Graham Hancock

Berdmann said:
Fair enough, I understand that. I am struggling to find the words to express myself about this, but I suppose the best way would be to say - he's a good guy, doing the best he can, bringing these ideas to a lot of people, and that's a cool thing! In all of the media I am exposed to, I never really hear anyone else talking about this stuff. Despite his methods, he's still a part of the family, so to speak. :)

Possibly true. But the differences are on important points, it seems. I'll be talking to a group tomorrow and a video will result. Not sure yet if it will be worth publishing it, but I plan to cover certain topics that may explain these differences.
 
Laura said:
Berdmann said:
Fair enough, I understand that. I am struggling to find the words to express myself about this, but I suppose the best way would be to say - he's a good guy, doing the best he can, bringing these ideas to a lot of people, and that's a cool thing! In all of the media I am exposed to, I never really hear anyone else talking about this stuff. Despite his methods, he's still a part of the family, so to speak. :)

Possibly true. But the differences are on important points, it seems. I'll be talking to a group tomorrow and a video will result. Not sure yet if it will be worth publishing it, but I plan to cover certain topics that may explain these differences.

All the videos that you have published so far are just amazing and loaded with lots of information. So, I think that video will be worth publishing too. ;D
 
Gandalf said:
Laura said:
Berdmann said:
Fair enough, I understand that. I am struggling to find the words to express myself about this, but I suppose the best way would be to say - he's a good guy, doing the best he can, bringing these ideas to a lot of people, and that's a cool thing! In all of the media I am exposed to, I never really hear anyone else talking about this stuff. Despite his methods, he's still a part of the family, so to speak. :)

Possibly true. But the differences are on important points, it seems. I'll be talking to a group tomorrow and a video will result. Not sure yet if it will be worth publishing it, but I plan to cover certain topics that may explain these differences.

All the videos that you have published so far are just amazing and loaded with lots of information. So, I think that video will be worth publishing too. ;D

I second that :D
 
The following is a repost from the discussion about the Comet Research Group here. I thought it fits well in this topic as well, so here it goes:

Two days ago Graham Hancock was on the Joe Rogan show together with Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson where they debated the infamous "skeptic" Michael Shermer (the head of the deceivers from "Skeptic Magazine") and his "scientist" friends about all sorts of intriguing topics.

Although it is a very long podcast, I recommend to watch or listen to it, since one learns a LOT! And I mean a lot. Not only is it a debate about the latest research into catastrophism, Göbekli Tepe, human history etc, Graham also states clearly that he is in strong support of especially Baily, Clube and Firestone and their research on comet-cataclysms and that they are very concerned that we will face something similar again the next coming 30 years. Graham also brings a researcher from the Comet Research group on the table who discusses his latest research. A lot of scientific topics are brought up and especially the latest research on comet bombartments around the time of the ice age and Graham makes interesting points about the idea of a comet breakup cluster, that has wiped out civilisations before and that some ancient traditions thought that human behaviour might somehow be implicated in those distructions.

Also a scientific discussion gets going that includes slide shows of the latest data points on massive floddings comet impacts etc. and how they get interpreted. I must also say that Randall's knowledge base there sounds pretty deep and solid.

Although listening to it only via audio is good, I recommend to watch it because Joe, Randall and especially Graham do an absolutely great job in exposing Shermer and his "scientists" for the pathological liars they are, without getting to emotional and sticking to the facts. It is also a great lesson in detecting pathological lying and how one can confront/expose it without letting the emotions run over.

At one point, the to this point rather "reasonable" sounding Shermer, gets confronted by Graham with the latest article that is supposed to be published on his "Skeptic Magazine" about Grahams latest research as a journalist, written by his "geology scientist" that is later also in the show. Joe, Randall and especially Graham then go into dissecting those defamatory statements (that can only be described as character assassination towards Graham) that are clearly purposefully a bag of lies this scientist presents about what Graham actually said and researched. Here they also do a pretty good job to not let Shermer and co but out and deflect and let them get away with those lies. From then on Shermer and his "scientists" get deliciously exposed especially by Graham, with his profound knowledge of the subject matters. It is a delight to watch and you wont regret it. I'm also impressed by the amount of knowledge Joe, Graham and Randall posses about those topics. So if you can take the time, you will learn A LOT.

I'm not finished with it yet, but will do so in the next coming days. A previous discussion (podcast) between Joe Rogan, Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson is also brought up, after which Shermer "had something to say about it", which was the basis of them coming together now on the show "to sort it out". Also this earlier potcast sounds like a MUST watch. I will watch/listen to it next. A final word, you will miss a lot when only listening to it as audio, since the devlecting and lying from Shermer and co. and how the others handle it, doesn't come across there fully and you also don't see all the slightshow pictures and data points.

