
Hosts' Location and RV Lifestyle Discussion
00:01:15
Speaker
Welcome back to 2025. Breaks over. Breaks over. It feels super good to be back because, well, we just have such a great topic for today, so. Yeah. But before we get into it, where are we? Yeah, we are in Arizona. And for longtime listeners of the show, we're back where we have been before. We're Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where the London Bridge is. And in fact, I think last year or the year before, I don't know, one year. Last year. Last year, I'm pretty sure we did a whole episode about it. Yeah, maybe we'll link to it if we are good at our jobs. Look, I'll put a note in here right now to go find a link to it. We'll see if it actually happens. Yeah, a version of the London Bridge is here in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. I think the last one before the one that's obviously in London right now, if I remember correctly. I don't know, I'll have to go back and listen to our episode. Yeah, go back and listen to it. There's been a couple versions over the years. But anyway, we're at this annual RVing event. In fact, it's a 10-year anniversary of the Xscapers
00:02:10
Speaker
I know I was going to say RV club, but it's the escapees RV club and the escapers is like a a club within a club. Yeah. So working age folks like us who live and work on the road. Yeah. Escapees is more retirees. They've been around 40 plus years and they have clubs within the escapees club and the escapers is the biggest club within the escapees club. yeah Yeah, because there's actually a lot of people who are working age who are on the road these days, partly because of COVID, because we all were able to work remotely, and partly just because it's a cool, fun thing to do. If you're in the United States or Canada, and you happen to be or Mexico for that matter, and you happen to be a full-time RVer, or hell, even a part-time RVer, but mostly on the road, and
00:02:52
Speaker
You want a fun group of people to hang out with, check out Xscapers, X, spelled with an X, X-S-C-A-P-E-R-S, check out the website. We're at the annual bash, they call it, in, like I was just saying, like you said. We're surrounded by, what, 300 rigs or something right now? Something like that, yeah, 500 people for sure. Probably three to 400 rigs. Yeah, give or take. It's the first full day today because we just got here yesterday as we're recording. And it's such a cool spot too because we are just surrounded by the mountains and it's so pretty and the weather is really nice here so it's kind of a nice change from Charlotte which is where we were for two months with my family who I love obviously but I think for us it was really nice to hit the road again and get out to the west so we are happy to be here. Big change. And I'm sure we'll go some cool places
00:03:37
Speaker
and have some cool episodes about our travels upcoming. And in particular, I can think of a few places we're going that are going to definitely get some TAS love. So yeah, travel episodes.
Travel Plans and Cultural Criticism
00:03:48
Speaker
They'll be coming. Yeah. We're going to have a lot to talk about because apropos of nothing and politics notwithstanding, we're going to spend the next two and a half months out of the country. We are, we are. So we'll talk more about that in the upcoming episode. Yep, that's the plan. Yeah, but you know what we're not happy about? I'm not happy about people who don't give proper attribution to all the cool things that the native cultures of this planet have done. correct. We don't like when people like to say that they just couldn't have been smart enough to figure out how to do these things on their own. Therefore, somebody must have handed them that technology.
Critique of Ancient Apocalypse's Speculative Archaeology
00:04:26
Speaker
That's right. And in this case, we are talking about ancient apocalypse season two presented by
00:04:34
Speaker
Mr. Graham Hancock. I don't even know if he's Dr. Graham Hancock, to be honest with you. I didn't look that up. He's not. I do not believe he is. They would have put that doctor in there all over the place if he was. So he is not. He's an enthusiast. And I'm going to take a page out of Dr. Kinkella's book for a second here. Dr. Kinkella. Dr. Kinkella. Of TV fame and the Archeology Podcast Network, more importantly. ah have the pseudo-archaeology podcast. He's actually already covered this season of ancient apocalypse. So yeah go listen to that after this if you need more ancient apocalypse in your life. But he has always been like, well, Graham Hancock.
00:05:10
Speaker
has some theories that are not on par with what the academic world feels and thinks. But he is platforming archaeology. And that is something that we have to keep in mind as we go through and talk about this show. yeah And so I want to give my overall feelings about the show before we dive into some of the specifics.
00:05:30
Speaker
He talks about a lot of freaking cool archeology. Really cool stuff. Stuff that is probably not mainstream that you might not have heard of before because, you know, he talks about early sites in the Americas, but he talks about the White Sands site, which is not, it's fairly new research and it's not like part of just part of our are ancient culture in your minds. When you think of ancient culture in the Americas, you don't necessarily think of White Sands. Well, now you might after watching the show. So,
00:05:56
Speaker
I really do appreciate this platform he's given for archeology. I don't appreciate the conclusions that are coming out of it. And we will talk about why those are... we're i'm not I don't want to use the word wrong again. It's just that they are reaching into a place that we don't have evidence for. yeah So that's what I want to say about that. But man, do I love some of the archeology and the way they show it, the shots are beautiful. They have great drone footage of these overhead images. and i I just thought that some of it was so cool and we did receive a number of well a handful of comments again well first time we played our episode reviewing season one and then as part of our encore series playing past episodes during this break period we played season one again yeah just in preparation for this episode right now that you're listening to so if you haven't heard our review of season one
00:06:47
Speaker
maybe go back and listen to that. We just played it a couple episodes ago. Yeah, it was just like two episodes ago. And then the one we did last week was Tristan, co-founder of APN, his interview with Flint Dibble, who actually went on to the Joe Rogan show and had a conversation with Graham Hancock about some of his theories and the lack of evidence behind them. So you get even more into the whole conversation around it if you listen to that too.
