Investigating YouTuber Miniminuteman

Introduction

On March 7th 2023, archaeologist Dr John Hoopes from the University of Kansas wrote a Tweet in support of Milo Rossi aka Miniminuteman, noting that Episode 1 of his YouTube series, ‘I watched Ancient Apocalypse so you don’t have to’ had

“…received over a million views in less than a week. That’s a great sign for popular interest in critical thinking and the debunking of pseudoarchaeology. Bravo Miniminuteman!”.¹

The archaeological community has upheld Rossi as a bastion of archaeological integrity in their perceived fight against ‘pseudoarchaeology’. This article investigates who Miniminuteman is and whether he is who he claims to be.

Chapter One: “Miniminuteman is an archaeologist”

Investigating the claim that Milo Rossi aka Miniminuteman is an archaeologist

On his YouTube channel, Milo Rossi aka Miniminuteman describes himself as an “archaeologist, environmental scientist, author and conspiracy debunker”:²

In October 2023, Quarto Books published a book by Milo Rossi entitled, The Encylopedia of the Weird and Wonderful. This is Rossi’s author bio as it appears on the Quarto Books site:

“Milo Rossi is an environmental scientist, archaeologist, and science educator residing near Boston, Massachusetts. Milo has an incredible audience of 1.8M followers on TikTok and 910K subscribers on YouTube.

With an insatiable interest in our planet’s history and human evolution, Milo has leveraged his effusive personality to teach a rapidly growing audience about archaeology, prehistory, and travel discovery. Graduating from the University of Maine in 2022, Milo’s expertise of interdisciplinary sciences and their truths inspires learning among a far-reaching audience with an engaging teaching style and quick-witted humor. The Encyclopedia of the Weird and Wonderful is Milo’s first published book.”³

On his LinkedIn profile, Milo Rossi describes himself as having graduated in 2022 with a BS undergraduate degree in Environmental Science from the University of Maine.⁴ This is the description of BS in Environmental Science at the University of Maine, as listed on the University of Maine website:

“It is widely understood that human and environmental health are facing serious problems across the globe, and that understanding–and solving–these problems requires comprehensive study. Ecology and Environmental Sciences (EES) is an interdisciplinary B.S. Degree program that emphasizes the inextricable link between humans and the environment. Students in the program receive solid training in the natural and social sciences. Our outstanding faculty spans a breadth of disciplines including geosciences, soils, biology, ecology, environmental sciences, economics, policy and more. In addition to our B.S., we also offer a Minor in Ecology and Environmental Science, a Minor in Soil Science, and a Minor in Sustainability.”⁵

On 22 January 2022, Historian Dr David Miano published a video on his YouTube channel, ‘World of Antiquity’ entitled, ‘Pseudo Archaeology: What is it?’. To explain what he thinks constitutes pseudoarchaeology, he first describes what he thinks archaeology is:

“Archaeology is partly the discovery of material remains, partly the meticulous work of the scientific analyst, and partly the exercise of creative imagination. It is not merely a set of beliefs. It is a practice. It’s something that you do. If a person engages in the creative part of archaeology but does not conduct the meticulous work, that person is not doing archaeology. Yes, archaeology can be considered a humanistic discipline, because it’s aim is to assist us in understanding humans, but it is also a scientific enterprise. The material record doesn’t just tell us directly what to think. It needs to be interpreted. Archaeologists need to make sense of what is found, and they can do this only by engaging in scientific analysis. Just as a scientist collects data (evidence), conducts experiments, formulates a hypothesis (which is a proposition to account for the data), tests the hypothesis against more data, and then devises a model (which is a description that seems best to summarize the pattern observed in the data), so does an archaeologist.”⁶

According to the Society for American Archaeology (SAA):

“While historians and archaeologists both use written documents to learn about the past, only archaeologists interpret archaeological sites. That involves unique field work.”⁷

On 12 December 2023, professional field/CRM archaeologist Justin Langlois, aka “Daskalos”, posted a YouTube video, ‘An Archaeologist reacts to Milo Rossi’ on his archaeology channel. Langlois introduces his video by saying:

“So, a need for this video came about from my Discord [social networking app] and a couple of friends of mine – they asked me my opinion on this Milo Rossi guy and his exploration of the Guadalupe ruins. Now, in full transparency, I’ve watched a little bit of this video already, and I was a little disappointed. For somebody who does stuff in archaeology and does education in archaeology, he does sort of tend to say things off the cuff and give you some bad information. So, what I’m going to do is watch the video and stop it from time to time and make my comments as an actual archaeologist, a professional archaeologist, who currently works in the field…”⁸

During the first ten minutes of his video, Langlois critiques Rossi’s background information about the Guadalupe ruins, noting that it’s “factually incorrect” multiple times. He concludes that “more research probably would have been better before he started this whole series.”

According to the Archaeological Institute of America on its web page ‘A Career in Archaeology’:

“Archaeology is, first and basically, manual labor. The idea is to remove dirt carefully enough that we can tell exactly how things came to be situated as they were, and to record it carefully enough that we can reconstruct what happened in the past. We dig carefully because we want to know the context of every find – that’s actually the single most important piece of information we are after. Knowing the context of something can make all the difference in how we understand it. For example, how differently would you interpret the meaning and use of an ancient oil lamp if you found it in a temple vs. in a grave?”⁹

Recording and preserving the context of an artefact, which involves recording the exact location the artefact has been found without disturbing it, is indeed the most important data that every archaeologist seeks. About this, Langlois confronts Rossi directly, saying:

“Look, I don’t know a single archaeologist who would tell you to pick up a piece of pottery and put it on a rock with other ones. First off, putting them on rocks drives us insane… Do better man, don’t tell your subscribers to pick up artefacts, you are removing the artefacts from their context and this is a bad thing, that is not a good thing, just don’t do that, just leave them where they’re at okay, just don’t mess with them.”

Langlois then reiterates that he’s “a little disappointed that someone who does archaeology content would be suggesting you do stuff like that” and notes that “maybe he doesn’t know any better”. He also reacts to Rossi’s statement to his viewers – that they can correct him in the comments section of his video, by saying:

“So, I’m not going to fill you in on the comments, but I am going to make this video to fill you in, because there’s a lot of shaky information that is being put out.”¹⁰

As an archaeologist, Langlois also felt compelled to explain why it’s wrong to sit on or touch an ancient site. He again confronts Rossi directly by saying:

“Milo, be better my friend, because that is very bad. And again, I’ve mentioned it before, with your subscriber count, you really should be showing people better practices than that. So please, if you’re ever out at the ruins, don’t touch them, don’t sit on them, lean on them, climb on them… it’s up to people like us that visit places like that to take care of them and to not… do that.”¹¹

Langlois then responds to Rossi’s exclamation that “it’s kind of amazing to touch these stones” with:

“…It is not amazing to touch the stones, you should not be touching the stones, so please don’t touch the ruins, I’ve said it before but he really shouldn’t be saying stuff like that because then 1.5million subscribers might go out and actually start touching stuff and then, you know, things start falling apart a lot faster. Please don’t touch the ruins – he probably didn’t know any better – but I’m telling you… that is bad practice, very bad practice.”¹²

Langlois concludes that:

“Generally speaking, I really like what he’s doing here. However, Milo, if you’re watching this… my opinion, as an archaeologist – not a YouTuber, an archaeologist – is, one: do a bit more research, maybe a little bit broader research, you know, multiple sources, that way you’re not stuck with one thing. Little mistakes like great house versus great kiva, stuff like that. The whole civilisation nitpicking with Mesa Verde, Chaco and Ancestral Puebloan and stuff like that, it’s not incorrect – well some of it is – but definitely the things that are not incorrect are giving the wrong impression. Also, the bad advice and the bad behaviour that you are showing to your subscribers is just perpetuating that bad behaviour to them, so the picking up of the sherds and telling them that it’s okay to relocate them is not okay – touching ruins, touching artefacts, all of that stuff is not okay. So I challenge you to be better with this, because you’ve got the platform, you’ve got the viewership, and you could do so much better if you didn’t tell people to do the wrong thing. And again, I haven’t seen the rest of the videos, so I don’t know if it’s that way with all of them. But those are my big nitpicks with the whole thing and some of them aren’t nitpicks, some of them are pretty hardline stuff.”¹³

In a video reply published in January 2024 entitled ‘Archaeological Ethics: Debunking Myself’, Rossi states that after a ninety minute call with Langlois, he’s ready to respond to his criticism. He admits that:

