Skeptic Vol 22 Issue 3 2017

LOST CIVILIZATIONS • OUR ANGRY ERA • ORIGIN OF UFOS & ALIENS • HOAX
SKEPTIC S
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2 S KE PTI C M AG AZ I N E volume 22 number 3 2017

EDITORIAL / ADVISORY BOARD CONTENTS
Arthur Benjamin
Professor of Mathematics, COLUMNS Magicians of the Gods
Harvey Mudd College, Magician by Marc Defant
Roger Bingham
4 The SkepDoc
Science Author & Television Essayist Juicing for Health or Torture 42 Lost Civilizations and
Napoleon Chagnon
by Harriet Hall, M.D. Imaginative Conjectures
Professor of Anthropology, U.C. Santa Barbara An Analysis of the Myths and
6 The Gadfly
K.C. Cole
Our Angry Era History of Graham Hancock’s
Science Writer, Los Angeles Times
by Carol Tavris Magicians of the Gods
Richard Dawkins by Tim Callahan
Emeritus Professor, University of Oxford
64 Authors & Contributors
Jared Diamond
Professor of Geography &
Environmental Health Sciences, UCLA SPECIAL SECTION
Clayton J. Drees
ARTICLES AN ACADEMIC HOAX
Professor of History,Virginia Wesleyan College
8 Big News on 48 Failure to Communicate
Mark Edward Homo naledi
Professional Magician & Mentalist
Why We Published the
More Fossils “Conceptual Penis as a Social
Gregory Forbes
Professor of Biology,
and a Surprising Young Age Construct” Hoax Exposé
Grand Rapids Community College by Nathan H. Lents by Michael Shermer
John Gribbin
Astrophysicist & Science Writer
12 The Real Origin 49 The Conceptual Penis
William Jarvis
of UFOs and Aliens as a Social Construct
President, National Council Against Health How the Media Shaped Our Ideas A Sokal-Style Hoax
Fraud, Professor, Loma Linda University
About Extraterrestrials on Gender Studies
Lawrence M. Krauss by Tim Callahan by Peter Boghossian (aka Peter
Theoretical Physicist,
Arizona State University Boyle, Ed.D.) and James Lindsay
18 Publicly Funded
Christof Koch Stem Cell Research (aka, Jamie Lindsay, Ph.D.)
Professor of Cognitive & Behavioral Biology
California Institute of Technology California’s $3-Billion Experiment 54 More Fashionable Nonsense
in Public Science
William McComas Some thoughts on “The Conceptual
Director, project to advance Science Education by Raymond Barglow
University of Arkansas Penis as a Social Construct” Hoax
Bill Nye
22 How to Tame a Fox by Alan Sokal
Executive Director, The Planetary Society and Build a Dog
Leonard Mlodinow by Lee Dugatkin
Physicist, Caltech
and Lyudmila Trut JUNIOR SKEPTIC
Richard Olson
Professor of History of Science, Harvey 59 Science, Facts, and 65 Zombies
Mudd College, Claremont Graduate School
“Provisional” Knowledge The Gruesome True Story of Zombies
Donald Prothero by David Zeigler by Daniel Loxton
Professor of Geology, Cal Poly, Pomona
Nancy Segal
Professor of Psychology, CSU. Fullerton On the cover: Göbekli Tepe
COVER STORY: EVALUATING Illustration by Ástor Alexander.
Eugenie Scott LOST CIVILIZATION EVIDENCE
(Retired) Executive Director,
National Center for Science Education CORRECTION: In the last issue of SKEPTIC, Vol. 22,
26 Debating Science No. 2, we published an article titled “Area 51: What’s
Julia Sweeney
Writer, Actor, Comedian and Lost Civilizations Really Going on There?” by Donald Prothero. It was
credited as an excerpt from the forthcoming co-au-
My Experience thored volume by Prothero and Tim Callahan, titled
Frank Sulloway UFOs, Chemtrails, and Aliens: What Science Says (In-
Research Scholar, MIT on the Joe Rogan Experience diana University Press, August 2017), which it is. But
Carol Tavris
by Michael Shermer it was originally published in a book consisting of a
collection of articles edited by Karen Stollznow titled
Social Psychologist / Author
32 Conjuring Up Would You Believe It?: Mysterious Tales from People
You’d Least Expect (January, 2017) under the same
Stuart Vyse
Behavioral Scientist, Author a Lost Civilization title. This work should have been properly referenced
in the SKEPTIC issue. Our apologies to Karen Stollznow
An Analysis of the Claims Made and to our readers for this oversight.
by Graham Hancock In —Michael Shermer, Publisher
volume 22 number 3 2017 WWW.SKEPTIC.COM 3

C O LUMN
The SkepDoc
Juicing for Health or Torture
BY HARRIET HAL L , M . D .
We are ingenious at finding new and buildup of harmful toxins in the beauty and consciousness… Juice
ways to complicate our lives and torture body from processed foods, pollutants cleansing enables the body to naturally
ourselves. One of those ways is adopting and stress.” They offer a Soft Cleanse, go into detox mode while flooding it
fad diets in the quest for health. Juicing a Semi Cleanse, and a Hard Cleanse: with live nutrients and enzymes…
is a big fad today. I find that hard to 25% off; originally $55 a day! When a Some signs that it is time to cleanse
comprehend. I recently endured two in- customer asked Juice Served Here to are: a weakened immune system,
terminable months on a liquid/pureed specify the toxins he’d be flushing from troubled skin, allergies, low moods or
diet while my fractured jaw healed. It his system, the company answered anger, sleeplessness, poor digestion,
was miserable. If I were a prisoner being with this lame copout: “Unfortunately, weight gain, low energy, feeling and
interrogated, the promise of solid food due to regulations by the FDA we are looking blah.” (I can relate to feeling
might have tempted me to tell all. It was unable to specify exact health claims blah, but I’m not sure I understand
hard to maintain a nutritious diet and for our products.” Naturally. “troubled” skin.) They offer Rainbow,
find foods that could survive being Paleta offers a PURIFY Cleanse Indigo, and Green cleanses that they
blenderized and still tempt the appetite. that will “cleanse the toxins right out of claim will “flood your system over the
The only “health benefit” was the loss of your system so you can experience a course of the day with over 20 pounds
a few pounds that I really didn’t need to more joyful and healthful life.” Bene- of certified organic, raw produce and
lose; it brought me down to a BMI of fits? Lose weight, kick the caffeine nuts or seeds. The only thing missing is
18.8, close to the “underweight” range of habit, reduce or stop smoking, detoxify the fiber.”
18.5 or less. Since that experience, I your liver, boost your metabolism, re- Pure Pressed offers Green Cleanse,
cherish the pleasures of being able to fresh your mind and body, curb sugar Detox Cleanse, and Energizer Cleanse.
chew. We have teeth for a reason. The cravings, increase energy and stamina,
That’s enough examples. You get the idea.
idea of systematically taking delicious improve skin, hair and nails, sharpen
solid fruits and vegetables and reducing cognition and focus, reduce sensitivity
Juicing for health
them to liquid strikes me as a truly re- to allergens, and improve moods. The
JuiceRecipes1 offers a long list of health
volting idea. I don’t object to the occa- full 10-day program costs $645. Gee, if
benefits and health conditions with
sional fruit juice, but celery without the it really could do all that, it might be
recipes for which fruits and vegetables
crunch? No thank you. worth that much.
to juice for each. For Alzheimer’s pre-
Moon Juice offers “plant-sourced
vention: apple, orange, and celery. If
Health Claims for alchemy to nourish and elevate body,
Alzheimer’s is already present: apple,
Juicing: Detoxification
carrot, kale, red bell pepper, cilantro,
People juice for various reasons. One is
and collard greens. For colon cancer: co-
“detoxification,” a buzzword that is a
conut, orange, and peach. For detoxifi-
red flag for pseudoscience. My liver
cation (only one of many reasons to
and kidneys do an excellent job of re-
juice, not the reason as the aforemen-
moving toxins from my body, thank you
tioned companies claim): apple, straw-
very much. They don’t need any help,
berry, and lime. For sore throat: tomato,
except in the case of acute poisoning
green bell pepper, celery, cilantro,
with lead or other heavy metals. And
spring onion, garlic, cayenne pepper,
juices are useless in acute poisoning.
and Himalayan salt. And on and on, for
Several companies will sell you juices
a long list of conditions that includes
for detoxification. Some examples:
everything from pain to weight loss,
Juice Served Here tells us “every- from kidney stones to low libido, from
day life contributes to the congestion acne to leukemia.

Is there any health condition that of pineapple, kale, celery, lettuce, both nificant difference in nutritional value,
juicing would not benefit? Would using flat and curly parsley, lemon, ginger, and there is no evidence of any de-
the wrong mix of ingredients for a con- turmeric, and “chilli’s”. Substitutions tectable difference in health outcomes.
dition make things worse? How do you are permitted: pear and apple for
suppose they determined which juices pineapple, spinach for kale, mint for Juice v. Whole Fruits
are good for which conditions? Intu- parsley, etc.2 It seems to me you could Whole fruits are unquestionably
ition? Divine revelation? Gut feeling? substitute anything at all and it would healthier than juices, since the insolu-
Dowsing with a pendulum? Shamanic probably be just as effective. I’m sure ble fiber has not been removed. Insolu-
journeying? A dart board? They cer- you will lose weight while drinking any ble fiber helps prevent constipation
tainly didn’t use the only reliable mixture of fruit and vegetable juices, and diverticular disease and may re-
method: scientific testing. providing you also reduce your total duce the risk of some cancers. A recent
calorie intake and exercise. study4 from the Harvard School of
Wheatgrass juice Public Health found that eating more
To my mind, wheatgrass juice is one of Do-it-Yourself whole fruits, especially blueberries,
the worst fads. People brave enough to The JuiceRecipes website helpfully tells grapes, and apples, was associated with
drink that nasty green glop testify that us “Juice is juiced with a juicer.” Juicers a lower risk of diabetes, while greater
it tastes even more putrid than it looks. sell for $30 to $1200. Or you can use a consumption of fruit juices was associ-
It makes no sense: cows can digest blender and strain the result through ated with a higher risk of diabetes.
grass; humans can’t, even in juice form. cheesecloth. You discard the pulp and They estimated that swapping three
Proponents say it is a powerhouse of drink the juice. It retains the soluble servings of juice a week for whole fruits
nutrients and vitamins; but according fiber but not the insoluble fiber. would result in a seven percent reduc-
to the Jamba Juice website, it only con- Another option is to blenderize tion in diabetes risk.
tains 7% DV (the recommended daily your produce and keep the insoluble The only rational argument I have
allowance) of vitamin C, 10% DV of fiber. Not as pleasant to drink. heard for juicing is that some people
iron, 1% DV of protein, and 0% of Do-it-yourself proponents like Re- don’t eat enough servings of fruits and
everything else. The enzymes in wheat- boot with Joe3 argue that commercial vegetables. There could be many rea-
grass are highly touted, but they can’t juices are processed and lacking in nutri- sons: they may not like the taste, they
be used by the human body. I see no ration while freshly juiced fruits and veg- may not have ready access to fresh pro-
tional argument for consuming wheat- etables are loaded with an abundance of duce, they may not be able to afford
grass. It contains only small amounts of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. them, they may not want to take the
nutrients that we already get in larger Processed juices are subjected to high time to prepare them, they may have dif-
amounts from a healthy diet. temperatures (pasteurization) and may ficulty chewing, or they may lack an ap-
The health benefits claimed for have added sugars. They may be supplied petite. It is easier to get them to drink
wheatgrass include: in low quality plastic bottles that allow juice than to eat more whole fruits and
harmful chemicals to seep into the juice. vegetables. I guess that’s better than
• Strengthens heart and
They argue that commercial facilities nothing, but it would make far more
arterial tissue
may not clean their equipment as thor- sense to just increase the intake of whole
• Lowers blood fat
oughly as you can do at home; and there foods. It’s a bit like saying people should
• Reduces inflammation
have been reports of contamination with take a multivitamin as insurance to make
• Treats degenerative diseases
bacteria, which is particularly a danger up for possible deficiencies in their diet:
• Drains the lymphatic system
for pregnant women, children, and the that’s an ill-conceived band-aid measure
• Flushes out toxins
immunocompromised. When preparing that may do more harm than good. Stud-
• Dissolves scars in the lungs
your own juice, you can wash your hands ies have shown5 that people who take
• Maintains youthfulness
and produce well and peel produce to re- multivitamins are likely to die sooner
by its enzyme content
move pesticide residue. You can mix and and to develop certain cancers.
• Normalizes high blood pressure
match. You can even save the pulp and The bottom line: juicing is a silly
• Regenerates the liver
use it in baking, soups, veggie burgers, fad that provides no special benefits for
• Stimulates healing
healthy cookies, crackers and much people who eat a healthy diet.
• Works as a hangover cure
more.
The evidence for those claims? None There are some reports of reduced
whatsoever. Zilch. Nada. amounts of certain nutrients (like an- REFERENCES
tioxidants and glutathione) in commer- 1. http://bit.ly/1C6HJ7A
Juicing for Weight Loss cially produced juices compared to 2. http://bit.ly/2pXMzqf
3. http://bit.ly/1FMMaCC
To lose weight, the website Reboot homemade juices; but the amounts are 4. http://bit.ly/OukX4b
with Joe recommends juicing a mixture probably not enough to make any sig- 5. http://nyti.ms/1cQVw5o

C O LUMN
The Gadfly
Our Angry Era
BY CAROL TAVRIS
How angry are you these days? H. pylori does. Expressing anger mostly typically feel angry. Since World War II,
Me, too. raises everyone’s temperature, inflames Americans have benefited from a world
rage and self-righteousness, and proof rising expectations—college for all,
When my husband and I lived in vokes counterattack. And whereas work for all, expanding benefits and
New York City, we frequented a local human beings share with other species opportunities for women and formerly
Chinese restaurant. Over time, I could- a physiological disposition to become excluded minorities. The strongest pre-
n’t help noticing I kept getting a theme angry when threatened or attacked, we dictor of depression—economic and
in the fortune cookies: are unique in one crucial way: we are the psychological—is lowered expectations,
only species that can say “The more I which is where we are now thanks to
• Watch your temper. Short temper is a
thought about it, the madder I got.” Your globalization, the shrinking or eradica-
loss of face.
beagle will respond in kind to snarls and tion of many thousands of jobs because
• He that is slow to wrath is of great un-
growls, but if you insult her mother, she’s of automation and other technologies,
derstanding.
likely to just come over and lick you. and the skyrocketing costs of college
• The greatest remedy for anger is
And right there is the problem, the and health care. It doesn’t help to hear
delay.
thorn in our nation’s psyche: What’s an “but progress isn’t linear; things were
• Anger, like fog, often distorts the way.
insult? The fact that people are not uni- worse before the Middle Ages/Civil
• If you are patient in one moment of
versally angered by the same perception War/Industrial Revolution/New Deal.”
anger, you will escape a hundred
of an offense illuminates the role of cog- People evaluate what they have now
days of sorrow.
nitions—and, in turn, ideology and against what they had recently and
I thought these fortunes elegant and identity—in generating anger. The best what they feel entitled to in the future.
beautiful, and was struck by how differ- summation I ever found of the common
ent they were from pop-psych advice ingredient in anger is that it stems from Self-justifying Interpretations
pervading American culture: the violation of an ought: You ought to Here is a paradigmatic study of the
have remembered my birthday. You disconnect between events and emo-
• Lose your temper. Expressing anger
ought not to have stepped on my foot. tions: students had to describe their
shows your status.
You ought to agree with me. You ought thoughts and feelings before taking an
• He that is quick to wrath understands
to believe in God. You ought not to be- important test, and again after getting
that others will knuckle under.
lieve in God. You ought to do the laun- their grades. The students’ emotions
• The greatest remedy for anger is to
dry more often. You ought to be on time, were related not to their actual grades,
sound off now.
like me. You ought not to have posted but to their appraisals of the reasons
• Anger, like a flashlight, illuminates
such a stupid comment. You ought not for their grades. The students who got
the path.
to be so stupid, period. poor grades but explained them by
• If you are patient in one moment of
The “oughts” that generate anger saying “I should have studied harder”
anger, you will lose your place in
today—at an individual level and at the or “my parents will kill me,” felt guilt.
line.
level of politics and society—suggest The students who were thinking of the
At the time, for a book on anger, I why we are living in an almost constant impact of the grade on their future—
was learning how many of the wide- state of polarizing rage. “What if I flunk out?”—reacted with
spread American beliefs about anger— anxiety or panic. And the students
it’s a normal biological instinct, it’s out Violations of Expectations who interpreted the exam (or the in-
of our control, it’s healthy to express it, When people expect something and structor) as being unfair responded
it’s unhealthy to keep it in, I’m entitled don’t get it for reasons they believe are with…anger.1 Needless to say, that’s
to say what I feel—are flat wrong. outside of their control, they rarely say, the explanation du jour. C. R. Snyder,
Suppressing anger doesn’t cause ulcers; “ah, well, luck of the draw.” Rather, they who studied the psychology of excuses,

worried about the transformation he Hightower made that great line fa- A boy went to his grandfather to
saw from people who make excuses to mous, referring to George H.W. Bush.) complain about a friend who had done
those whose identities are the excuse.2 Anyone still trying to get on base at all him a great injustice; the boy was very
Instead of saying “I’m sorry I lost my might understandably be angered by angry.
temper and said those awful things; that attitude. “Let me tell you a story,” said the
I have been under a lot of pressure grandfather. “I too, at times, have felt a
lately,” people are now more likely to A Failure of Empathy great hatred for those that have taken so
say, “I’m sorry I lost my temper and There are two primary reasons to ex- much, with no sorrow for what they do.
said those awful things, but I can’t press anger: One is: “I’m pissed off, and But hate wears you down, and does not
help it—I’m an angry person.” I want you to know it, and I want you hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison
to feel as bad as I do, you son of a and wishing your enemy would die. I
A Belief that an Event, bitch.” The other is that you want the have struggled with these feelings many
Decision, or Behavior is Unfair son of a bitch to change his mind, you times. It is as if there are two wolves in-
Melvin Lerner’s classic studies of the want her to change her behavior, you side me. One is good and does no harm.
“just world phenomenon” explained want redress of your grievance, you He does not take offense when no offense
why it is difficult for many people to want justice. The former strategy is not was intended. He will only fight when it
accept evidence of an injustice that generally going to achieve the latter re- is right to do so, and in the right way. He
threatens their delusional but com- sult, but it is easy to confound them— saves all his energy for the right fight.
forting certainty that “life is fair.” Peo- as we see in the typically useless and
ple who can’t deny that this bad thing inarticulate explosions of fury on col- “But the other wolf, ahhh! He is full of
happened to those people can decide lege campuses that seem to involve no anger. The littlest thing will set him into
“those people” deserve what they got. goals other than “end racism!”, “fire a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all
Lerner found that if two people work that teacher!”, “disinvite that speaker!” the time, for no reason. He cannot think
equally hard on a task and—by a flip Anger draws attention to a problem, because his anger and hatred are so
of the coin—one gets a hefty reward but it’s the next step that is the hard great. It is helpless anger, for his anger
and the other gets nothing, most ob- one—doing something about it. This is will change nothing. Sometimes it is
servers will rate the unlucky partner why conversations across political lines hard to live with these two wolves inside
as having worked less hard.3 And they frequently devolve into exasperated ex- me, for both of them try to dominate my
know it’s random! plosions. Neither side wants to change spirit.”
Today, the anger generated by the its mind or accept that the other side The boy asked: “Which one wins,
widening chasm of income inequality might have a point. Grandfather?”
stems less from the fact that some peo- These tributaries into the river of The grandfather smiled and said,
ple are enormously wealthy—it was rage in America today have always been “The one I feed.”
ever thus in the world—but from the there; it’s just that the levees that once
belief that their wealth was unfairly ac- kept them from overflowing have been
quired: unearned, stolen, insufficiently breaking down. For example, one of the REFERENCES
taxed, or fraudulently created. Human key conditions under which the expres-
beings (and other species) have a fair- sion of anger is likely to be cathartic 1. Smith, C.A., & Ellsworth, P. 1987. Pat-
terns of appraisal and emotion related
ness bias that seems part of our evolu- and beneficial (instead of backfiring to taking an exam. Journal of Person-
tionary heritage—monkeys and and making matters worse), is this: ality and Social Psychology, 52, 475-
toddlers alike will be distressed when your target doesn’t retaliate. When peo- 488.
they perceive an unfair allotment of ple can roar and hurl insults and allega- 2. Snyder, C.R., Higgins, R. L., & Stucky,
R. J. 1983. Excuses: Masquerades in
treats or rewards.4 John Jost and his tions with no consequence, then, just search of grace. New York: Wiley-Inter-
colleagues have studied the phenome- like the child who has learned that per- science.
non they call system justification: sistent shrieking gets the cookie, that’s 3. Lerner, M. 1980. The justice motive.
New York: Plenum. Also Montada, L., &
Many people who were born into great just what they will keep doing. Après
Lerner, M. 1996. Current societal
wealth and power justify that position nous, le déluge de l’internet. norms about justice. New York: Plenum.
by claiming they are entitled to it by I do often feel despairing and 4. Sloane, S., Baillargeon, R., & Premack,
virtue of their superior abilities and na- angry as I survey the current cultural David 2012. Do infants have a sense
of fairness? Psychological Science, 23,
tive talent, whereas all those poor and and political landscape in this country. 196–204; Brosnan, S.F., & de Waal, F.
struggling people are unable or unmo- I’ll do what I can to support my goals B. M. 2003. Monkeys reject unequal
tivated to succeed.5 As the football and beliefs, and to learn what my side pay. Nature, 425, 297–299.
coach Barry Switzer said, “Some people is doing wrong as well as what the 5. Jost, J.T., Kay, A.C., & Thorisdottir, H.
(Eds.) 2009. Social and psychological
are born on third base and go through other side believes. But day to day, I try bases of ideology and system justifi-
life thinking they hit a triple.” (Jim to live by the parable of the wolf. cation. New York: Oxford.

AR TICLE
Big News on
Homo naledi
More Fossils and a Surprising Young Age
BY NATHAN H. LENTS
In September of 2015, scientists at the University the Dinaledi and Lesedi chambers are within the
of Witwatersrand, led by Dr. Lee Berger, made a Rising Star cave system, located in the UNESCO
bombshell announcement. Not only had a new World Heritage Site called The Cradle of Humanity.
species of hominin been discovered, but the find con- The Lesedi chamber contains fewer fossils than
tained more than 1500 fossils from at least 15 individ- were in Dinaledi. However, while the Dinaledi fossils
uals. The remains were found all in one place, a deep were all mixed in together, Lesedi harbored partial
dark cave in South Africa. This was, by far, the largest skeletons corresponding to three distinct individuals,
number of fossils ever found in one place in the his- two adults and an infant. One skeleton, called Neo, is
tory of paleoanthropology. In one fell swoop, Homo nearly as complete as the famous “Lucy” skeleton, the
naledi went from being completely unknown to sci- type specimen of Australopithecus afarensis.
ence to being one of the most fully described ho- The remarkably complete skull of Neo adds addi-
minins ever. Although no age was given to the fossils tional information about the anterior skull and face.
at the time, speculation was rampant. For example, we now know that the nose and maxil-
Over the last few months, the paleoanthropology lary area of H. naledi is flatter than previously
community has been abuzz with rumors that more H. thought. “Hopefully this puts the argument that this
naledi fossils had been found and that the age of the is Homo erectus to rest!” said Berger, a reference to the
fossils had been determined. On May 9th, a large team small but vocal contingent of those that believe that
of scientists, again led by Berger, confirmed the rumors H. naledi is nothing more than an early H. erectus.
and made two big announcements regarding this enig- Both of these “burial chambers” are in the same
matic species. First, a second cave had been found har- cave system and both are incredibly difficult to ac-
boring more H. naledi skeletal remains. That, and even cess. All assumptions are that the hominins in both
more dramatically, the dating effort from the original chambers were contemporaries, but the age of the
fossil find revealed that the fossils are much younger new fossils is not yet known. Dating will require that
than previously thought, a mere 300,000 years old. some fossils be destroyed in the process and Berger
The results are released in three papers in the insists on publishing the fossils first and making
journal eLife, published by the Howard Hughes Med- them available to the community through Mor-
ical Institute, which was also the venue for the first phosource before any of the samples are consumed
publication of Homo naledi in 2015. Both of these an- for the dating efforts. As I wrote in Skeptic last year,
nouncements have astounding and far-reaching impli- the H. naledi team has displayed an unprecedented
cations. A couple of days before the press conference, I commitment to transparency and the democratiza-
caught up with Lee Berger to ask him what all this tion of science, believing that fossils belong to no one
means. and should be shared freely and widely.
The Second Cave A Surprising Young Age

The second cavern, called the Lesedi chamber, is a When H. naledi was first announced, many assumed
mere 80 lateral meters from the now-famous Di- that the fossils were between two and three million
naledi chamber, which housed the treasure trove of years old. The unique and surprising combination of
fossils announced in 2015. That find remains the older, ape-like and newer Homo-derived features
largest hominin discovery in history, with enough places this species at or near the base of the Homo fam-
fossils to nearly recreate the entire skeleton. Both ily tree. The tiny brain and curved fingers, for example,

Nor thern
entrance
Rising Star
Cave System
3
as 7 inches
D (18 cm) wide
Lesedi
chamber Toilet bowl entrance
Main sur face

entrance
Dinaledi Figure 1 (left)

chamber The entire Rising Star cave
system with the Lesedi and
Dinaledi chambers marked.
Figure 2—(below)
The Lesedi chamber, site of
0 ft 50 newer hominid discoveries.
0m 10 20 30
Southern
entrance Figure 3—(below)
The Dinaledi chamber, site
of the original discoveries.
Figure 2—The Lesedi Chamber
To Dinaldi
Chamber
To
“Pinch and Punch” “Berger’s Box”—a 25 cm squeeze named for
passage 1m high climb Dr. Lee Berger after he was stuck there in 2014
through a 60 cm shaft
Skeleton location A Skeleton location C: second adult

Neo adult male
C
0 ft 50
Skeleton location B A
infant B 0m 10 20
Cake Icing Fracture
Entrance
Figure 3—The Dinaledi Chamber
39 foot (12 meter) vertical shaft Superman’s crawl—

averages 7.9 inches (20 cm) wide a passage as small
as 7 inches
Dinaledi (18 cm) wide
(1
chamber
0 ft 50 100
FOSSIL
FOSSSSIL
L Dragon’s
SITE
TE
SITE back 0m 10 20 30

H.
H. sapiens H. foresiensis neanderthalensis H.
TODAY heidelbergensis The Importance
of the Body Skeleton
1 MILLION
YEARS AGO
? H. naledi H. erectus
P. robustus
One of the most important
H. habilis lessons gleaned from the
H.
A. sediba rudolfensis bones of Homo naledi is that
2 MILLION
YEARS AGO A. garhi attempts to infer ancestry
P. boisei from isolated bones, frag-
3 MILLION A. afarensis O P.
aethiopicus ments, or dentition should
M
PUS
YEARS AGO “Lucy”
HO
O be taken with a grain of salt.
HR
4 MILLION
A. africanus
A. anamensis A NT The history of paleoanthro-
R
PA
YEARS AGO
Ar. amidus
pology is filled with tall tales
AU
5 MILLION
S TR woven from the fragments of
YEARS AGO AL a mandible, a single tooth, or
OP Orrorin
IT tugenensis a piece of skull. As Donald
Ar. kadabba
HE
6 MILLION
YEARS AGO
Sahelanthropus
Prothero told me when we
CUS
DIP ITH E CU tchadensis were discussing one of his

7 MILLION
AR S
books two years ago, “That
YEARS AGO
would never fly in any other
Homo naledi compared to other Hominin species. The boxes indicate the time the vari- field of Paleontology, but
ous species existed. Homo naledi could be nearly contemporary or much older. Redrawn
after a chart by S.V. Medaris, University of Wisconsin, Madison. when it comes to the ho-
minin fossil record, it’s us
that we’re talking about, so
are primitive characteristics within the hominin line- the rules get bent a little bit in our desperate desire
age, but the heel made for striding, the proximal femur, to understand our origins.”
and the shoulders are clearly derived features for the With these two big discoveries of H. naledi and
Homo clade. (A clade that needs some revision, by the other recent finds including H. floresiensis from In-
way.) donesia, the Dmanisi skulls from Georgia, and the
Based on the anatomical features, most agree Sima de los Huesos site in Spain, paleoanthropol-
that H. naledi is an early species of the Homo genus, so ogy has a lot more material on which to base its
the tender young age of 300,000 years is quite a sur- still-murky understanding of our evolutionary ori-
prise. While there are several possibilities, what seems gins. As Berger told me, “It used to be joked that
most likely is that this hominin was a long-persisting paleoanthropology had more practitioners than fos-
species. It evolved somewhere in Africa, possibly from sils, but finally that’s not true anymore!” The power
a common ancestor of H. habilis or even from habilis of having so many H. naledi fossils cannot be over-
itself. For comparison, H. erectus was also a long-per- stated. We now have an essentially complete
sisting species, but it had a larger brain and was more skeleton that harbors an interesting but confusing
fully bipedal than H. naledi, spread throughout Asia mosaic of primitive and derived characteristics.
but not much in Africa except its earliest beginnings, “The phylogeny works out very differently based
and showed a steady increase in brain size across the on which anatomy you consider,” says Berger, a point
evolutionary duration of the species. made very clear in an accompanying paper discussing
H. naledi seems to be more in the style of H. flore- how H. naledi fits into the rich hominin diversity of
siensis, the “hobbits” discovered in 2003 at Liang Bua subequatorialAfrica.Lookingonlyattheskull,H.naledi looks primitive in-
on the island of Flores in Indonesia, who maintained deed and this is why having the postcranial skeleton
an early hominin form until surprisingly recent times. is so important. In addition, by having so many indi-
The hobbits had the benefit of isolation on a Pa- viduals, we also gain a sense of the interpersonal vari-
cific island, however, while H. naledi lived in the aptly ation in their anatomy. From even just the first cave,
named cradle of humanity amidst several lineages of we now have more fossils of H. naledi than we do of
hominins, including our own. any other extinct hominin, except Neanderthal and
Whether or not H. naledi was long-persisting or H. erectus.
evolved more recently from some ancestor waiting to
be discovered, its discovery adds yet another lineage of Big Implications for Archaeology
hominins roaming through the Southern half of Africa When I inquired as to the largest impact that might
during the Pleistocene and late Pliocene epochs. not be immediately obvious, Berger replied, “The

field that will be most impacted by the young age of tion. “It’s getting harder and harder to deny that the
H. naledi may actually be archaeology!” This is be- only reason we have a hard time accepting [the no-
cause, previously, stone tools that were found any- tion of intentional body disposal] is because we just
where in Southern Africa dating to the middle or late don’t want to,” says Berger. Indeed, the idea that an
Pleistocene were attributed to the coastal popula- otherwise primitive hominin might have developed
tions of archaic Homo sapiens. By the last half-million enough social complexity to care about disposing of
years, there were no other hominins in Southern their dead is jarring, to say the least.
Africa except our lineage. Or so we thought. Even among those who agree that deliberate
It is not known whether H. naledi crafted tools. disposal is the most likely explanation, there is dis-
When asked if any artifacts had been found in the agreement about whether this implies great social
caves, Berger demurred but did not issue a defini- complexity. If a population was firmly rooted to a
tive “no.” While the small brain of H. naledi might specific location, disposal of decomposing bodies
make it seem unlikely to be a stone tool-maker, re- could have become a simple “housekeeping” behav-
call that two million-year old Homo habilis remains ior to keep the area free of decaying bodies. One
are associated with simple stone tools and their problem with this idea is that sedentary home-
brains were only slightly bigger than those of H. steading is not a lifestyle found in any primates ex-
naledi. It is also worth noting that the long fingers cept fully modern humans.
of H. naledi are ideal for fine handiwork. Further, the chambers are very far from the
Further still, size is only a crude measure of the cave opening. Even if simply tossing a dead body
power of a brain. After all, our own brains have down a hole doesn’t require much intelligence or
shrunk by 10% since the last ice age. Analysis of the H. social complexity, that’s not what occurred with
naledi skull has provided evidence that their brains these H. naledi collections. To reach either of the
may have undergone substantial organization and spe- caves, one must traverse 60-70 lateral meters and
cialization like the brains of our immediate ancestors descend almost as many vertical meters of treacher-
did. Because of how energy-hungry brains are, adapta- ous terrain, in complete darkness. Both caves re-
tions that allow greater efficiency and computing quire passage through gauntlets, extremely narrow
power without growing larger would be heavily fa- passages of 18cm and 25cm, respectively, at their
vored. With this in mind, it is wise not to underesti- narrowest point. Most humans cannot fit through
mate the brain power of the diminutive H. naledi. these passages and Berger himself got stuck for
some time in 2014. Geologists are quite confident
More Evidence for Deliberate Body Disposal that the caves were no more accessible 300,000
Perhaps the most controversial and interesting years ago than they are today. Whoever put those H.
feature of the H. naledi discovery is the manner in naledi bodies in those caves went to great lengths to
which the remains have been found. The two do so. This makes little sense if the only goal was
caves contain homogeneous collections of this sin- getting rid of a rotting corpse.
gle species. The only other fossilized remains are
those of an owl and a few small scavenger mam- Fire Lighting the Way
mals that found their way into the caves. Such While most attention understandably focuses on
mono-specific collections of remains are most un- the body disposal itself, not to be forgotten is that
usual in paleontology, even unheard of, except in both chambers were well into the “dark zone”
the case of a sudden catastrophe like a volcanic where whoever deposited those H. naledi bodies was
eruption. In these two caves, there are many indi- working in the complete absence of light. This sug-
viduals of the same species, with no other species gests, though indirectly, that Homo naledi had mas-
present, collected in a tight space that is ex- tered the use of fire. How else but with torches
tremely inaccessible. This is remarkable and calls could they have navigated the twists, turns, drops,
out for an explanation. and climbs of the rising star caves?
From the first announcement of the Dinaledi Acknowledging this probability, Berger con-
chamber in 2015, the possibility of intentional body firmed that scientists are scouring the cave for signs
disposal has hung in the air. On the one hand, the evi- of fire use and any other artifacts that might give
dence is circumstantial and it may be impossible to clues as to how and why these remains ended up in
ever know for sure. On the other hand, no alternative the chambers.
explanations supported by evidence have emerged in Something tells me that the Rising Star caves
the last 18 months, and surely not from lack of atten- haven’t given up all of their secrets yet.

E XC ERPT
The Real Origin

of UFOs and Aliens
How the Media Shaped Our Ideas About Extraterrestrials
BY TIM CALLAHAN
On the evening of November 20, 1952, George The Threat of Nuclear War
Adamski led two women and two couples out into the Klaatu, a wiser version of a human being representing
California dessert in the hope that they might make all that is noble in our species, landed on Earth to
contact with space visitors. He asked his companions warn humanity that if it failed to find a solution to the
to wait while he went on ahead. While alone he threat of nuclear war, an interstellar robot police
claimed to have met a man from Venus named Orthon. force, over which Klaatu and his fellow advanced
One of the women, Alice Wells, made a drawing of aliens had no control, would annihilate the people of
Orthon, based on Adamski’s description. The drawing Earth. The United States had destroyed Hiroshima
is of a tall very human looking being wearing a jump and Nagasaki with atomic bombs in August 1945 but
suit remarkably like that worn by the actor Michael had then lost its monopoly on nuclear weapons when
Rennie in the role of Klaatu, the benign alien who the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb in
came to warn the human race of the threat of nuclear 1949, just two years before the release of The Day the
war in the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still.1 Earth Stood Still. Thus, the movie reflected the grow-
Were this the only example of a “close en- ing fears generated by the nuclear arms race.
counter” with aliens that reflected imagery and On November 1, 1952, the United States deto-
themes previously appearing in films, television and nated its first large-scale thermonuclear weapon, or
other media, the resemblance of Orthon to Klaatu hydrogen bomb, with an explosive yield of 10.4
could by explained as mere coincidence. Likewise the megatons (million tons of TNT) at the Enewitok
assertion that Adamski based Orthon on Klaatu could Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific.
be easily refuted as an example of the logical fallacy of The results of the test were made public on Novem-
post hoc ergo propter hoc (“after this, therefore because ber 16, and George Adamski claimed to have first
of this”). After all, Orthon’s shoulder length blond met Orthon on November 20. Coincidence?
hair is nothing like Klaatu’s fairly short dark hair.
However, every major trope of the modern UFO Advent of the Flying Saucer
mythos can be traced to previous media images and The benevolent Klaatu of The Day the Earth Stood
themes. The three major types of aliens of UFO litera- Still shared one thing in common with the malevo-
ture—Nordics, grays, and reptilians—can all be traced lent aliens of many other science fiction movies:
to media prototypes, as can tales of alien abductions, they all came to Earth in flying saucers. Supposedly,
alien implants, and the imagery of flying saucers. The the first sighting of flying saucers was by amateur
chief media sources of these tropes are movies, televi- pilot Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947. However,
sion, pulp magazines, and comic strips. But earlier lit- what Arnold actually reported was that the UFOs he
erature and even ancient myths were also precursors saw moved erratically, like saucers skipping
of the modern UFO myths. That this new mythology across water. He didn’t say they looked like saucers.
came into being in the 20th century reflects the Here are Kenneth Arnold’s own words, from a 1950
greater emotional and visceral impact of film and tele- telephone interview with Edward R. Murrow:
vision compared to that of the written word. Particu-
larly in the 1950s, film and television focused primal These objects more or less fluttered like they were, oh,
fears activated by the threats of nuclear war and brain- I’d say, boats on very rough water or very rough air of
washing through the medium of science fiction. some type, and when I described how they flew, I said
Excerpted from UFOs, Chemtrails, and Aliens: What Science Says (Indiana University Press, August 2017 by Don Prothero and Tim Callahan.

that they flew like they take a saucer and throw it
across the water. Most of the newspapers misunder-
stood and misquoted that too. They said that I said
that they were saucer-like; I said that they flew in a Fashion for the 1950s Alien
saucer-like fashion.
Arnold initially said that what he saw looked

like the heel of a shoe, with the curved edge leading.
Eventually he described them as shaped like (Left) Orthon, November 20,
boomerangs. His own drawing and illustrations of 1952. George Adamski described
them actually look somewhat like crescents. But this visitor from Venus and
claimed that he met him in the
UPI reporter Bill Bequette mistakenly reported that California desert.
Arnold had described what he saw as flying saucers.3
From the time of this misquote, witnesses who saw
UFOs began to characterize what they saw as disc-
shaped. The fact that those who believe they’ve been
abducted by aliens derive the shape of the spaceships
from a media trope rather than from an actual expe-
rience is illustrated by their description of the alien
craft as the erroneously reported saucer-shape, rather
than the boomerang or crescent-shape actually de-
scribed by Kenneth Arnold.
However, it was not this error alone that was the
source of the disc-shaped craft. An even earlier image
of flying saucers is found on the cover of the Decem-
ber 1915 issue of The Electrical Experimenter as part of
a canal scene on Mars. Perhaps the original inventor
of this image, or at least its foremost popularizer, was
science-fiction illustrator Frank R. Paul. His illustra-
tion for the cover of the November 1929 issue of Sci-
ence Wonder Stories depicts a giant flying saucer using
metallic tentacles to carry off a skyscraper. This is but
one of several covers Paul painted that depict menac-
ing flying saucers. In one a saucer—acting like a giant
buzz saw—is shearing an airplane in two. In another
a flying saucer is pulling up a chunk of earth using tri-
angulating tractor beams.1
The term tractor beam was, incidentally, in-
vented in 1929 by science fiction author E. E. Smith
in his “Lensman” novels. Decades later Smith’s en-
ergy beam concept would fire the popular imagina-
tion when used in graphic 1950s film scenarios that
reflected cold war anxieties. In the 1955 film This
Island Earth tractor beams were used by a flying (Right) Klaatu, 1951.
saucer to capture the hero and heroine trying to In the science fiction film The
flee in their private airplane. The energy beam con- Day the Earth Stood Still the
cept had become a stock prop by the late 1960s in actor Michael Rennie played
Klaatu, a silver suited ambas-
science fiction TV series. Star Trek had been using
sador to Earth from a plane-
tractor beams for nearly a decade by the time Travis tary federation, who came to
Walton, exhibiting a paucity of imagination, warn the Earthlings against
claimed to have been sucked up in a beam of light the profligate build up of nu-
into an alien spaceship in 1975, and used his claims clear weapons.
to sell a book and movie rights.

