24th February 2023
Graham Hancock and the “most dangerous show on Netflix”
Ancient apocalypse and historical amnesia
According to a Guardian article dated 23rd November 2022, the above 8 part show is “the most dangerous show on Netflix” and within it’s sub-headline alone a position is taken that it’s solely for “conspiracy theorists” and there is also a question posed:
“Why has this been allowed?”
Allowed?
Why indeed.
Leaving aside my apathy that a supposed liberal, left leaning publication is seemingly screaming for censorship, though I reserve my right to be angrily perplexed as to the sinister nature of the question posed by the writer of the article, Stuart Heritage, here is a word for word introduction from the Wikipedia page for the Netflix series:
“Ancient Apocalypse is a 2022 documentary series about the pseudo archaeological conspiracy theories of British writer Graham Hancock”.
And therein lies the almost lifelong intellectual battle waged by the Edinburgh born number 1 best selling author. To my knowledge and as he himself re-enforces at the beginning of the documentary series, Graham considers himself an “investigative journalist” and not an archaeologist, pseudo or otherwise. Being a number 1 best selling author has obviously given Graham a nest egg of cash from which to explore both his inner self and the outside world of which he is fascinated by, inquisitive of and, after decades of detailed research all around the world, the conclusion he continually draws is of lost civilisations, common languages and common themes found in megalithic sites and of a collective “amnesia” of the current human family and civilisation the mainstream and establishment structure of science and geology refuses to acknowledge. We are not the most enlightened, advanced and superior civilisation we believe ourselves to be and are just another civilisation in a chain of many that have come before us and which were crucially far, far more technically superior than we are led to believe, or have been collectively programmed by history to believe existed before us.
Therefore Graham continually incurs the wrath of the established orders within science, geology and history as he posits that all three of these disciplines must be revised in light of the findings he has documented for decades from bona-fide researchers and archaeologists all over the world. Therein lies the enigma, as in today’s world of the deletion of history and tradition you’d think his findings would find a welcoming home, but his findings not only challenge the established orthodoxy but splinter supposed conventional thinking into thousands of disorganised pieces. So he’s labelled a conspiracy theorist, a pseudo archaeologist and there are calls for his censorship in a world of “settled” science, history and geology and the messenger is shot whilst his message is ridiculed.
When did information become so dangerous?
Why can we no longer speculate as to a differing history?
We live within what Carl Sagan once described as a “pale blue dot” compared to the vastness of the cosmos and the universe. Surely the more we learn about ourselves, our ancestors and civilisations way before recorded time allows us, as a human family, to become enlightened, more spiritually aware of the gift of human life and to continue evolving?
No.
Just ban, censor and ridicule.
It was ever thus.
As I’m sure you’ll appreciate from the headline image used for this article, I have a lot of time and affection for the 72 year old intrepid gallivanter around the world. My paperback copy of his best known publication “Fingerprints of the Gods” is a little battered and dog-eared these days but I bought his follow up “Magicians of the Gods” in hardback on the day of release and have always found his theories, explanations and reasons for an unrecognised pre-history to be as compelling as the Swiss author Erich von Däniken. They seem to coalesce as I’ll briefly outline below but further to this I originally read both authors for the first time two decades ago and find their speculations and positions utterly fascinating. I’ve read a little of Carl Sagan over the years as well as diving into “The Electric Universe” (David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill), “The Holographic Universe” (Michael Talbot) and “Who Built the Moon?” (Christopher Knight and Alan Butler). Each one of these books will melt your face! But you’re allowed to read these and many others you know? We’re also allowed to be wrong or revise our positions, find them credible, incredible, fanciful or utterly infuriating. We’re allowed to explore our thinking and evolve and surely this is a favoured path rather than rock solid, concrete thinking dogma? I always return to the simple quantum physics argument that atoms are the “building blocks of matter” yet are almost entirely empty and have no solidity, therefore, how do you account for that coffee table you’re resting your feet on currently, or that plastic rectangular tablet you’re reading this article on?
