Why I Think Graham Hancock is Mostly Right
My general thoughts based on reading mythology and ancient history since I was 8 years old, and my experience with ‘mainstream academia’ while at UCLA
I’ll start off by saying that I’ve never read any of Graham Hancock’s books. I’ve seen him a few times briefly on Joe Rogan clips, but have never paid attention to him enough to form an educated opinion of his theories — until I saw his special on Netflix that was released very recently titled Ancient Apocalypse.
In case you haven’t read the books or seen the Netflix special, Graham Hancock’s overarching theory can be summarized as thus: that there existed a civilization prior to the end of the last Ice Age. A civilization that was destroyed by a series of comets known as the Younger Dryas. And that remnants of said civilization and its destruction exist in, amongst other places, the myths of later civilizations such as the Iroquois, Aztecs, Hebrews, Sumerians, Egyptians, classical Greeks and many others.
This flies in the face of what mainstream academia (historians and archeologists) hold. Their opinion is that civilization first emerged between 6000 and 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia and the Indus River Valley. In fact if you Google search “when did the first civilization develop” you are confronted with the following image:
Mainstream academia is not happy with Graham Hancock. If you search him on Wikipedia, he is called a pseudo-archeologist and pseudo-historian. In fact it was this Wikipedia description of him that first discouraged me from investigating his theories further when I saw clips of him on Joe Rogan.
However after watching his Netflix Special, I am convinced he is in fact correct, that there was a civilization (or perhaps many civilizations) that existed during the Ice Age. I don’t agree with all of his points, namely I don’t agree that humans are at risk for another civilization destruction from comets any time soon (I trust NASA more than prehistoric astronomers on this). But I do agree with his core thesis.
Graham Hancock offers a wide variety of evidence for his theories. This article won’t cover those — if you’re interested, watch his Netflix special or read his book. Instead I will dive into three additional reasons from my outside perspective on why he is correct. These will be based on my own knowledge of ancient history and mythology (things that are widely accepted by mainstream academia), the history of archeology, and my own unique experiences with academia while studying philosophy at UCLA. Without further adieu…
First Reason: The Origins of Western Civilization and the Myth of Europa
The home of Western Civilization, as we now know it, is Europe. Sure, the United States is also included in Western Civilization and is arguably the apex of Western Civilization, but our culture comes from Europe. Was it influenced to a degree by immigrants from other places? Of course — but it is fair to characterize us as an Anglo offshoot sub-civilization.
However, Western Civilization did not begin in Europe. It began in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq for people who don’t know anything about history). It was there where many tenants of Western Civilization first emerged. Hero/warrior culture, epic poetry, the politics of city-states, mathematics, beer, the codified legal system — all existed in Mesopotamia while Europeans were living as simple hunter gatherers.
Over time, their civilized ways spread westward. One of the civilizations to have emerged from Mesopotamia was the Hebrews. After all Abraham, forefather of the Hebrews was from Ur (a city in Sumeria, southern Mesopotamia) according to the Bible.
Another civilization to emerge west of Mesopotamia, from the Mesopotamians, was Phoenicia. The Phoenician civilization occupied what is modern day Lebanon and like Mesopotamia before them and Greece after, was not a single nation but rather a collective culture made up of a variety of city-states. I’ve provided a map below:
On the map above, you’ll see a red dot third most to the south within the green space labeled ‘Tyre’. This was the most important city of ancient Phoenicia. The Phoenicians were seafarers and merchants. They were the first to travel throughout the Mediterranean, in ships made of the same cedar trees that are still so common in the region to this day that there is one on the Lebanese flag. Tyre left a major legacy far away from home by founding cities such as Carthage and Gadiz (modern day Cadiz) — the later of which is widely regarded as the oldest city in Western Europe that is still inhabited today, founded over 3000 years ago by merchants in Tyre looking to trade with the locals, probably for aluminum which is a critical ingredient to make bronze.
The Phoenicians also profoundly influenced the first civilization to emerge in Europe (at least the first civilization that we know about, excluding any pre-ice age civilizations) namely, the Minoan civilization on Crete. Minoan buildings, especially their palaces, mirrored construction techniques of those great empires in the Middle East. Their artwork bears striking similarities to Phoenician artwork. And in that artwork, where ships are portrayed, the ships of the Minoans are strikingly similar to the ships portrayed in Phoenician artwork. There is a competing theory to this paradigm, namely that the Minoan civilization appeared out nowhere, from the hunter gather indigenous population, and that they learned art, ship building, palace building, and metallurgy spontaneously without any outside influence. I personally think this theory is a lot less likely than the idea that they learned most of it from the Phoenicians.
So, to recap, here is the paradigm we are working with. Western civilization as we know it, characterized by hero culture, epic poetry, codified legal system and a love for beer started in Mesopotamia, moved west towards the Levant (Hebrews and Phoenicians), moved further west to Crete with the creation of the Minoan civilization, moved north from Crete to Greece with the Mycenaean civilization and then was later reborn as classical Greece, and from their radiated throughout the rest of Europe. This paradigm is a broad strokes painting and is not 100% accurate, because Western Civilization, as it developed and even to this day continued to be influenced by other cultures outside of this trajectory. But I do believe this synopsis describes the core, the kernel of the evolution of Western Civilization. And this is not a controversial opinion at all — most of mainstream academia would agree with me up to this point.
