Hancock's Sahara Delusion

Graham Hancock is desperately clinging to the Sahara as one of the places in which his speculated lost Allerød Advanced Antecedent Civilization (LAAAC) "might have" existed. He has recently made the first concrete announcement about his new book (the first after the Flint-Dibble-Joe-Rogan Debate) and reveals his thinking about this.

"The Sahara Desert, green and fertile for 5,000 years following the end of the Ice Age (2012 reference*), is more than twice the size of the Indian subcontinent but has only been the subject of minimal archaeological investigation. Implications in the attached info-image.

 "

Hancock seems confused. His speculated lost Allerød Advanced Antecedent Civilization is supposed to have flourished in... uh, the Allerød (pre-incipient Younger Dryas) warm period after the last ice age.

The Allerød was the latter part of the Bølling-Allerød interstadial (from 14,690 to c. 12,890 years Before Present, during the final stages of the Last Glacial Period), this was a period of major ice sheet collapse and the period begins with a corresponding sea level rise known as Meltwater Pulse 1 (between 14,700 and 13,500 years ago). During this episode, global sea level
 rose between 16 metres and 25 metres in about 400–500 years (4-6 cm a year).

Allerød temperatures (adapted from Obase et al 2012, via wikipedia)

  

This sea rise stabilised with the onset of the Allerod, which was a warm and moist global interstadial that occurred c.13,900 to 12,900 BP, in which temperatures in the northern Atlantic region reached almost present-day levels. But in this period, the actual Sahara was warm and dry. The "Green Sahara" Hancock talks about only came after a while. In the 2012 article he himself cites (!) the early and middle Holocene "African Humid Period (AHP)" is dated to between 11,500–5,000 years ago. In other words the Green Sahara dates to AFTER the end (END) of the Younger Dryas period (Younger Dryas cool period... 12,900–11,700 years ago).

Hancock conflates the whole lot and mixes events millennia apart. He says this lost civilization functioned in the period (i.e., Allerød) in a Green Sahara period before the Younger Dryas began ('with a bang' - he favours comet impact), then the sealevel rose rapidly giving rise to the world's flood legends.

He suggests that archaeologists have not found traces of his LAAAC because but the Sahara Desert "has only been the subject of minimal archaeological investigation". One wonders how he quantifies this. Firstly he seems to fall into the complete novice's misconception that archaeology is "only excavation". One would have thought that after all these years of him attacking archaeologists and their methodology and attempts to question and correct their conclusions, he would have made the effort to understand how archaeology actually works in the 21st century. He clearly has not the foggiest.

As archaeologist Scott D. Haddow (@sdhaddow) has pointed out :

I'm all for exploring more of the Sahara, but only 15-25% of it is covered by sand, the rest is exposed bedrock and gravel plains, so if there were any traces of lost Ice Age cities they'd be exposed on the desert floor and visible in satellite imagery. Exposed bedrock surfaces (hamadas) across the Sahara consistently yield evidence of human occupation dating back to the Paleolithic, but still haven't revealed any signs of a lost Ice Age civilization. Graham's right though: it's no coincidence that the drying up of the Green Sahara led to the emergence of the Predynastic Badari and Naqada cultures of the Nile Valley. Archaeologists have long made this connection. As the Sahara became increasingly arid, nomadic hunters/pastoralists were drawn to the Nile Valley and this eventually led to the development of Dynastic Egyptian culture, pyramids, etc. But this process took over 2000 years - it didn't happen overnight.

As for surveying and locating sites of the pre-Younger Dryas temperate period (c.13,900 to 12,900 BP), let us recall that in Hancock's current homeland, the British Upper Palaeolithic is characterised by the Creswellian Culture dated between 13,000 and 11,800 BP (and was followed by the cold spell, the Younger Dryas, when Britain was at times unoccupied by humans). How many Upper Palaeolithic sites are known from the whole of Great Britain? How extensive are the surveys where layers of this period are exposed on the surface ?

The same goes for the continental areas of western Europe, on the Northern European Plain we have the sites of the Hamburg(ian) culture/technocomplex or (15,500-13,100 BP) and the Federmesser group ('the late Magdalenian') and its variants dating to between 14,000 and 12,800 years ago (and then in the YD, the Ahrensburg(ian) culture (c. 12,900 to 11,700 BP. Again the same question, what acrage of exposed Upper Palaeolithic landscapes of the whole Northern European plain has been systematically surveyed compared with the extensive surveys of deflation areas of the Saharan desert by institutions from many countries that work there? The bibliography of the latter is pretty substantial - yet NONE of it is cited by hancock, who just cherry picks for texts that support his vision. It’s only “minimal” if you don’t bother looking for (or paying competent research assistants to look for) the multiple journal articles, field reports, edited volumes, and full books that cover archaeological surveys, remote survey, and excavations.

Justine “That Woman” Warren @adancingferret 12:23 AM · Nov 25, 2025
It’s only “minimal” if you don’t bother looking for (or paying competent research assistants to look for) the multiple journal articles, field reports, edited volumes, and full books that cover archaeological surveys, remote survey, and excavations.

I have a feeling that the 2027 book is going to be a real hoot. I wonder if the publisher will get an archaeologist as one of the pre-publication referees? 

References

*deMenocal, P. B. & Tierney, J. E. (2012) Green Sahara: African Humid Periods Paced by Earth's Orbital Changes. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):12

Obase, T., Abe-Ouchi, A. & Saito, F. 2021, 'Abrupt climate changes in the last two deglaciations simulated with different Northern ice sheet discharge and insolation'. Sci Rep 11, 22359 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-01651-2