Culture Ancient Apocalypse is the most dangerous show on Netflix - Why has this been allowed?

Ancient Apocalypse is the most dangerous show on Netflix

A show with a truly preposterous theory is one of the streaming giant’s biggest hits – and it seems to exist solely for conspiracy theorists. Why has this been allowed?

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Ancient Apocalypse is the most dangerous show on Netflix | Television…

archived 23 Nov 2022 12:57:31 UTC

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A show with a truly preposterous theory is one of the streaming giant’s biggest hits – and it seems to exist solely for conspiracy theorists. Why has this been allowed?

Stuart Heritage

At the time of writing, Ancient Apocalypse has been comfortably sitting in Netflix’s Top 10 list for several days. This presents something of a mystery, because the show closely resembles the sort of half-baked filler documentary that one of the lesser Discovery channels would slap up at 3am between shows about plane crashes and fascist architecture. Ancient Apocalypse obviously has an audience, but who on Earth is it?

Fortunately, you don’t have to watch for long to find out. In quick succession, during the pre-show sizzle reel, we are treated to clips of the show’s host Graham Hancock being interviewed by Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan. Finally, we have an answer: Ancient Apocalypse must be a TV programme made exclusively for people who like to shout at you on Twitter.

Of course it is. These people are Hancock’s bread and butter; the “free thinkers” who, through some bizarre quirk of nature, are often more perennially outraged than anyone else on Earth. They’re drawn to Ancient Apocalypse, thanks in part to Hancock’s loud and persistent claims that his life’s work is being suppressed by Big Archaeology.

The thrust of Ancient Apocalypse is as follows: Hancock believes that an advanced ice-age civilisation – responsible for teaching humanity concepts such as maths, architecture and agriculture – was wiped out in a giant flood brought about by multiple comet strikes about 12,000 years ago. There are signs everywhere you look, he says. To prove this, he spends an entire television series looking everywhere.

Hancock travels to Malta, to Mexico, to Indonesia, and to the US, purely so he can look at remnants of old structures and insist that they prove his theory. Which isn’t to say that is all he does, of course, because a great deal of every episode is spent railing at the buttoned-up archeological institutions that fail to listen to him (because, according to them, the whole theory doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever).

The result – sadly, given it’s about an intelligent life form being exploded off the planet in a hail of cometfire – is preposterously boring. Hancock goes to a place and says: “They want you to think it’s this, but actually it’s that,” over and over again. I once got trapped at a party with a Flat Earther. It was a very similar experience to watching this.

Which isn’t to say we should dismiss Hancock’s theory out of hand, of course. Because if he’s right, and the history of humanity really is just the first five minutes of Prometheus, it would change everything we know about ourselves. But we certainly shouldn’t treat his hodgepodge of mysteries and coincidences as fact.

That’s the danger of a show like this. It whispers to the conspiracy theorist in all of us. And Hancock is such a compelling host that he’s bound to create a few more in his wake. Believing that ultra-intelligent creatures helped to build the pyramids is one thing, but where does it end? Believing that election fraud is real? Believing 9/11 was an inside job? Worse? If you were feeling particularly mean-spirited, you could suggest that Netflix knows this, and has gone out of its way to court the conspiracy theorists.

But, hey, not all conspiracy theories are bad. If you don’t like Hancock’s story about the super-intelligent advanced civilisation being wiped off the face of the planet, here’s another that might explain how Netflix gave the greenlight to Ancient Apocalypse: the platform’s senior manager of unscripted originals happens to be Hancock’s son. Honestly, what are the chances?

 

[Corette]

There's enough toxic waste in there already. We should shoot them into the sun.

Shooting things to the sun is actually really hard thing to do.
How about Uranus?

 

[Zero Day Defense]

That’s the danger of a show like this. It whispers to the conspiracy theorist in all of us. And Hancock is such a compelling host that he’s bound to create a few more in his wake. Believing that ultra-intelligent creatures helped to build the pyramids is one thing, but where does it end? Believing that election fraud is real? Believing 9/11 was an inside job? Worse?

Yeah, like believing that the product of human copulation isn't itself human because it's really short, or thinking that a woman can be trapped in a man's body and that rearranging his guts will bring the woman out.

Truly, this show is a danger to society.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Believing 9/11 was an inside job? Worse?

Considering how giddy the government got over an excuse to have a few more wars and chip away at the constitution, well...