However I will now venture further beyond what is commonly accepted by mainstream academia.
The Myth of Europa
According to the myth of Europa, there was a Phoenician princess named Europa who was the daughter of the King of Tyre. Zeus, the supreme god of the Greeks, fell in love with Europa and wanted to have his way with her. So he turned himself into a beautiful white bull and waited for Europa on the beaches of Tyre where she liked to take walks in the morning. Side note, bulls were worshiped in both Crete and Phoenicia.
When Europa saw the white bull on the beach she was taken aback at its beauty. So she approached him, and seeing that he was calm and peaceful she sat on him. At this moment the bull (Zeus) flew away, taking Europa away from her home in Tyre and to the island of Crete.
Zeus then returned to his normal ‘human-like God’ form and had three children with Europa. One of their children was named Minos (aka Minoan) and was the first King of Crete and founder of the Minoan civilization.
Myth as Collective Memory
Central to Graham Hancock’s thesis is that myths don’t come from thin air, or from ancient priests taking mushrooms and writing down their visions (a common theory amongst academics). Rather they come from memories that were passed down, generation after generation, and have ‘creative flair’ added to them by groups of peoples who were less concerned with factual truth and more concerned with symbolic truth.
There is much debate on where the word ‘Europe’ comes from (no one denies that it is essentially identical to Europa, the Phoenician princess) but one explanation is that it comes from the Akkadian (first empire in world, dominant civilization in Mesopotamia when the Minoan civilization emerged) word erebu meaning ‘to go down, to set’ ie the place where the sun goes down, the west.
If you haven’t put the pieces together yet, allow me to. Modern historians acknowledge that the roots of Western Civilization go back to Mesopotamia vis a vis Phoenicia to Crete. The continent that is synonymous with Western Civilization, Europe, gets its name from Europa, the princess who came from Phoenicia to Crete. And this name in turn likely comes from the Mesopotamian word for the west. To me, it is painstakingly obvious that the myth of Europa is not made from thin air, but rather a memory of history that happened. It is telling the story of the origin of Western Civilization, in a time when stories rather than facts were used to explain what we now call history.
And if this myth is clearly a memory, a type of history, then why is it not possible, or should I say likely that all the flood myths throughout dozens of civilizations (nearly every ancient civilization has a myth of how a flood destroyed the world) could not also be a type of memory passed down from a time when the Younger Dryas comets hit the ice caps and caused massive flooding throughout the globe — just as Graham Hancock proposes? Because that seems far more likely to me than ancient civilizations from China to the Hebrews all the way to the Olmecs in Mesoamerica, who had no contact with each other, independently creating flood myths from thin air themselves.
Second Reason: The Correctness of Heinrich Schliemann
History repeats itself. In the case of Graham Hancock, it truly does. For he is not the first person to be gaslit by mainstream academia for proposing that there is more truth in myths than what is commonly accepted. Long beforeGraham Hancock, there was Heinrich Schliemann.
Heinrich Schliemann was born 200 years ago. He started off life as a business man, a self made successful businessman at that, and by the age of 36 he was wealthy enough to retire. But instead of living a life of leisure, he decided to follow his passion, which was to find the lost cities of Troy and Mycenae, and to prove to the world that the stories of the Iliad were at least partially based on real historical events.
Troy and Mycenae were the two primary cities of the Iliad. Troy was the city that was destroyed by the Greeks. And Mycenae was the most powerful of all the Greek cities. The king of Mycenae in the Iliad was named Agamemnon, and he was called the King of Kings. This was a way of saying that all of the Greek cities (Sparta, Athens, Tiryns, Argos, dozens more) had their own king, but that the king of Mycenae was supreme amongst all the various kings.
In the 1800’s, when Schliemann was alive the prevailing theory amongst academics was that the events of the Iliad were completely made up. There was never any Troy, and there was never any Mycenae.
Like Graham Hancock, Schliemann wasn’t a professional archeologist — he was an outsider, which made him even more hated for going against the existing paradigm of the day. Schliemann was insulted by mainstream academia, considered a nuisance, uneducated, and incredibly incorrect.
However he turned out to be correct. He discovered a large ancient city on the coast of Asia Minor, right where Troy was described in the Iliad. It was destroyed by pillaging and fires right around 3200 years ago which was the time the war took place according to Homer. And then he discovered the city of Mycenae, which was far grander and obviously more powerful than the neighboring cities of Greece at the same time period, evidenced by vast amounts of riches found there and the largest buildings in Greece at the time. They even had two savage lions decorating the entrance to their city:
Just like the Europa myth, which bears striking similarity to historical developments that are now commonly accepted by the academic community, the Iliad too was, although not completely true (we don’t believe that Aphrodite came down to the battlefield and saved Paris from being slaughtered by Menelaus in 1:1 combat), based on real events. A war between Greek cities and the preeminent city on the Asia Minor Coast. Look here on the map to see where Troy lies:
As you can see, Troy sits right where the Greeks would have needed to sail to in order to trade with tribes in the Black Sea. This trading with areas in the Black Sea is also the subject of myths (Jason and the Argonauts) and is supported by archeological evidence. The commonly held theory now is that the Greeks were tired of getting taxed every time they wanted to cross through that small point by the Trojans who likely guarded it with their own ships, so they decided to band together and burn Troy to the ground.
