Netflix, Apocalypses, and the Lost Civilization:
Confronting Mainstream Pseudoarchaeology

The 2022 Netflix “docuseries” Ancient Apocalypse, hosted by former journalist and author Graham Hancock, has provoked a firestorm of discussion in the press and social media. In this series, the host claims that comets destroyed an advanced civilization that existed during the Ice Age and whose survivors were the progenitors of ancient complex societies around the world. Archaeologists contend that Hancock’s claims are a form of pseudoarchaeology that misrepresent science and revive Victorian-era explanations of the past that are associated with colonialism and notions of cultural superiority. Hancock’s attack on archaeology and archaeologists has been so dismissive that it prompted an open letter to Netflix from the Society for American Archaeology, outlining the potential harm to the profession in the minds of the public and alluding to the ways this series could contribute to issues of racism and white supremacy. The series is just one recent example of the rejection of academic expertise and the promotion of conspiracy theories about scientific authority. Hancock and his supporters complain that archaeologists are practicing “wokeism,” bringing the debate squarely into current culture wars that include the rejection of liberal higher education.

About the Speaker:
John W. Hoopes received his PhD in anthropology from Harvard University. He has been a professor on the faculty of the University of Kansas since 1989. Hoopes is an archaeologist who specializes in the archaeology of Latin America with a specific focus on pre-Hispanic cultures of the Isthmo-Colombian area. His interests include the origins of ceramic technology, gold metallurgy, and complex society. Hoopes recently co-edited two books for Dumbarton Oaks with the late Colin McEwan: Pre-Columbian Art from Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks and Pre-Columbian Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador: Toward an Integrated Approach. Hoopes has had a long-term engagement with pseudoarchaeology, having assisted Prof. Stephen Williams to develop the first course ever on this topic forty years ago as a graduate student at Harvard. He was a scholar and outspoken critic of the so-called Maya Apocalypse that did not occur on December 21, 2012, having published several peer-reviewed articles, including in the book 2012: The Counterculture Apocalypse (2011) and a special 2012 issue of the journal Archaeoastronomy. His skeptical commentary was featured in the 2017 book and documentary film Lost City of the Monkey God (2021), about an archaeological project in Honduras. In 2019 Hoopes edited a thematic issue of The SAA Archaeological Record, the official magazine of the Society for American Archaeology, titled “Pseudoarchaeology, Scholarship, and Popular Interests in the Past in the Present” that provided colleagues with a context for interpreting the work of Graham Hancock. As an active contributor to Wikipedia and discussions on social media, Hoopes’ interests have included Western esoterica and the occult, psychedelics and popular culture, and proactive critiques of pseudoscience and pseudoarchaeology. For the past four years, he has taught a seminar for first-year college students titled, “How to Find a Lost City.”