“Interacting with the site, pretty much period, is a big nono in archaeology. And so what I wanted to do is use this as a teaching and learning experience for all of us and go over probably the first thing that they teach you in the fundamentals of archaeology class, which is the archaeological code of ethics. For those of you that don’t know, there is a archaeological code of ethics outlined by the Society of American Archaeology that talks about the guidelines that every archaeologist should have when working in the field. So I wanted to go over them to address where I misstepped to be able to sort of rectify it and also give you guys the tools that you need in order to identify archaeological malpractice in the future. So to make very clear the sort of things you’re not supposed to do: moving potsherds – do not move potsherds. In that video I said you can kind of put them near signs or people will make piles of them – don’t do that. Now this one is one that was a little bit embarrassing to be called out on I have to admit, because that’s something I really should know better about, I’ll be the first to admit that – but I think my enthusiasm kind of overtook me there. I’m also not one who has done extensive work in the American southwest, it’s only been like tangential reading about it, I’ve never done fieldwork there, and so I’m sort of unfamiliar with that environment. A lot of my archaeological studies in college were on the shell middens in Maine and a lot of what we were talking about there was layers of stratigraphy, where obviously you don’t want to disturb the context, you don’t want to dig into it and rip things out, because the moment you move it from where it was, you have destroyed the most important information you can get from it, which is where it sits in the strata. But when I would go out west and you know it’s a river bed full of these potsherds, you’re like man it’s a riverbed, this stuff’s all been washed around, you know, what’s the like how can moving it do that much damage, but it does because archaeologists can look at you know the flow of the river, they can identify where these sherds have come from. And more importantly, if you end up putting the sherds in one place, that may be great for people like you and I who want to go there and just look at them, but people will steal them. People suck.”¹⁴

Rossi presents ‘Principle No. 1’ of the Society for American Archaeology’s archaeological code of ethics, of which he was unaware:

Echoing the Archaeological Institute of America and the Society for American Archaeology, Rossi reiterates that “this one really is the kind of fundamental big boy one number one, which is don’t disturb the context.”¹⁵

As part of his conclusion, Rossi confirms who he intends to be to his audience:

“…Yeah I’m an archaeologist, I’m an environmental scientist, I’m an author, but my big thing is that I’m a science communicator, this is my job, it’s talking to you, you know I don’t have a shovel in my hand right now. And outreach is the most important thing that we have, because the moment that the academic world stops engaging with the public, it drives people towards f*cking pseudoscience….¹⁶

On June 25^th 2022, Rossi featured in a live stream hosted by ancient history professor Dr David Miano, called ‘Awful Archaeology’. In a video posted by Dr Miano in December 2023, entitled, ‘Beware of These Words (with Miniminuteman) | Livestream highlights’, Rossi states his opinion about what constitutes valid credentials for talking about archaeology.

The conversation begins with them agreeing that their viewers should watch out for people who talk about archaeology and describe themselves as ‘authors’ or ‘researchers’, because ‘these people’ are likely ‘pseudoarchaeologists’ who invent the title ‘author’ or ‘researcher’ to make themselves sound like they are authorities.

“I find it really funny,” giggles Rossi, “when someone who clearly does not have a very good grasp on the reality of a topic is labelled as just an author because they don’t have the credentials to be anything else. Like, they have no formal archaeology training”

“Yeah! And if you don’t believe you need credentials, then you don’t need to make up a fake credential, right?” postulates Dr Miano,

“Exactly!” exclaims Rossi,

“You don’t have to say I’m a researcher or whatever, you could just say, I’m just me” reiterates Dr Miano,

“Yeah, exactly!” exclaims Rossi again,

“But the fact that they want to put something there, to make it sound like they have credentials,” Dr Miano chuckles, to which Rossi responds,

“Yeah, that’s something that I’ve definitely noticed a lot in my time doing this, because archaeology is a field that is stereotyped as being this highly academic field, which it is, by and large – you know, many of the people I met in college are lifetime career archaeologists – but that’s something I’ve noticed a lot when doing my videos: I don’t know what to label myself as, because it would make me feel like a fraud to say that I am an archaeologist when I have like [a?] training in it – I haven’t been out on a dig, you know, so it’s like I don’t want to claim that, when in reality that title requires a lot of, you know, research and a lot of time and investment to say that. So I’m just like “I’m Milo, I talk about this stuff, you guys know I’ve been researching it, you know, my whole life, I’m a researcher. But you know, I don’t feel the need to like make up some title to try and make myself sound like, you know, I know better than I am.”¹⁷

Chapter Two: “Miniminuteman is a pseudoarchaeologist”

Investigating the claim that Milo Rossi aka Miniminuteman is a pseudoarchaeologist

As evidenced in Chapter One, Milo Rossi aka Miniminuteman is on record stating that:

• He is an archaeologist;¹⁸

• He is not an archaeologist, because he hasn’t been adequately trained;¹⁹

• If he were to call himself an archaeologist, he’d feel like a fraud.²⁰

Defining ‘pseudoarchaeologist’

According to the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), ‘archaeology’ is:

“The scientific excavation and study of ancient human material remains.”²¹

This is consistent with the Society for American Archaeology’s (SAA) statement that:

“While historians and archaeologists both use written documents to learn about the past, only archaeologists interpret archaeological sites. That involves unique field work.”²²

Indeed, archaeologists and historians both interpret the past, yet archaeologists also apply the scientific method to human material culture.

While history is an art or a social science, archaeology is both a social science and a physical science; what distinguishes an archaeologist from an historian is that they also obtain and analyse empirical data.

According to the Oxford Languages Dictionary, the prefix ‘pseudo’ is defined as:

not genuine; spurious or sham;

a pretentious or insincere person;

supposed or purporting to be but not really so; false; not genuine;

resembling or imitating.²³

By logical deduction, a preliminary definition of a ‘pseudoarchaeologist’ is, therefore:

• An inauthentic (“not genuine”), fake archaeologist – someone who calls themselves an archaeologist when they lack adequate qualifications or training (a “sham”);

• Someone who calls themselves an archaeologist to make it seem like they’re an authority on archaeology when they’re not (“pretentious”);

• The opposite of a real archaeologist, who possesses the title ‘archaeologist’ because they not only possess adequate qualifications or training but also follow the scientific method that the discipline prescribes;

• Someone who imitates or resembles an archaeologist by applying methods to human material remains that are unique to archaeology practice, rather than another practice like history or environmental science.

It seems that Dr Miano, in his video, ‘Pseudo Archaeology: What is it?’, could agree with the abovementioned points on what constitutes a ‘pseudoarchaeologist’:

“What exactly is pseudoarchaeology? Well, the literal meaning is “fake archaeology”, that is, something that is not archaeology, which is masquerading as archaeology…”

He goes on:

“Now, what if a person formulates a hypothesis and devises a model, but fails to collect all the necessary data, neglects to conduct experiments, and doesn’t test the hypothesis against more data? Is that person practising archaeology? If they fail to perform all the steps, no. They can be great at the speculative phase of archaeology, the creative part of it. They can dabble a bit in the data, even doing a small measure of analysis on a small number of artefacts. But if their data collection falls far short of what is needed for the subject, or if their experimentation is sorely lacking – in other words, they don’t even come close to performing the necessary work – they are not practising archaeology. They are, in fact, doing pseudoarchaeology.”²⁴

However, Dr Miano goes on to contradict himself somewhat by saying:

“Someone might say, “Well, it can only be called pseudoarchaeology if the person is claiming to be doing archaeology. What about cases when a person is drawing conclusions without ever calling themselves an archaeologist?” If the person is making claims about the past, using material remains as evidence, they are performing the same function as an archaeologist, just as a person who offers medical advice is performing the same function as a physician.”²⁵

This statement about the functions of an archaeologist begs two questions:

• Is it true that if a person makes claims about the past using material remains as evidence, they are performing the same function as an archaeologist, by default?

• Is it true that if a person advises someone about a medical matter, they are performing the same function as a physician, by default?

In other words, is a person who isn’t a physician and who medically advises another who’s suffering with a medical condition, by default a “pseudo-physician”?

Or is a person who isn’t an archaeologist and who makes claims about the past using material remains as evidence, by default a “pseudoarchaeologist”?

…Of course not, because the prefix ‘pseudo’ is more nuanced than that, and so are the definitions of ‘archaeologist’ and ‘physician’.

If a person calls themselves a physician or pretends to be one when they’re not, then they’re no doubt a “pseudo-physician”, because they’ve not been trained to follow the methods and processes undertaken by qualified physicians, and they’re deceiving the person that they’re advising.

If, however, it’s already known that the person is not a physician, or if they state “I’m not a physician, but this worked for me, so you could explore it as a possibility,” then they’re not a “pseudo-physician”, they’re someone who’s giving medical advice.

In a similar vein, the scientific method that Dr Miano states archaeologists must abide by to practice archaeology rather than pseudoarchaeology – formulating a hypothesis, devising a model, collecting data, conducting experiments and testing the hypothesis with more data – is not the same function as interpreting the past by using results obtained by archaeologists.

As explored earlier, interpretation of the past without scientific experimentation is an art, humanity or social science, and can be undertaken by historians or journalists as well as archaeologists (historians interpret the past more often than the present, whereas journalists interpret the present more often than the past).

