Ancient Amazonian Sites in Jeopardy

In the southwestern Amazon, one archeologist is fighting to protect ancient sites from Brazil’s seemingly unstoppable agribusiness industry, now worth $524 billion. The carvings are proof of an ancient and sophisticated civilization that aligned its agricultural calendar with summer and winter solstices. Farmers view the land as a cash cow, and the area’s historic geometric earthworks are in the way.

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Posted on YouTube by Bloomberg Originals Sep 25, 2024

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Why Pseudoarchaeology Isn’t “Just Another View”

A British trainspotter calling himself "Sir Nigel Gresley" (@JLBKL) [a name pinched from railway history] joins the discussion about the relationship between pseudoarchaeology and professional archaeologists and urges archaeologists to treat pseudoarchaeologists better. In doing so he claims that arcaheologists allegedly forget that "evidence is interpreted and an opinion is formed which is fine but the opinion is not fact".

Treating the two manners of approaching the evidence for the past as equivalents however somewhat glosses over a crucial distinction.

Properly conducted academic archaeology is not merely one "opinion" among equals but a rigorous, evidence-based discipline that demands systematic data collection, contextual analysis, peer review, falsifiability, and the integration of vast bodies of reinforcing evidence rather than isolated anomalies.

In contrast, amateur pseudo-archaeology frequently begins with preconceived conclusions--often sensational ones-—and then cherry-picks superficial similarities ("it looks like"), ignores contradictory data, bypasses contextual scrutiny, and sidesteps the methodological safeguards that prevent confirmation bias from turning speculation into purported fact.

The difference is not just stylistic or temperamental; genuine archaeology builds cumulative, testable knowledge through disciplined inquiry, whereas pseudo-archaeology often misrepresents the record to fit a narrative, which can mislead the public and undermine efforts to uncover what actually happened. Civility is essential, but so is intellectual honesty about what constitutes reliable method versus wishful interpretation.



Gresley @JLBKL added (Mar 19 2026 10:47 AM):

[...] The situation to me is very clear. We fund universities and they fund Archaeology. Graham Hancock points to an earlier civilisation about which we know very little. An archaeologist (whose name I did not make a note of) said that he is working of what he thinks was (sic). A message and a warning which is why it was deliberately buried 12,000 years ago.

So I say IF he is right AND they knew then how to predict a global catastrophe THEN I would like that to be researched more thoroughly and funded properly.

The other proposition of simply looking for evidence that looks to confirm the established paradigm has no real importance compared to finding out something that may save lives.

So let's cut out the abuse and simply concentrate on diverting the funds, both public and private, away from the current focus and onto much more useful research.

The argument presented rests on redirecting public and private funds away from “the established paradigm” in archaeology toward investigating Graham Hancock’s hypothesis of an advanced civilisation ~12,000 years ago, destroyed by a global catastrophe, whose builders allegedly left a deliberate “message and warning” at sites such as Göbekli Tepe. This is said to be more important than current research because it “may save lives”.


this proposition ignores that after several decades of Hancock raising this issue, there is in fact stiil no credible evidence for his alleged lost Allerød Antecedent Advanced Civilisation or its apocalyptic end (nor the Spanning [Seven Sages] Civilization that would be needed to transfer its knowledge to later cultures around seven millennia later). Decades of global fieldwork, seabed mapping, ice-core records, and genetic studies have found no trace of the metallurgy, writing systems, monumental architecture, or agricultural products, let alone surpluses, that an advanced global society would leave.

The Tas Tepeler sites in SE Anatolia (such as Göbekli Tepe, maybe c. 9600–8200 BCE) built by pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers are remarkable, but show continuity with later Neolithic developments, not a technological leap from a vanished supercivilisation. Disasters preserve rather than erase evidence (Pompeii, the Storegga Slide, Laacher See). The absence of any signature of Hancock’s civilisation is not explained by “it all washed away”; it is explained by the civilisation never having existed. Hancock’s thesis, popularised in best-selling books and a Netflix series, functions as entertainment that profits from speculation while dismissing the peer-reviewed record. That is why professional archaeologists describe it as pseudoscience.

The “message and a warning” supposedly buried deliberately 12,000 years ago for future generations has no basis in the archaeological literature. At one stage it was claimed that one site, Göbekli Tepe, was intentionally backfilled, but even then the lead excavator, Klaus Schmidt, stated the reason remained unknown and probably marked the ritual closure of a part of a site of a “very strange culture”. Any infilling could have been practical or ceremonial, not prophetic. The “warning to us” narrative circulates only on YouTube, Facebook, and alternative-history forums; no peer-reviewed paper attributes the backfill to a deliberate time-capsule for 21st-century humanity. Past ritual cannot be turned into future prophecy without evidence.

