L'antica apocalisse

If his motivation for making this film was merely asking questions about natural phenomenons & seemingly, forgotten landmarks, then this show has some defining moments. I do feel like he throws around a lot of dates, and treats thousands of years very loosely in his episodes, but his David Attenborough oration made this show more entertaining. The music & zoomed in angles made some moments a little overdramatic, which disconnected our thoughts from the story. Was the show thought provoking, yes, was is it entirely factually supported, no. This show has created many good questions & raised some interesting hypotheses. Why does a show like this create an apocalypse of his own, an a apocalypse of vitriol. His ideas are interesting, and this creates more investigations in to these suggestions. One thing we know, is those sites exist, and the monoliths and sites are old, so someone must have built them with more knowledge then clubs & loin clothes. This is indeed a thought provoking show, but remember, he is still throwing out ideas. If anything, this show has an entertainment value, but if this show doesn't provide accuracy to the ancient culture of forgotten history, then at least the show has shed some light on the current academic narrow mindedness of ancient history already has been answered. Whether you agreed with his viewpoint or not, we can see how this show has created interesting conversations & intriguing further study.

Is wrong.

Some of you here claim Hancock "has no proof" - yet Gobekli Tepe is scientifically proven - not by Hancock - to be as old, as he claims it to be. Google the site and see what age you can find.

Once again - Gobekli and Karahan Tepe are indeed around 11-12 thousand years old (- which is universally agreed at this point), then everything they ever taught us about our ancient history is simply wrong.

Imagine, we have suddenly discovered some new information - just like some started to claim a few hundred years ago, that Earth isn't flat or that the sun doesn't orbit around Earth - people who claimed this, were burned alive, because scientists of that time "knew better". Now we all (well most of us) agree with this as a fact. In a few decades, all the kids will know about Gobekli Tepe and hopefully many other places yet to be discovered and it will be accepted.

You can't have it both ways - there was this joke about an old man at the zoo, looking at a giraffe all day long. Giraffe was walking around, chewing on the leaves, resting. The man was just shaking his head. They were closing up for the day and asked the man to leave. As he was leaving, he said "that animal you have there cannot possibly exist, it just makes no sense..", he walked away still shaking his head.

I was on Malta in 1997, visited most of the megalithic sites - they told us, "these are the oldest man made structures in the world" - well, and they were wrong. (Unless they are not 5-6 thousand years old - as they thought, but are also 11 thousand + years old - in which case, the scientists were very wrong still - wrong at establishing the real construction date). In 1997, it was universally believed, that it was a fact. Gobekli Tepe was only discovered/serious digs started in 94/95, it took a few years to determine the actual age.

Graham Hancock dares to ask questions.

He dares to say (and I am paraphrasing) "well, if Gobekli Tepe is admittedly this old - you have to admit, you were wrong about our history. Our ancestors from that era obviously weren't nearly as primitive, as you claim. What else did you get wrong? What else do you claim, although you have no proof for whatsoever? Let's investigate, let's study, let's talk about it"

The self assured, but very obviously mistaken historians and archaeologists: "no, you're a pseudo-scientist"

Oh, OK then...

There's no way, they were building such structures, while being just hunters and gatherers - although that's what these series also claim.

Why and how would you build all that, while having no certainty, that you can have enough food in the surrounding area? Unless you can grow your own food and raise your own animals, you'd never do that - unless it was some "garden of eden", with nothing but endless supply of food growing and running around.

But anyway, let's imagine for a while, that a huge cataclysm destroys most of the world in the next few days. You survive, a few thousand people around the world survive, but no technology survives. No internet. Most roads are gone, no electricity, no running water, no medical care..

...then some brainiac 20 thousand years from now asks - "so, if those people did exist and were not primitive, were are their houses? Where's their rubbish" - well, my friend, it's overgrown, under the sea, disintegrated - did you really expect your particular timber, or brick house will survive 10- 20 thousand years? After a cataclysm? Think about it. Look at a 100 year old abandoned shed. Now imagine it in 5 thousand years, 10 thousand years. What is it going to look like? All the huge pyramids in Mexico were overgrown - it only took a few hundreds of years of neglect, it all became a jungle.

