Archaeologists have been accused of debunking ancient alien influence theories and conspiracy theories in archaeology. The most common theory is that intelligent alien life visited human populations in the ancient past and either influenced or directed them. This theory has led to the marginalization of BIPOC communities by denying their histories and reattributing them to mythical entities.
Since 2009, the show has featured mostly white male conspiracy theorists posing harmful questions about the legitimacy of human involvement in various projects. Some argue that our ancestors may have encountered various hominins, such as the Indonesian island of Flores and the Denisovans in Siberia. The article raises questions about why someone would create a hoax by planting Native American artifacts.
The Ohio History Connection (OHC) has been called out for banning internationally best-selling author and journalist Graham Hancock. Many were defaced by Moslems due to their forbidden use of graven images in their religion, similar to the destruction of Buddha statues.
Forbidden Archaeology is proposed in a book from the 90s that suggests evidence that man did not evolve from a common ancestor. Throughout the Southeast, piles of stones may be considered mysterious depending on one’s views on traditional archaeology.
The bear has stood for danger and horribleness for ages, possibly due to ancestral experiences with cave bears in Europe. Some scholars suggest that Antinous may have been killed by Hadrian himself, either in an attempt to defy scientific consensus. Contrary to the current scientific consensus, horses did not go extinct in the Pleistocene and were not re-introduced post-contact.
📹 Best of Miniminuteman – Tiktok’s Archeology Conspiracy Debunker
Compilation of Tiktok’s conspiracy theory debunker, and archeology connoisseur, Miniminuteman. Cyclops, vampires, the dragon …
📹 Pseudoarchaeology Conspiracies with Brent Lee
An interview with former conspiracist Brent Lee about the relationship between pseudoarchaeology and conspiracy theories.
For the dragon man, who I wrote a paper about, another reason it is presumed that the man hid the skull in the well, was that during the time period he discover it, the government had been taken over. If he had turned in the skull, he was fearful that it would have be lost forever or destroyed when turned over to their hands.
to be fair it is possible for a human to get Cyclopia if the mother eats strange plants that effect either the Pikachu or Sonic the hedgehog protein (yes those are their actual names but since I remember their names by how ridicules they are I can’t remember which one is the one that needs to be effected) during the pregnancy. This is how all those sheep got cyclopia back in the 50’s.
With the whole cyclops thing: That’s like looking at someone with dwarfism and going, “Wow! They’re decendents from a race of dwarves!”. People seem to be equating a condition with a fictional race not realizing that these conditions inspired the creations of these fictional races in fantasies/mythologies.
The cyclops thing is quite interesting! I’ve heard of a theory that speculates that the idea of a cyclops could have come from seeing elephant skulls. The hole where the trunk comes out of could be easly mistaken for an eyesocket, if you’re unfamiliar with the animal or its internal anatomy. The theory is, basically, that Greeks somehow stumbled upon some elephant skulls and guessed incorrectly what they where of, and eventually created the mythology arround the being we now know as a Cyclop. Obviously this is all a theory and we will most likely never understand where those myths come from. But is still a fun detail.
If anyone’s curious about cyclopia and why it looks like that, basically your head (and brain) start as one blob. Your brain isn’t in two halves yet and is wrinkle free, and your head hasn’t made a face yet. Now during development, as your brain divides into the two hemispheres, your face and eyes (your eyes have to attach you your brain via the optic nerve, so they develop together around the same time. Two brain halves=two eyes, usually) also split into its two fairly symmetrical halves at around 6 weeks gestation. With cyclopia, the brain starts but doesn’t finish forming both hemispheres, or doesn’t divide at all. Your cells still have the message of “connect eyes here”, so you can end up with two fused eyes in one big socket, or one big eye with conjoined pupils (although sometimes there’s a socket with no eyes at all). Now because you’ve got one big hole where the face should be, there’s no space for a nose. Most babies with cyclopia develop a “proboscis” looking protrusion on the forehead. It’s essentially just a flesh cylinder that the body tried to make a nose with, it doesn’t function. The deformed brain means they’re pretty much always either miscarried, stillborn, or die within hours, and if they were theoretically to survive longer, they’d be a mess of near constant seizures as the brain can’t communicate with itself properly. With modern ultrasound, you’d generally know fairly early on as cyclopia begins around 5-6 weeks into the pregnancy, so is generally visible even on the early scans.