Dr Miano, who possesses the title ‘ancient historian’, is qualified to interpret the past for this very reason. According to his logic, he’d be a ‘pseudoarchaeologist’ otherwise.

Logic follows that if a person doesn’t claim to, or attempt to, obtain results from human material remains, which is exclusively the job of an archaeologist, and instead claims to interpret the past by using results obtained by archaeologists, they’re not practising fake archaeology, but something else, and the label ‘pseudoarchaeologist’ should not apply.

If, however, a person does claim to be an archaeologist, yet they have not followed the scientific method prescribed by the institution of archaeology that distinguishes it from other disciplines like history or journalism, then they could justifiably be referred to as a pseudoarchaeologist (a “fake archaeologist”).

Investigating Rossi’s research method and process, and his intention

One of Dr Miano’s final statements in his video ‘What is Pseudo Archaeology’ is:

“…If a person reaches a conclusion that is in harmony with the mainstream consensus of history, but doesn’t engage in the process scientifically, that person is doing pseudoarchaeology. The word pseudoarchaeology has nothing to do with whether a theory is correct. It’s not what that matters, it’s the how. And so, measuring an object poorly or incompletely, failing to take into account all the evidence on the subject and drawing far-reaching conclusions from it is pseudoarchaeology.”²⁶

Langlois has not been the only professional archaeologist to respond to Rossi’s archaeology videos. On August 24^th 2022, archaeologist Dr Brad Hafford published a video on his YouTube channel, ‘Artifactually Speaking’ entitled, ‘The Baghdad Battery? Archaeologist Reacts!’, in response to episode 6 of Rossi’s video series, ‘Awful Archaeology’.

Dr Hafford introduces his video by saying:

“Milo does a great job of debunking conspiracy theories that have to do with ancient artefacts and archaeological sites. Most archaeologists don’t spend a lot of time trying to do that…It’s a really interesting series of videos that he does and I hope he continues. Now, this particular object is related to some conspiracies but it actually could be what people claim it is, and that is an ancient battery. And it’s closer to my field of expertise – I’m a Near Eastern archaeologist, I work primarily in Iraq…”²⁷

Dr Hafford admits that some of what he himself said about ‘the Baghdad Battery’ on a podcast – after doing “very basic research on it” – was wrong. He explains:

“…This is the kind of research most people do: if you search for the Baghdad Battery you’re going to find some basic things, but you’re not going to find the original data, you’ve got to dig for that. And so I became more and more interested in it after I did the podcast and after I’d heard that Milo was going to be covering it. So I’m going to watch Milo, see what he has to say, interrupt sometimes and say what I have found and talk about how that compares with what he’s saying.”²⁸

After correcting the inaccuracies and inconsistencies in Rossi’s contextual information about the artefacts, Dr Hafford goes on to critique his analysis of the artefacts themselves. He points out:

“When Milo says we don’t know anything about [the Baghdad Batteries] in situ, about the ones at Seleukia we absolutely do know, and it is very interesting…”²⁹

And directly after, in response to another statement by Rossi, he explains:

“Okay, not all this is true, he’s talking about the Seleukia ones now, and none of those had an iron rod inside, only the one at Khyut Rabu’a had that. Three of them had copper cylinders and all three of those had papyrus, so he’s wrong when he says one had papyrus. And the one that didn’t have a copper cylinder had the remains of a glass flask in it. And it was standing upright, the others were all lying down. So, it’s a confusion of information here and we’re not hearing the full story.”³⁰

In other words, Rossi assessed the artefacts poorly and failed to take all of the necessary information on the topic into account, thus creating a confusion of information, and an incomplete and inaccurate analysis of the topic. Such is Dr Miano’s statement about what constitutes ‘pseudoarchaeology’.³¹ This is also a criticism that Langlois expresses about Rossi’s method, albeit in other words.³²

Indeed, Rossi’s interpretation of the artefacts culminates in his exceedingly confident claim:

“Now again, I want to make really really clear while we have all four of these drawn, that only one of them has the asphalt plug and the iron rod in it. The other three are functionally completely different from one another…”³³

To which Dr Hafford responds:

“And I want to make really clear that this is not the full story and we’re looking at conflated information here. We do have only the one with an iron rod so he is right in many cases, I’m not trying to make fun of him, I’m just saying that as so many people have done, it’s really hard to get the real information, so they’ve made mistakes. And even with all of the information I’m not necessarily right, I don’t know what these really are, but when he says that the others are functionally different, I think he’s wrong, I think these are functionally the same, they just have variations. And remember that his drawing shows four identical jars, they’re not identical, even the Seleukia one. Two of them were missing that neck… if you break that neck off, you get what looks like a Badghdad jar or Badghdad Battery, you’ve got the copper in them, the bitumen in them, and the papyrus in them. So I think it’s not right to say they’re functionally different.”³⁴

So, where Dr Hafford admits that he doesn’t really know what the artefacts were used for, Rossi claims that he knows that they were functionally completely different; and where Dr Hafford came to his tentative conclusion based on the original excavation reports where the archaeological data is reported, Rossi draws his exceedingly confident conclusion based on spurious secondary sources whose information departs from the archaeological data.

Again, in reference to Dr Miano’s definition of ‘pseudoarchaeology’: Rossi goes on to draw an “inaccurate, far-reaching conclusion” from his secondary sources in stating:

“There was some theorisation that these ones did also contain an iron rod at some point, because there were other iron rods found at the grave site supposedly, but again we have no records of the grave site, and we have no evidence that these were implemented as part of this apparatus. So every single thing that we have to support this conspiracy going forward is based off of just this, a single jar… The final piece of “evidence” that König found to suggest to him that this was some sort of electric cell was the presence of a residue which suggested an electrolyte within the container.”³⁵

To which Dr Hafford immediately responds:

“König never says that, he did not have proof of acid. So there’s another very good article written by Emmerich Paszthory in 1985 – it was written in German, so a lot of people aren’t reading it, but it analyses all of the evidence. It does a great job. He did some scientific analysis of these objects after a exhibit in Germany that included the Baghdad Battery and other versions of it. And when he analysed it he did find carbonates, which are deterioration products from the lead. He never talks about an acid corrosion, and no-one really does. There’s one mention [referring to an article published in the Guardian online] that says after the war – meaning World War II – someone looked at this and found acid corrosion, and Milo often says, especially about conspiracy theorists, that they’ll refer to an experiment and they won’t tell you what was found, or how it was done. You have to have the experiment and understand that it was using good techniques or whatever – so there we go.”³⁶

So, where Rossi claims there are no records of the grave site, Dr Hafford shows us that there are; where Rossi claims that there’s no evidence that the iron rods were found in situ with the jars, Dr Hafford shows us that they were; where Rossi claims that all evidence has been obtained from a single artefact, Dr Hafford shows us that evidence has been obtained from at least eleven artefacts;³⁷ and where Rossi claims that ‘the Baghdad Battery’ is a conspiracy, Dr Hafford demonstrates that some of the artefacts were scientifically analysed and found to hypothetically function as batteries, and that there’s another interpretation of them that’s better attested by the archaeological record, which is that they had a “ritual” function.³⁸

To summarise Dr Hafford’s main criticisms of Rossi’s interpretation of ‘the Baghdad Battery’ (albeit in more direct language than his own):

• Rossi does not find enough evidence to suggest that the artefacts could have been batteries, because he did not look for, or use, the archaeological (primary) data and instead uses spurious secondary sources;

• Since Rossi failed to use the archaeological data, he misunderstood the artefacts;

• Since Rossi misunderstood the artefacts, he misrepresents the leading interpretation by archaeologists, which is – contrary to Rossi’s claims – sufficiently evidenced;

• Rossi misinforms his viewers about the artefact and various interpretations of it.

In other words, Rossi’s data collection falls far short of what is needed for the subject, and he doesn’t come close to performing the necessary work. Such is also Dr Miano’s definition of what constitutes pseudoarchaeology.³⁹

Like his communication with Langlois, Rossi chose to correspond with Dr Hafford by publishing a video reply. At around fifteen minutes in to this reply, Rossi responds to Dr Hafford’s reference to the Albert Al-Haik article, which Dr Hafford describes as being a reliable source on the original excavations, due to the author’s direct connection with the relevant museum in Iraq.⁴⁰

Dr Hafford educates us on who, according to the Al-Haik article, recovered the Khyut Rabu’a artefact, to which Rossi responds by addressing him directly:

“Aha! Well, I guess we do know who found it. Well, I didn’t know who found it but he knows who found it, and I’m very impressed. I’m curious about the reference paper you’re discussing here – is this from a personal collection or a local library or was this was an online source? Because I’m no longer enrolled at my university and I’m having a really hard time accessing scientific papers and stuff like that. There is definitely uh some issue in getting my hands on primary documents when they are locked behind paywalls and I can’t find another way to get them. So I’m curious about where you found this source because this is a wealth of information on the topic, I wish I had this for my video.”⁴¹

The Al-Haik article is not, however, a primary source on the subject – those are the original 1930s excavation papers. The Al-Haik paper is rather a relatively reliable secondary source, due to its provenance.