I’m biased and a captive audience for this documentary series and so naturally I enjoyed it immensely. Together with reading Graham’s two best known written works I’ve listened to umpteen long form interviews he’s conducted over the past decade and especially so the three, sometime four hour long deep dive interviews with American comedian Joe Rogan on his hugely successful self titled podcast. Rogan is pilloried in The Guardian article but this is nothing new for the comedian and MMA cage fighting commentator and especially so since 2020. He appears sporadically throughout the series and has found a somewhat kindred spirit in Graham as outsiders not reliant upon the established system routinely attacking them and attacking them, lest we forget, for simply using their humanity given, inalienable right to speaking freely. It’s an upside down world for sure, and if you watch this series, you may see a world even more inverted and unexplainable than you dared even believe.
Pleasingly for me, the third episode entitled “Sirius Rising” takes us to the Mediterranean island of Malta, a holiday destination I was lucky to visit in 1996 and have been desperate to return to ever since. I witnessed the famed “Blue Caves” but as Graham begins to question our collective claim to be at the “Apex of Achievement”, he outlines the 19 megalithic temples that dot the tiny islands of Malta and Gozo and particularly a temple known as “Ggantija” as well as the 35km of deeply scored tracks in the limestone that are so eerily reminiscent of the “Nazca Lines” in Peru made world famous by the documentary writings of Erich von Däniken. I won’t spoil your enjoyment but should you be reading this, take a peek at those lines and come to your own conclusions as to what they are, who created them and the all important question: why?
Thus is my fascination for the works of Hancock and von Däniken.
The who and the what are pertinent enough questions but I always revert to the why. Why were such monumental and incredible engineering feats created, many of which can only be fully appreciated from thousands of feet in the sky from an aeroplane. The Nazca Lines are truly remarkable, as is the “Serpent Mound” near Ohio which can only be fully appreciated from high in the sky as you see a fully formed snake winding its way through a dense forest and the question is naturally why, as well as why does this piece of archaeological significance point yet again to the summer solstice and the setting sun, and why is Graham Hancock banned from visiting the site?
He himself explains why in episode six, “America’s Lost Civilisation”, as he also journeys to an ex plantation known as “Poverty Point” which at first glance shows just a viewing platform across an incredibly flat, large area of green forest but which, from a higher vantage point, demonstrates the remains of a staggering horseshoe shaped amphitheatre nearly a mile wide.
Why?
Before Malta and between and after our visits to a lost American civilisation we visit “Gunung Padang” in Indonesia, the site of over 5,000 enormous cut and shaped volcanic slabs high on a mountain top known locally as “Mountain of Light” or “Mountain of Enlightenment” and which Graham believes to be a “step pyramid” before we visit another pyramid amongst the stories and myths and legends of Mexico and the “Great Pyramid of Cholula”. Episode Four takes us to the “Bimini Road” of underwater roads that I again eerily saw echoes of the scored earth of the Nazca Lines of Peru before pleasingly for me I finally saw the incredible evidence of the megalithic carved structures of “Gobekli Tepe” in Turkey that I’ve listened to Graham describe in enormous detail and with great affection for so many years. Described as the “oldest structure on earth” and pre-dating Stonehenge by over 7,000 years, recent ground penetrating radar suggests a further 20 similar structures are buried deep within the ground over a radius of 9 hectares.
The final two episodes return once more to Turkey and the Cappadocia region for the “hidden city” of “Derinkuyu” which has to be seen to be believed and which Graham describes “one of the most large scale projects humanity has ever undertaken” before returning once more to America and the “Channelled Scablands” that Graham believes is the result of the “biggest flash floods in human history”.
The beauty of all this is that you, I and the rest of our human family can take or leave this information, find it fascinating, revelatory, ridiculous, fanciful or the work of over active minds.
But ban, censor and relentlessly mock and ridicule the messenger whilst also questioning whether this should be “allowed”?
How have we permitted such censorious, close minded claptrap?
Why is perhaps the more enlightening question to ask.
"Tales I Tell Myself" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.