Even I could tell that that one skull was just the bottom of the skull with the hole, foramen magnum. Why are people so credulous? I think we all know: people who believe in conspiracies feel special and superior because they are one of the intelligent few who can see past all the “lies.” It’s often all just about ego.
As much as I like to toy with the idea of “what if {insert supernatural creature} exist?” They are ultimately just stories. I, for one, find it interesting how and why those stories change overtime. Like: did you know a werewolf’s vulnerability to silver, being bound to the lunar cycle, and spreading the curse through bites only exist after Hollywood started making movies? How fascinating is that?!?
In regard to the first one, I remember reading about how not only was it a big problem for poor areas, it was especially big in areas with poor people of color. Also, many students became so desensitized by all the horrors they had to see (cause our medical knowledge wasn’t the best) they would play with the body parts of cadavers, often hiding them around. One kid looked through a window and saw these trainees working with a cadaver, and one looked up, smiled, and waved the cadaver’s arm at him. The kid became convinced it was his grandpa, and when they checked his grave, his body wasn’t there. Then there was a whole thing of townspeople storming the school.
Another note about cyclopia: it occurs when an animal’s brain fails to divide into two hemispheres as it develops. Because the animals with it only have half of a brain, (among other things— a missing nose also is often a symptom) they usually die shortly after being born. By “usually” I mean the only example I could find of one of these animals living past a week was a goat in India a few years ago. Considering the 100% fatality rate of the condition, this is another nail in the coffin of the “race of cyclops people” theory.
I remember having an argument with someone regarding those “anti-vampire burial cages” or whatever they are. After I pointed out that they were actually designed to prevent the endemic grave robbery that took place in Victorian England, the rest of the argument proceeded to degenerate into the following hellscape of a conversation. This guy: There’s no way grave robbing was legal back then! Me: Of course it wasn’t legal, there was an entire black market for dead bodies at the time. This guy: But people didn’t break the law in the old days. Crime hadn’t been invented yet! Me: ???
Thank you for being one of the rare people that uploads articles combatting misinformation. I meet people all the time that see articles on YouTube that are perpetuating ridiculous misinformation, and for some reason they just blindly believe what it is they are hearing. I don’t know if it’s because they want the crap to be true, so they simply decide that it is. Or if it’s because they are of low intelligence and fail to utilize critical thinking whatsoever. Rather than critical thinking, these people completely immerse themselves in confirmation bias and shout back and forth with other fools in internet echo chambers. A lot of the foolishness is also rooted in superstition and religion as well. Both are areas where people readily believe in nonsense without any evidence for it. People’s standards for proof or requirement for evidence goes through the floor when it comes to their religion. Aside from religion there are also those that are simply contrarians and/or the types that mistrust any and all forms of government or authorities of any kind. Anything that comes from a government agency or even legitimate scientists is automatically thought to be some sort of misinformation or disinformation. These people are equally ridiculous. And then there is also the person that just blindly believes every conspiracy “hypothesis” that they hear. Yes, “Conspiracy Hypothesis”. Not, “theory”. They are, “Conspiracy Hypotheses”, not “theories”. A hypothesis is an idea, based on observations made.
For the cyclops thing, while that disorder does exist its massively incompatible with life and all of the human cases have died either in utero or very shortly after birth. That medical journal illustration is most likely just to model the condition, as no infant has survived to the age of the child depicted in the drawing.