When Dr Hafford then explains how Rossi misrepresents how the artefacts were recovered, Rossi replies:

“That is something which was not only not talked about, but it was discussed incorrectly in almost every single one of the papers uh that I read. The one jar became four jars and the location where it was found ended up being somewhere fifteen miles away from Baghdad, instead of only four. So, interesting how information changes over time if there’s no-one there to fact-check it.”⁴²

Trouble is, Rossi doesn’t disclose the sources he used, and a brief internet search brings up at least two open access articles that cite the original primary documents that Rossi admits he was unaware of, and that were fundamental to the reliability and utility of his research.

For example, the scientific analysis that Emmerich Paszthory undertook in 1985, which Dr Hafford states is only written and available in German was, in fact, not only translated to English and published in a book edited by Stuart Fleming and Helen Schenck in 1989, but is also available to read for free on Google Books.⁴³

It’s this source that Dr Hafford describes as being “really hard to get” and doing “a great job” of “analysing all the evidence” associated with ‘the Baghdad Battery’. Indeed, in citing all of the original excavation papers, this article acts as a good starting point from which the original archaeological data can be sourced.

Another that presents itself upon a brief search for open access articles on ‘the Baghdad Battery’ is by Allan A. Mills, published in 2001 in the 68^th Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society.⁴⁴ Upon typing ‘Baghdad Battery’ into Google Scholar, a free PDF of this paper presents itself within seconds. This paper again cites the primary sources on the topic.

As to the primary sources themselves, using Leroy Waterman’s original report on the four artefacts recovered in 1930 at Seleukia, as an example: Clearly listed in the references of both the Mills and Paszthory papers is Waterman’s report, published originally as a book by the University of Michigan Press. Logic follows that the University of Michigan would hold copies of the data. Indeed, the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library repository called ‘Leroy Waterman Papers, 1887-1972’, contains all of the relevant archaeological data – in ‘Box 4’ to be precise – of which digital copies are available to purchase inexpensively.⁴⁵ Anyone can sign up for a research account and order digital copies of these files through the library’s duplication service.⁴⁶ This type of archival research is fundamental to professional history and archaeology practice, which Rossi evidently – at least for this video – did not attempt.

In the event that one is unable to access digital copies of the data via the Waterman archives, Waterman’s original book published by University of Michigan Press is available to purchase online. At the time of this investigation, two copies are available for sale in the US via second hand book marketplace Abe Books alone:⁴⁷

Comprehending Rossi’s claim that these tax-deductible expenses acted as a barrier to his research is a challenge. According to social media account auditor SpeakerJ, Rossi’s ‘Miniminuteman’ YouTube channel is estimated to earn him a daily amount of between ~$1,500 and ~$34,200 and a monthly amount of between ~$45,600 and $1,000,000 based on his existing 1,800,000 YouTube subscribers, his historic average views, his historic average video uploading frequency, and SPEAKRJ’s CPM range – his TikTok, Instagram and author income not included.⁴⁸

Whether or not Rossi’s videos are factually correct or ethically sound, he gains abundantly per video. As stated on the Wikipedia page on pseudoarchaeology:

“Prominent academic archaeologist Colin Renfrew stated his opinion that it was appalling that pseudoarchaeologists treated archaeological evidence in such a “frivolous and self-serving way”, something he believed trivialised the “serious matter” of the study of human origins.”⁴⁹

The Wikipedia page on pseudoarchaeology also notes that:

“Academics like John R. Cole, Garrett G. Fagan and Kenneth L. Feder have argued that pseudoarchaeological interpretations of the past were based upon sensationalism, self-contradiction, fallacious logic, manufactured or misinterpreted evidence, quotes taken out of context and incorrect information.”⁵⁰

As highlighted by Dr Hafford and Justin Langlois in Chapter One and Chapter Two herewith, incorrect information, sensationalism, and manufactured and misinterpreted evidence all feature in Rossi’s videos on ‘the Baghdad Battery’ and the Guadalupe ruins.

Ordinarily, Wikipedia is an unreliable source of information due to the anonymity of its editors. On March 30th 2023, however, in response to a comment on Twitter, archaeologist Dr John Hoopes from Kansas University claimed editorship of this specific Wikipedia page:

Around three weeks before that exchange, as noted earlier, Dr Hoopes had applauded Rossi for his debunking of pseudoarchaeology:

On Dr Hoopes’ Wikipedia page on ‘Pseudoarchaeology’, he also notes that:

“Academic critics have stated that pseudoarchaeologists typically neglect to use the scientific method. Instead of testing evidence to see what hypotheses it satisfies best, pseudoarchaeologists force the archaeological data to fit a “favored conclusion” that is often arrived at through hunches, intuition, or religious or nationalist dogma… Pseudoarchaeological groups have a variety of basic assumptions which are typically unscientific… many of pseudoarchaeology’s proponents claim that they gained their conclusions using scientific techniques and methods, even when it is demonstrable that they have not.”⁵¹

Having gathered the points made by Dr Hoopes et al on their Wikipedia page, it’s their opinion that a pseudoarchaeologist is someone precisely like Rossi, who:

• Gains abundantly from his factually incorrect and ethically irresponsible videos;

• interprets the past according to sensationalism, misinterpreted evidence and incorrect information;

• calls themselves an archaeologist when they lack sufficient qualifications or training;

• claims to practise the scientific method when they demonstrably neither use original archaeological reports to formulate their interpretations, nor obtain data from sites.

The fifth point that Dr Hoopes et al give on what constitutes a pseudoarchaeologist, is that they force archaeological data to fit a favoured conclusion or assumption.⁵²

In his introduction to his video series, ‘Awful Archaeology’, Rossi explains part of his method:

“Howdy friends my name is Milo and welcome to Awful Archaeology, the show where I spin this bingo wheel… in order to randomly pick one of these archaeological conspiracy theories to talk about in depth. As you may remember once upon a time I did have a roulette wheel that I would spin and then pick the archaeological conspiracies that way, but for those of you don’t know I managed to lose the wheel – how you lose something that is digital, I don’t know… so going forward every single episode of this progressively more painful series is going to be picked by this ball of balls. Last episode we talked about the Dendera light, an Egyptian carving which conspiracy theorists will claim is proof that ancient Egyptians had working electric lights. At the time when we filmed that video, I was still between random picking methods and so I decided to just pick the next conspiracy myself and I decided it would make a lot of sense to stick with a theme of ancient electricity conspiracy theories, which is why, ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present to you this episode of Awful Archaeology where I will be telling you everything you need to know about ‘the Baghdad Battery’.”⁵³

So for each episode, Rossi picks a topic from a list of “archaeological conspiracy theories”. This means that unless he undertook comprehensive research on all 75 topics on the list in advance of the series – which, after investigating the response of professional archaeologist Dr Hafford to episode 6 on the Baghdad Battery, he demonstrably did not – he approaches research on each topic with the question:

How is this a conspiracy theory?

…rather than with the question:

Is this a conspiracy theory?

The probability that Rossi chose his 75 topics based on his pre-existing belief that they’re conspiracy theories is therefore high. If so, this means that in selecting pre-set topics, he pigeon-holed himself into showing how these topics are, by default, conspiracy theories.

Such is Dr Hafford’s statement at the beginning of his video – that although the artefacts associated with ‘the Baghdad Battery’ have been subject to conspiracy theories, the claim that they could have been used as electric batteries is itself a valid hypothesis.⁵⁴ An article that’s commonly cited by academics as being the most convincing of such is by historian of science and technology Paul Keyser from the Univesity of Alberta, whose 1993 article was published by Chicago University Journal, and puts forward the possibility that the artefacts were used medically to induce “local analgesic” (local anaesthetic) through electrical nerve stimulation.⁵⁵

Thus a fifth point raised by Dr Hoopes et al on what defines pseudoarchaeologist – that they force archaeological data to fit a favoured conclusion or assumption – is met by Rossi and his “Awful Archaeology” method.

When Rossi refers to ‘archaeological conspiracy theories’, what does he mean?

