In my long post "Scientists and Clergy Have Much in Common," I cite quite a few similarities between scientists and clergy (people such as ministers and priests). In his paper "The Scholarly Atmosphere: A Magnificent Deception?" (well worth a full read) Neil J. Flinders makes some related points:
"Scholarship is entangled in a magnificent deception; quietly generation after generation is led into mindsets that function as religious orders without their being recognized as such....All universities, in addition to housing the tools of scholarship, function as religious solariums where devotees of selected orders and potential members for these 'sacred' orders gather together in a clustered if not cloistered community. These are individuals dedicated to or in search of some means of transformation, whether it be actualization, recognition, certification, graduation or some other academic symbol or process. The search, when dutifully followed, results in subtle or overt commitments that invite the scholar to give singular recognition to a particular mental paradigm accepted by the community....Characteristically, academic work is ritual work in the service of some belief system--overtly or covertly....Each scholar's fundamental allegiance, loyalty, and commitment resides in some 'church'; and the scholar, like the laborer, cannot serve two masters equally....Characteristics common to such recognized religions as Judaism, Christianity, Islam or Hinduism are clearly discernible in their literature and in the behavior of the respective disciples. And the same general characteristics are equally self evident in the literature and disciples of physical science, social science, linguistics, law, medicine, and other forms of scholarship. These parallel orders display similar if not identical elements; robes, rituals, sacrifices, rites of entry and levels of priestly authority....The experience of a committed graduate student and a novitiate in any of the traditional religious orders are very similar. The focus and sacrifice, submission and performance, obstacles and language, ceremonies and rewards are common components. And the places assigned in the resulting hierarchy reflect a shared pattern....Meetings, numerous and regular meetings, are conducted to define, disseminate, and direct the work of these ministries of modern academe. Prospective members are recruited, instructed, and formally accepted into the various orders. This process seems very normal, natural and easy to accept because the 'new orders' are not called religions; they are perceived as secular scholarly associations....Recognition and advancement are ceremoniously bestowed. Loyalty, commitment, and devotion to the order are prescribed and carefully monitored. Once accepted, adherents are expected to be supportive witnesses and valiant defenders of their designated 'faith'...Among the 'churches' that emerge around scholars a common article of faith is that each of these orders insists on being its own highest court of appeal; its own expertise is the supreme authority in its chartered domain. All who question this authority are pretenders to a throne which holds unquestioned dominion. As scholars build these 'churches' unto themselves, they function as laws unto themselves."
In my post "Scientists and Clergy Have Much in Common," I make no mention of archaeologists. But recently some archaeologists have been showing up on social media and science news sites, sadly acting in an appalling manner, like some intolerant medieval clerics. Very strangely, the immoderate fury of such archaeologists has been provoked by an unlikely source: the mild-mannered archaeology scholar Graham Hancock. What provoked this rage from these archaeologists? It is merely that Graham Hancock has a Netflix TV series called "Ancient Apocalypse," in which Hancock occasionally offers some mild criticism of archaeologists (while spending almost all of his time talking about ruins and cultures originating very long ago). Hancock does not criticize any specific archaeologists, and says nothing very strong against archaeologists. He says little more against archaeologists than to occasionally accuse them of being too dogmatic and to accuse them of not paying attention to some evidence that they should study more carefully.
This mild criticism has provoked the most enraged response from some archaeologists, who have done the rhetorical equivalent of trying to burn Hancock at the stake. Such archaeologists have made groundless accusations against Hancock, such as claiming that he is promoting racism or advancing conspiracy theories. As far as I can see, such claims have no merit, and are merely cases of libelous mud-slinging.
Anyone watching the Netflix "Ancient Apocalypse" series or reading Hancock's books will find a subject that defies the scurrilous caricature of him painted in these livid archaeologist depictions of him. On TV we see a very calm and soft-spoken old man speaking the King's English in a crisp British accent, someone who seems many times more interested in discussing old archaeological sites than saying anything about archaeologists. Graham's theory is one that is unproven but quite reasonable. He theorizes that before the Ice Age ended about 10,000 BC there was an advanced civilization, contrary to the claims of archaeologists who claim that there were merely hunter-gatherers at such a time.
The Netflix series shows Hancock traveling around to various archaeological sites around the world, in places such as Indonesia, Mexico and the island of Malta. For example, Hancock examines a site in Indonesia, talking to an investigator who thinks that parts of the site may date from before 10,000 BC. Hancock visits or mentions various pyramid sites around the world, noting the physical similarity of different pyramid sites in such widely scattered locations, including similar functions they served. He doubts that the similarities are coincidental, and suspects that they may reflect engineering know-how or building habits that have a common source, perhaps stemming from some lost civilization that rather quickly declined or disappeared, with remnants of it scattering around the globe. Hancock pays attention to some cataclysm legends told long ago, and suggests that such stories may offer clues as to the origin of some of these structures, or may be faint traces of some ancient apocalypse causing the destruction of some civilization existing very long before the pyramids of Egypt were built.