The trainspotter ignores the fact that there is zero firm evidence that these ancients actually “knew how to predict a global catastrophe” - like a comet strike, a volcano or whatever. No ancient society left records of scientific forecasting of ice-age endings, sea-level rise, or cosmic impacts using instruments or mathematics beyond what the archaeological record shows. Prediction requires repeatable, testable methods; myths record, they do not forecast with the precision needed to “save lives” today.

Also I find frustrating the repeated surfacing of the Hancock-originating stereotype based on a few examples of anecdote that all all archaeology worldwide merely works only to confirm an “established paradigm” and therefore has “no real importance”. Funding is awarded competitively on the basis of testable hypotheses, not dogma. The notion that the entire global discipline (from Chinese state archaeology to university digs in Peru) is a closed shop ignoring big questions is a rhetorical device, not a description of practice.

Sustained misrepresentation of this type does explain professional frustration with pseudoarchaeologists. When commentators who have conducted no fieldwork, read no primary literature or excavation reports, have a totally inadequate grasp of the cut-and-thrust of moder theory and methodology, people who have engaged only with the cheap and loaded rhetoric of commercial books accuse an entire discipline of conspiracy or laziness, the response is predictable. Archaeologists spend years in trenches, labs, and peer review; they publish open data and debate fiercely among themselves. To be told their life’s work is worthless “paradigm confirmation” while a Netflix theory is elevated as urgent public safety research feels like deliberate abuse. That does justify pushback when basic facts are ignored.

Research priorities are not decided by popular YouTube votes or personal hunches; public money requires evidence, falsifiability, and expert evaluation. Diverting funds to untestable “IF he is right” scenarios would violate the very principles that produced reliable knowledge about sites like Göbekli Tepe in the first place. Real threats such as climate change, pandemics, industrial pollution are already researched with rigorous methods, public warnings are issued by academics, reports are published, evidence displayed transparently, and then politicians for decades ignore and deny the validity of these warnings. Every time. We may get a ban on the use of a particular type of plastic bag or drinking straws, or the shape of plastic bottle tops is chaged, but in general the scientists can say what they say until they are blue in the face but we march on into self-destruction.

In short, the proposal fails on every factual count: funding continues, no lost civilisation exists, the quest for truth is best served by evidence, not by rebranding book-selling speculation as life-saving research.

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QUEST For Ancient Civilizations

Apparently the last 'Sedona' event was not as repetetive enough of the same old tired tropes to prevent the organizers trying to host another one... 

Sedona, Arizona May 1–3, 2026.

Quest for Ancient Civilizations is a three-day gathering of researchers, explorers, and curious people investigating the deeper story of humanity's past.
The ancient world is full of stuff that doesn't add up. How were the stones at Puma Punku cut with that kind of precision? Why do more than 400 cultures have a flood story? How is Göbekli Tepe 12,000 years old and more sophisticated than structures built 7,000 years after it? These are genuinely good questions, and they deserve a space where they're taken seriously, not dismissed, but not oversold either. Just explored, honestly, with good people. There are researchers who've spent decades investigating this, in the field, at the sites, with the evidence in their hands. And there are a lot of people who've been following their work, watching the videos, reading the books, and carrying this curiosity mostly in private because there isn't always a great place to talk about it. Quest puts those people in the same room.

The Pre-Babel Age and the Vedas

"This is Dr Irving Finkel, a renowned Assyriologist at the British Museum. He suggests writing may have existed thousands of years earlier than we’re taught. "

Walter Cruttenden (@WalterCrut)(* 2/2/26
It may be true, but if the pre-Babel age was really an age of telepathy and clairvoyance (as suggested by the Vedic saints and sages) then writing which formally starts about 3100BC may be a devolution rather than an evolution of consciousness. You only need to spell things out for people when they don’t already know. Still in an age of telepathy some symbols may have been helpful to some people.

Oh gosh. While the speculative notion of a "Golden Age" of telepathy is a poetic narrative, it relies on an unfalsifiable premise. Where is the evidence of this? To suggest that writing represents a "devolution" of consciousness is in my view a misinterpretation. In reality, the transition from oral or hypothetical "intuitive" cultures to literate ones was not a retreat from power, but a massive cognitive expansion. Writing served as the first "external hard drive," allowing for the storage of complex data—astronomical cycles, legal codes, and mathematics—that far exceeded the capacity of any single biological brain or even orally transmitted (and transmutable) mythological cycle. It looks a bit like Cruttenden has been influenced by the Hamlet's Mill crowd (cf Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechen 2015).
Furthermore, treating the Vedic Siddhis or the Tower of Babel as literal historical markers is a category error. These traditions function as profound spiritual metaphors or allegories for linguistic diversity, not as chronological records of a lost psychic baseline.