So after all the mockery of Henrich Schliemann, it turned out that he, the outsider, the non-academic, the pseudo archeologist (which is what mainstream academia currently calls Graham Hancock) was basically 100% correct. Which supports the notion that the academic community, especially in matters of archeology and ancient history, are far from infallible and in fact are capable of not only being incredibly incorrect, but being extremely arrogant about how right they are only to be proven wrong. This leads to my final argument, the general arrogance of the academic community and their unwillingness to even consider ideas outside of what is conventionally accepted.
Third Reason: My Encounters with the Arrogance of Mainstream Academia while at UCLA
My third reason relies on anecdotal evidence, my own experiences which are not ‘verifiable’ in the way that my two previous arguments are, so I’ll keep it brief.
I attended UCLA between 2012 and 2015 and studied Philosophy. Within the world of Philosophy at the university level there is a widely recognized divide. This divide exists between the ‘Analytic’ community, and the ‘Continental’ community. The ‘Analytic’ community is descended from Kant, Frege and Bertrand Russell. It emphasizes Philosophy of Science, structures of language (grammar rules), and most importantly symbolic logic. Modern famous philosophers in this community include Noam Chomsky, and UCLA professors Tyler Burge and David Kaplan.
Then you have the ‘Continental’ community. This community descends from Hegel and includes Husserl, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Foucault (Foucault smashed Noam Chomsky in a debate in 1971 while he was stoned out of his mind on hashish). The Continental community largely rejects ‘final philosophic truth’ and rather sees philosophy within the context of history. Continental philosophy also attempts to view philosophy through the gaze of human experience, rather than the reverse (understanding human experience through science/philosophy, which is an Analytic practice). Furthermore, while Continental philosophy is also focused on language, it’s more concerned with the history/meaning of words rather than grammatical structures.
Suffice to say, UCLA falls extremely within the ‘Analytic’ school of thought. That in and of itself is fine. It’s no problem for an institution to have a bias towards one mode of thinking over another — we all have our biases, individuals and groups. What is not fine, is the complete exclusion of Continental philosophy from the entire curriculum of UCLA’s education. I will now tell the story of John McCumber to explain how far this went.
John McCumber was a Philosophy professor at UCLA, however he taught in the German department. He specifically taught courses on Heidegger, Nietzsche, and post-Kantian German philosophy. He published books, was beloved by his students, and in my opinion he was brilliant. He was also the only Philosophy professor I knew at UCLA who could read and write in ancient Greek.
So why did John McCumber teach in the German department and not the Philosophy department? Because the faculty of the Philosophy department, led by Tyler Burge, figuratively blacklisted him from their department. John McCumber had different ideas from the mainstream UCLA Philosophy community. Rather than debating him, or allowing him to peacefully coexist with his own ideas, they refused to have him in their department, even though he had all the same qualifications as the other professors (PhD in Philosophy, peer-reviewed publications etc).
If it seems like I have a gripe with Tyler Burge, it’s because I do. He gave me the only F on an assignment that I ever received in my college career. And I can’t say for certain why he gave me an F, but I will say this. It was my experience that at UCLA, within the Philosophy department, your grades were largely tied to how much you aligned your views with the professor who was doing the grading. Disagree with the professor? Get a B-. Agree with the professor? Get an A. For the record my GPA at UCLA was roughly a 3.6, indicating I agreed with my professors around half of the time.
In short, long before I ever encountered Graham Hancock and saw his Netflix special, I’ve known from my own experience that at best, academics are by and large very sensitive to criticism of their ideas. At worst, they will go out of their way to destroy people who disagree with them. They are far from being ‘free thinkers’, and are almost never willing to change their mind once formulated in a belief.
Conclusion
Writing this, and more specifically writing about my college days, reminds me of when I used to write papers. I hated writing conclusions more than anything else. Mainly because I always felt that they were redundant — the evidence and arguments had already been stated, what purpose does the conclusion even serve?
I started writing this on Thanksgiving, while my wife was cooking turkey. It’s now December 9th and I’m finally done. In that time I’ve seen multiple Academic organizations attempt to get Netflix to ban Graham Hancock’s special. They say nothing about Ancient Aliens on the History Channel, but attack Graham Hancock because he actually makes sound, believable arguments that contradict their own beliefs.
So this is an article about history, but it’s also an article about censorship. Without an open exchange of ideas, the truth will surely be obscured by political and private interests. We need to stop demanding that people who we disagree with are censored. Thank you for reading.