When, on June 25 2022, Dr Miano invited Rossi to join him on a live stream to talk about his video series, ‘Awful Archaeology’, Rossi described it in these words:

“So the premise of Awful Archaeology is um whereas a lot of my videos on TikTok revolve around a specific video that I find or I’m tagged in and I just debunk that one video, Awful Archaeology is meant to show that there is a wide array of pseudoscience and pseudoarchaeology that kind of needs talking about um so typically I try and talk about a mix of things which are really well known and things which aren’t really well known, so you know, there’s you know, countless conspiracies about you know, um you know, building the pyramids and stuff like that um but people may not know about, you know, the Clute Bowl or the Beartooth Highway Molar or these things which are just a lot smaller, but are used in these more rhetorical circles in order to bolster their uh misinformation um so i think it’s kind of important to have this diverse, you know, cast of different topics to discuss in order to really show how deep rooted it is and how dangerous it really can be… it’s really easy for uh you know people to fabricate artefacts and to you know draw conclusions um you know just because there is a lack of understanding in the topic.”⁵⁶

In sum, Rossi created his series, ‘Awful Archaeology’ to:

• Talk about a “wide array” of pseudoscience and pseudoarchaeology – some topics that are well known, others that are less well known;

• Talk about “conspiracies”, for example, who built the pyramids – which are topics used in “rhetorical” circles by conspiracy theorists “to bolster their misinformation”;

• Show how deep rooted and dangerous archaeological “conspiracies” are;

• Show how easily people can fabricate artefacts and cause people to draw conclusions, due to their lack of understanding about relevant topics.

Since “to fabricate” is “to invent or produce something false in order to deceive someone”,⁵⁷ it’s Rossi’s claim that a number of fake scientists intend to mislead by disseminating lies and false information about archaeology to an unenquiring public.

This inherently strong claim is made stronger by his statement that the ‘conspiracies’ he alleges are “deep rooted” and “dangerous”. Hence Rossi has positioned himself as defender of ‘The Truth’ against a malignant “other” that’s ‘pseudoscience’ and in particular ‘archaeological conspiracies’.

Chapter Three: What does Rossi mean by “dangerous”?

Investigating Rossi’s claim that archaeological conspiracies are “dangerous”.

To understand what Rossi means when he claims that “archaeological conspiracies” are “deep rooted” and “dangerous”, a look into his response to Graham Hancock’s hit Netflix series, Ancient Apocalypse will suffice.

Not only has journalist and international bestselling author Hancock been labelled as a “pseudoarchaeologist” or “pseudoscientist” since the publication of his first major investigation into the possibility of a lost advanced civilisation in 1995, but Rossi also published a four-part series of YouTube videos totalling almost four hours of content entitled, ‘I watched Ancient Apocalypse so you don’t have to’.

To comprehend what Rossi means in stating that “pseudoscientists” and “conspiracy theorists” like Hancock are “dangerous”, some of his concluding remarks on Ancient Apocalypse will suffice. Rossi exclaims:

“…If there were one word that I could use to describe Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse as a whole it would be the word predatory, because Graham Hancock’s show is designed specifically to take advantage of the most innocent of intent. It capitalizes on curiosity and twists interest into distrust and throughout its run time it does more to sow the seeds of doubt and deceit than provide answers. Ancient Apocalypse discourages critical thinking.” (Timecode: ‘I watched Ancient Apocalypse so you don’t have to’, Episode 4: 00.43:20-00.43.46.)

Rossi’s monologue about Hancock goes on for the best part of twenty minutes. To summarise some of his most vehement allegations (Rossi is quoted verbatim in the endnotes):⁵⁸

• Hancock is a “predator” because he capitalises on the “innocent intent” and “curiosity” of his viewers and “twists interest into distrust”;

• Ancient Apocalypse “does more to sow the seeds of doubt and deceit than provide answers”;

• Not “believing” in the field of archaeology is a “gateway drug” into “distrust in science”, which is “far more dangerous”;

• Hancock belongs in the category of “dangerous” ‘pseudoscientists’ with ancient aliens, flat earthers, and Atlantis believers;

• such “distrust” in science is behind the death of 1 million people in the US;

• Hancock passes off his “personal truths” as “hard facts” because he seeks “power, money, notoriety, and fame”;

• Hancock is willing to “say anything” to “make it to the top”, so he “misdirects”, “lies” and “[sows] seeds of doubt”, pushing his viewers “farther and farther away from fact”;

• Hancock teaches his viewers that “the true greater enemy of humanity are doctors and archaeologists”, that “science is out to get [them]” and that all scientists are part of “some great plot to keep [them] down”;

• Hancock “is greasing the pipeline” by “preparing peoples’ minds to distrust the things around them”;

• Hancock manipulates his viewers into thinking that the only way that they can find “their truth” is by listening to what he has to say;

• By encouraging his viewers to distrust archaeologists, Hancock is allowing those responsible for “horrible things in our world” to “continue doing them”;

• Ancient Apocalypse is “propaganda” because it is “designed specifically to keep people from noticing what’s really going on and redirect their frustrations”;

• Rossi is a teacher who is enlightening his students about Graham Hancock and Ancient Apocalypse;

• Rossi loves being on camera and wants people to subscribe to his channel and follow him on social media.

At the heart of Rossi’s vehement monologue is his belief in a ‘Truth’ of archaeology that best be believed, or else society could descend into chaos and anarchy.

Consequently, Rossi has positioned himself as “conspiracy debunker” who teaches ‘the Truth’ about science against wrong and malignant conspirators of fake science like Hancock.

Clearly, Rossi believes that archaeology is as much a science as microbiology, which unfortunately for him is untrue. Archaeology is first and foremost a social science or humanity like history or anthropology, so his comparison with the recent pandemic and vaccines is way out of line.

Conversely, the philosophy of history and archaeology posits that there is no ‘Truth’, only ‘truths’ aka ‘interpretation’, or lies.

Suffice it to say, without multiple truths or perspectives in history and archaeology, the past would lack the diverse representation it needs to lay claim to accuracy and utility. What matters is an interpretation’s degree of authenticity; whether primary (original) source material is used, how accurately sources are represented and how convincingly its argument is developed.

Therefore, to “believe in” the field of archaeology is in no way synonymous with belief in ‘The Truth’ or belief in science as Rossi claims; on the contrary, it implies a paranoid reaction to perspectives from outside the field.

We saw in Chapter One herewith how interpretation of the past without scientific experimentation is an art, humanity or social science, which historians, journalists and archaeologists are all trained to do (archaeologists interpret the past; historians interpret the past more often than the present; journalists interpret the present more often than the past).

Unlike history or journalism, however, archaeology is also a physical science because archaeologists apply the scientific method to human material culture. However, this doesn’t detract from the fact that archaeology is predominantly a social science that that requires interpretation and the toleration of multiple ‘truths’ or perspectives.

Historians and journalists as well as archaeologists are trained to interpret the past, which can involve working with results obtained by scientists. Therefore, where a historian or journalist hasn’t attempted to apply the scientific method to their work, application of the ‘pseudoscientist’ or ‘pseudoarchaeologist’ label should not apply.

Where the ‘pseudoscientist’ or ‘pseudoarchaeologist’ label has been applied to a journalist or historian who does not attempt to apply the scientific method and is found simply to offer an authentic perspective on the past, an ideological crusade against their work is revealed.

Perhaps the most vehement iteration of ideological crusade is a wrongful conspiracy allegation.

At the heart of a conspiracy are alleged lies, deception and manipulation. If the lies, deception and manipulation are not shown to be True, it ceases to be a conspiracy and becomes a witch-hunt against the accused.

Where an alleged conspiracy becomes a witch-hunt, role reversal takes place; where Truth was alleged, falsehood is exposed; the Truth defender becomes the conspiracy theorist who spreads malicious lies about the accused.

In this sense, a defender of Truth or conspiracy debunker can be the real danger to interpretation and diversity, unless their allegations are shown to be True because the accused is found to have lied.

Chapter Four: “Miniminuteman is a conspiracy debunker”.

Investigating the claim that Milo Rossi aka Miniminuteman is a “conspiracy debunker”

As well as an archaeologist, environmental scientist and science communicator, Rossi describes himself as a debunker of archaeological conspiracies.

However, in Chapter Two herewith, application of the term “conspiracy” with “archaeology” was shown to be inherently problematic: while alleging a conspiracy polarises lies and deception with honesty and ‘the Truth’, archaeology is first and foremost a social science that prescribes interpretation, which in turn presupposes multiple perspectives and the absence of Truth.

Where a conspiracy is alleged, Truth and falsehood must both exist; Rossi is either the defender of Truth as he claims, or he is a deceptive conspiracy theorist who is deceiving his viewers into believing malicious lies about Hancock.

That said, an analysis of Rossi’s claims about Hancock is in order.

This chapter deconstructs what that Rossi alleges about Hancock in Episode 1 of his four-part video series, ‘I watched Ancient Apocalypse so you don’t have to’, claim by claim, to expose The Truth:

• Is Hancock a dangerous, deceptive predator, conspirator and pseudoscientist who manipulates his viewers into believing his lies? Is Rossi a ‘Truth Defender’ and ‘conspiracy debunker’ who is simply informing his viewers about Hancock?