Brainwashing Fears, Abduction and Implants 1964. Likewise, the mind control by implants into the
Another film dealing with the threat of annihilation brain in Invaders from Mars focused the American
of the human race was the 1957 film, The 27th Day. public’s fear of communist mind control and redi-
Although the alien in that film was benign, he did rected it toward insidious aliens well before implants
not hesitate to abduct and transport the five hu- became a staple of alien abduction stories. It is also
mans to whom he gave deadly capsules by which interesting that so many claimed abductions followed
we might destroy ourselves. In the 1953 film In- the Hills’ narrative, both in time and in content.
vaders from Mars, capture by malign Martians was
far creepier. Accompanied by an ominous droning, Abduction and Sexual Fantasies
the sand of a sand pit in which the Martian flying Similar to the motif of alien implants is Betty Hill’s
saucer had buried itself was sucked down, and the claim, related while under hypnosis, that the gray
unlucky human walking over it was as well. This aliens inserted a needle into her navel, which has a
was clearly patterned after the action of a buried strong parallel in the vision of St. Teresa of Avila.
antlion larvae capturing and killing other insects. The piercing of the abdomen in both St. Teresa’s
Not only did Martians suck people under the vision and Betty Hill’s narrative is almost certainly
sand, but once they captured them they implanted a form of sexual imagery. This is particularly borne
tiny mechanisms at the base of the people’s skulls out in St. Teresa’s description of the sensations
in order to control their minds—thereby turning caused by the angel piercing her body with a spear:
the loving parents of young David MacClean into
The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and
cold, heartless automatons, and turning a little girl
yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive
who is one of David’s friends into a creepy patho-
pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.4
logical arsonist. The paranoia that pervades the film
is heightened when David tries to tell the police In Gian Loranzo Bernini’s famous sculpture of the
what happened to his parents. He is interviewed by ecstasy of St. Teresa, her face mirrors that of a
the chief of police, but when the chief turns around woman in the throes of orgasm.
in his swivel chair to answer a phone, David sees Even leaving aside the imagery of piercing
the telltale scab on the back of the man’s neck—he, related both by Betty Hill and St. Teresa, the ele-
too, is under Martian thought control. After the ment of abduction is common in sexual fantasies.
Martians have used their mind-controlled humans The narrative of Antonio Villas Boas’ 1957 abduc-
for a given task, they do away with them by deto- tion was explicitly sexual. He was taken aboard a
nating the implant, thereby causing a cerebral hem- spacecraft to impregnate a beautiful alien woman.
orrhage. When, toward the end of the film, David Abduction as part of sexual fantasy is a particularly
and Dr. Patricia Blake are captured by the Martians, common theme in romance novels, as can be seen
David witnesses the unconscious Dr. Blake lying on by looking up “abduction in romance novels” on
a glass table with the Martian implant being low- the Internet and clicking on “images.” The idea of
ered toward the back of her neck. loss of control is implicit in the sexual act, and ab-
Invaders from Mars was released in April 1953, duction in sexual fantasies removes the onus of vio-
near the end of the Korean War (June 1950–July lating sexual taboos. Those fantasizing needn’t
1953) amid fears of brainwashing. Though claims of justify taking part in a forbidden act, because the
rampant communist brainwashing were largely de- act is perpetrated against their will.
bunked by later investigations, during the Korean In Greek myth, abduction is common in tales of
War and in its aftermath, many Americans believed gods having sexual relations with mortal women.
that people’s minds could be controlled through a Two of those abductions are particularly promi-
combination of torture and psychological subver- nent—that of Zeus, in the form of a bull, carrying
sion. The control of people through tiny implants Europa off to Crete and that of Hades carrying Perse-
lodged in their brains fed into such fears to make phone off into the underworld. Thus, abduction as a
the original Invaders from Mars a masterpiece of story trope with strong sexual overtones was well es-
paranoia. tablished in ancient literature long before 20th cen-
Thus, the abductions of The 27th Day and This Is- tury alien abduction narratives mirrored it.
land Earth, plus the sand pit captures of Invaders from A more immediate and graphic source for alien
Mars, had firmly implanted the motif of capture by abduction scenarios, and one that is implicitly sex-
space aliens into the public imagination well before ual, appears in a Buck Rogers comic strip from 1930.
the narrative of Barney and Betty Hill developed in In the panels of this comic strip, Buck’s sexy girl-

friend is first shown being carried off in a giant
claw descending from an extraterrestrial spaceship. Early Prototypes for the Gray Alien
Later she is shown lying unconscious on an examin-
ing table, being scrutinized by catlike aliens.2 Thus
an ancient mythic and literary trope was empha- Left:
sized and made more graphic by comic strips and February 22, 1964
Sketch of an alien
movies in the 20th century. with wrap-around
eyes by Barney Hill.
Origin of the Gray Aliens
The gray aliens, so common in abduction narra-
tives, were first described and drawn by Barney Hill
while he was under hypnosis on February 22, 1964.
They do not appear in UFO/alien stories before this.
Tellingly, this was only 12 days after the science fic-
tion television program The Outer Limits aired the Below: February 10 1964. Two views of the
Bellero Shield alien. Thought to be the proto-
episode titled “The Bellero Shield” (February 10, type of the gray, this alien appeared in an
1964), which featured an alien that became the es- episode of The Outer Limits TV show, “The
sential prototype of all grays. An earlier depiction of Bellero Shield.”
stunted gray, seemingly sexless, aliens is, however,
found in the description of the Selenites in H. G.
Wells’s The First Men in the Moon:
There was no nose, and the thing had dull bulging
eyes at the side—in the silhouette I had supposed
they were ears. There were no ears…I have tried to
draw one of these heads, but I cannot. There was a
mouth, downwardly curved, like a human mouth in
a face that stared ferociously.5
It is conceivable that the alien from The Outer

Limits “The Bellero Shield” episode was based on
Wells’s Selenites. The idea that humans from the
future might be diminutive, have large heads,
and be physically weak is common in science fic-
tion. As skeptic Aaron Sakulich notes at his Iron
Skeptic website, small gray men with bulbous heads,
often depicted as what humans would look like in
the future, are found in fictional works going back
to 1891.6 It is a common, though unfounded, as-
sumption in many such works that an increase in
mental acuity leads to a decrease in physical vigor.
Thus, humans of the future are depicted as sickly.
Dying Races and Alien-Human Hybrids

This brings us to the myths of dying races and alien-
human hybrids. In many UFO narratives the gray
aliens want to create hybrids by interbreeding with
humans because they are a dying race and need
human genes to reinvigorate them. Dying planets Above: 1900-1901
are found in both the 1955 movie This Island Earth H.G. Well’s serial story “The First Man on the
Moon” first appeared The Stand magazine.
and the 1957 film The 27th Day. In This Island Earth, The story featured two adventurers who travel
Metaluna, home planet of the humanoid aliens who to the Moon and interact with a wide variety
have abducted the hero and heroine, is being de- of mostly insectoid Selenites.
stroyed by its enemies. The scientifically improbable

attempt of the grays to create hybrids with humans changelings and theirs (elves, witches, demons), on
partakes of two tropes. The first is the mythic motif the other, in a two-page comparative list. Among
of gods siring heroes by mortal women. This was the many striking parallels are the following, which
elaborated in Jewish apocalyptic works, such as the I have paraphrased (my numbering and italics):
Book of Enoch, as the creation of a hybrid race, the
Nephilim, by rebellious angels having sex with mor- (1.) Demons steal semen to breed children. Fairies
tal women. The second trope is that of sexual fan- replenish their race with stolen human chil-
tasy, one of the more common of these involving dren and interbreed with mortals. Aliens ex-
women carried off and ravished by mysterious and tract eggs and sperm to produce hybrids.
sexy strangers. (2.) Changelings are more like their fairy or demon
Although narratives of aliens mating with parents than their human parents. Alien-human
Earth women or extracting sperm from human hybrids are more alien than human.
males to create hybrid beings can be traced back to (3.) Children of gods and humans or fairies and hu-
Greek myth and to the Nephilim of Genesis 6:2-4, mans have special powers. Hybrids have special
such stories have a much more immediate source, powers.
the 1960 movie Village of the Damned, based on the
1957 John Wyndham novel The Midwich Cuckoos. Origin of the Reptilian Aliens
In both the novel and the film, the people of the The main source of reptilian aliens is most likely the
English village of Midwich fall unconscious, as 1983 television miniseries V. In V, giant flying saucers
does anyone entering the town, when a UFO flies appear and hover over the major cities of Earth. Out
over it. Following that event, all the women in of these ships emerge aliens completely human in ap-
Midwich become pregnant and give birth on the pearance, who say they wish to trade knowledge of
same day seven months later, though the babies their advanced technology for Earth’s natural re-
aren’t premature. Their children, evenly divided sources. In reality, the aliens, called the “Visitors,” are
between boys and girls, all look alike, with pale reptilian—their scaly green reptilian skin is hidden
skin and fine blond hair, and are telepathic and under a covering of synthetic human-looking skin.
cold hearted. When a young man driving a car ac- They also wear contact lenses to disguise their red-or-
cidentally hits one of the children, injuring the ange eyes, whose pupils are vertical slits. That they
child’s hip, the others, taking control of his mind, are disguised as humans is significant, because a
force him to drive into a wall, killing himself. major tenet of theories involving reptilian aliens is
When the man’s brother tries to avenge him, the that they too disguise themselves as humans, often by
children make him shoot himself. Eventually the shape shifting. The Visitors’ real reason for coming to
hero of the story blows himself up with the chil- Earth in V is to harvest human beings as food.
dren, ending the threat. At a MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) website
As folklorist Thomas Bullard notes, scenarios of listing reptilian alien encounters and abductions,
alien-human hybridization are wonderfully free of the only three reports are from before 1983. The 11
restrictions of biology, biochemistry, and genetics: other reptilian encounters are from 1983 or later.8
The main proponent of the theory that reptilian
A hybrid-making program as the reason for abduc- aliens are heavily involved in human affairs is
tions raises questions about how two species can David Icke. The reptilian aliens presented in his
evolve worlds apart and still be genetically com- 1999 book The Biggest Secret have all the character-
patible. Popular wisdom sets aside this objection istics of the Visitors of V. For example, they disguise
by accepting that alien techno-magic can hybridize themselves as human beings:
anything with the push of a button. Yet this argument
self-destructs because of the same superiority. If The Windsors, like all the royal families (family) of
aliens are advanced enough to unite any genes, they Europe are representatives of the Black Nobility
should be too advanced to practice hybridization at and Babylonian Brotherhood and related to
all. Real aliens would need a kitchen rather than an William of Orange. They are, as I shall be describ-
examination room, since they could simply create life ing, shapeshifting reptilians.9
to their specifications from raw materials up.7
While Icke’s assertions seem patently absurd, ac-
Bullard points out a strong connection be- cording to an April 7, 2016, article in the Guardian,
tween the hybrids and their alien forebears of mod- 12 million Americans believe the reptilian conspir-
ern UFO narratives, on the one hand, and acy theory to be true.10

* * *
Before the 20th century, there were almost no reports
of UFOs or aliens in the popular media. Instead, leg-
ends focused on mythical beings such as angels,
demons, incubi, and succubi. With the advent of the Reptilian
modern age of secularism and science, angels and alien drawn
demons have gone out of fashion. Instead, the origin after those
on posters
of every motif of UFO narratives can be traced to the featured on
media of the time. These include flying saucers, which David Icke’s
were taken from comic strips and pulp magazine cov- website.
ers of the 1920s and 1930s but going back as far as (https://
1915; alien implants, which came from the 1953 movie www.david
icke.com.)
Invaders from Mars; alien abductions, derived from the
Buck Rogers comic strip, Invaders from Mars, This Island
Earth, and The 27th Day; dying worlds, from This Island biopsy on some of Betty’s tissue, that procedure
Earth and The 27th Day; and interbreeding aliens with would require a large needle. But when doctors
humans, from both Village of the Damned and V. In ad- take biopsies, they administer local anesthesia to
dition, the main denizens of UFO literature derive reduce the trauma of the procedure. Thus, even if
from movies and television: the Nordics from Klaatu they were taking a biopsy, these aliens should have
in The Day the Earth Stood Still, the grays from “The had at their disposal anesthetics and sedatives far
Bellero Shield,” and the reptilians from V. more sophisticated than any we now have.
It is noteworthy that not only are the Nordics, Finally, considering the vagaries of evolution
grays and reptilians humanoid in shape (because of occurring on another planet in another star system,
the budgetary restrictions of the films and television would we expect actual extraterrestrial visitors,
shows that spawned them), UFO narratives also re- whether benign, malign, or indifferent, to repro-
flect the technology restrictions of their own time. duce the gray alien of “The Bellero Shield,” the rep-
Consider, for example, the gray aliens’ piercing of tilians of V, or human beings of the Nordic type,
Betty Hill’s navel with a huge needle, which caused indistinguishable from Homo sapiens? The simplest
her excruciating pain. By using the far less invasive and most likely explanation for all of these motifs—
technology of the CT (computer tomography) scan flying saucers, implants, abductions, Nordics, gray
and that of MRI (magnetic resonance imagery), we aliens, and reptilians (all of which appeared in UFO
can learn much more about what goes on inside narratives only after first appearing in the media)—
the human body than by sticking a needle into it. is that they are the products of mental sets engen-
CT scans first became commercially available in dered by literary, graphic art, motion picture, and
1971. The first clinically useful MRI was performed television tropes. They reflect a rich literary,
in 1980. Thus Betty Hill had no knowledge of them graphic, filmic, and mythic trove, one imprinted by
in the early 1960s, and her “memory” under hypno- our own psychology. However, these narratives do
sis was limited to the technology she knew. not reflect either the character or the motives of
If, however, the grays were performing a beings from another star system.
REFERENCES
1. Loxton, Daniel. 2015. “Space Brothers from Moon. New York: Berkley Highland Books, 73.
Venus?” JUNIOR SKEPTIC, 20, no. 4. 6. Sakulich, Aaron. 2005. “A Media History of Gray
2. Arnold, Kenneth. 1984. “Transcript of Ed Murrow– Aliens,” The Triangle, May 20, http://bit.ly/2nj61cj
Kenneth Arnold Telephone Conversation.” CUFOS 7. Bullard, Thomas. 2010. The Myth and Mystery of
Associate Newsletter, February/March, 3. http:// UFOs. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 271.
bit.ly/2niWi5G 8. “Reptilian Alien Reports.” 2015. MUFON Forum,
3. Kottmeyer, Mar tin. 1993. “The Saucer Error.” October 27, http://bit.ly/2nAGRbw
The REALL News 1, no. 4, May. http://bit.ly 9. Icke, David The Biggest Secret: The Book that Will
/2oifyQc Change the World, Scottsdale, AZ: Bridge of Love
4. Teresa of Avila ca. 1580. The Life of St. Teresa of Publications 1999, 127.
Jesus of the Order of Our Lady of Carmel. Ch. XXIX, 10. Oksman, Olga. 2016. “Conspiracy Craze: Why 12
item 17 http://bit.ly/2mCWm3s Million Americans Believe Alien Lizards Rule Us,”
5. Wells, H. G. 1901/1970. The First Men in the The Guardian, April 7.

AR TICLE
Publicly Funded
Stem Cell Research
California’s $3-Billion Experiment in Public Science
BY RAYMOND BARG L O W
Twentieth century medicine has succeeded in ration and sharing of data, methods, and materials.
When Does
treating many infectious diseases very effectively. But Government is also in a position to fund scientific
Personhood
against severe conditions of cell injury or loss such as projects that would be too risky for private firms to un-
Begin?
Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, type one diabetes, and spinal dertake. Hence a public science model should, in prin-
Does cord injury, the past century’s drugs and vaccines have ciple, permit stem cell research to follow a trajectory
personhood
begin here? remained all but powerless. Hence the excitement in that begins with scientific discovery and culminates in
1998 when embryonic stem cell lines were first de- new, effective treatments.
rived in James Thomson’s laboratory in Wisconsin. However, this path forward for regenerative
Stem cells provide the building blocks of every tissue medicine has been obstructed in the United States by
type and might, it was anticipated, restore organs of a number of political barriers, including religious op-
Fertilized egg the human body much as rebuilding a damaged foun- position to embryonic stem cell research on the
(zygote) dation, wall, or roof rehabilitates a house. grounds that it is akin to abortion. Some religious be-
lievers hold that a human embryo is a full-fledged per-
The Federal Impasse son possessing a soul and a right to exist and develop.
Since no one is exempt from severe illnesses, popular This “pro-life” view is hostile to stem cell research,
support for medical research to find remedies is enor- since the conviction that a fertilized egg is a person
mous. At the same time, though, over the past half with legal and moral rights views a 5 day-old blasto-
century the very idea of government intervention to cyst (which is a source of embryonic stem cells for sci-
improve human lives has been vigorously contested in entific experimentation) as sacred as a months-old
Blastocyst the U.S. Many functions of government, ranging from fetus or a new-born child. While it is true that re-
Contains stem cells
that differentiate into education (charter schools) and incarceration (private search that uses embryonic cells is only one form of
all the cell types of
the human body prisons) to fighting war (out-sourcing military opera- stem cell science, these cells remain essential for em-
tions to private firms) have been privatized. Scientific pirical studies and therapeutic applications.
research funding has been subject to privatization as Since the trajectory from a fertilized egg to a
well. Mick Mulvaney, the former Congressman from born child is a gradual one with no discernible sud-
Virginia who is currently the Director of the U.S. Of- den leap into personhood, a consistent “sanctity of
fice of Management and Budget, asked in September life” view is logically compelled to push the time of
2016, “do we really need government funded research incipient personhood all the way back to fertiliza-
at all?” Such doubt, voiced strongly by officials in the tion. This view holds that embryonic stem stem cell
current administration in Washington, is rekindling research, along with abortion at any stage of preg-
Fetus
the perennial debate about public versus private sup- nancy, is unethical and should be outlawed.
port for science. Relevant to that debate is California’s In our moral deliberations, we often look for
investment in stem cell research, which illustrates sharply-defined boundaries so that we can clearly dis-
both the advantages and the challenges of government tinguish between ethically permissible and ethically
sponsorship of scientific enquiry. forbidden practices. But as Michael Shermer has writ-
A strong prima facie case can be made for such ten, “Most moral problems are better conceived as
sponsorship. Government-funded science is less con- continuous rather than as categorical. The categoriza-
strained by patent and other proprietary barriers that tion of the world into cleanly cleaved boxes is a useful
inhibit commercial, profit-driven scientific investiga- cognitive tool for some tasks, but it doesn’t always
Baby tion, and is therefore better able to encourage collabo- serve us well in understanding social and moral

problems.” 1 Nature takes its time in forming a Those who supported this initiative responded to the Two Sources
human being and gives us no reason to believe that a “embryos are potential persons with rights” argu- of Stem Cells
“right to life” is instantly bestowed upon an egg at the ment, which had been so effective at the federal level,
moment of entry by a sperm. by emphasizing the stories and the rights of the indi-
Extraction from
Were personhood to begin instantly at concep- viduals whose several medical conditions cell-based 5-day old embryo
tion, as the religious right maintains, that indeed therapies might treat or cure.
would make the extraction of stem cells that destroys However, even though the grassroots campaign
a blastocyst an act of murder. What is amiss with this on behalf of Proposition 71 achieved a landslide vic-
reasoning? To be sure, a fertilized egg does count bio- tory in November 2004, the constitutionality of the
Reprograming
logically as “human life.” But so does every living cell ballot measure was immediately challenged in court (Induced pluripotency)
in a human body. A single skin cell, for example, is by the Life Legal Defense Foundation, a “pro-life” law of mature somatic
cell (e.g. skin or hair)
also “human life,” since it is both human (i.e., belongs firm that represents religious organizations. Although
to a member of the human species) and alive. But a this legal effort was ultimately defeated, it succeeded
skin cell does not have the status of a “person” with an in delaying financing for nearly three years. It was not
inviolable right to life. until October 2007 that state funds were released to
Yet this “right to life” view has been very politi- support the research.
cally influential in the United States for over two Public science means, at a minimum, publicly
decades. In 1995, the U.S. Congress passed legislation funded science, and the stem cell research institute es-
that prohibits federal funding for any research that tablished in California by Proposition 71 is certainly Stem cells
creates or destroys a human embryo. As defined by public in that sense. But conceived more inclusively,
this legislation, a 4-6 day-old blastocyst consisting of public science is science overseen and in some degree
about 100 cells, or even a just fertilized egg, counts as directed by lay citizens. Proposition 71 does engage the
an “embryo.” Speaking in favor of this prohibition, public in that deeper way. Sitting on the 29-member
Congressman Jay Dickey, a Christian conservative governing board of the California Institute for Regen-
from Arkansas, advanced the classical argument that erative Medicine, along with scientific researchers and Pancreatic
(Islet cells)
in subsequent years would be invoked time and again biotech industry representatives, are 12 patient advo-
in federal and state legislatures: embryonic stem cell cates representing a wide variety of diseases. These ad-
research “is an attack on the sanctity of life. It is an at- vocates, many of whom have no formal scientific
tack on the moral conscience of our Nation…. There training, have served as well on the three working Hemato-
poeietic
are no spare embryos…these are lives.” This legisla- groups that determine CIRM policy on facilities devel- (blood cells)
tion remains in effect today and bars federally funded opment, grants review, and ethical standards. This ex-
stem cell scientists from using any of the hundreds of traordinary degree of citizen engagement rests on the
thousands of unused embryos currently stored in IVF assumption that scientific enquiry is not the exclusive Cardiomyocytes
(in-vitro fertilization) clinic freezers across the nation. province of scientists: lay citizens can learn enough (heart cells)
These excess embryos result from the imprecision of about biology and medicine to participate rationally in
IVF procedures and are routinely discarded. Lost on policy formation and ensure that scientific work ad-
the lawmakers is the manifest irrationality of legisla- vances effectively and ethically. Neurons
(brain cells)
tion that permits the destruction of excess embryos in Such citizen involvement is not unprecedented.
IVF clinics as waste but rules out the use of those During the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, patients and their
Hepatocytes
same embryos for research that might lead to effective activist allies not only organized public support for re- (liver cells)
treatments for many diseases.2 search funding to find effective therapies for the dis-
ease, but also often acquired enough expertise to
Enter California, in 2004: engage with scientists and doctors on science itself.
Democratic, Public Science AIDS activists were especially influential in the do-
The lack of federal support for stem cell research mo- main of HIV/AIDS clinical trials, working with scien-
tivated patient advocates, health care providers, and tists to set new safety standards and accelerate the
scientists in California to draft a state initiative allo- availability of new treatments.
cating $3 billion funding for the research and to CIRM’s democratic model of governance is de-
gather enough signatures to put it on the ballot in signed to counter irrational influences that distort de-
2004. Proposition 71 was passed by the voters and es- cision-making by scientists and lay stakeholders alike.
tablished the “California Institute for Regenerative Scientists are expert at applying the logic and lan-
Medicine” (CIRM), which is mandated to work with guage of science to evaluate a research hypothesis; Restoration of damaged
multiple stem cell sources, including blastocysts. they know about evidence, probability, standard or destroyed tissue

deviation, independent and dependent variables. But CIRM from 2008 to 2014, acknowledged, “The av-
scientists are by no means immune to the human erage cost of delivery of a new biopharmaceutical
foibles of stubbornness, intolerance, blinkered vi- drug into medical practice has been estimated to be
sion, egoism, and confirmation bias. Lay citizens are, $1.2-3.9 billion…. In the private sector, there are
of course, subject to these same influences, and may currently too few investors and pharmaceutical or
form opinions not based on scientific evidence. biotechnology companies with sufficient resources
Driven by hope for medical solutions as soon as possi- and interest in cell therapies to enable the full op-
ble, they may, for example, underestimate the impor- portunity for clinical trials to occur.”
tance of scientific rigor in advancing the search for In the world of drug development there exists a
cures. so-called “valley of death” between scientific discov-
In CIRM’s administrative meetings, the battles ery and clinical translation that, because of the risk
of ideas and proposals are intense and sometimes ac- of failure, turns away potential investors. Even if a
rimonious. At the same time, though, the participants company is persuaded to embark on clinical trials of
share a commitment to advance the science and the an experimental therapy, it may still lack the deter-
search for cures, and that principle of unity favors mination to carry clinical development all the way to
compromise. Many of the patients involved in FDA approval. In 2010, Geron Corporation began
CIRM’s governance, quite aware that their own per- the first clinical trial in the U.S. of a therapy based on
sonal illness may be too far advanced to be helped by embryonic stem cell research. The therapy aimed to
a stem cell therapy that will be developed during heal spinal cord injury, and its trial was partly funded
their lifetime, hold out hope that others will be by CIRM. One year later, however, Geron halted the
spared the travail of that illness. Their engagement in trial, not because of adverse results but because the
this cause motivates passionate dedication on the company deemed continuation too risky from a fi-
part of everyone connected with the Institute— nancial perspective. Only two years later, in 2013,
CIRM staff and volunteers as well as the scientists was clinical development resumed, under new aus-
working in CIRM-sponsored laboratories and clinics. pices. The Geron termination, says Christopher
The collaboration that CIRM encourages ex- Thomas Scott, Director of the Stanford University
tends beyond the boundaries of its own funded Program on Stem Cells in Society, exemplifies a cor-
projects in California. The Institute has become the porate weakness of the will: “Much longer and
hub of a global network that connects scientists and deeper commitments from [commercial] founders
their laboratories, and that facilitates the sharing of are needed to bring stem cell and other frontier ther-
methods, materials, and knowledge. apies to market.”
CIRM’s subsequent relationships with some
The “Valley of Death” other corporate funders have also been disappointing.
To what extent should CIRM rely upon private In May 2015 the Institute funded Caladrius Bio-
sources of funding to develop clinical applications sciences to research and develop a stem cell therapy
of CIRM-funded scientific discoveries? The Insti- for a fatal form of skin cancer. But in January 2016 the
tute is mandated to ensure that therapies resulting company terminated its late stage clinical trial, not be-
from its sponsored research will be made available cause the underlying science had been disproved but
inexpensively to low-income patients. However, because of unfavorable economic circumstances. Sim-
private companies are reluctant to embark on the ilarly, CIRM awarded a grant of $20 million to Im-
development of therapies that will be subject to munoCellular Therapeutics, a small biotech company,
price controls. CIRM needs to attract private in- to conduct a stage III clinical trial of a cell-based treat-
vestment, but aims not to compromise its commitment for brain cancer. In June 2017, citing its shrink-
ment to improved health care for all. ing cash reserves, ImmunoCellular halted the trial.
The authors of Proposition 71 had anticipated CIRM’s experience with Geron, Caladrius,
that the development of new medical treatments Capricor, and other biomedical companies illustrates
would be too expensive for the Institute alone to a problem of reliance on private capital for the clini-
fund and would therefore be financed largely by cal application of scientific discoveries: the profit-
biotech and pharmaceutical firms possessing re- making interest of these companies may conflict
sources sufficient to carry the research “from the with the interest of patients and taxpayers in the de-
laboratory to the bedside.” Commercial firms, how- velopment of effective, affordable stem cell thera-
ever, tend to be averse to such speculative, expen- pies. Responding to CIRM’s difficulty in attracting
sive investment. As Alan Trounson, President of private industry participation, the Institute’s “2.0

CIRM staff in the company of four
patients and families helped by treat-
ments based on CIRM-sponsored
research. Five-year old Evangelina
Padilla-Vaccaro, was cured of severe
immunodeficiency disease (SCID).
Jake Javier, in the wheelchair, is re-
gaining some motion in his arms and
hands, following a spinal cord injury.
Next to Javier on the right, Brendan
Whittaker, born with an immune disor-
der that almost killed him, was cured
by a stem cell treatment. Standing
behind Whittaker, Karl Trede, diag-
nosed with lung cancer, received an
anti-tumor therapy that has been ef-
fective so far (July 2017)
Strategy,” approved in 2015, has created a network of gurate promising new ones. California’s $3 billion
so-called “alpha clinics” to apply CIRM-sponsored outlay for stem cell research seems ample but is ac-
discoveries. This network extends the public science tually quite modest, given the savings that will ac-
model into the clinical development and testing crue if the research proves successful in treating or
phases of stem cell science, facilitating close cooper- preventing debilitating diseases. Annual care in the
ation of researchers with physicians, nurses, patient U.S. for patients with just one of these diseases,
advocates, industry representatives, and experts on Alzheimer’s, costs $259 billion, according to an
clinical testing and regulation issues. Alzheimer’s Association estimate.2
Clinical trials are beginning to fulfill CIRM’s
Progress to Date and Future Prospects declared mission: “Accelerating stem cell treat-
How well is CIRM’s public science model working? ments to patients with unmet medical needs.”
Critics argue that California’s experiment in public However, the Institute will run out of government
science has failed: CIRM-funded projects have not money over the next three years. Those who believe
yet yielded a single FDA-approved therapy. Advo- that California should continue to champion this
cates reply that it typically requires about 12 years cause are likely to place a measure on the state bal-
for a drug to receive FDA approval—longer than lot in 2020 to renew funding. Voters will then de-
the Institute has been in operation. And they note cide whether they believe this radical experiment
that the Institute has substantially advanced basic in public science merits their ongoing support.
stem cell science and has established a foundation
for future clinical applications. CIRM funding has
built 12 major research facilities in California and REFERENCES
has supported research resulting in more than
2,350 scientific publications. To date, 32 human 1 Shermer, M. 2015. The Moral Arc: How Science
Makes Us Better People. New York: Henry Holt, p.30.
clinical trials arising from CIRM-funded discover- 2. Privately sponsored stem cell research is threat-
ies are either in progress or completed. These trials ened too. The Trump administration and Congress
range from cancer and HIV/AIDS to Alzheimer’s are considering legislation that would define every
fertilized human egg, without exception, as a legal
and Type One diabetes. There have been, prior to person, thereby rendering illegal not only abortion
completion of the rigorous FDA approval process, but also some methods of contraception as well as
significant successes in treating immune disorders, embryonic stem cell research. “Personhood” legis-
lation passed at the federal level could halt embry-
eye diseases, and other illnesses. The Institute’s onic stem cell research in California and
Strategic Plan aims at 50 new clinical trials by everywhere else in the United States.
2020. 3 It’s noteworthy as well that total federal investment in
medical research—$32.3 billion in the 2016 NIH
In response to critics who find these advances budget—is much less than investment in other areas,
insufficiently impressive, advocates for California’s military preparedness for example. The Pentagon es-
stem cell research program argue that its progress timates the cost of designing and building the F-35
fighter plane alone at $406.5 billion. Long-term oper-
has been held back by the Institute’s limited capac- ations and support costs are expected to drive this
ity to adequately fund existing projects and to inau- figure up to $1.1 trillion.

E XC ERPT
How to Tame a Fox

and Build a Dog
BY LEE DUGATKIN AND LYUDMILA TRUT
In 1959, Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut began one of What if, Lyudmila thought, I switch gears, and instead of
the longest-running experiments in biology. For the last 58 resisting the foxes’ increasing charms, allow myself to explore
years they have been domesticating silver foxes in Novosibirsk, just how far I can take these animals down the road of emo-
Siberia, and studying evolution in real time to better under- tional expressiveness?
stand how dogs were domesticated from wolves. By 1974, after For a long time now Lyudmila had pondered the limita-
about 15 generations during which they had selected the tions of the careful scientific data she and her team collected
calmest and tamest foxes to parent the next generation, Lyud- on the foxes; it was immensely important—the core of what
mila and Dmitri had a population that was on the fast track to they were doing—but it would tell her only so much. If she re-
domestication. These foxes were markedly tamer than the ones ally wanted to know just how much social and emotional depth
that parented the first generation, and they were beginning to these tame foxes were capable of, she would have to give one of
not just behave like dogs, but to look eerily dog-like. them the opportunity to live in the rich social environment of a
Right from the start Dmitri had predicted that even if home, with humans as its closest companions. Like dogs live.
foxes were selected strictly based on tameness—how calm Lyudmila made a bold proposal to Belyaev. There was a
they were when interacting with humans—he and Lyudmila little house off one corner of the experimental fox farm.
would see other traits appear in their domesticated foxes. Lyudmila told him that she would like to move into that
Many domesticated species share a common set of traits that house with one of the tamest of the foxes to see what bonds
includes floppy ears, curly tails, and extended reproductive pe- might develop. Dmitri loved the idea and right away got her
riods: together these traits are referred to as the domestication the authorization to use the facility.
syndrome. Dmitri had hypothesized that selection for tame- On March 28, 1974, Lyudmila moved into the little house
ness was key to the domestication process and that the other with a (pregnant) tame female fox named Pushinka (Russian
traits associated with the domestication syndrome were genet- for “little ball of fuzz”). Lyudmila’s plan for living with
ically correlated (how, he was not sure) with tameness. Even a Pushinka was to spend most of her days and nights at the lit-
casual glance at the foxes in 1974, with their floppy ears and tle house with her, but so that she could also have some time
curly tails (wagging in joy as humans approached) provided with her human family, she arranged for her longtime assis-
glaring support for this prediction. And the vaginal smears tant and friend, Tamara, along with a young graduate student,
that Lyudmila had taken since the early 1960s indicated that to help out by taking over some days and nights. Whoever
that tame females had also extended their period of estrus. was on shift would make detailed journal entries throughout
While they were always looking for other traits associ- the day and evening about all aspects of Pushinka’s behavior.
ated with domestication to appear, no one on the fox re- During the years that Lyudmila lived with Pushinka she
search team was a psychologist, and so initially they had not remembers two incidents that hinted that perhaps selection for
given much thought to the effect that the process of domesti- tameness had produced more intelligent foxes. One was a sly
cation might have on intelligence. That would change, first trick that Lyudmila saw Pushinka play on a crow—a trick
as a result of anecdotal observations Lyudmila would make, which fooled Lyudmila as well. One day when Lyudmila was on
and then later based on experimental work. her way back to the house from spending some time with the
By 1974, Lyudmila felt her already intense bond with the foxes at the nearby experimental fox farm, she saw Pushinka
foxes strengthening. Deep inside, she knew that something was lying perfectly still in the grass in the backyard of the house.
different. The emotional changes, the depth of feeling that these She looked like she wasn’t breathing. Terrified, Lyudmila
foxes began to express, and that they inspired in her, the care- rushed over to her, but Pushinka remained totally still, and
takers, and anyone who visited the experimental fox farm, could even with Lyudmila so close, showed no signs at all of breath-
not be ignored. She realized that this was an important finding ing. Lyudmila turned to rush to get the vet. Just as she turned,
on its own, and surely part of the story of how dogs became so she noticed a crow fly down onto the yard near Pushinka. In an
strongly domesticated and so intensely loyal to humans. instant, Pushinka sprang to life and grabbed the crow. Did

Pushinka plan this? Lyudmila had no way of knowing, but if Pushinka had,
her trap had been set brilliantly.
Perhaps the most interesting instance of what seemed to be a kind of
inference by one of the domesticated foxes happened a few years later when
Marina, an assistant who had come to help at the house, sat down to smoke
a cigarette, as she did every day. Jacquelin, one of Pushinka’s descendants
who now lived with Lyudmila in the house, was especially taken by Marina
and the feelings were mutual. When Marina sat down for her smoke that
day, the ashtray that was usually on the table where she was sitting wasn’t
there. She asked Lyudmila and the others in the house whether they knew
where it was, and everyone started to search for it. Suddenly they heard
some noise from behind a cupboard in the room, and out came Jacquelin
pushing forward the lost ashtray. They were all amazed.
Perhaps it was sheer coincidence, and Jacquelin had simply stumbled on
the ashtray and was playing with it as if it were a toy. But it certainly seemed
that she had understood what Marina was looking for. Perhaps she had made
the connection by having observed Marina smoking so many times. Perhaps
not. Lyudmila knew isolated anecdotes don’t make science, and that people
are often quick to assume their pets are doing extraordinary things when
they aren’t, but Jacquelin’s behavior that day fueled the notion that perhaps
selection for tameness might have unexpected affects on intelligence.
Fast forward 25 years to the turn of the 21st century. Over that time,
animal behaviorists, psychologists, and anthropologists had done much
work on animal social cognition—the ability of nonhumans to evaluate
the social situation they are in; for example, the ways that dogs are so
adept at reading their owner’s moods.
In 2002, one of the leading contributors to this research on animal
social cognition was Brian Hare, who was working on a Ph.D. at Harvard
under the supervision of Richard Wrangham. Hare’s specialty was in com-
paring social cognition abilities across animal species, and he was focus-
ing on studying dogs and primates. He was particularly interested in
understanding how their social skills had evolved.
Hare’s own studies focused on social cognition in dogs and primates.
Work by others in the area of social cognition had shown that on one classic
social intelligence test—known as the object choice test—chimps came up
short compared to dogs, who performed supremely on it. Researchers found if
they placed two opaque containers on a table, and then, unknown to the
chimp, put food under one, that it was very difficult to provide a chimp with a
visual cue it could use to figure out where the food was. You could point at the
correct container, stare at it, touch it, or even place a marker like a wooden
block on it, and chimps just didn’t get it: they were no more likely to choose
the container with food than the one without it. Experiments had shown that
dogs, on the other hand, are virtual geniuses at this sort of object choice task,
and are able to cue in on what chimps seem oblivious to.
Hare had also conducted studies comparing the ability of chimps and
dogs and confirmed just how much smarter dogs were at this task. Then he
asked himself: why are dogs so good at this? Maybe it was because dogs
spend their whole lives with humans, and learn how to do this sort of
thing. Or it could be that all canids—dogs, wolves, and so on—were just
good at object choice tests, and that it had nothing to do with “dogginess”
per se. The only way to know was to design an experiment, so Hare tested
Photo credit top: Institute of Cytology and Genetics, Novosibirsk.
both wolves and dogs on this task. The dogs shined as always, and the Bottom: Dr. Lyudmila Trut who has been working with foxes for 58
wolves seemed clueless as to what was going on. Not all canids could do years holds one of her animmals. Photo by Vasily Kovaly.

