That sounds more like some junior marketing hack at the publisher.

And I agree, Graham could have let the ancients’ method stand as undetermined or unknown sciences, rather than ESP.

Archeology is Not a Hard Science

My comment that archeology is an art rather than a science, well, I’ll be more precise.

Hard Science: Math is a formal science, the foundation of those sciences requiring experimental manipulation and reproducibility; physics, chemistry, geophysics, biology, engineering, computer science, and others.

Soft sciences, such as psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology, archeology, political science, philosophy and demography are characterized by indirect measurement, limited experimental control, theory under-determination by data, and dependence on interpretive frameworks. Data are frequently incomplete, or non-repeatable. These features increase reliance on theoretical, framing and contextual judgment.

Graham Hancock

The thing that gets me about Graham Hancock is that he has been keenly driven to understanding ancient phenomenon that has been ignored or dismissed by modern and arbitrary schools of archaeology and anthropology.

He did not come from those schools, but because of that, he was not limited by them. He can explore and look at something new and look at it without blinders. And he had a gift for seeing patterns and connections.

What he’s able to do as a result is find the anomalies and the oddities that measure quite older than established scientific wisdom will allow. He is self taught, and intensely curious and is able to make connections where others refused to explore.

The truth is that all advances in science have come from the minds and mouths of lunatics.

We didn’t have advances because we looked for them. We had advances because there were people who challenged conventional wisdom.

Copernicus, Galileo, Fermi, Morse, Tesla, Edison, Marconi each withstood barrages of derision the real scientific scholars. And each and every one of them stood on the path of progress to lay their own brick in the name of advancement.

They were all heretics. Look up the meaning of the word ‘heretic’ and you will find that it comes from the Ancient Greek word ‘heriticos’, meaning “one who is able to choose”.

I, for one, believe Graham and enjoy reading about his bricks.

H2IK

H2IK = “Heck If I Know”

Sorry for the delay. I lost track of your website. Found it. I want to reread your review before I answer later today.

I’m not familiar with H21k, but there’s genetic evidence for individuals in both North and South America that date to around 12kya (Montana and Brazil, respectively). Perhaps a little earlier for N. America and a little less for S. America. However, there are sites on both continents that have reasonable dates that are earlier. Around 22-28 kya for the White Sands footprints and around the same for a site in Brazil where some bone pendants were found in strata dating to at least 25 kya. These sites don’t include direct genetic data, but one can infer humans at the time had a genome. There are probably some older sites waiting to be found. Those are all objective data, by the way.

Let me revise just a bit. I’m going to say that Archeology is a subjective science, rather than an objective one. Because ancient times don’t come with a legend or a guide, everything is swaddled in interpretation.

Before I give you a question, I need to test the waters. Please answer me this: when did the human genome first appear in North and in South America? One question, two answers. H2IK is also a valid answer.

SeaEFan, thanks so much for commenting. I truly appreciate the time you took to do that!

I really like how you’re looking at this. I’m not sure I agree, given how close the symbols on the bowl appear to cuneiform.

But! I definitely see how the patterns could be knots in string represented in stone. I’m certainly not an expert in quipu, but it would be interesting to know if there are other examples of quipu being represented in other media than fiber. For instance, are there any carvings, petroglyphs, pictorgraphs, paintings, etc. that are of quipu anywhere else? I think there are some pot sherds from Tiwanaku dating to around 400 CE that show an anthropomorphic figure holding strings below an outstretched arm. But I’ve not seen an image of them.

Thanks again for commenting!