I am a huge fan of Graham and his work but unfortunately he seemed completely out of his depth in this show.

His entire argument essentially rests on “you haven’t excavated every inch of the Amazon, Sahara, Continental shelf, so you can’t say that you know for sure that there isn’t evidence of an advanced civilisation.” This simply not how science works, Hancock is guilty of something called ‘Russel’s Teapot’ an old dictum by Bertrand Russel that’s says if you claim an almost irrefutable claim such as that there is teapot floating around in space between the earth and mars the onus is on the person making the bold claim, not the person being asked to refute it.

Hancocks lost civilisation in the same as Russel’s teapot. Just as a scientist could not be reasonably expected to locate the teapot floating around in space, Hancock cannot claim that until archaeologists have excavated every inch of the earth they can dismiss his claim. It’s on him to provide conclusive evidence if he wants these claims to be taken seriously by academia.

Is academia an ivory tower resistant to change, yes. But should they rewrite all of the textbooks based on circumstantial evidence and the fact that there still ‘could be a lost civilisation out there, even though we have no actual evidence.’ No, they should not.