Ergo, Hancock concludes, вЂњat the very least it would mean that some as yet unknown and unidentified people somewhere in the world, had already mastered all the arts and attributes of a high civilization more than twelve thousand years ago in the depths of the last Ice Age and had sent out emissaries around the world to spread the benefits of their knowledge.вЂќ This sounds romantic, but it is the bigotry of low expectations. Hancock's biggest X is GГ¶bekli Tepe in Turkey, with its megalithic, T-shaped seven- to 10-ton stone pillars cut and hauled from limestone quarries and dated to around 11,000 years ago, when humans lived as hunter-gatherers without, presumably, the know-how, skills and labor to produce them.

The problem here is twofold: (1) scientists do have good explanations for Hancock's X's (for example, the pyramids, the Great Sphinx), even if they are not in total agreement, and (2) ultimately one's theory must rest on positive evidence in favor of it, not just negative evidence against accepted theories. This is the type of вЂњGod of the gapsвЂќ reasoning that creationists employ, only in Hancock's case the gods are the вЂњmagiciansвЂќ who brought us civilization. Third, Hancock grounds his case primarily in the argument from ignorance (because scientists cannot explain X, then Y is a legitimate theory) or the argument from personal incredulity (because I cannot explain X, then my Y theory is valid). These extinctions, in fact, were timed with human arrival, thereby supporting the more widely accepted overhunting hypothesis. Further, although 37 mammal genera went extinct in North America (while most other species survived and flourished), at the same time 52 mammal genera went extinct in South America, presumably not caused by the impact. In addition to the lack of any impact craters determined to have occurred around that time anywhere in the world, the radiocarbon dates of the layer of carbon, soot, charcoal, nanodiamonds, microspherules and iridium, asserted to have been the result of this catastrophic event, vary widely before and after the megafaunal extinction, anywhere from 14,000 to 10,000 years ago. Second, Hancock's impact hypothesis comes from scientists who first proposed it in 2007 as an explanation for the North American megafaunal extinction around that time and has been the subject of vigorous scientific debate. But is it true? I'm skeptical.ДЇirst, no matter how devastating an extraterrestrial impact might be, are we to believe that after centuries of flourishing every last tool, potsherd, article of clothing, and, presumably from an advanced civilization, writing, metallurgy and other technologies-not to mention trash-was erased? Inconceivable. I listened to the audio edition read by the author, whose British accent and breathless, revelatory storytelling style are confessedly compelling.

All this is woven into a narrative entitled Magicians of the Gods (Thomas Dunne Books, 2015). One so thoroughly wiped out by a comet strike around 12,000 years ago that nearly all evidence of its existence vanished, leaving only the faintest of traces, including, Hancock thinks, a cryptic warning that such a celestial catastrophe could happen to us. Graham Hancock is an audacious autodidact who believes that long before ancient Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Egypt there existed an even more glorious civilization.

Gaia age of mythology