Listener Feedback and Show's Educational Value
00:07:13
Speaker
Right. And one of the comments we got through email about our critique of season one, I want to address because I actually responded back to the commenter and I was a little agitated when I commented and sorry about that, sir. if you're still a listener. But either way, he did make a good point. He said, you know what, I learned a lot more about archaeology and archaeological sites from watching Season 1 of Ancient Apocalypse from Grand Hancock than I have from almost any other archaeological source than I have. And I'll tell you, unless you seek out and read fairly dense archaeological books and source material and things like that, I 100% agree.
Impact of Well-Produced Shows on Archaeology
00:07:52
Speaker
There's really garbage TV series out there about archaeology and they're really hard to find. And when you get a Netflix series that is well produced with a lot of money behind it and they have the good graphics and they have the budget to send him to all these fantastic sites that nobody gets to go to, of course there's going to be a lot of good stuff. And I'll tell you what, every
00:08:15
Speaker
place that he went to, every, let's just call it, chunk of, you know, the america things that he talked about, every and culture yeah every site that he went to, the the first 95% of it was fantastic it was amazing producing. yeah It was really good archeology. He talked to like, we likeologist just he spent the whole season of season one and season two saying how archeologists are fighting him and all this stuff. But what, who did he talk to? He talked to archeologists mostly, so but He talked to archaeologists mostly and and then at the last two seconds he's like except I don't you know I go against all that and I say this right and we're gonna talk about that but so just like ignore the last five seconds of everything he said yeah the first part is great yeah and it really is a good way to learn about a lot of good archaeology sites if you just ignore the last sentence that he says about every single one of Yeah, the way he tries to tie everything together into and we'll get into what that is exactly.
Hancock's Presentation Style Evolution
00:09:09
Speaker
But he does make this attempt to tie everything together at the end of each section. And that's where he goes wrong in our opinion. Well, not just our opinion, like the academic world's opinion. yeah But what I was going to say, did you notice in this season, he did not directly attack archaeologists the way he did in the first season.
00:09:28
Speaker
Well, he did sometimes. But not like he did in that first season where he acted like he was being dragged down. I heard the words mainstream archaeologist a few times. He did, but he did a better job in my opinion. I liked season two so much better than season one for all these reasons, but he did a really good job of saying when he was speculating about things. Now, he made it so that you wanted to go along on his speculation with him. He was trying to bring people down his speculation road, which when he went down those roads, that's where he went off track and, you know, according to mainstream archaeology. But I thought he did a better job of not attacking actual archaeologists and saying that the things that he was saying were speculation. yeah not
00:10:10
Speaker
a better job of it. Anyway, I feel like I'm coming down like on the side of the show right now. I'm not
Archaeologists in Media vs. Speculative Narratives
00:10:15
Speaker
meaning to. I just, I kind of did enjoy it. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, this first segment, we're not really going to get into the show too much, just kind of giving our opinions on it, but along those lines.
00:10:26
Speaker
One of the things that we've talked to, again, Andrew Kinkela, about of the pseudo-archaeology podcast and all the things he's done, is the need for archaeologists to say yes to more projects like this, because this is why Graham graham Hancock has a platform. A, he's a he is a writer, yeah and he's written books on this, and this is why you know when producers of shows seek out things like this, and they find a platform like Netflix to put this on, they're gonna look for somebody who who does have Well a they can look good on TV and and he has that yeah, and and be he can speak yeah, he has a good voice and and see He he knows what he's talking about according to him right now He can go there and speak intelligently to these people and he's researched what he's what he's looking at right so but there's 100,000 archaeologists out there that could do the same thing, except they're just like, oh, I just want to sit in my lab or sit at my site and have people not talk to me. And I just want to, you know, do my research and wear my tweed jacket with my elbow patches and not worry about it. Right. yeah And that's all I want to do with my life. And I don't want to do anything. I don't want to do social media. I'm not on TikTok. I'm not on Facebook. I'm not on Instagram. I'm not doing any of these things. And you guys go away. Right. There's plenty of archaeologists that are trying to get into the social media stuff and do that stuff too. But
00:11:49
Speaker
We just don't say yes enough to those types of things. Therefore, dot, dot, dot, Graham Hancock is going to get a platform, right? And we got to listen to his bullshit before, you know, we got to listen to all the good stuff he's going to say, but then his bullshit at the end because he's got the platform and he has, he has the floor. So he's going to get his opinion in. Yeah and I mean he is doing something different than most academic archaeologists too in that he has a ah broad range of interest. So he's covering the entire world and then he's taking these threads from the entire world and like tying them up into these nice neat little bows which are the the
00:12:25
Speaker
fallacies of his theories,
Early Human Migrations and White Sands Evidence
00:12:27
Speaker
right? That's because you can't tie all these things together in nice, neat little bows. And no archeologist would ever do that. our Actual archeologists are focused on one place, one area, one culture. And I think that's a difficulty in getting a platform for those kind of people because there's only so much Mayan archeology that the world is interested in, and you know? But if you're going to tie it all together with the entire world and talk about archeology and cultures around the entire world, it makes this bigger picture that yeah it just sells better. It just makes for a better ah better show. So I understand why people are into it. Yeah. Well, I would say I don't think we promote. I can't remember in season one if we promoted watching the show or not. I would actually say
00:13:09
Speaker
This was, you know, watch watch season two if you haven't. if you're If you're avoiding it, whatever, watch it. We'd actually not watched it for a while. I don't know if we were just just delaying it. I was almost avoiding it a little bit, yeah. I didn't want to cloud my opinion of
Ceruti Site and Limited Evidence Speculation
00:13:23
Speaker
Canoe either. You know, Canoe was in it. Keanu Reeves, we call him Canoe.
