Graham Hancock

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Image:Graham Hancock.jpg Graham Hancock (born 1951) is a British writer and journalist. His books include Lords of Poverty, The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, Keeper of Genesis, The Mars Mystery, Heaven's Mirror (with wife Santha Faiia), Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization, and Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith (with co-author Robert Bauval).

His most recent book, Supernatural: Meetings With the Ancient Teachers of Mankind, was released in the UK in October, 2005 and shall be released in the US in 2006.

Hancock's chief areas of interest are ancient mysteries, stone monuments or megaliths, ancient myths and astronomical/astrological data from the past. One of Hancock's main areas of study is the possible global connection with a 'mother culture' from which he believes all ancient historical civilizations sprang. Although his books have sold more than five million copies worldwide and have been translated into twenty-seven languages, his methods and conclusions have found little support among orthodox academics, and Hancock has been criticised as a pseudoarchaeologist. Hancock prefers to describe himself as nothing more than a writer.

Although born in Edinburgh, Hancock's formative years were spent in India, where his father worked as a surgeon. Having returned to the UK, he graduated from Durham University in 1973, receiving a First Class Honours degree in Sociology. He states that he did not, however, receive any formal training in archaeology.

As a journalist, Hancock worked for many British papers, such as The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Guardian, and The Economist.

Hancock's ideas have been refuted on numerous occasions, most famously by BBC 2's Horizon programme, in a November 4 1999 broadcast entitled "Atlantis Reborn". This programme detailed his attempts to join the dots on maps of ancient temple complexes to produce outlines of astrological features and pointed out that the same thing could be done using famous landmarks in New York, and with equal justification. It also revealed that Hancock had selectively moved or ignored the locations of the temples to fit his own theories. It further pointed out that Hancock ignored the texts on the temples themselves that explained why and when the temple had been built. Hancock states that he was misrepresented by the programme. He and Robert Bauval made complaints to the Broadcasting Standards Commission against the way BBC programme portrayed them and their work, eight points raised by Hancock, two by Bauval (one of which duplicated a complaint of Hancock's). This included the complaint:

"The programme had created the impression that he [Hancock] was an intellectual fraudster who had put forward half baked theories and ideas in bad faith, and that he was incompetent to defend his own arguments",

to which the BSC adjudicated:

"[The Commission] finds no unfairness to Mr Hancock in these matters".

The BSC's rulings dismissed all but one of these complaints. The complaint which was upheld related to "The programme unfairly omitted one of their arguments in rebuttal of a speaker who criticised the theory of a significant correlation between the Giza pyramids and the belt stars of the constellation Orion (the "correlation theory")", which the Commission found to be unfair. Overall, the BSC conclusion read "the programme makers acted in good faith in their examination of the theories of Mr Hancock and Mr Bauval". Horizon offered to broadcast a revised transmission of the programme which takes into account the one point which was found in the writers' favour. This went to air on December 14 2000.

Another of Hancock's subjects has been Robert Bauval's Giza plateau/Orion's Belt theory which co-relates the positions of the great pyramids of Egypt with the positions of the stars in the constellation of Orion's Belt. Ed Krupp has argued that the pyramids do not line up with the stars at all, unless you "flip" the cosmos so north faces south. Another theory Hancock has been closely involved with is that of the Sphinx being many thousands of years older than previously thought (supposedly built in 10,500 B.C., rather than the commonly-accepted view of c. 3rd millennium BC). Although at least one geologist, Robert M. Schoch, supports an early date for its construction based on his analysis of the effects of water erosion on the statue, his proposed date range lies at 7,000—5,000 B.C., which is to say several thousand years later than is indicated by Hancock Template:Ref. Most other geologists and archaeologists who have been invited to examine the Sphinx, such as Colin Reader), refute these earlier dates. Their analyses, which agree with the conventional dating for the monument, attribute the apparently accelerated wear on it to modern industrial pollution, limestone from different sources being used by the initial builders, scouring by wind-borne sand, and/or temperature changes causing the stone to crack.

Hancock will be participating in late 2005 in the Conference on Precession and Ancient Knowledge organized by the Binary Research Institute. Among the subjects discussed will be the theory that the Sun has a binary star companion which is responsible for the precession of the equinoxes. This is directly related to the ancient concept of the yugas, which Hancock has written about in several of his books.

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