Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock
Born	Graham Bruce Hancock (1950-08-02) 2 August 1950 Edinburgh, Scotland
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Durham University
Occupation	Author
Known for	The Sign and the Seal Fingerprints of the Gods The Message of the Sphinx Magicians of the Gods America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Spouse(s)	Santha Faiia
Website	grahamhancock.com

Graham Bruce Hancock (/ˈhænkɒk/; born 2 August 1950) is a British writer and journalist. He is known for his pseudoscientific theories involving ancient civilizations, Earth changes, stone monuments or megaliths, altered states of consciousness, ancient myths, and astronomical or astrological data from the past.

Hancock's works propose a connection with a 'mother culture' from which he believes other ancient civilizations sprang. An example of pseudohistory and pseudoarchaeology, his work has neither been peer reviewed nor published in academic journals.

Early life

Graham Bruce Hancock was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He moved with his parents to India at the age of three, where his father worked as a surgeon. Having returned to the UK, he graduated from Durham University in 1973, receiving a First Class Honours degree in sociology.

Graham Hancock is married to Santha Faiia, who is a Malaysian of Tamil origin from Penang, Malaysia, and she is also a professional photographer specializing in ancient cultures and monuments. They have six children.

Early Career and first books

As a journalist, Hancock worked for many British papers, such as The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, and The Guardian. He co-edited New Internationalist magazine from 1976 to 1979, and served as the East Africa correspondent of The Economist from 1981 to 1983. Prior to 1990 his books dealt mainly with problems of economic and social development such as poverty, hunger and the AIDS-epidemic.

Pseudohistory

Since 1990 his works have focused mainly on speculative connections he makes between various archaeological, historical, and cross-cultural phenomena.

Hancock describes himself as an "alternative historian" who argues against an intellectual elite and their "dobermans" (Hancock: "their [...] fans and chums in [...] media"). He sees hypotheses that are well supported by evidence and have withstood criticism and scientific peer review as "previously unquestioned theories" and states that his work is about presenting one side of the argument, not a balanced view - as a journalist would.

In Hancock's book Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith, co-authored with Robert Bauval, the two put forward what sociologist of religion David V. Barrett called "a version of the old Jewish-Masonic plot so beloved by ultra-right-wing conspiracy theorists." They suggest a connection between the pillars of Solomon's Temple and the Twin Towers, and between the Star of David and The Pentagon. A contemporary review of Talisman by David V. Barrett for The Independent pointed to a lack of originality as well as basic factual errors, concluding that it was "a mish-mash of badly-connected, half-argued theories". In a 2008 piece for The Telegraph referencing Talisman, Damian Thompson described Hancock and Bauval as fantasists.

Hancock's Supernatural: Meetings With the Ancient Teachers of Mankind, was published in the UK in October 2005 and in the US in 2006. In it, Hancock examines paleolithic cave art in the light of David Lewis-Williams' neuropsychological model, exploring its relation to the development of the fully modern human mind.

Hancock has presented his pseudohistoric ideas in numerous films, shows and podcasts, such as The Mysterious Origins of Man, Ancient Aliens and The Joe Rogan Experience. He also wrote and presented the pseudohistoric films Quest for the Lost Civilisation (1998) and Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age (2002).

Orion correlation theory

The outline of the Giza pyramids superimposed over a scaled and rotated photo of the stars in Orion's Belt. The validity of this match has been called into question by Hancock's critics.

Main article: Orion correlation theory

One of the many recurring themes in several of Hancock's works has been an exposition on the "Orion correlation theory" (or OCT), supported by Belgian writer Robert Bauval and then further expounded in collaborative works with Hancock, as well as in their separate publications. OCT posits that there is a correlation between the location of the three largest pyramids of the Giza pyramid complex and Orion's Belt of the constellation Orion, as intended as such by the original builders of the Giza pyramid complex.

BBC Horizon controversy

BBC Two's Horizon TV series broadcast a programme, Atlantis Reborn, on 4 November 1999 that challenged the ideas presented by Hancock. It detailed one of Hancock's claims that the arrangement of an ancient temple complex was designed to mirror astronomical features and attempted to demonstrate that the same thing could be done with perhaps equal justification using famous landmarks in New York. It also alleged that Hancock had selectively moved or ignored the locations of some of the temples to fit his own theories (see below).

Hancock claimed he was misrepresented by the programme, and he and Robert Bauval made complaints to the Broadcasting Standards Commission against the way Horizon had portrayed them and their work. Eight points were raised by Hancock, two by Bauval (one of which duplicated a complaint of Hancock's). These included the complaint that:

The programme had created the impression that he [Hancock] was an intellectual fraudster who had put forward half-baked theories and ideas in bad faith, and that he was incompetent to defend his own arguments. Adjudication: [The Commission] finds no unfairness to Mr Hancock in these matters.

The BSC dismissed all but one of the complaints. Overall, the BSC concluded that "the programme makers acted in good faith in their examination of the theories of Mr Hancock and Mr Bauval". The complaint which was upheld was that

The programme unfairly omitted one of their arguments in rebuttal of a speaker who criticised the theory of a significant correlation between the Giza pyramids and the belt stars of the constellation Orion (the "correlation theory")

which the Commission did find to be unfair. That speaker was the astronomer Edwin Krupp. Krupp argued that Bauval had fudged the maps of Orion and the Pyramids by placing them upside down in terms of stellar directionality to make the theory work. The BBC was not obligated to do more than broadcast an apology for the single point of unfairness but made a decision to modify the Orion sequence to demonstrate that the overall argument of the film remained intact.