00:13:26
Speaker
I know, but like he was in it for like three and a half seconds and he didn't even say anything important. They literally shot one scene with him, you could tell, because he was in, I think maybe three episodes, but they used that one scene. That same spot somewhere on a hill in California probably. Right, and you could tell because they took all day to do it because it was super foggy in the morning when they did it, or early afternoon, and then by the end of the scene it was not foggy anymore, which is typical California. It was definitely northern California. yeah yeah and And all they did was talk about, wow, this is so cool. And we just have to open our minds and think about these possibilities. And he is Mr. Hippie. So I guess the that is why Graham Hancock's theories you know appeal to him. And yeah having his name attached to the show was probably big for the show. But honestly, his impact on the show was yeah minimal. Yeah. all right Well, we're going to take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about some specifics of some of the episodes that that we took notes on. so all right Back in a minute.
00:14:27
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 291 of The Archaeology Show. And we're talking about season two of Ancient Apocalypse. So now I think we're just going to talk about ah you know some some of the stuff they covered. Yeah, some of the stuff they covered yeah in some of the episodes. I don't know if we saw this in segment one or not, but this whole season was focused on the Americas specifically. So all the sites are in North and South America.
00:14:50
Speaker
Right. Same conclusion. Season one was about the other half of the world. i Lots of sites in... It was all over the world, I think. well it wasn't but i don't think he covered I don't know if he covered the Americas at all. Maybe he did. I can't remember. I can't remember. Either way... Oh, he did. He did cover the Americas because there was one site in North America that they wouldn't give him access to and he's like standing outside the the gate looking at the...
00:15:15
Speaker
the sign I can't remember which side it was, but it was really funny. Well, either way, yeah it was all over the world. yeah So episode one, he starts at White Sands, New Mexico, with the human footprints that were found a few years ago, ye dated through various means. You can't date impressions in rock. right They dated the the plants, basically, the pollen. yeah And they dated it back to 23,000 years ago.
00:15:41
Speaker
and The dating for that is actually fairly decent. They've they've come back. there There was initial skepticism about the dating of those these things. um And the reason for that was and when you have this environment, there was a ah lake there at some point in the past. And when you have this environment, they said that you know the community was like, well,
00:16:02
Speaker
the lake area could cause some interesting carbon deposits there, and we're not sure about the dating, because you can't really trust that. yeah But then a lot more dating has happened since then, and the dating turns out is pretty decent. It's pretty solid. It kind of fits with this overall idea that has been happening in the archaeological world about North America and South America too, but that people probably got here much earlier yeah than we have evidence for so far. yeah And this is where like I kind of agree with everything that Graham Hancock said in this first bit about White Sands is we have to open our minds and look further back and look in places maybe we didn't look before, because if you don't look there, you won't find the evidence.
00:16:45
Speaker
I agree with all of that. I'm going to go back to the one thing I took away from the episode, probably six, seven years ago of, I think this show before you were on it, when I interviewed... Oh. What's his name? From Cerruti. Yep, Cerruti. I interviewed the guy who published that. What was his name? I don't remember. it Anyway, ruins have talked about this. I interviewed the guy right after the paper was published. um I'm gonna allow you to talk about this right now, only because I know
Significance of White Sands Footprints and Open-Mindedness
00:17:15
Speaker
it's valid. So the Ceruti site, briefly, San Diego, they found these stones that was mimicked like Oldowan technology, which is like million to two million year old stone tool technology. He took these stones next to a mammoth, sent them off to a guy in Africa, that studies African Oldowan technology and says, what do you think about these? And he's like, they look like they come from Africa, where'd you find them? He said, San Diego, what the hell, right? It's blah, blah, blah.