By framing literacy as a symptom of ignorance, the American author overlooks its true function: temporal transcendence. Writing did not emerge because we "forgot" how to communicate; it emerged because we finally had something to say to the future. Duh.

And no, a few symbols scratched on a stone do not equal writing, except perhaps to the same extent as a three-year old's drawing of blobs with a smile and two vertical lines below (symbolising in their opinion [my/a] granddad) is a pictograph of the word.

* self describes as "Author entrepreneur focused on precession and cycles of consciousness. Rancho Mirage", CA" (USA). BinaryResearchInstitute.org. Author of "Lost Star of Myth and Time" (2005) and "The Great Year" (2003).

More "Lies" About Ancient Ruins (Which are not what they seem to be)

 

NewsNation "journalist" Ross Coulthart says he went into the woods and found a portal to another dimension that's being guarded by the US military.

He, of course, provides no evidence of this.pic.twitter.com/JJmIfQHDv0

— Steven Greenstreet 🐷 (@MiddleOfMayhem) March 1, 2026

The Fidesz Era's False MagyarCentric Prehistory

                 .       hot water                              

Hungarian author TTom (@Pipogya4277) who describes themself as a "A good old seeker of truth" reckons:

"Old Europe was born from its own internal, ancient energies and became a force for creating culture and civilization. One of Europe's spiritual and technological centers was the Carpathian Basin, which served as a refuge during the Ice Age thanks to its geothermal heating. Many forward-looking inventions originated here, including, most likely, the development of writing, even during the time of the hybridization of Neanderthals and modern humans. Linguists would be well advised to study Hungarian runic writing in greater depth and compare it with other linear and runic scripts, as they would find the source of the first human writing system".

Hardly. The oldest undisputed archaeological finds of Hungarian runes (known as Szekler-Hungarian Rovás) are medieval and post-medieval/ethnographic in date.

                European man?      

Furthermore the writer is invested in arguments based on "ancient genetics":

"the oldest I1 hg was found in the Carpathian Basin, in Transdanubia [my hyperlink, no reference given in original - PMB] [...] It originates from the Neolithic "Lengyeli" culture. These findings are key evidence of the early spread of the haplogroup from Central Europe. According to geneticists [no reference given - PMB], "I" hg is the only one that originated in Europe during the Stone Age. A significant proportion of today's Hungarian population can be traced back to I1+I2a hg. So the so-called "Germanic" gene probably originated in the Carpathian Basin and spread throughout Europe after the ice melted."

Hmmmm. There's more:

"The Hungarians have been indigenous to the Carpathian Basin since at least the Neolithic Age, one of the oldest peoples in Europe, based on genetics (I2a+R1a+R1b=75%), anthropology, archaeological continuity, cemetery data (european skulls), and folk culture research. The Hungarian language and runic script emerged as a result of this long, local development.

The "Conquest" Elite tribes (AD 895) - who were a half European half Asian mixed group - made up only 15% of the total local, indigenous european proto-Hungarian population at the time. The Asian components have since been completely assimilated, with about 1% detectable today. This "Conquest" (or more likely a merging) event is only one episode in the history of the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin. Although one of the most important in the consolidation and strengthening of the sacred Hungarian-Scythian rule and statehood in the Carpathian Basin.

Hungarians have a dual origin: the majority population is of local origin (descendants of Gravettian hunters, Neolithic farmers, and Bronze Age metalworkers), the military and ruling elite are partly of Asian origin. The royal elite of the Hungarian Árpád dynasty (Turul dynasty) almost certainly has Mesopotamian roots, with the family line dating back to Nimrod."

Ufff! Hungarian ancestors in the Bible. Just like in the Middle Ages.

Where do they get this stuff from?

Anyway, if you go to their website it turns out they have written a book

A Kárpát-medencei Nyelvi Központ: A magyar nyelv ősi gyökrendszere, belső logikai teljessége, földrajzi eredete és hullámterjedése [The Linguistic Centre of the Carpathian Basin: The Ancient Root System of the Hungarian Language, Its Internal Logical Completeness, Its Geographical Origin, and Its Wave-Spread].

