This evening I
suspect I was not alone in spending four hours of my time watching a debate moderated
(by Joe Rogan) between popular
writer Graham Hancock and the archaeologist Flint Dibble about Hancock's
theories presented in the popular 2022 Netflix series "Ancient Apocalypse"
[henceforth AA]. Here's the synopsis of the series from the Wikipedia article
on the series:
Synopsis
In the series, Hancock argues that an advanced ice age civilization was
destroyed in a cataclysm, but that its survivors introduced agriculture,
monumental architecture and astronomy to hunter-gatherers around the world. He
attempts to show how several ancient monuments are evidence of this, and claims
that archaeologists are ignoring or covering up this alleged evidence. [...]
He builds the narrative around the Younger Dryas
impact hypothesis, which attributes climate change between "12900 and
12800 years ago" at the end of the Pleistocene to a massive impact with
something falling out of the sky (meteor, comet).
Dibble had been one of the archaeologists critical of AA and like another one (who
refused the invitation) was challenged by Hancock to a public recorded debate.
Dibble has previously written very sensibly (among other things) on pseudoarchaeology and
I was interested to see what happened. To be honest, I was expecting it to be a
trainwreck, and it could so easily have been - Hancock was trying very hard.
Dibble starts off really well with "what is archaeology" with quite a striking artefact to break the ice.. but more than that as it immediately addresses the "looks-like" approach of pseudoarchaeology (and indeed portable antiquities collection/antiquitism) and draws attention to CONTEXT. A really clever opener.
The second slide (went over Hancock's head, it later transpired) showed survey data, making the point how much data we have - but also (and this is what GH missed) that archaeology is not just about excavating. Slide three mentions looting (big plus from me there....) and the fragility of the record. This leads into him giving a quick summary of GH's theories, and how he proposes to test them. His whole introductory talk (despite dumb interruptions from Rogan which we could have done without) was really well-prepared, succinct and to the point.