Or

• Is Hancock who he says he is – a harmless journalist and author who’s spent the past three decades passionately putting forward his interpretation of prehistory that the institution of archaeology doesn’t like? Is Rossi a deceptive conspiracy theorist, who misrepresents Hancock for his own gain?

An analysis of the claims made by Rossi about Graham Hancock in Episode 1 of, ‘I watched Ancient Apocalypse so you don’t have to’

Claim 1: “Graham Hancock is a scientist”

In Rossi’s words (timecode: 00.05.07-00.05.10):

“I’d go so far as to say that Graham Hancock is a scientist. He has a hypothesis, he is doing experimentation and research to see if he can prove that hypothesis.”

Is this true?

• A scientist is “a person who conducts scientific research or investigation; an expert in or student of science, especially one or more of the natural or physical sciences”.⁵⁹

• Hancock neither conducts scientific research nor has expert knowledge of the natural and physical sciences. He is, rather, a journalist and international bestselling author who has spent around thirty years investigating the possibility that civilisations have been lost to prehistory, with particular focus on the end of the last Ice Age ~13,000 years ago.

• While Hancock, as a journalist, has not conducted scientific investigations of his own, he has used results of investigations from the humanities and natural, physical and social sciences that are relevant to the theme of his interpretation, including from the disciplines of astronomy, archaeoastronomy, geochemistry, geophysics, archaeology, anthropology, geology, theology, comparative religion, mythology, history and philosophy.

• Rossi’s claim that Hancock is a scientist is untrue.

Claim 2: “Hancock bends the truth about the Younger Dryas and sea level rise”

In sum, Rossi claims that:⁶⁰

• During the Younger Dryas (YD), sea levels rose gradually, and though average sea level rise was “a lot” at “the peak” of the YD, it was “not enough for people to really notice”, because according to sea level averages, sea level rise was “infinitesimal” during much of the YD;

• Rapid sea level rise is “a fundamental building block” of Hancock’s hypothesis;

• Hancock bends the truth by acting like the YD climatic event is a great mystery.

Is this true?

• Rossi’s claim that sea level rise during the YD was so “gradual” that it was “not enough for people to really notice” is irrelevant to Ancient Apocalypse, as is his preoccupation with average sea level during the peak of the YD. The alleged catastrophic start/trigger of the YD, the Earth’s bombardment by cometary debris ~12,800 years ago, also known as the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH); and the alleged catastrophic beginning of the Holocene, a flooding event at ~11,500 years ago known as Meltwater Pulse 1B or Catastrophic Rise Event 2, are however fundamental.

• Contrary to the sceptical point of view, a vehement iteration of which is the 2023 paper by Dr Holliday et al in the journal Earth-Science Reviews, the huge amount of data that has amassed in support of the YDIH over the past two decades has led to its elevation to the title Younger Dryas Impact Theory (YDIT).⁶¹ The YDIT is a leading explanation for the YD climatic event that is supported by an abundance of scientific data, including but not limited to the disciplines of astronomy, archaeology, archaeoastronomy, geochemistry, geology and geophysics.⁶² The comprehensive three-part study led by Ex-President of the oldest and largest archaeology organisation in the US, the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), Dr. Andrew Moore, is particularly compelling in light of the results of the Bayesian chronological analysis of 235 dates from 23 stratigraphic sections in 12 countries on four continents by Dr Kennett et al in 2015, which established a precise age range for the cataclysm of 12,835-12,735 cal. BP at 95% probability.⁶³ Hence the dates for and synchronised timing of the impact events are robust and absolute.

• The YDIT posits short-term catastrophic episodes; thus Rossi’s argument about average sea level “at the peak of” and “for much of” the YD in comparison with millennia before and after is a moot point. Naturally, ice melts and sea levels rise faster during warmer periods than cooler periods, natural catastrophes notwithstanding. Sea level averages are not reliable markers of catastrophic flooding events, especially in this context, with the ~1,200 year-long YD cold period occurring between two warm periods, the Bølling–Allerød (referred to by Rossi as “~14,000 years ago”) and the Holocene (referred to by Rossi as “~11,500 years ago”). “Ironically” note Dr Abdul et al in their 2016 paper in the journal Paleoceanography, “the Younger Dryas cold interval occurred during Northern Hemisphere radiation maximum and in the middle of the most recent deglaciation.”⁶⁴ The ~1,200-year-long return to cold conditions was not to be expected in the midst of a period of deglaciation, hence the positing of extraordinary explanations, like the YDIT.

• A major Northern Hemisphere two-to-three-decade-long flooding event at the YD onset ~12,800 years ago is evident from comprehensive studies of “huge North American and European proglacial lakes” that “catastrophically drained into the surrounding oceans through ice dam failure at exactly the same time”.⁶⁵ These “widespread synchronous changes at the margins of three relatively isolated Northern Hemisphere ice sheets; Laurentide, Fennoscandian and Greenland, and their related proglacial lakes” cannot be explained effectively by “conventional climatic and/or paleoceanographic processes”, but can be accurately explained by “catastrophic processes triggered by cosmic impact with Earth”, explains Dr Kennett.⁶⁶ Subsequently, global sea levels are thought to have risen ~2-4 m within a few decades or less at the YD onset.⁶⁷ This obviously says nothing of average sea level for the ~1,200 year YD climatic period as a whole, which is Rossi’s preoccupation.⁶⁸ As Dr Khanna et al explain in their article published in 2017 in Nature Communications, “…During the recent peak deglaciation sea level did not always rise gradually, but rather was characterized by a series of punctuated and rapid sea-level rise events over decades to one century”.⁶⁹ Rossi’s claim to have explained what was “actually going on” during the YD evidently falls far short of reality.

• Another of these catastrophic flooding events was Meltwater Pulse 1B (MWP1B) also known as Catastrophic Rise Event 2 (CRE 2) at ~11,500 years ago, which according to Dr Bastos et al in their paper for Marine Biology in 2022, was potentially a global event.⁷⁰ “A meltwater pulse following the Younger Dryas is predicted and required”, state Dr Abdul et al in the journal Paleoceanography in 2016, “because the ice sheets at the end of the Younger Dryas were out of equilibrium”.⁷¹ Having said this, our knowledge of MWP1B is still, in the words of Dr Tian et al in their Quaternary Science Reviews article published in 2020, “very limited”.⁷² Its timing and magnitude has been debated due to the lack of clear evidence not only from tropical areas recording near-eustatic sea-level change, but also from high-latitude areas where the ice sheets melted.⁷³ Another study published in 2023 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment by Dr You et al presents “…new evidence that millennial-scale meltwater events caused by extensive calving of the surrounding Laurentide Ice Sheet and the Greenland Ice Sheet were triggered by subsurface ocean warming in the Labrador Sea” and that the changes caused by meltwater pulses might have been so “abrupt” that they “occurred within a few decades”.⁷⁴

• The catastrophic nature of MWP1B has been attested since 1995 by the results of a study by Drs Blanchon and Shaw, published in the journal Geology, of which a major finding is that, “Massive inputs of ice not only produced catastrophic sea-level rise, drowning reefs and destabilizing other ice sheets, but also rapidly reduced the elevation of the Laurentide ice sheet, flipping atmospheric circulation patterns and forcing warm equatorial waters into the frigid North Atlantic”.⁷⁵ The results of their study of drowned Acropora palmata (coral) reefs in Barbados, whose elevations and ages demonstrate the rate, magnitude and timing of glacio-eustatic sea-level change, are fundamental: Clearly, sea level rise during deglaciation is “stepped” or punctuated by “truly catastrophic… drowning events” – hence their positing of three “Catastrophic Rise Events”, one of which is synonymous with MWP1B at ~11,500 years ago.⁷⁶ Since then, methods have however improved and results have become more precise; while in 1995, Drs Blanchon and Shaw report that CRE 2 was likely a ~7.5m rise in sea level that begun ~11,500 years ago and lasted for less than 160 years, the latest estimates by Dr Blanchon in a co-authored paper published in 2021 is that it was likely an ~8-11m rise that begun ~11,300 years ago and lasted for ~250 years, “which is 5 m smaller, and 150 years younger than previous estimates” by Dr Abdul et al in 2016, who found that sea level jumped 14m in 350 years, between 11,450 and 11,100 years ago.⁷⁷ According to Dr Gargani in a more recent paper published in 2022 in the journal Geomorphology, these calculations do not accurately account for isostatic rebound aka the uplift of the coral reefs, however, and so “…After reconstruction, a rapid sea-level jump of 4.8 m is observed contemporaneously with Meltwater Pulse 1B” that was “very short”, lasting only 50-100 years and at 11,500 years ago.⁷⁸ Notably, Dr Gargani shows that after reconstructing the sea-level curve, this sea-level jump “…was not an artifact due to tectonic and isostatic adjustment, but was caused by ice sheet melting in response to North Atlantic warming.”⁷⁹ To put a 4.8 m rise in sea level in ~60 years into context: in the past 30 years of increasing major floods and climate crisis, sea level is thought to have risen a mere 0.091 m.⁸⁰ Multiply this by 27, and we approach the magnitude of Catastrophic Rise Event 2, whose effects are revealed in the “geophysically corrected global historical coastline position raster” by De Groeve et al in a paper published in Global Ecology and Biogeography in 2022, “[allowing], for the first time, calculation of global and regional coastline retreat rates and land loss rates”.⁸¹ According to this data, between ~11,500 and 11,000 years ago, the Earth lost ~800,000km² of land.⁸² As the authors explain, “The commonly high coastal retreat rates of >10m/year between 9 and 15 ka must have induced forced migrations of terrestrial biota, including humans, to higher grounds and, plausibly, formed the foundation of flood mythologies.”⁸³ That flood mythologies relate to this time period is indeed strongly implied, especially given that the precise flooding proxy that is coral reef shelving attests to at least one “abrupt” and “punctuated” rise in sea level rather than a steady rise of 10m per year over six millennia.⁸⁴ The probability that a large proportion of the estimated 800,000km² of land loss between 11,500 and 11,000 was abrupt, within a decade-or-century-long period, is therefore high. Either way, the consequences on humans will have been catastrophic, with major flooding guaranteed.

