Andre Costopoulos, University of Alberta
About three years ago, archaeologist Lee Berger and a number of colleagues published a group of papers claiming that Homo naledi, one of our cousins who lived in southern Africa around 300,000 years ago, intentionally buried their dead, and created engravings on the walls of the Rising Star cave system. The articles were accompanied by
Life is change How it differs from the rocks I ve seen their ways too often for my liking New worlds to gain My life is too survive And be alive for you From Crown of Creation, Jefferson Airplane A couple of weeks ago, we had the release of “Einstein Companion,” which the Ars Technica coverage
John Hawks recently published a post on the “uniquely American controversy” on the place of evolutionary ideas in education. In the runup to the centennial of the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” he traces the broad outlines of the substantial Christian Fundamentalist pushback on the introduction of Darwinian and other evolutionary ideas in American public education in
Like all great empires, the American Empire is concerned with the fate of its predecessors (literally, those that went, retired, or died before). Of all its predecessors, the Roman Empire looms large in the American imagination. The idea that American (and Western) men constantly think about Ancient Rome even became a topic of discussion and
My colleague Ruth Gruhn, Emerita in our department, recently showed me a critique of Chariots of the Gods? (the title still had its question mark back then) that she published in the journal Calgary Archaeologist (vol 3) way back in 1975. Even though I am very much aware of Jason Colavito’s work showing that pseudoarchaeology
The Joe Rogan Experience lately seems to have become one of the epicentres of pseudoarchaeology. After Flint Dibble and Graham Hancock, and then Hancock on his own, it was Zahi Hawass’ turn to discuss ‘advanced’ ancient civilizations and other archaeological mysteries on the podcast. Overall, the episode is a useful and informative watch, but there
There has recently been renewed interest in a 2001 Mars Orbiter photo that shows a rectangular feature on the surface of the red planet. It seems the feature is about 250 metres per side. Joe Rogan has declared the photo “f-ing wild,” and even Elon Musk has chimed in, saying that astronauts need to be
In S12 E8 of The Curse of Oak Island presents us with a new glass trade bead recovered from the increasingly interesting Lot 5 structure. This isn’t the first time we see beads come out of the Lot 5 excavations (see here for last year’s find), but every bead tells a story, and this one
Graham Hancock was again a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience on October 17th, presumably in support of the release of season two (The Americas) of his Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse on October 16th. The opening move Hancock and Rogan begin by complaining that they were duped by archaeologist Flint Dibble (who was just given
Tony Trupp recently asked this question on twitter. It’s not a new question, but given the impending release of Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse: The Americas, it’s a good time to give it some thought. I have long argued that archaeologists must be an active and vocal presence in the public conversation about archaeology, and about