In Atlantis Reborn Again, shown on 14 December 2000, Hancock and Bauval provided further rebuttals to Krupp and argued that the ancient Egyptians had made the Pyramids correlate with the three stars of Orion's Belt. However, the documentary as a whole continued to present serious doubts about Hancock's claims, demonstrating as an example how, by using his methods, the constellation of Leo may be 'discovered' among landmarks of modern Manhattan, concluding: "As long as you have enough points and you don't need to make every point fit, you can find virtually any pattern you want."

Consciousness and psychedelics

Hancock's book Supernatural: Meeting with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind (2005) focuses on shamanism, altered states of consciousness and prehistoric cave art.

Hancock edited the book The Divine Spark (2015) which deals with the human mind, consciousness, interspecies communication, and psychedelic drugs.

TEDx talk

Hancock gave a TEDx lecture titled "The War on Consciousness", in which he described his use of ayahuasca, an amazonian brew containing a hallucinogenic compound DMT, and argued that adults should be allowed to responsibly use it for self-improvement and spiritual growth. At the recommendation of TED's Science Board, the lecture was removed from the TEDx YouTube channel and moved to TED's main website where it "can be framed to highlight both [Hancock's] provocative ideas and the factual problems with [his] arguments".

Fiction

His first novel, Entangled: The Eater of Souls, the first in a fantasy series, was published in the UK in April 2010 and in the US in October 2010. The novel makes use of Hancock's prior research interests and as he has noted, "What was there to lose, I asked myself, when my critics already described my factual books as fiction?"

Hancock's War God trilogy is a series of epic novels about the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

Influence

In 2009, Roland Emmerich released his blockbuster disaster movie 2012, citing Fingerprints of the Gods in the credits as an inspiration for the film, stating: "I always wanted to do a biblical flood movie, but I never felt I had the hook. I first read about the Earth's Crust Displacement Theory in Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods."

Books

Miscellaneous

• Hancock, Graham (1985). Ethiopia: The Challenge of Hunger. London: V. Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-03680-X.
• Hancock, Graham; Enver Carim (1986). AIDS: The Deadly Epidemic. London: V. Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-03837-3.
• Hancock, Graham (1989). Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press. ISBN 0-87113-253-2. (review at Foundation for Economic Education)

Pseudohistory

• Hancock, Graham (1992). The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant. New York: Crown. ISBN 0-517-57813-1.
• Hancock, Graham (1995). Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN 0-517-59348-3.
• Graham, Hancock; Bauval, Robert (1996). The Message of the Sphinx: A Quest for the Hidden Legacy of Mankind. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN 0-517-70503-6. Published in the United Kingdom as: Keeper of Genesis: A Quest for the Hidden Legacy of Mankind. London: Heinemann. 1996. ISBN 0-434-00302-6.
• Hancock, Graham (1998). The Mars Mystery: A Tale of the End of Two Worlds. London: Michael Joseph. ISBN 0-7181-4314-0.
• Hancock, Graham; Santha Faiia (1998). Heaven's Mirror: Quest for the Lost Civilization. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN 0-517-70811-6.
• Hancock, Graham; Santha Faiia (2001). Fingerprints of the Gods: The Quest Continues (New Updated ed.). New York: Crown Century. ISBN 0-7126-7906-5.
• Hancock, Graham (2002). Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization. New York: Crown. ISBN 1-4000-4612-2.
• Hancock, Graham; Robert Bauval (2004). Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith. Tisbury: Element Books. ISBN 0-00-719036-0.
• Hancock, Graham (2005). Supernatural: Meeting with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind. London: Century. ISBN 1-84413-681-7.
• Hancock, Graham (2015). Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilisation. Coronet. ISBN 978-1444779677.
• Hancock, Graham (2019). America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9781250243737.

Fiction

• Hancock, Graham (2010). Entangled: The Eater of Souls. New York: The Disinformation Company. ISBN 978-1-934708-56-9.
• Hancock, Graham (2013). War God: Nights of the Witch. Coronet. ISBN 978-1-444734-37-9.
• Hancock, Graham (2014). War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent. ‎Coronet. ISBN 978-1444788372.
• Hancock, Graham (2017). War God: Night of Sorrows. Coronet. ISBN 978-1444788419.

Videos

• Michael Palin's Pole to Pole – Crossing the Line (EP 5) (1992)
• Quest for the Lost Civilization – Acorn Media (1998)
• Atlantis Reborn Again – BBC Horizon (2000)
• Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age (2002)
• Earth Pilgrims – Earth Pilgrims Inc. (2010)
• The War on Consciousness – TEDx (2013)

See also

• Archaeoastronomy
• Erich von Däniken
• Mythology

Bibliography

• Fritze, Ronald H. (2009). Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-religions. London: Reaktion Books.

External links

• Official website
• Graham Hancock at IMDb
• Broadcasting Standards Commission – Synopsis of adjudication. Horizon: Atlantis Reborn (4 November 1999)
• Horizon: Atlantis Reborn and the Broadcasting Standards Commission – The BBC's response to the Horizon programme debate
• Brass, M., nd, An analysis of the quality of Graham Hancock's "science" at the Wayback Machine (archived 4 May 2006), The Antiquity of Man Web Site.
• Brass, M., 2002, Tracing Graham Hancock's Shifting Cataclysm, Skeptical Inquirer. vol. 26, no. 4: 45–49.
• Carroll, R. T., 2009, Atlantis, The Skeptic's Dictionary website.
• Fagan, N., nd, An Answer to Graham Hancock and Analysis of Hancock's Position Statement on C-14 Dating, Papers, In the Hall of Ma’at website.
• Flemming, N., nd, Review of Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age, Papers, In the Hall of Ma’at website.