Not Before Time: Pyramid Scan Pseudoarchaeology Retraction From Journal of Remote Sensing

Filippo Biondi and Corrado Malanga's bonkers paper "Synthetic Aperture Radar Doppler Tomography Reveals Details of Undiscovered High-Resolution Internal Structure of the Great Pyramid of Giza" has just been retracted from the journal Remote Sensing (Remote Sens. 2022, 14, 5231. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14205231  Published: 19 October 2022). This has been ascribed to an "investigation that confirmed serious methodological flaws and statistical errors that were deemed to undermine the scientific conclusions of the article". In other words, they are going to submit the text to the external editors that will now do what should have been done four years ago, read the work carefully. 

For the record, I am one of several archaeologists who have called out the so-called Khufu Project's methods and questionable formulations repeatedly (on the retracted paper, see here: 'Filippo Biondi, and Corrado Malanga: 'Khufu's Pyramid is Full of Holes and May Have Been a Giant Vibro-Massager' Monday, 27 April 2026), but I never found the time to actually contact the journal and am not the whistleblower [the dozy editors and their peer-reviwers should not have needed one in this case, rather they should resign].*

Nicole Ciccolo walks away from her Khufu Project

* Academic Editors: Rosa Lasaponara, Ilaria Catapano, Luca Piroddi, Sebastiano D’Amico, Marilena Cozzolino, Nasser Abu Zeid, Patrizia Capizzi and Sergio Vincenzo Calcina. Note, ms was received on 30 August 2022, it was already accepted on 12 October 2022, and published a week later, 19 October 2022.

Atlantis Theories Meet Ancient DNA

There is a quite detailed article Atlantis Theories and DNA: What Paleogenetics Excludes (May 27, 2026) on the website of a company 'Explore Your DNA' that seems worthy of attention. This service is provided by Teemu Nätkinniemi, trading as G25Requests, a registered Finnish sole proprietorship business based in Vaasa, SW Finland. The article contains too many details to summarise here, but the conclusion is as follows:

"Conclusion: what paleogenetics excludes
Paleogenetics now allows several precise versions of the Atlantis hypotheses to be excluded. First, it excludes the existence of a pre-Neolithic advanced maritime Atlantic civilization that left demographically traceable descendants: no European or Mediterranean population carries an unexplained ancestral component corresponding to a pre-7000 BCE Atlantic source. Second, it excludes the identification of Tartessos as a genetically distinct civilization: the studied Tartessian individual is a normal local descendant. Third, it excludes the identification of the Minoans as an exotic population: their profile derives cleanly from documented Aegean sources. Fourth, it excludes the identification of Doggerland as a lost civilization: its inhabitants were ordinary Western hunter-gatherers. What paleogenetics cannot exclude is the allegorical interpretation of Plato (which most classical scholars have favored since Antiquity), nor the idea that the Atlantis account reflects, in distorted form, the memory of real natural events (Santorini eruption, Doggerland submersion, Storegga tsunami, decline of Tartessos) that impressed the oral sources transmitted to Plato. Paleogenetics eliminates versions of the hypothesis that assume a distinct demography; it leaves intact the purely cultural, allegorical, or symbolic versions."

Unfortunately this whole exercise has failed to identify at its outset a useful research aim. It asks, in all seriousness, the question whether the population of EUROPE came "from Atlantis". The only bodies of genetic material examined are European. So basically what they are addressing are the very anachronistic views of writers such as Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901) and Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) - questions long ago already answered by science. 

Very few later writers are claiming that Europe was colonised by Atlantis. Those that do situate that mythical fantasy-island in Europe, so there were German nationalists such as Albert Hermann (1886–1945) and Dutch-German pseudohistorian Herman Wirth (1885-1981) who linked the process of civilization of Europe with Aryan ("German) colonisers. In more modern times we only have a few devotees of hyperdiffusionism such as Paul Dunbavin ('Atlantis of the West: The Case For Britain's Drowned Megalithic Civilization' 2003), argueing that Atlantis was a large island that once existed in the Irish Sea and that a comet impact caused a pole shift that changed the Earth's axis around 3100 BC and this somehow led to the Neolithic civilization on ythe island being drowned out by rising sea levels and this led to its inhabitants colonising Europe (a sort of a reversed Hancockism). Swedish geographer Dr. Ulf Erlingsson ('Atlantis from a Geographer's Perspective: Mapping the Fairy Land' 2004) proposes that Atlantis had been located in Ireland. None of these ideas are mainstream, even in pseudo-archaeology or pseudo-history circles. So it is not cler what, or who is being "debunked" in this out-of-touch article.

