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+--- Thread: Article Forgetting history (/thread-19724.html)
Forgetting history - C C - Feb 4, 2026
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/forgetting-history/#more-15154
EXCERPTS: Engaging on social media to discuss pseudoscience can be exhausting, and make one weep for humanity. [...] one very common narrative that I have seen amounts to denying history, often replacing it with a different story entirely. At the extreme the narrative is – “everything you think you know about history if wrong.” Often this is framed as – “every you have been told about history is a lie.” Why are so many people, especially young people, apparently susceptible to this narrative?
[...] Another factor driving this phenomenon is pseudoexperts, who also can use social media to get their message out. Among them are people like Graham Hancock, who presents himself as an expert in ancient history but actually is just a crank. He has plenty of factoids in his head, but has no formal training in archaeology and is the epitome of a crank – usually a smart person but with outlandish ideas and never checks his ideas with actual experts, so they slowly drift off into fantasy land. The chief feature of such cranks is a lack of proper humility, even overwhelming hubris. They casually believe that they are smarter that the world’s experts in a field, and based on nothing but their smarts can dismiss decades or even centuries of scholarship.
Followers of Hancock believe that the pyramids and other ancient artifacts were not built by the Egyptians but an older and more advanced civilization. There is zero evidence for this, however – no artifacts, no archaeological sites, no writings, no references in other texts, nothing. How does Hancock deal with this utter lack of evidence? He claims that an asteroid strike 12,000 years ago completely wiped out all evidence of their existence. How convenient. There are, of course, problems with this claim. First, the asteroid strike at the end of the last glacial period was in North America, not Africa. Second, even an asteroid strike would not scrub all evidence of an advanced civilization. He must think this civilization lived in North America, perhaps in a single city right where the asteroid struck. But they also traveled to Egypt, built the pyramids, and then came home, without leaving a single tool behind. Even a single iron or steel tool would be something, but he has nothing.
Of course, there is also a logical problem, arguing from a lack of evidence. This emerges from the logical fallacy of special pleading – making up a specific (and usually implausible) explanation to explain away inconvenient evidence or lack thereof... (MORE - details)