You know what could possibly survive all that? - such as a huge cataclysm and possibly ten thousand + years of climate change, vegetation grow, nature taking over in general? - A huge, megalithic structure, ideally burried under ground..like Gobekli Tepe and others.

Is Graham Hancock right about everything? No, he doesn't have to be.

And remember one more thing, while you're reading this and clicking thumbs down on my comment, on this wonderful website.. somewhere in a remote jungle, there's a small slender guy, chasing some squirrel sized animal with a spear or a blowgun, which is the most advanced piece of technology, that he ever held in his possession. You and this little savage guy can live at the same time, living totally different lives, a few thousand km from each other. His people will live like that for another bunch of thousands of years, unless we interfere with their lifestyle.

In 2024, you still have modern people and primitive savages living "side by side"..if you have these savages living in stone age conditions today in Amazon jungle, how can anyone in their right mind claim, that it wasn't like that also 12 thousand or more years ago?

Those Amazon rainforest tribes could never build their own Gobekli Tepe today and they would never ever try, it would never occur to them - "hey, let's build this huge, megalithic structure..". Maybe in a few thousand or tens of thousands of years they eventually would. Those people are the hunters and gatherers.

Builders of Gobekli Tepe were obviously far ahead of that. So you want a proof - other, than it's scientifically proven, that these sites are that old? Here's your proof - today's hunter and gatherers have built nothing but some primitive shacks. And it's 2024.

This isn't a very well made show at all. It feels like something they made for a NatGeo show back in the 2000s but much less factual. The amount of slow-motion, pan-over drone shots of the worksite and Graham Hancock power-posing seem to outnumber the frames that actually meaningfully push the content forward.

Essentially the show continuously presents archaeological evidence that refutes the typical timeline of human history, which Hancock insists must be because of this advanced ancient civilization we've lost contact with. There's no evidence though of these mystical capabilities.

It genuinely feels like Graham Hancock is just showing up to various active archeological sites with a film crew, asking the workers questions, and then splicing out the parts of the interview that may further the ongoing narrative. I'm not convinced that the archaeologists presenting their findings are doing so in support of his theory, they're just having individual frames of content being mined out of interviews and interaction.

Why is this concerning? It's a film that has been made professionally enough to be called documentary even though it's not factual. Someone who doesn't really have a whole lot of attachment to the issue would probably entertain this as a factual documentary without looking too critically at it. And someone who is a genuine conspiracy theorist would allow this to feedback into their disbelief in genuine science anyway.

Could go on on, but I'll stop here.

An old conspiracy theories believes he knows more than actual archaeologists and is so I'll researched that he can't even get basic dates for the sites he uses correctly. Netflix really just sunk their money into this oil spill of a ship for people to pretend they know what they're talking about.

How about making an actual documentary series with established real archaeologists who have actual credentials and experience instead of letting this wrinkled legume get off on his own ego and drag every pseudoscience loving freak with him. If you have an interest in history just do some research but don't take the steps back that watching this mess would take you.

'Ancient Apocalypse' is an often confused, and generally arrogant, attempt to sensationalize history through one person's insistence of a rather ridiculous idea, and his desire to pick a fight with archaeologists, historians, and scientists.

Graham Hancock insists, on the one hand, how archaeologists and scientists all around the world have locked themselves into this one idea of human history, and are unwilling to change their perspective in light of new archaeological evidence.

On the other hand, he takes all the evidence, the myths and legends of diverse cultures, and any facts, hints, and suggestions he can find, and twists them all to fit into his own idea of an incredibly advanced, forgotten ancient civilization while doing exactly what he constantly accuses academics of doing: not being willing to accept anything which defies their own perception.

He has visited some amazing places, found some fascinating links between separate cultures across history, and maybe even come up with a few half-decent ideas about why we need to continue extensive research into our past to better understand our ancient ancestors.

However, the biggest conclusion he has drawn is largely nonsensical. The way he keeps implying ancient humans could not have progressed as they did, to discover agriculture and build large monuments and structures, without the help of some advanced civilization forgotten by history is plain arrogant, insulting, extremely annoying, and rather hypocritical given he accuses archaeologists of the very same arrogance he displays himself.