The Blackberry Walk

As the sun set on the Christmas holidays, I fell mildly ill. Not so ill that I’m feverish, coughing and spluttering, but ill enough that one wants nothing more than to lie in bed and nest up. There, huddled, I watched YouTube on my phone, gormlessly wading through the bog of suggestions. And the video I found myself watching was some scientist’s takedown of Graham Hancock and his alternative archaeology. An odd pick for me, you may think given what I write here. Indeed it was, I rarely am interested in the views of the ‘umm actually’ science guys. But I nonetheless watched, half-amazed this cadre of science bros were still knocking about. The video was a reaction video to Hancock debating a learned archaeologist named Flint Dibble on Joe Rogan. Joe is a long-time friend of Hancock’s, and, I will confess, how I came to find out about his work circa 2017. Since then, Hancock has found mainstream fame and success through a Netflix series; but for those of you who have yet to encounter his work, I will describe it briefly. What Hancock promotes is a kind of Atlantean civilisation during the Ice Age, which by the thawing of the Ice Age was destroyed; but also that the fingerprints of this advanced ancient civilisation can be seen in subsequent primitive cultures around the world through a diaspora of Atlanteans into these primitive cultures, teaching them agriculture amongst other skills. His evidence consists of ancient myths, and archaeological remains like Gobelki Tepe, a real hatchet in the established archaeological narrative; and he weaves these threads together into one cohesive, convincing tapestry. And for some time I was really into his beliefs, comfortable beneath this quilted tapestry. Hancock is a journalist by trade, and in his book Fingerprints of the Gods, he presents himself as a kind of Victorian explorer of old updated to the modern day. Hancock is not an archaeologist of any training. To the archaeological community, this is understandably very frustrating. In their eyes, a man with no archaeological training has made a career telling sweet little lies only to go on to become the best known contemporary archaeologist by his Netflix series. Mr Rogan set up this debate after Hancock put out an open offer for debate, and Flint Dibble nominated himself as champion for the archaeological establishment. But what was being argued was not simply different ideas: these were different epistemologies. Dibble began the debate by presenting his main thesis, that we have zero evidence for the domestication of crops prior to the end of the Ice Age; that we have plenty of seeds preserved from each and every era, before and after the Ice Age’s end, but once the DNA is examined we find not one seed prior to the end of the Ice Age bears traits of domestication. This is bad news for Hancock’s theory. For his thesis to be true, there have to have been advanced Atlanteans, who are at least agriculturalists. To this, Hancock says that we have yet to find every seed, and that domesticated plants can become feral. Dibble bats this down, arguing the effects of feralisation can be seen as residues in the genome. Then Hancock is shot down by Dibble once more. Dibble brings up charts of every shipwreck ever discovered, many thousands, and argues that no ancient shipwrecks from the Ice Age have ever been found. Again, Hancock argues that they just haven’t been found yet. A pattern emerges. Science as an epistemology isn’t exhaustive: and Hancock knows this. As Hume said, we cannot prove by science the sun will rise tomorrow; and neither then can we prove evidence for Atlantis won’t arrive tomorrow. Then there is a long argument about underwater archaeology. You see, a major part of Hancock’s argument is that much of the evidence for this Atlantean civilisation is submerged underwater, since as the Ice Age ended – most likely due to an asteroid impact – a great deluge of water from the melting ice flooded the Earth, permanently raising the water levels. And the geologists agree here, even if the mainstream account isn’t as sudden a flood as Hancock makes it out to be. Hancock argues certain sites underwater look as if they were ancient megaliths placed by men. And to his credit, bolstering his image as a Victorian explorer, he’s been to many of these sites and has dived there. Dibble took a look at the square-cut rocks and simply said that they were all natural. Rock can cut along these perfectly square lines by known natural processes, he argued. Then Hancock fought back. ‘How can you pass judgement if you haven’t even been there’, he said, to paraphrase. You can imagine the indignation and laughter of both Dibble and the science YouTuber reacting. What would being there in person to see this site matter? And here again is our crux: there are two epistemologies at work. For Dibble, the photograph of the archaeological site and the witnessing of the site with one’s own eyes is the same. Actually that may be untrue, since a scientist diver could see up close and know where to look; but if he had some kind of underwater robot which could investigate all the crags a person could, perhaps with even greater accuracy, even then Hancock would raise the same objections. Because what Hancock has, having dived at the site, is a kind of personal intimacy. He hasn’t just taken measurements and compared those measurements to textbooks and known patterns, he’s gone there and felt something from the site, got to know it a bit. This sounds like woo-woo, and it is by most definitions woo-woo. Graham Hancock is a woo-woo kind of guy. But this is his appeal, not just that he throws eggs at the maligned scientific establishment, but provides a new kind of knowing to replace it. Hancock’s truth isn’t scientific, and having a scientist argue with him was never going to be fruitful. To Hancock, science is but a tool, to be used when it bolsters his argument, like with the evidence of rapid flooding at the end of the Ice Age, and ignored when it disagrees with him, like with the evidence of agriculture, pointing out all the ugly holes of the scientific method. This mix-a-mix approach to evidence may disgust you, dear reader. In my adolescence when I was still a gung-ho materialist atheist, it would have disgusted me too. But over time, I’ve come to terms with the fact that knowing isn’t all about the scientific method, that there are other means by which truth can be ascertained. Science can see but a sliver of reality, that which is quantifiable, reproducible and material, a sliver which holds little place for personal experience, symbols, feelings, and forms of embodied knowledge. All these other epistemologies are quashed or flattened. At the end of the day, Graham Hancock is a cult figure. He appeals to his lay-interpretation of archaeological sites he visits, and asks of you that you trust his deep-seated experiences and feelings. He appeals to a distinctly non-scientific epistemology, appealing to science when the myth science tells is one he wants to fold in to his greater mythos. He is a great man of sorts, and if you trust his genius you will believe every word he says – his Victorian explorer archetype goes a long way to appealing to listeners, particularly Americans. You too will believe in his Atlantis of yore. If instead you cling to the scientific method, you will instead believe a very different view of pre-history, one informed by that white-cloaked organisation known as the scientific community. Feel free to choose your master. For the record, today I’m not of Hancock’s school of Atlantis believers. No longer do I believe him to be the sage I thought he was in my youthful naivety. Though I continue to have a great respect for him and his project. Like many other mercurial figures today, he manages to bridge the grey, sharp scientific worldview with the colourful, fuzzy imagination of what could be. This I believe to be commendable. For the pale, white cheeks of our Weltanschauung are in need of some rosy warmth and a bit of life.