So here is the latest potcast as audio file (you can download it here). And here as a video:


https://youtu.be/tFlAFo78xoQ

And here is the previous discussion as and audio file. And here as a video:


https://youtu.be/0H5LCLljJho

Enjoy!
 
Pashalis said:
[...] Also this earlier potcast sounds like a MUST watch. I will watch/listen to it next. [...]

And here is the previous discussion as and audio file. And here as a video:


https://youtu.be/0H5LCLljJho

Completed to watch the earlier video above too and I would also say that what is brought up there is pretty interesting, especially the parts of Randalls research into the landscapes of north america and how they must have been flooded by huge tsunami like waves about 12800 years ago, probably caused by the comets encounters in that period. And not only there, but practically globally.

The shorter parts about drugs like Marijuana and DMT, and that the legalization of the former one is "a huge step forward for america" is pretty bonkers though, as well as the idea that our civilization seems to finally go into "a good direction", because of things like this and things like "earth day" and other "environment friendly thinking/measures". Also the ideas, that if we start to pay attention now to this cyclic cataclysms via comets, that we can then avoid them through technology like painting those "icy rocks" , "propelling them into a different direction via rockets", is obviously besides the point as well and not thought through that well. Also the fact that all three seem to be pot smokers doesn't make it better.

Keeping that in mind, I think especially Randalls research into geology, together with the research of the comet group and Grahams research, sounds pretty interesting.
 
Yeah, it was alright, though much of it was the same stuff presented by this group quite often... and others in the EU arena might question whether all of that is flood or EM activity, such as has been mentioned about Grand Canyon... I think it was... but in general, the interviews seem to show the way the establishment is being pushed to deal with these 'inconvenient truths'... as the Gore monster called his interpretation of it....
 
Great Video an debate! I agree it shows how to handle skeptics who use diversion and try to muddy the waters so to speak. A lot to learn from this!
 
gdpetti said:
Yeah, it was alright, though much of it was the same stuff presented by this group quite often... and others in the EU arena might question whether all of that is flood or EM activity, such as has been mentioned about Grand Canyon... I think it was... but in general, the interviews seem to show the way the establishment is being pushed to deal with these 'inconvenient truths'... as the Gore monster called his interpretation of it....

I know that some researchers in the electric/plasma universe field suggest an electrical nature to some of the features on earth. I think in some cases there might indeed be something to it, in regards to earth structures, but at least the cases Randall presents in the last video above, are pretty compelling, in that they were probably likely caused by giant floods rather then electrical activity. And it seems he has studied the landscapes there pretty extensively (via geological measures) to come to that conclusion in the first place. He also says that it is pretty much accepted now by the mainstream science community, that those features were indeed formed by water/floods that were created after the end of the last ice age. What caused it and how big and in which time frame they were created is where the crux lies.

They mainstream says it was created by many small floods after the melting of the ice sheets, in which dams of water broke from the ice sheets, that created a number of smaller floods over a extended timeframe.

Randall and others suggest that at least some of those floods were much much bigger and were caused by comets hitting the ice sheets exactly at that point in time and pretty suddenly. From the presentation above, that last explanation indeed sounds more probable. I can't see how some of those structures could have been created in that time frame by small floods, Randalls suggests only one big, or several big floods, can account for those features present in the landscape and the idea is that a comet stream that hit the earth back then caused it.

From what I can see, that idea sounds pretty solid from the data we have thus far.

There is also a reason why mainstream science doesn't want to go to sudden and big cataclysms caused by comets in the recent past: It would distroy their dogma about history, human develoment and ancient cultures. It would undermine many of their pressures dogmas which they have instilled in us for so long now.

I guess in general, it could have also been a combination of electrical scarring of the landscape, when those comets flew by, in addition to the floods that were caused by them. So both phenomena do not seem to be mutually exclusive.

Some of the structures Randalls presents have a lot of signs of typical flood damage caused by water and he explains how many water would be necessary to create them and in which hight. So, he presents a scales to give the viewer a better picture on the immense flooding that occurred there. Since water behaviour can be scaled up (similar to electrical/plasma phenomena) he simply states that the features look exactly like small features caused by small amounts of water, just on much much bigger scale.

Sounds pretty compelling to me so far.

Also interesting that Randall presents some of those structures way down south in america and says that this couldn't have been created by the ice sheets suddenly melting up north, but only by incredible huge amounts of rain in a very short time (like days). Then Graham jumped in and explaines that there have been studies that suggest that comet impacts can create exactly such huge amounts of downpour when they hit aqueous places.

