Graham Hancock

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Hancock spent his early years in India, where his father worked as a surgeon; he later went to school in the northern English city of Durham and graduated from Durham University in 1973 with First Class Honours in Sociology.⁠[1]

He wrote for British newspapers including The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent and The Guardian, was co-editor of New Internationalist magazine from 1976 to 1979, and was East Africa correspondent of The Economist from 1981 to 1983.⁠[1]

His early books include Journey Through Pakistan (1981), Under Ethiopian Skies (1983), Ethiopia: The Challenge of Hunger (1984), AIDS: The Deadly Epidemic (1986) and African Ark: Peoples of the Horn (1990).⁠[2]

In 1989 Atlantic Monthly Press published Lords of Poverty, his critique of the international aid business. The book argues that the main beneficiaries of aid are elites in recipient countries, interest groups in donor countries and the aid bureaucracy, and that the programs are beyond reform and should be abolished; reviewer David Osterfeld praised the book while noting criticism that it offers no alternative.⁠[3]

In 1992 the US publisher Crown released his The Sign and the Seal. The book recounts how he visited Axum in 1983 while commissioned by the Ethiopian government to write a coffee-table book, then pursued the whereabouts of the Ark of the Covenant, argues that the Ark is kept in Ethiopia, and describes his unsuccessful attempt to see it on returning to Axum in 1991.⁠[4]

In 1995 Crown published his 608-page Fingerprints of the Gods. In it he proposes that a highly evolved civilization was wiped out in the cataclysms that attended the retreat of the last ice sheet, that crustal displacement buried its traces and that a few survivors passed their knowledge to later civilizations, pointing to Antarctica; one review called the book breathless but intriguing.⁠[5]

On November 4, 1999, BBC2 broadcast the documentary Horizon: Atlantis Reborn, which examined his and Robert Bauval’s theories of a lost civilization; on December 8 that year he complained to the UK Broadcasting Standards Commission that the programme had treated him unfairly.⁠[6]

The Commission upheld the part of his complaint concerning the programme’s omission of his rebuttal to astronomer Ed Krupp’s criticism of the Giza–Orion correlation theory, and rejected the other parts, including those on the Angkor–Draco correlation and carbon dating.⁠[6]

He went on to publish the novel Entangled: The Eater of Souls (2010) and the War God trilogy (2013–2017), along with The Master Game (2011) and The Divine Spark (2015).⁠[2]

By his own account, he gave the talk “The War on Consciousness” at TEDx Whitechapel in London on January 12, 2013; on March 14 TED deleted it from the TEDx YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel and moved it to a discussion section of its own website. He called the move censorship and, together with Rupert Sheldrake, challenged TED to a public debate.⁠[7]

In 2015 Dunne/St. Martin’s published his 504-page Magicians of the Gods, a sequel to Fingerprints of the Gods arguing that an Atlantis-like civilization was swept away by a cataclysmic event; one review criticized it as cherry-picking dubious facts and dismissing the work of scholars.⁠[8]

In June 2017, Skeptic magazine publisher Michael Shermer questioned Magicians of the Gods in a Scientific American column, noting that the comet-impact hypothesis lacks craters of the right age and that the relevant radiocarbon dates vary widely, and arguing that inferring a lost civilization from Göbekli Tepe underestimates what hunter-gatherers could achieve.⁠[9]

His America Before became a New York Times bestseller; Visionary, published in 2022 as the definitive edition of Supernatural with a new introduction and chapters omitted from the original paperback, explores psychedelic plants and the origins of human consciousness, including his experience of drinking ayahuasca in the Amazon.⁠[10]

On November 11, 2022, the eight-episode docuseries Ancient Apocalypse, presented by Hancock, premiered globally on Netflix, following him to archaeological sites around the world to ask whether a far more advanced civilization than generally believed existed in prehistory.⁠[11]

The first season visits Gunung Padang in Indonesia, Cholula in Mexico, the megalithic temples of Malta, the Bimini rock formation, Göbekli Tepe and the underground city of Derinkuyu in Turkey, and mounds in North America.⁠[12]

On November 30, 2022, Society for American Archaeology president Daniel H. Sandweiss wrote to Netflix and the producer ITN that the host “repeatedly and vigorously dismisses archaeologists” and that the theory has a long-standing association with racist ideologies, asking them to remove documentary labels and add disclaimers that the content is unfounded.⁠[13]

University of Alberta archaeologist André Costopoulos said the claims in the series are either untestable or not very likely to be true.⁠[14]

George Washington University archaeologist Eric H. Cline said there is no proof or supporting evidence for an advanced lost Ice Age civilization, and that the series offers a flurry of questions rather than hard evidence.⁠[15]

On January 30, 2023, he responded point by point on his website to the Society for American Archaeology letter, saying he had never knowingly made false claims and that no individual archaeologist was disparaged in the series; he called the racism association “a spurious attempt to smear by association” and said he took responsibility only for his own theory.⁠[16]

In January 2023 he accepted an offer from Cardiff University archaeologist Flint Dibble to discuss his theories on The Joe RoganJoe RoganJoe Rogan is an American podcaster, stand-up comedian and UFC commentator whose long-form interview podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, launched in 2009, is among the most listened-to podcasts in the world; he hosted the NBC reality show Fear Factor, and his show’s content and political statements have repeatedly drawn controversy.Open the full entry Experience. Dibble said the show’s popularity meant academics could no longer stay silent; he argued that the lost-civilization idea strips Indigenous peoples of credit for their heritage, while saying he did not believe Hancock himself was racist.⁠[17]

On March 19, 2024, the Wiley journal Archaeological Prospection retracted a paper suggesting that Gunung Padang might be a man-made pyramid more than 25,000 years old, because the radiocarbon dates came from soil not associated with any human-made features; lead author Danny Hilman Natawidjaja called the retraction unjust. The paper had thanked Hancock for proofreading, and he had used the site to support his theory in Ancient Apocalypse.⁠[18]

On April 16, 2024, Joe Rogan hosted his debate with Flint Dibble on episode 2136; on October 11 that year he published a video rebutting Dibble’s claims point by point. He has appeared on the show several other times, including episodes 1543, 1897, 2051 and 2215.⁠[19]

In September 2024 Netflix announced that the second season, The Americas, would premiere on October 16 with actor Keanu Reeves appearing; the first season had reached the top 10 in more than 65 countries.⁠[20]

The second season runs six episodes of about 40 minutes, produced by ITN Productions, with filming in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Easter Island. Hancock said he hoped the new evidence would spark “healthy debate” in the archaeology community.⁠[21]

During production ITN had sought permits to film in Chaco Canyon and the Grand Canyon, then said neither permit would be taken up; Stewart Koyiyumptewa, the Hopi tribe’s historic preservation officer, criticized the National Park Service for not consulting the tribe, and Hancock did not respond to a request for comment.⁠[22]

He appeared on episode 449 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing a lost Ice Age civilization, Göbekli Tepe, the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, the Great Pyramid and Sphinx of Giza, the Sahara and the Amazon, and his response to critics.⁠[23]

Personal website: Public link: https://grahamhancock.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[23]

X: Public account: https://x.com/Graham__Hancock (opens in a new window)⁠[23]

YouTube: Public channel: https://youtube.com/GrahamHancockDotCom (opens in a new window)⁠[23]