An Attack on Archaeology? - Fall 2022
Much attention has been focused on Hancok’s theories of a lost civilization. This totally misses the point and while this author is vilified and slandered, the subsequent cloud obscures what is really being revealed. Let’s set aside the phoney indignation by Hancock’s attackers and address the real questions. Hancock professionally points out that very complex megalithic structures were built within the shadow of the ending of the last ice age when the world was supposedly dominated by hunter gatherers who certainly did not have the abilities to build these structures 6000 years before the first pyramids. Forget Hancock’s theories.. Archaeologists tell us who did it. Seems like the mainstream is avoided this like a bad case of COVID.
Netflix’s enormously popular new show, Ancient Apocalypse, is an all out attack on archaeologists. 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.
Author 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. His argument, as laid out in this show and in several books, is that this advanced civilisation was destroyed in a cataclysmic flood.
The survivors of this advanced civilisation, according to Hancock, introduced agriculture, architecture, astronomy, arts, maths and the knowledge of “civilisation” to “simple” hunter gatherers. The reason little evidence exists, he says, is because it is under the sea or was destroyed by the cataclysm.
“Perhaps,” Hancock posits in the first episode, “the extremely defensive, arrogant, and patronising attitude of mainstream academia is stopping us from considering that possibility”.
https://theconversation.com/with-netflixs-ancient-apocalypse-graham-hancock-has-declared-war-on-archaeologists-194881
This is a fascinating series and well worth your time. Hancock postulates that a lost civilization must have built these megalith sites that date to the period just after the end of the last Ice Age that was dominated by Hunter Gatherers. Hancock believes that it defies logic that Hunter Gatherers built these very sophisticated structures without any archaeological record of having the technological expertise. Hancock’s question seems obvious for a structure that predates the Egyptian pyramids by over 6000 years.
Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey has delivered the oldest examples of religious monumental architecture so far known, dated by archaeological methods to 9600-8000 BC. At the end of its uselife, the megalithic enclosures of Göbekli Tepe were refilled systematically. This special element of the site formation process makes it hard to date the enclosures by the radiocarbon method, as there is no clear correlation of the fill with the architecture. Several ways have been explored to overcome this situation, including the dating of carbonate laminae on architectural structures, of bones and the remains of short-lived plants from the filling. The data obtained from pedogenic carbonates on architectural structures back the relative stratigraphic sequence observed during the excavation. But, unfortunately, they are of no use in dating the sampled structures themselves, as the carbonate layers started forming only after the moment of their burial. At least these samples offer a good terminus ante quem for the refilling of the enclosures. For layer III this terminus ante quem lies in the second half of the 9th millennium calBC, while for layer II it is located in the middle of the 8th millennium calBC. The data obtained from bones discovered in the filling and layers are at least partially biased by methodological problems. At least within the group of samples chosen, collagen conservation is poor and isotopic exchange processes with carbon rich surface and ground waters may cause alterations in the carbonate contents of bones that lead to problems with the dating of apatite fractions. Nonetheless, the data could hint at last refilling activities in the big enclosures of layer III in the middle and later 9th millennium calBC. Charcoal samples from short-lived plants could give a good hint at the beginning of the refilling and “burial” of the big enclosures in the late 10th and early 9th millennium calBC, but they could also simply indicate the use of older fill material. The last intrusions in the big enclosures can be dated by a charcoal sample taken from under a fallen pillar fragment in Enclosure A to the middle of the 9th millennium. The analysis of this type of sample, which is available in considerable amounts from recent excavation work at Göbekli Tepe, will be pursued preferentially in the future. Also further analysis should show, whether poor conservation of collagen is a general problem at the site and the extent to which the apatite dates can be taken into consideration.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258182967_Radiocarbon_dating_the_first_temples_of_mankind_Comments_on_14C-Dates_from_Gobekli_Tepe
The End of the Ice Age
The Younger Dryas and the Mesolithic
Patrick WymanFinally, there is widespread evidence for a series of extraterrestrial impacts right around the time the Younger Dryas began. According to this line of reasoning, fragments of a comet or perhaps a meteor shower bombarded the planet some 12,900 years ago, precisely at the Younger Dryas boundary. While no individual impact in this encounter might have been particularly large, there were enough of them to cause widespread burning of ground cover and eject particulate matter into the atmosphere, which would have reduced the absorption of sunlight and lowered the temperature. The more extreme advocates of this theory give it far too much explanatory power, but there’s no reason to reject it out of hand. Extraterrestrial objects hit the Earth all the time!
These are all plausible, and the most likely explanation for the Younger Dryas involves some combination of a general cooling trend, a meltwater pulse, a volcanic eruption, and extraterrestrial impacts, perhaps in rapid succession. An event that might cause notable but short-term cooling in one place could have global consequences if it were effectively simultaneous with several others.
After 1200 years, around 11,700 years before the present, the Younger Dryas came to an end. The warming resumed, and the Holocene - our present era - began. The ice melted, sea levels rose, and the environment changed once more. A whole clutch of new cultures and practices emerged to capitalize on the new possibilities. In Europe, these new cultures belonged to the Mesolithic period. They were quite different from what had come before. Genetic evidence suggests that Mesolithic people only had a small bit of ancestry from the Paleolithic Europeans who had lived there for tens of thousands of years. As the population changed, cave painting, a practice that had lasted for perhaps 20,000 years, came to an end. The tools changed, too: Rather than making large spearpoints and blades, they created small, modular blades called “microliths,” which could then be placed into a variety of antler, wood, or bone handles and used for a number of different purposes. Rather than making an arrowhead and a separate scraper to clean hides, Mesolithic people made microliths, which could be used for either purpose in the right setting.https://patrickwyman.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-ice-age
