More Graham Hancock Stuff

Great Debates
1

Okay, so I’m watching some ‘Mysteries of the Ancients’ show on TLC, which is another Graham Hancock propaganda piece.

I thought that I’d leave this message open while I’m watching it and write down some of his assertions so that we can debate them:

[ul]
[li]The Cartouche of Khufu in the great pyramid is the ONLY evidence we have linking the pyramid to him.[/li][li]The king’s chamber in the great pyramid is exactly twice as wide as high, and the height is exactly one-half the length of the diagonal drawn between corners of the floor. He interprets this to mean that this is a perfect 3,4,5 right triangle, and implies a knowledge of geometry that shouldn’t have existed them (we credit the discovery of these relationship to Pythagoras about 2000 years later)[/li][li]The layout of Angkor Wat exactly matches the constellation Draco in 10,500 BC.[/li][li]The Nazca lines in Peru exactly match various constellations, and even track the movements of constellations over the millenia. And he claims that Orion figures prominently.[/li][li]Of course, he claims that the three pyramids of Giza exactly match the layout of Orion.[/li][/ul]

Oh well, I can’t watch the rest right now, so I’ll have to catch the later broadcast. Any comments?

2

Well, I don’t know much about the pyramids, but unless I’m mistaken, the room you’re describing is impossible. It can’t have those dimensions and still have right angles.

Imagine a box formed by the congruent rectangles ABCD and EFGH, positioned vertically:


  A                  B
    ________________
   |\               \
   | \               \
   |  \  D            \
   |   \_______________\  C
 E \   |               |
    \  |               | 1
     \ |               |
      \|_______________|
               2         G
      H

Based on the description, that means that segments CG, DH, AE, and BF have length (height) of x. So segments AB, DC, EF, and HG have length 2x, since the width is twice the height. Since the height is half the length of the floor/ceiling’s diagonals, that means the diagonals (segments AC, DB, EG, HF) also have a length of 2x.

So (assuming all the angles are right angles), that means that triangle BCD has hypotenuse length 2 (segment BD) and leg length 2 (segment DC), with angle BCD being the right angle. Impossible: the depth of the room (segment BC) would have to be zero. The only way that’s possible is if the room is a trapezoid or some irregular shape.

Also, it’s impossible for a 3,4,5 triangle to be inscribed in such a box, regardless of the length of the diagonals. The width is too large. all diagonals would have to be longer than 2x (pythagorean theorem), and diagonal AG would be even longer. Since, in a 3,4,5, the longest dimension (5) of a is less than twice the shortest one (3), and in this box the middle dimension is defined as twice the shortest, there’s no way it could make a 3,4,5. Maybe a 5,12,13 or something, but definitely not a 3,4,5.

I’d say that either the guy is a wacko (somebody who studies the astrology and great wisdom of the ancient egyptians? crazy? The hell you say!) or else you remembered the details wrong.

3

and when I previewed, those extra blank lines in the code segment were not there.

4

Sorry, I screwed that up. He said the room was twice as long as wide, with the height equal to the diagonal drawn between corners on the floor. He also claimed that it was made of exactly 100 stone blocks.

5

I think this is meant to say the chamber is twice as long as it is wide. Not sure if that was the program’s mistake or a typo by Sam Stone (on previewing I see that this is the case). Anyway, it all works out if those are the measurements. I found some measurements for the chamber online and did the calculations, and there is a pretty good 3:4:5 right triangle:
-the diagonal across one of the nearly square ends of the chamber (3)
-the length of the chamber (4)
-the hypotenuse between these two (5)

As to the other points, I think Hancock’s backpedaled on most of them. From what I can glean from his website, and from what I remember of one or two of his books I read a few years ago:

-He now agrees that the great pyramid was built during Khufu’s reign (BUT he still thinks it could have been built according to a much earlier plan).

-He acknowledges that the Orion and Draco ‘correlations’ aren’t exact (BUT he still thinks the monuments on the ground were still constructed so as to represent the constellations in the sky)

His Nazca stuff can be found in Heaven’s Mirror, and I thought it was pretty darn weak, even by his ‘archaeotainment’ standards. It comes off as a hastily cobbled-together postscript to the Giza-Orion and Angkor-Draco ‘correlations’ that he’s spent the rest of the book talking about.

There are a few related articles on his webpage, in the “Forum” section:
http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/default.htm

6

Eh. He’s an idiot’s idiot.

I can’t specifically comment on this batch of assertations other than that his interpretation of the Nazca Lines manages to incorporate and at the same time completely contradict the work of Maria Rilke, the definative scholar of said lines.

And I just love the part about Atlanteans being responsible for every major civilization/ feat of ancient architecture ever. Including those pyramids that you describe.

7

I liked the fact that he claimed that Atlantis was under the ice of Antarctica, which according to him was warm in recorded human history. He didn’t bother to mention that we have ice core samples that date back at least 75,000 years, proving that the ice sheet has been there at least that long.

8

Other reasons for thinking that it’s all nonsense.

http://www.maat.paradoxdesigns.com/art.html

http://www.maat.paradoxdesigns.com/links.html

9

What has happened to TLC? Not to mention the History Channel and Discovery? A few years ago, TLC had that great show * Archaeology* which discussed real archaeology with real archaeologists. Now it seems that truth and accuracy have gone out the window. Now it shows all of these Graham Hancock mental masturbations.

For people who have a clue the work of Graham Hancock is, shall we say, interesting. There is nothing wrong with positing new, and sometimes off the wall, theories. There is a problem when these theories are presented from a formerly credible source, as being accurate. Why is it that serious shows seem to mention the crackpot theories, yet the crackpot shows never mention the prevailing theories?

Again, it is worth mentioning that Hancock has yet to produce a single shred of evidence to back up his claims. All the anecdotes and wishful thinking in the world will not make what he says true.

Once again, Hancock is the Van Daniken of a new generation.

10

And after that show, they had another show on ‘psychic surgery’ and other ‘mysterious things’. And the Discovery channel has a show coming up called, “The Science of Magick”.

No doubt the arts-grad programming execs that run these channels think that they are on the cutting edge of science.

11

Ummm, no we don’t. The existance of particular examples of what are now called Pythagorean triples is fairly widespread outside of the Greek tradition. Pythagoras only comes into it for proving that these are a special case of a general theorem about all right angled triangles.

12

bonzer: The existance of particular examples of what are now called Pythagorean triples is fairly widespread outside of the Greek tradition.

Including examples in Babylonian mathematics from at least as early as the 19th century BCE.

Pythagoras only comes into it for proving that these are a special case of a general theorem about all right angled triangles.

And it’s highly unlikely that Pythagoras was actually the first, or anywhere near the first, person even to discover that.

13

Agreed. And that the theorem predating Pythagoras is universally accepted by academics hardly strengthens Hancock’s attempted point.

14

What drives me nuts is that the bookstores put his stuff in history or similar category, when it should go into “new age” or a similar fluff category.

15

At least that way some of his more trusting readers might innocently stumble across some properly researched history books.