 

[Shadfan666xxx000]

Would have still left plenty of evidence, regardless of how advanced or widespread it was.

None of those exceed 4000-5000 years old (without accounting for bullshit such as the Sphinx erosion hypothesis or Gunung Padeng being a giant pyramid).

It's not necessarily iron or metal metal that you should find: the civilization should have produced mountains of masonry, pottery, votive offerings, carvings and whatever stuff they threw out. Where there were genuine inundated settlements, things like those are often dredged from the bottom. Not to mention remnants of fortifications and irrigation systems.

Civilization took so long to emerge because human population was very low for the first few tens of thousands of years (and even went through population bottlenecks), plus an ice age not being too conducive for agriculture.

Well, we are talking about a worldwide flood mixed with asteroid impacts. Considering how most people live near water, it would make sense if most of it was washed away into the ocean.

 

[Screamer_2]

But why is it dangerous? I haven’t seen it - If it’s ancient aliens tier it’s just funny. How could such a show be the most dangerous thing in the media?
I don’t know much about Hancock but the idea of a cometary impact around 12k years ago has plenty of evidence. We know which comet and we can see where bits of it landed. That’s hardly ancient aliens tier stuff, it’s more cautious but increasing evidence for an event. Why dangerous?

As the article says, " Believing that ultra-intelligent creatures helped to build the pyramids is one thing, but where does it end? Believing that election fraud is real? Believing 9/11 was an inside job? Worse? If you were feeling particularly mean-spirited, you could suggest that Netflix knows this, and has gone out of its way to court the conspiracy theorists."

So, just listen to what you're told, don't question the official narrative or think for yourself. Even if it's completely harmless it could lead to being a Trump supporter.


Not that I believe Graham Hancock. There's no way some artifacts wouldn't have survived if there was some super-advanced civilisation.

 

[Snekposter]

One of the things that drives me crazy with "conspiracies" and I have first-hand experience of this, is the way after they are confirmed everyone suddenly starts saying "we knew that all along" and wont accept under any circumstances that they believed otherwise.

"Hey man, I think these untested COVID vaccines might have some serious side effects."
"CONSPIRACY THEORIST!"
We at the Farms all lived through that, sadly.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

As the article says, " Believing that ultra-intelligent creatures helped to build the pyramids is one thing, but where does it end? Believing that election fraud is real? Believing 9/11 was an inside job? Worse? If you were feeling particularly mean-spirited, you could suggest that Netflix knows this, and has gone out of its way to court the conspiracy theorists."

So, just listen to what you're told, don't question the official narrative or think for yourself. Even if it's completely harmless it could lead to being a Trump supporter.


Not that I believe Graham Hancock. There's no way some artifacts wouldn't have survived if there was some super-advanced civilisation.

Everyone knows Stargate SG1 is a documentary. Like cmon man.

 

[Next Task]

Why dangerous?

Others have answered this well, but the journalist tells on themselves far earlier. Hancock has talked to Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, and the preview shows you that. By progressive law, that makes him an alt-right Nazi-adjacent fascist who should be deplatformed immediately.

Just like the chosen 'outlandish conspiracies' used as an example, this has nothing to do with what he has to say, it's that he shouldn't be allowed to say anything at all. He's not 'one of us', he associates with 'undesireables', how dare my Netflix safe space allow this man to speak?

This is a filler article that any pushback to will have the author complaining that their little opinion piece on a stupid TV show has gotten the crazies after them, but that downplays the authoritarian, condescending asshole he outs himself as being, very clearly, in just a few words. Also not helping his argument is that one of the lessons of Current Year is yesterday's evil conspiracy theory is today's proven fact, including lies surrounding covid, Hunter Biden's laptop, every hoax hate crime and anything questioning the physical and mental issues surrounding trans people. You're meant to believe these things until they can't hide the truth anymore, no matter how obvious the truth is. Doing otherwise is ontologically evil - or makes people like the guy who wrote this article uncomfortable, which to people like him is the exact same thing.