The stone in the mouth is thought to have been used to help gases release from plague victims who had to be buried hastily without being properly treated for burial. Maybe sometimes because it was a believed vampire because the gases from the victims sometimes would cause corpses to rise temporarily until the gas is released…
0:07 If you really believe that those cages were meant to prevent the undead from escaping their graves you are a fool. How would a cage like that prevent them from escaping? If they were strong enough to break through their coffin, and then somehow dig up through all the soil then a cage that sat over the surface of the grave would not have stopped them. They wouldn’t know the cage was there, so they would have dug up out of the grave, and then saw they cage and simply dug under it. It would be that simple. But, these cages had nothing to do with anything so stupid. They were there to prevent grave robbers. Yes, grave robbers could dig under the cage, but it would make the task much harder than usual, and it would have increased their chances of getting caught. How you could think that there were actual vampires coming out of graves is pure ridiculousness.
There was a hyper religious girl I went to school with who genuinely thought I was a vampire because I have naturally large canine teeth, pale skin, and I was very antisocial. So one day I got fed up with people asking me so I ate a whole clove of raw garlic in front of her as well as about 5 other people while sticking my middle finger up
I love the description of how earth could/will change, nature is unpredictable, if people can unite and move to a built structure in space like Halo where everything can be linear and monitored, people can survive and planets can be holiday destinations. We shall become space explorers, beam me up scotty😜 But seriously, as a civil engineering student, I can’t wait for the time where we design space structures more frequently, cause every structure needs a civil or structural engineer to sign off on it, I think our education will move that way one day, but the evolution of education is slow cause you can’t change a course every year. But humanity is fun and exciting when looking at the facts. Great vid, interesting, now let’s go to space😜
Just wanted to point out (maybe someone already has) that the future supercontinent he’s talking about isn’t set in stone! There are several different possibilities with novopangea being just one of them. Right now it’s considered the most likely but pretty much anything farther than 100 million years into the future is pretty tough to say with certainty.
I am deeply incredulous of any propositions based on rigorous scientific methodology, sound evidence based research, credible historical inquiry from primary sources, systematic archaeological analysis, peer reviewed scholarly publications, and in general, anything remotely reminiscent of plain old common sense; so, I’m gonna go with sensationalist zombie-vampire guy and ditch the spurious pronouncements of archaeology dude. ADDENDUM (edit): Well, that was edifying…now, back to ‘The Kardashians’ marathon.
If I remember correctly, people believed vampires existed because when people would dig up bodies they would discover that the bodies look plump and at that time period people knew little about what happens in the body after death so they assumed that the corpses were rising out of the ground at night to snack on blood due to the blood that was often found around the lips of the corpses. To make sure that the dead didn’t rise they would nail the bodies hands, feet, and yes sometimes head to the coffin. So really like he said in the article superstition and lack of knowledge can lead people to do some pretty bizarre things.
Vampires are just Titles, for examples lets take a look at Vlad III, He is a “Normal” Human being but was said to drink blood and Impales his Enemy onto Stakes, Vlad III (the Impaler) was also known as Vlad III Dracula. The name Dracula means “son of Dracul.” In the Romanian language today, dracul means “the devil”—drac is “devil,” ul is “the”—but it is derived from the Latin dracō, “dragon.” (Dragons have been historically associated with Satan, hence the evolution.) Now, “son of Dracul” is a reference to Vlad’s father, who was a member of the Order of the Dragon. There is also another example to this which is Elizabeth Bathory (The Countess of Blood) who Bathe in Virgins Blood to sustain her Youthful look. So you get the Idea of what im trying to say
3:24 minor correction: the man didn’t hide the skull because he thinks the technology at the time was inadequate, he hid the skull because the country, especially that region, was under a minor incident called a Japanese Invasion, and the skull was hidden to keep it from falling into the hand of the Japanese Occupation forces.
Oh I’m sure they didn’t just work on cadavers. The story of St Martin and Dr Beaumont where a French Canadian in Fort Mackinac Michigan, was shot in the stomach. The doctor would dip things into the hole of his stomach and would record what happened. Not just edible food either, he would put rotten things in there too which would make him sick – eventually they parted ways and the St Martin would eventually shy away from the medical field entirely. Read the story its insane and very ethically dubious but thats where a good portion of our understanding of what happens when we eat things began.
