It’s important for us to think about this history, Hancock adds, because we also face impending cataclysm. Before dying out completely, this civilization sent out emissaries to the corners of the world, spreading knowledge, including building techniques that can be found in use at many ancient sites, and sparking the creation of mythologies that are oddly similar the world over. An “advanced” society that existed around 12,000 years ago was extinguished when the climate changed drastically in a period scientists call the Younger Dryas. Hancock, a fascinating figure with an interesting past as a left-leaning foreign correspondent, has for decades been elaborating variations on this thinking: Humans, as he says in the docuseries, have “amnesia” about our past. His bitter disposition, I’m sure, accounts for some of the interest in this show. Graham Hancock, the journalist who hosts the series, returns again and again to his anger at this state of affairs and his status as an outsider to “mainstream archaeology,” his assessment of how terrible “mainstream archaeology” is about accepting new theories, and his insistence that there’s all this evidence out there but “mainstream archaeologists” just won’t look for it. And the consequences could be catastrophic.

The argument is essentially this: The authorities who study human prehistory are ignoring-or covering up-the true foundations of the world as we know it today.

Netflix’s new hit Ancient Apocalypse is an odd duck: a docuseries filmed in many gorgeous and historic locations (Turkey, Mexico, Indonesia, … uh, Ohio) that advances a provocative thesis aimed furiously at a single academic discipline.

Hancock full movie youtube