00:17:41
Speaker
and They dated the site to 125,000 years ago or 135,000 or whatever it was, and it's in San Diego. and they're like Nobody's like, you got you're on crack. yeah There's no human material other than it looks like these mammoth bones could have been altered, blah, blah, blah. right Everybody's like, there's no way humans were there. I agree. right however The one thing that he said during that show is that archaeologists always stop at one of two things when they're digging, especially CRM archaeologists because of budgets. You stop at two sterile layers or you stop at what has been told to you by either geologists or somebody else that there's nothing cultural below yeah dot dot dot this layer. yeah And he's like, if you always stop there and you never have any experimental layers that go below that, how do you know? How do you know? How do you know there's nothing below, say, you know, an extremely low layer? You know, this is kind of feeding right into Graham Hancock. But like, how do you know? Yeah. Right. How do we know there weren't earlier migrations? We know there were there were Homo sapiens 250,000 years ago, you know, in other parts of the world. We know there were earlier Homo species a million, two million, three million years ago in other parts of the world.
00:18:51
Speaker
How do we know there there weren't other ways to? I know. And we do not have a clear picture of the peopling of the Americas right yet. It is an evolving idea that more evidence just clarifies and is often pushing it pushing those dates back further. So everything that Graham Hancock said in this first episode about how we need to have more open minds about looking for older evidence is true. We do. We do. We definitely, definitely do. yeah Now, that being said, we shouldn't just, you know, look at the severity site or something like that. I'm like, well, I guess we got here 120,000 years ago. Like that's a little extreme. You need evidence to support all and you need a lot of it. So you need a lot of it. yeah Yeah, we need more. We just need one. So, but I thought that part was great. In fact, the White Sands bit of this show, which is the very first part of it, and it's probably my favorite part because I don't think he made any.
00:19:43
Speaker
drastic claims about anything. It was really just talking to the scientists there and learning about the footprints and saying that they are older than we would expect them to be what we know from what we know of the people in the Americas. Great. Let's keep looking for more older evidence. Yeah. Yeah. I love that part.
00:19:58
Speaker
Yeah, they end episode one and and then kind of start episode two in the same place, going down to South
Amazon Geoglyphs and Speculative Origins
00:20:04
Speaker
America. yeah And really what we're talking about here, just kind of in broad strokes, are gigantic geoglyphs. And these geoglyphs No, there's a huge, there's a couple of huge leaps here that I just want to talk about because these massive structures, yeah, they, they sent up some LIDAR, drone mounted LIDAR by the way, which is getting really, really cool. So cool. Like look at this technology like a drone you could hold in your hands yeah and it's drone mounted LIDAR. And we've had drone mounted LIDAR for a little while, but it's getting down to the point where it's almost affordable, which is really neat. And I didn't know this existed at all. I learned that learned about it from the show. So again, really cool things you can learn by watching the show. Yeah, so these there's structures. And when we say structure, we mean these geoglyphs, which are basically ditches that have been dug into shapes, right? right Like geometric shapes, circles, squares, that kind of thing. right yeah structure Some of the structures dated about 2,500 years ago. They didn't really talk about the dating on that during the show.
00:21:03
Speaker
We know there were people in the area, through other methods, about 10,000 years ago. And Graham Hancock is making the leap that one equates to the other. Yeah, that they built those structures. That those people built those structures. And when he's saying that,
00:21:18
Speaker
there're They're saying in the show, how many people would it have taken to build these structures? Let's say that there were no structures on the landscape, and there's lots of them. They're everywhere. and Amazon is covered in in billions of trees. right yeah and They're saying that if we extrapolate out in these open areas where we can see them, and you use lidar to discover stuff that's hidden in the landscape. right And they're saying that if we just light on the rest of the area and we find the rest, they're making several leaps here. One, that these structures permeate through the trees and they're everywhere. right The other one is that there were no structures, and then suddenly, there they all are. How many people would have taken to build all those if they did it in a generation? right It would have taken 100,000 people, he said, yeah this archaeologist or these people said. And he's like, OK, great. So that must mean that there would have been 100,000 people here or more 10,000 years ago.
00:22:05
Speaker
And that goes against archaeological thought right now and evidence. Therefore, dot, dot, dot, it must have been a pre-advanced civilization yeah that built these structures because that goes against all the evidence. yeah that those so many leap leaps Those leaps are what the problem is because we don't know when these, we don't know that just because there were people there 10,000 years ago doesn't mean they're the ones who built these structures. And then Yeah, it's just it's just there's so many leaps and that is a problem with so many of the conclusions that are drawn in this show.
Rock Art Dating and Evidence Precision
00:22:40
Speaker
Another part of this episode was talking about pictographs in the Amazon, I think in Brazil this time.
00:22:45
Speaker
and they There's this, just this sort of like magical moving around of dates and ideas that actually got kind of confusing in that episode, almost confusing to the point where like our notes are like not making sense to us. But basically they were saying that they dated, they have these pictographs, right? That in pictographs are just like painted images on a rock. This in this case is like with red ochre. And they dated sites nearby to 13,000 years ago.