Chichen Itza structure in Mexico
There is nothing very radical about such ideas. They are far more conservative and much less speculative than the "Ancient Aliens" ideas advanced by another TV series. The long-running "Ancient Aliens" series has long advanced the idea that archaeological anomalies can be explained by imagining visitors from other planets. Hancock advances an idea much less speculative: the mere idea that some of the anomalies can be explained if a lost human civilization existed prior to the end of the Ice Age. Around the 30:00 mark in Episode 1, he speculates that such a civilization may have been mostly wiped out by "a massive global cataclysm about 12,500 years ago." One of his books cites a scientific paper suggesting some cataclysm may have occurred around such a time, and we know that the rather cataclysmic Ice Age occurred around that time. Hancock mentions things such as volcanic eruptions and collisions with a comet (or comet fragments) that might have caused some great civilization to collapse about 12,000 years ago. Interestingly, on the page here Hancock cites an ancient Egyptian historian who apparently gave a chronology indicating a history of Egyptian rulers going back more than 20,000 years. My guess is that Hancock's theory is somewhat unlikely to be true, but I would not at all be surprised if it is correct. My opinion on this matter counts for little, because I am not a student of archaeology.
Of several archaeologist responses I read, none of them attempted to make a substantive response to Hancock's theory. Instead such archaeologists mainly engaged in the crudest and clumsiest attempts at character assassination. These included the following:
- Groundless accusations that Graham is a conspiracy theorist. There are no conspiracy theories advanced on Hancock's "Ancient Apocalypse" series, and I could find no such theories in three books of Hancock that I read. The idea that there was a civilization lost before the end of the Ice Age is not a conspiracy theory. A conspiracy theory is a theory of people alive today or in recent times plotting some evil.
- Groundless accusations that Hancock's ideas are racist or helpful to racists. The reasoning I read trying to support such accusations was some of the worst reasoning I have ever heard. One person tried to make Hancock's ideas sound racist on the grounds that some Nazis supposedly believed in a lost civilization like Atlantis. This is reasoning is absurd as claiming that people who like listening to Wagner's operas are racist because such operas were also enjoyed by the racist Nazis.
- Groundless attempts to link Hancock's work to far-right extremists. Hancock's "Ancient Apocalypse" series is actually completely unpolitical, and I read nothing political or racist-sounding in three books of Hancock that I read. Hancock seems hundreds of times more interested in what happened many thousands of years ago than in any current political events.
Although archaeologists have recently senselessly painted Hancock as some kind of uninformed kook or crank, anyone reading his books will find the work of a calm, cautious, very studious and reasonable-sounding scholar of extremely broad and deep knowledge, a reality very much at odds with recent mud-slinging portrayals of him. So why was the vicious fury of archaeologists provoked? We can chalk this up to a few possible factors:
- Archaeologists may be furious that the mild-mannered Hancock has offered some gentle suggestions for how archaeologists can improve their work by considering evidence they have ignored.
- Archaeologists may be enraged and jealous that Hancock sold millions of books while their papers typically get very little readership.
- Archaeologists may be furious that someone is daring to question their dogmas.
- Archaeologists may bitterly resent anyone who has become a successful archaeology scholar without being anointed as a member of their exclusive priesthood of PhD's.
Archaeologists have misspoke by claiming that Hancock is not an archaeologist. The Cambridge Dictionary defines an archaeologist as
"someone who studies the buildings, graves, tools, and other objects of people who lived in the past." Hancock has been doing just that for decades, while traveling to archaeology sites all over the world, meaning he does qualify as an archaeologist. The amount of study he has put into archaeology over his decades of writings on the topic is probably at least twice as much as the amount of archaeology study by a newly minted archaeology PhD. I suspect archaeologists would not have objected to works such as Hancock's if they had been written by an archaeology PhD; but it rather seems that when those not officially anointed by the conformist archaeology sect dare to do archaeology scholarship, that's a sin the elite insiders cannot forgive.
The seething responses of some archaeologists to Hancock's TV series is a case of some archaeologists shooting themselves in the feet. By responding to Hancock with groundless character assassination mudslinging and by acting like prickly thin-skinned hypersensitive people enraged by a little constructive criticism, such archaeologists have done more to damage the reputation of archaeologists than anything Hancock said. In the article here, Hancock replies his critics.
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