Pseudo-Archaeology

By Leo Gura - August 25, 2024

I’m fascinated by pseudo-archaeology and ancient Egypt. I’ve shared videos about it in the past.

But here I want use pseudo-archaeology in a meta way to teach you some lessons about epistemology and the nature of science. In my foundational series, Deconstructing The Myth Of Science, I pointed out how science doesn’t function the way that laymen and even professional scientists assume. I pointed out that there is no such thing as a canonical “scientific method”. I pointed out that it is impossible to make a distinction between science and pseudo-science. But those points were all abstract. Now I want to show you a real-world example of how everything I talked about in that series plays out in real life because, of course, all of my philosophy applies to and predicts the real world. If you learned the lessons above you should be able to predict the epistemic and methodological traps that scientists’ minds fall into.

The following is a 4-hr long scientific debate that took place on the Joe Rogan podcast on the topic of what counts as valid archaeology. It’s a debate between professional archaeologist Flint Dibble and the popular pseudo-archaeologist Graham Hancock. They spend 4 hrs arguing over which of them is doing proper archaeology.

As you watch this, focus on seeing the meta-scientific issues and epistemology under-girding their debate, not the content of their archaeological claims. In this case we don’t care whether Hancock’s lost Atlantis exists or not, we care about understanding the trickeries of defining valid science. This is essentially a debate between orthodox science (Dibble) and unorthodox science (Hancock). Each claims to be superior to the other. But who is right? Rather than taking a side, I want you to see that there isn’t a right answer here because there is in fact no such thing as “scientific method”. Scientific method is a myth, a human invention which can be changed at any time in order to get a better handle on phenomena. But of course, there is no guarantee that your new version of the method will lead to truth, it could lead to self-deception and falsehood. But also, there is no guarantee that the old version of the method will lead to truth either!

What is interesting about this debate is that it shows how science really works, with serious scientists accusing others of racism, sexism, charlatanry, bullying, ridicule, slander, etc. in an effort to discredit their work. And it shows how much science is a cultural construction, a marketing game, not merely a presentation of truth or facts. Just the fact that this science debate is taking place in a pop-culture non-academic arena like Joe Rogan is an important point, because it shows that science isn’t just a factual matter, it’s a marketing matter. This example illustrates the hairiness of science.

Personally, my opinion is that Graham Hancock is doing sloppy and rather irresponsible archaeology/science by jumping excessively to conclusions and seeing things he wants to see. Ordinarily this would get Hancock dismissed and marginalized as a pseudo-scientific crackpot and charlatan — which he is often accused of being. However, the lesson I want you to learn here is that this orthodox scientific perspective is actually wrong, but not because I believe Hancock’s lost Atlantis actually exists. It’s wrong on meta-scientific grounds. It’s wrong to dismiss Hancock as being unscientific because in fact Hancock is engage in science, he’s just doing it in an unorthodox and non-academic way. But the key is to realize that no one has a monopoly on science or archaeology. When Hancock goes out and scuba dives to look at ancient underwater ruins or geological formations and reasons about them, he IS doing valid science. Of course that doesn’t mean his conclusions will ultimately be valid, but scuba diving around the world to look for Atlantis IS absolutely valid science! This is what people who haven’t watched my series on Deconstructing The Myth Of Science misunderstand.

Science can be done in many different ways and it is never clear which ways will yield new discoveries. It is certainly possible that you could go scuba diving and discover Atlantis. And in fact, if Atlantis does exist, this would be one of the best ways to find it.

Notice how serious scientists tend to dismiss unorthodox science by calling it words like pseudo-science or pseudo-archaeology. Understand why this is an epistemic mistake, such that Flint Dibble could be completely right about all the facts of this matter, but still wrong in his epistemic attitude towards Hancock and science at large.

Notice that while Flint Dibble might be a legit archaeologist and scientist, he does not have a deep grasp of epistemology or meta-science. Dibble is a career scientist, which means he’s good at doing orthodox science but it does not mean that he understands what science is or how scientific method evolves in meta-scientific ways. As I said in my series, there is a big difference between doing science vs understanding science itself as an epistemic system. You can be great at one and terrible at the other. And while I say that, I don’t mean that Hancock has a deep grasp of science or epistemology either. He is not rigorous in this thinking, but at least he is openminded enough to think outside the orthodox box. And when it comes to groundbreaking science, openmindedness can be more important than technical rigor.

Other points to notice and contemplate:

What counts as the difference between archaeology and pseudo-archaeology?
Is scuba diving to look for Atlantis a valid scientific method? Why or why not?
Who gets to say whether an underwater structure is a man-made ruin vs a natural rock formation? Is that an objective fact or an interpretation of one’s mind?
By what objective method can you adjudicate how and where to do legit archaeology?
Is the age of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids a scientific fact?
Is it a scientific fact that the Pyramids were tombs for Pharaohs? Even though no Pharaoh has ever been found inside a pyramid?
It is a scientific fact that just because a Pharaoh’s name is carved on a pyramid that he built that pyramid?
How much speculation, theorizing, and jumping to conclusions is allowed within legit science? For example, is it legit science to go searching for Atlantis based on the fact that it was mentioned in one of Plato’s books?
Was Heinrich Schliemann, the amateur archaeologist who discovered the lost city of Troy based on reading Homer’s Iliad, doing valid science? If not, how come he discovered something of great interest to science? And how it this different in principle from what Hancock is doing?
Is it legit science to assume or conclude that no advanced civilization could have existed 15,000 years ago even though archaeologists have not even excavated 1% of the Earth?
What is a “scientist rat”? (as opposed to a visionary scientist like Einstein)

Bonus: Personally, based on the amazingly precise stone cutting I’ve seen from ancient Egypt, I suspect that there did exist some kind of more advanced ancient peoples than we currently know. I suspect that Plato’s account of Atlantis is more likely to be real than fake. But these are just my hunches, not any kind of serious science. But I think that Hancock’s theory of a highly technologically advanced ancient global civilization is a fantasy. However, I take seriously the possibility that ancient humans had significant contact with aliens. To me this idea is not crazy at all and aligns well with reports of alien spacecraft in possession by the US government. If the government has alien spacecraft, the chances that ancient humans had significant contact with aliens is very high, and there is nothing unscientific about this theory. Don’t let orthodox scientist rats gaslight you about that.

The ultimate lesson from all this is that to do good science you must be intellectually rigorous and simultaneously extremely openminded.

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