• Given the compelling nature of the evidence, and the significant consequences that this catastrophic period from ~12,800 years ago until ~11,000 years ago could have had on human behaviour, interpretations of human material culture from 12,800 years ago that account for these catastrophes are called for. Ancient Apocalypse draws on the abundance of YDIT and Meltwater Pulse 1B data to offer such an interpretation.

• Evidently, Hancock does not “bend the truth” about the Younger Dryas or about sea level rise as Rossi claims; he uses compelling results obtained by scientists to offer his interpretation of the past.

Claim 3: “Hancock intentionally misrepresents archaeologists about hunter-gatherers”

In sum, Rossi claims that:⁸⁵

• By stating that archaeologists think that during the Ice Age, people were “simple hunter gatherers”, Hancock intentionally misrepresents their position;

• Hancock hasn’t spoken to an archaeologist in about 30 years because no archaeologist has referred to hunter gatherers as “simple” for about 40 years;

• Hancock is foolish to suggest that hunter gatherers “couldn’t really do anything”.

Is this true?

• Some archaeologists do still refer to hunter-gatherers as “simple”. In his book published by Cambridge University Press in 2014, Dr Brian Hayden, “an author and archaeologist” whose “passion is to understand what cultures were like in the past – especially hunting and gathering cultures – and why they changed” summarises that:

  “All hunter/gatherers are not the same…At one end of an idealized spectrum are simple hunter/gatherers (foragers) such as the Hadza who generally share food openly among band members, who maintain an egalitarian ethic and behaviour concerning food resources, who prohibit private ownership of most or all food resources (and many other items), who prohibit any competition involving food resources, and who lack long-term storage and private wealth items. In contrast, complex hunter/gatherers, such as those on the Northwest Coast of North America, produce and store surpluses, hold ownership rights over food and food resources, accumulate privately owned wealth, compete with food and wealth, and exhibit marked socioeconomic differences between individuals or families. Testart (1982: 529-30) has shown a strong tendency for hunter/gatherers to fall into either the simple or complex side of this dichotomy.”⁸⁶

• Dr Hayden goes on to list a number of other archaeologists and anthropologists who also still categorise hunter-gatherer cultures and societies as “complex” or “simple”; such is a common way to comprehend difference, with no offence intended.⁸⁷

• Hancock similarly describes hunter-gatherers of the Ice Age as “simple” in comparison with a lost advanced “civilisation” that he suggests that they coexisted with. He rightly describes the position of archaeologists about human material culture of the Ice Age – that it was “simple” compared with what he’s proposing. Thus, Hancock’s intention is not to misrepresent archaeologists as Rossi claims, but to compare his interpretation of human material culture with theirs. Hancock’s other references to hunter-gatherers in Episode 1 of Ancient Apocalypse are consistent with this. The transcript of these references reads:

  “Seven thousand years ago, far from being builders on such an epic scale, there’s no evidence that the people of this region were anything other than simple hunter gatherers. What could have motivated them to go to the immense effort of bringing all these blocks here?”⁸⁸ “…The accepted time line of human history tells us that the tribe of hunter-gatherers living atop the hill 7,000 years ago wouldn’t have been capable of building a structure of this colossal size and complexity. Yet, here it is, a mystery crying out for investigation.”⁸⁹ “…Danny’s findings are utterly extraordinary and bewildering. Hitherto, archaeologists have regarded it a long established fact that no large-scale structures were built anywhere in Southeast Asia until around 4,000 years ago.”⁹⁰

• Contrary to Rossi’s claim that Hancock must have not spoken with an archaeologist in 30 years, as part of Ancient Apocalypse Episode 1, shortly after Hancock’s introduction that Rossi refers to, Hancock interviews archaeologist Dr Ali Akbar who’s worked at Gunung Padang since 2012. The start of their dialogue goes as so:

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: “When archaeologist Ali Akbar and his team began working here in 2012 they assumed that any structures on this hill would prove to be less than 2,500 years old.”

  DR. ALI AKBAR: “We don’t know about the absolute dating in this site. This site was abandoned for so long and perhaps forgotten. The columnar joint is imported from another region, from another location.”⁹¹

• Rossi uses sensationalised language and ridicule to misrepresent Hancock and misinform his viewers.

Claim 4: “Hancock uses deceptive tactics to deceive his viewers into thinking Gunung Padang is a mystery”

In sum, Rossi claims that:⁹²

• Hancock “marvels” at how “large” the blocks at Gunung Padang are;

• Hancock makes it sound like the builders of Gunung Padang achieved something more impressive than they did, to deceive his viewers into assuming a “miraculous conclusion”;

• Hancock wants his viewers to believe that Gunung Padang is a mystery, so he makes them think that archaeologists don’t think hunter-gatherers were capable of building it;

• If the date of the second cultural layer at 5200 BCE is found to be correct, it would make Gunung Padang 10,000 years old.

Is this true?

• The transcript of the relevant excerpt from Ancient Apocalypse Episode 1 reads as so:

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: “When archaeologist Ali Akbar and his team began working here in 2012 they assumed that any structures on this hill would prove to be less than 2,500 years old.”

  DR. ALI AKBAR, University of Indonesia: “We don’t know about the absolute dating of this site. This site was abandoned for so long and perhaps forgotten.”

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: “The team also assumed that the ancient builders of Gunung Padang had found the blocks of columnar jointing naturally present at the site. But then they discovered something strange.”

  DR. ALI AKBAR: “The columnar joint is imported from another region, from another location.”

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: “That means that every one of these blocks, up to 50,000 of them, and each weighing up to a third of a ton, were carried up this hill. When Dr. Akbar’s team first surveyed the site, they quickly found evidence that humans had been present in what’s called the cultural layer. But not where they expected.”

  DR. ALI AKBAR: “We are very surprised that this site consists of two cultural layers. The first layer are on the surface, it’s from 500 BC. But at four metres depth, we found another cultural layer. It is from 5,200 BC. It is very surprising, we are very shocked. It is very odd.”

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: “Seven thousand years ago, far from being builders on such an epic scale, there’s no evidence that the people of this region were anything other than simple hunter gatherers. What could’ve motivated them to make the immense effort of bringing all these blocks here?”

  DR. ALI AKBAR: “I’m not really sure about the function of this site. However, we’ve still not found a skeleton or human bone. So this is not burial site. Perhaps it is for ceremony or rituals.”

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: “We’re dealing with truly a mystery here, a mystery that needs to be explained.” (Timecode, Ancient Apocalypse Episode 1: 00.07.53-00.10.14).

• Contrary to Rossi’s claim that Hancock “marvels” at how “large” the blocks at Gunung Padang are, Hancock asks what could have motivated the builders of Gunung Padang to carry 50,000 blocks each weighing a third of a ton up the hill.

• When Hancock states that “we’re dealing with truly a mystery here, a mystery that needs to be explained”, he is responding to archaeologist Dr Akbar, who notes that he and his team were “very surprised” and “very shocked” to find a cultural layer that dates to 5,200 BC, and that they don’t know what the function of the site was. Rossi’s claim that Hancock intends to deceive his viewers into “assuming” a “miraculous” conclusion for how Gunung Padang was built is a misinterpretation and a misrepresentation of Dr Akbar’s statement.

