John Hawks recently published a post on the “uniquely American controversy” on the place of evolutionary ideas in education. In the runup to the centennial of the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” he traces the broad outlines of the substantial Christian Fundamentalist pushback on the introduction of Darwinian and other evolutionary ideas in American public education in…
Light summer doom post: If we’re in the middle of a Roman-style collapse, which of the many collapses of Rome is it like?
Like all great empires, the American Empire is concerned with the fate of its predecessors (literally, those that went, retired, or died before). Of all its predecessors, the Roman Empire looms large in the American imagination. The idea that American (and Western) men constantly think about Ancient Rome even became a topic of discussion and…
This fifty year old critique of Chariots of the Gods reads like a 2025 critique of Graham Hancock’s work
My colleague Ruth Gruhn, Emerita in our department, recently showed me a critique of Chariots of the Gods? (the title still had its question mark back then) that she published in the journal Calgary Archaeologist (vol 3) way back in 1975. Even though I am very much aware of Jason Colavito’s work showing that pseudoarchaeology…
Zahi Hawass on Joe Rogan: Pyramids, and magic, and pillars, oh my
The Joe Rogan Experience lately seems to have become one of the epicentres of pseudoarchaeology. After Flint Dibble and Graham Hancock, and then Hancock on his own, it was Zahi Hawass’ turn to discuss ‘advanced’ ancient civilizations and other archaeological mysteries on the podcast. Overall, the episode is a useful and informative watch, but there…
The Square Structure on Mars: Is it xenoarchaeological?
There has recently been renewed interest in a 2001 Mars Orbiter photo that shows a rectangular feature on the surface of the red planet. It seems the feature is about 250 metres per side. Joe Rogan has declared the photo “f-ing wild,” and even Elon Musk has chimed in, saying that astronauts need to be…
ArcheoThoughts 
