His attacks against “mainstream archaeologists”, the “so-called experts” who “practice censorship” are strident and frequent. Hancock argues that viewers should “not rely on the so-called experts”, implying they should rely on his narrative instead. The Neolithic archaeological site Göbekli-Tepe in Turkey is one of the locations Hancock visits in Ancient Apocalypse. However, all of these sites have been published on in detail by archaeologists, and a plethora of evidence indicates they date thousands of years after the ice age. Instead, Hancock visits several North American mound sites, pyramids in Mexico, and sites stretching from Malta to Indonesia, which Hancock is convinced all help prove his theory. The only site Hancock visits that actually dates to near the end of the ice age is Göbekli Tepe in modern Turkey.

A canny choice, as the label “journalist” helps Hancock rebut being characterised as a “pseudo archaeologist” or “pseudo scientist”, which, as he puts it himself in episode four, would be like calling a dolphin a “pseudo fish”.įrom my perspective as an archaeologist, the show is surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) lacking in evidence to support Hancock’s theory of an advanced, global ice age civilisation. Instead, he calls himself a journalist who is “investigating human prehistory”. In the opening dialogue of Ancient Apocalypse, Hancock rejects being identified as an archaeologist or scientist. Trailer for Graham Hancock’s Netflix series, Ancient Apocalypse. “Perhaps,” Hancock posits in the first episode, “the extremely defensive, arrogant, and patronising attitude of mainstream academia is stopping us from considering that possibility”. The reason little evidence exists, he says, is because it is under the sea or was destroyed by the cataclysm. The survivors of this advanced civilisation, according to Hancock, introduced agriculture, architecture, astronomy, arts, maths and the knowledge of “civilisation” to “simple” hunter gatherers. His argument, as laid out in this show and in several books, is that this advanced civilisation was destroyed in a cataclysmic flood. As an archaeologist committed to public engagement who strongly believes in the relevance of studying ancient people, I feel a full-throated defence is necessary.Īuthor Graham Hancock is back, defending his well-trodden theory about an advanced global ice age civilisation, which he connects in Ancient Apocalypse to the legend of Atlantis. Netflix’s enormously popular new show, Ancient Apocalypse, is an all out attack on archaeologists.

Fingerprints of the gods