enough to pick up on social cues emitted by their hu-
mans would get more food because they could do the
things that humans wanted them to do, so humans
might toss them more scraps as a reward. They
might also be able to pick up on cues humans didn’t
necessarily want them to pick up on, and occasion-
ally scarf down some food not meant for them.
It made perfect sense. The skill in dogs was a
beautiful adaptation to their new life situation, se-
lected for by their new human masters. Hare, it
seemed, had come up with a tidy and beautiful ex-
planation for an important question: just the sort of
thing a young scientist dreams of.
His mentor, Wrangham, thought otherwise
about Hare’s findings. Yes, he told Hare, picking up
the skill must have something to do with domestica-
tion, but was his adaptationist tale—that animals that
were socially smarter were selected by humans—the
only possible explanation? Was it necessarily the case
that the amazing ability of dogs to pick up on human
social cues had been favored by selection? Wrangham
thought not. He proposed an alternative hypothesis.
Maybe, just maybe, this ability was simply an acciden-
tal byproduct of domestication. Picking up on human
social cues hadn’t been selected for, he proposed; it
just came along for the ride with other traits that had
been selected. Hare decided to take the challenge of
testing their competing ideas, and they placed a little
wager on who was right.
There was really only one place where Hare
could test this, and that was at the experimental fox
farm in Siberia. It was the only place in the world
where animals had been domesticated from scratch,
Photo credits—top: Irena Pivovarova, left: Irena Muchamedshina, right: Vladimir Novikov. and where researchers knew exactly what sort of se-
lection pressures had been in place during domesti-
this. He also tested dog pups of different ages. They cation, and that selection for social intelligence, per
all did just fine on the object choice test. He tested se, had not been applied. Hare knew that in addition
dogs who had lots of interactions with humans, ver- to the line of tame foxes, the Russian fox team, now
sus those with few interactions. They all did fine as under the leadership of Lyudmila (Belyaev died in
well. So, Hare deduced, it wasn’t the amount of time 1985), had a control line of foxes that had been se-
with humans that made dogs so good at the task. lected randomly with respect to their tameness. If
The obvious conclusion was that dogs seemed Hare was right, both the domesticated foxes and the
to have an innate talent for it. That answers the control foxes should fare poorly on the social intelli-
question at one level, but not another. Why, Hare gence test, because the fox team had never selected
wondered, do dogs have this innate ability to solve foxes based on their social intelligence per se. If
hard social cognition tasks whereas chimps don’t? Richard was right, and social intelligence was indeed
The answer, he surmised, probably had something to a byproduct of domestication, then the domesticated
do with the fact that dogs had been domesticated. “It foxes should show social intelligence on par with
is likely,” Hare wrote in a 2002 Science paper, “that dogs, but the control foxes should not.
individual dogs that were able to use social cues When Brian contacted Lyudmila through one
more flexibly than could their last common wolf an- of her colleagues to ask if she would approve of him
cestor…were at a selective advantage.” During the conducting the study, she said she would love for
process of domestication, dogs that were smart him to. After scraping together about $10,000 in

funding, Hare was off to Siberia. Lyudmila, the and after boards had been placed in the pen of each
Institute research staff, and the fox farm workers fox to be tested, when Hare went to the farm the
gave him a warm reception, and he was thrilled at next day, he remembers quite vividly that every sin-
how quickly he was accepted into their close-knit gle fox was lying on the boards in the middle.
circle. He even enjoyed the common mispronuncia- He tested 75 fox pups, each one many times.
tion of his name among the researchers, as “Brain.” The results were crystal clear. When tame pups
When Hare saw the tame foxes uncontrollably were compared to dog pups, they were just as smart
wagging their tails at him, he immediately fell in as the dogs. And when the tame pups were com-
love with them, as everyone does. Getting down to pared to control fox pups, they were smarter—
the task at hand, he decided that he should expand much smarter—both at finding the hidden food in
on the object choice test done on dogs and wolves. the pointing and gazing task, and at touching the
The test with the foxes would be done using two dif- same toy that Hare or his assistant had touched.
ferent experimental setups. In the first, which was The results were completely in line with
very similar to the test he had given to the dogs and Wrangham’s hypothesis. The control foxes were
wolves, he would hide food under one of two cups clueless on the social cognition tasks, which the do-
placed on a table that was about four feet in front of mesticated foxes aced, performing even a little bet-
a fox. One of the researchers working with him on ter than dogs. Social intelligence was a byproduct
the study would point and gaze at the cup that had of domestication.
the food under it, and then which cup, if either, the Suddenly, Hare saw the evolution of intelli-
fox preferred would be recorded. The second type of gence, and the process of domestication also, very
test would not involve food. Instead, two identical differently. He had thought that early humans in-
toys that the foxes knew and loved would be placed tentionally breeding dogs to be smarter had led to
on the right and left end of a table in front of a fox dogs’ social intelligence. But if the trait could
pup in its home pen. Hare or his assistent would emerge, instead, from selection for tameness, then
then touch one of the toys. that was evidence in support of the view that the
Hare had the protocols all sketched out and domestication of the wolf might have started with-
ready to go, when a series of unexpected problems out breeding for social intelligence being involved.
emerged. For one thing, he needed a table to place Selection acting on tameness alone could have
the cups and toys on, which didn’t strike him as a brought wolves onto the path to domestication.
problem until he got a taste of some of the relics of Lyudmila knew Dmitri would have been in-
the managed economy that had been a hallmark of trigued with Hare’s finding: selection for tameness
life in the USSR. When he asked for a table, he was led not only to correlated changes like floppy ears,
told that one would be made for him. He was to be curly, wagging tails, and extended periods of repro-
provided not with any shoddy contraption, but with duction, but to better social cognition as well.
a marvel of Russian engineering. The job order
went in, and two weeks later, the table arrived. “It Reprinted (in modified form) with permission from How to Tame
was the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen,” a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of
Jump-Started Evolution, by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut,
Hare recalls fondly. “I dubbed it ‘Sputnik,’ which published by the University of Chicago Press. © 2017 by Lee Alan
everyone thought was hilarious.” Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut. All rights reserved.
The second problem to be solved before the ex-
periments could begin was a bit trickier. For the
test to be fair, each fox had to be standing in the
middle of its pen at the start, not on the right or left For much more on the
side. But how could he make sure they were? Some ongoing incredible silver
on the fox team suggested he train them to stay in fox domestication exper-
the middle, which they assured him would be possi- iment (still being led by
ble, but he didn’t have time for that, and what’s Lyudmila Trut), see: How
more he wanted to avoid the training procedure as to Tame a Fox (and Build
an experimental confound. Instead he thought that a Dog) by Lee Dugatkin
if he put a wood plank on the floor of each pen, in and Lyudmila Trut. Uni-
the middle, the foxes might prefer to sit or stand on versity Of Chicago Press
it rather than the chicken wire on the pen’s floor. 2017. 240 pps $26. ISBN
Once again the Institute provided for his needs, -13: 978-0226444185

AR TICLE
Debating Science
and Lost Civilizations
My Experience on the Joe Rogan Experience
BY MICHAEL SHERMER
On May 16, 2017, I appeared on the Joe Rogan Alex Bones Jones
Experience (JRE) podcast (and YouTube videocast) Joe was massively biased and it was 3-vs-1 for the
along with Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson, bulk of the podcast. He is the worst moderator I’ve
plus our hand-selected “phone-a-friend” Skyped in ever seen.
guests (geologist Marc Defant for me, planetary sci-
Tadas Galinauskis
entist Malcolm LeCompte for Hancock and Carl-
That was not good moderating, that was 3vs1 most of
son). It was a three-and-a-half hour marathon that
the time with lots of interuptions on Shummer and
at the time of this writing, several million people
then complaining that he doesn’t understand his
have heard or viewed on various platforms.
points.
It was, in fact, my third appearance on the JRE,
one of the most popular podcasts in the world. Llama4 hours ago
According to Joe, as of that week he was averaging Honestly embarrasing how joe and the other two
over 120 million downloads a month, putting him acted. I have never seen him like this, acting so unrea-
on a par with the biggest talk show hosts on televi- sonable and being so obnoxious to michael shermer.
sion, either cable or broadcast. He has a huge and
Zack Duncan
diverse following, and for good reason—he’s a re-
Neither Graham nor Joe gave Michael the opportu-
markable conversationalist. My previous two ap-
nity to finish a complete thought. They just ping
pearances lasted for three hours each, without any
ponged back and forth random citations and in-
sense of time passing. Unlike most talkshow hosts I
credulity. If you don’t understand why he’s arguing
have engaged with over the decades, a dialogue
against something LET HIM EXPLAIN IT.
with Joe Rogan is like talking to an old friend. He is
warm, receptive to all ideas, and allows the conver- I wasn’t bothered by Joe’s siding with Hancock
sation to advance organically without an agenda. as I’m used to being outnumbered. There was no
For my solo appearances he was as sympathetic to agreement ahead of time that Joe would act as a
my ideas as he was to those of Hancock and Carlson neutral moderator; it is his show and he can do
in their prior appearances on his show. whatever he wants. I saw it as more bandwidth for
It was, therefore, surprising to find myself me to explain how science works on the margins of
under something of a grilling from Rogan the mo- knowledge. In any case, there were far fewer com-
ment I was given the opportunity to reply to a few ments critical of Joe than of me and Hancock
opening comments by Hancock. It soon went from (everyone seemed to love Carlson), which I esti-
2-on-1 to 3-on-1, which a great many people noted mate to be split roughly 50/50. Here are a few com-
in comments on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and ments in support of Hancock and critical of me (out
other outlets during and after the show. Here are of thousands):
just a few among hundreds:
Rusty Shackleford Jr
xmikex902x
Graham sources all of his work. Michael and Mark
Ya I don’t think Joe did a good job as a moderator at
had to retract slanders… the skeptics got roasted.
all. He should’ve remained neutral, but he almost
instantly turned this into a 3 on 1, and idc which Marty Marino
side “did better“ or w/e. It just wasn’t a very fair way you’re a really smart man but you’ve lost your magic
to handle this. as a human.

L O S T CIVILIZATIONS
Kris Rai
Oh dear Michael, oh dear.
City Strut
Respect to you Graham. I commend you greatly for
trying to seek answers and debate your findings.
You’re rad!
Tom Bunzel
I cannot believe how closed @Michaelshermer’s
mind is. Could not listen despite the amazing in-
sights of Graham and Randell
Joe
Fantastic as always mr hancock!
And here are a few comments in support of me and

critical of Hancock (out of thousands):
Clayton Reese Christian
Hi Michael, I’m a big Graham fan. I just wanted to
come over and say hi and thanks for doing the de-
bate/podcast. I really enjoyed it and you gave their
ideas really tough resistance. It takes a really special
mind to go up against three people with contradictory
world views in front of millions of people. I will be fol-
lowing your work :).
Andreas Ciecielski
What the hell was that Joe? Graham is a sanctimo-
nious ass and here you are constantly interrupting
Michael. Graham’s theories shrivel under the hot
lights of pear review for a reason; if you funnel data
to suite your theories, the stuff you leave out will get
noticed. Nice to see Michael keep an even keel
while being constantly interrupted.
George Koush
Michael you did a great job joe and graham were
acting like children. I love how everyone was ex-
pecting you to give them answers to their fantasy,
lol. ;)
Sven Bondessono
Painful to listen to. Shermer was too polite in his
fight for the scientific method. Joe was waaay to bi-
ased and makes for a horrible mediator. Hancock is
just making shit up and asking people to disprove
his theories, hack. Should have been another scien-
tist in the podcast for some balance.
LE0NSKA
I agree with shermer. 3D paintings on a 2D space is
more impressive than a 3D carving on a 3D space in
terms of cognitive function. you just have look at From top to bottom: Randall Carlson, Graham Hancock, Joe Rogan
some old regular paintings, their perspective is all and Michael Shermer on The Joe Rogan Experience, a podcast pro-
fucked up. duced in Southern California.

From my notes for the show, here are the rea- —Christian Fundamentalists start with the
sons why alternative archaeologists in general, and assumption of the Flood and go in search of
Hancock in particular, have failed to convince most Noah’s Ark and evidence of floods.
scientists and archaeologists to abandon the theory —Creationists begin with a belief in a young
about the timeline of civilization over the past Earth and instant creation in seven days, so
13,000 years in favor of an alternative theory of a they reject the theory of evolution and look
lost advanced civilization. for any anomaly in science that seems to go
against the findings that support a 4.6 billion
year old Earth.
—Hindu creationists believe in an exceptionally
ancient human lineage that dates back tens of
millions of years, and therefore accuse the scientific
establishment of suppressing the fossil evidence
of extreme human antiquity. The self-identified
“Vedic archaeologist” Michael Cremo, in his book
Forbidden Archaeology, believes his findings
support the story of humanity described in the
Hindu Vedas.
I can assure readers that these writers believe as

strongly in the truth and validity of their ideas as Gra-
ham Hancock does in his.
1. There isn’t just one “alternative” to mainstream
archaeology, there are hundreds of alternative theories.
To name a few:
—Lost tribes of Israel who colonized the Americas
(and other places).
—Mormon archaeology that the Native Americans
are descended from this lost tribe.
—Kensington Runestones of Minnesota claimed to
prove Nordic Viking peopling of the Americas.
—Black Egyptian Hypothesis: Ancient Egyptians
were predominantly Black.
—Piltdown Man.
—South American archaeology claiming Olmec
statues look African in origin. 3. Patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful pat-
—Erich von Däniken, Secharia Sitchin, and ancient terns in both meaningful and meaningless noise.
alien archaeology.
—Matching the alignment of buildings on the
To take a line from skeptics of alternative med- ground with stars in the sky.
icine, do you know what you call alternative ar- —The comparison between disparate cultures of
chaeology with evidence? Archaeology. artifacts and monuments from one society and
Illustrations in this article by Anna Maltese
highlighting similarities with those of another to

conclude a common source, when in fact they are
more likely explained by independent invention.
—Immanuel Velikovsky compared myths of
migrations and war gods in Mesoamerican
Aztec civilization, but was off by a millennium.
—John Taylor, in his 1859 book The Great Pyramid,
computed that if you divide the height of the
2. Cherry picking data, confirmation bias, and starting pyramid into twice the side of its base, you get a
with a conclusion and working backward through the number close to pi; he also thought he had
evidence to make it fit. discovered the length of the ancient cubit as the

division of the Earth’s axis by 400,000—both of tools” were nothing at all like the finely crafted Clovis
which Taylor found to be too incredible to be points found all over North America, and instead
coincidental. Other alternative archaeologists might be just broken rocks. When I queried the
“discovered” that the base of the Great Pyramid renowned scholar of human history and prehistory,
divided by the width of a casing stone equals the Jared Diamond, who has for half a century followed
number of days in the year, and that the height of the claims of pre-Clovis peoples populating the Ameri-
the Great Pyramid multiplied by 109 approximately cas, he replied with this one-liner: “The latest semi-an-
equals the distance from the Earth to the Sun. nual new-paradigm pre-Clovis claim with a credibility
And so on. half-life of two days.”
In his classic 1952 book Fads and Fallacies in the
Name of Science, the science writer Martin Gardner
revealed the poignant problem with patternicity when
“just for fun” he analyzed the Washington Monument
and “discovered” the property of fiveness to it: “Its
height is 555 feet and 5 inches. The base is 55 feet
square, and the windows are set at 500 feet from the
base. If the base is multiplied by 60 (or 5 times the
number of months in a year) it gives 3,300, which is
the exact weight of the capstone in pounds. Also, the 5. Falsifiability, conjectures and refutations, and
word “Washington” has exactly 10 letters (2 times 5). the burden of proof.
And if the weight of the capstone is multiplied by the During our debate I asked Hancock several times,
base, the result is 181,500—a fairly close approxima- “What would it take to refute your hypothesis?” I never
tion of the speed of light in miles per second. After received a reply. In his 1959 book, The Logic of Scientific
musing that “it should take an average mathematician Discovery, the philosopher of science Karl Popper pro-
about 55 minutes to discover the above ‘truths,’” Gard- posed a solution to “the demarcation problem” of dis-
ner concludes “how easy it is to work over an undi- tinguishing science from pseudoscience: “The criterion
gested mass of data and emerge with a pattern, which of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or
at first glance, is so intricately put together that it is refutability, or testability.” In his 1963 book Conjectures
difficult to believe it is nothing more than the product and Refutations, Popper outlined how scientists operate
of a man’s brain.” by conjecturing ideas to their colleagues and consider-
ing the refutations in response. There’s nothing wrong
with making conjectures—it is the life blood of science
in fact—but since most ideas that scientists propose
are wrong, the constant dialogue with one’s fellow ex-
perts in a field through letters (and today emails),
phone calls, papers, books, conferences, and the like, is
crucial for determining if one has run off the rails. That
4. Alternative archaeologists disparage mainstream
is why it is dangerous to work in isolation, which is an
archaeologists and accuse them of being closed-minded
inherent limitation of being an outsider to a field. It’s
dogmatists in a conspiracy to silence the truth.
not that outsiders can’t or don’t make contributions—
This calumny is gainsaid by a paper published just
occasionally they do. But usually they don’t because
weeks before our debate in the prestigious journal Na-
most of us most of the time are wrong about our con-
ture, in which scientists put forth evidence that they
jectures, so refutations from colleagues is vital. I wrote
believe indicates humans (or possibly Neanderthals)
to Hancock a few days after our debate, in part to re-
inhabited the San Diego area of Southern California
spond to his annoyance over the publication of my col-
some 130,000 years ago, which is an order of magni-
umn on his work in Scientific American (that by chance
tude earlier than mainstream archaeologists’ timeline
was posted online the same day of the debate):
for the peopling of America. The evidence for this con-
jecture, however, is not as strong as the popular media Dear Graham,
made it out to be in the considerable press coverage I get that you’re upset, and why, and I no doubt owe
this paper received. The “butchered” mammoth bones a great deal to that fact by how and what I said and
may, in fact, have been broken in the excavation of a wrote. To that end I am truly sorry that you feel I
road recently constructed at the site, and the “stone “rubbished” your life’s work. That was certainly not

my intention, and it goes against my philosophy of whenever humans first colonize fertile empty lands.
giving people a fair hearing. Clearly I failed in that But any claim by an archaeologist to have discov-
regard. But there is nothing factual in my column ered “the first X” is taken as a challenge by other ar-
that I would change, even after our long dialogue. chaeologists to discover an earlier X. In this case,
To wit: you still have no evidence whatsoever for archaeologists feel challenged to discover pre-Clovis
the lost civilization. Not a single tool. No writing. Not sites, i.e., sites with different stone tools and dating to
even any pottery. Even after nearly four hours in Joe’s before 13,000 years ago. Every year nowadays, new
studio I still have no idea what you mean by “ad- claims of pre-Clovis sites in the U.S. and South Amer-
vanced”, despite my asking you repeatedly. Your com- ica are advanced, and subjected to detailed scrutiny.
ments were filled with many modifiers like “perhaps” Eventually, it turns out that most of those claims are in-
“maybe” “possibly,” etc. It’s fine to speculate, and you validated by the equivalent of technical errors at step
may even be right. But to overturn the mainstream 37: e.g., the radiocarbon sample was contaminated with
theory in any field you need to do more than that. older carbon, or the radiocarbon-dated material really
If mainstream archaeologists are all wrong about wasn’t associated with the stone tools. But, even after
how they define “advanced” (writing, metallurgy, pot- complicated analyses and objections and rebuttals, a
tery, etc.) then it is incumbent on you to redefine it in a few pre-Clovis claims have not yet been invalidated. At
way to convince them that the evidence points to your present, the most widely discussed such claims are for
claims. That they don’t accept your theory is simply Chile’s Monte Verde site, Pennsylvania’s Meadowcroft
how most science in most fields works, a point I tried site, and one site each in Texas and in Oregon. As a re-
(and mostly failed) to make in bringing up other exam- sult, the majority of American archaeologists currently
ples. I realize these other theories have nothing to do believe in the validity of pre-Clovis settlement.
with you, but my point is that in the Popperian sense of To me, it seems instead that pre-Clovis believers
falsification science you need to explain how your the- have fallen into the archaeological equivalent of Mr.
ory could be falsified. Maybe I missed it but I don’t Bridgess’s fallacy. It’s absurd to suppose that the first
think I know how you would answer that question. human settlers south of the Canada/U.S. border could
It’s the reason I brought up Lawrence Krauss. have been airlifted by non-stop flights to Chile, Penn-
Neil deGrasse Tyson is another example. They both sylvania, Oregon, and Texas, leaving no unequivocal
get weekly letters, articles, books, and the like from signs of their presence at intermediate sites. If there
people advancing alternative theories of physics. They really had been pre-Clovis settlement, we would al-
simply cannot address them all, but the burden of ready know it and would no longer be arguing about
proof is on the alternative physics people to show why it. That’s because there would now be hundreds of
mainstream physics (Newton, Einstein, etc.) are undisputed pre-Clovis sites distributed everywhere
wrong and their theory is right. It’s possible that is the from the Canada/U.S. border south to Chile.
case, but not likely given the failure rate of so many
who have already tried to do so over the centuries. So
Lawrence and Neil end up defending the mainstream,
not because they are hidebound dogmatists, but be-
cause the preponderance of evidence supports it.
I then recommended to Hancock that he read Jared

Diamond’s short essay in the January Edge.org issue
about this matter (http://bit.ly/2h7n95g):
The first well-attested settlement of the Americas
south of the Canada/U.S. border occurred around
13,000 years ago, as the ice sheets were melting. That
settlement is attested by the sudden appearance of
stone tools of the radiocarbon-dated Clovis culture,
named after the town of Clovis, New Mexico, where
the tools and their significance were first recognized.
Clovis tools have now been found over all of the
lower 48 U.S. states, south into Mexico. That sudden
appearance of a culture abundantly filling up the en- 6. The dangers of reading the past from the present.
tire landscape is what one expects and observes Before the JRE show I consulted the professional

archaeologist and skeptic of alternative archaeol- T-shaped pillars at Göbekli Tepe, Krupp noted of
ogy, Ken Feder, about the symbolism found on the Hancock’s interpretation:
monumental stone structures at Göbekli Tepe.
It all seems to rest on the Scorpion, which he argues
Hancock thinks they represent the constellations
must be Scorpio [sic. He means “Scorpius”]. Then he
or carry some deeper meaning about nature at
turns the other images, which have no known rela-
that time. Feder replied:
tionship to any known constellation imagery, into
There appears to be a conceit on the part of mod- constellations in the same territory. This gives him the
ern people that all ancient art must in some way Milky Way in Sagittarius, although it is not depicted.
be representational, depicting things the artists Then he takes the disk, calls it a sun symbol, and says
actually saw and experienced. But we don’t insist it is in the center of the Milky Way in Sagittarius, à la
on that for modern artists. Their art requires no the 2012 Maya Calendar End Times Follies. Because
concrete explanation. We allow them to be cre- the Maya calendar allegedly marked the start of a New
ative, imaginative, and to just make shit up be- Age, he implies the Göbekli Tepe carving also marks
cause it’s cool or represents stuff they the start of a New Age (and the end of the earlier era).
hallucinated in trance and then interpreted That, in turn, is linked to the alleged Dryas impact. It
through the prism of religion. all appears to be contrived data of high order.
Feder added that the paintings of Magritte, if * * *

we took them literally, would represent the “pe-
riod when gravity was abolished, at least for men Of the many thousands of comments in response
in suits, and apples.” And “My favorite; there’s a to the JRE debate I have become painfully aware
version of a Kokopelli that I’ve seen in Utah. Only that to roughly half I seemed hidebound and dog-
instead of being a hump-backed, flute-playing matically closed minded to the possibility of a
man, it’s a bipedal bighorn sheep playing a flute. lost advanced civilization. As I told Hancock on
This reflects a time when Ovis canadensis was far the show and in writing after, I’m not. Honestly.
more musically inclined. Probably because of the I don’t have a dog in the fight. I haven’t written
comet.” anything on the subject save the Scientific Ameri-
Satire aside, the point is that we must be ex- can column. I would happily change my mind,
tremely cautious about reading into the past our which I have on many other subjects (evolution,
own ideas, and the further back in time we go climate change, gun control, the death penalty,
the more dangerous it is to do so. The astronomer etc.). But the further back in time we push the
Ed Krupp, Director of the Griffith Observatory in origins of civilization the more problematic the
Los Angeles, expert on archaic astronomy, and the dates become, and having followed this area
author of several books on when it is appropriate since the 1970s when I read the alternative ar-
(or not) to interpret archaeological sites as astro- chaeology of that time with wide eyed naiveté,
nomical in nature, offered these insights, includ- I’ve seen earlier date after earlier date not stand
ing the problem of employing astronomical up to scrutiny. An uncontested conjecture does
computer programs that allow one to see what not a new civilization make.
the night sky would have looked like to people Finally, as I said at the end of the debate, I
thousands of years ago. Here again we see the truly believe that science needs outsiders and
problem of patternicity, or finding patterns that mavericks who poke and prod and push accepted
exist only in the mind’s eye. theories until they either collapse or are rein-
forced even more strongly. Of all the alternative
The broad account of the interpretation makes me
archaeology theories I’ve read I found Hancock’s
very skeptical. We have no dictionary for the sym-
to be the most intriguing, in the romantic sense
bolic vocabulary of Göbekli Tepe imagery. This ap-
of Golden Age myths and what they may mean
pears to start with the assumption [that] the figures
for us. But I don’t think he has convinced the
are recognized constellations (several problems
professionals in the field of the factual nature of
right there) and then goes back in time with plane-
this particular story, and that’s how it usually
tarium software in search of a fit. Starry Night and
goes in science. Most ideas turn out to be wrong.
Stellarium have a lot to answer for. They are danger-
The standard timeline of how civilizations un-
ous weapons in the hands of amateurs.
folded over the past 13,000 years may be one of
Regarding the carving of a scorpion on one of the them, but so far it has held up well.

AR TICLE
Conjuring Up a
Lost Civilization
An Analysis of the Claims Made by
Graham Hancock in Magicians of the Gods
BY MARC DEFANT
Graham Hancock’s 2015 book Magicians of the too advanced to have been built by hunter-gatherers
Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth’s Lost Civilization1 alone, and must therefore have been constructed with
is something of a sequel and update to his 1995 inter- the help of people from a more advanced civilization.
national bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evi- Unfortunately for Hancock these people left behind
dence of Earth’s Lost Civilization,2 which was translated no hard evidence for their existence, so he is forced to
into 27 languages and sold more than three million allude to what he thinks is sophisticated architecture,
copies.3 In Fingerprints, Hancock uses creation myths along with a few carved figures that he asserts repre-
in ancient texts and wild geological scenarios to sug- sent astronomical constellations. From these specula-
gest that 12,450 years ago major crustal shifts moved tions Hancock concludes: “At the very least it [Göbekli
Antarctica to its present location. Portions of a sup- Tepe] would mean that some as yet unknown and
posedly highly advanced unknown lost civilization unidentified people somewhere in the world had al-
(none other than Atlantis) living on Antarctica at the ready mastered all the arts and attributes of a high civ-
time were able to survive the destructive cataclysms ilization more than twelve thousand years ago in the
and go on to convey their knowledge to the builders depths of the last Ice Age and sent out emissaries
of the megalithic structures of Egypt, Maya, Babylon, around the world to spread the benefits of their
and other known great civilizations. He also claims knowledge.”
that the Mayan calendar portended world cataclysms It’s a romantic notion, but not the conclusion
in 2012. In Magicians, Hancock now says he got it all that the late great German archaeologist Klaus
wrong—there was no crustal shift; instead he thinks Schmidt came to after excavating Göbekli Tepe for
this advanced civilization was destroyed by a comet. more than two decades beginning in 1994. The site,
Magicians appears to be on its way to becoming he says, was used from 11,600 to about 10,000 years
another bestseller for the British writer. Although before the present. Lower sections were backfilled
Hancock has few scientific credentials (an under- giving way to new structures on top. The fill is re-
graduate degree in sociology from Durham Univer- fuse containing sediment, hundreds of thousands of
sity),4 his early career as a journalist5 helped him broken animal bones, flint tools for carving the
navigate through a wide range of scientific re- structures within the site and for hunting game,
search, but without benefit of specialized training and the remains of cereals and other plant material,
in astronomy, geology, history, archaeology, or com- and even a few human bones. There is no evidence
parative religion and mythology. Hancock is obvi- that the site was ever used as a residence, and the
ously bright, articulate, and a good writer and megaliths found there (Schmidt called them “mon-
storyteller who comes across as eminently reason- umental religious architecture”) along with carv-
able, which makes it all the more difficult to tease ings and totems, imply ritual and feasting.
apart fact from fiction in the many claims made in The main features of Göbekli Tepe are the T-
his books, documentary films, and lectures. shaped 7- to 10-ton monolithic pillars cut and hauled
from crystalline limestone quarries on the tepe (hill)
Göbekli Tepe and erected within 10- to 20- meter ring structures
The centerpiece of Hancock’s Magicians is a remark- made of rocks annealed by clay mortar that encircle
able archaeological site called Göbekli Tepe in Turkey the pillars. The stone statues are clearly anthropomor-
dated to 11,600 years ago. He contends Göbekli Tepe is phic—arms and hands can be seen on the sides of the

Figure 4—The star pattern is from the day sky in 10,950 BCE (using the
astronomical computer program Stellarium) with the images from pillar 43
at Göbekli Tepe matched with the constellation as proposed by Sweatman
Figure 1—A T-shaped megalith with animal carvings and Tsikritsis. I argue that the correlations are purely speculative.
at Göbekli Tepe.
Figure 3—Two interpretations of the

Figure 2—Hancock claims that the “teapot” asterism “teapot” asterism by the author: Uncle Sam
of the constellation Sagittarius fits the vulture from and a commando insignia. It is easy to find
Göbekli Tepe better than the archer (Page 319). matching patterns if you are motivated to do so.
Figure 5—The Scorpius star

asterism (far left) associated
with the scorpion is compared
to the carving of the scorpion
found at Göbekli Tepe (left).
We know constellations are
symbols not necessarily based
on matching patterns, as can
be seen from the lack of corre-
lation between either scorpion
and the asterism. This shows
the tenuous foundation of the
Sweatman and Tsikritsis argu-
ment. (Image on the far left
from the Stellarium astronomi-
cal computer program.)
volume 22 number 3 2017 WWW.SKEPTIC.COM

Figure 6—Excavators
uncover one of many
circular enclosures at
Göbekli Tepe. Two large
T-shaped pillars over 5m
(16 feet) high typically
stand in the middle of
the ring with smaller
pillars facing them.
Some of these stones
are decorated with re-
liefs of animals that
once lived in the area.
This area known as
Enclosure D features
birds, while others em-
phasize animals such
as snakes, foxes,
boars, or wildcats.
pillars reaching around to the front. A variety of animals, mostly culture. Perhaps, he hinted, they communicated entirely
representing the wild animals found within the refuse, have through the oral tradition, skipping writing. When Shermer
been carved on the pillars.6, 7, 8, 9, 10 pressed him to explain what he means by “advanced” Hancock
Göbekli Tepe and other archaeological sites being studied replied: “I am saying that a group of people settled amongst the
nearby have forced archaeologists to rethink the way the pre- hunter-gatherers and transferred some skills for them.” When I
historic lifestyle of hunting, gathering, and foraging gave way to came into the debate later and pushed him on this same issue
a more domesticated lifestyle in northern Mesopotamia. Oliver of how an allegedly advanced civilization could lack all the fea-
Dietrich, a colleague of Klaus Schmidt at the German Archaeo- tures of other such societies, such as metallurgy, he demurred:
logical Institute, poignantly expressed the impact of these dis- “I do not make that claim. I am reporting that this claim is
coveries: “These people must have had a highly complicated made in the Book of Enoch.” It is true that in his book Hancock
mythology, including a capacity for abstraction. Following discusses the secrets of metals in the context of discussing the
these ideas, we now have more evidence that…social systems Book of Enoch, but the entire chapter is in support of evidence
changed before, not as a result of, the shift to farming.” 11 It also that a lost civilization had superior knowledge that included
shows that hunter-gatherers were capable of more than we pre- the secrets of metal working. Such details are important be-
viously thought, and that the origins of religion may have to be cause it gives us a glimpse into how Hancock infers one thing
pushed back by millennia. when it is convenient in making his point, but then shifts to
But this is a far cry from Hancock’s proposal that the site claiming he is only reporting what other people say when the
is a link to his lost civilization. In fact, archaeologists consider implications stretch our credulity. For example, Hancock calls
Göbekli Tepe to be a pre-pottery Neolithic site. Not only is these ancient peoples the “Watchers” (aka the “Magicians”) in
clay pottery absent, the site contans no evidence of any metal a section titled “Mystery of the Nephilim”:
or metal workings. The obvious reason for this is that clay pot-
The Watchers begin their development project in quite small
tery and metals are typical of more advanced cultures. Al-
ways, teaching “charms and enchantments, and the cutting of
though Hancock writes that “our ancestors are being initiated
roots” to humans, and making them “acquainted with plants.”
into the secrets of metals, and how to make swords and
This sounds fairly harmless; apart from a bit of “enchantment,”
knives,” no such thing is found at any of the archaeological
it’s not really above and beyond the basic hunter-gatherer level of
sites he touts as being influenced by his highly advanced lost
skills. But pretty soon, as we saw earlier, our ancestors are being
civilization, not at Göbekli Tepe, nor in the non-Roman areas
initiated into the secrets of metals and how to make swords and
of Baalbek, Easter Island, nor at any of the ancient Mayan sites
knives, and how to study the heavens.
he discusses.
During an exchange with Michael Shermer on the Joe Hancock may call this reporting, but Shermer was not
Rogan Experience podcast, Hancock suggested that “perhaps,” satisfied by such chicanery when he questioned Hancock on
“maybe,” and “possibly” this lost civilization did not have metal why the hunter-gatherers at Göbekli Tepe were not taught the
tools, writing, and other features of societies traditionally la- “secrets of metal workings.” Hancock had no explanation as
beled as “advanced,” and that we need to reconfigure the main- to why the hunter-gatherers at Göbekli Tepe knew nothing
stream scientific timeline of what it means to be an advanced about metals, or even pottery, nor did he reply to Shermer’s
S KE PTI C M AG AZ I N E volume 22 number 3 2017

numerous requests for a definition of an “advanced That Sweatman distances himself from Han-
civilization” that lacked writing, metallurgy, or cock’s theory is telling, but in my decades of reading
ceramics. scientific papers I have never come across an article
Schmidt and his colleagues have arduously docu- more speculative than this one. The entire paper rests
mented the use of flint tools for the construction of on the supposition that the authors can match “low
Göbekli Tepe, and none of the hundreds of thousands relief carvings” on a pillar of Göbekli Tepe to star as-
of animal bones and cereals found in the backfill from terisms in 10,950 BCE in the western sky at 4 seconds
the lowest levels show any signs of domestication— after 1:01 PM on September 11 (Figure 4). Specifi-
they are all wild species. In fact, the large abundance cally, Sweatman and Tsikritsis use the carvings on pil-
of bones from wild animals found at the site allows lar 43. But why that one? There are many pillars both
Schmidt to underscore the ability of the hunter-gath- unearthed (44) and still buried at Göbekli Tepe, so it
erers in the region to support the hundreds of workers is not clear why pillar 43 has the significance they at-
and stone cutters presumed necessary to create the tribute to it—drawings of animals decorate most of
megaliths and other structures. Schmidt makes a the pillars. In any case, they start by assuming that
salient point almost as if he anticipated Hancock’s the scorpion at the bottom of pillar 43 is the same as
book: “Fabulous or mythical creatures, such as cen- the modern-day constellation Scorpius. The assump-
taurs or the sphinx, winged bulls or horses, do not yet tion that we can attribute 12,950 year-old patterns on
occur in the iconography and therefore in the mythol- rocks to star asterisms is highly suspect. Here in the
ogy of the prehistoric times. They must be recognized U.S., for example, we call a set of stars in the constel-
as creations of the high cultures which arose later.” 11 lation Ursa Major the Big Dipper because to our eyes
I would only add that unlike the Mesopotamian and it looks like a dipper. In the UK, however, they call
Egyptian civilizations where inscriptions made by lit- the same asterism the Plough. In Mayan culture it is
erate societies have been well documented, not a sin- described as a parrot. In ancient Egypt it is the leg of a
gle inscription has been found at Göbekli Tepe. bull. No doubt naming asterisms helped ancient peo-
ples remember star patterns, but the names were not
Patterns in the Stars always chosen on the basis of a matching appearance
Next consider Hancock’s assertion that the stone with the asterism. Such naming could be and often
carvings on the sides of the T-shaped pillars at was symbolic. There are many carved images of ani-
Göbekli Tepe represent constellations. Figure 49 on mals at Göbekli Tepe, and attributing even one to a
page 319 of his book (Figure 2 in this article) em- star pattern is more like astrology than science.
phasizes how virtually any figure could be matched Here is the rub. Sweatman and Tsikritsis casu-
to star asterisms (clusters). In fact, Schmidt con- ally assume that because in the past a star asterism
cluded that the figures on the pillars mostly repre- was attributed to a scorpion (in this case Scorpius),
sent the wild animals whose bones were found in it makes perfect sense that ancient hunter-gather-
the backfill from the site. ers living 13,000 years ago saw the same pattern as
Recently Hancock’s thesis seemed to find sup- a scorpion. Look carefully at Figure 5 and compare
port from two professors at the University of Edin- the scorpions to the star pattern we call Scorpius. I
burgh, Martin Sweatman and Dimitrios Tsikritsis, think most would contend that almost any elon-
whose paper reported that the “vulture stone,” a pillar gated figure could be associated with the star aster-
at Göbekli Tepe, is “a date stamp for 10950 BCE + – ism and that matching of a scorpion to the pattern
250 yrs.” 13 I wrote Sweatman about the article prior takes a fertile imagination. Finally, the scorpion on
to our debate with Hancock on the Rogan show, and pillar 43 looks nothing like the star pattern.
he directed me to his website where he states: The pattern correlation problem does not keep
Sweatman and Tsikritsis from matching figures on pil-
Graham Hancock attempted to decode GT in his lar 43 in a roughly clockwise fashion to the asterisms
book Magicians of the Gods using the ideas of Paul surrounding Scorpius in the day sky of 10,950 BCE. I
Burley and the YD [Younger Dryas] context pro- show the day sky with the location of the sun and im-
vided by [Andrew] Collins, but in our view his logic ages of the various animals below with arrows point-
takes a wrong turn early on, leading him to make ing to the constellations they supposedly match
some erroneous conclusions. Especially we oppose (Figure 4).
Graham’s contention that the Vulture Stone predicts Besides the obvious fact that the images have no
an impact 12,000 years into their future—around good correlation to the star patterns in the known
2030 AD—this is, ocurse [sic] impossible. constellations displayed (e.g., look at the bird figure

that has been matched with Libra), there are many tasy occurs at the Great Sphinx of Giza and the
constellations that have been ignored, such as Sphinx and Valley temples.
Norma, Ara, Telescopium, Corona Australis, Scutum, The major evidence Hancock brings to the
and Serpens. In addition, there is one bird-like fea- table comes by way of the Sphinx water erosion hy-
ture that does not match to any star asterism and in pothesis proposed by Boston University professor
another case, for an unexplained reason, a crane-like Robert Schoch. The hypothesis has never been pub-
image is combined with a fish-like image to match lished in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but that
with Ophiuchus. Not only do Sweatman and Tsikrit- has not stopped Schoch from becoming the darling
sist claim their mapping of the images in the sky doc- of subscribers to the ancient lost civilization myth.
uments a date of 10950 BCE + – 250 years, but they go The argument posits that there is erosion on the
on to conclude that the hunter-gatherers of Göbekli Great Sphinx that must have been caused by “thou-
Tepe must have been certifying the date of “the” sands of years of heavy rain” as Hancock puts it. He
comet strike. (Even though that strike supposedly oc- continues: “this means it [the Great Sphinx] has to
curred in North America). They try to bring their be much older than 2500 BCE (the orthodox date,
point home by suggesting that a “belt buckle” with a when Egypt received no more rain than it does
“nested U” has “an excellent likeness of the very spe- today) and must originally have been carved around
cific bow shock wave of a hypersonic spherical ob- the end of the Ice Age when the Nile valley was
ject.” Seriously? Without high speed photography subjected to a long period of intense precipitation.”
how does one see the bow shock wave of an object Recent dating that contradicts Hancock’s asser-
traveling faster than the speed of sound? tion was published in 2015. University of the Aegean
If you wanted to convey the existence of a physicist Ioannis Liritzis and his collaborator Asimina
comet strike to future generations, would it not be Vafiadou published in the peer-reviewed Journal of
prudent and obvious to carve the actual positions of Cultural Heritage surface luminescence dates of the
the stars along with the comet on a rock? Sweat- Valley and Sphinx temples that match perfectly with
man and Tsikritsis, along with Hancock, attribute the time period that archaeologists have long ac-
evolved astronomical knowledge to these hunter- cepted based on other dating techniques—the Great
gatherers. So why don’t these ancients show off Sphinx of Giza and associated temples were built dur-
their knowledge with star maps rather than with ing the reign of Pharaoh Khafre (c. 2558-2532 BCE).14
figures that may or may not represent constella- Nevertheless, with a stiff upper lip Hancock spends
tions? I think the answer is obvious—the carvings several pages in Magicians attempting to argue that
likely have nothing to do with asterisms. the dates come from what we are told “Schoch al-
Hancock has attempted to make the case that ready regarded as restoration work.” I wrote Dr. Lir-
the megalithic structures at Göbekli Tepe are so com- itzis and asked him to comment on the assertions
plex that they had to involve assistance from his lost made by Hancock and Schoch. He told me he was
advanced civilization when the hunter-gatherers built aware of Hancock’s “ideolipseis” and assured me that
them. But Schmidt found that the backfill that cov- the samples Hancock claims were from a coating
ered these structures had no signs of any advanced placed over the blocks to shield them from weather-
technologies including domesticated animals or ing “were not shielded coatings…but derived from
crops. Shermer’s point about lack of technology be- the whole block in between a firm contact!” In other
comes even more salient when you carefully examine words, the Sphinx and Temple Complex are evidence
Hancock’s proposal—the Magicians supposedly of an ancient civilization that existed in the third mil-
taught hunter-gatherers the secrets of asterisms (and lennium BCE, not thousands of years earlier.
even how to predict the destruction of our planet During our debate, Hancock was keen to empha-
some 12,000 years in the future) but did not pass on size that the dates are from the temples and not the
simpler technologies like domestication of plants and Sphinx. But a careful reading of both Fingerprints and
crops or the use of metals and pottery? Not likely. Magicians shows that he argues that the Sphinx and
associated temples were built in the same period,
The Great Sphinx of Giza which explains why he spends several pages in Magi-
Hancock’s formula used at Göbekli Tepe for inferring cians attempting to undermine or explain away the
a lost advanced civilization—speculation absent of dates from the temples as noted above. And with
supporting data—is extended to other archaeological good reason, as the work of renowned Egyptologist
sites. Arguably, the most egregious example of “fit- Mark Lehner shows. Lehner received his Ph.D. from
ting” ancient structures into a lost civilization fan- Yale and is currently the director of Ancient Egypt

