OS 160 - Graham Hancock and the Philosophy of Archeology

Oldest Stories

Graham Hancock is a complicated man. On one hand, he is exposing a lot of people to some of the most cutting edge archeological investigations and open questions in history, and doing it in a way that is engaging, entertaining, and gets non-experts excited about the field. On the other hand, his methodology is fundamentally unsound, to the point that even if he is right in his thesis of an ancient lost civilization with unexpectedly high technologies, his methods are insufficient to prove himself. So today we are not going to necessarily debunk any of his claims, I don't think that is very worthwhile, but instead we are going to talk about the Philosophy of Archeology and the historical method. We will use some of his examples, like the Piri Reis map and Gobekli Tepe, to help flesh out what he should be doing that he often is neglecting to do.

Also, I did largely forget about the whole academic consensus aspect of this as I was writing, because honestly I am pretty disconnected from academia and have the perspective that someone can engage with a field pretty solidly with a good internet connection, but here is the link to Dr. David Falk, a fellow who himself passes in and out of respectability based on the circles you travel in, talking about the challenge of breaking into a fairly ossified field. And honestly, I do get the sense that archeology is rather more rigid in its scientific consensus than many other fields of study, so its not like Mr. Hancock doesn't have a point here. https://youtu.be/yE6Blwt-QIE?si=4tA952zPewVsghti

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