00:23:14
Speaker
And that would have preceded the Younger Dryas. And you know, Graham Hancock is ah obsessed with the Younger Dryas as this like place, this date where like this ancient civilization died out and then he humans today picked up after that. So the problem is with rock art, always, always, always, is that you cannot date the rock art itself. And just because there's a site nearby that dates to 13,000 years ago, it doesn't mean that that rock art also dates to that time period. yeah Relative dating is a real thing. It's true. But I did not feel like the evidence presented in the show was good enough to say that that rock art was associated with the hearts that they were able to date to 13,000 years.
00:23:51
Speaker
The archaeologist that was that was being interviewed here, they also said that ah because when he did experiments with the the red ochre that was used to make this rock art, you know if you just take raw red ochre and try to etch it onto the rock, when it rains, it all washes off. It washes away, yeah. Obviously. yeah Every pictograph on the planet, that's true, right? They had to use some sort of a binder. Yeah. every native society that's ever drawn on rock has realized this, right? They've all used some sort of a binder, whether it's tree resin or ah they've used other things yeah in around the world. it almost right kind of yeah They've used some kind of something to put it in there to where it it dries clear and and then it basically preserves it. And some have done a better job than others, to be honest with you. This rock art is really good and it's almost looks as though, you know, the day it was made, right? It's very little fading. It's really cool. Yeah, it's really good. And again, not attributing this to the society that probably put it there, who knows how long ago, possibly not when the fires were made, but who knows how long ago. Yeah, they're saying Graham Hancock is sort of alluding to and again not in front of the guy because the guy would have been like He would have disagreed. Yeah, Graham Hancock is alluding to off-camera and sort of in front of the guy that oh almost like they Inherited this knowledge of this technology for creating this binder like they came here with that not like they Invented this yeah or or through trial and error came up with a way to do this because you don't see all the shit that washed off the wall Yeah, you don't see the the bad the bad trials the ones that didn't work Yeah, you don't see all that. You see the one that that worked, right? So like, why did they have to come in with, and maybe they did come in with that knowledge, right? Maybe they did, but maybe they did that 2,500 years ago, yeah you know? And maybe they're the rock walls where they were trying it out. Maybe who knows where that's at, but that didn't have to be from some
00:25:47
Speaker
common some ancient common cultural ancestor. And that's the problem. Just because you see this stuff around the world in different cultures and different places, doesn't mean that there's a shared common source of knowledge. And that's that is the fallacy in every single one of Graham Hancock's theories.
00:26:06
Speaker
However, there is one super cool thing in this episode, and it comes up.
Astronomical Observations in Amazon Rock Art
00:26:11
Speaker
There's some other cool astronomical things they're doing at this site that comes up actually in the very last episode as well. But there is a painting that this guy has done some really good research. I can't remember what his name was, but he's done some really good research here. Christopher, Dr. Christopher Davis, I think. Oh, was it? Oh, there we go. Well, obviously, his work is going to be stellar then. But stellar. But anyway, there's a...
00:26:36
Speaker
There's a lot of astronomical observations yeah on this rock art panel, and it's really, really super cool. period And too there's one that looks to be like a comet. And the comet almost looks like it's like comet trails for various reasons are often with the trail pointing point away from the Earth. yeah And this one is the the trail is pointing towards the Earth. yeah And it's it's often you can't see those. And if you take astronomy software, we have pretty good We have pretty good backwards AI in astronomy software and it can basically backdate comets and and all that stuff. And you can basically just look at a date in in history and say, what does the sky look like? What did this what was this comet doing? What was going on? Where was an eclipse? You know, stuff like that, because it's just math, right? yeah And he was able to basically look back in history and find out when there could have been a time period. and
00:27:26
Speaker
when something like this could have happened. And it was possibly the drawing of an eclipse about 13,000 years ago of a comet that could have been breaking down. That would have faced the wrong direction. That would have had a tail facing that direction. And that would have coincided with about something that preceded the Younger Dryas. And the Younger Dryas was a massive climatological event, again, that Graham Hancock is obsessed with. Yeah, he is obsessed with it. But it is something that did change the planet. It did, for sure did. And we don't know what caused that necessarily. And it could have been caused by an impact event. It could have been. But the thing you can never ever dismiss is that humans are human people. They can do silly things. They can do fantastical things. So yes, this comet tail is facing towards the earth rather than away from the earth, which is how they typically are. And maybe that means something.
00:28:18
Speaker
Or maybe it means that the guy who drew it, the shaman who was drawing it, just like had a brain fart and like drew it the wrong direction. And that just feeds into one of my main criticisms of this show and Graham Hancock is that He never ever shows the other theory, the other reason why something might be the way it is. He only shows the theories that feed into his ultimate theory of ancient cultural knowledge getting passed down to the entire world, or at least the entire Americas. And that's my problem. You have to look at all options, all reasons, all theories. You can't just pick one. That's cherry picking. You can't do it. All right, with that, we'll take a break and come back on segment three, back in a minute.