Research Associates. He wrote his dissertation on the that their diet was mainly young cattle (prime beef!).
Sphinx and has spent the last 30 years working on the The makeup of the laborer community is important
approximately two-square miles of the Giza plateau, because it appears they walked off the job before the
making some remarkable discoveries. First, the Giza complex was finished. As far back as 1978,
Sphinx is carved directly from an in situ limestone Hawass and Lehner discovered that stone blocks
mass. Lehner, together with geologist Tom Aigner, were left abandoned as the Sphinx temple was being
demonstrated that the limestone used to construct built.17 Why?
the temples has precisely the same fossil assemblage That’s where German climatologists Rudolph
as the limestone in the Great Sphinx, and therefore Kuper and Stefan Kröpelin come into the picture.
must have come from the same source. Moreover, They published a study of climate changes in the
they found that the walls of the Sphinx temple were eastern Sahara in Science in 2006, based on copious
excavated from a trench surrounding the Sphinx. amounts of archaeological dating (more than 500
Lehner and Aigner emphasized that the most likely dates from over 150 excavations). Their conclusions
scenario was that the Sphinx temple was built while are telling: (1) A vast region including Egypt and
they were carving the Great Sphinx.15 Sudan and parts of Libya and Chad were bone dry
Hancock makes no mention of these aspects of from the last glacial maximum at 20,000 years ago
Lehner’s work, but he does tell us that “By virtue of until about 8,500 years ago—not the advantageous
the distinctive weathering patterns on that monu- environment Hancock envisions for hunter-gather-
ment’s [the Sphinx] flanks and on sections of the ers when they supposedly met up with his “magi-
trench that surrounds it—highlighted in the analysis cians” in 10,000 BCE to build the Great Sphinx. (2)
of geology professor Robert Schoch of Boston Univer- Monsoon rains beginning in 8,500 BCE transformed
sity—a proto Sphinx does appear to have existed the desert into a habitable environment for hunter-
when heavy rains fell across Egypt at the end of the gatherers who began settling in the region about
Ice Age.” Attentive readers will notice that Hancock 7000 BCE—no evidence of hunter-gatherers in the
links the weathering on the Sphinx with the weather- lower Nile exists prior to this time, contrary to Han-
ing in the trench from which the walls of the Sphinx cock’s assertions. (3) By 1,500 BCE desiccation was
and Valley temples were extracted. In other words, complete, leading Kuper and Kröpelin to conclude:
the weathering must have occurred after the walls “The final desiccation of the Egyptian Sahara also
were excavated from the trench and placed in the had an essential impact on the contemporaneous ori-
Sphinx temple—the very walls that have been dated gin of the pharaonic civilization in the Nile valley.” 18
to approximately 2500 BCE by Liritzis and Vafiadou. Lehner attributes the evidence of erosion on the
Further, in 1853 French Archaeologist Auguste Sphinx and along the trenches from which the Valley
Mariette discovered a life-size statue made of and Sphinx temple walls were excavated to the
“black volcanic rock” of the Pharoah Khafre within monsoon rains that periodically fell in the region as
the Valley temple. He also unearthed a paved pro- it became desiccated. Not only are there erosional
cessional causeway between the Valley temple and remnants on the Sphinx from rains during this pe-
a mortuary temple adjacent to Khafre’s pyramid. Is riod, but Lehner found evidence of erosion within
it any surprise that professional archaeologists have the laborers’ camp. He postulates that by the later
concluded that Khafre constructed the Sphinx, the years of the Old Kingdom, laborers refused to work
Valley and Sphinx temples, as well as his great pyra- in the suffocating dry conditions and stopped the
mid? Egyptian archaeologist and former Minister of construction of the Giza complex when food became
State for Antiquities Affairs of Egypt, Zahi Hawass, in short supply.19
wrote in 2006: “Most scholars believe, as I do, that It is also worth noting that Lehner has tied the
the Sphinx represents Khafre and forms an integral Giza complex together—including the Sphinx and
part of the pyramid complex.” 16 pyramids—through his careful mapping and research
Indeed, Lehner located the site where as many of the structures. As Hancock has pointed out, the
as 2,000 laborers lived while constructing the Giza Sphinx runs east-west, but not because the Egyptians
complex near the Old Kingdom cemetery that had help from magicians in aligning it with asterisms.
Hawass had uncovered nine years earlier. The ceme- Swiss archaeologist Herbert Ricke noted in the 1960s
tery was the burial site of some of the directors of the that the Sphinx temple walls encompass a courtyard
construction of Giza based on tomb inscriptions. with 24 pillars—each pillar representing an hour of
Lehner showed that the laborers were not slaves, but the day as the sun crosses the sky from east to west.
the kingdoms hired hands—bone artifacts indicate Lehner recognized that at the equinoxes “the shadow

Mississippi embayment to the ocean. Oxygen isotope
-25
Younger analyses along with 14C dating of planktonic shells
Mean annual temperature (degrees C)
Holocene
Dryas
from the Gulf of Mexico reveals a decrease in the
-30
flux of fresh water from about 11,100 until 10,000
years ago. The Broecker group postulated that the
-35
compositional change in seawater related to a
-40
change in the drainage through flooding from Lake
Last Glacial Agassiz toward the North Atlantic. The idea was that
Maximum an influx of freshwater into the North Atlantic di-
-45
minished density-driven circulation of oceanic cur-
-50 rents—the conveyor belt that brings warmth to the
northern climes—initiating worldwide cooling.
-55 However, neither geomorphic evidence of
8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22
Age (thousands of years)
flooding from Lake Agassiz into either the Arctic or
Atlantic oceans, nor a drop in the water level in Lake
Figure 7—Temperature variations from Greenland ice cores over the Agassiz could ever be found, causing even Broecker
last 23,000 years (from climateshifts.org)
to abandon the Lake Agassiz flooding hypothesis.22
That left the door open for another scenario, a comet
of the Sphinx and the shadow of the pyramid, both strike termed the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis
symbols of the king, become merged silhouettes. The (YDIH). The proponents of YDIH claim that the im-
Sphinx itself, it seems, symbolized the pharaoh pre- pact not only caused the dramatic climate change,
senting offerings to the sun god in the court of the but also triggered the demise of the Pleistocene
temple.” Hawass agrees, reminding us that Khafre as megafauna (the extinction of dozens of large North
the royal falcon god “is giving offerings with his two American mammals more commonly attributed to
paws to his father, Khufu, incarnated as the sun god, either overhunting by humans, gradual climate
Ra, who rises and sets in that temple.” 20 change, or both) and the collapse of the Clovis cul-
ture in North America. The debate over what hap-
The Younger Dryas and the Comet Strike pened during the YD can only be described as a
Next we will consider Hancock’s explanation for scientific “dogfight” that may go on for decades. But
why there is no direct evidence for his lost civiliza- the reason the YDIH extraordinary claim has yet to
tion—it was completely wiped out by a comet im- find consensus is that extraordinary evidence has yet
pact. Here’s the back story which involves a to emerge to support it. To be clear, the debate is not
mainstream scientific controversy that Hancock over lost civilizations.
has stepped into for his own unique reasons. The firestorm began in 2007 when Richard
About 23,000 years ago Earth began to come Firestone and numerous colleagues proposed that it
out of the last glacial deep freeze, marked by reced- was a comet strike of “multiple ET [extraterrestrial]
ing glaciers at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum airbursts along with surface impacts” that occurred
(see Figure 7). But rather dramatically, about 12,900 at 12,900 years ago that initiated the YD.” 23 The
years ago temperatures plummeted and then did an paper was full of impressive evidence gathered from
about face, warming again about 11,500 years ago—a 10 sites where a carbon-rich layer (referred to as the
period of 1,400 years geologists call the Younger “black mat”) marked what they claimed was the end
Dryas (YD). The cause of the event has been a mat- of the Clovis culture in North America: “The in situ
ter of considerable scientific debate for decades, but bones of extinct Pleistocene megafaunas, along with
consensus in the early 1990s centered on a paper by Clovis tool assemblages, occur below this black layer
Wally Broecker and his colleagues that proposed the but not within or above it.” They reported that sedi-
disruption of a large-scale ocean phenomenon called ments directly below the black mat were enriched in
the Thermohaline Circulation in the north Atlantic, magnetic grains, iridium, magnetic microspherules,
driven in part by the interaction of surface heat and charcoal, soot, carbon spherules, glass-like carbon
freshwater fluxes.21 Melt water from the massive containing nanodiamonds and fullerenes containing
Laurentide Ice Sheet covering large swaths of north- extraterrestrial helium. They explained that the soot,
ern North America drained into ancient Lake Agas- charcoal, spherules, etc. were the result of extensive
siz, itself formed by the retreat of the more than mile and intense forest fires initiated by the airbursts.
thick glacier. Water then flowed south through the Melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet would have

Southwest Rocky Eastern
Calibrated radiocarbon years before present: Age (cal a BP)
United States Mountains Great Plains US

9000
10,000
11,000
12,000
13,000
14,000
15,000
16,000
17,000
18,000
Arlington Springs, CA
Naco, AZ
Wilcox PLaya, AZ
Huntington Canyon. UT
Sunshine Locality, NV
Gilcrease Spring, NV
Murray Springs, AZ
Chapo Ranch, AZ
Southern Great Basin, NV
MacHaffie, MT
Indian Creek, MT
Black Mountain, CO
Vermillion Lakes, Alberta
OTL Ridge, MT
Beacon Island, ND
Benz, ND
J.B. Spring, ND
Sewright, ND
Little MO Badlands, ND
Little MO Escarpment, ND
Flaming Arrow, ND
Lake Ilo/Bobtail Wolf, ND
Cow Catcher, ND
Streifel Gravel Pit, ND
Lange/Ferguson, SD
Chalk Rock, SD
Bram’s, SD
Jim Pitts, SD
South Whilock site, SD
Sheep Mtn Table Badlands, SD
Sister’s Hill, WY
Carter/Kerr-McGee, WY
Agate Basin, WY
Hell Gap, WY
Sheaman, WY
Jurgens, CO
Frazier, CO
Jones-Miller, CO
Lindenmeier, Co
Lamb Spring, CO
Ash Hollow, NE
Medicine Creek, NE
Kanorado, KS
Nall, OK
Domebo, OK
Bull Creek, OK
Lubbock Lake, TX
SHP draws, TX and NM
Clovis, NM
Pounds Playa, NM
Aubrey, TX
Wilson-Leonard, TX
Richard Beene, TX
Arc, NY
Hiscock, NY
Figure 8—Carbon 14 ranges from samples taken from “the Younger Dryas boundary” at various Clovis sites (one standard
deviation above and below the mean is shown as a vertical line). The gray region marks the YD. From Holliday et al.26
dumped copious quantities of melt water into the fect the entire continent.” 27 They also point out that
Atlantic, thereby disrupting the density currents and any comet strike large enough to affect an entire
bringing on the cooling. continent would leave a detectable crater even if it
Over the years, however, support for the YDIH struck the ice sheet. To get around this glaring prob-
has been undermined. Nearly every aspect of the lem, the Firestone group proposed that the comet
original evidence has been challenged by a host of broke up upon entry into earth’s atmosphere. But
scientists in various fields. Only one of the indicators, according to physicist Mark Boslough and his col-
iridium, has been commonly used as an impact leagues,28 that would produce “more than a million
marker, and the iridium data have not always been Meteor craters” (the size of the crater in central Ari-
reproducible. The iridium concentrations can also be zona) based on the comet size postulated by Fire-
explained by terrestrial origins.24, 25 Nor do nanodia- stone and his cohorts.29,30
monds require extraterrestrial events. The absence of While the Firestone group claims that the comet
any impact craters at the beginning of the YD world- strike was responsible for the disappearance of the 37
wide is the most disconcerting evidence against mammal megafauna genera specifically in North
YDIH, as is the lack of control for the age of sedi- America, extinctions occurred on other continents,
ments/black mat at or near the YD boundary. Figure most notably South America, where at least 52 mam-
8 above shows the range of 14 C dates from the YD mal genera disappeared. And not all those genera dis-
boundary at various Clovis sites. The gray region rep- appeared synchronously at the YD boundary! Instead,
resents the YD, and the dates emphasize the difficul- megafauna extinctions on continents and islands
ties in precisely defining the YD boundary at 12,900 seem to correlate with the arrival of humans. The
years ago. thinking goes that these huge megafauna would have
In addition to these arguments against the had no reason to fear humans, and were probably easy
YDIH, it is difficult to imagine how an airburst/im- pickings for the newly arriving hunter-gatherers. Sci-
pact could annihilate the North American mammal entists have also been a bit incredulous that a comet
megafauna and Clovis culture and initiate huge wild strike could wipe out all the megafauna as far south as
fires, without leaving any evidence in the way of Patagonia, while leaving mammoths alive and well on
massive flooding or impact features. Vance Holliday St. Paul Island, Alaska until 3,700 years ago.31
and his colleagues argue that “no physical mecha- There is, in fact, no need to hypothesize a cata-
nism is known to produce an airburst that would af- strophic event to explain the disappearance of the

megafauna and associated Clovis culture. The Clovis to an extraterrestrial origin: nanodiamonds, mag-
culture in North America is known foremost for the netic sphericals, melt glass, and the platinum group
large fluted lanceolate projectile points found prima- metals (reduced from the 10 or more originally pro-
rily around 13,500 years ago. There are spectacular posed by the Firestone group). But all of these can be
mammoth kill sites associated with Clovis artifacts explained through terrestrial processes also, which
with butchery marks on the mammoth bones. At the he acknowledged on the show.
Manis site in Washington, Dr. Carl Gustafson and his A recently published paper has some intriguing
team excavated a mastodon skeleton in the 1970s data. Moore et al.35 found platinum concentrations
with a long projectile point embedded in one of the above background levels within what they believe is
bones. Under the “overkill” scenario, the disappear- representative of the YD boundary. The problem, of
ance of Clovis projectile points and other artifacts course, is that Pt concentrations are traditionally low
does not require a catastrophic event. It probably in ice-rich comets. LeCompte suggested that the Pt
means that the human toolkit, originally developed to concentrations could be indicative of an asteroid.
kill the megafauna, was gradually replaced as the The story continues to evolve, and I am loathe to
megafauna were killed off.32 There is no evidence that comment further until the comet/asteroid group can
humans disappeared in North and South America decide what the correct scenario is. While Pt con-
after the YD. How would a comet kill the megafauna centrations do increase within the YD boundary, dat-
but leave humans virtually untouched? ing the event is difficult (see Figure 8). The debate
In addition, contrary to what Hancock would may take many years to be resolved. While I would
Figure 9—A typical have us believe, there is no evidence of catastrophic not rule out an extraterrestrial event at this point
Clovis projectile point. flooding. Recall that Broecker had to back off his Lake there is virtually no evidence that an asteroid/comet
https://en.wikipedia. Agassiz hypothesis because no evidence for cata- devastated the megafauna, caused massive flooding,
org/wiki/Clovis_point
strophic flooding could be found. The glacial moraines and destroyed the Clovis culture.
formed by the Laurentide Ice Sheet have been pre- In any case, Hancock’s reliance on the YDIH is
cisely mapped and they show a consistent retreat until problematic for a number of reasons. First, Hancock’s
about 9,800 years ago.33 They would most assuredly white whale is what geologists call uniformitarian-
have been disrupted by the postulated massive floods. ism—the idea that the earth has been affected by
Hancock claims that the “comet and asteroid continuous, gradual, uniform processes. He claims
impacts not only cause floods but can also impose that scientists are so blindly wedded to this dogma to
huge stresses on the crust of the earth resulting in the point that they cannot see the catastrophism be-
increased earthquake and volcanic activity.” As a vol- fore their eyes. This is disingenuous. As a practicing
canologist, I would strongly argue that a strike would geologist, I can assert in the strongest terms that al-
not lead to volcanic activity, and beyond the initial though uniformitarianism is a tool in geological re-
impact, it may not lead to earthquakes. Regardless, search, the importance of catastrophes has been
Hancock can’t have it both ways—huge stresses can- recognized since the early to middle 20th century,
not happen to the earth’s crust without leaving iden- thanks to work by Daniel Barringer and later Gene
tifiable scars on the land. Notably, Broecker and his Shoemaker on Meteor crater, J Harlen Bretz and J. T.
colleagues have most recently concluded that “there Pardee on the Scabland floods, and the documenta-
is no need to call upon a one-time catastrophic event tion of massive volcanic eruptions, past tsunami
to explain the YD. More likely, the YD was a neces- events, glaciation, plate tectonics, and many more ex-
sary part of the last termination…cold reversals amples. Far from being dogmatically closed minded,
equivalent to the YD seem to be integral parts of our openness toward catastrophic events is precisely
global switches from glacial to interglacial cli- what allowed Walter and Luis Alvarez to overcome an
mate.” 34 initially doubting geologic community to accept the
I want to emphasize that although the YDIH idea that the dinosaurs had been wiped out by a me-
has lost acceptance within the scientific community teor impact. Hancock implies conspiracy whenever
over the last decade, the debate proceeds in the he runs into normal scientific skepticism (he actually
proper scientific manner (i.e., by publishing results has sections of his book entitled “Conspiracy Corner”
in peer-reviewed scientific journals). As Malcolm and “Taking on the dogmatic uniformitarians”). This
LeCompte, one of the comet researchers, pointed allows him to deflect scientific criticism from his un-
out in our debate on Joe Rogan’s show (he was likely ideas by painting himself as just one of many
Hancock’s expert guest; I was Shermer’s), there are that have run up against the supposed scientific jug-
four indicators at the YD boundary that may be due gernaut of uniformitarianism.

124° 122° 120° 118° 116° 114°
Co
LERAN ICE SHEET
CORDIL
Cordilleran Ice Sheet
nt i n
Glacial lakes TEN
AY ALBERTA
Lake Kootenay KOOO O D
FL
Flooded area Recessional
e
PU
Glacial Lake n
Kootenay ta
RC
BRITISH COLUMBIA
EL
49° CANADA
ER
l
L
TR
RIV
WASHINGTON UNITED STATES
EN
CH
A
C O LUMBI
D
Glacial
v
i
Lake id
LAKE A
Clark OUL
CO LUMBIA S S DSS
MFI FLLOOOOD
e
FLOOD
Glacier
Peak
BI
Glacial
Flathead
TT
Lake
Columbia Lake
ER
SEATTLE
SPOKANE MONTANA
O
(100m lower during Missoula floods)
O
T
47° Quincy
Basin Channeled
R
Scabland
A
N
PACIFIC OCEAN
Mount G
Rainier E
SNAK
E
E
ER
CO R IV Glacial Lake
NG
Pasco
LUM Ya k i m a
Va Basin Missoula
ll ey
BI
Mount Walla
A
St. Helens Walla

RA
Valley
RIVE R
IDAHO
y
PORTLAND
E
e
all
OREGON
AD
Willamette V
45°
SC
0 100 miles
CA
0 200 k
Figure 10—(Above) The distribution of Lake Missoula and the flooded areas. From Waitt.
Figure 11—(Below) The range in dates of the timing of the periodic flooding from Lake Missoula. From Waitt.
Hancock portrays himself as the modern-day J

Harlen Bretz, continually comparing the difficulties Zuffa 3 (deep sea)
After Missoula floods
Bretz had getting a skeptical scientific community to Fulton (southern B.C.)

accept the Scabland flooding hypothesis with his own ArchNW 2
helter-skelter conjecturing. Hancock insists that Battle Ground, WA
ArchNW 1
Bretz’s first claim that there was one major flood Gilmour 2
through the Scablands is correct. Bretz later changed Willamette Valley, OR)
Gilmour 1
his mind in favor of multiple periodic floods. Science Mullineaux Vancouver, WA
has moved on, not only eventually accepting Bretz’s
Within Missoula floods
Bunker
original evidence for flooding (Bretz would receive Benito 3
the coveted Penrose Medal for his work on the Scab- Waitt
lands), but carefully documenting the dates of specific Benito 2
floods through the Scablands. We now know with Atwater
some confidence that ice dams that formed ancient Lillquist
Lake Missoula broke periodically, pouring erosive Benito 1
water through a massive area of eastern Washington Zuffa 2 Early
(deep sea) Missoula
and northern Oregon (see Figures 10 and 11). Zuffa 1 floods?
(southern Before
At least 17 floods in the Scablands have been Claque B.C.) icesheet
documented by careful dating. But the most impor-
tant thing required to support Hancock’s theories is 24000 22000 20000 18000 16000 14000 12000
missing—no larger flood occurred in the Scablands at Calibrated date (cal BP)
the YD boundary. All the floods were clearly limited

in area and are consistent with the breaking of ice Hancock informs us that emissaries from Atlantis
dams formed by the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which survived the destruction and carried their advanced
released water from ancient Lake Missoula. Hancock science and technology to Göbekli Tepe, the Maya,
admits that the periodic flooding occurred, but insists Egypt, Baalbek—even Easter Island. Further, these
that geologists have missed the evidence for an Magicians, these Seven Sages who Hancock says were
apocalyptic flood at the YD boundary brought on by imbued “with mysterious ‘powers’” (so mysterious
a comet strike. This, in turn, is used as evidence for a that we are never told what these powers are)—set
worldwide flood that wiped out his lost advanced about “wandering.” They also had a message for us—a
civilization. A flood of this scope is quite a contrast powerful message as deduced by Hancock. From the
to the limited area covered by the Scabland floods. inferred astrological signs and proposed alignments of
So what is his evidence for worldwide flooding? the megaliths, Hancock makes the following wild
Once again, he relies on flood mythologies, including leap: “The last time this grand celestial line-up of
the Noachian flood, stating: “So although the floods earth, December-solstice sun and the galactic center
at the end of the Ice Age could never have carried occurred was a full precessional cycle of 25,920 years
Noah and his Ark thousands of feet above present sea ago and the next time it will happen is a full preces-
level to the slopes of Mount Ararat, they were indeed sional cycle of 25,920 years in the future. We live, in
global in their extent and would have had devastating other words, in a very special, indeed rather unique,
consequences for humans living at the time.” moment in terms of cosmic astronomical symbolism.”
I asked Isaac Larsen at the University of Massa- Spoiler alert! Hancock avers:
chusetts, one of the world’s experts on the Scabland
However improbable it may seem, therefore, we are
flooding, if there was any chance that the deluges could
obliged to consider the possibility that in 9600 BC the
be related to the YDIH, and if he had any thoughts on
builders of Göbekli Tepe were already so advanced in
the claims made by Hancock about a conspiracy to hide
their knowledge of the recondite phenomenon of pre-
evidence. (Larsen along with his colleague Michael
cession that they were able to calculate its effects for
Lamb have just published a paper in Nature on “out-
thousands of years backward and forward in time in
burst flooding in the Scablands.”37) He did not mince
order to produce an accurate symbolic picture of the
words in his response: “The scientific consensus is that
Sagittarius/winter solstice conjunction… Bearing in
there was not one single catastrophic flood, but multi-
mind that half a precessional cycle is 12,960 years… if
ple floods, and the occurrence of multiple floods is
I understand the message correctly, we’re in the dan-
hence not consistent with the comet impact pro-
ger zone now and will be until 2040.
posal…. Regarding conspiracies, I would say that the
scientific community is very open to new ideas, and In other words, Hancock is seriously proposing
those ideas supported by data gain credence, whereas that we are being told by the Magicians that the comet
ideas that lack compelling empirical or theoretical clusters that supposedly struck earth some 12,900 years
basis fail to gain traction. Scientists are quite individu- ago and led to the destruction of Atlantis, the North
alistic, and getting thousands of them to subscribe to a American megafauna, the Clovis people, etc., will rain
conspiracy isn’t something I can imagine happening.” death and destruction upon us sometime over the next
Neither can I. few decades. The extreme mental gymnastics Hancock
goes through to warn us of eminent doom fails in the
The Lost Civilization Sends a Message light of logic. (1) Hancock insists that the Mayans could
Magicians is admittedly a compelling read, and its predict the future from celestial mechanics; (2) He
thesis a titillating one, invoking an advanced lost civi- claims the Mayan calendar is based on a precession
lization that reinforces the myth of a “Golden Age” of that began with the “conjunction of the winter solstice
humanity, but it is convoluted and twisted in its sub- Sun and the center of the Milky Way galaxy” some
stance. Hancock is often vague, which makes it diffi- 26,000 years ago. (3) The hunter-gatherers with their
cult to ferret out what he is trying to say. His book is magician watchers at Göbekli Tepe recognized, accord-
full of excerpts from mythology that he insists bear hid- ing to Hancock, that the destruction of the lost civiliza-
den truths. Not once are we told why the magicians tion was precisely at a midway point between the
had to send their messages using obtuse metaphors. precession 12,900 years ago when a supposed comet
But Hancock’s message is clear: a technologically ad- struck; and (4) The Göbekli Tepe inhabitants generated
vanced civilization—no less than the most famous lost symbols indicating that this 26,000 year precession
civilization in all fiction, Atlantis—was destroyed by cycle spells doom for our planet in the coming decades.
the YD comet strike, and it could happen to us! Remember, a 26,000 year precession cycle can be

started at any time—there is nothing physically unique about conjecturing that a cycle
started when we were aligned “with the dark rift and nuclear bulge of the Milky Way” as
Hancock suggests. Nor is the alignment itself unusual. It happens every December.
Ignoring such mental gymnastics, the obvious flaw in Hancock’s scenario is the asso-
ciation of a precessional cycle with comet strikes. Precession relates to the “wobble” of
the earth on its axis over 26,000 year cycles (see Figure 12). Hancock has surmised that
the source of the comet that struck the earth 12,900 years ago came from the Taurid me-
teor shower. The belt or ring does indeed look like it was formed from the breakup of a
large comet (which does not imply that a comet struck the earth 12,900 years ago). The
earth passes through the Taurid belt in late October or early November and in June and
July of each year, which creates meteor showers. But what does this have to do with the
earth’s precession?
The earth wobbling on its axis over 26,000 years does not affect the earth’s orbit, so
why would we expect large comet strikes every 12,900 years from the precession of the
earth? I asked Hancock this question during our debate and he seemed dumbfounded by Figure 12—The wobble of the earth’s
axis during a 26,000 year precession
its implications. He never answered my question, probably because there is no answer. cycle is shown by the circle above
All I am left with is that Hancock has a wild imagination and romantic longing for a past the Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/
best described by myth, not science. wiki/Axial_precession
REFERENCES
1. Hancock, G., 2015. Magicians of the olithic Communities. New Evidence pact Event at the Bølling–Allerød/
Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth’s from Göbekli Tepe, South-eastern Younger Dryas Transition.” Proc. Natl.
Lost Civilization. St. Martin’s Press. Turkey.” Antiquity, v. 86, 674-695. Acad. Sci., v. 51, 21505-21510.
2. Hancock, G., 1995. Fingerprints of 12. Schmidt, K., 2008. “When Humanity 25. van Hoesel, A., et al., 2014. “The
the Gods: The Evidence of Earth’s Began to Settle Down.” German Res. Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis: a
Lost Civilization. Three Rivers Press. v. 30, 10-13. Critical Review.” Quaternary Sci. Rev.,
3. “Fingerprints of the Gods,” Wikipedia, 13. Sweatman, M. B. and Tsikritsis, D., v. 83, 95-114.
http://bit.ly/2b1aSMC 2017. “Decoding Göbekli Tepe with Ar- 26. Holliday, V. T., et la., 2014. “The
4. I have no objection to Hancock’s lack chaeoastronomy: What Does the Fox Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis: a
of scientific qualifications per se, but Say?” Mediterranean Archaeology and Cosmic Catastrophe.” J. Quaternary
his entire book continually refutes evi- Archaeometry v. 17, 233-250. Sci., v. 29, 515-530.
dence from experts in a plethora of 14. Liritzis, I. and Vafiadou, A., 2015. 27. Holliday, V. T., et al., 2014. op cit.
fields. Generalists with no qualifica- “Surface Luminescence Dating of 28. Boslough, M., et al., 2012. “Argu-
tions run the risk of ruined reputations Some Egyptian Monuments” J. Cul- ments and Evidence Against a
by challenging experts who have dedi- tural Heritage, v. 16, 134-150. Younger Dryas Impact Event. Cli-
cated their careers to specific fields. 15. Hadingham, E., 2010. “Uncovering mates, Landscapes, and Civilizations.
5. Graham Hancock, Wikipedia, http:// Secrets of the Sphinx.” Smithsonian: Geophysical Monograph Series 198.”
bit.ly/2jZbp5P http://bit.ly/2joGZWL American Geophysical Union, 13-26.
6. Schmidt, K., 2010. “Göbekli Tepe: 16. Hawass, Z., 2006, Mountain of the 29. Firestone, R. B., 2009. “The Case for
The stone age sanctuaries. New re- Pharaohs. Doubleday, 224. the Younger Dryas Extraterrestrial Im-
sults of ongoing excavations with a 17. Hadingham, E., 2010, op cit. pact Event: Mammoth, Megafauna,
special focus on sculptures and high 18. Kuper, R. and Kröpelin, S., 2006. “Cli- and Clovis Extinction, 12,900 Years
reliefs.” Documenta Praehistorica, v. mate-Controlled Holocene Occupation Ago.” J. Cosmology, v. 2, 256-285.
37, 239-256. in the Sahara: Motor of Africa’s Evolu- 30. Firestone, R. B., et al., 2007. op cit.
7. Schmidt, K., 2003. “The 2003 Cam- tion.” Science, v. 313, 803-807. 31. Holliday, V. T., et al., 2014. op cit.
paign at Göbekli Tepe (Southeastern 19. Hadingham, E., 2010, op cit. 32. Hancock refers to the Clovis culture
Turkey).” Neo Lithics, 2/03, 3-8. 20. Hadingham, E., 2010, op cit. as having a “sophisticated weapons
8. Curry, A., 2008. “Gobekli Tepe: The 21. Broecker, W., et al. 1989. “Routing of technology” which is simply not true.
World’s First Temple?” Smithsonian, Meltwater from the Laurentide Ice 33. Holliday, V. T., et al., 2014. op cit.
Nov. Sheet During the Younger Dryas Cold 34. Broecker, W., et al., 2010. op cit.
9. Lang, C. et al., 2013. “Gazelle behav- Episode.” Nature, v. 341, 318-321. 35. Moore, C. R., et al., 2017. “Widespread
iour and Human Presence at Early Ne- 22. Broecker, W., et al., 2010. “Putting the Platinum Anomaly Documented at the
olithic Göbekli Tepe, South-eastern Younger Dryas Cold Event Into Context.” Younger Dryas Onset in North American
Anatolia.” World Archaeology, v. 43, Quaternary Sci. Rev., v. 29, 1078-1081. Sedimentary Sequences.” Nature,
410-429. 23. Firestone, R. B., et al., 2007. “Evi- http://go.nature.com/2rmbCCs
10. Peters, J. and Schmidt, K., 2004.“Ani- dence for an Extraterrestrial Impact 36. Waitt, R. B., 2016. “Megafloods and
mals in the Symbolic World of Pre-Pottery 12,900 Years Ago that Contributed to Clovis Cache at Wenatchee.” Quater-
Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, South-eastern the Megafaunal Extinctions and the nary Res., v. 85, 430-444.
Turkey: a Preliminary Assessment.” Younger Dryas Cooling.” Proc. Natl. 37. Larsen, I. J. and Lamb, M. P., 2016.
Anthropozoologica, v. 39, 179-218. Acad. Sci., v. 104, 16016-16021. “Progressive Incision of the Chan-
11. Dietrich, O., et al., 2012. “The Role of 24. Paquay, F. S., et al. 2009. “Absence neled Scablands by Outburst Floods.”
Cult Feasting In the Emergence of Ne- of Geochemical Evidence for an Im- Nature, v. 538, 229-232.

AR TICLE
Lost Civilizations
and Imaginative
Conjectures
An Analysis of Myth and History
in Graham Hancock’s Magicians of the Gods
BY TIM CALLAHAN
Few topics in science evoke more wonder than mythic form, as does the myth of Atlantis. While the
the idea that there was once a great prehistoric civi- Younger Dryas may well have had a sudden onset, pos-
lization now lost to history, whose scant remnants are sibly measured in a few decades, and the rise in sea
presented in breathtaking revelations by independent levels at the end of that period may also have been as
scholars insightful and brave enough to think outside sudden, there is no evidence of any civilization devel-
the box of mainstream archaeology. Most prominent oping before the Younger Dryas. As this issue of Skep-
among those who promote this view is Graham Han- tic includes an analysis of the astronomical and
cock, author of The Message of the Sphinx, The Mars geological aspects of the theory by geologist Marc De-
Mystery, Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civiliza- fant, I will here focus on myth and history as Hancock
tion, The Divine Spark, Sign and the Seal: The Quest for presents them in Magicians and his other books.
the Lost Ark of the Covenant, Fingerprints of the Gods, and
now, Magicians of the Gods. This latest work, at over Gunung Padang
400 pages, expands upon his earlier books, all of To begin, according to Hancock, not all traces of this
which are oriented around his belief that a worldwide advanced ancient civilization were destroyed. As he
civilization existed more than 20,000 years before has argued in previous works, for example, the Sphinx
present (BP). needs to be redated to make it part of this much ear-
What happened to this advanced culture? It was lier civilization, as does a pyramid buried at Gunung
wiped out by a planet-wide cataclysm that Hancock Padang, a megalithic site in Java. Hancock praises the
now suggests was triggered by a comet strike on the work of geologist Danny Hillman Natawidjaja, who he
Earth, as evidenced by many geological features he sees as persevering in the face of hidebound scientists
thinks have no better explanation than a massive flood who want to stop his investigation because they fear
caused by the comet impact that erased nearly all the “truth” about the past. According to Hancock, a
traces of this advanced civilization. This initiated the cabal of these dogmatic scientists petitioned to have
Younger Dryas period of intense cold, ca.12,900- Natawidjaja’s work halted, until the president of In-
11,700 BP, followed by a disrupting period of gradual donesia heroically stepped in and put an end to their
warming at the end of the last glacial maximum from machinations.
27,000-24,000 BP when, presumably, this ancient ad- As is often the case, the truth is more complex
vanced civilization flourished. The Younger Dryas was and less heroic. Dyna Rochmyaningsih notes in an ar-
followed by extensive flooding of the continental shelf ticle in Nature, the motives driving the excavations at
land areas previously exposed due to falling sea levels Gunung Padang are far from purely scientific:
during the glaciations. The flooding was caused by
rapid warming of the entire planet at the end of the Two high-profile projects suggest that the officials who
Younger Dryas. steer our national science policy are favouring ques-
According to Hancock’s theory, flood myths tionable research that is likely to bring short-term head-
across the world record the history of this event in lines and “national pride,” rather than solid science

that will result in true, long-term societal benefit. Graham Hancock in documentary films, shows the
The first of these projects is based on the claim site at Gunung Padang as nothing more than a grassy
that ancient Indonesia could have been home to Earth’s plateau littered with basalt columns, a natural, rather
oldest civilization. Geological patterns discovered dur- than manmade feature.3 That Collins asks the blessing
ing excavation of the Gunung Padang volcanic site in of the “Weaver Princess,” along with other spirits to
West Java have been used to push the idea that an an- help him find the truth about Gunung Padang does lit-
cient pyramid is buried there that would predate the tle to inspire confidence in the scientific validity of his
historic ruins of ancient Egypt by thousands of years. investigation. Of course, if there were a pyramid
Many Indonesian people love the project and its ex- buried under the plateau, we wouldn’t expect it to
traordinary claims, and the work has received backing show at the surface. Danny Hilman’s claims that
from the government. The Indonesian president visited ground-penetrating radar support his views on Gu-
the site last year to proclaim it the cradle of civilization, nung Padang remain disputed by other scientists. Suf-
and military forces have been deployed to assist work fice it to say the site is not the “smoking gun” that
there.1 Graham Hancock claims it to be.
So, the project may be more about national pride and
Göbekli Tepe
less about science. But did closed-minded skeptics ac-
A considerably more substantial site is Göbekli Tepe in
tually seek to block excavations because they are ene-
Turkey, just north of the Syrian border, a site that far
mies of the truth? A 2013 article in the Sydney Morning
antedates Stonehenge and other such megalithic sites.
Herald offers a different explanation for the scientists’
opposition to the project: Animal bones associated with the site have been car-
bon dated to ca.11,000 BP. The site consists of a stone
A petition signed in April by 34 Indonesian archaeolo- circle about 300 meters (984 ft.) in diameter. Within
gists and geologists and submitted to Yudhoyono [the the circle are about 20 smaller circles that include
President of Indonesia] agrees that the upper part of more than 200 massive T-shaped stone pillars. Each
Gunung Padang is “the largest megalithic structure in pillar has a height of up to 6 meters (20 ft.) and a
south-east Asia,” but the experts are deeply suspicious weight of up to 20 tons. While other megalithic monu-
of the Arif team’s methods and motives, and the geo- ments, such as Stonehenge, were erected by agricul-
logical flag-waving it is trying to invoke. turalists, Göbekli Tepe appears to have been erected by
The petitioners do not like Arif’s “plans to involve Neolithic hunter-gatherers, who hadn’t yet even
common people as volunteers to support the ‘the Red learned how to make pottery (or at least none has
and White Glory Operation in Gunung Padang’ which been found at the site). That hunter-gatherers could
they call ‘research’.” Red and white are the colours of erect such an edifice is remarkable, and Göbekli Tepe
the Indonesian flag. “This activity is carried out with- certainly challenges accepted views on the types of so-
out scientific norms of conservation knowledge,” the cieties that could organize a workforce sufficient to
petitioners say. They believe the excavation threatens build such megalithic structures, but that is a different
the preservation of the existing site, and hint strongly debate entirely than the one Hancock wants to have.
that archaeologists, as opposed to geologists, should be He suggests sages from an advanced lost civilization
involved. One of them, vulcanologist Sutikno Bronto, taught the people at Göbekli Tepe how to build such
says Gunung Padang is simply the neck of a nearby vol- structures.
cano, not an ancient pyramid. Hancock does not accept that hunter-gatherers
“Danny Hilman is not a vulcanologist. I am,” could have erected such a structure on their own. He
he says. As for the carbon-dated cement between the holds instead that people who survived the great catas-
stones, on which Hilman relies for his claims about trophe of the Younger Dryas and the flood that fol-
the age of the site, Sutikno believes it is simply the lowed it disseminated agriculture to indigenous
byproduct of a natural weathering process and “not hunter-gatherers, and that:
man-made.” 2
The sudden, indeed completely unprecedented, ap-
So, far from being hidebound naysayers trying to stifle pearance of giant stone circles at Göbekli Tepe, which
the truth, the scientists actually want the site pro- surely could only have been conceived and imple-
tected and wish to exclude politics and nationalism mented by people with extensive prior experience of
from what should be a purely scientific endeavor. megalithic architecture, and the simultaneous “inven-
A video of the site, narrated by Andrew Collins, tion” of agriculture in the exact same locale, are, in my
another alternative theorist who has appeared with view, highly suggestive of this possibility (p. 152).