They also mention the flood stories that are present in pretty much every culture on earth via myths. Certainly floods in that scale could account for that global similarity in those stories.
 
Apparently Graham Hancock recently suffered a major stroke along with seizures. One has to wonder just what role all the drug use that he's been engaged in played in his health issues. He posted on his Facebook:

Having spent most of the past week at the gates of death, I thought I would take this opportunity here to bring friends, readers, allies and critics up to date with what has been happening to me.

The background is that I suffered a major seizure with sustained loss of consciousness while travelling and researching in the US in May (the new non-fiction book I am working on is focused on ancient North America).

I was stabilized in the ER in Farmington New Mexico, diagnosed with atrial fibrillation of my heart, and discharged the following day on anti-coagulants to prevent a possible recurrence of what was diagnosed as a transient ischaemic attack -- in other words a "mini stroke". I suffered some loss of memory of events in the weeks before the seizure but otherwise, mercifully, no obvious neurological damage visible on the scans. The medical staff at Farmington were absolutely brilliant. I have little doubt that their rapid intervention saved my life.

However, although I do indeed have atrial fibrillation which can indeed cause strokes (the blood pools and clots in the heart), it turned out that the diagnosis I had been given was completely wrong. This was discovered in the early hours of Monday, 14 August, when I suffered further, far more severe grand mal seizures here at my home in Bath, UK. Again I was rushed to the ER and then to the intensive care ward. Again the medical staff, now at the Royal United Hospital (RUH) in Bath, were completely brilliant, caring and engaged with my case far above and beyond the call of duty. Again their intervention saved my life.

This time the seizures were multiple and recurrent and my beloved wife Santha was taken aside by the neurologist who advised her to prepare herself for my death or, if by chance I survived that I would be so badly brain damaged that I would effectively be a "vegetable". They put me in an induced coma, intubated on a ventilator for 48 hours. Eventually they were able to withdraw the tube and start me breathing for myself again. It was Wednesday 16 August, late afternoon, when I began to return to some form of consciousness baffled to see that Sean and Shanti, two of my grown-up children, had flown from Los Angeles and New York to be with Santha at my bedside together with Leila and Gabrielle, two more of our grown-up children who live in London. For quite some time I couldn't understand what had happened, why I had a catheter in my bladder, why my brain was so foggy.

Little by little consciousness increased. I was moved to the neurology ward and on Thursday night, 17 August, much to my relief, the catheter was taken out. All day Friday 18th I remained in the neurology ward, very wobbly but able to totter to the toilet with the aid of a stick. By Friday night I was feeling much better. Finally, Saturday, I was discharged and came home.

Tests carried out established pretty clearly (although there is still some mystery over what exactly is going on) that the seizures were not caused by blood clots deriving from my atrial fibrillation, but rather by long-term over-use of a migraine medication called sumatriptan, delivered by injection; I was taking up to a dozen of these shots a month and have been doing so for more than 20 years. Turns out having migraine is itself a risk-factor for epilepsy, and research has established a link between triptans (especially when over-used) and seizures.

It's almost certain that it was the sumatriptan that had brought me to death's door and it is now obvious that I must simply suffer the hideous and mind-numbing pain of my migraines or end up dead or a vegetable. Meanwhile I have been prescribed massive daily doses of the anti-seizure medication Keppra (Levetiracetam Milpharm) and told that I must stay on this for at least a year. I'm forbidden to drive but otherwise should be pretty functional.

The 48 hours of induced coma, though utterly harrowing for Santha, for our children and for myself were, to say the least, interesting. All kinds of questions arise. Where was "I" during these missing 48 hours? I do remember the ventilator tube being stuffed down my throat and the powerful sense that I was being invaded and asphyxiated. Are the other confused, haunting recollections that come to me from time to time memories of near-death experiences? Of actually being dead?

As I have made public in a few of my presentations I had a previous near-death experience, 50 years ago at age 17, caused by a massive electric shock. I remember looking down at myself from near the ceiling before abruptly returning to my body. My migraines started within a month of that shock and have continued ever since. One thing I know for sure now, if I had not fully grasped it before, is that the borderline between life and death is poignantly thin, fragile and permeable. We feel firmly fixed in our lives but any of us may cross over at any time. Sometimes we come back. Sometimes we don't.

I want to put on record here my deep gratitude towards the ambulance staff and towards the medical and nursing staff in the emergency department, intensive care and neurology wards at the RUH, Bath, for the incredible level of care they extended to me and for their dogged determination not to give up on me, even when things looked very bad, but to keep trying everything that could possibly bring me back. I repeat also my thanks and appreciation towards their colleagues in Farmington New Mexico whose care for me in May was also of the absolutely highest standard.