It’s quite sad to think that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and only has a billion years of being a life-bearing planet left, if that. I read that in around a billion years the heat from the expanding Sun will make Earth uninhabitable, but that complex life could die out before then due to several other factors. I know to us even 500 million years more of life on Earth sounds like an eternity, but in cosmological time it’s not that long 🙁 I have a hope that somehow humans will survive and thrive for the next 500 million to 1 billion years and will remember our home and save it with some yet indescribable technology
Generation ships moving at an appreciable fraction of lightspeed could reach nearby galaxies in a few hundred years (subjectively, due to time dilation), and by the time their descendants make the return journey back to Earth, it’s entirely possible that tens or hundreds of millions of years may have passed from the perspective of Earth. They may get to see Pangaea Ultima only a few hundreds years from now.
Glad to see not all young people these days are intelligent. I was starting to lose faith in modern humanity because of how stupid the new generation is thank God for people like this because I might actually run into somebody with enough brains to have an intelligent conversation with good job brother
Gotta love how in this construction of the next supercontinent, Zealandia is still just vibing, isolated by a bunch of ocean. Isolated and practically unchanged for 100 million years past and gonna be unchanged for hundreds of millions of years in the future, that is if the invasive species humanity added don’t entirely wreck the damn place…
I was looking at your mega pangea map progression and was feeling somethings wrong here, then it hit me, the Atlantic is widening and the Pacific is getting smaller so north and south America should wind up pressing against japan and china, not returning to Europe and Africa’s west coasts. Or am I missing something?
I think they call him “Dragon Man” is because he was found in China. China often likes to name countries based on what they’re known for. For it’s mythology, china likes to call itself Dragon Country. Japan they like to call Sakura Country, America they like to call Eagle Country, Russia they liked to Call Bear Country IIRC, and so on.
The whole thing of giants is just people being confused about what giant meant way back when. They constantly site David and Goliath as proof without realizing that Goliath would have been about 9 ft 9 in tall compared go David who was less than 5 ft. Acordong to science, anyone over 7 ft is a giant. That means that about 2800 people currently are considered giants.
The Elderscrolls told of their return. Their defeat was merely a delay. From the time after Oblivion opened, that the sons of Skyrim would spill their own blood, but no one wanted to believe… believe they even existed. And when the truth finally dawned… it dawns in fire. But there is one they feared. In their tongue he is Dovakinn.
Fun fact: Denisovans are our ancestors but not the ancestors of the Homo Sapiens race. Let me explain, Homo Sapiens’, Neanderthals and Denisovans all evolved separately in different regions during around the same time frame then, as the earth warmed, Homo Sapiens’ expanded out of Africa and interbred with the other two groups in Europe and Asia. Subsequent migrations between Europe, Asia and Africa resulted in everyone having some degree of genetic influence from the two extinct groups.
I enjoy the digitally altered image of a supposed giant that is really a human skeleton sized up to look 30 ft tall. Anyone familiar with biomechanics would explain the the buffoon that the bodily proportions- matching the 6 ft variety exactly, would be fatal at that scale. Eyes larger than the largest known eye that was adapted for seeing in deep oceans. Long bones whose cross sectional area would fracture if forced to support a body 125 times more massive than the 6 ft variety human. etc.
Cyklopses go back to 2 tings. Dwarf Elephants and Bronze Age Black Smiths. Dwarf Elephants is the very known thing but the Black Smiths need some explaining: Cyklopses are very good Smiths according to Greek myths, and during the bronze age Weapons Smiths usually lived way outside the City where they work ores apparently magically into blades and other things. They also often wore eye patches due to security goggles not existing then so that at least one eye is protected. Centuries of Misunderstanding and Folklore later these usually very big and Strong Hermits that lived way outside of civilization that had only 1 eye and forged metal became cyklopses.