In other words, these primitive savages couldn’t have pent in the Sky, regarding this “sudden” appearance:
built what seems to be a temple at Göbekli Tepe on
How does a complex civilization spring full-blown
their own. In point of fact, primitive hunter-gatherers
into being? Look at a 1905 automobile and compare
can be quite inventive. Consider Sequoya, an early
it to a modern one. There is no mistaking the
19th century Native-American Cherokee crippled in
process of “development.” But in Egypt there are no
his youth in a hunting accident, and his invention of
parallels. Everything is right there at the start.
the Cherokee alphabet (actually a syllabary). He sub-
The answer to the mystery is, of course, obvious,
mitted his invented writing system to the Cherokee
but, because it is repellent to the prevailing cast of
nation in 1821. It was approved, and by 1828 the
modern thinking it is seldom considered. Egyptian
Cherokee were producing their own newspaper, the
civilization was not a “development,” it was a legacy.6
Cherokee Phoenix, written in both Cherokee and Eng-
lish. Thus, the Cherokee went from a nonliterate peo- That the foreword to West’s book was written by the
ple to fully literate publishers in less than a decade.4 late Peter Tompkins, author of The Secret Life of
Hancock would probably argue that, after all, the Plants, which argues for the sentience of plants,
Cherokee learned of the existence of writing systems should give any reader pause as to the scientific valid-
from European settlers, but notice that in his quote ity of the work. Be that as it may, West’s—and Han-
above he speaks of the appearance of agriculture in cock’s—assertion the Egyptian civilization appeared
the same area as Göbekli Tepe as occurring simultane- suddenly, without precursors, simply isn’t true. In
ously with the building of the megalithic structure. both Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt (i.e., the Nile
However, as Andrew Curry, writing in Smithsonian delta) archaeologists have unearthed a series of cul-
Magazine has noted, the megalith was built before tures leading from simple Neolithic farming villages
these people had agriculture (emphasis added): to those of early Egyptian civilization, as follows7:
But, Peters and Schmidt say, Göbekli Tepe’s builders Lower Egypt
were on the verge of a major change in how they lived, —Faiyum A culture 9,000-6,000 BCE, Neolithic.
thanks to an environment that held the raw materials —Merimde 5,000-4200 BCE.
for farming. “They had wild sheep, wild grains that —L Omrari near Cairo ca. 4000 BCE.
could be domesticated—and the people with the po- —Maadi contemporary of Naqada I and II
tential to do it,” Schmidt says. In fact, research at other in Upper Egypt, copper tools.
sites in the region has shown that within 1,000 years of
Göbekli Tepe’s construction, settlers had corralled Upper Egypt
sheep, cattle and pigs. And, at a prehistoric village just —Tasian ca. 4,500 BCE.
20 miles away, geneticists found evidence of the —Badarian 4,400-4,000 BCE.
world’s oldest domesticated strains of wheat; radiocar- —Naqada I (4,000-3,500): first use of mud bricks.
bon dating indicates agriculture developed there —Naqada II (3,500-3,200 BCE): designs of ships
around 10,500 years ago, or just five centuries after on pottery, cylinder seals (possibly introduced
Göbekli Tepe’s construction.5 from the early Sumerian Uruk culture),
Egyptian style houses.
That the building of Göbekli Tepe occurred 500 years —Naqada III (3,200-3,000 BCE): first
before its builders acquired agriculture completely un- hieroglyphs, irrigation systems serekh (heraldic
dermines Hancock’s argument. In any case, had sur- crest, precursor of the cartouche), dead buried
vivors of a previous civilization taught the local in special houses, forerunners of mastabas.
hunter-gatherers how to build a megalithic monu- —Dynasty “0” (3150-3050 BCE): semi-legendary
ment, they probably would not only have taught them kings, Pharaohs “Scorpion” and Narmer.
agriculture, as Hancock erroneously believes, but —Dynasty 1 (3050-2890 BCE):
some form of writing as well. And wouldn’t they have mastabas (forerunners of pyramids).
also taught them now to make pottery?
Hancock isn’t the only one to argue for the sud-
Egypt as a “Sudden” Civilization den appearance of a civilization. The late Zecharia
Hancock makes much the same argument as he Sitchen, who claimed that space aliens came down
does for Göbekli Tepe regarding the “sudden” ap- and started Sumerian civilization, also argued it ap-
pearance of Egyptian civilization. Toward the be- peared suddenly, without any precursors. He was as
ginning of the book (p. 10) he quotes John Anthony wrong as Hancock is in his claims (although Hancock
West’s statement from page 13 of his 1979 book Ser- rejects Sitchen’s theories). As with ancient Egypt,

Sumer is the culmination of a series of cultures, begin- dikes to keep the rivers from flooding and overflow-
ning with simple Neolithic farming villages and grad- ing, but this doesn’t work. Yao has Gun executed.
ually developing the use of metallurgy, irrigation When Gun’s body is chopped in half, Yu emerges
systems, monumental architecture and the wheel. The from it as a dragon. He assumes human form and digs
irony in this is that Hancock has taken some pains to canals to drain floodwaters into the sea.9 So, flood
distance himself from supporters of the ancient astro- myths of different types could be a mythic version of
naut thesis. He states the following on his website: an ancient history of the flooding of continental
shelves and the torrential rains that might have ac-
I am quite clear, however, having spent more than
companied this. However, Hancock cherry picks
[a] quarter of a century walking the walk across
those that support the flood he needs to have wiped
many of the most intriguing ancient archaeologi-
out his ancient civilization.
cal sites on earth, and digging into ancient texts
Even more dramatically, Hancock indiscrimi-
and traditions from all around the world, that NO
nately uses Plato’s myth of Atlantis as support for his
ancient archaeological site and NO ancient text or
theory. Unlike other flood myths, however, the story
tradition that I have yet come across provides per-
of Atlantis is not a traditional story growing out of the
suasive evidence for the “ancient astronaut hy-
mythic traditions of a people. Rather, it is Plato’s own
pothesis.”
and singular invention, despite claims made in the di-
And I’m equally clear that in order to give the
alogues Critias and Timaeus that the Greek lawmaker
impression that the sites and texts do support their
Solon (ca.638-ca.558 BCE) heard from Egyptian
hypothesis, it is necessary for ancient astronaut the-
priests. Hancock’s reasoning on the issue of the story’s
orists again and again to take the ancient texts out
validity is rather odd. Referring to those who reject
of context, or to misquote them deliberately, rather
any historical kernel for Atlantis he says (pp. 172, 173):
than to present them to readers in an honest and
transparent way.8 They “know” this not because of any hard evidence
which absolutely rules out the existence of an Atlantis
Despite excoriating Sitchen and other ancient
type civilization in the Upper Paleolithic, but rather
astronaut theorists, however, Hancock uses the
on the general principle that the result of less than
same erroneous argument to support his alternative
two hundred years of “scientific” archaeology is an
theory. Since I was easily able to find material on
agreed timeline for civilization that sees our ancestors
the prehistoric predynastic cultures of Upper and
smoothly out of the Upper Paleolithic, into the Ne-
Lower Egypt that lead by gradual steps from Ne-
olithic (both, by definition, Stone Age cultures) at
olithic villages to the earliest forms of Egyptian civi-
around 9600 BC.
lization merely by surfing the web and looking into
a few books on the subject written for the layperson, Actually the burden of proof is on those advanc-
I have to conclude that Hancock either made his ing the idea of Atlantis as having a historical basis,
assertion that Egyptian civilization appeared sud- since it is difficult, if not impossible to prove a nega-
denly without bothering to do any research to back tive. Those who reject the historicity of Atlantis can
it up, or simply ignored any sources that didn’t sup- only point out that there is no evidence of its existence
port his theory. Seeing as he is obviously an intelli- and that Plato is its only original source (other ancient
gent and widely read man the latter explanation writers on the subject come after Plato and all refer
would seem to be the likelier one. back to him). If Hancock wants anyone to believe
there was an island civilization destroyed by flooding
Flood Myths and Atlantis at the end of the Younger Dryas that was the basis of
The idea that widespread (but by no means universal) the Atlantis myth, he bears the burden of supporting
flood myths could hearken back to fairly rapid flood- evidence for the claim.
ing of continental shelves at the end of the Younger As it turns out, Hancock does claim to have just
Dryas is not an unreasonable one, particularly if one such evidence. He points to the Edfu temple texts
considers the variety of flood myths. The main flood about an island of the gods destroyed by flood and
myth of China, for example, doesn’t involve a sudden fire, and he states on page 170 that this story is an ob-
flood that inundates the world. Rather, while the vious prototype of Plato’s Atlantis. The big problem
flooding has a sudden onset, it goes on for genera- with this claim is that the Edfu temple of Horus was
tions. And there is no ark. The people take refuge on built well after Plato lived (ca. 429-347 BCE), in the
mountain tops instead. Emperor Yao commissions a Ptolemaic Period. Construction was begun on it in
courtier named Gun to solve the problem. He builds 237 BCE, and work continued on its site until 57

Figure 1—Can we identify an ancient object based only on B.
A.
what it resembles in contemporary culture?
(A.) Mesopotamian civilization ca. 5000 –3500 BCE. In Assyrian
art, sacred figures hold a banddudû (bucket) along with a cone
shaped object, the mullilu (purifier). These two objects are
thought to be part of a blessing or purification ritual that
involved sprinkling water or pollen. If the figure was shown next
to a Tree of Life and the mullilu was a pine cone or the spathe of
a male palm, the ritual echoed the way date palms have been fertilized
by hand for millennia.
(B) Olmec culture ca. 1200–400 BCE, A relief sculpture
known as Monument 19 from La Venta, Tabasco, Mex-
ico. The figure here is shown with one of the first
known representations of the Feathered Ser-
pent deity.
(C.) Göbekli Tepe ca.11,000 BCE. Archeol-
ogists working at Göbekli Tepe suggest the
3 objects carved on the top of Pillar 43
(right) could represent the enclosures
found there, with arching roofs, each with
it’s representative tribal animal.10
C.
BCE. Thus, its texts could hardly have been a prototype of Plato’s from an Assyrian relief from the Temple of Ninurta, dating
story. Hancock is aware of this, but asserts that these texts were from the ninth century BCE, which now resides in the British
copies of much earlier texts. But there is no evidence of such Museum (Figure A).
copying. Hancock includes a drawing based on this relief (27). The
Hancock’s other supposed Egyptian source for Atlantis is image shows a man wearing a fish headdress with the rest of the
much earlier, a papyrus from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, 2040- fish forming a robe of sorts. In one hand he carries a basket or
1780 BCE. It is called The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor and it bucket with a handle. Quetzalcoatl, culture hero of the Aztecs,
may well be a later copy of an earlier tale. However, it really says represented both as a man and as a plumed serpent, also carries
little that could be construed to support an Egyptian (or earlier) a basket/bucket with a handle (Figure B). Images that could be
origin of the Atlantis myth. The sailor of the story is shipwrecked of such a basket also adorn one of the pillars from Göbekli Tepe
on an island where he meets a fantastic serpent 30 cubits (45 ft.) (Figure C). This, of course, leads Hancock to assume they are all
long, with scales of gold and eyebrows of lapis lazuli. The super- representations of the same antediluvian sage from his hypo-
natural snake tells the sailor he is the last of 75 such serpents. thetical pre-Younger Dryas universal civilization. However,
The others perished when a star fell, and their island went up in while Mesopotamian civilization began about 3,500 BCE,
flames. Hancock apparently sees this star as the comet that Mesoamerican and Mexican civilizations only began with the
struck the earth, initiating the Younger Dryas. However, it’s quite Olmecs about 1,200 BCE, and the Aztec civilization—whose
a stretch to make the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor work as an basket carrying culture hero was Quetzalcoatl—only appeared a
early telling of the Atlantis myth. Thus, it would seem that At- bit after 1300 CE. Apparently the great antediluvian sages didn’t
lantis remains a story that Plato made up out of whole cloth. make it to the Western Hemisphere until thousands of years
after they arrived in Mesopotamia. The similarities between the
Oannes and Other Culture Heroes baskets or buckets carried by Uanna-Adapa and Quetzalcoatl,
Hancock particularly esteems the writings of Berossos, a Baby- then, seem to derive more from practical innovation rather than
lonian priest of Bel-Marduk. His Babyloniaca was published ca. common culture.
290-280 BCE under the patronage of the Seleucid Emperor One fact that Hancock overlooks is that just about every
Antiochus I (322-261 BCE). Berossos claimed the source of his ancient people, regardless of their level of technology—from
late writings were ancient Babylonian texts, lost to us today. preliterate stone age hunter-gatherers to civilized peoples with
Berossos wrote of an ancient being, one of the seven sages or writing and metallurgy—had a myth of a culture hero, a divine
Apkallu, who were the source of Mesopotamian culture, called or semi-divine person who gave them all their arts and usually
Oannes. Hancock correctly states that Oannes is a Hellenized stole fire from the gods. For example, Prometheus in Greece,
form of Uanna, itself derived from Uanna-Adapa, often referred Maui in Hawaii, and Raven in British Columbia all stole either
to simply as Adapa, meaning “wise.” Oannes/Adapa is often por- fire or light from selfish beings, often gods, who would not share
trayed as a fish-man. The most famous image of him is derived it with the rest of the world. Often these culture heroes are

L O ST CIVILIZATIONS
tricksters, beings of prodigious sexual appetites and as mischie- in both locations. Pyramids appear in both Egypt and Caral in
vous as they were beneficial. One of them was the Sumerian Peru at about the same time, ca. 2,600 BCE, but the earliest ev-
Enki (literally, “Lord Earth”), who became the Akkadian god Ea. idence of bronze metallurgy in South America is between 900
Enki/Ea is the one god who saves a human family—that of the and 700 CE,12 over 3,000 years later, and the wheel never ap-
Sumerian Ziusudra, or the Akkadian Atrahasis—against the pears in any of the South American civilizations. It would seem
wishes of the other gods, who want to annihilate the human the ancient lost civilization people were selective in what they
race. So, is this history in mythic form? Perhaps the idea that passed on to each group.
the gods are less than benign in their relations with the human Another oddity is that Mesoamerican civilizations, possibly
race is nothing more than a psychological understanding that beginning with the Olmecs, while they lacked bronze metal-
the world is not fair. lurgy and the wheel, did have the sophisticated concept of the
zero, a number that means nothing. Since the Sumerians, Egyp-
The Problems of Technology and Chronology tians and early Chinese civilizations lacked such a concept, we
If these myths were actually the history of a great cataclysm that must assume the Mesoamerican civilizations invented it inde-
destroyed a civilization that thrived prior to the Younger Dryas, pendently. While this single fact doesn’t disprove Hancock’s the-
and of the survivors of that civilization who taught primitive ory, it does point to the independent origin of these western
peoples their arts, thus recreating civilization, as Graham Han- hemisphere civilizations.
cock claims, we would expect a number of things to be true. That the civilizations of Mesoamerica and Mexico ap-
First, primary civilizations everywhere should have the peared much later than those of Egypt and Sumer shows, as
same basic technologies. These would include writing (and previously noted with respect to the baskets or buckets carried
that writing should be the same system everywhere) and uni- by Uanna-Adapa and Quetzalcoatl, that they could not have
versal metallurgy, the wheel, and agriculture. Animal hus- been started by Hancock’s survivors of the antediluvian civiliza-
bandry might vary according to the availability of animals that tion. Time, as well as technology disputes his theory.
could be domesticated, and agriculture might vary across the In sum, Hancock’s theory fails due not only to lack of
globe according to what grains and legumes were native in dif- evidence, but as well to failed chronology, and differences of
ferent parts of the world, but there should be many similarities. writing systems and technology among the primary civiliza-
What we have is something else altogether. Egypt had a pic- tions, supposed common heirs to the legacy of his grand Ice
tographic writing system that first appeared about 3,250 BCE, Age civilization.
in which each symbol is a word. The Sumerians invented
cuneiform writing, a syllabary, i.e. each symbol standing for a syl-
lable—usually a consonant followed by a vowel—somewhat ear- REFERENCES
lier. The Indus river civilization produced yet another writing
1. Rochmyaningsh, Dyna. 2015. “Don’t distort policy in the name
system, which has yet to be deciphered, about 3,000 BCE. Chi- of national pride.” Nature 523, 257, July 16.
nese civilization also produced a pictographic writing system— 2. Bechelard, Michael and Rompies, Karuni. 2013. “Digging for
but it was in no way related to Egyptian hieroglyphics. The earli- the truth at controversial megalithic site.” Sydney Morning Her-
ald, July 27; Dipa, Arya. 2014. “Archaeologists slam excavation
est possible form of writing in Mesoamerica was produced by the of Gunung Padang site.” The Jakarta Post, September 24.
Olmecs, possibly as early as 900 BCE.11 All of these writing sys- 3. Collins, Andrew. “Gunung Padang: Exploration of 20,000 year
tems were invented independently, the Chinese and the Olmec old Hilltop Pyramid Site in Java.” http://bit.ly/2iFvnNv
much later than those of Sumer, Egypt, and the Indus River Civi- 4. Palmer, Rose A. 1949. North American Indians: The Smithsonian
Series, volume 4. Washington, D. C.: The Smithsonian Institution.
lization. The South American civilizations, beginning with the 5. Curry, Andrew. 2008. “Gobekli Tepe: The World’s Oldest Tem-
city of Caral (so named by modern archaeologists) in Peru, dated ple.” Smithsonian Magazine, November.
to as old as 2,600 BCE, and ending with the Inca Empire de- 6. West, John Anthony. 1979. Serpent in the Sky: The High Wis-
dom of Ancient Egypt. New York: Harper.
stroyed by the Spaniards in the 1500s, had no writing systems. 7. Clayton, Peter A. 1994. Chronicle of the Pharaohs. London:
The South American civilizations of the Andean region Thames and Hudson Ltd.; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_
did have bronze metallurgy, however, in common with the Egypt; Manley, Bill. 1996. The Penguin Historical Atlas of An-
cient Egypt. London: Penguin.
early civilizations of the Eastern Hemisphere, which the 8. Hancock, Graham. “Aliens or a Lost Civilization.”
Mesoamerican civilizations lacked. Both the Mesoamerican http://bit.ly/2jWX8Cs
and Andean civilizations lacked the wheel, which all the origi- 9. Helft, Claude, Jiang Hong, Chen and Harton, Michael. 2007.
Chinese Mythology. Brooklyn, New York: Enchanted Lion
nal civilizations of the Eastern Hemisphere had. Press, 40-45.
The commonality of pyramids to ancient Egypt and the 10. https://tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/category/favourite-finds/
Americas seems to be more related to the logic of a common 11. Wilford, John Noble. 2006. “Writing may be oldest in Western
rectilinear shape for a man-made mountain than commonality Hemisphere” New York Times September 15.
http://bit.ly/2jwKVYh
of culture. Otherwise, we would expect the same or similar 12. Cook, Colin A., Abbot, Mark B. and Wolfe, Alexander P. “Metal-
writing systems and the same use of metallurgy and the wheel lurgy in Southern South America.” http://bit.ly/2jwzcsB

I N TR O D U C TION
Failure to
Communicate
Why We Published the “Conceptual Penis
as a Social Construct” Hoax Exposé
BY MICHAEL SHERMER
In this issue we present a thoughtful reflection by Alan Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmen-
Sokal on the latest academic hoax perpetrated by James Lindsay tal change. However, the relationships among gender, science,
and Peter Boghossian, who managed to get published in the peer- and glaciers—particularly related to epistemological questions
reviewed journal Cogent Social Sciences their nonsensical paper about the production of glaciological knowledge—remain under-
“The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct.” (http://bit.ly/2rt studied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology frame-
6FrF) On the day it was released online we published in eSkeptic work with four key components: (1) knowledge producers; (2)
their exposé of the hoax (http://bit.ly/2qAaR8n). Why? gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domi-
In their exposé Lindsay and Boghossian give two reasons for nation; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging
their hoax: (1) the pretentious nonsense that often passes for feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecol-
scholarship in postmodernism studies, and (2) the lax standards ogy, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis
of some peer-reviewed journals. Critics of the hoax pounced on of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecologi-
the second, claiming that since Cogent Social Sciences is a lower cal systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science
tier journal the hoax was a failure. My motivation for publishing and human-ice interactions.
the exposé focused on the first problem. To me, it wouldn’t have When this paper was published I thought it was a hoax, so
mattered if the hoax were published in the Annals of Improbable I contacted the University of Oregon, the institution of the au-
Research, The Journal of Irreproducible Results, or even the thors, and confirmed it was real. And this is just one of count-
Onion. For me the point was not to fool journal editors. As the ed- less examples, posted daily on Twitter @RealPeerReview and
itor of a national magazine and a monthly columnist for the oldest retweeted all over the net to the amusement of readers who
continuously published monthly magazine in the world (Scientific cannot decipher what most of these articles are even about,
American), I am sympathetic to the overwhelming amount of much less comprehending their arguments and gaining value
work it takes to produce a quality publication, particularly when from their conclusions.
the remunerative rewards are so low for most writers and editors. What matters to me is the truth about reality (lower t and
What agitates me is scholarship that passes for cogent argu- lower r), which science is best equipped to determine. Ever
mentation in support of a thesis that is, in fact, what Gordon since the 1980s there has been a movement afoot in academia
Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, and their colleagues call in which postmodernism has encroached on some of biology,
“pseudo-profound bullshit,” in a paper published in the highly much of social science (especially cultural anthropology), and
respected peer-reviewed journal Judgment and Decision Making most of history, literature, and the humanities, in which the
(http://bit.ly/1PnJLJ3). Bullshit, they write, is language “con- claim is made that there is no truth to be determined because
structed to impress upon the reader some sense of profundity at there is no reality to study. Nearly everything—from race and
the expense of a clear exposition of meaning or truth.” Bullshit is gender to genes and brains—is socially constructed and lin-
meant to impress through obfuscation; that is, to say something guistically determined by our narratives. And the more obfus-
that sounds profound but may be nonsense. It may not be non- cating those narratives are about these socially constructed
sense, but if you can’t tell the difference then, to quote Strother non-realities, the better. This is the very opposite of how sci-
Martin’s character from the 1967 Paul Newman film Cool Hand ence should be conducted and communicated, and it is, in
Luke, “what we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” part, why we are currently witnessing the campus madness in-
Compare, for example, any of the passages from the “Con- volving student protests—and even views collide with the re-
ceptual Penis” hoax to the abstract for the 2016 paper published ality of contradictory facts and opposing viewpoints. It’s time
in the peer-reviewed journal Progress in Human Geography ti- we put a stop to the lunacy and demand critical thinking and
tled “Glaciers, Gender, and Science” (http://bit.ly/2r0edQH): clear communication.

AR TICLE
The Conceptual Penis

as a Social Construct
A Sokal-Style Hoax on Gender Studies
BY PETER BOGHOSSIAN (AKA PETER BOYLE, ED.D.)
AND JAMES LINDSAY (AKA, JAMIE LINDSAY, PH.D.)
The Hoax gans but as damaging social constructions. We made

The androcentric scientific and meta-scientific evi- no attempt to find out what “post-structuralist dis-
dence that the penis is the male reproductive organ is cursive gender theory” actually means. We assumed
considered overwhelming and largely uncontroversial. that if we were merely clear in our moral implica-
tions that maleness is intrinsically bad and that the
We began with this preposterous sentence of a penis is somehow at the root of it, we could get the
“paper” consisting of 3,000 words of utter nonsense paper published in a respectable journal.
posing as academic scholarship. Then a peer-re- This already damning characterization of our
viewed academic journal in the social sciences ac- hoax understates our paper’s lack of fitness for ac-
cepted and published it. This paper should never ademic publication by orders of magnitude. We
have been published. Titled, “The Conceptual Penis didn’t try to make the paper coherent; instead, we
as a Social Construct,” our paper “argues” that “The stuffed it full of jargon (like “discursive” and “iso-
penis vis-à-vis maleness is an incoherent construct.” morphism”), nonsense (like arguing that hypermas-
We argue that the conceptual penis is better under- culine men are both inside and outside of certain
stood not as an anatomical organ but as a gender- discourses at the same time), red-flag phrases (like
performative, highly fluid social construct.” As if to “pre-post-patriarchal society”), lewd references to
prove philosopher David Hume’s claim that there is slang terms for the penis, insulting phrasing regard-
a deep gap between what is and what ought to be, ing men (including referring to some men who
our should-never-have-been-published paper was choose not to have children as being “unable to
published in the open-access (meaning that articles coerce a mate”), and allusions to rape (we stated
are freely accessible and not behind a paywall), that “manspreading,” a complaint levied against
peer-reviewed journal Cogent Social Sciences. men for sitting with their legs spread wide, is
Assuming the pen names “Jamie Lindsay” and “akin to raping the empty space around him”).
“Peter Boyle,” and After completing
writing for the ficti- the paper, we read it
tious “Southeast In- carefully to ensure
dependent Social it didn’t say any-
Research Group,” we thing meaningful,
wrote an absurd and as neither one
paper loosely com- of us could deter-
posed in the style of mine what it is actu-
post-structuralist ally about, we
discursive gender deemed it a success.
theory. The paper By way of example,
was ridiculous by in- here is a paragraph
tention, essentially from the conclu-
arguing that penises sion, which was
shouldn’t be thought held in high regard
of as male genital or- by both reviewers:

We conclude that penises are not best understood as compared to much of the rest of the paper. Con-
the male sexual organ, or as a male reproductive sider another example:
organ, but instead as an enacted social construct that
Inasmuch as masculinity is essentially performative,
is both damaging and problematic for society and
so too is the conceptual penis. The penis, in the
future generations. The conceptual penis presents
words of Judith Butler, “can only be understood
significant problems for gender identity and repro-
through reference to what is barred from the signifier
ductive identity within social and family dynamics, is
within the domain of corporeal legibility” (Butler,
exclusionary to disenfranchised communities based
1993). The penis should not be understood as an hon-
upon gender or reproductive identity, is an enduring
est expression of the performer’s intent should it be
source of abuse for women and other gender-margin-
presented in a performance of masculinity or hyper-
alized groups and individuals, is the universal perfor-
masculinity. Thus, the isomorphism between the con-
mative source of rape, and is the conceptual driver
ceptual penis and what’s referred to throughout
behind much of climate change.
discursive feminist literature as “toxic hypermas-
You read that right. We argued that climate change culinity,” is one defined upon a vector of male cul-
is “conceptually” caused by penises. How do we de- tural machismo braggadocio, with the conceptual
fend that assertion? Like this: penis playing the roles of subject, object, and verb of
action. The result of this trichotomy of roles is to
Destructive, unsustainable hegemonically male ap-
place hypermasculine men both within and outside
proaches to pressing environmental policy and action
of competing discourses whose dynamics, as seen via
are the predictable results of a raping of nature by a
post-structuralist discourse analysis, enact a system-
male-dominated mindset. This mindset is best cap-
atic interplay of power in which hypermasculine men
tured by recognizing the role of [sic] the conceptual
use the conceptual penis to move themselves from
penis holds over masculine psychology. When it is ap-
powerless subject positions to powerful ones (confer:
plied to our natural environment, especially virgin
Foucault, 1972).
environments that can be cheaply despoiled for their
material resources and left dilapidated and dimin- Not only is the text ridiculous, so are the refer-
ished when our patriarchal approaches to economic ences, most of which are quotations from papers
gain have stolen their inherent worth, the extrapola- and figures in the field that barely make sense in
tion of the rape culture inherent in the conceptual the context of the text. Others were obtained by
penis becomes clear. searching keywords and grabbing papers that
sounded plausibly connected to words we cited. We
And like this, which we claim follows from the read exactly zero of the sources we cited, by inten-
above by means of an algorithmically generated tion, as part of the hoax. Some references cite the
nonsense quotation from a fictitious paper, which Postmodern Generator (http://www.elsewhere.org
we referenced and cited explicitly in the paper: /journal/pomo), a website coded in the 1990s by An-
Toxic hypermasculinity derives its significance di- drew Bulhak featuring an algorithm, based on NYU
rectly from the conceptual penis and applies itself to physicist Alan Sokal’s method of hoaxing a cultural
supporting neocapitalist materialism, which is a fun- studies journal called Social Text, that returns a dif-
damental driver of climate change, especially in the ferent fake postmodern “paper” every time the page
rampant use of carbon-emitting fossil fuel technolo- is reloaded. We cited and quoted from the Postmod-
gies and careless domination of virgin natural envi- ern Generator liberally; this includes nonsense quo-
ronments. We need not delve deeply into criticisms tations incorporated in the body of the paper and
of dialectic objectivism, or their relationships with citing five different “papers” generated in the course
masculine tropes like the conceptual penis to make of a few minutes. Five references to fake papers in
effective criticism of (exclusionary) dialectic objec- journals that don’t exist is astonishing on its own,
tivism. All perspectives matter. but it’s incredible given that the original paper we
submitted had only 16 total references (20 now,
If you’re having trouble understanding what after a reviewer asked for more examples). Nearly a
any of that means, there are two important points third of our references in the original paper go to
to consider. First, we don’t understand it either. fake sources from a website mocking the fact that
Nobody does. This problem should have rendered it this kind of thing is brainlessly possible, particularly
unpublishable in all peer-reviewed, academic jour- in “academic” fields corrupted by postmodernism.
nals. Second, these examples are remarkably lucid Two of the fake journals cited are Deconstructions

AC ADEMIC HOAX
from Elsewhere and And/Or Press (taken directly tire paper, “outstanding” in every applicable cate-
from algorithmically generated fictitious citations gory. They didn’t accept the paper outright, however.
on the Postmodern Generator). Another cites the Cogent Social Sciences’ Reviewer #2 offered us a few
fictitious researcher “S. Q. Scameron,” whose in- relatively easy fixes to make our paper “better.” We
vented name appears in the body of the paper sev- effortlessly completed them in about two hours, put-
eral times. In response, the reviewers noted that our ting in a little more nonsense about “manspreading”
references are “sound,” even after an allegedly care- (which we alleged to be a cause of climate change)
ful cross-referencing check done in the final round and “dick-measuring contests.”
of editorial approval. No matter the effort put into The publication of our hoax reveals two prob-
it, it appears one simply cannot jump Cogent Social lems. One relates to the business model of pay-to-
Sciences’ shark. publish, open-access journals. The other lies at the
We didn’t originally go looking to hoax Cogent heart of academic fields like gender studies.
Social Sciences, however. Had we, this story would
be only half as interesting and a tenth as apparently The Pay-to-Publish,
damning. Cogent Social Sciences was recommended Open-Access Journal Problem
to us by another journal, NORMA: International According to their website
Journal for Masculinity Studies, a Taylor and Francis (https://cogentoa.com/journal/social-sciences):
journal. NORMA rejected “The Conceptual Penis as a
Cogent Social Sciences is a multidisciplinary open
Social Construct” but thought it a great fit for the Co-
access journal offering high quality peer review
gent Series, which operates independently under the
across the social sciences: from law to sociology,
Taylor and Francis imprimatur. In their rejection let-
politics to geography, and sport to communication
ter, the editors of NORMA wrote,
studies. Connect your research with a global audi-
We feel that your manuscript would be well-suited ence for maximum readership and impact.
to our Cogent Series (www.cogentoa.com), a multi-
One of the biggest questions facing peer-re-
disciplinary, open journal platform for the rapid dis-
viewed publishing is, “Are pay-to-publish, open-ac-
semination of peer-reviewed research across all
cess journals the future of academic publishing?” We
disciplines.
seem to have answered that question with a large
Transferring your manuscript: red, “No!” with an asterisk. That is, the peer-review
—Saves you time because there is no need for you process in pay-to-publish, open-access journals can-
to reformat or resubmit your work manually not achieve quality assurance without extremely
—Provides faster publication because previous re- stringent safeguards. There’s nothing necessarily or
views are transferred with your manuscript intrinsically wrong with either open-access or pay-
To ensure all work is open to everyone, the to-publish journals, and they may ultimately prove
Cogent Series invites a “pay what you want” con- valuable. However, in the short term, pay-to-publish
tribution towards the costs of open access publish- may be a significant problem because of the inherent
ing if your article is accepted for publication. This tendencies toward conflicts of interest.
can be paid by you as author or by your institution The pay-to-publish mechanism should not af-
or research funder. Many institutions and funders fect the quality control standards of the peer-re-
now provide financial support for open access pub- view process. Cogent Open Access claims to
lishing. address this problem by using a blind review
process. Does it work? If our hoax is any indica-
We took them up on the transfer, and Cogent tion, not always. Some pay-to-publish journals
Social Sciences eventually accepted “The Conceptual happily exploit career-minded academicians and
Penis as a Social Construct.” The reviewers were will publish anything (cf: the famous Seinfeld
amazingly encouraging, giving us very high marks in hoax paper1). Is that the case here? Gender stud-
nearly every category. For example, one reviewer ies scholars committed to the integrity of their
graded our thesis statement “sound” and praised it academic discipline should hope so, and they
thusly, “It capturs [sic] the issue of hypermasculinity have reason for suspecting it. For a minimal pay-
through a multi-dimensional and nonlinear process” ment of $625, Cogent Social Sciences was ready
(which we take to mean that it wanders aimlessly to publish, “The Conceptual Penis as a Social
through many layers of jargon and nonsense). The Construct.”2
other reviewer marked the thesis, along with the en- There seems to be a deeper problem here,

however. Suspecting we may be dealing with a ceived a slightly different need. Sokal’s aim was to
predatory pay-to-publish outlet, we were surprised demonstrate that fashionable linguistic abuses (es-
that an otherwise apparently legitimate Taylor and pecially relying upon puns and wordplay related to
Francis journal directed us to contribute to the scientific terms), apparent scientific authority, con-
Cogent Series. (Authors’ note: we leave it to the formity with certain leftist political norms, and flat-
reader to decide whether or not NORMA: Interna- tery of the academic preconceptions of an editorial
tional Journal for Masculinity Studies constitutes a board would be sufficient to secure publication and
legitimate journal, but to all appearances it is run thus expose shoddy academic rigor on the part of
by genuine academic experts in the field and is not postmodernist scholarship and social commentary.
a predatory money mill.) The problem, then, may A primary target of Sokal’s hoax was the appro-
rest not only with pay-to-publish journals, but also priation of mathematical and scientific terminology
with the infrastructure that supports them. that postmodernist “scholars” didn’t understand
In sum, it’s difficult to place Cogent Social Sci- and didn’t use correctly. (We included “isomor-
ences on a spectrum ranging from a rigorous aca- phism” and “vector” in our paper in subtle homage
demic journal in gender studies to predatory to Sokal.) Fashionable Nonsense pays particular at-
pay-to-publish money mill. First, Cogent Social Sci- tention to postmodernists’ abuses of mathematical
ences operates with the legitimizing imprimatur of and scientific terminology. That is, Sokal took aim
Taylor and Francis, with which it is clearly closely at an academic abuse by postmodernists and hit his
partnered. Second, it’s held out as a high-quality target dead-center. His paper could only have been
open-access journal by the Directory of Open Access published if the postmodernists who approved it ex-
Journals (DOAJ), which is intended to be a reliable hibited overwhelming political motivations and a
list of such journals. In fact, it carries several more staggering lack of understanding of basic mathe-
affiliations with similar credentialing organizations. matics and physics terminology.
These facts cast considerable doubt on the The scientific community was exuberant that
facile defense that Cogent Social Sciences is a sham Sokal burst the postmodern bubble because they
journal that accepted “The Conceptual Penis as a were fed up with postmodernists misusing scien-
Social Construct” simply to make money. As a re- tific and mathematical terms to produce jargon-
sult, wherever Cogent Social Sciences belongs on laden nonsense and bizarre social commentary
the spectrum just noted, there are significant rea- carrying the apparent gravitas of scientific termi-
sons to believe that much of the problem lies nology. It appears that Social Text accepted Sokal’s
within the very concept of any journal being a paper specifically because Sokal was a recognized
“rigorous academic journal in gender studies.” scientist who appeared to have seen the light.
Our hoax was similar, of course, but it aimed
Postmodernism, Gender Studies, to expose a more troubling bias. The most potent
and the Canon of Knowledge among the human susceptibilities to corruption by
In 1996, Alan Sokal, a Professor of Physics at NYU, fashionable nonsense is the temptation to uncriti-
published the bogus paper, “Transgressing the cally endorse morally fashionable nonsense. That
Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneu- is, we assumed we could publish outright nonsense
tics of Quantum Gravity,” in the preeminent cultural provided it looked the part and portrayed a moraliz-
studies journal Social Text, which is published by ing attitude that comported with the editors’ moral
Duke University Press. The publication of this non- convictions. Like any impostor, ours had to dress
sense paper, in a prestigious journal with a strong the part, though we made our disguise as ridiculous
postmodernist orientation, delivered a devastating and caricatured as possible—not so much affixing
blow to postmodernism’s intellectual legitimacy. an obviously fake mustache to mask its true identity
Subsequently, Sokal and the Belgian physicist as donning two of them as false eyebrows.
Jean Bricmont noted in their 1997 book, Fashion- Sokal exposed an infatuation with academic
able Nonsense, that certain kinds of ideas can be- puffery that characterizes the entire project of aca-
come so fashionable that the critical faculties demic postmodernism. Our aim was narrower yet
required for the peer-review process are compro- more pointed. We intended to test the hypothesis
mised, allowing outright nonsense to be published, that flattery of the academic Left’s moral architec-
so long as it looks or sounds a certain way, or pro- ture in general, and of the moral orthodoxy in
motes certain values. It was standing upon Sokal’s gender studies in particular, is the overwhelming
shoulders that we initiated our hoax, though we per- determiner of publication in an academic journal

AC ADEMIC HOAX
in the field. That is, we sought to demonstrate that proponents of each to lay primary blame upon the
a desire for a certain moral view of the world to be other. As we see it, gender studies in its current
validated could overcome the critical assessment form needs to do some serious housecleaning.
required for legitimate scholarship. Particularly, we To be clear, no one is arguing, nor has any rea-
suspected that gender studies is crippled by an son to argue, that respectable journals like Nature
overriding almost-religious belief that maleness is and countless others have adopted a peer-review
the root of all evil. Our suspicion was justified.3 process that is fundamentally flawed or in any
As a matter of deeper concern, there is unfor- meaningful way corrupt. Much of the peer-review
tunately some reason to believe that our hoax will system remains the gold-standard for the advance-
not break the relevant spell. First, Alan Sokal’s ment of human knowledge. The problem lies
hoax, now more than 20 years old, did not prevent within a nebula of marginal journals, predatory
the continuation of bizarre postmodernist “schol- pay-to-publish journals, and, possibly to some de-
arship.” In particular, it did not lead to a general gree, open-access journals—although it may largely
tightening of standards that would have blocked be discipline-specific, as we had originally hoped to
our own hoax. Second, people rarely give up on discover. This is, after all, not the first time post-
their moral attachments and ideological commit- modernist academia has fallen for a hoax.
ments just because they’re shown to be out of The publish-or-perish academic environment
alignment with reality, as the psychologist Leon is its own poison that needs a remedy. It gives rise
Festinger discovered in the 1950s when he infil- to predatory profit-driven journals with few or no
trated a small UFO cult known as the “Seekers.” academic standards that take advantage of legiti-
When the apocalyptic beliefs of the Seekers failed mate scholars pressured into publishing their work
to materialize as predicted, Festinger documented at all costs, even if it is marginal or dubious. Many
that many cultists did not accept the possibility of these scholars are victims both of a system that is
that the facts upended their core beliefs but in- forcing them to publish more papers and to publish
stead rationalized them. He called this process them more often, to the detriment of research qual-
cognitive dissonance. Many Seekers adopted a ity, and of the predatory journals that offer to sell
subsequent belief that they played a role in saving them the illusion of academic prestige. Certainly,
the world with their fidelity; that is, they believed we have every reason to suspect that a majority of
the doomsday-bringing extraterrestrials were so the other academics who have published in Cogent
impressed by their faith that they decided not to Social Sciences and other journals in the Cogent
destroy the world after all! Series are genuine scholars who have been cheated
It is therefore plausible that some gender stud- by what may be a weak peer-review process with a
ies scholars will argue that the “conceptual penis” highly polished edifice. Our question about the fun-
makes sense as we described it, that men do often damental integrity of fields such as gender studies
suffer from machismo braggadocio, and that there seems much more pressing nonetheless.
is an isomorphism between these concepts via “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct”
some personal toxic hypermasculine conception of should not have been published on its merits be-
their penises. We sincerely hope not. cause it has no merits whatsoever. The question
that now needs to be answered is, “How can we re-
Conclusion: A Two-Pronged store the reliability of the peer-review process?”
Problem for Academia
There are at least two deeply troublesome problems
damaging the credibility of the peer-review system in
REFERENCES
fields such as gender studies: (1) the echo-chamber of
1.
morally driven fashionable nonsense coming out of For more here, read about “Dr. Martin Van Nos-
trand’s” famous hoax paper http://www.snopes.
the postmodernist social “sciences” in general, and com/2017/04/13/science-journal-seinfeld-
gender studies departments in particular, and (2) the episode/
2.
complex problem of pay-to-publish journals with lax Portland State University has a fund dedicated to
paying fees for open access journals, and this par-
standards that cash in on the ultra-competitive pub- ticular journal qualified for disbursement. For ethi-
lish-or-perish academic environment. At least one of cal reasons, however, we did not apply for funding,
these sicknesses led to “The Conceptual Penis as a So- and we never paid the fee.
3.
Our suspicion arose from countless examples
cial Construct” being published as a legitimate documented on the anonymously run Twitter feed
piece of academic scholarship, and we can expect @RealPeerReview.