The article does not address Graham Hancock’s influential "Lost Allerød antecedent Civilization" hypothesis, because it merely focuses on Bronze/Iron Age, region-specific theories rather than pre-Younger Dryas (before 10,800 BCE) narratives. To directly address Graham Hancock’s specific hypothesis, a scientific critique or article would have to pivot away from Bronze Age Mediterranean archeology and instead target his specific timelines, mechanisms, and geographic models. To address Hancock’s claims, the article would need to analyze early Palaeolithic genomes on a far wider scale than we see here.

Hancock does not usually argue that an advanced civilization mass-migrated into Europe or the Americas. Instead, he claims a few highly advanced survivors from the collapse of his postlated "Lost Allerød antecedent Civilization"  at the beginning of the Younger Dryas travelled the world to teach local hunter-gatherers agriculture, astronomy, and architecture. What is needed to examine this theory by genetic means is to show the degree of unexplained trace ancestry of 10,000–9,000 BCE populations (like those at Göbekli Tepe or early South American sites)to determine the degree that these populations are descended from known, local Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, or whether there are traces at the time of a social or cultural change of an "introgression" or "founder event" from a mysterious, technologically advanced third party. 

This needs testing for all the global hotspots Hancock highlights (such as Indonesia/Sundaland, the Amazon basin, and southeastern Anatolia). Genetic testing would need to show the degree to which, right before and during the postulated “Younger Dryas cataclysm”, there was sudden, widespread population mixing or genetic bottleneck that would indicate a global maritime network collapsing and dispersing.

Since Hancock implies that (“the idea of”) agriculture was gifted to humanity by this lost civilization after the postulated cataclysm, another approach would be through tracking the genetics of domesticated crops and animals. The paleogenomics of early domesticates (like einkorn wheat in Anatolia or maize ancestors in the Americas) needs to show to what degree the genetic wild-to-domestic transition in these plants happened gradually over thousands of years via local gathering, as opposed to the degree to which it shows a sudden, genetically engineered, or fully "pre-developed" introduction from an unknown botanical source.

Hancock has argued that his postulated “lost civilization” is today lost to sight because it flourished on landmasses that are now underwater due to post-glacial sea-level rise (like the drowned continent of Sundaland in Southeast Asia) or shifted by crustal displacement (Antarctica). A critique would need to look at the genetics of pre- and post- Younger Dryas populations living on the edges of these regions (e.g., modern and ancient genomic data from maritime Southeast Asia, Australia, and southernmost South America). This would show the degree to which these populations lack any shared, highly distinct "ghost" DNA component that would link them to a singular, central, highly developed maritime empire that sunk beneath the waves.

Biondi's "Harmonic SAR" examined and found wanting

While we were all waiting for a more digestible form of the Malaga/Biondi presentation on the Khafre Project, I came across a very interesting text here: "I tried to reproduce the viral satellite radar paper about the pyramids [https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.00811]. Here's what I found" (Simone @theotherpomp Apr 21). I do not know who the author is, but their method and conclsions seem worthy of discussion.

The critique begins by outlining Filippo Biondi's extraordinary claim that satellite radar analysis has revealed vast underground structures beneath the Giza pyramids, including shafts extending hundreds of metres underground and structures more than a kilometre deep. These claims were presented as credible because the method was also said to have successfully detected the known chambers within the Great Pyramid and the underground Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy.

The author first examines whether the published single-pass SAR method is physically capable of detecting the known chambers inside the Great Pyramid. By reconstructing the imaging geometry using real satellite parameters, they conclude that the method's vertical resolution is approximately 285 metres, far too coarse to distinguish structures such as the King's Chamber and Queen's Chamber, which lie only a few tens of metres apart. This suggests that the claimed detections are not physically plausible using the published technique.