Unfortunately, there are no clear authoritative library or bibliography entries for this book in major bibliographic databases that I could locate. It appears to be sold as an independent / self-published e-book (PDF) on Payhip, but the author’s name is not displayed on the product page itself. The author name is not accessible from the Payhip storefront page. Because of that, no precise bibliographic citation with author, ISBN, publisher, and year could be found in standard bibliographic sources.

AI translation of the book's blurb:

"The origin of the Hungarian language has been a subject of centuries-old debate, where the opinions of poets, writers and academic dogmas clash. This book now puts an end to speculation once and for all. The author presents the revolutionary Center Hypothesis, according to which the Hungarian language has a Carpathian Basin origin, and even a central nature. Using a unique, four-phase, AI-supported logical analysis method, the work not only establishes a theory, but also proves with rigorous evidence the incredibly high-level internal logical system and world-describing ability of the Hungarian language. This modern approach confirms the two-hundred-year-old intuitive recognition of Dániel Berzsenyi and others: the Hungarian language is a Hologram of Reason.

Discover the logical system that makes the Hungarian language unique:
The Completeness of the Root System: It is revealed that a few Hungarian roots (e.g. K-R, T-R, FOG, KÉP) can form thousands of basic words, which is the secret of the language's million-strong vocabulary.
The Integrity of the System: The research that forms the basis of this book sheds light on the source nature of the Hungarian language. While in other Eurasian languages the root system is fragmented and incomplete, in Hungarian this system is complete, alive and intact, showing a maximum system of connections. The veil is lifted from the shortcomings of academic etymology, which claims that almost every Hungarian word is a foreign word!
Cultural codes: We can learn at what ancient level the Hungarian language encodes the words of the Carpathian Basin Neolithic and Metal Age civilizations, as well as the expressions of the most ancient cultural traditions (names of the cardinal directions, numbers, time system, colors, tastes).
Archaic connections: The book presents the ancient connections of the most important words of the religious world (e.g. Él, Isten) with ancient high cultures (Sumerian, Hittite), and the duality of Hungarian prehistory becomes understandable through the logic of the linguistic Plinth and Superstructure.

The Carpathian Basin Language Center Hypothesis, also confirmed by the results of related sciences (archaeology, archaeogenetics, anthropology, folk art research), places the origin of the Hungarian people and language on a new, scientifically sound basis. This book is an indispensable read for all those who want to learn about the logical beauty and national cultural significance of the Hungarian language on a systemic level.

That Inca Stonework: Fantastic Technique and Execution, but Not Really a "Mystery"

 

This is well worth your time settling down with a cup or glass of something and spending some time to not only watch, listen and absorb the film presented here but also admire the excellent video production values - so unsual in YouTube productions on such theemes. Tony Trupp (@TonyTrupp 27/2/26) introduces it:

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been collaborating with one of my favorite YouTube channels, Ancient Americas,* on a video about The Secrets of Inca Masonry, which went live just a few hours ago. He did a brilliant job with it. It’s his longest video to date, but well worth the time if you’re interested in Andean cultures and Inca architecture! The video not only shares much of the research from my recent article Masonry Techniques of the Inca’s Master Builders, but also traces the evolution of Andean stonework across millennia, with examples from the Caral-Supe, Cerro Sechín, Chavín de Huántar, Pacara, Wari, and Tiwanaku cultures.

An additional discovery he highlighted is that the Quechua term for this stonework, Caninacukpirca (Qaninakuy Pirqa), derives from a word meaning “to nibble” or “to bite.” That linguistic connection further supports multiple lines of evidence indicating that Inca masonry was primarily accomplished using hammerstones, which is consistent with the tools recovered at these sites, the tool marks preserved on the stones themselves, and early Spanish eyewitness accounts.  

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Posted on You Tube by Ancient Ameriucas 26.02.2025

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* The YouTube channel Ancient Americas ('a channel dedicated to ancient American history') focusing on the pre-Columbian history of North, South, and Mesoamerica. It began Aug 15, 2019, has 289K subscribers and produced so far 59 videos. These are characterised by their generally high production values and information content, his videos are notable for being well-researched, featuring substantive bibliographies and credited visuals. The creator is an American educator and amateur historian who identifies himself simply as Pete (or Peter) online. While he is very active on YouTube and Patreon, he has intentionally maintained a degree of privacy regarding his full legal identity, with some online communities noting that he "hides his own identity" from the public. He says he is an "average guy" living in the Midwestern United States. The author explicitly states he is not a professional archaeologist or historian, but rather a passionate amateur researcher. In addition to his YouTube channel, Pete hosts group travel tours to archaeological sites (such as Zapotec sites in Mexico) through the platform TrovaTrip, where he is listed as Peter.

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