AR TICLE
More Fashionable
Nonsense
Some thoughts on “The Conceptual Penis
as a Social Construct” Hoax
BY ALAN SOKAL
Academic hoaxes are nothing new. In 1768, the and the editor of Angry Penguins held up to ridicule.
Baron d’Holbach published the Portable Theology, But some critics nowadays claim that “Crazy as it
or Brief Dictionary of the Christian Religion—slyly at- seems, the Malley poems do have merit.” 5
tributing authorship to the Abbé Bernier—in which So there were precedents—most of which I
he stoutly defended the prevailing Christian dogmas was unaware of at the time—for my parody article,
with entries like “Transgressing the boundaries: Towards a transfor-
mative hermeneutics of quantum gravity,” which
Doctrine: What every good Christian must believe
was published in the spring/summer 1996 issue of
or else be burned, be it in this world or the next.
the cultural-studies journal Social Text.6
The dogmas of the Christian religion are immutable
But in the past few years, academic hoaxes
decrees of God, who cannot change His mind except
seem to have proliferated. In 2014, the French soci-
when the Church does.1
ologists Manuel Quinon and Arnaud Saint-Martin
Probably not very many people were taken in by the hoaxed the journal Sociétés—edited at the time by
hoax. But d’Holbach’s mordant satire was brilliant the very media-savvy French sociologist Michel
nonetheless, and it circulated clandestinely for Maffesoli—into publishing a hilarious article gush-
decades. ing over the Parisian rental car Autolib’ as
In 1931, the physicist Hans Bethe and two col-
a privileged indicator of a macro-social dynamics un-
leagues published—while they were still postdoc-
derlying the transition of a “modern” episteme to
toral fellows—a short article entitled “On the
“postmodern” episteme. Through the analysis of the
quantum theory of the temperature of absolute
vehicle aesthetics (which is characterized here as poly-
zero,” parodying speculative attempts to determine
identificatory) and its most salient functional features
the fundamental constants of nature by numerology,
(for instance, the connected electric car illustrates the
in the journal Die Naturwissenschaften.2 Senior
contemporary topos of “dynamic rootedness”), the ar-
physicists were not amused, and the authors were
ticle interprets the various socio-anthropological as-
forced to apologize.3
pects of the “Autolib’” and finally emphasizes the fact
In 1943, the young Australian writers James
that this small car is, among other things, the prod-
McAuley and Harold Stewart hoaxed the modernist
uct/producer of a new “semantic basin”.7
literary journal Angry Penguins into publishing 16
poems allegedly found among the papers of a recently In 2016, the French philosophers Anouk Bar-
deceased—but, alas, fictitious—poet, Ern Malley: berousse and Philippe Huneman hoaxed the journal
Badiou Studies—“a multi-lingual, peer-reviewed
We opened books at random, choosing a word or
journal dedicated to the philosophy and thought of
phrase haphazardly. We made lists of these and wove
and surrounding the philosopher, playwright, nov-
them into nonsensical sentences. We misquoted and
elist and poet Alain Badiou” 8—into publishing an
made false allusions. We deliberately perpetrated
article entitled “Ontology, neutrality and the strive
bad verse, and selected awkward rhymes from a Rip-
for (non-)being-queer” as part of the journal’s spe-
man’s Rhyming Dictionary.4
cial issue “Towards a Queer Badiousian Feminism.”
The hoax was quickly outed in the Australian press, The abstract gives a bit of the flavor:

AC ADEMIC HOAX
Since “gender” has been continually the name of a by almost everyone (including the authors of the
dialectics of the continued institution of gender into parody). So, beyond that platitude, what is novel in
an ontological difference and the failure of gender- this article that makes it worthy of publication in a
ing, it is worth addressing the prospects of any scholarly journal of sociology?
gender-neutral discourse through the tools of Ba- The answer, in my humble opinion, is: nothing.
diousian ontology. As established by Badiou in Being The most telling parts of the article, I think,
and Event, mathematics—as set theory—is the ulti- are the passages in which the authors buttress their
mate ontology. Sets are what gendering processes by claims by citing a provably meaningless article that
reactionary institutions intend to hold, in contradic- they had produced using the Postmodernism
tion to the status of the multiplicities proper to each Generator.12 For instance:
subject qua subject. This tension between subjectiv-
This tendency [to use the word “dick” as a verb] is
ity and gender comes to the fore through the lens of
easily explained by extrapolation upon McElwaine
the ‘count-as-one,’ the ontological operator identi-
(1999), who demonstrates clearly that, “Sexual iden-
fied by Badiou as the fluid mediator between set-be-
tity is fundamentally used in the service of hierarchy;
longing and set-existence.…9
however, according to Werther (1977), it is not so
And so on for 23 pages. (Curiously enough, Alain Ba- much sexual identity that is fundamentally used in
diou himself is a member of the journal’s editorial the service of hierarchy, but rather the dialectic, and
board. One is left to wonder: if the Master’s closest hence the defining characteristic, of sexual identity.
disciples, and even the Master himself, are unable to The subject is contextualised into a subcultural desit-
distinguish between his thought and an intentionally uationism that includes sexuality as a reality.”
nonsensical pastiche, who on earth can? 10 )
The reference list cites five nonexistent articles by
So it was a pleasure to read this year’s contribu-
nonexistent authors. Even the copy editors at Co-
tion to the genre, “The conceptual penis as a social
gent Social Sciences, it seems, were asleep at the
construct,” by Peter Boghossian and James Lind-
wheel.
say.11 I’d like to offer a few brief thoughts, first about
But not every sentence in the article is com-
the article itself, and secondly about what I think its
pletely meaningless, and not every assertion is
publication does and does not prove. For it seems to
made entirely without argument. Even the article’s
me that this hoax, while both amusing and instruc-
most amusingly outrageous claim—that “the con-
tive, proves somewhat less than the authors have
ceptual penis…is the conceptual driver behind
claimed for it. The underlying theme of the arti-
much of climate change”—is supported by some ar-
cle—that “hypermasculine machismo braggadocio”
gumentation, however flimsy:
can have negative consequences for both men and
women—is not, in and of itself, ridiculous; on the Destructive, unsustainable hegemonically male
contrary, it is by now a commonplace, accepted approaches to pressing environmental policy and

action are the predictable results of a raping of na- vealed the depth of the problem. University of Col-
ture by a male-dominated mindset. This mindset is orado librarian Jeffrey Beall has compiled a list of lit-
best captured by recognizing the role of [sic] the erally hundreds of scholarly journals that he
conceptual penis holds over masculine psychology. considers “predatory.” 16 (But the problem is not
When it is applied to our natural environment, es- confined to open-access journals: more than 120
pecially virgin environments that can be cheaply SCIgen-generated papers have been detected in con-
despoiled for their material resources and left di- ference proceedings published by Springer and the
lapidated and diminished when our patriarchal ap- IEEE.17)
proaches to economic gain have stolen their inherent So I took a closer look at Cogent Social Sciences,
worth, the extrapolation of the rape culture inherent which advertises itself as a “multidisciplinary open
in the conceptual penis becomes clear. access journal offering high quality peer review
across the social sciences: from law to sociology,
Let me even go out on a limb: it is conceivable that
politics to geography, and sport to communication
this sketch of an argument—on the connection be-
studies.” 18 Here are the titles of some of their re-
tween masculine psychology and environmental
cently published papers:
destruction—could be transformed, by marshaling
additional evidence, into something halfway con- • Framing leadership: The social construction of leader-
vincing. But as it stands, this reasoning would ship within the academic field of communication
barely merit a C− in a freshman course. studies.
So how did such a worthless article get pub- • Service delivery protests in South African municipali-
lished? In their exposé published in Skeptic and ties: An exploration using principal component re-
eSkeptic, Boghossian and Lindsay opine that gression and 2013 data.
• The effect of single-tasks and dual-tasks on balance in
There are at least two deeply troublesome diseases
older adults.
damaging the credibility of the peer-review system
• Poverty dynamics in Botswana: Policies, trends and
in fields such as gender studies:
challenges.
1. the echo-chamber of morally driven fashionable • Death and taxes: The framing of the causes and policy
nonsense coming out of the postmodernist social responses to the illicit tobacco trade in Canadian
“sciences” in general, and gender studies depart- newspapers.
ments in particular; and • Professional methods of assessments in architectural
design projects: A focus on the relevant parametric
2. the complex problem of pay-to-publish journals
measures in selected Nigerian universities.
with lax standards that cash in on the ultra-competi-
• A multivariate analysis of gun violence among urban
tive publish-or-perish academic environment.
youth: The impact of direct victimization, indirect
At least one of these sicknesses led to “The Concep- victimization, and victimization among peers.
tual Penis as a Social Construct” being published as
I then took a brief look at each of these papers. I
a legitimate piece of academic scholarship, and we
don’t feel qualified to judge these articles’ quality or
can expect proponents of each to lay primary blame
importance, but none of them seemed to be utter
upon the other.13
nonsense. As far as I can tell, Cogent Social Sciences is
This last prediction was astute, and it has been a run-of-the-mill lower-tier academic journal, not a
amply borne out by the commentary thus far on the predatory publish-anything-if-they-pay outfit.
hoax. But I would like to add some nuances con- Did financial considerations nevertheless play
cerning the two “sicknesses” diagnosed by Boghoss- a role in lowering this journal’s academic stan-
ian and Lindsay, starting with the second. dards? Without further evidence concerning the in-
Over the past decade there has been a phenom- ternal processes at Cogent Social Sciences, it is hard
enal proliferation of pay-to-publish, open-access aca- to say. (For what it’s worth, Boghossian and Lindsay
demic journals (and conferences), the worst of apparently never even received an invoice for the
which are pure moneymaking vehicles with zero putative $625 minimum charge.) But at a more
scholarly standards. This problem affects all aca- general level, the dynamics of open access is clear:
demic disciplines, but it is probably worst in the sci- the pay-to-publish model permits the existence of
ences and technology, simply because that is where very-low-tier academic journals that on the tradi-
the money is. Several well-publicized hoaxes—such tional publishing model would fail to attract
as SCIgen14 and John Bohannon’s sting15—have re- enough paid subscriptions to survive. (Cogent Social

AC ADEMIC HOAX
Sciences no doubt belongs to this category.) So, in some of this excess is sustainably recycled via dona-
this sense, pay-to-publish probably does contribute tions of last year’s fashion to charity shops, the vast
to a lowering of academic standards at the lowest majority ends up unused in closets (to the annoy-
non-predatory tier: more marginal articles will get ance of male partners who urgently require the
published. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I space for sporting equipment and pornographic
don’t really know. After all, any of the above-cited magazines) or in landfills, or is exported to devel-
articles from Cogent Social Sciences—even if they oping countries by predatory pseudo-charities,
are admittedly not earthshaking—could potentially undermining the local clothing manufacturers. Fur-
be of value to future workers on its specialized sub- thermore, 30% of non-biodegradable waste in land-
ject. fills is composed of disposable diapers, which are a
This leaves us with the first of Boghossian and direct consequence of toxic hyperfemininity via its
Lindsay’s “sicknesses” they outlined in their exposé exploitation of male sexual weakness. In all these
article: ways, the conceptual vagina—a performative social
construct that is isomorphic to an especially toxic
The most potent among the human susceptibilities
strain of femininity—is revealed as the conceptual
to corruption by fashionable nonsense is the temptation
driver behind much of climate change.
to uncritically endorse morally fashionable nonsense.…
[We conjectured that] we could publish outright non- Would a modified article along these lines have
sense provided it looked the part and portrayed a moral- fared as well as the original? I doubt it.
izing attitude that comported with the editors’ moral On the other hand, Boghossian and Lindsay’s
convictions.… We intended to test the hypothesis that experiment also shows that flattery of the editors’
flattery of the academic Left’s moral architecture in gen- moral and ideological preconceptions is not always
eral, and of the moral orthodoxy in gender studies in par- sufficient to garner publication. After all, they origi-
ticular, is the overwhelming determiner of publication in nally submitted the article to NORMA: International
an academic journal in the field. That is, we sought to Journal for Masculinity Studies—a not-particularly-
demonstrate that a desire for a certain moral view of the prestigious journal of gender studies—which re-
world to be validated could overcome the critical assess- jected it (apparently without review) as “unsuitable
ment required for legitimate scholarship. Particularly, we for publication in NORMA”.19 By contrast, Cogent So-
suspected that gender studies is crippled academically by cial Sciences—whatever one may conclude about its
an overriding almost-religious belief that maleness is the overall merit—is a generalist social-sciences journal,
root of all evil. not a journal of gender studies.
Finally, it seems even less likely that this paper
Do the results of their experiment vindicate
would have been accepted at a more prestigious
their conclusion that “our suspicion was justified”?
gender-studies journal, such as Gender & Society,
I would answer: yes and no, but mostly no.
Feminist Theory, Signs, Feminist Studies, or Men and
It indeed seems likely that, at Cogent Social Sci-
Masculinities. The bias towards articles presupposing
ences, the flattery of the editors’ moral and ideologi-
a particular moral and ideological orientation—and
cal preconceptions helped to dull their critical
the associated dulling of the editors’ capacities for
faculties and smooth the way to publication of a
critical thinking—may well persist at this higher
grossly deficient manuscript. To be sure, Boghoss-
tier, but its effects will be more subtle than a hoax
ian and Lindsay did not carry out a controlled ex-
like this could demonstrate.
periment, but suppose that they had: imagine that
In assessing the conclusions to be drawn from
they had selected a sample of lower-tier sociology
my Social Text hoax, I wrote that
or gender-studies journals and then sent, to a ran-
domly-chosen half of them, an article contending, From the mere fact of publication of my parody I
with equally flimsy arguments, that toxic hyperfem- think that not much can be deduced. It doesn’t prove
ininity is the conceptual driver behind much of cli- that the whole field of cultural studies, or cultural
mate change. For example: studies of science—much less sociology of science—
is nonsense. Nor does it prove that the intellectual
Toxic hyperfemininity leads to rampant con-
standards in these fields are generally lax. (This
sumerism and the profligate overconsumption of su-
might be the case, but it would have to be established
perfluous luxury goods (for they are luxuries to the
on other grounds.) It proves only that the editors of
overwhelming majority of humankind), principally
one rather marginal journal were derelict in their in-
apparel, cosmetics and celebrity magazines. While
tellectual duty, by publishing an article on quantum

physics that they admit they could not understand, without It seems to me that a similar analysis applies, mutatis mutan-
bothering to get an opinion from anyone knowledgeable in dis, to the Boghossian–Lindsay hoax.
quantum physics, solely because it came from a “conveniently
credentialed ally” (as Social Text co-editor Bruce Robbins later Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Peter Boghossian, Jerry Coyne, Rebecca
Goldstein, Philippe Huneman, Massimo Pigliucci and Arnaud Saint-Martin for
candidly admitted), flattered the editors’ ideological preconcep- helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Of course, none of these peo-
tions, and attacked their “enemies.” 20 ple are in any way responsible for what I have written.
REFERENCES
1. Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach. 1768. “La par Benedetta Tripodi ou ce qu’il Fal- see also: Ball, Philip. 2005. “Com-
Théologie Portative, ou Dictionnaire lait Démonter,” Carnet Zilsel, 13 avril puter Conference Welcomes Gob-
Abrégé de la Religion Chrétienne.” 2016, http://bit.ly/2qQhNf6 bledegook Paper.” Nature 434, 946
(CODA, Chécy/Paris, 2006). English 10. See also: Barberousse, Anouk, (21 April).
translation: Baron d’Holbach. 2010. Philippe Huneman, Manuel Quinon, Ar- 15. Bohannon, John. 2013. “Who’s Afraid
Portable Theology, translated by David naud Saint-Martin and Alan Sokal. of Peer Review?” Science 342
Holohan. Hodgson Press, Surbiton. 2016. “Canulars Académiques, les (6154), 60–65 (October 3).
2. Beck, G., H. Bethe and W. Riezler. «Maîtres à Penser» Démasqués,” 16. Beall’s List of Predatory Journals and
1931. “Bemerkung zur Quantentheo- Libération [Paris], 1 juin, 20–21. Publishers, http://bit.ly/2sJdQJQ See
rie der Nullpunktstemperatur.” Die 11. Lindsay, Jamie and Peter Boyle also: Butler, Declan. 2013. “Investi-
Naturwissenschaften 19, 39. (pseud.). 2017. “The Conceptual gating Journals: The Dark Side of Pub-
3. See: Schweber, Silvan S. 2012. Nu- Penis as a Social Construct,” Cogent lishing.” Nature 495, 433–435 (28
clear Forces: The Making of the Physi- Social Sciences 3, 1330439, 7; the March).
cist Hans Bethe. Cambridge, MA: article has been deleted from the jour- 17. van Noorden, Richard. 2014. “Publish-
Harvard University Press, 190–192. nal’s website but is available at http:// ers Withdraw More than 120 Gibber-
4. “Ern Malley, Poet of Debunk: Full Story bit.ly/2rDrDSt ish Papers.” Nature News (24
From the Two Authors,” FACT, 25 June 12. The Postmodernism Generator is a February).
1944, reprinted at computer program written in 1996 by 18. http://bit.ly/2qQijK6
http://bit.ly/2qQ4OKs Andrew C. Bulhak of Monash University 19. It would appear, at first sight, that the
5. Lehman, David. 2002. “The Ern Mal- and based on the Dada Engine, a sys- editors of NORMA nevertheless felt no
ley Poetry Hoax—Introduction”, Jacket tem for generating random text from re- qualms in passing the article on to
17, June, http://bit.ly/2qPJyVv See cursive grammars. See: Bulhak, Andrew their sister journal Cogent Social Sci-
also: Heyward, Michael. 1993. The C. 1996. “On the simulation of post- ences, one step down in the aca-
Ern Malley Affair. London: Faber and modernism and mental debility using demic pecking order:
Faber. recursive transition networks.” Monash
We feel that your manuscript would
6. Sokal, Alan D. 1996. “Transgressing University, Department of Computer
be well-suited to our Cogent Series
the Boundaries: Towards a Transfor- Science, Technical Report 96/264
(www.cogentoa.com), a multidiscipli-
mative Hermeneutics of Quantum (April 1), http://bit.ly/2s9IP55; see
nary, open journal platform for the
Gravity.” Social Text 46/47, 217–252. also http://bit.ly/2svNHyO and
rapid dissemination of peer-reviewed
Reprinted with annotations in: Sokal, http://bit.ly/1fdbdmL and you get a
research across all disciplines.
Alan. 2008. Beyond the Hoax: Sci- brand-new, never-before-seen article in
ence, Philosophy and Culture. New authentic postmodernist lingo, com- The form-letter style of this referral to
York: Oxford University Press. plete with (fictitious) references. Cogent suggests that this situation
7. Tremblay, Jean-Pierre (pseud.). 2014. Boghossian and Lindsay commit a arises frequently; one can only hope
“Automobilités Postmodernes: Quand slight inaccuracy by saying that the that NORMA reserves it for articles
l’Autolib’ Fait Sensation à Paris”, So- Postmodernism Generator was based that they feel have some scholarly
ciétés 126, 115–124; the article has on my Social Text hoax. In fact, the value. But this seems not to be the
been deleted from the journal’s website Postmodernism Generator was devel- case: apparently all rejection letters
but is available at http://bit.ly/2sbElei oped independently from my hoax, and from NORMA contain this statement
See also: Quinon, Manuel and Arnaud roughly contemporaneously. about the manuscript being “well-
Saint-Martin. 2015. “Le Maffesolisme, 13. Boghossian, Peter and James Lindsay. suited” to the Cogent Series. NORMA
une «Sociologie» en Roue Libre. Dé- 2017. “The Conceptual Penis as a So- co-editor-in-chief Ulf Mellström says
monstration par l’Absurde.” Carnet cial Construct: A Sokal-style Hoax on that he was unaware that their publish-
Zilsel, 7 mars, http://bit.ly/2s9g74p Gender Studies.” Published in eSkeptic ers Taylor & Francis—which (surprise,
8. http://bit.ly/2sIWtJ1 the same day as the hoax article was surprise) also owns Cogent—had in-
9. Tripodi, Benedetta (pseud.). 2015. “On- released online: http://bit.ly/2qAaR8n serted this paragraph into NORMA’s
tology, Neutrality and the Strive for 14. “SCIgen is a program that generates standard rejection letter, and he prom-
(non-)Beingqueer,” Badiou Studies 4, random Computer Science research ises to fix this in the future (Ulf Mell-
no. 1, 72–102; the article has been papers” using a context-free grammar, ström e-mail to Phil Torres, 24 May
deleted from the journal’s website but written by MIT graduate students Je- 2017, http://bit.ly/2qTgFvz).
is available at http://bit.ly/2rYIkv6 See remy Stribling, Max Krohn and Dan 20. Sokal, Alan. 1998. “What the Social
also: Barberousse, Anouk and Philippe Aguayo. “One useful purpose for such Text Affair Does and Does Not Prove.”
Huneman. 2016. “Un «Philosophe a program is to autogenerate submis- In: A House Built on Sand: Exposing
Français» Label Rouge: Relecture tripo- sions to conferences that you suspect Postmodernist Myths about Science,
dienne d’Alain Badiou”, Carnet Zilsel, might have very low submission stan- edited by Noretta Koertge. New York:
1 avril (!), http://bit.ly/2qQ8r33; and: dards.” See http://bit.ly/2svTtjW and Oxford University Press, 9–22, quota-
“L’Ontologie Badiousienne Parodiée http://bit.ly/2qPLjSB for more details; tion at 11.

AR TICLE
Science, Facts,
and “Provisional”
Knowledge
BY DAVID ZEIGLER
What drives us onward in the work of science is precisely the sense that there are truths out there to be discovered,
truths that once discovered will form a permanent part of human knowledge. —Steve Weinberg, 20011
…all scientific knowledge, however acquired, is inherently provisional. —Ian Tattersall, 2008 2
It is a fact that we are cousins of gorillas, kangaroos, starfish, and bacteria. Evolution is as much a fact as the heat
of the sun. It is not a theory, and for pity’s sake, let’s stop confusing the philosophically naïve by calling it so. Evolution
is a fact. —Richard Dawkins, 2005 3
Science is not about final truth or “facts”; it is only about continually testing and trying to falsify our hypotheses,
until they are extremely well-supported. —Donald P. Prothero, 2007 4
No one should suppose that objective truth is impossible to attain, even when the most committed philosophers
urge us to acknowledge that incapacity. —Edward O. Wilson, 1998 5
I could have easily doubled the number of discover facts about the universe. This situation does
quotes that open this article by well-respected scien- not make for clear and effective communication be-
tists who respectively seem to be saying two dis- tween the scientific community and society. Fortu-
tinctly different things. Either, science is able to nately, essentially no modern scientist claims that all
discover facts and truths concerning the physical scientific knowledge is factual, but unfortunately
universe, or science can never discover lasting facts many scientists do claim that none of the conclusions
or truths about the universe. Bertrand Russell wrote science has arrived at are factual.
that while religion lays claim to eternal and absolute Whether there is a conflict or problem here
truth, “science is always tentative.” But later in the would seem to hinge on the definition of the term
same book he writes: “I cannot admit any method of fact, which is probably best defined by its meaning in
arriving at truth except that of science.” 6 Statements common usage. To have one meaning in the scientific
like these can confuse even some scientists, and community and another in common usage (as we do
surely they have the potential to greatly confuse the for the term theory) is certainly not desirable in this
general public—giving the impression that scientists case, and should arguably be avoided. Such inconsis-
can’t agree on this important and basic point. tencies work against the professed need for increased
Such conflicting statements suggest an apparent scientific literacy and for communication between
dualism in the scientific community. While we want scientists and society. The misunderstandings that
students and the public to know that scientists don’t have arisen around the scientific meaning of the term
all agree on every topic and finding in science, I “theory” and the layperson’s meaning has generated a
doubt scientists really want people to think that most sizable problem. An outstanding example is the mis-
scientists are not even “on the same page” on the understanding over the theory of evolution. It is cer-
fundamental question of whether or not science can tainly desirable to avoid similar misunderstandings

over the simple term fact, especially since it is used and yes—this importantly includes the ongoing cor-
by the layperson far more frequently than the term rections to our knowledge base, since science is al-
theory. According to the Oxford English Dictionary a most unique among disciplines in being
fact is: “something that has really occurred or is actu- self-correcting by nature.9 Modern doctors know
ally the case; truth attested by direct observation or far more factual information about health and dis-
authentic testimony; reality; the truth with regard to ease than did physicians of a century ago, not to men-
the subject under discussion.” Webster’s Dictionary of- tion the ancient world. The cumulative nature of
fers this: “Something that has actual existence; mani- science is especially obvious and straightforward in
fest in experience or may be inferred with certainty; a the area of descriptive science, an area often ig-
verified statement or proposition; an assertion or in- nored by the philosophers of science. When the
formation purporting to contain something having planet Uranus was discovered in 1781 by William Her-
objective reality.” shel, it was soon accepted as fact, and multiple obser-
When I looked up these definitions, for exam- vations since that time confirm that Uranus exists.
ple, I took it as fact that the dictionary I was hold- While some philosophers and individuals
ing existed, and I accept that facts exist by the subscribe strongly to the philosophies of idealism,
common and widespread meaning most people relativism, and similar views that hold reality to be
take when they use the word. When communicat- ambiguous, the majority of humankind takes the
ing science to both students and society, scientists same stance that most scientists profess: the world
should attempt to speak the same language and and universe exist independently of our conscious
avoid misunderstanding by reserving their own sensations, perceptions, and opinions—in short, the
special meanings for key words such as theory, fact, universe is real and does not depend on our sensa-
provisional, etc. when attempting to teach or share tions of it for its existence. Accepting the reality of
science with the public. The philosophy of science, the universe leads naturally to the implication that
like most philosophical disciplines, tends to gener- there are factual particulars concerning this real uni-
ate very complex and specialized terms and mean- verse that we either are, or are not, capable of ascer-
ings that its practitioners argue to be applicable to taining to the point of referring to these particulars as
science, even though most practicing scientists go facts. If asked to consider this point, a great many
about their daily work unaware of these arguments people (including scientists) would answer in the af-
and terms. Although these are important distinc- firmative—yes, facts do exist and can be elucidated.
tions among philosophers of science, I contend that Most butterflies can fly. This statement is certainly a
most scientists share a fairly simple understanding fact about which no scientist or knowledgeable per-
of the word fact that is in agreement with that of son should have any doubt.
the general public and of most dictionaries. In explaining scientific thinking to students in
According to the renowned evolutionary biolo- the classroom, I often reference a large counter at
gist Ernst Mayr: “Practically all working scientists, the front of the classroom. I state that I know the
and indeed most people with an interest in science, counter exists because I can see it, I can feel it,
are convinced that we are making steady advances in and I know that its surface is harder than my hand.
our understanding of nature, as successive genera- Because I and the students can see and feel the
tions of scientists fill in more and more parts of the counter, we empirically or objectively know the
“true” story of how the world works.” 7 Evolutionary counter exists, and we know that its other proper-
theorist Randy Thornhill also noted: “The list of what ties as just stated are correct—in short they are
we know for sure is long and growing. Any view of facts by any standard definition of the term. While
science that pretends we don’t know for sure that in- these facts are not particularly interesting, and do
sulin is produced in the islets of Langerhans, that bac- not support any hypothesis under study, they are as-
teria and viruses can cause disease, that cells are the certained empirically in a manner roughly compara-
building blocks of higher organisms, that natural se- ble to the way most scientific data is acquired.
lection acts incessantly, that chromosomes house Thus, most would agree there is a strong argu-
genes, etc. is nonsense.” 8 These words, plus those of ment that some facts do exist, and some (rationalists
Steve Weinberg in the epigrams, all speak to what is in particular) would additionally claim that only
sometimes referred to as the cumulative nature of sci- through empirical scientific methods can facts
ence. This idea refers to the rather obvious fact that beyond individual opinion and preference (e.g., I love
we know more and more about the workings of the jazz and cheesecake) be known and agreed upon. Are
universe as more scientific knowledge accumulates, not the following examples statements of fact?

• DNA is the molecule that contains the ask: did birds evolve from a line of theropod di-
primary genetic information that codes for nosaurs? Over the past couple of decades the evi-
organismal structure. dence supporting this conclusion has become
• Life has evolved over Earth’s history. sufficient to convince the great majority of biologists
• Our solar system resides within a galaxy we that this case is essentially closed. This conclusion is
have named the Milky Way, and there are a great perhaps not yet as certain as the conclusion that trilo-
many other galaxies in the known universe. bites are extinct, but nearly so. It is at best today only
• In terms of ecological trophic levels, leopards slightly provisional, and some current explanations of
function primarily as top-level carnivores. this topic still mention the alternative views of the re-
• Steel is harder than copper. cent past on bird origins to show the provisional na-
ture of those previous views.11
This list could be extended to many thousands of There are many general statements in biology
specific statements that would qualify as facts in the that must be said to be provisional for the simple rea-
minds of most scientists and knowledgeable laypeo- son that all the pertinent data are not in. Most zoology
ple. Though each item is an isolated scientific fact, textbooks state that all mammals have a four-cham-
each is also part of a body of knowledge in one of the bered heart and non-nucleated red blood cells. But
several distinct scientific disciplines. What can possi- not all species of mammals have been discovered.
bly be provisional in any useful sense of the term While it would be an exceedingly good bet that any
about any of the statements above? The Earth orbits undiscovered mammal species would likewise have
the Sun. Though this was once unknown, it is now four-chambered hearts and non-nucleated red blood
well-known to be a fact. Surely, no rational person cells, there is at least the possibility that one might be
anywhere thinks that perhaps some new data may found to vary from those standard mammal bench-
come to light tomorrow that would significantly alter marks. Still, no zoology textbooks I have ever seen in-
this known relationship of the Sun and the Earth. clude wording such as “so far, all known mammals
Admittedly, many statements in science must be have four-chambered hearts and non-nucleated red
given a bit less confidence, such as that trilobites are blood cells.” It seems unnecessary when we have no
extinct. Though there is no record of anyone ever col- evidence suggesting that these are not universal char-
lecting or observing a living trilobite, the ocean floor acteristics of mammals. There are a great many other
is still relatively unexplored. Almost every time a new examples of scientific conclusions that are taken as
area of this vast dark ecosystem is explored new firm by the scientific community, but in truth the pos-
species are discovered.10 So far no living trilobites sibility exists for them to be overturned or signifi-
have turned up, but it would not be completely be- cantly altered by new data or by a better interpretation
yond belief if tomorrow some expedition to the deep of existing data.
abyssal floor of the Indian Ocean discovered that a And then finally, yes—of course—in science
few are still around (as was the case for the coela- there are also many statements and hypotheses that
canth—believed to have been extinct for some 65 are still being tested and questioned by the scientific
million years but discovered alive in the last century). community. In biology there is still a healthy ongoing
Though unlikely in the extreme (since trilobites are discussion as to the ultimate unit of selection in natu-
believed to have all died out around 250 million years ral selection (the group, the individual, or the gene),
ago), it is at least possible. Therefore, the statement with some scientists currently coming down on one
that trilobites are extinct is provisional. A great many or more sides of this complex question, and the an-
other examples of such “almost” certain findings exist swer may even vary depending on the organisms
within science, but what is to be gained by adding a being examined. There are still multiple competing
statement about its provisional nature when saying hypotheses as to why sex evolved, and why it has
that trilobites are extinct? I have certainly never seen been maintained in so many lines of descent. There
scientific writing stating that provisionally we think is still no strong consensus on why sleep evolved, or
all trilobites are extinct. If we accepted that as neces- what its original and current functions might be.
sary, then a huge amount of the information pre- More visible currently is the question of the relative
sented in science textbooks and papers would have to percent of the human genome that has useful func-
state that this statement or finding is provisional, tionality. This important question is currently being
which would greatly reduce the confidence of the investigated by many workers and lab groups, with
reader in statements that scientists generally agree to. disagreement among them as to what the answer
Moving down a sliding scale of confidence, we may be. It will take more research to approach a

consensus answer on this very interesting question. of continental drift was viewed as laughable when first
In the area of human evolution, much progress proposed by Alfred Wegener due to lack of any known
has been made in elucidating our recent ancestry, mechanism or supporting data. Today continental
but full consensus as to whether Homo sapiens drift (plate tectonics) has been documented beyond
evolved directly from Homo heidelbergensis has not any reasonable doubt—though as with all such com-
been achieved. Most current published accounts of plex and largescale processes, many of the smaller de-
human evolution put Homo heidelbergensis as the tails are still being questioned and investigated.
most likely ancestor of modern humans (Homo erec- Many in the sciences (current author included)
tus was previously believed to be our direct ances- were drawn to science because scientific knowledge
tor). Due to the incompleteness of the fossil record is by and large more objectively confirmed, more
and the fact that some subjectivity is involved in agreed upon, and usually more lasting than much of
making these determinations, this relationship will the knowledge in many of the more human-centered
likely never be an established fact in the same sense disciplines such as philosophy, art, fashion, econom-
that we know steel to be harder than copper. ics, politics, business, etc. While there have certainly
There are many other open questions in biology been several significant paradigm shifts in science,
that remain unanswered such as how did the mod- they are arguably becoming fewer and less inclusive
ern eukaryotic cell evolve? Though a great deal is as time goes by. Physics is one area where the poten-
now known about this evolutionary process, there tial for major paradigm shifts (concerning the funda-
are still important unanswered questions, and some mental nature of matter and the universe) may exist
aspects of this complex issue will undoubtedly al- to a greater degree than is true for much of chem-
ways remain provisional. istry, geology, or biology. The majority of work in
Most first-time scientific answers start out as ten- most scientific disciplines is of the “normal” type,
tative or provisional, especially answers to complex which fills in the many details of the major accepted
questions concerning complex phenomena. The idea concepts and theories.
Only a few decades ago the question was open
as to whether the Animal Kingdom was mono-
phyletic or polyphyletic, with sponges especially
being viewed as so weird and distinctive that they
may have had a separate origin from different pro-
tist ancestors. With modern genomic work, that
large question is now confidently answered—ani-
mals are indeed monophyletic, and sponges are
part of the animal clade. Now a question of interest
is the smaller one of whether sponges sit at the very
base of the animal tree, since some recent evidence
suggests that comb jellies or Placozoans may be the
more ancestral phylum.12 A firm answer to that
more specific question is still certainly provisional.
This pattern is true of much of science today—the
big paradigms and answers are largely settled, but
with a great many smaller questions and details yet
to be elucidated.
The evolution of life on Earth is a confirmed
fact, though a full and complete picture of Earth’s
evolutionary process as to exact evolutionary tracks,
timing, and mechanisms involved will surely never
be a finished body of work. This does not mean that
much of our evolutionary knowledge is not factual,
only that much still remains, and will continue to
remain unknown concerning the many details of
this large and encompassing paradigm.
Without belaboring the point, it seems clear
that science can discover what we should own up

to as facts (beyond reasonable doubt)—and as well, dense than liquid water. All the available empirical
to numerous conclusions that are only slightly pro- evidence tells us clearly that these statements are
visional. As has always been the case, science con- true. Perhaps a better and less philosophical wording
tinues to deal with a number of hypotheses that would be that scientists are fully confident about these
may be true, but are as yet very much provisional. conclusions, since they are strongly supported by all
Indeed, some hypotheses may remain provisional, the available empirical evidence.
or at least incomplete, far into the future. But just To simply say without qualification, and to say
because science can’t explain everything now does repeatedly (as many have) that all scientific knowl-
not mean that it has not succeeded in explaining a edge is provisional or tentative dangerously feeds
great deal of our physical universe in factual terms. into the postmodern deconstructionist philosophy
Standard dictionaries in defining the term proof recent times that claims knowledge of any type is
visional usually include “temporary” as one of the “only a construct,” and that the knowledge of sci-
standard meanings. I would argue that we know a ence is no more accurate or lasting than knowledge
great many scientific facts that are not considered from any other source such as philosophy or reli-
to be temporary by the scientific community. To gion. Certainly the vast majority of scientists and
briefly add other examples, we know that some science educators reject this view, and many have
plants depend on insects for pollination, the spoken out against it.
Hawaiian island chain is volcanic in origin, Tyran- Saying that all scientific knowledge is provi-
nosaurus rex was a theropod dinosaur that lived dur- sional is simply not portraying science accurately. If
ing the Cretaceous, oysters are filter feeders, and we want to educate people to have confidence in
the number of beetle species far exceeds that of scientific knowledge and adopt rational views, we
mammal species. All these statements are facts by should arguably refrain from making statements
any reasonable and objective measure. What is re- implying that everything in science is provisional.
ally meant when some say that science is provi- That would only be a true statement if we believe
sional is that in science the door is always open to that facts do not exist, if we believe that humans
new evidence on any subject. are incapable of discovering facts, or if we chose to
In brief, science is open minded and continually retreat back to Descartes’ solitary item of knowl-
seeks new evidence and data on any tentative or fac- edge: “I think, therefore I am.”
tual knowledge. The “provisional” nature of science
does not mean, however, nor should it be taken to
mean, that scientists are not firmly convinced of a REFERENCES
great many factual points concerning the world as
science has elucidated it. Perhaps some scientists fear 1. Weinberg, S. 2001. Facing Up. Cambridge MA: Har-
vard University Press.
that claiming the existence of scientific factual truths
2. Tattersall, I. 2008. “What’s So Special About Sci-
would imply that science is not open to new evi- ence?” Evolution: Education & Outreach. 1 (1): 36-41.
dence—in short, that scientists are close minded on 3. Dawkins, R. 2005. “Darwin and Evolution.” Natural
some topics. However, concerning the idea that the History Magazine, November.
4. Prothero, D.R. 2007. Evolution: What the Fossils
Earth orbits the Sun, scientists and most educated Say and Why it Matters. New York: Columbia Univer-
people are convinced that this fact is now beyond sity Press.
question. Still, if anyone should claim to have actual 5. Wilson, E.O. 1998. Consilience: the Unity of Knowl-
edge. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
objective evidence to the contrary, we should at least 6. Russell, B. 1997. Religion and Science. Oxford: Ox-
give this evidence a hearing. Scientists often wield ford University Press.
the descriptor of close minded to denigrate the cre- 7. Mayr, E. 1997. This is Biology. Cambridge, MA: Har-
ationist community because they will not listen to, or vard University Press.
8. Thornhill, R. 1984. “Scientific Methodology in Ento-
try to understand, the vast bodies of evidence that mology.” FL Entomologist. 67(1): 74-96.
support evolutionary theory. In that case, however, 9. McComas, W.F. 2014. “Revisiting the Myths of Sci-
there is an exuberant abundance of physical and in- ence-Enhanced Science Teaching by Focusing on its
Nature.” Connecticut Journal of Science Education.
ferential evidence supporting the fact of the evolution Vol. 5, No 1.
of life that the hardcore young-Earth creationists are 10. Crist, D.T., G. Scowcroft, & J.M. Harding. 2009.
unwilling to examine with an open mind. This is not World Ocean Census. Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books.
the case when rational minds are completely con- 11. Prothero, D.R. 2007, op cit.
12. Maldonado M. 2014. “Metazoans: The Rise of Early
vinced that the Earth is roughly spherical, that DNA Animals.” In: The Tree of Life. Vargas P. & Zardoya R.
is the genetic material of life, or that water ice is less (Eds). Sinauer Associates, Inc.

