Indeed they do, and your thoughts there should be considered. However, they're baffled by, and handwave away real explanations of, Gobekli Tepe, which is dated to about 9600-8000 BC, a discovery that smashes the previously accepted timelines. Like any aspect of science, nothing should ever be considered settled, and is constantly evolving as new information comes to light, i.e. no theory should be either believed, nor dismissed, including Hancock's. Even though he's been off the mark a few times through his run, so have mainstream academics, who don't have any better of a track record (but who try to cancel any ideas that don't fit in with their own, often ideas they end up accepting a few decades later when the evidence is too overwhelming to continue to deny--it takes a while because there' s a lot of egos and politics and money that get in the way). But I do find Hancock's ideas and research interesting food for thought, and tend to always question mainstream "accepted" concepts since they are often later found wanting.
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Never believe. Always question. Rebuke belief, a.k.a. bias, a.k.a. groupthink, a.k.a. ideology, the bane of skeptical, logical reason.
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jriley555 (8530)
4 years ago
certainly paleoanthropology has been turned upside down in the past 20 years - but that is largely based upon the narrow platform in the fossil record - so any distinctive find prompts wide-ranging re-evaluations. we've gone from rejecting global multi-regionalism, to thorough-going intra-african multi-regionalism, leading to a very bushy theory of human evolution.
this happened because people are looking for evidence, advanced sometimes by those who chose to look in new or long-neglected places, like Berger in SA, in discovering the weird & wild naledi population.
if hancock uncovers anything independently which advanced the field, he should get credit, in that unlikely event. but his credibility is not good. and he is certainly not the only person taking a look at gobekli tepe, nor was he discoverer.
part of his schtick is selling the notion that science is a hidebound enterprise that only a few intrepid souls such as himself are taking a 'fresh' look at :). alt-science relies about such embellishments, though in various times & places, that caricature hold (during the age of religious orthodoxy, piltdown man, 'soviet' & 'aryan' science).
we're past that, other than the domination of research dollars by corporate interests.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665/
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