They’d rather see people engage with the ideas.”Īs Hancock was writing his first book, he says he couldn’t “point out that smoking gun,” but that within the last eight years, mainstream science journals have presented more evidence that prove his theory about the massive extinction. “It’s not enough for an archaeologist to say anymore, ‘Look, I know this is how things are.’ It turns people off now. I think those lies have devalued the currency of authority,” says Hancock, who describes Magicians of the Gods as a fundamentally rebellious book. We know that we’ve been lied to quite often, for example, about the Iraq War. It’s grounded it’s not a conspiracy theory. “There is a deep distrust of authority now.

His message is appealing to younger, social-media-savvy readers, many of whom are cynical about old-school power structures in the aftermath of whistleblowers such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Hancock still has his fair share of naysayers, but it’s a new generation of younger fans who showed up at his recent sold-out 22-stop tour across the U.S. He has now returned with more evidence to back up his first book with its sequel, Magicians of the Gods. The book sold more than 7 million copies worldwide and turned Hancock into an icon of the “alternative history” movement. Some of those sages - or magicians as they were known - were responsible for constructing such wonders as the Sphinx, which Hancock’s book suggests actually predated the ancient Egyptians.Īlthough Hancock’s theories of a lost civilization were dismissed by experts (he’s been referred to as both a pseudoscientist and a “Pyramidiot”), readers didn’t care - and neither did he.

The remaining survivors then canvassed the world, landing in such places as Egypt, Turkey and Peru, in hopes of spreading their wisdom. journalist hypothesized that, 12,800 years ago, a massive, cataclysmic comet had hit the Earth, essentially wiping out a highly advanced ancient civilization. Twenty years ago, when Graham Hancock’s book Fingerprints of the Gods was first published, it caused quite the stir among archaeologists, historians and conspiracy theorists.

Hancock fingerprints of the gods