To test this conclusion empirically, the author compares the radar response of the Great Pyramid with nearby empty desert using the same processing approach described in the paper. Across 240 experiments varying multiple parameters, the method fails to distinguish the pyramid from the surrounding landscape; indeed, the empty desert often produces stronger responses than the pyramid itself. Expanding the analysis to twenty different locations (including other monuments, urban areas, farmland, and the Nile River), produces remarkably similar results in every case.

The author then investigates why the method appears to generate underground structures everywhere. Through simulation, they show that sparse tomographic reconstructions can create convincing but entirely artificial deep structures, even when only shallow features are present in the original model. As the amount of genuine observational data increases, these apparent deep structures disappear, suggesting that they are reconstruction artefacts rather than real objects.

This explanation is then applied to the Gran Sasso laboratory, which the author argues may represent a case of identifying an expected feature within a reconstruction method that naturally generates structured responses at many depths. The critique also identifies a possible inconsistency in the original study: although the published method is described as a single-pass technique, the paper references multiple acquisitions and processing tools typically associated with multi-pass interferometric SAR analysis.

The author ultimately concludes that the published single-pass method cannot support the extraordinary claims being made for it. They suggest that any genuine detections of known structures may have resulted from a different, multi-pass workflow than the one described in the paper, while the dramatic deep structures beneath Giza are more plausibly explained as artefacts generated by an under-constrained reconstruction process.

The veil is falling: Ἢ Ἀπ’ Ὄνου Πίπτειν

Nicole Cicciolo's "ancient mysteries" fanboys are trying to build up the tension.

Filippo Biondi @Filippobiondi_1 · 4h

History is about to be rewritten forever.
In world premiere at Castel San Pietro Terme, Filippo Biondi and Corrado Malanga unveil the groundbreaking results on the Second Sphinx of Giza. What was hidden for millennia beneath the sands is emerging — a perfect symmetrical twin of the Great Sphinx, rewriting ancient history. As the ancient Greeks whispered: «Σφίγξ δὲ δίμορφος, φύλαξ τῶν μυστηρίων» — a bimorphic Sphinx, guardian of the mysteries. And «Ἐν τῷ σκότει κεῖται ἡ ἀλήθεια» — in the darkness lies the truth. Just as the Latin masters taught: «Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem» — from shadows and images into truth.
The HarmonicSAR technology has spoken. Sacred geometry does not lie. This is the millennium of space. For discreet support to the Sphinx excavations and HarmonicSAR research, contact: biopippoo@gnail.com
The veil is falling.
Watch the world premiere preview now → https://youtu.be/wH792ihvbhk

Biondi Bollocks on The/A Flood at Giza

Italian boffin Filippo Biondi says that the Great Flood, the so-called "Zep Tepi", and the Giza pyramids are all connected. He told US podcaster Joe Rogan that "seawater salt" still stuck to the walls inside the Great Pyramid proves the entire area was flooded thousands of years ago. That same salt is the evidence that ties everything together with the mythological "first times" (Zep Tepi). "Two months ago, I went for the first time to visit the pyramids, and I found salt on the wall" and he said that this is proof that the entire area was flooded, which he suggests is supported by the fact that the shafts were flooded and filled with debris. This would mean that:

the pyramids were built sometime between Zep Tepi and the Great Flood, which could push their age back dramatically. The salt on the walls is ocean salt from when the sea rushed in over 11,000 years ago and filled the shafts with debris [...]. This changes everything we thought we knew about ancient history

. It further convinces me that this guy has some kind of mental condition that requires him to come out with firm "statements of fact" for purposes of self grndisation and attracting attention.
Salt is present in limestone and desert conditions for other reasons than an otherwise undocumented marine transgression.

Neal Sendlak ( @Gnosisinformant, May 21) and I are of the same opinion:

It's hard to tell if this guy is completely out of his mind or just a complete fraud who knows there are really stupid people in the world who will buy into his crap.

Myth as History

                                             .                                             

Michael Button thinks (@MichaelButtonX )

At the end of the last Ice Age, sea levels rose by more than 120 metres. That's a drastic shift. An area of land *larger* than the United States disappeared beneath the ocean. But for the people living there, it must have felt like the world was slowly ending. Today, around 40% of humanity lives within 100 km of a coastline. Imagine London underwater. New York underwater. Shanghai underwater. If your homeland vanished beneath the ocean, what story would you tell your children? And what story would they tell theirs? Would it become a legend? A flood myth? A warning? One of the strangest possibilities in history is that some ancient myths may not be inventions at all. They may be memories.

