Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1488480
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 18 DECEMBER 2022 OPINION 10 Raphael Vassallo OPINION Ancient Apocalypse? You can't be Sirius (pt 2) IN Episode 3 of 'Ancient Apoc- alypse', Graham Hancock re- gales us with a CGI 'recon- struction' of what he thinks the Ġgantija megalithic temples may have looked like, soon af- ter they were first built. Now: as the entire purpose of this series is to challenge the scientific consensus regarding the age of those very temples… I won't bother going into ex- actly 'when that was', for now. Instead, I will focus only on the reconstruction itself; and some of the claims that come with it. As viewers are beckoned to enter this (admittedly very im- pressive) prehistoric version of the 'Portomaso Hilton', Han- cock's voice is heard musing in the background: "In its prime, Ġgantija was truly gigantic. As tall as a three-storey house. The outer walls were constructed from huge stones, stacked atop one another. Two connected tem- ples, with oval shaped cham- bers, their walls painted red; and a series of altars where charred animal remains were found: suggesting ritual sacri- fice, or feasting. There are no written sources telling us when Ġgantija was built. And no reli- able carbon dates." Right: from the outset, I will not waste too much time on the most glaring assumption in all that – i.e., that there are 'no re- liable carbon dates' – because countless archaeologists have already taken to YouTube, in droves, to point out that… … actually, there've been quite a few studies, over the years, that have used 'radio-carbon dating' (and other techniques: including Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) and Ac- celerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) Dating) to determine the age of Malta's temples. All these studies, by the way, are very easily accessible on- line; and, more importantly, they are all subject to peer-re- view. So exactly how Hancock can so cavalierly dismiss all those decades of scientific research (all of which yielded broad- ly comparable results), as if it even 'didn't exist at all'… well, I guess we have to add that to all the other 'unanswerable ques- tions', raised by the same Net- flix series. To be fair, however: much of the rest does actually align quite neatly, with the 'consen- sus' view of archaeology. That Ġgantija consisted of 'two connected temples, with ov- al-shaped chambers' is easily confirmed just by visiting the site today [even if it remains un- clear whether it was built that way from scratch; or whether – as happened, and still happens, with so many contemporary churches - it was enlarged, and expanded, over the course of several centuries.] Likewise, all the archaeolo- gists I've ever read on the sub- ject, concur that the 'slaughter of animals' – whether for ritu- al, or feasting purposes, or both – was a regular practice at all Maltese megalithic sites. I need hardly add, of course, that Hancock is also perfectly correct in claiming that there are 'no written records' to tell us how old these temples are. (That is, after all, the diction- ary-definition of the term 'pre- history', right there.) At the same time, however: by specifying such an obvious, self-evident fact, Graham Han- cock may have inadvertently drawn attention to a small flaw in his entire theory (that will only become much bigger, as the episode progresses). Think about for it a second. His basic premise is that ear- ly human civilisations were 'not technologically advanced enough' to learn how to plant crops, or domesticate animals, all on their own; and even less, to build anything as elaborate as Ġgantija, 6,000 years ago. This leads Hancock to pro- pose two alternative hypothe- ses to account for the 'anom- aly': 1) Either that the temples themselves were built at a much earlier date (basically, any time before 13,000 years ago), by the remnants of a superior civiliza- tion (now lost) that Hancock identifies as 'Atlantis'; 2) Or else, that the temples really were built by a later cul- ture (though still much earlier than claimed by archaeolo- gists), which was 'taught' tech- nologies such as agriculture, and advanced megalithism, by the same 'lost civilisation'. To this, we have to add that these 'Atlanteans' were also so very technologically advanced, that they somehow managed to impart their superior wis- dom to various civilisations spanning the entire globe: from Malta, to Indonesia, to the Americas, and beyond… All of which leads us to con- clude that this ultra-advanced civilization called 'Atlantis' – which bequeathed to us all the technologies that we now associate with the 'Neolithic revolution': farming, animal husbandry, architecture, as- tronomy, etc. – managed to achieve all the above… without ever have developed a form of 'written communication', of its own. (For as Hancock himself argues: there are 'no written records', are they? Yet surely there WOULD be, if the At- lanteans were capable of leav- ing any…) Sorry to have to raise the ob- vious question, but… how DID the Atlanteans actually pass on all that information – genera- tion after generation – without the aid of writing? And in any case: if these Atlanteans were just as 'illiterate', as the people they presumably 'educated' all over the world… how (at the risk of repeating my last ar- ticle) were they also capable of developing all those other technologies, in the first place? (In a word: how could the At- lanteans have singlehanded- ly discovered, and perfected, every advanced technology of that age… except the most im- portant, and advanced, of the lot?) But that's as far as I'll go for today: because people like Hancock always have instant, 'potted' answers to that sort of question. (If it's not 'Aliens!', it's 'Telepathy!'; and if it's not 'Telepathy!', it's… well, 'Magic', I suppose.) No, the question I'd like to ponder today, concerns wheth- er Ġgantija temples ever DID really appear, as portrayed in that video. Is that comput- er-generated image really the result of a well-researched, and scientifically-conducted attempt to 'reconstruct' Ġgan- tija? Or is it just… well, 'guess- Regardless whether the temples were built 6,000 years ago (as archaeologists believe), or anywhere up to 20,000 years ago (as suggested by Hancock)… one thing is certain: 'in its prime', Ġgantija would certainly not have even remotely resembled the high-rise edifice we see in 'Ancient Apocalypse'