USUALLY no longer living human subjects. There was at least one case that the the subject of dissection was discovered to be still living. But the subject had been convicted of a brutal crime so the anatomist decided to carry on with the dissection. Or actually I suppose that would have been a vivisection….
I just wanted to say that I held on as a fan of Graham for years. Every criticism i would hear of Graham would be, ‘oh hes crazy, he’s horrible, he’s a charlatan’. They would never actually explain why and challenge his analysis. Finally i saw Flint on Rogan just plainly explain a couple of things and it took about 5 minutes for me to realize my folly
Such an insightful conversation! The small tidbit that I got caught up on was Brent’s descent into extremist Christianity. With the prevalence of satanic cults and rituals in this conspiracist worldview, a conspiracist must believe deeply in Christianity to endow these cults with the spiritual power that they claim. These claims of power would not be nearly as effective on non-religious individuals.
This is a wonderful and insightful conversation. Genuinely applaud anyone who can escape the rabbit hole and even more for someone willing to use that to try and free others. Honestly i dont know if i could do the same, it takes a special kind of strength to admit to your mistakes so publicly for the sake of others.
I went through my conspiracy theory phase in the mid 90s. I was maybe 14-16 years old. Mostly alien conspiracies… Area 51, with some sympathy for grander theories, but more in the ‘wouldn’t it be nice to think so’ vein. Part of it was just the X Files… but also, I think I was building a defensible ontology by exploring the limits of what we, as individuals, can actually know. I think it was a really important period in my intellectual development. I look back on it fondly. I wound up becoming a plant-microbial ecologist and soil scientist.
I remember the exact moment I also became a “former conspriacist” my self. I was perusal a short film about Tupac faking his death. The prompt at the beginning was “Tupac read a book about a prince named machialvelli who learned the secrets of keeping and maintaining power” and I immediately went whoooooa hold up… You mean the book TITLED “The Prince” written BY Machialvelli?? Like how many times had I taken a prompt like that and just ran with it? How am I expected to believe your grand theory if you can’t get the basics right??
Getting flashbacks to “Foucault’s Pendulum”. Which was hilarious until it was horrifying. I’m a programmer by profession, and programmers are very good at pattern recognition. And if a pattern doesn’t exist, by God a lot of them will invent one. I used to find it amusing to listen to Jeff Rense’s program of silliness until I noticed the increasing hints about Jews. These days I doubt they’re just hinting. I’ve always found David Hatcher Childress incredibly smarmy and annoying, to be honest.
The thing that got me out of my conspiracy mentality was a podcast on 911. They went through the deal evidence and interviewed an expert in the actual investigation. Jimmy Akin’s mysterious world, hes a fan of mainstream archaeology and has debunked psuedo archeology, graham hancock in particular. He also does debates and i think you two would have an incredible discussion. Please look him up flint, you wont regret it. He’s also a skilled debater and can give you some tips if you were to debate dangerous dan or something. 😅
I’m curious about theories that are on the fringe, but still somewhat plausible? There’s something really attractive about the liminal space you find at the fringes. I’d still want to be responsible about exploring that space, but I’m not sure of how exactly to go about it myself (not being an archeologist), or where to find those sorts of theories being discussed. One that I’ve heard of in the past and that I find really compelling is the idea that writing may have been invented multiple times throughout the past, and the earliest writing we have today is more accurately described as the first writing we know about rather than the first writing definitively. From what I understand there might be some reason to think that things like the Vinča symbols are a form of writing, one that emerged out of conditions very different from the sorts of economic transactions that facilitated the emergence of writing in places like Mesopotamia – opening up the possibility that writing could emerge under very diverse conditions, maybe including emergences in the very deep past. However, when I tracked down the reference I was after, the one that discussed mechanisms by which writing might emerge in a society that wasn’t as economically complex as those in Mesopotamia (located in the book “European Prehistory: A Survey”, pg 237), it turned out to have been ultimately based on a personal communication between the author and David Anthony, and was thus inaccessible 🙁 My guess is that a lot of this sort of grounded speculation does take the form of personal communications between professionals and is thus pretty inaccessible to the public.