If that is what this ancient-history-educated YouTuber believes, then it would advance discussion of his idea if he would write a proper book setting out a METHODOLOGY of using "the Greek Myths"(first he should define that term) recorded by say Apollodorus and Hesiod as a historiographical source. Not a video, a book with references.

                            .                        

No doubt Button would start off with his favourite example of how Schliemann used Homer to find the real city of Troy(though in fact it was never lost). He might mention the examples of indigenous Australian myths that purportedly accurately describe coastlines from 10,000 years ago, or perhaps break down how Hesiod's Ages of Man compare to actual archaeological ages.

It is difficult to see how one could go much further with this. As I said a methodologist must strictly define what "The Greek Myths" means. Myth is not a single holy book. It is a messy, shifting web of oral tales. Myths mix real memories (though potentially selecdtive or biased retellings of them) with symbolic storytelling, religious lessons, and creative imagination. To use stories like those referring to the hackneyed topic of a Golden Age or global divinely-ordained catatrophes as history. Scholars cannot just take them at face value, especially by picking-and-mixing the bits of what must be treated as an internally coherent whole just because certain fragments seem to relate to extra-source evidence. First the discarded fragments need to be taken into account - by what methodology?

Using mythology as a straight historical record creates several major issues. Myths lack precise dates, there may be timeline distortion, various symbolic numbers may be assigned to events, how can a methodology separate these from actual dates derived from some kind of record if that record itself is neither explicit or extant? There may be exaggeration introduced for narrative or symbolic resons. Natural events get grander over time; a large local river flood becomes a global ocean flood that "covers the highest mountains". The story may have been symbolic, a parable, with characters and events often standing for ideas. A "Golden Age" might not be a real time period, but a literary tool to contrast a difficult present with a perfect, imagined past. Myths also may involve political rewriting. Rulers and priests often changed myths. They rewrote stories to prove they had a divine right to rule or to make their enemies look bad.

What kind of toolkit would be involved in trying to use myth as a historical source? In some cases they are the same that are in use for any written source first of all, establish the authentic text then apply the usual analystical tools (e.g., comparative mythology, textual criticism and source stratigraphy) followed by some form of cross-verification.

So how far would that get you? Let Mr Button show us. In the course of trhat, he may well discover why two centuries of study of these texts has pretty definitively already decided that they are not actually usable in the way he proposes. I wonder just how much of that debate (for example on the compilation of the first five books of the Old Testament and their relation to other Near Eastern - for exmple mesopotamian or Egyptian - documents) he is aware of? If he writes the book, we will find out.

"Crackpot" versus "Conspiracy"

The problem with the priminence of anti-academic conspiracy theory in the public domain is not restricted to archaeology. Karl Feagans draws attention to a similar discussion in other sciences, for example Angela Collier at UCI, makes a fascinating point about "crackpot physics" vs "conspiracy physics".

"Crackpot versus conspiracy physicist."

The slide distinguishes between two types of fringe science figures:

Crackpots

• Crackpots are convinced they have solved a specific physics problem.
• Crackpots seek "help" from physicists to get their ideas accepted by the physics community.
• Crackpots work alone and recognizes other  crackpots  are crackpots

          Conspiracy Physicists  

• Conspiracy Physicists think physicists are liars.

• Conspiracy Physicists look for physics adjacent, expelled or "underdogs".
• Conspiracy Physicists form groups, create celebrities, and formulate conspiracy theories about physicists. They do not make physics 'theories.

• He comments:

"There are definitely some points in this that I recognize in crackpot/conspiracy archaeology. I know crackpot archaeologists that look at others in pseudoarchaeology as crackpots. But I think pseudoarchaeologists tend to both make theories and consider real archaeologists as liars" ( Carl Feagans cfeagans.bsky.social [@cfeagans] Apr 28, 2026 10:56 PM).

See Dr Collier's video here for some more perspicaceous and applicable observations:

.

Posted on YouTube by Angela Collier Aug 5, 2022

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So much of this relates to pseudoarchaeology.