Ancient Apocalypse [Netflix]

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new Graham Hancock Netflix series. eight episodes, hope he gets more. it was fantastic. no FUD or far-reaching nonsense, simply fact- and research-based presentation of reality of various ancient sites, etc. really, the premise of the show is that we, as humans, have collective amnesia of quite advanced ancient ancestors and that "mainstream archeology" has a narrative that dictates they can't buy into this idea without blowing up their entire thing. graham does show that many times, very slowly and over time, "mainstream archeology" does eventually have to admit to certain facts as evidence becomes overwhelming. anyway, point is - some extremely compelling thoughts, ideas, and theories presented here by someone that takes it very seriously and is quite passionate about it. glad he is on this platform, as his work on Gaia doesn't have remotely close to the audience. recommend everyone watch this show. my only real gripe is that he does sometimes repeat things, assuming that people may not watch every episode, and that he mixes units of measurements willy-nilly. some things are metric, some things are imperial, etc. just pick one and stick with it. small nitpick.

[moved from recently watched to its own thread]
Last edited by TC on 05/12/22, 12:40:20, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

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I watched the first 10 minutes with an open mind. At the first archeological site they visit in Indonesia there is surface evidence of stone architecture from c. 500BC. That's nice but nothing mind blowing, there's plenty of stone architecture around the world that's far older than that. Then the 'big reveal' that further down there is another cultural layer from 5200BC. At which point the narrator states:

"7000 years ago, far from being builders on such an epic scale, there's no evidence that the people of this region were anything other than simple hunter-gatherers. What could have motivated them to make the immense effort of bringing all these blocks here?"

But but but. They have shown no connection between the stones on the surface (500BC) and the earlier cultural layer (5200BC)! Why is the narrator linking the two? This is baldly misleading. At this point I realised it was a big pile of shit and turned it off.

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I watched another 10 minutes yesterday just to be sure. At no point does he provide any evidential link between the stones from 500BC and the earlier cultural layer which the archeologists have discovered. Instead, he brings in a local geologist who clearly has some kind of nationalistic inpetus for mis-dating the site and the geologist carries out a core sample which shows - shock horror - that the hill itself is 20K+ years old. Well no shit Sherlock but that doesn't prove anything since the narrator has already admitted at the start of the sequence that there are many such hills naturally formed all over Indonesia. I put it that the facts are presented in a knowingly misleading way to create the impression of a 'mystery', and furthermore to try and misattribute authorship of the site away from the indigenous people of Indonesia to some kind of superrace, which as some critics have pointed out could serve unwholesome agendas. It is offensive faux-science that shoud never have been funded. If you want to watch a good history doc check out Mary Beard on the BBC (she's an actual historian) or indeed if you taste is for rightwing nut jobs then Neil Oliver's BBC series' A History of Ancient Britain and A History of Celtic Britain are actually really good too despite his politics (again, he's an actual archeologist).

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klimov wrote: 04/12/22, 00:50:05 Ah this is the one I was looking for, "the series promotes ideas of race science".
Pfft, now that is nonsense. Talk about someone deliberately misunderstanding the takeaway from the implications of the series (of which Atlantis is a very small part in the discussion about what was a global catastrophe). But I forgot, everything is racist now, it’s the easy button to get something dismissed, debunked, or otherwise point people back to the approved narrative. The other link is just plain silly - Joe Rogan (who again, has a very small part in this show) does not “yell at you on twitter”. I don’t know how people continue to write things making statements that can easily be disproven in minutes of searching. Who just believes what they are being told? Toddlers who just discovered the internet? Or, as Joe Bob has said, Brits who move to LA (who he finds quaint as they initially believe everyone they talk to is telling them the truth)? I bet that “obey the rules of right-think” writer listens to RATM unironically.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

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Yes no doubt liberal commentators haven't given Joe Rogan his fair due or whatever, but that's a straw man you're creating to avoid answering a single one of the criticisms raised about the program.

To recap, the presenter pulls together three facts about the site in Indonesia:
- existence of stone structures from 500BC on the surface
- 5200BC cultural layer further down (that's how archaeology works, the deeper you dig the further back in time you go)
- 20000BC core sample taken even lower than that (not evidence of inhabitation)

From these three facts he somehow concludes that there were people on the site in 20000BC building stone structures!! And furthermore that they couldn't possibly have been from Indonesia. 2+2+2=11. Snake oil 101. Like I say, watch a proper archaeology program - you'll like Neil Oliver, he's a good whack to the right of Joe Rogan (but he doesn't make shit up to sell books).

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

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As i said, i’m not going to explain the rest of the hour to you if you can’t be bothered to watch it. Sure, Graham could just come out and hand everyone the cold facts, but this is an hour long program so there is some drama manufactured. Frankly, that episode wasn’t my favorite. But they are in a certain order that does play out over the course of the season as future episodes refer back to prior ones.