And now… here I am! A bit wobbly to be sure, but very much in the land of the living and filled with renewed creative energy and ideas that I hope the universe will allow me to bring to fruition in my forthcoming America book.

Strangely it is as though a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. A darkness that had been hanging over me for most of this year reached its peak intensity at the time of the heated debate that Randall Carlson and I participated in with skeptic Michael Shermer and establishment geologist Marc Defant on the Joe Rogan Experience in May (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFlAFo78xoQ). The focused hatred directed at me in the comments section in the first three weeks after the debate is hardly visible in the more recent comments but, at the time, it affected me energetically in a very bad way and my intuition is that it was a contributing factor in my health breakdown.

Subsequently a researcher has looked into those early comments for me and established that a very large number of them were generated by a relatively small group of people using multiple aliases and often repeating the exact same phrases with the exact same spelling mistakes. I don’t know if this was a deliberate attempt to manipulate public opinion, or what it was, or who was behind it, but it certainly hit me hard! Hatred is a vile and terrible energy, doubly so because it damages not only those who it is focused upon but also those seduced into expressing it.

My journey to the gates of death in the past week appears, however, to have cleared the energetic miasma by which I was briefly entrapped and has renewed my strength for the struggle ahead.

We have been grievously misled about our past as a species and plunged into a state of sleepy amnesia. It is desperately important that we awaken if the human family is to survive on this beautiful garden of a planet, and if we are to honour as we should the gifts of life, consciousness, joy and the opportunity to learn and to love, to grow and to develop, that the universe so generously and unhesitatingly bestows upon us.

Graham Hancock 22 August 2017
 
I'm sad to hear that. Im also thinking that his drug thing might be a major contributer and the direction in general where he is going with his work. Generally, I would say that what has happened should probably be a major wake up call for him. Although from his statement, it doesn't sound like he understood the call. I hope I'm wrong though!

He says:

It's almost certain that it was the sumatriptan that had brought me to death's door and it is now obvious that I must simply suffer the hideous and mind-numbing pain of my migraines or end up dead or a vegetable.

Well I don't think that this necessarily has to be the case, considering the major improvements one can archive with another way to eat, as just one example. I'm wondering if part of the reason why he seems to smoke pot regularly is those migraines?
 
I've almost finished reading Graham latest book "America Before" mentioned in the last post above. I think with some weeding out and critical thinking on what he is writing, especially given the background covered in this thread (see posts before, especially from Laura) about his idea of "spiritualism" and so forth, it covers a number of pretty interesting findings and ideas if you can read somewhat between the lines and also know that he has a pretty strong bias to deify past happenings, cultures and events etc. I think his cozy imaginings about the past, especially in regard to "spirituality" and drugs like "Ayahuasca" that "might have helped this lost civilization to achieve great things", might still be the main thing that makes this misleading, especially for people who search for a spiritual path and the truth.

And this might in fact be one of the reasons he can write what he is writing. This wishful "there is free lunch" thinking of Graham in regards to "spirituality" by "using medicine herbs" and how this would "solve" the problems in the world "if only more people experience such states, especially politicians" is also perfectly reflected again in the interview above with Joe Rogan, who himself is famously on the same boat in that regard, as ever more people seem to be, thanks to Joe, Graham and people like them. Sadly, Graham doesn't seem to have noticed the signs that were banging on his head a couple of years ago, when he almost died twice. Instead, he is more firmly in the "drugs will safe me and humanity" paradigm than ever, greatly helped by people like Rogan, who, as becomes apparent in the interview, tempted him again to smoke weed after three years of stopping it.

When it comes down to the actual evidence and ideas presented in the book, stripped off from Grahams assumptions and musings, it is a pretty interesting read, as always.

I'll try to write a synopsis of the book later on, but here are just a couple of impressions worth noting for now from what I've read:

- Basically he starts of where he left with "Magicians of the Gods", since a lot more evidence has come out since then about the cataclysm that wrecked earth about 12.800 years ago and new astounding findings in the americas

- He makes the case that America might have been at the epicenter of the cataclysm and that a lost civilization was wiped out there bringing to the foreground what actually still existed in the americas when the first Europeans arrived in the sense of population size in the millions, sophisticated huge cities, buildings and earth works, by the thousands.

- He makes the case that america was probably populated far longer by humans then imagined, drawing on past arrogant dogmas of archeologists, and also on latest archeological evidence that might suggest that humans might have been in america even up to 130,000 years ago and interestingly DNA evidence.