 

[Ser Prize]

I’m honestly not sure that we would find much more and I’m not convinced it was worldwide. By advanced society, I do think they mean cellphones (although I’ve not seen the series) , they mean Bronze Age level. And there are quite a few megalithic structures that are of ages that are disputed. Some of the structures around the pyramids for example are queried in age. The sphinx is too and I think the serapeum is as well. Ness of Brodgar? OOOOLLLD. Plus there’s that place in Indonesia, what’s it called (looks it up) gunung padeng:

A Scientist Claims The World's Oldest Pyramid Is Hidden in an Indonesian Mountain

When Dutch colonists became the first Europeans to discover Gunung (Mount) Padang in the early 20th century, they must have been awestruck by the sheer scale of their ancient stone surroundings.

www.sciencealert.com

We certainly wouldn’t find iron, that lasts a few hundred years in the ground. What would we find if there’s been largely coastal civilisations who got inundated? There’s a few places off India that are drowned as well…
I just think it’s very interesting. We’ve been an anatomically modern species for several hundred thousand years. We only just got going in the last eight or so? Nah. I can quite believe we’ve got to Bronze Age levels and been knocked back a couple of times.
Have you ever been to skara brae? If you’re ever in Orkney, do. It’s the oddest feeling to stand in someone’s home that’s older than the pyramids and think ‘yeah I’d lay it out like this, nice beds for the kids, little stone dresser for possessions and stuff.’ It’s so completely modern, and yet it’s five thousand years old.

Humans haven't fundamentally changed all that much as a species, frankly. Our teeth still haven't gotten used to agriculture and we've been doing that for a long, looooong time. So it's not surprising when you see some proto-european mud house in ancient turkey and think "Yeah this is nice, I could live here".
That said I could totally see something as late as late medieval tech in our distant past. Some of the stone work we've uncovered with ancient carbon dating is immaculate.

People ostensibly living in the greatest age of enlightenment humanity's ever known, where more people can get more information on more things with less effort than in any other point in history, where you can literally learn the secrets of life over the breakfast table, and those same people are running around calling knowledge outside a narrow and dogmatically-policed selection "dangerous" - I weep.

Yeah, all the knowledge didn't lead to a smarter people; it just lead to more entrenched institutions. It's really depressing.

 

[Otterly]

Just to mention the sheer scale of the destruction we are talking about as well. This isn’t a big flood that leaves pottery and middens intact - we are talking about kilometre sized bits of landscape kicked up and splashing down elsewhere. Nothing whatsoever would be left, apart from a large hole in the ground, and maybe a few people who’d been elsewhere looking aghast at the hole where their settlement and the landscape round it was.
And there IS some evidence for this kind of thing happening. Here’s one (probably a smaller one) in the americas which took out the Hopewell culture:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05758-y That took out a whole culture. We do also find whole cultures still - what about those mittani or whatever they’re called in Iran who made king tut’s meteor-iron dagger? Advanced Bronze Age type, almost nothing known about them. There must be so many like that - a city state even is easy to miss.
And @Crex Crex what you say about bottlenecking is true, and a cometary impact does indeed seem to have been perhaps causative for such an event in the americas. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0706977104
There’s also evidence for the same or similar event over in Europe https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00531-022-02243-9
I think in a way arguing over what kind of culture was around isn’t the point. It’s highly unlikely we will ever know that. Maybe it’s how the Atlantis myths started? Maybe is was people living as hunter gatherers in tents. Who knows. What I think IS emerging is that about 12k years ago, something, perhaps comet Encke, broke up and bits of it hit earth - amd that caused the younger dryas (there’s also evidence from the Hiawatha crater in Greenland and burn evidence in Venezuela- whatever it was was big.)
The earliest mentions of Atlantis are (I think) Plato talking about Solon’s visit to Egypt. So even at that point in history the concept, the idea, culturally, of much older lost civilisations was there. The actual truth of it I don’t think we will ever know, but I can well believe a pre younger dryas island out by the Azores or wherever, inundated fast and utterly destroyed with just a few survivors, and the same catastrophe befalling others.’
Then you get to the megaliths and the astronomy. Obsessed, these people were. The idea it was for the harvests I just don’t buy that. You know when it’s late spring and hasn’t been some frost for a bit to plant. You don’t need that degree of precision for agriculture. You go off what the weathers like and what’s migrating around you. To go purely in date in Northern Europe is disastrous as well becasue say late may can be warm or it can be frosty, depending on the year. Date is pointless, it’s conditions you go on. But knowing the two times a year you go back through those comet fragments now that IS date based. I do t know of anyone’s looked at megaliths in the context of the Taurids but it would be fun to look.
That was long. Anyway, I haven’t seen the series but I might have a look.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

This dude's been promoting silly shit for decades now. He's funny to laugh at and apparently a good entertainer, but I guess just promoting this makes him EVIL or some nonsense. Like who gives a fuck? Thinking it's all because of comets or aliens isn't going to affect anything whatsoever.