00:29:03
Speaker
Welcome back to Episode 291 of the Archaeology Show, where we discuss real things and not come up with wild conclusions.
Moai Statues and Cultural Ancestor Theories
00:29:14
Speaker
All right, so in continuing on with Ancient Apocalypse, Season 2,
00:29:22
Speaker
He does go to then, again, when you got an unlimited budget like Netflix, you can do everything you want, including go to Easter Island, AKA Rapa Nui. Rapa Nui. Because we don't care what the Dutch called it. Yeah. yeah The natives call it Rapa Nui. They call it Rapa Nui. Yeah. But this is the island, if you're if this is like niggling in your head a little bit, this is with the big old heads, big stone heads. And I i always forget this, but there was over 1,000 of those on that island. So many, and some of them are lined up on these like platforms, yeah which I think they were put there as a like like ancestor protection kind of thing, that's the way it's explained in the show, and that makes sense to me. But then some of them are just like distributed throughout hillsides, and you can kind of, like there's paths through them that they're walking on for the show, and you're just like winding your way through these like heads that are buried or half-buried under the ground. And some of those heads are not just heads, they've got full statues below the head too.
00:30:19
Speaker
I want to go there so bad. and i like Again, I really liked this show because it made me want to go to these places and it made me understand more about these things that we know about and we've seen in popular culture, but maybe don't know like like everything about. you know Yeah, Rapa Nui, we actually talked about this a little bit. It came up anyway during our Polynesian history episode. We talked about Moana too. We did. That was the last episode that we did before this one. Because they are obviously part of Polynesian history. yeah um It was populated just a thousand years ago. yeah
00:30:53
Speaker
according to archaeological evidence. Yes. And there was another kind of wave of population shortly after that, I think of like 800 years ago, I think it was stated, something like that. And most of the statues date to about 800 years ago. Yeah, give or take. Yeah. yeah And? Moai. That's what they call them, by the way. The Moai. The Moai statues.
00:31:11
Speaker
and And one of the things that Graham Hancock kind of latches onto here is the shape and form of the statues, the morphology. So that he mentions that, you know, the shape of these, and you really got to kind of want to look at it and kind of see it. But if you generalize the shape. They don't really have legs. They have kind of little stubby feet, if you want to see them. some Some of them have like little toes drawn in, but they don't really have legs or anything. And if you want to kind of look at it that way, you can see very similar shapes in statues in Indonesia, Gobekatepe, and other places around the world. And Graham Hack's looks like, yeah, see, look at these. If these people either A, came from other places, or B, had a common cultural ancestor, again, his big theme here,
00:31:57
Speaker
Then they didn't learn how to make these shapes they saw these shapes before or their ancestors did and therefore They didn't come up with this. They just learned it right and then they replicated it. Yeah, and I'm like, okay But in all of your other shows you're talking about 13,000 years ago, but this was 1,000 years ago or 800 years ago, so they just held on to this knowledge for 12,000 years and passed it down and said, okay, now make these shapes. yeah That doesn't make sense. That timeline does not make sense. and And the second thing that doesn't make sense is What about all the other things in the world that are similarly shaped, like projectile points, arrowheads? You've never talked about that. Yeah, he never went into that at all. Yeah, he does talk about pyramids sometimes. There's lots of societies around the world that have made pyramids, but that's also a really kind of easy architectural shape to make that's stable, right? um It's something that doesn't fall over very easily if you just stack stuff up. if he just
00:32:52
Speaker
Drop sand out of your hand. It'll form a pyramid shape, right? um Yeah, so it's like like ah a stable thing to make yeah, there's lots of very common very easy things to do around the world just like morphologically and He he ignores most of it Yeah, he takes out the the fact that humans are humans. I'll keep coming back to that, but people are people. Humans are humans. They will do similar things because we all have the same brain, you know, and and brains develop in similar ways and civilizations develop in similar ways too. yeah So it makes sense that they would start doing some things that kind of look alike.
00:33:29
Speaker
And one of the things that they really latch onto in the Rapa Nui segment of the show is they bring in actual people from the island to sort of share and explain their oral traditions and their stories. yeah And Graham Hancock is using their oral traditions as evidence for some kind of ancient ancestor yeah across the world as ancient common ans yeah that are that are passing down this cultural knowledge.
Oral Traditions in Archaeological Interpretation
00:33:59
Speaker
Oral traditions are a tough thing in archaeology because they do go way back further than
00:34:07
Speaker
archaeological history does sometimes, because oral traditions are, they I mean, they're like religion, right? they They aren't necessarily based completely. In fact, they are oral traditions. And I don't think you can use that as evidence of a group being somewhere longer than the archaeology tells us they were, because they are oral traditions. They're stories.
00:34:30
Speaker
And stories get bigger over time. It's like playing a game at telephone, you know? yeah So I think that that was a misstep to try to use the oral traditions of Rapa Nui to say that they go back further than what the archaeological evidence tells us. We're very familiar with a lot of oral traditions of just Native Americans because we live in the United States. We're archaeologists. We've studied. You know, we've heard lots of different things. Yeah.