C O N TR I B U TORS
________________________
Ástor Alexander is a figura- age of Discovery: From the Besides his research in Surgeon. Her website is
tive illustrator and painter. Big Bang to the Ice Age and mathematics and physics, he www.skepdoc.info.
He specializes in portraits published several articles for is co-author with Jean _________________________
and he's a big fan of the general readership maga- Bricmont of Fashionable Pat Linse is an award win-
American illustrators of the zines such as Popular Sci- Nonsense: Postmodern ning illustrator who special-
60s. His work can be seen ence. He has presented a Intellectuals’ Abuse of ized in film industry art
at behance.net/astor Tedx talk on “Why We are Science (1998) and author of before becoming one of the
alexander Alone in the Galaxy” Beyond the Hoax: Science, founders of the Skeptics So-
________________________ (http://bit.ly/2jHxEtC) and Philosophy and Culture ciety, SKEPTIC, and the creator
Dr. Raymond Barglow ma- has written many essays on (2007). of JUNIOR SKEPTIC magazine.
jored in physics at Caltech his blog at www.marcde- _________________________ As Skeptic’s art director she
and received a Ph.D. in phi- fant.com Dr. Lyudmila Trut is a profes- has created many illustra-
losophy at UC Berkeley. He _________________________ sor of evolutionary genetics tions for both Skeptic and
has taught at UC Berkeley Dr. Lee Dugatkin is an evolu- at the Institute of Cytology JUNIOR SKEPTIC. She is co-edi-
and Trinity College and writes tionary biologist, historian of and Genetics, in Novosi- tor of the Encyclopedia of
on science, ethics, and cul- science, and science writer birsk, Siberia. She has been Pseudoscience.
tural issues. He is interested at The University of the lead researcher on the _________________________
in the history and prospects Louisville. He is coauthor silver fox domestication ex- Daniel Loxton was a profes-
of participatory democracy in with Lyudmila Trut of How To periment since 1959.The sional shepherd for nine
the United States and Tame a Fox (and Build a New York Times Book Re- years before he became edi-
abroad. Dog) (2017, University of view calls Dugatkin and tor of JUNIOR SKEPTIC. He illus-
_________________________ Chicago Press) Trut’s recent book, How To trates and authors most of
Peter Boghossian Dr. Peter _________________________ Tame a Fox (and Build a the current JUNIOR SKEPTIC ma-
Boghossian is a full time fac- Dr. Nathan H. Lents is Pro- Dog) (2017, University of terial. He wrote and illus-
ulty member in the Depart- fessor of Molecular Biology Chicago Press), a “Sparkling trated the best selling
ment of Philosophy at at John Jay College of the new book...Part science, award-winning Evolution:
Portland State University. City University of New York, part Russian fairy tale and How All Living Things Came
He’s the author of A Manual where the s also the director part spy thriller... It may to Be, and the award winning
for Creating Atheists and the of the biology and cell and serve—particularly now—as children’s three book Tales
creator of the Atheos app. molecular biology programs. a parable of the lessons that of Prehistoric Life Series.
@peterboghossian He also maintains The emerge from unfettered sci- _________________________
________________________ Human Evolution Blog and is ence, if we have the courage Dr. Michael Shermer is the
Tim Callahan is religion edi- the author of Not So Differ- to let it unfold.” Publisher of SKEPTIC maga-
tor of SKEPTIC. His books in- ent: Finding Human Nature _________________________ zine, a monthly columnist for
clude Secret Origins Of the Bible, in Animals, which will be Dr. David Zeigler is a re- Scientific American, a regu-
and Bible Prophecy: Failure or Ful- published by Columbia Uni- cently retired professor of Bi- lar contributor to Time.com,
fillment? both published by versity Press. ology. He has written a half and Presidential Fellow at
Millennium Press. He has _________________________ dozen earlier articles for Chapman University. His new
also researched the environ- Dr. James Lindsay holds a Skeptic. His latest book is book is The Moral Arc: How
mental movement, and his doctorate in mathematics Evolution: Components & Science and Reason Lead
article “Environmentalists and a degree in physics. He Mechanisms, 2014, Aca- Humanity Toward Truth, Jus-
Cause Malaria! (and other is the author of four books, demic Press. He has also tice, and Freedom. As a pub-
myths of the ‘Wise Use’ including Everybody Is Wrong long been interested in the lic intellectual he regularly
movement)” appeared in The About God and Life in Light basic nature of science. contributes Opinion Editori-
Humanist. of Death. His essays have als, book reviews, and es-
_________________________ appeared in many periodi- says to The Wall Street
Dr. Marc J. Defant is a Pro- cals, including Scientific Journal, The Los Angeles
fessor of Geology at the Uni- American, TIME, and The REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS Times, Science, Nature, and
versity of South Florida. He Philosophers' Magazine. _________________________ other publications. He ap-
specializes in the study of _________________________ Dr. Harriet Hall, MD, the peared on such shows as
volcanoes—more specifi- Anna Maltese is an artist SkepDoc, is a retired family The Colbert Report, 20/20,
cally, the geochemistry of who spent most of her adult physician and Air Force Dateline, Charlie Rose, and
volcanic rocks, the associ- life as an animator for the Colonel living in Puyallup, Larry King Live (but, proudly,
ated processes within the Simpsons before she struck WA. She writes about alter- never Jerry Springer!). His
mantle, and the origin of the out on her own as a free- native medicine, pseudo- two TED talks, seen by mil-
continental crust. He has lance illustrator and digital science, quacker y, and lions, were voted in the top
been funded by the National painter. When she’s not critical thinking. She is a 100 of the more than 1000
Science Foundation, National drawing or painting, she can contributing editor to both TED talks. He holds a Ph.D.
Geographic, the American be found coaching archery in SKEPTIC and Skeptical In- from Claremont Graduate
Chemical Society, and the Pasadena or immersing her- quirer, an advisor to the University in the history of
National Academy of Sci- self in a book on history and Quackwatch website, and an science.
ences, and has published science. editor of Sciencebasedmed _________________________
in many internationally _________________________ icine.org, where she writes Dr. Carol Tavris is a social
renowned scientific journals Dr. Alan Sokal is Professor of an ar ticle ever y Tuesday. psychologist and coauthor,
including Nature. He has Physics at New York University She is author of Women with Elliot Aronson, of Mis-
written a book entitled Voy- and Professor of Mathematics Aren’t Supposed to Fly: The takes were made (but not by
at University College London. Memoirs of a Female Flight ME).

PUBLISHER AND
EDITOR IN CHIEF
Pat Linse
CO-PUBLISHER
Michael Shermer
EDITOR AND WRITER
Daniel Loxton
The Gruesome True Story
Hello!
Our world has been conquered by hordes of zombies! They
CONTRIBUTORS: menace us in video games, comics, television, and movies. They
Pat Linse lurch gruesomely down city streets in “zombie walk” events.
is the creator of
and Editor in Chief After decades of zombie fiction, the walking dead are more pop-
of JUNIOR SKEPTIC. ular than ever. Mindless, moaning, hungry for human flesh, zombies
She wrote many of may be the ultimate modern monsters. They’ve spread like a virus
the early issues.
through tales of terror and horrified imaginings. But where did the
Daniel Loxton idea come from? Were zombies invented for fiction, or do they have
is the Editor of
JUNIOR SKEPTIC, a basis in legend—or perhaps even in reality? Could anything like fic-
and writes and tional movie zombies actually exist in the real world?
illustrates most is-
sues. Daniel is the
author of Evolu-
tion: How We and Let’s find out!
All Living Things
Came to Be. He il-
lustrated this
issue’s cover.
Monster Stories
Jim W. W. Smith
is a cartoonist
and CGI illustrator
who works People everywhere tell tales of creatures reaching as tales of vampires and were-
regularly with that stir in dark places, lurking ravenously wolves. But like those other creatures, zom-
Daniel Loxton for the unwary. Different cultures imagine a bies are imagined as transformed human
on JUNIOR SKEPTIC
and a variety of terrifying variety of monsters, but some beings. In that transformation,
book projects types tend to reappear in legends, fairy tales, all three creatures lose some
for kids. and horror stories told all essential part of what made
around the world. Dragon them human. Werewolves
and ogre stories turn up lose the restraint and reason
in many places, for exam- that make a person civilized.
ple. [See JUNIOR SKEPTIC They lose all memory of who
#30 for more on dragons.] they are. They become wild
Similarly, many cul- animals. Vampires often keep
tures imagine monsters their intelligence, but lose
that look like us. These their conscience (their “soul”
are often said to be humans in some stories). Other peo-
JUNIOR SKEPTIC No. 64 (2017)
who became monsters through ple are mere prey for the vampire’s
some horrifying process of trans- thirst.
formation. Countless cultures speak Zombies lose even more: memories, intelli-
of vampires—fiends who suck the gence, purpose, a sense of self, everything that
lifeblood from their victims. Werewolf legends makes a person more than just a body that
are also widespread and have been repeated for moves. A zombie is a human with everything
thousands of years. human taken out. Everything but hunger.
Zombie stories are not nearly so old or far-
or demons who hid behind an attractive illusion. They dis-
Prehistory of Zombies guised themselves as beautiful women to lure the strong
young men they preferred for their food. Despite this grue-
Modern zombies vary from story to story. Most are slow, but some appetite, they don’t sound much like zombies!
some are fast. Most are animated corpses; others become in- Several centuries later, however, a new kind of legend
fected or changed while they are still living. But zombies typ- combined the elements of “returning from the dead” and
ically share three features: they’re mindless; they’re savagely “feeding on humans” into a much more zombie-like mon-
violent; and, they’re contagious. ster: the vampire. During the Medieval Period, stories
In many stories zombies behave like a fast-spreading abounded of corpses rising from the grave to menace the liv-
plague. Zombies attack and bite humans. This turns their vic- ing, often by drinking blood. Historian William of New-
tims into more zombies. The infection spreads. Usually the burgh told some such tales in England during the 1100s. He
zombie hordes multiply so fast that soldiers, police, and gov- claimed there was “abundant testimony” to prove that the
ernments are totally overwhelmed. Civilization collapses. dead sometimes rose to “wander about to the terror or de-
Soon only a few desperate survivors remain to scav- struction of the living” before returning to their
enge among the ruins of the old world. graves. When brave men dug up and destroyed
Such “zombie apocalypse” stories are as famil- these undead horrors, they appeared like a
iar today as superheroes, wizards, or space bat- “leech filled with the blood of many persons.”
tles. Yet it was not always so. Where did the Early vampire tales also included another
modern zombie story come from? We can element found in modern zombie stories:
find early roots for that story in much, much the terror of contagious disease. In some
older tales. stories the wandering corpse contaminated
the air, killing even those who wisely shel-
Reanimating the Dead tered behind locked doors at night. William
Flesh-eating zombies are modern mon- of Newburgh said one town “which but a
sters, not creatures from ancient folklore. short time ago was populous” was “almost
But for thousands of years people have told deserted” because so many had either been
stories about the dead returning to life—not killed by the unnatural plague or fled “lest
just as ghosts but as physical bodies. Such sto- Ezekiel’s
they, too, should die.”
ries were an easy leap of the imagination: if a dry bones
living person can change into a dead body, Plague Narratives
could that process be somehow reversed? Of course, people didn’t need vampires to fear dis-
For example, Greek myths tell of a healer named Asclepius ease during the Medieval and Renaissance periods. The
who was so skilled in medicine that he could even cure Black Death was terrifying all on its own. The plague wiped
death. Unfortunately, the gods did not want mortals to have out roughly half the population of Europe—more in some
this divine power. Zeus angrily struck down Asclepius with a places. Millions more died in China and the Middle East.
thunderbolt. But in other Greek tales, the gods chose to re- And it kept coming back in wave after deadly wave.
turn people to life themselves. Similarly, in the Bible’s Book Cities were so badly devastated by the Black Death that
of Ezekiel, God miraculously restores life to dry bones scat- they resembled modern visions of a zombie apocalypse. Peo-
tered across a valley. With “a rattling sound…the bones came ple cowered in their homes or abandoned their belongings
together, bone to bone…and tendons and flesh appeared on to flee into the countryside. So many died so quickly that the
them and skin covered them…and breath entered them; they rules of society broke down. Looters ransacked at will. There
came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.” But the was no one left to enforce the law, for the authorities, “like
reanimated people in these stories are nothing like zombies. other men, were all either dead or sick,” explained one
They’re fully alive again. The gods were said to have the writer in the 1300s. Even the bonds of family began to un-
power to reverse death completely. ravel. The plague struck “such terror to the hearts of all…
that brother forsook brother” and parents abandoned their

Bloodthirsty Demons and the Rise of the Undead own children. No one knew what caused the plague. No one
Tales of the dead returning to life suggest one ancient root could stop it. No one was safe. Rich or poor, good or bad—
for the modern zombie idea. Other tales provide other hints. the Black Death took everyone equally.
In Greek and Roman times, people spoke fearfully of beings These horrifying, dramatic events inspired true and fic-
who ate the flesh and blood of human victims. These vam- tional plague stories for centuries. Those stories are literary
pire-like creatures appeared human, but they were not people ancestors to all modern thrillers about epidemics, including
who returned from the dead. They were supernatural spirits tales about plagues of zombies.
65
faced, but there is a catch. Those who interfere with fate do
The Monkey’s Paw so “to their sorrow.” He throws the shrivelled paw into the
fire, but Mr. White rescues it for himself. “If you keep it,”
In ancient stories, the gods decided what was natural. If they warns the friend, “don’t blame me for what happens. Pitch it
chose to restore a dead person to life, that was a good thing on the fire like a sensible man.”
—a miracle. This changed in Medieval vampire stories.
After all, it was hardly a miracle if bloodthirsty corpses Instead, Mr. White laughingly wishes for a large sum
arose from their graves to hunt the living! Vampires of money. Soon his wish does indeed come true—but in
were thought to be raised by dark supernatural the most horrifying way. The wished-for money is deliv-
powers. They were the work of the Devil. ered by a lawyer as compensation for his son Herbert’s
grisly workplace death. “He was caught in the machin-
Since then, modern horror writers have in- ery,” the lawyer explains.
vented countless imaginary ways to reanimate
the dead—magic, viruses, radiation, bizarre After days of grief and despair, Mrs. White is suddenly
medical experiments, and so on. But whatever seized by a feverish realization: there are still two
the details, modern stories usually agree with wishes left! She demands that her husband fetch
Medieval legends: the dead are meant to stay the paw “and wish our boy alive again.” The old
that way. To raise the dead is unwholesome, man tries to reason with her. “He has been dead ten
unnatural, and unwise. Usually there is a ter- days,” he stammers, and he was so mangled in the acci-
rible price to pay. dent that he could only be recognized by his clothing. Mr.
White is gripped by a “horrible fear that the…wish might
Be Careful What You Wish For… bring his mutilated son before him,” but in the end he
obeys his wife’s desperate pleas. He grips the paw and utters
This is the theme of “The Monkey’s Paw,” by W. W. Ja-
the words, “I wish my son alive again.”
cobs. Published in 1902, this short story is considered one of
the earliest zombie tales. Late that night there comes a knocking at the door, first
softly and then louder. “It’s my boy; it’s Herbert!” cries the
The main characters are an elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs.
joyful Mrs. White as she struggles to unbolt the door. But
White, and their adult son Herbert. One cold wet night an
what undead horror waits on the other side? “For God’s sake
old friend visits their isolated cottage. He brings with him
don’t let it in,” cries the terrified old man. As the risen thing
tales of adventures in foreign lands, and also a small strange
pounds on the door, he “found the monkey’s paw, and franti-
object: a “little paw” from a monkey, “dried to a mummy.” He
cally breathed his third and last wish.” He wishes his son back
explains that a sorcerer in India enchanted the paw to grant
to the grave.
three people three wishes each. It works, he says, white-
corpses as pale, “glassy-eyed,” and savagely violent “automata”

Lovecraft’s Reanimator (unthinking beings that behave mechanically, like robots).

One such “frightful carnivorous thing” kills almost twenty
While “The Monkey’s Paw” left it to readers to imagine the people before it is shot, captured, and locked up in an insane
creature at the door, horror writer H. P. Lovecraft was happy asylum. The victims of this “voiceless, sadistic monster” and
to reveal his own version of the undead in a series of rather West’s other reanimated creations are torn apart
nasty short stories published in 1921–1922. “Herbert West— “in a manner…too hideous for description,”
Reanimator” is the saga of one doctor’s mad quest to dis- though Lovecraft gleefully provided plenty of
cover a scientific process to bring the dead back to life. In a details too gruesome to quote in the pages of
series of “hideous experiments,” West injects chemical fluids JUNIOR SKEPTIC. One of those details
into bodies stolen from fresh graves. His secret tests suc- makes the “Herbert West—Rean-
ceed—at least partly. West brings corpses back to life after imator” stories an especially
the “deterioration of sensitive brain-cells” in death. This cre- notable early step toward the
ates mindless monsters which repeatedly (and predictably) modern zombie. Lovecraft’s
escape to attack the living. Eventually the creatures destroy reanimated monsters
their own deranged creator. aren’t just vio-
Though the word “zombie” was not yet part of the main- lent. They’re
stream English language, modern readers know a zombie also hungry.
when they see one. Lovecraft described his reanimated
66
Birthplace of Zombies Florida (USA)
Restless corpses had risen from the grave in vampire stories Atlantic
for centuries. In more modern times, horror writers had Ocean
begun to explore terrifying new versions of the living dead.
But how did these early monsters evolve into the zombies we Haiti
know today? For that matter, where did the word “zombie” Dominican
Republic
come from? Our search for the origin of the zombie takes us Cuba
to the tropical Caribbean island country of Haiti.
History of Slavery and Violence

Located near the coast of Florida, Haiti is a small, impov- of “zombies” to the American public.
erished nation with a turbulent history. Christopher Colum- Vodou grew from the spiritual beliefs that slaves brought
bus claimed the island for Spain in 1492, despite the with them from West Africa. When these blended with
indigenous people who already lived there. It was the site of Christian beliefs taught by Catholic missionaries, the result
the first European settlement in the Americas. Over the next was a unique new religion. Vodou beliefs include many pow-
300 years the territory was ruled first by Spain, then by pi- erful loa spirits in addition to a supreme God. Song, dance,
rates, and then as a colony of France. complex rituals, and animal sacrifices are used to seek the
Wealthy French plantation owners brought hundreds of help of the loa here on Earth and in the spirit realm. It is be-
thousands of African-born slaves to toil in the sugar fields. lieved that the loa can take control of believers’ bodies dur-
Thousands of slaves escaped into the mountains or fought ing Vodou rituals.
back against the brutal slave masters. Finally the white rulers Seabrook was impressed by the Vodou faith. This “pro-
were overthrown after years of violent rebellion. found and vitally alive religion” has nothing to do with Devil
In 1804 Haiti became the first country ever to be ruled by worship, he explained to his readers. Furthermore, “Crimi-
former slaves after a successful uprising. But Haiti’s troubles nal sorcery, black magic, are incompatible with the spirit of
weren’t over. After years of violence and centuries of slavery, Voodoo as a ritual religion.”
Haiti was poor, chaotic, and hated by slave owning nations. However, many Haitian Vodouists do also have beliefs
The next century saw a series of revolts. Haitian rulers were about magic, in much the same way that American Chris-
routinely killed or overthrown. tians may also have beliefs about psychics or alternative
medicine. Throughout the country, bokor sorcerers sell po-
American Occupation tions, charms, herbal medicines, and rituals claimed to heal
Haiti was collapsing into even deeper turmoil during the sickness, protect from evil, harm enemies, attract love, or
early years of the 20th century. This threatened American other magical effects. These services offer “ample scope” for
commercial and military interests. In 1915, the United States “charlatanry and profitable fraud,” Seabrook noted. How-
military invaded Haiti and took over. American rule lasted ever, it was his opinion that “the majority of the bocors…be-
until 1934. lieve…sincerely in their own powers.”
During two decades of military occupation, American
forces built roads and bridges, but also fought against Haitian Rumors of Zombies
rebels and treated the local people badly. Racist attitudes Seabrook also heard Haitian stories about werewolves
were common among the Americans in Haiti and at home. and vampires. These monsters struck Seabrook as “first
Sensational books and news stories called the Haitian people cousins to those we have at home,” but he was intrigued by
“savage” and accused Haiti’s Vodou (“Voodoo”) religion of tales of another kind of creature that seemed unique to Hait-
being black magic or a “form of Devil worship.” This helped ian folklore: the “zombie.” According to claims, bokor sor-
to justify American control of the country. cerers have the power to reanimate the dead:
The zombie, they say, is a soulless human corpse, still

Haitian Vodou dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery
Vodou sounded ominous to American readers, but one with a mechanical semblance of life—it is a dead body
travel writer named William Seabrook was more open which is made to walk and act and move as if it were
minded. He lived in Haiti, talked to Haitians about their be- alive. People who have the power to do this go to a fresh
liefs, and took part in their ceremonies. His bestselling 1929 grave, dig up the body before it has had time to rot, gal-
travel book The Magic Island tried to describe Vodou beliefs vanize it into movement, and then make of it a servant
and practices more accurately. It also introduced the concept or slave….
67
Haitian Zombies strange,” Seabrook said. They were working in silence, “plod-
ding like brutes, like automatons.” When touched, one zom-
bie stood up. Seabrook looked into his face, he said, with
Seabrook was told that zombies are real, “not a matter of su- “rather sickening shock.”
perstition.” He learned that the belief in zombies was wide-
spread. According to stories, bokors stand over a recent The eyes were the worst. … They were in truth like the
grave, capture the dead person’s soul in a magical jar, and eyes of a dead man, not blind, but staring, unfocused, un-
summon forth their corpse as a zombie. Grieving Haitians seeing. The whole face…was vacant, as if there was noth-
sometimes guarded the graves of their loved ones to prevent ing in it. It seemed not only expressionless, but incapable
this. In a country founded by slaves, becoming a mindless of expression.
slave was a fate feared more than death. Seabrook said he momentarily almost believed in the un-
It was claimed that “people who have stood by and seen dead. But then he took one of the man’s calloused hands. It
their own relatives buried have…months or years afterward, felt completely human. Seabrook sadly concluded that “the
found those relatives working as zombies” in the fields. zombies were nothing but poor, ordinary demented human
“There are only too many true cases,” claimed one of the au- beings, idiots, forced to toil in the fields.”
thor’s Haitian friends. “At this very moment…there are zom- Despite this skepticism, Seabrook retold several zombie
bies working on this island,” the man insisted. tales in his book and in newspaper stories. This introduced
Seabrook was skeptical. “The zombies in such cases may the undead zombie idea to the American public for the first
have resembled the dead persons” but been cases of mistaken time, making the unfamiliar word a mainstream part of the
identity, he suspected. But his friend said he could take English language. These were the original zombies: mindless
Seabrook to personally see “dead men working in the cane corpses reanimated as slaves by Haitian magic. They were not
fields.” According to The Magic Island, he was as good as his violent flesh eaters like modern zombies. (Indeed, according
word. Seabrook claimed he had the opportunity to meet and to folklore, “zombies must never be permitted to taste salt or
examine “three supposed zombies” in broad daylight. meat.” Salt restores their memory, breaks the spell control-
ling them, and sends them back to their graves.)
There was “something about them unnatural and
bride himself. He plots with the sorcerer to poison her, steal

Zombies On Screen her from her grave, and transform her into a zombified slave.
When her body disappears, her grieving fiancé enlists the
Haitian-style zombies weren’t carnivores, but filmmakers help of a wise old man to investigate. They track her to a cas-
saw that they could be scary. Seabrook’s book inspired the tle, where the young hero battles the zombies and defeats the
first zombie movie just three years later: White Zombie, re- zombie master. The film ends with both villains dead, the
leased in 1932. The villain is an evil plantation owner and damsel’s life and soul restored, and the lovers reunited.
sorcerer (played by Bela Lugosi, known for his portrayal of The zombies in this movie murder without emotion when-
Dracula). His workers are zombies under his magical con- ever their master commands. They’re strong and relentless.
trol. His six silent bodyguards are the reanimated corpses of Bullets can’t harm them. But the true horror is their puppet-
his enemies. If these were to “regain their souls,” he admits like loss of free will. In one chilling scene, the unblinking
with amusement, “they would tear me to pieces.” zombie bride robotically plays the piano for the entertain-
In the story, a young couple arrives in Haiti to be married. ment of the man who murdered her. In another, the zombie
However their wealthy host is obsessively in love with the master commands her to stab her own fiancé.
The sinister zombie master Bullets can’t stop zombies! The zombified damsel
68
possible “rational explanation.” Bokor sorcerers were widely
The Zombie Mystery believed to possess a secret poison able to cause the tempo-
rary appearance of death without actually killing the victim.
The Magic Island and White Zombie made a specific type of Haiti even passed laws based on this belief, Seabrook noted.
zombie part of American culture. Zombies that appeared in Use of any such poison was outlawed as attempted murder—
films, radio plays, comic books, and even dictionaries during or murder if a poisoning victim was buried as a result. This
the 1930s–50s were of this type inspired by Haitian folklore. idea was part of the plot of the White Zombie movie. Zora
Neale Hurston agreed that “the semblance of death” could be
Belief in zombies remains common in Haiti. Are they
“induced by some drug known to a few.”
merely a legend, or could there be some truth behind the sto-
ries? Seabrook claimed he saw “supposed zombies” with his Davis wanted samples of this supposed zombie poison. He
own eyes. But he is rumored to have exaggerated or made up paid bokors to make it for him. The sorcerers made powders
events in at least one of his books. If he did meet these three using human bones, magical rituals, and an inconsistent va-
silent workers as he claimed, there was no way for him to riety of other ingredients. Often they included irritating
know that they really were zombies—that’s just what he was plants, poisonous toads, or spiders. Several also included a
told. Their behavior could be explained in other ways. surprising ingredient from the sea: puffer fish!
A decade later, anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston con-
Controversial Hypothesis
firmed a “real and deep” fear of the “living dead” among the
people of Haiti. She became convinced that some people truly Davis knew that the bodies of puffer fish sometimes con-
had been “called back from the dead” because she “had the tain a powerful poison called tetrodotoxin. Eating puffer fish
rare opportunity to see and touch an authentic case.” This was can be deadly. In Japan, specialized chefs carefully prepare
a hospitalized old woman had been identified as a woman the fish to be served safely as a delicacy. Even then, diners
who died decades earlier. However, the doctor treating the are sometimes poisoned by accident. Depending how much
woman thought Hurston was very gullible to accept the of the poison they eat, most victims either get mild poison-
“Zombi pseudoscience.” The woman had been diseased and ing or else quickly die. But in some rare cases, the exact right
mentally ill when she wandered into a random village, caus- dose of tetrodotoxin may temporarily paralyze victims with-
ing “mass hysteria,” the doctor said. Because the villagers al- out killing them. They may appear dead, only to recover a
ready believed in zombies, they got carried away trying to few hours later! Amazingly, they may even remain conscious
“identify her with various people who were known to be dead while unable to move.
long ago.” But X-rays proved the old woman was not the per- If zombie poisons often contain puffer fish, they
son they convinced themselves she was. must sometimes contain tetrodotoxin. (One
There are many other cases in which someone was sample did.) If enough bokors poison enough
either identified as a zombie by others, or claimed people with enough different doses of their
themselves to be a person who previously died. zombie powders, some victims should
The most famous was a man who claimed to be eventually get a dose that might cause
Clairvius Narcisse, who died 18 years before. The them to fall into death-like paralysis be-
man said he’d been enslaved as a zombie for years before recovering. A few such rare cases
fore regaining his memory. At the time there was no could be the origin of the Haitian belief in
scientific way to confirm his identity, but he did seem able to zombies, Davis reasoned. Some victims
answer questions the real Narcisse would have known. The might even survive being buried for a short
dead man’s family believed the man’s claims. So did one Hait- time. If people who believe in zombies went through such an
ian psychiatrist and a small group of his colleagues in the experience, they might believe they are themselves zombies.
United States. They sent a writer and anthropologist named And if they were then kidnapped and drugged, as zombie
Wade Davis to investigate how zombification could work. stories describe, they might accept becoming slaves.
Davis wrote two books arguing that he had solved the
Rational Explanation? mystery. But his puffer fish idea is highly controversial.
It’s best to be sure that there really is a mystery before you There’s no solid evidence that Haitian zombies exist, nor that
try to solve it. Zombification doesn’t need explaining if it isn’t the process Davis describes actually ever happens. There are
a real thing. Despite many claims and stories, there are no a lot of “if”s in his hypothesis. It certainly would not be a reli-
confirmed cases in which a person died, was buried, was dug able process for creating zombies.
up and enslaved as a zombie, and then was found alive at a Whatever its origin, Haitian folklore defined zombies for
later date. Nevertheless, Davis tried to discover some way for decades. But writers went on spinning tales about other
such a thing to happen in real life. types of monsters. Two of those non-zombie tales would
For over a century, zombie stories repeatedly suggested one eventually help to inspire the zombie stories we know today.
69
“Now keep on watching it,” she said. She
Shambling Hordes of… Plants fired the gun into the air. …
“See?… All the triffids that heard
One non-zombie story that later it are coming this way now.”
helped to inspire modern zombie
apocalypse ideas was the 1951 Today’s zombie fans find the images
novel The Day of the Triffids, by John and themes of Wyndham’s novel very fa-
Wyndham. The story begins with a man who wakes up in a miliar. Survivors scavenging for supplies.
hospital to discover that a global catastrophe has Abandoned cars littering empty city streets.
taken place. Most of humanity has been struck blind Blasting the tops off triffids with shotguns.
by mysterious green lights in the sky—a meteor Hordes of mindless monsters breaking through
shower perhaps, or radiation from military satellites. fences to get at the humans inside. One reason
Society collapses. People turn on each other. The this all sounds familiar is that zombie filmmak-
scenes of disease, looting, and despera- ers have borrowed ideas from the book. For
tion are similar to Medieval accounts example, the writer of the 2002 zombie
of the plague. But the survivors in Wyndham’s movie 28 Days Later agreed that he was
novel face yet another threat: walking, predatory inspired by Wyndham’s story. As he
plants called triffids that attack people with whip- said in one interview, “You could say,
like poisonous stingers. With the end of civi- ‘Look, he’s ripped that off Day of the
lization, triffids begin multiplying and taking Triffids…’ and I accept that and
over the English countryside. say, ‘Sure I did.’” Most obvi-
ously, 28 Days Later begins
Triffids move and behave much like modern with a man who wakes up in a
zombies. At one point, a small group of survivors hospital only to find that the
realize why hundreds of triffids keep gathering world has ended. The Walking Dead
against the fences they’ve built around a farm: television series also begins the same way.
I watched the thing lurching slowly across a field. …
cludes a believable-sounding explanation that would later be-

Legendary Beginning come common in zombie fiction: these monsters are literally
a plague, infected and animated by strange, contagious
But modern zombie stories owe an even bigger creative debt germs. Neville discovers that the vampires’ bodies have been
to another monster story. Richard Matheson’s 1954 novella I taken over by a bacteria that keeps them alive after death, en-
am Legend is the story of Robert Neville, who may be the last larges their canine teeth, and makes them hungry for blood.
human survivor of a vampire apocalypse. He lives a lonely, They are next to impossible to stop with bullets because the
brutal life. At night he shelters inside a house fortified with bacteria quickly seal bullet holes.
boarded windows and wreaths of garlic, surrounded by I am Legend is (like The Day of the Triffids) full of feelings
howling, taunting bloodsuckers. During the day he prowls and images we associate today with zombie apocalypse tales.
an empty city, searching for supplies and driving stakes into Panic, loneliness, and desperation. Silent cities. Empty build-
vampires as they sleep. ings. The undead shrugging off gunfire. A survivor grimly
These monsters are like zombies in several ways. They re- fighting through crowds of the walking dead to reach
turn from the dead. They gather in crowds. They hunger for safety, fighting grasping arms to close a door.
humans. And though some of the vampires are intelligent, But I am Legend’s central image—a lonely house sur-
many are like ferocious animals. Neville wonders why the rounded by the undead—isn’t just familiar. This image
vampires who gather outside each night never think to set directly inspired the invention of the modern zombie story.
his house on fire:

Robert Neville spends most of I am Legend watching
It seemed such an obvious tactic. Was it possible they… through boarded windows, listening to the “murmur-
were just too stupid? After all, their brains could not be ings and…walkings about” of the “white-faced men
so fully operative as they had been before. The change prowling around his house, looking ceaselessly for a
from life to mobile death must have involved some tissue way to get in at him.” Reading this would soon inspire
deterioration. one American filmmaker to create the most impor-
Matheson’s story is told in a gritty, realistic style. It in- tant zombie movie of all time.
70
Inventing the Modern Zombie
The first modern Survivors hide

zombie ever to in this lonely
appear on screen farmhouse
Zombies changed forever in 1968 with the release of a low from space. These “creatures who feast upon the flesh of
budget black and white horror film called Night of the Living their victims” are slow and stupid, but they’re also relentless.
Dead. Directed by George A. Romero (who passed away in They just keep coming. Bullets can’t hurt them because
July 2017) and written by Romero and John Russo, Night of the they’re already dead. The only way to stop them is to destroy
Living Dead introduced audiences to a horde of flesh-eating their reanimated brains—and there are too many to fight.
zombies for the very first time. Romero had just invented the zombie apocalypse. But he
The story begins with an adult brother and sister who visit didn’t call his creatures “zombies.” After all, White Zombie
a graveyard in the countryside. She finds the place eerie. and other films had already defined zombies as robot-like
“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!” teases the brother— slaves reanimated by Haitian magic. Romero thought of his
only to find that’s true. A reanimated corpse attacks the flesh-eating corpses as “ghouls” instead. But movie reviewers
brother and chases Barbara to an isolated farmhouse. There quickly connected the two types of mindless monster, calling
she finds a group of other survivors led by a brave, resourceful Romero’s creatures a “plague of zombies.”
African-American truck driver. As night falls, the survivors Night of the Living Dead copied the bleakness of I Am Leg-
find themselves trapped. The house is surrounded by the hun- end, which was inspired by the hopelessness of Medieval
gry undead. They board up the windows, find weapons, and plague stories. No character is safe in Romero’s movie. The
argue about how to escape—or at least survive. brave and the good are just as doomed as the selfish and cow-
Sound familiar? “I ripped off the idea…from a Richard ardly. Survivors turn on each other. Zombies feel nothing
Matheson novel called I Am Legend,” Romero explained in an when they attack their own family members.
interview. He couldn’t copy the vampire novel exactly (I Am Audiences were shocked. There was “almost complete si-
Legend had already been made into a movie with Matheson’s lence” after the movie, said film reviewer Roger Ebert, ex-
permission), so Romero invented a new kind of undead mon- cept for crying kids who should never have seen it. “The
ster. In the film, a TV news reporter solemnly announces that movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway
“the unburied dead are coming back to life and seeking through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying.”
human victims” because of “mysterious high level radiation”
The original Not even the

zombie horde hero is safe…
71
The Popularity of Zombies Cheap and Easy
George Romero and his friends had very little money
Night of the Living Dead started an undead invasion. Hundreds to make their movie, so they did something clever: they
of other zombie movies followed its example and added to invented monsters they could afford.
zombie mythology. (The notion that zombies hunger for If you wanted to make a realistic film about, say, dragons
“braaaains!” comes from the 1985 horror-comedy Return of or an alien invasion, you’d need elaborate costumes, sets, and
the Living Dead, which was loosely based on a book by special effects. That’s expensive. But zombies are cheap! All
Romero’s Night of the Living Dead co-writer.) Zombies have you need for a zombie movie are a camera, some friends, and
shambled into games, comics, coloring books, and every Halloween make up. You could film in your own neighbor-
other corner of our culture. And in true zombie fashion, the hood or even your own backyard. For this reason, countless
multiplying undead appear to be unstoppable. After 50 low budget zombie filmmakers have followed Night of the Liv-
years, zombies are more popular than ever. But why? ing Dead’s affordable example (not to mention those with
huge budgets to create armies of zombies and ruined cities).
Zombies are Terrifying, Yet Familiar
But aren’t those other zombie filmmakers copying some-
One obvious reason is that zombies are terrific monsters. one else’s work? Some zombie stories are more original than
They’re simple, straightforward, and scary. And they’re great others, but yes—they are. Many filmmakers use Romero-style
for storytelling, because everyone knows the basic “rules” of zombies without permission from the people who invented
a zombie story. That allows writers to play with those rules them. And that’s because of a blunder in the way Night of the
and invent creative variations without starting from scratch. Living Dead was released.
At their scariest, zombies embody deep and ancient fears.
Their decaying bodies remind us of old age and death. They Zombies are in the Public Domain
give a face to the terror of contagious disease. Zombie apoca- Under the current laws of the United States, you automati-
lypse stories warn us that civilization could be fragile. They cally own the “copyright” to any original piece of art that you
imagine a world where everything we rely upon—police, create. Whether you write a novel, create a painting, or film a
hospitals, food in grocery stores—suddenly stops working. movie, people generally aren’t allowed to reproduce or imi-
Zombies are perhaps the purest form of predatory mon- tate your work without your permission. By the same token,
ster. Usually they feel nothing except hunger—not love, not you need permission to copy ideas or characters owned by
pity, not pain, not even an instinct for self-preservation. someone else (such as Jedis or Captain America).
They can’t be reasoned with. They never tire. However, many ideas and artworks are too old to be under
No other monster is quite so personal and so impersonal copyright. Nobody owns dragons, wizards, or vampires for in-
at the same time. We become them. Their only purpose is to stance—or rather, those ideas belong to everyone. They’re in
destroy us. And yet they’re also like a tsunami: a deadly the “public domain.” Everyone is free to use them.
threat that feels nothing about the things it destroys. That’s a But Romero’s zombies were original and distinctive new
scary combination. creatures when they terrified moviegoers in 1968.
But creepiness Shouldn’t permission be required to use Romero-
isn’t the only rea- style zombies in a project such as AMC’s popular
son zombies are television series The Walking Dead?
so popular. Zombie That would be true if not for a momentous mistake.
stories would not be Copyright was not automatic at the time when Night
so common today if of the Living Dead was released. Creators had to
not for two specific publish their work with a copyright notice in
things about order to keep the rights to their work. Unfortu-
Night of the Liv- nately for Romero and his collaborators,
ing Dead—one their movie was accidentally released with-
really smart idea, out a copyright notice, which placed the

and one really big film and its ideas immediately into the
mistake. public domain. This was bad news for them.
They missed out on millions of dollars. But it turned
Zom- out great for zombie fans everywhere! It means
bies everyone is free to create stories about zombies.
are Seems fitting that a simple accident unleashed
hordes of zombies to take over the world!
72
So there are living “zombies” in nature. However, para-
Real Life Zombies? sites that manipulate their hosts’ behavior evolved over a
very long time to make specific animals do specific things.
Modern zombies are imaginary creatures invented by film- For example, the “zombie fungus” only infects ants of cer-
makers. They were partly inspired by Haitian folklore, and tain species. Humans are not at all closely related to ants,
partly by vampire legends. But people who grew up with real- and our brains are very different. It’s far-fetched to imagine
istic-looking zombie movies sometimes wonder whether that ant-specific fungus evolving the ability to infect and
there could be truth to the stories. In June 2012 for example, control human beings.
news reports about violent crimes inspired a huge increase in It’s controversial whether some viruses or parasites may
Google searches asking “are zombies real?” and about the have evolved some ability to influence human behaviors. But
idea of a “zombie apocalypse.” there are certainly no infections that control us to the de-
This public concern prompted a spokesperson from the gree that the fungus controls infected ants—and there are
U.S. Centers for Disease Control to explain to the media that no real infections that make humans behave like fictional
the “CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would zombies.
reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like
symptoms).” Zombie Preparedness
On the other hand, the idea
Undead Zombies Don’t Make Much Sense of zombies may be able to
Although zombie movies sometimes offer believable- change our behavior—and our
sounding pseudoscientific explanations such as a “zombie scientific understanding. At
virus,” the walking dead are not creatures that could exist in least, that’s what the Centers for
nature. It’s a purely magical idea to imagine rotting corpses Disease Control and other sci-
lurching up from the grave. Muscles can’t function without entists hope. The CDC has used
working lungs and circulating blood. Only in stories can “zombie preparedness” as a fun
zombies continue to move for years without food or water or way to encourage people to keep
oxygen, even when their internal organs are destroyed. a well stocked emergency kit in
If undead zombies did exist, they wouldn’t last long. Bacte- their homes.
ria would see to that. When living things die they begin to de- Zom-
compose. Zombies would be quickly rotted away by bacteria bies are a pretend threat, but it’s
or eaten by scavengers (especially insects). important for families to prepare
for real emergencies such as
But Living Zombies… earthquakes, hurricanes, or out-
breaks of disease. “Zombies can be used
Undead zombies aren’t realistic. But in some stories zom-
as a powerful tool” for educating the pub-
bies are infected with something that takes over their brains
lic about diseases such as rabies, argued
and changes their behavior while they are still alive. Could
the authors of a 2013 CDC
that really happen?
paper, “Zombies—A Pop Cul-
Amazingly, there are real viruses and parasites that do con- ture Resource for Public
trol their hosts’ brains and behaviors. For example, the rabies Health Awareness.” And the
virus acts a bit like a zombie virus for animals. It causes in- zombie apocalypse idea
fected animals to aggressively bite other animals, passing on can be useful for scien-
the virus through their saliva. A microscopic parasite called tists themselves. In
Toxoplasma gondii changes the behavior of rodents, making most stories zombies
rats and mice attracted to cats instead of frightened. When spread like a disease,
one of the fearless infected rodents gets eaten, the parasite so scientists have studied imaginary zombie
can complete its life cycle inside the body of a cat. plagues as a way to understand how to
Ants infected with a fungus called Ophiocordyceps unilater- track and control real diseases.
alis are caused to climb up and clamp on to the underside of a So don’t worry about zombies
leaf. The fungus then kills the ant, consumes its body, and becoming real. But do plan for pos-
drops down spores to infect other ants. This “zombie fungus” sible emergencies. If five decades
was the inspiration for the 2013 video game The Last of Us. of zombie fiction have taught us
The game imagined that this real fungus mutated to use hu- anything, it’s that it’s best to be
mans as hosts instead of ants, bringing about a zombie apoca- prepared!
lypse.
73
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Alt. Medicine by L. Jaroff by E. Goode; Religious Fraud by M. Help by D. Lease; Cassingham’s Facilitated Com. by B. Gorman;
Gerlich; Fairy Fraud by Randi;. Fried; Evil Eye by G. Bohigian. Dumbth; JR. SKEPTIC: TT by E. Rosa. Psychotherapy? byT. Dineen. JR. S.
magv6n4-JFK: JFK by N. Ger- magv7n1-Influence: C. Tavris magv7n2-Cloning by F. Miele; magv7n3-Millennium: The
lich, & A. & M. Snyder; Pope by Interview; Christian Science by R. & by M. Shermer; Evolution by R. End by T.McIver; Prophesy by P.
M. Shermer; J. Horner Interview; Miller; Science Fraud by D. Kevles; Dawkins; Evo. Psych by K. Kon- Molé; Millennial Meanings by M.
Dowsing by Randi; Survival Myth Belief by K. Parejko; Hypnosis by B. kola & G. Sunshine; Pop. Myths Shermer; Frederick Crews Inter-
by T. Callahan; Humor by S. Gib- Seidman; Public Relations by B. by D. Henige; Richard Seed In- view; Immortality by A. Herd;
son & R. Cassingham • JR. Siano;Randi& Congress; Alt. Med. terview; Evil by N. Thompson; Randi; Myth by T. Callahan; Pol.
SKEPTIC: Aliens by A.Chesworth; by H. Ziel; Communication by D. Medicine by H. Ziel; Humor by S. Extremism by L. Hyman. Humor
Psychic Math! by A. Benjamin; Brenders; Knowledge Filter by M. Asma, D.Lease, Randi, J.George;. by R. Cassingham, S. Asma, D.
UFO Photos by P. Linse. REVIEWS. Shermer; JR. SKEPTIC: Fortunetelling. JR. SKEPTIC: Urban Legends. Lease. JR. SKEPTIC Halloween.
magv7n4-Pseudoscience: P. magv8n1-Race & Sports by magv8n2 Religion: F. de Waal magv8n3-Chaos/Complexity:
Klass Interview by Posner; Sagan by Entine, by Hoberman, & by Sher- Interview by Shermer; Agnostic by J. Diamond Interview by Shermer;
Shermer/Morrison; Healing by Molé; mer; Race by Sarich; Ernst Mayr Dawson; Faith? by Wildish; Scope’s Complex Systems by Lam; Contin-
Phantoms by Bartholomew/Goode; Interview by Sulloway & Shermer; by Riniolo & Torrez; Bible Belt by gencies by Shermer; Cosmology
Eye Movement by Rosen; Panics by Free Energy by Park; Gaia by Wil- Sloan; Scientology by Martin; Bible/ by Ebert; Chaos by Miele, & by
Wade, & by Bartholomew; Sai Baba son; Chiropractic by Homola; At- Nature by Zerin; Life’s Meaning by Pigliucci; Bumper Fish by Gibson;
by Gogineni; Thought Fields by Swen- tention Deficit by Leo; Mind/Body Naiditch; TV by Gibson; Personal Gould Festschrift; Reverse Speech
son/Lilienfeld/McNally; ESP by Kauff- by Lee; Women by Gibson; Geller Gods by M. Pigliucci; Prayer Heals? by Langstoni & Anderson; Cultural
man /Brown; Psiby Riniolo /Schmidt. Trick by Randi; JS: Darwin by Linse. by Matthews;. JR. SK: Pyramids. Relativismby Bartholomew; Randi.
magv9n1-Anthropology Wars: magv9n3-A.I.&UFOs: A. I. by magv10n1-Roswell by B. D. magv10n2-Wolfram’s Sci-
S.Pinker Interview; Anthro Wars by S. Harris; UFO Theology by B. Den- Gildenberg; Psychic by M. Sher- ence by D. Naiditch; Dumber? by
F.Miele; NobleSavage by P. Frank; zler; Education & Skeptics by W. mer; HAARP by D. Naiditch; Blind R. Ehlich; Smart People by M. Sher-
Anthro Science by M. Shermer; Walker, S.Hoekstra, R.Vogl; Smart Research by R. Sheldrake; Pet mer; Media/Science by H. N. Pollack;
Margaret Mead by P. Shankman; People by P. Molé; Learning by L. Psychic by B. Farha; M. Shermer, Media Harm by S.Waxman; Psychics
Velikovosky by D.Morrison; Medi- K. Hagan; Neo-Confederates by C. T.Dace; Time Travel by A. Bernar- /Grief by R. Freedman; Randi; Mys-
ums by Randi; Transcendence by Center; Peers by B. Markovsky & din; Skeptic Maxims by J. Hryny- tery Balls by R.Saberi; John Edward
D. Brin; Atlantis by G. Fagan & C. S. Thye; Leopold/Loeb Trial by T. C. shyn, J. Gribbin, P. Molé; Homeop- by B. Phelps, S. Pedersen E. Wogen;
Hale; Jr Skeptic: Moon? by P. Linse. Riniolo. Randi, JR. SKEPTIC. REVIEWS. athy by Randi; Loxton’s Alien Life. Sylvia Brown by B. Farha. Yeti.
magv11n1-Medieval UFOs? magv11n2-Nature/Nurture magv11n3-Catastrophe magv11n4-ID, Ernst Mayr:
by D. Cuoghi; Witches by L. Igwe; Nurture by H. D. Schlinger; Human by R.A. Posner; Collapse by J. Creationism by M. Perakh; I.D.
Mass Suicide by S. Kowit; China by Behavior by F. Miele; Alternative Diamond; Double-Blind by S. Peer-Reviewed by R. Weitzel; Su-
D.Mainfort; Puerto Ricoby L. Montes Health by C. Bowerman; Sports Bratman; Electronic Myths by pernatural Test by S. Shuster;
by A. Bernardin; New History by J. E. Winer; Cholesterol by M. E. Conspiratorial Thinking by G.
-Valentín; Dogon by L. McDaid;
Colavito; Spiritualists by P. Deutsch; Shakespeare by D. Case; Alien Faces by F. V. Malm-
India by A.D.. Polak; Gibson’s Pas- Price; Memories Untrustworthy? strom; Mind Myth by H. D.
Firenze; J. Randi; Science by D.
sion, Da Vinci Code by T. Callahan; Krider; Mexican UFOs by J. by D. Greenberg; Psychic Renier Schlinger; Randi: John Of God;
Berlitz by L. K. Hagen; JR.SKEPTIC: Smith; Cryonics by G. Benford; by G. Posner; Randi; JR SKEPTIC: Race Debate; JR. SKEPTIC: Madman
Loch Ness by D. Loxton. REVIEWS. Sasquatch by D. Loxton. REVIEWS. Sasquatch II by D. Loxton of Magic, REVIEWS.
magv12n2-Artificial Intelli- magv13n3-Medicine: Psy- magv13n4-Quirkology by R. magv14n1-Global Warming:
gence by P. Kassan; Dawkins on chiatry by J.Sorboro; Research by Wiseman; Dawkins Wrong by D. S. G W:“Yes”by T.Schneider,“No”by
ID; Dover ID Trial by B. Humburg & H.Hall; AIDS by B.Martin; Autism Wilson: Dawkins Replies; Chopra v. P. Frank; GW Solutions by Calvin;
E. Brayton; ID v. SETI by R. Camp; by M.Normand, et al.; Cold Cures Shermer; Can Apes Talk? by C. Detox by H. Hall; Hydrogen by A.
Young Earthers by J. Rosenhouse; by H.Hall; Animal Researchby Wynne; ET Myths by Tim Callahan; Kong/Nessie by Loxton; Friede-
ID Theories by D. Brin; Ted Serios N.Shanks, et al.; Smoking:S.Zion Franklin’s Kite by W. D. Stansfield; mann; Houdini by S. E. Rivkin;
by C. Campbell; CoralCastle by W. v. H.Hall;Bonobos by F.de Waal; Mozart Effect by W. Dowd; Consci- Journalism byS.Salerno; Super-
Stansfield. Omnitron by Randi; JR Randi on Sam Harris; ID by A. ousness by H. Schlinger; Jr. Skep- naturalby C.T.Palmer,K.Coe, &
SKEPTIC-Pyramid Power by Loxton. Pilpel; Aliens by Loxton tic: Alien Astronauts IIby Loxton. R.L.Wadley, Dragons by Loxton
magv14n2-Evolution of In- magv14n3-Revisionism by magv15n1-Christian Origins magv15n 4-Climate by D.

telligence; Grief Myth; Criminal M. Shermer; Altruism by K. W. Matt Ridley Interview; Atheism a Brin; Cell Phones/Cancer; Dows-
Profiling; Near Death Experiences; Krause; Evo Psych by F. Miele; Religion?; H. Ross v. M. Shermer; ing Rod Bomb Detectors by
Phoenix Lights; Expelled Film; 9/11 Out-of-Body by J. A. Cheyne; UFO Hoax; Orgone Energy; Randi on Randi; Fertility, Immune System;
Conspiracy; Dyson’s Paranormal; Germ Theory Denial by H. Hall; Firewalking; Hall on Homeopathy, Longevity; Biology Curriculum;
Medical Fallacies; Perceptual Dis- Near Death Expereinces by S. Placebo Effect; Flawed Justice Magic in Class; Astrology & Sex;
tortion; Snake Oil; For God; Spirit- Dieguez; ID’s Flagella Myth by M. System; Ape Language; Internet Million Dollar Challenge; Atheist
ual Brain; Postmodernism; DNA Perakh; Wolfram by G. Neske; JR. Matchmaking; Critical Thinking. Stigma; Non-religious by J. A.
Evolution; JR.SKEPTIC: Crystal Skulls. SKEPTIC: Great Skeptics by Loxton. REVIEWS. JR. SKEPTIC: Scooby-Doo. Cheyne; Top 10 Myths
magv16n1-Happiness by S. magv16n2-Origin of Life magv16n3-Islam: Qur’anby magv16n4-UFOs by Simon;

Salerno; Zen by C. Edwards; Mars by Deisler, Jr; New Atheistsby Callahan; Humphreys Interview by Roswellby Borzellieri; Tornados
Effect by A.Y.Panchin; Gardner by Dowd; Accents by Stollznow; Re- Miele; Muslim Creationism by by Prothero; Antioxidantsby Hall;
Randi &Shermer; Genetic Tests by ligion by Purzycki/Gibson; Randi Carrier; Aspartame by Hall: Auto Randi’s $1M; D’Souzaby Dahlen;
Hall; Change Minds by M.J.Kane; On Science;Naturopathy by Hall; Writing by Stollznow; UFO Artifact W.L.Craig by Grubbs; Tuned Uni-
Think Tanksby M.Pigliucci; A. Flew Kurzweil by Edwards; Ayurvedic by Linse & Harrison; Evolution by verse by Sirola; Sound Healing by
by K.Grubbs; Quantum Con by M. Med by Carrier; Universe by Zei- Shtulman; D.Bem’s Precognition Stollznow; Creationist Self Crit by
Bier; Sports by S. Sniderman. JR. gler; 9/11 by Sommers; Stradi- by NGauvrit; Alien Contact by Barnes& Church; Precognition by
SKEPTIC: Griffins by D. Loxton. varius by Barclay; JR. SKEPTIC. Michael; Kraken! by D. Loxton. Wiseman. Fossil Fakes by Loxton.
magv17n2-Climate Q & A magv17n3-Christian U.S.? magv17n 4-Cancer Cures magv18n 1-Mass Murder
by Prothero; Foo Fightersby Lindell; by Callahan; Fetus Myth by Dupuy; by Hall; Free Will by Stenger; Neu- by Hillshafer & by Shermer; Coral
Randi on Hitchens; Energy Medicine Facilitated Com by Hagen; Science/ roethics by Pigliucci; Fact Check Castle by Hancock; Expanding Earth
by Hall; Krauss Interview by Williams; Democracy by Vroman; “Nothing” by by Halper; Jesus Married? by Call- by Prothero; Poltergeist by Bartho-
Shroud of Turin by Loxton; Depres- Sirola,& by Shermer; UFO Physics by ahan; Exorcist by Stollznow; Earth lomew & Nickell; Creationist Dinos
sion by Levine; Psychic by Stollznow; Gainer;Changing Minds by Prichard Grounding by Hall; Howard Bloom by Senter; Sense of Being Stared
Audio Hallucinations by Buckner V & & Christman; Planet Search by Nare- Interview by Miele; Postmodern by At Test by Lohr, et.al.; Electromag-
Buckner; Autism by Polenick/Flora; chania; Genesis byCallahan ; Scien- Davies; Glossolalia by Semenyna netic Sensitivity by Hall; Almanacs
Sleep Paralysisby Love. Moa!-Loxton. tific Models by Woronow;. Live Dinos. /Schmaltz; Ancient Mythbusters. by Stollznow. Ghostbuster Girls!
magv18n 2-Gender by H. Hall; magv18n3-JFK Conspiracies magv18n 4-Ancient Aliens magv19n1-Did Jesus Exist?
Gender Belief Stats by A.Saide; Sci- by D.Reitzes; Paleolithic Science by C.White; Medical Uncertainty by by T. Callahan; Religion/Health by
entology by K.Stollznow; Skeptics Origin by L.Liebenberg; Science H.Hall; Astrology by Randi; Noah’s H. Hall; Faith Healing by D. White:
in Court II by Randi; Magnetic Field Denial Threat by D.Prothero; Hall, Floodby Callahan/Prothero; Psych. James Van Praagh by I. H. Smythe;
Reversalby D.Prothero; The Soulby Randi,& K.Stollznow on Scien- DiagnosisbyLewis; Multiple Person- Sand Creek Ghosts by G.F.Michno;
S.Cave; Nothingby R.L.Kuhn; Film tology; Sovereign Citizen Scam alities by Stern/McDonald; Bigfoot Whistleblowing by F.V. Malmstrom
Skepticsby R.Martoccia; Napoleon by J. Tsidulko; Sylvia Browne by by J. Blais; Satanic Panic by Moran; & D. Mullin; James R. Flynn Inter-
Chagnon Interviewby F.Miele; I. H. Smythe; Radium Craze by Sean Carroll Interview by Trujillo; view by L.Traynor; M.M.O’Hair by
Witch Docs by J. Chapman. Aliens. R. Sutera;. Mermaids by Loxton. Medical Errorsby Levitt. JS. M.Stephens. JS: Sagan by Loxton.
magv19n2-Boston Bombing Conspiracies magv20n1-Terrorism. Terrorism Guide by R. magv20n2-Drug Myths: Carl Hart Interview by
by G. Michael; Randi on M. Gardner; Faith Healing by E. Wackrow; Terrorism Myths by M. Shermer; Terrorism F. Nogueira; Preventative Medicine by H. Hall; Raising
H. Hall; Voynich Manuscript by K. Stollznow; Science and Religion by K. Krause; Colloidal Silver by Harriet Kid’s I.Q.s by C.Tavris; Parenting Myths by S. Hupp & J.
of Memory by C. Tavris; Multiverse & God by R. Grigg: Hall, M.D.; Genius Myth by C. Tavris; Fake Rainmakers Jewell; Calling E.T.by D.Brin; Do Emotions Effect Matter?
Soft Theism by M. Jako; Evolving a Soul by J. Harris; by Peter Olausson; Clever Hans by T. E. Heinzen, S. O. by N. Gauvrit & S.Francfort; Placebos by J.Brissonnet,
Mass Hysteria by R. E. Bartholomew; Probability Lilienfeld, & S. A. Nolan; Testing for Demons by R. Am- trans. by H. Hall; Diet & Heart Health by K. W. Krause;
and Miracles by Alex Boklin; Artificial Intelligence mirati, S. T. Hendrick, &S.O.Lilienfeld; Horror by S.T. Supernatural? by Shermer; Putin’s A. Dugin by R. Zubrin;
Optimism by B. Ferris; K. Sanders Cartoon. JR. Asma; Cow tipping by P. Linse; Quantum Quackery by Near-Death by C. Markum; Pseudo-Math by E. C. Pric-
SKEPTIC: Ghost Photos, Part I by D. Loxton. REVIEWS. J.Harris. JR. SKEPTIC: Hollow Earth by D.Loxton. REVIEWS. hard; JR. SKEPTIC: Hollow Earth II by D.Loxton. REVIEWS.
magv20n3-Alfred Russel Wallace: Species magv20n4-Robert Trivers: Photo Amnesia by magv21n1-Cons by M. Konnikova. DSM-5 by H.
by R. Conniff; Consilience by J.T. Costa; Human Cogni- C.Tavris; Incidentalomas by H.Hall; Tanning Myths by A. Hall; Defining Rape by C.Tavris; U.S. Stonehenge by G.J.
tion by L.Dugatkin; Spiritualism by R.Milner; Flat Earth Becirevic & D.D.Reed; Magic Perception by D.Russell; van‘t Land; ET Paradox by G.Michael; Volney by T.C.
by R. Milner & M. Shermer; Heretic Scientist by M.Sher- Moral Values: M. Hauser v.M. Shermer; Richard Paul Williams; Divine Hurricane Strikes by R.Warren et al;
mer. Internet Civility by C.Tavris; Good Evidence; by H. Tribute by G.Hart; Destiny? by D. Zeigler; Radiation by J. Vaccine War by R. Barglow & M. Schaefer; Pretentious
Hall; Full Moon Test by J.D. Van Dyke; Non-Fine-Tuned A. Siegel &C. W. Pennington; Ben Carson’s Beliefs by Bullshit by J. A. Cheyne & G. Pennycook; Why Cops Kill by
Universe by J.Harris & E. Harris; Science/Theology by D.J. D. Prothero; Moving Tomb by G. J.van ‘t Land; Education D. DeLeon; Video Game Violence by J. Glynn; Morals De-
Navarick; Critical Thinking by J. E. & R.A. Buckner. & Religion by N. M. Baker; God Debate: D. Navarick v.D. bate by S. Harris, M. Shermer & M. Hauser; Review. JR
JR. SKEPTIC: Bat-People Hoax by D. Loxton. REVIEWS. Matson; Reviews. Adamski UFOs by D.Loxton. REVIEWS. SKEPTIC: Haunted Houses by D. Loxton
magv21n2-Uploading the Mind: Plausible by magv21n3-Internet Porn =Sexual Dysfunction? magv21n4-Cancer Care Industry by L. Kirk
K. Hayworth; Implausible by P. Kassan; Mind-Body Prob- “Yes” by P. Zimbardo, G. Wilson & N. Coulombe, “No” by Hagen; Aging Claims by H. Hall; Memory Training by C.
lem by R. L. Kuhn. Flu Shots by H. Hall; Abuse Cycle? by M. Klein. Herbal Hazard by H. Hall; Sex Orientation by C. Tavris; Amityville by R.E.Bartholomew & J. Nickell; Alien
C. Tavris; Extremists & Idealism by T. Dupuy; Islamism by Tavris; Ancient Maya on Google by D.S. Anderson; Paleo Skulls by D. Prothero, A. Bondarev, & T. Callahan; Nazca
P. Boghossian & J.A.Lindsay; Future Terrorism by P. Tor- Diet by A.R.Johnson; Does AA Work? by C.J. Bogart; End- Lines by D. Iammarino; Galactic Defense System by G.
res; Homo naledi by N. H. Lents; HIV Goat Milk Cure by H. Times by P. Torres; Neurophysiology of Bad Dreams by J. Michael; Clown Panics by R. Bartholomew; Spirituality
Hall; Mass Hysteria by R. E. Bartholomew; St Paul by H. A.Cheyne; EM Field Panic by J. Frantsve-Hawley; Poison Defined by D. Speed; Living in a Computer Simulation? by
White; Pro Anti-Science by H. Siegal; ID Declines by D. Gas Attack Myths by R. E. Bartholomew, S. Lockery, & Peter Kassan; Luck and the Mean by G. Smith; Political
Prothero; JR. SKEPTIC: Man-Eating Plants by Loxton A. F. Najm;. REVIEWS. JR. SKEPTIC: Mammoths I by Loxton. Critical Thinking by T. J. Redmond. Reviews. JR. SKEPTIC.
magv22n1-Bill Nye Saves the World. inter- magv22n2- Artificial Intelligence Danger magv22n3- Hancock’s Lost Civilization:
view by M. Shermer; Functional Medicine by H. Hall; AI Concerns by M.Graves; Is AI an Existential Threat? by Joe Rogan Debate by Shermer; Hancock’s Geological
Prejudice by C. Tavris; Miracle Zamzam Water by M. M. Shermer; AI: Simulation or Synthesis by P. Kassan; Claims by M. Defant; Hancock’s Historical Claims by T.
Telias; Lone Wolf Terror by G. Michael; Torturing Data pH Med Myths by H. Hall; Racism Test? by C. Tavris; The Callahan. CONCEPTUAL PENIS HOAX: Why We Published It-
by G. Smith; ET v. Earth Pathogens by T. Callahan; Alt-Right by G. Michael; “Tractor” Quack Device by Shermer; The Hoax by Boghossian/Lindsay; On Hoaxes by
Changing Minds by P. Boghossian; Shoddy Journalism T. Hines; Area 51 by D.R.Prothero; Concept of Race by R. Alan Sokal. Juicing by Hall; Our Angry Era by C.Tavris; CA
by R. E. Bartholomew; Multiverse Trouble by P. Kassan; Khan & B.B. Boutwell; 3 Kinds of Atheism by B. Page & Stem Cell Research by Barglow; Homo naledi News by
Football Playoff Science by M. J. Defant; REVIEWS; D.J.Navarick. REVIEWS: New Ideas; Men Age; Homo Deus; Lents; UFOs/Aliens by Callahan; Taming Foxes by Trut/
JR. SKEPTIC: Baloney Detection for Kids by D. Loxton Science Deniers; Cons. JR. SKEPTIC: Chemtrails by Loxton. Dugatkin; Facts by D. Zeigler. JR SK Zombies by Loxton.
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Richard Dawkins Jared $5. Booklets

An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist
Diamond THE BALONEY DETECTION KIT
This 16-page booklet is designed to hone critical
by Richard Dawkins. Cat.No.b167PB. ($15.99 paperback) A memoir
covering material from Dawkins’ childhood in colonial East Africa The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution thinking skills. What questions to ask, what traps to
through the publication of his world-changing bestselling book and Future of the Human Animal avoid. Specific examples of how the scientific
The Selfish Gene. Told with frankness and eloquence, warmth and by Jared Diamond (b049PB $15. paperback) method is used to test pseudoscience and paranor-
humor. An entertaining and enlightening read. The evolution of human sexuality and science mal claims. Includes a how-to guide in developing
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The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. partners. Why do we grow old and die? The an- Tools for Baloney Detection; Shermer’s Ten Questions For Baloney De-
(b143PB $16.99 paperback) A fierce counterattack against Intelli- imal origins of art. Why do we smoke, drink, tection; How Thinking Goes Wrong: The 25 Fallacies of Thought; Eight
gent Design. Rich layers of scientific evidence: living examples of and use dangerous drugs? The golden age that never was. Sample Syllabi: How to Teach a Course in Science & Pseudoscience;
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Natural Experiments in History
tion by non-random selection. A master vision of life’s splendor. (b138HB $29.95 hardback) Edited by Jared HOW TO DEBATE A CREATIONIST
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. (B113PB $15.95 Diamond and James Robinson. You can’t run PART I: BACKGROUND: Science on Evolution; Sci-
paperback) Dawkins’ most important book to date, his definitive a controlled scientific experiment to discover ence & Religion; Debating a Creationist: Duane T.
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The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. (b123PB $15.95 pa- public, so much poorer? Why did deforestation occur on schools; Why creationism is not science. U.S. Supreme Court ends
perback) A classic. Changed the nature of the study of social biol- some Pacific islands and not others? Why did places con- new creationism.• The Rise of Intelligent Design Theory: Ten I.D.
quered by Napoleon become wealthier than those that were arguments including: The Nature of the Designer; Methodological
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Collapse: How Societies Choose Creationist Cat. No. PB007. 28 pages, 8 1/2 x 11 booklet.
The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond.
Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins. (88PB $18. paperback) What caused some
of the great civilizations of the past to A Skeptic’s Guide To Global Climate
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collapse into ruin, and what can we learn Change by Don Prothoro (148PB $5. paperback)
evolution written in this century. Natural selection—the unconscious, See skeptic.com for multiple copy discounts) The
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Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids by Daniel Loxton Disasters (b147HB $30. hardback) A fasci-
by Carl Sagan, Ed. by Ann Druyan. (B114PB $17. nating read. Describes historic catastrophic
and Donald Prothero. (b150HB $29.95 hardback) An entertain-
paperback) Sagan’s prestigious Gifford Lec- events and the forces that cause them in grip-
ing, educational, and definitive text on cryptids, presenting the
tures on Natural Theology. Considers: psychol- ping detail. These tales of geologic history and
arguments both for and against their existence. Takes on Big-
ogy of belief; possible chemical nature of human fortitude & folly will stay with you long
foot; the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, and its cross-cultural
transcendence; creationism & intelligent de- after you put the book down & leave you with
incarnations; the Loch Ness monster; the evolution of the Great
sign; life on other planets; science as “in- respect for the mighty power of the earth.
Sea Serpent; and Mokele Mbembe, the Congo dinosaur. Analyses
formed worship.” Humorous, wise, and at
Award W
inner!
the psychology behind the persistent belief in paranormal phe-
times stunningly prophetic. Sagan at his best. Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs:
nomena, and discusses the cryptozoology subculture. Evolution, Extinction, and the
Future of Our Planet (b137HB $29.95
hardback) Dr. Donald Prothero discusses the
latest findings and controversies in geology
Sam Harris The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future
of Reason by Sam Harris. (b139PB $13.95 paperback). Harris’
and paleontology, using a personal narrative
style and examples from his own career. A
must read for anyone interested in these pro-
fessions. A section of the book covers the possible reasons for
The Moral Landscape: How Science Can first book was an instant bestseller because of its cogent argu- past radical climate changes and extinctions—from jungles
Determine Human Values by Sam Harris. ments & literary clarity, in which the author argues that because in the Arctic to the frozen snowball earth—and what this
(b141HB $26.95 hardback) Views the experiences of con- of weapons of mass destruction the world can no longer tolerate could mean for us and our current changing climate.
scious creatures as peaks and valleys on a “moral land- violent religions, & that in fact even moderate religious believers
scape.” Definite facts can be known about where we fall only encourage extremists by enabling their supernatural beliefs. Evolution: What the Fossils
on this landscape, so science can go beyond merely de- Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. (b140HB Say and Why It Matters
scribing morality—it should be able to tell us what we $12. hardback) In this tightly reasoned commentary on the state by Donald Prothero. (b127HB $30. hard-
ought to do to live the best lives possible. of religion in America, Sam Harris pulls no punches in his argu- back) Rave reviews! “Best damn evolu-
Waking Up by Sam Harris. Cat.No.b161HB-($20. ments to members of the Christian Right on all matters moral tion book, period!” A great introduction
Hardback) A guide to spirituality without religion. Medi- and political, noting Old Testament law (death for adultery, ho- to the field or get up to speed on the lat-
tation as a rational practice. Important truths from mosexuality, disobedience to parents etc.), and contrasts this Award W est discoveries in the incredibly rich fos-
Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and other saints with, for example, the complete non-violence of Jainism. Harris inner! sil record, with an emphasis on
and sages. Waking Up is part memoir Only Harris— argues that the reliance on dogma can create a false morality, transitional forms. Includes a no holds
a neuroscientist, philosopher, and famous skeptic— which is divorced from the reality of human suffering and the ef- barred critique of the claims of creationism and Intelligent
could write it. AUTOGRAPHED. forts to alleviate it. Quite a bargain for only $12. Design. Over 200 illustrations.
AWARD WINNING
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Shermer Daniel Loxton The AtheismTapes av571DVD. $29.95 (2 DVD set) A Documentary
Ske?tic by Michael Shermer. (b168HB $28. hardback) A Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be Extra with Jonathan Miller Neurologist, playwright, filmmaker & self-described
by Daniel Loxton. (b136HB $18.95) Ages 8–13. Winner of multiple
collection of 75 essays from Shermer’s Scientific Ameri- atheist. Conversations with six of today's leading men of science and letters:
awards. Easy to understand, spectacularly illustrated introduction to
can columns. Features his trademark combination of Richard Dawkins, philosophers Daniel Dennett & Colin McGinn, playwright
deep scientific understanding, scientific concepts and the theory of evolution. How the evidence for evolution was dis-
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mon questions and misunderstandings about evolution. Written Weinberg. These distinguished thinkers discuss their personal intellectual
The Moral Arc by Michael Shermer. (b162HB $32. with warmth and enthusiasm. Outstanding science content. journeys & offer illuminating analyses of belief & disbelief from a wide range
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species’ history? Extensive data suggest we are. Of the
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THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL? The Original
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structs Beliefs & Reinforces Them as Truths ing, heavy-plated dinosaur) saves the day when a T. rex attacks. A
by Michael Shermer. (b149HB $28. hardback) (b149PB surefire hit with young dinosaur lovers. Examines the power of religion, an interview with former Pastor Ted Haggard, the nov-
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reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished. From Pterosaur Trouble (Tales of Prehistoric Life) by Daniel & consequencesof faith inthe 21st century.
our superstitions to our politics, and economics. The neuro- Loxton. (b149HB $16.95) Ages 4 and up. A dramatic paleofiction
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exist—finds himself on the menu for a pack of small feathered av569DVD. $24.95 (3 DVD set) During the filming of Root of All Evil?,
devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.
Velociraptor-like dinosaurs. This photorealistic adventure will de- Richard Dawkins conducted many fascinating interviews. The footage was edited,
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bility. UFOs, ESP, Near Death Experiences, Alien Abductions, by Daniel Loxton. (b153HB $16.95) Ages 4 and up. A group of ple- free online at skeptic.com); Michael Bray; Hell House Pastor Keenan Roberts; Alister
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each) Where does valid science leave off and borderland Dr. Geivett presents the best theological, philosophical, and scientific evidence for
science begin? Examines the theories, the people and the
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ligent Design theory are not science. Why 50% in U.S. emagician’s Guide Nickell (b070PB $15. 115 that will mesmerize young and old alike. Illuminating demonstrations, wildlife, vir-
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worldview? Religion may be the most common source of spir- 3 DVDs. About 7 1/2 hours. Skeptics Society conference hosted by Michael Shermer
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it human nature to be selfish or selfless, fierce or loving, moral aliens. Glossary, bibliography. “Try This” Wonder Workers!
or immoral? Scientific evidence shows that morality is deeply sections encourage critical thinking skills. How They Perform Penn & Teller's Bullshit
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fred Russel Wallace by Michael Shermer (HB081 $55. Geographic's dramatic presentation of Jared Diamond's Pulitizer-Prize win-
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Mind of the Market by Michael Shermer. (b126PB

Lawrence Krauss camera crews follow him around the globe on his quest to explain why some
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$15. paperback) Integrates behavioral economics, neuroe-

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The Question of God
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cation of science & skepticism to reveal that humans are the limits of the known laws of nature, and what humans or aliens could atheism seen through the lives of Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis, with roundtable
just as irrational when it comes to money & markets as do with advanced technologies. A very entertaining read. discussion by Dr. Michael Shermer & eight other panalists.
they are in other areas.
The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience by

A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something
Rather Than Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.
The Original Cosmos Collector’s
Michael Shermer, Ed./Pat Linse, Con. Ed. TWO VOLUMES, (b165PB $16.00) At long last scientists are closing in on answering the Edition by Carl Sagan A beautiful boxed
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cal Documents. Bibliography, Illustrated nothing without the aid or direction of a deity. The definitive tour of our universe. Inspiring! A classic!
EXCELLENT BOOKS NOW AVAILABLE ON SKEPTIC.COM…
Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation by Bill Nye. Sparked by his 2014
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Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life by Daniel C. Dennett. In
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The Great Leveler: Violence and the ALEXANDER
History of Inequality from the Stone Age The Jazz of Physics: The Secret
to the 21st Century Link Between Music and the
Structure of the Universe
DR. ANDREW
SHTULMAN DR. JANNA LEVIN
Scienceblind: Why Our Intuitive Theo- Gravitational Waves, Black Holes,
ries About the World Are So Often and the Nature of the Cosmos
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Why Are We Here? It Matters
DR. CAROL TAVRIS DR. ARTHUR

Mistakes Were Made BENJAMIN
(But Not by Me) The Magic of Math: Solving
for x and Figuring Out Why.
GARY TAUBES Math tricks that will make
The Case Against Sugar you look like a genius!
DR. PRIYAMVADA MICHELLE

NATARAJAN FEYNMAN
Mapping the Heavens: the Radical Sci- The Quotable Feynman,
entific Ideas That Reveal The Cosmos With Dr. LEONARD MLODINOW &
Feynman’s van
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BERGEN DR. LISA RANDALL
What the F: What Swearing Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs:
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Our Brains, and Ourselves of the Universe
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LOST CIVILIZATIONS • OUR ANGRY ERA • ORIGIN OF UFOS & ALIENS • HOAX

DID A MYSTERIOUS UNKNOWN

“Shermer makes a strong

“An ingenious collection of light entertainment for

Order on the colored tear sheet at the back of

“A thrilling and fascinating book, A SKEPTIC’S

About the Skeptics Society

Skeptic (ISSN 1063-9330) is published quarterly

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The Second Cave A Surprising Young Age

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Main sur face

Dinaledi Figure 1 (left)

Figure 2—The Lesedi Chamber

Skeleton location A Skeleton location C: second adult

39 foot (12 meter) vertical shaft Superman’s crawl—

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DIP ITH E CU tchadensis were discussing one of his

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The Real Origin

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Arnold initially said that what he saw looked

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It is conceivable that the alien from The Outer

Dying Races and Alien-Human Hybrids

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How to Tame a Fox

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And here are a few comments in support of me and

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I can assure readers that these writers believe as

highlighting similarities with those of another to

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I then recommended to Hancock that he read Jared

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Feder added that the paintings of Magritte, if * * *

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Figure 3—Two interpretations of the

Figure 5—The Scorpius star

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S KE PTI C M AG AZ I N E volume 22 number 3 2017

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