For me it was a combination of many things that lead me to conspiracy thinking. One aspect I can remember is that it felt like harmless fun. Who cares what shape the Earth actually is, it doesn’t harm anybody whether it is round or square, it is just fun to think about it. So any serious claim like racism/anti-intellectualism/fascism, that can just be dismissed out of hand. Another aspect was this weird mindspace where you think that finding questions = finding evidence. What if civilization was more advanced 300.000 years ago, it is technically possible, I thought of it, so it feels true. It also works with dismantling counter arguments. You say there is tons of evidence of hunter gatherers and nothing for LAHT, but what about this one question that you can’t answer, that means your entire argument is null and void. I only have to come up with questions for evidence, but you have to perfectly counter and answer every imaginable counter claim or question or else your entire theory is wrong. I can’t remember all the aspects, but I can remember it started out really small, you watch a UFO documentary, you search some pixelsquatch articles. But then more and more you argue, and criticize the status quo, watch weird articles and theories, and after a while your entire ideology is ‘just asking questions’. You can counter any claim, any evidence, with a simple question, that is all you need to keep believing. Someone posts a article of somebody moving a giant rock, just ask where the article is of them cutting a rock.
Brent Lee went from believing that some ancient civilization from before “the Younger Dryas” may have influenzed the old Egyptians, the Mayas, the Incas, and so on, to worshipping a man who was alledgedly born from a virgin, who could walk on water, turn stones into bread and water into wine, who died and then rose from the dead. I guess if you are an American that makes perfect sense! Some conspiracies are obviously more equal than others!
I’m tired of straw man arguments. Hey…. there are lots of controversial sites and lots of theories, some seem over the top, but cultures have disappeared and without these theories much will be overlooked as being possible. I’ve studied Anthropology for 50 years and much has reversed and changed, even before DNA technology. Catastrophism was considered pseudoscience until recently….etc.
I have to admit, I enjoy perusal stuff like Graham Hancock. He does find really out there and unknown to the mainstream stuff and brings attention to it. You get like 85% interesting stuff, you’re learning about “new” stuff to look into further. Then BAM!!!! ONE SINGLE WORLD WIDE CIVILIZATION!!!!!? Whoa,whoa, whoa, pump the brakes here lol I love that feeling of breaking away from the conspiracy and start thinking about how humans lived and migrated and maintained those familial trade networks long after the families became settled lands of moated and walled off hill forts and more. Sky Woman is so much more beautiful when you see the history of a daughter being married off to a more primitive culture to spread your trade networks peacefully instead of through war. Or the eventual failure of a settlement and people moving out. Creation stories are the best. Edit: Garden of Eden? Or how Adam was bad in bed, got a divorce and his new wife helped him steal iron working knowledge (flaming sword as they leave? Obvious lol) Adam should have learned how to please Sky Woman
I don’t like your explanation of your usage the term racist, and I don’t actually think that explanation truly applies to faux archaeologists. That they are racist BECAUSE they rob the brown-skinned of their myths and accomplishments is absurd because of the ease at which they might rob the light-skinned of same, and sometimes in the very same breath. I think what you’re seeing here is not a racial bias of European vs the brown-skinned but a religious bias of Christian vs the pagan. This bias I propose far better explains the almost religious, cult-like fashion that these beliefs spread, and how they so often develop a selective cannon to best maintain the monism of the story’s sway over the believer. I think parallels can be drawn here to the spread of early Christianity, and especially to the later development of cannon, the cultural dismissal of the (now) apocrypha and the destruction of pre-Christian, pagan literature. I don’t think that a misapplication of such scornful a label as “racism,” when a far more apt explanation exists, should be used. By ignoring the (in my opinion) more likely cause, instead choosing to “satanify” these people and shame them out of their beliefs, you are, unfortunately, further galvanizing their resolve against all external, non-cannon reasoning and simultaneously reducing the credibility of formal expertise thereby.