00:34:52
Speaker
The archaeological evidence and the oral traditions of Native American cultural history are vastly different. yeah you know the archaeological evidence Now, again, Graham Hancock would agree with that, and he would latch on to more of the oral tradition and is that as evidence say the archaeological evidence is just behind that. And we haven't found the archaeological evidence to back up the oral tradition, and maybe that's true in some cases.
00:35:14
Speaker
and And I'd be the first to agree that, you know, the archaeological evidence has found what it's found, and we don't know what we don't know, right? We don't know, yeah. Yeah, and we haven't found everything. There's no way we could know if we found everything, right? But that's such a hard question to answer, and I don't think any archaeologist would say 100% concrete, this is the absolute truth, right? Because until something else comes along,
00:35:40
Speaker
you know, we we know what we know and we have to redefine what we know when something new comes along. yeah and If you don't do that, you're not a very good scientist to begin with. Yeah, but new physical evidence. yeah you You can't take stories as truth. You can't. You can use them as a guide, which archaeologists do. Which is so important to do. yeah And I am glad that we got to hear the stories of the Rapa Nui people because I think that those stories are so important in helping to interpret the archaeology that you're finding and these huge moai statues. like It's really important to know their oral traditions and their oral histories when drawing any conclusions about the archaeology. But I don't think that that means that you can fill in the blanks that you don't have physical evidence for. You can't use it for that. yeah
00:36:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's really hard to to take
Need for Concrete Evidence in Hancock's Methods
00:36:31
Speaker
in all this, right? And I think that's Graham Hancock's biggest... I mean, we've talked about this time and again, this this really is his biggest problem is he's trying to take these he's trying to take these assumptions, these things that he doesn't know and promote them as... he's He's latched onto this idea that, you know, there is this common cultural ancestor and he said, wouldn't that be cool if that were the case? Right. And then he's saying, we don't know this, we don't know this, we don't know this, we don't know this. Therefore, I'm going to invent this thing back here that I have zero evidence for and I'm going to go try to find evidence for it. Or I'm going to say that the lack of evidence over here is evidence for this thing. Yeah. And that is not how science in any profession works. It doesn't. Right. You can't. The lack of evidence for something is not the evidence for something else. No, it's not. You need to find evidence for the thing that you're looking for. And that's that's what he's trying to do with these shows. right By the way, he's not publishing papers. No. He's not yeah he's not excavating. he's not He's not doing actual research. He's just coming up with theories and saying, well, the fact that you didn't find something here or that you, you know, whatever is so is is
00:37:40
Speaker
supporting my theory and all he has is theories. He has zero evidence for anything. Well, I think what is frustrating too, probably for all archaeologists is like, archaeology is a science where you have almost no answers. It is all speculation and That is the fun of it. Sitting around a table in a bar and like speculating about what you found and what the conclusions are is is like the fun of archaeology, right? Archaeologists love doing that, but they do it knowing that they're coming from a ah place of speculation, yeah just coming up with ideas, throwing it at the wall, seeing what sticks.
00:38:19
Speaker
But none of them are writing papers about those speculations. There might be one sentence that says, hey, maybe this could mean this, but we need more evidence. And that's the problem is that Graham Hancock treats these speculations as actual, real theories or evidence, and like he wants to rewrite the history of the world with his speculations, and that's just not the way science works. And he's making the fun part of it not fun anymore. It's not fair,
Genetic Evidence on Rapa Nui and Speculative Conclusions
00:38:46
Speaker
so yeah. One of the things I thought, and this is starting to get more into science, and this is what people need to do, is the banana plant on Rapa Nui. And they they did have somebody on there that was talking about this, but you know when you start studying these these other things that
00:39:03
Speaker
at first may not seem like archaeology but you start looking at all these different little pieces to the puzzle and that's what it is then you start putting putting you know start building that picture a little more but um this one woman on there had studied this and you know she's starting to put this together but there still needs to be more more thought behind it but she studied the banana plant on Rapa Nui and again this Netflix show didn't really go into it so I'd like to know more but apparently The banana is not indigenous to that island. right And I don't know why. ah i mean the It's just not indigenous to that island. The bananas are from somewhere else. right So that makes sense. yeah It's way off in the middle of nowhere. Great. It's not indigenous to there.
00:39:43
Speaker
but What she said, and this is a little bit of a leap, is they know through just the DNA evidence of the banana plant. The genetic makeup of it. Yeah, the genetic makeup of it, that it's been there about 3,000 years, right? Okay, great. Well, they don't have years. They have no evidence for humans. They have no archaeological evidence.
