The Lying Media Told Me Not To Watch Netflix’s ‘Ancient Apocalypse,’ So I Did

Archeologists and their friends in the media are losing their minds over author and journalist Graham Hancock’s alternative ancient history Netflix series “Ancient Apocalypse.” According to The Guardian, “Ancient Apocalypse is the most dangerous show on Netflix.” It’s “an all out attack on archaeologists,” reads one hit piece on the series. It “promotes a whole lot of bunk,” Slate accuses. “[Graham’s] whole theory is steeped in racism and white supremacy,” alleges another.

The outrage articles don’t seem to have stopped anyone from watching “Ancient Apocalypse,” though. The series reportedly garnered 24.62 million hours of viewing in its first week of release, earning it a spot on Netflix’s “top 10” in 31 countries.

Accusations that Hancock’s theory is an affront to archaeology or that it’s somehow “racist” and “white supremacist” are poor excuses for the real reason people in the corporate media hate “Ancient Apocalypse”: its active defiance of the establishment narrative in archeology. The media fear the show threatens to prompt viewers to begin questioning the authority in other realms, as well. “[W]here does it end? Believing that election fraud is real? Believing 9/11 was an inside job?” The Guardian frets.

The new docuseries rejects establishment archeology’s belief that human civilization was not advanced prior to about 4,000 B.C. Hancock travels to various ancient structures across the globe, pointing out that many of them happen to be architecturally alike — something modern archaeologists have been unable to explain. He also points to many ancient civilizations sharing similar stories of an ancient being or beings teaching them about architecture, agriculture, astronomy, arts, and mathematics.

Hancock hypothesizes that a crashing comet destroyed Atlantis or a similar advanced lost civilization some 13,000 years ago, sparking a Great Flood (an event recorded and passed down by many ancient peoples). Hancock attributes the similarities in architecture and origin stories of the known ancient civilizations to the survivors of the lost civilization. He believes the survivors were somehow able to disseminate their knowledge to hunter-gatherers across the globe, who, in turn, built some of the oldest ancient civilizations in recorded history.

Hancock is a compelling narrator, and the idea that an advanced civilization was wiped out by the Great Flood isn’t implausible. However, his hypothesis still leaves viewers with unanswered questions. How did the survivors of the lost advanced civilization travel to all these different societies around the world? How did they communicate with people who undoubtedly spoke different languages? Where is the archaeological evidence of this advanced civilization? Surely a cataclysm just mild enough to leave behind survivors couldn’t have destroyed all evidence of this lost advanced civilization?

Just because Hancock’s theory has holes doesn’t mean it isn’t worth considering, and it certainly doesn’t mean he should be silenced. Yet suppression is exactly what Hancock’s critics want. Last week, the Society for American Archaeology published an open letter pressuring Netflix to “reclassify this series as ‘science fiction’” rather than a documentary. The Guardian piled on, writing, “Why has this been allowed?” apparently suggesting that Netflix never should have green-lit the show in the first place.

Scientists have a