- Although he doesn't sate it directly, he seems to suggest that the civilization Plato talked about as "Atlantis" might have had is center in America or thereabouts

- He brings up a very intriguing DNA mystery in the Amazon which baffles scientist and kind of doesn't make any sense with the "humans came from the Land bridge through the ice corridor to America"

- He draws parallels to the myths and legends of the Americas and its inhabitants to the that of ancient egypt, suggesting that both might have had a common source in a lost civilization that might have existed before the cataclysm
 
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I listened to the podcast today and he talks a lot about the Amazon which reminded me of a documentary mentioned here: Amazon's 'unnatural history': Documentary suggests forest once widely populated.
The link in the thread no longer works and the best i could find from a quick search was this playlist - although one of the most interesting sections is missing due to "BBC copyright".

I watched the documentary when it was first posted in the thread back in 2014 and i remember being pretty taken aback because it overturned all my previous notions about the Amazon plus there was some good footage of the geo-glyphs and so on. And so having listened to the interview, a few of us decided to watch the documentary this evening.

Since i haven't read his new book, i'll just speak to some of the points raised in the interview and those that coincide with the documentary.

Probably because i was brought up with the idea that the Amazon was 'virgin' land and had never really experienced much impact from human activity, it was fascinating to learn that within the last 600 years (but for at least the last 2000) there is strong evidence for an extremely large and organized civilization having lived there. This became particularly apparent in the deforested areas where geoglyphs can be seen all over the place, especially from the air, but there's even evidence, as Hancock mentions, in the unusual predominance of some trees (brazil nut and the ice cream bean - who can blame them :lol:).

It was also surprising to learn that because of the climate and other conditions, Amazon soil isn't actually that fertile. It can support 2-3 growing seasons at most, and some of the current tribes get around this by simply moving on to fresh land and starting over again. However some tribes seem to have retained (or maybe relearned) the technique of how to cultivate 'terre preta' which, if i remember correctly, also has some special properties whereby it can even confer increased fertility, due to its unique make up, to any soil. In the documentary one tribe apparently still create their own (although his description sounded more like simple composting). Hancock talks about some special technique where the vegetation is burnt but isn't aflame and doesn't get very hot, instead it smoulders. Finding a way to make this stuff could be critical in our troubled times...

Another idea he mentions is that the origin story of one tribe is that their ancestors were brought to the Amazon by a group of "supernaturals" for some settlement mission, gifted certain knowledge (like hallucinogens) and then they left. I thought this was interesting in how it correlated with some things the C's had said about races being placed in areas particularly suited to their make up. There's also the issue of there being some DNA connection with people from the Amazon and those in Papua New Guinea and others in the Amazon to Native Australians.

The question of what happened to this civilisation came up after watching the documentary. Apparently it is accepted by mainstream researchers that millions of people could have lived in the region, and that habitation could have spanned at least 1,500 years. This massive, interconnected and relatively sophisticated civilisation is supported by the records of a Portugese explorer who, being one of the first Europeans to explore the Amazon river in the 1540's, reported seeing great and thriving cities. However, later explorers found just forest. So what happened? Some archaeologists speculate small pox brought over from Europe wiped them out. But I wonder whether, since this time is coincident with the Little Ice Age, whether there weren't other contributing factors. After all, Europe has been wiped out by by weather shifts and plagues (added: corruption, and the subsequent societal breakdown) before, as have other civilisations in the America's that couldn't have been blamed on European contact, so perhaps something like that occurred here too? I don't know, but that was what came to mind.

It's notable that in the interview they discuss these hallucinogens, how they were a 'gift from the gods', as a way to achieve other states of consciousness. When asked whether there were other ways of doing so, he talks about fire gazing and drumming, and he does seem to acknowledge that perhaps some people don't need any of those things, although he skips over it quite quickly, which i think is rather telling. Perhaps he accepts that it is possible but, for him, he wants to do it anyway and doesn't want to wait till he can do it without them...

Anyway, while, as has been mentioned, Hancock has his blind spots and doesn't have the whole banana, i would recommend the interview for a good overview on the topic, as well as the documentary for the visuals of the geoglyphs, maps of the sites and so on. I think i'll get round to reading the book soon too.
 
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I've read this thread and also have seen the podcasts on Joe R. but I am yet to read his books.
I have mixed fillings about him however I'm going to see his lecture next week here in Montreal. A friend of mine likes him a good deal and Hancock is going to discuss his latest book: America Before.
Don't know if you're interested in my subjective opinion after the event.
I have a strong aversion to the whole psychedelic thing and find it hard to even pay enough attention to his research when ayahuasca means so much to him.
 
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