00:40:02
Speaker
But they have oral history evidence, according to Graham Hancock and the oral historians there, right? According to their own oral history, they've been there at least 3,000 years, right? So blah, blah, blah, I guess that's right. But anyway, um no archeological evidence for it, right? yeah But now Graham Hancock is latching onto this saying, well, yeah some humans must have at least gotten here 3,000 years ago, whether or not they stayed. yeah right so And this woman is just stating this fact that the banana at least was here 3,000 years ago. and she's saying, ah she she actually said that it couldn't have been brought here by like birds birds or wind or anything like that. And I actually was wondering about that because can't like seeds or something be brought in feces? And I know birds can't fly through a thousand miles, but some some actually can. yeah
00:40:47
Speaker
but Would it it have been like, I guess, pooped out before then? I mean, can you can you hold it for a thousand miles? I don't know, but exactly what you're saying right now is yet another problem I had. yeah Because Grandma Hancock says to her, and the banana couldn't have gotten here any other way besides human, like birds. And she goes, no, full stop.
00:41:07
Speaker
No. I need more. And I was like, well, tell me more. Why? Why couldn't it have? Is it because of what you just said? Yeah. Because they wouldn't have made it here? Is it like, why? Is there literally no other way? Yeah. Is it unlikely? But it could have happened? Like, I just wanted more out of that. But you know what? He always cuts it right when it still supports the theory that he's trying to promote. And at that point, her answer of no supported what he wanted. So. And I'm like, could a human in a,
00:41:36
Speaker
crappy canoe 3,000 years ago actually have sustained a banana long enough across the sea 3,000 years ago to make it long enough to plant a banana? I mean, even if a human did bring it, yeah I'm like 3,000 plus years ago because the banana was theoretically planted 3,000 years ago, but probably before that, right? yeah So this is just what the evidence says, right? So a banana was here 3,000 years ago, so presumably well before that a banana was planted. But we're presuming like they didn't just pick up a banana at the 3,000 year ago supermarket, right? they They had banana plants or they had bananas or something viable enough to actually plant
00:42:16
Speaker
and grow and cultivate over 3000 years ago. That's a huge statement for somebody tra traversing the Pacific ocean in a shitty canoe. yeah You know what I mean? yeah like Like, that's a lot. It is a lot. And and to have a viable plant to to survive in that ruthless environment, I mean, it's hard to grow stuff there now. You know what I mean? I mean, yeah it's just it's a leap. It's a leap.
00:42:42
Speaker
It is, but I think bananas are really easy-growing fruits, so that's part of the reason why yeah you know they're they're such a big part of diets around the world. They're a hunter-gatherer type society. they yeah They live off that kind of stuff, so they would have been expert cultivators, I'm sure of it. yeah you know When they got here, they would have known what to do had they had viable seeds, you know viable material. but either way. Yeah. i'm I just, I wanted more out of that segment because I'm like, okay, so there's 3000 years worth of difference in the bananas that you find on Rapa Nui compared with somewhere else. But are we sure that all 3000 of those years took place on the Island of Rapa Nui or could it have been
00:43:22
Speaker
Somewhere else and then moved to Rapa Nui for the last thousand years like maybe that first 2,000 years of development happened on a different island and then People moved to Rapa Nui a thousand years ago came with them in that last ah you know like I don't I don't and and this is We should probably do more research on this to know that answer because maybe it is a very obvious answer But they did not cover that in the show and that was again like I wish that they had because I wanted to know more about that Yeah, but either way Sure, great. Keep looking for more evidence of people being there 3,000 years ago. If the bananas say they might have been there 3,000 years ago, then look for it. I don't think the bananas said anything. The bananas were talking to them, and they said, you need to look here, and I don't think you should ignore the bananas. You know what I think? That's bananas. That is bananas. B-A-N-A-Anas. All right, Gwen.
00:44:14
Speaker
Anyway, stuff is all right well yeah we so much about this that this is going to be two episodes. we were really this to be I said to Rachel, there's no way this is going to be two episodes at the beginning of this. And she said, this will 100% be two episodes. And I said, you're crazy.
00:44:29
Speaker
And I said, you're crazy, and here we are. As usual, I'm right. This is definitely two episodes. stuff We have so much more to cover. When we go to Peru, we talk about ayahuasca. We're going to talk about all kinds of more things. Chaco Canyon, we got a lot more to cover. I didn't want to give Graham Hancock two episodes, but what we're actually giving two episodes is all these really cool archeology sites. We are. So I'll give it two episodes. You know what, too? We're about to get into the archeology at some places that we've been to, like the stuff in Peru. I've been to a couple of those places.
00:44:59
Speaker
i um chi ita chi chi ita i mean they talk about stuff in the americas that we've been to like yeah canyon and hope well so anyway It's just really fun for us to talk about places that we've actually been, so we're going to give that a whole a whole other episode. Sorry. Not sorry. Right. All right.
Conclusion and Teaser for Next Episode
00:45:17
Speaker
Well, with that, I guess we will keep talking about this next week. Yep. See you then. Bye.
00:45:29
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet dot.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening and have an awesome day.
00:45:54
Speaker
The Archaeology Podcast Network is 10 years old this year. Our executive producer is Ashley Airy, our social media coordinator is Matilda Seabreck, and our chief editor is Rachel Rodin. The Archaeology Podcast Network was co-founded by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in 2014 and is part of CulturoMedia and DigTech LLC. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at ww www.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.