This is sillier than the people who say Egyptian tombs have evidence of astronauts and helicopters.

Then you get to the megaliths and the astronomy. Obsessed, these people were. The idea it was for the harvests I just don’t buy that. You know when it’s late spring and hasn’t been some frost for a bit to plant. You don’t need that degree of precision for agriculture. You go off what the weathers like and what’s migrating around you. To go purely in date in Northern Europe is disastrous as well becasue say late may can be warm or it can be frosty, depending on the year. Date is pointless, it’s conditions you go on. But knowing the two times a year you go back through those comet fragments now that IS date based. I do t know of anyone’s looked at megaliths in the context of the Taurids but it would be fun to look.

You absolutely need the degree of precision for agriculture when the slightest bit of failure means you'll be dead or starving come next spring. It's also very nice to have when your religion is sky worship/sun worship, that's why all the priests and shamans watched the sunrises.

What doesn't make the slightest lick of sense is why anyone thousands of years later would give a fuck about some disaster thousands of years ago to build megaliths. Primitive cultures didn't think that way. Anything further back than 150-200 years (i.e. older than anyone the oldest man in their tribe alive would've known) was just a bunch of hazy myth, that's why the Sumerians thought their first kings lived for 50,000 years.

 

[teriyakiburns]

And there IS some evidence for this kind of thing happening. Here’s one (probably a smaller one) in the americas which took out the Hopewell culture:

There's also the Clovis culture, the destruction of which predates the arrival of native Americans in North America. There are Clovis tools and artefacts, then a layer of soot accompanied by megafauna extinction, then nothing for centuries until evidence of subsequent migrations appears.

 

[Kel1 shi1]

You absolutely need the degree of precision for agriculture when the slightest bit of failure means you'll be dead or starving come next spring.

"There's still snow on the ground the seeds will rot"

"Shut up, sun god stone calendar says plant now!"

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

You absolutely need the degree of precision for agriculture when the slightest bit of failure means you'll be dead or starving come next spring.

Less on dates, more on previous weather patterns and current weather patterns weighed against previous year as well as observation of natural vegetation and animals.

Source: Grew up on a farm.

 

[thx1138]

Better not tell this guy about In Search Of back in the 70s or he'll have a fainting spell.

 

[Sperghetti]

One of my other major hobbies is paranormal/conspiracy stuff (goes great with lolcow watching), so I’m fairly used to self-proclaimed skeptics and people in academia getting weirdly defensive and enraged when anyone starts claiming that something is “off” and doesn’t really fit into the existing paradigm. Hell, that dates back to the days of Charles Fort.

But there’s a definite modern trend of people a-logging anything remotely alternative, which I think spawned from the creationism debates in the 00’s. It’s like after that, the former “euphoric atheist” types had to keep finding groups of fringe weirdos to crusade against (anti-vaxers, flat earthers, homeopathy, MLM scams, etc.), and act as if their views are shared by the majority of people and pose a major threat to Life As We Know It. (Their fixation on flat earthers was particularly bizarre to me, as the Flat Earth Society has been around since the 1950’s, and everyone knows it’s crazy.)

Graham Hancock has been on this since the 90’s, and theories about lost, advanced civilizations are by no means new. At this point, I fully expect to see a modern freak out about how some people thought Paul McCartney died in the 60's, or that some people think JFK was offed by the CIA.

 

[Ita Mori]

Hancock goes to a place and says: “They want you to think it’s this, but actually it’s that,” over and over again.

ACKSHUALLY is bad when anyone who doesn't eat & drink soy does it!!!

 

[Klaptrap]

are often more perennially outraged than anyone else on Earth.

Journos live the pointing Spiderman meme so hard

 

[Overly Serious]

A small observation someone made on the farms a while back that I found interesting. Bronze was the recyclable material of its day. Which makes a lot of sense. When you've mined this stuff, refined this stuff that's a lot of effort. So if you need a sword you're going to melt down something you don't need 9/10 times. They made this comment in relation to that weird clock thing that was found and why we've only found one of them. It's not like once something bronze was made it would be around forever. It would be around until someone needed the bronze for something else. One statue of Alexander and there go a hundred artifacts.

 

[Male Idiot]

Hm. I wouldn't buy super advanced.

But more advanced like middle ages, sure.

Also, stupid journos can't let us have any fun. Comets aren't a minority ehose feelings can be hurt, soygolem.