• When Hancock states that “seven thousand years ago, far from being builders on such an epic scale, there’s no evidence that the people of this region were anything other than simple hunter gatherers” he is responding directly to Dr Akbar’s claim that “it is very odd” that a 5,200 BC cultural layer is present at Gunung Padang. Indeed, another archaeologist who has worked at Gunung Padang, Dr Lufti Yondri, is quoted in Nature stating that his work demonstrates that people in the area lived in caves between 12,000 and 6,000 years ago, and left no evidence of having the “remarkable masonry capabilities” supposedly employed by people of the area.⁹³ Rossi’s claim that Hancock deceives his viewers about the position of archaeologists at Gunung Padang is, therefore, inaccurate and unfounded.

• Rossi’s claim that at 5,200 BCE, the second cultural layer would be 10,000 years old is factually incorrect: at 5,200 cal. BC, the second cultural layer has been found to be 7,200 years old.

Claim 5: “The builders of Gunung Padang didn’t cut columnar basalt, so Hancock is wrong”

In Rossi’s words (timecode: 00.19:53 – 00.20.03):

“[Hancock] also says that these uh columnar basalt stones are cut – it was a little thing but I felt the need to include it, because it’s wrong – they didn’t cut the columnar basalt, columnar basalt cracks – it comes in these, like, massive pillars.”

Is this true?

• The transcript of the relevant excerpts from Ancient Apocalypse Episode 1 read as so:

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: “…But take a closer look and it becomes obvious that these rocks have been cut, repurposed as building materials and placed by human hands.” (Timecode, Ancient Apocalypse Episode 1: ~00.07.16).

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: “There are some archaeologists I’ve heard who are still convinced that this is all entirely natural. I mean I know this is natural rock but they’re suggesting the whole layout of the thing is natural as well.”

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA, Geologist: “They are natural, but the position though is not in a natural position.”

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: “And normally vertical?”

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: “Vertical, yeah, that’s right.”

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: “And here it’s laid on its side.”

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: “And also it’s not cut like this – here – always cut in to like one and one and half metres.”

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: “Right.” (Timecode, Ancient Apocalypse Episode 1: 00.11.25-00.11.47).

• When Hancock states that the columnar basalt has been cut, he is quoting geologist and expert on Gunung Padang, Dr Natawidjaja, who states that the blocks have been cut uniformly into a length of one to one and a half meters.

• Rossi’s claim that columnar basalt “cracks” into “massive pillars” is a moot point and a misrepresentation, because Hancock and Dr Natawidjaja consistently state that nature created the blocks in pillar-form, and that humans then cut them into smaller blocks and transported them to the site.

• Rossi’s claim that Hancock is wrong about the blocks being cut by humans is therefore a misrepresentation.

• Rossi’s silencing of Dr Natawidjaja and the other specialists’ opinions is problematic. It suggests that he forces the content of Ancient Apocalypse to fit his favoured conclusion that Hancock is wrong, not the experts, who have comprehensively studied the site.

Claim 6: “Hancock purposefully omits the possibility that the “chamber” at Gunung Padang is a natural “lava tube””

In sum, Rossi claims that:⁹⁴

• Gunung Padang looks like a terraced hill, so it probably isn’t a pyramid;

• Hancock changes the definition of a pyramid to make it seem like Gunung Padang is one;

• Since Gunung Padang is built on the remains of a volcano, it’s logical and worth “putting money on” that the alleged chamber is actually just a natural “lava tube”;

• Hancock purposefully omits the possibility that the chamber is a “lava tube”, to trick his viewers into believing that Gunung Padang is a mystery.

Is this true?

• LIPO geologist Dr. Danny Hilman Natawijaja, former Indonesian Geologist Association (IAGI) General Chairman and expert in paleosedimentology, who conducted extensive fieldwork at Gunung Padang for ~13 years, is utterly clear that the entirety of Gunung Padang is an artificial structure that cannot, in geological terms, be a natural “hill”.

• Rossi’s preoccupation with the difference between a “terraced hill” and a “stepped pyramid” and whether Hancock’s definition of a pyramid as “a series of terraces that rise to a summit” is legitimate, is absurd. Archaeologist Dr Yondri, who considers himself an expert on Gunung Padang and argues – to paraphrase his appearance in Nature – that people in the area lived in caves between 12,000 and 6,000 years ago and had not developed the skills necessary to build such a structure – refers to the archaeological site on the top of Gunung Padang as a punden berundak, which translates directly into English as “stepped pyramid” or a “terraced pyramid” or a “series of terraces that rises to a summit”.⁹⁵ When referring to ancient pyramids, a “terrace” is a wider than a “step” yet the two words are used interchangeably, especially in this context, when translating between Indonesian and English.

• At any rate, to argue that an archaeological site does not look like what the experts of the site have evaluated it to be, and to act like such an observation, without visiting or studying the site, could be a reliable interpretation, is not only insulting towards the experts, but also unscientific. Thus Hancock does not change the definition of a pyramid to suit his interpretation; he paraphrases the established conclusion of the Indonesian experts at the site – not only that of Dr Natawidjaja et al, but also of Dr Yondri. Most importantly, Rossi fails to acknowledge that it is geologist Dr Natawidjaja and his team who present, following ~13 years of comprehensive geological and archaeological field work at the site, the void within Gunung Padang as a “chamber”. The transcript of the relevant part of Episode 1 of Ancient Apocalypse reads as so:

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: So how old is it really? Who built it? And why? Dr. Hilman and his team turn to technology usually deployed in geological surveys to look for answers deep inside the structure.

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: So we have three methods here, the GPR.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: Yeah, that’s ground penetrating radar.

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: The ground penetrating radar. [Yeah] Yeah, and resistivity tomography, [Yeah] and also the seismic tomography.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: Previously, archaeologists had dug down in to the site only a few metres, and in a few isolated trenches. This new technology covers much more ground.

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: 30 metres, okay.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: And goes far deeper.

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: So we’re gonna do the ground penetration radar, the GPR surveys.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: Ground penetrating radar emits pulses of radio waves in to the ground. When they hit something they bounce back, and that data is recorded and analysed.

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: We’ve chosen the frequency of 40 mega hertz to penetrate down…

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: Okay, let’s go.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: The more Dr. Hilman and his team learn from their scans of the interior, the more mysterious it becomes.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: The nature of the structures underground became more and more complex, although the columnar basalt is always there and was always used as a construction material.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: Seismic tomography in particular has uncovered an intriguing spot, deep inside the hill.

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: It has the seismic velocity about 200 metre per second.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: Right. Which in layman’s terms means what exactly?

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: That’s a void.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: A void, an empty space.

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: Empty.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: And you can get a sense of the shape of that empty space?

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: Yes, er, see, see here, it’s a rectangular.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: It’s a rectangle. Yeah.

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: And this part is just right, [Yeah] because in the centre of this site, [Right] beneath the terrace one is also a chamber [Yes] connecting to this chamber beneath the second terrace.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: What Dr. Hilman and his team have discovered are at least three large rectangular chambers. One around ten metres down, perhaps an entrance hall of some kind. It seems to have an access tunnel leading to a larger main chamber. And another passage connecting to a third chamber, between 20 to 30 metres deep. All three located right along the central axis of the site.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: I’m very intrigued by all these chambers, I so much wish you could get the archaeologists to actually excavate this site.

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: When we see these chambers, three chambers, it just like we’re amazed.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: You know you’ve found something significant at that point…

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: It’s true. (Timecode, Ancient Apocalypse Episode 1: 00.14.28-00.17.52.)

• Rossi’s failure to refer to the preliminary data obtained by Dr Natawidjaja – which at the time of recording Episode 1 of his YouTube “critique” of Ancient Apocalypse, was available as a PDF that Dr Natawidjaja presented at the Proceedings American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting 2018 – suggests that his motive is to dismiss their findings outright, without engaging with the data in the slightest.⁹⁶ This evaluation is supported by his repeated unscientific statements like “I’m willing to put my money on”, and “I’m willing to bet”, and “it’s probably” and “I don’t know” and “who knows” – without citing any relevant evidence. Rossi insultingly acts like his unreliable, unfounded guesswork is more reliable than the evaluations of scientists who have worked at Gunung Padang for the best part of ~13 years.

• Rossi chose to not use the geophysical data obtained by Dr Natawidjaja et al that had been online since 2018 and that clearly shows the pyramidal shape of Gunung Padang, albeit its terraces covered in undergrowth.

• Rossi’s “guess” that the “chamber” that Dr Natawidjaja and his team detected in the seismic tomography survey is actually a “lava tube” is, again, absurd. In the Ancient Apocalypse episode that Rossi responds to, Hancock and Dr Natawidjaja present three rectangular voids, not one. Rossi’s preoccupation with a single “chamber” is therefore a misrepresentation. At any rate, a “lava tube” cannot create the three rectangular, geometric shapes with straight edges that Dr Natawidjaja and his team present in Ancient Apocalypse. Figures 10, 11 and 12 of Dr Natawidjaja and his team’s 2023 paper demonstrate that the voids are not inside the “massive andesite lava” as Rossi guesses, but within the artificial rock units.⁹⁷ Also, according to seismic tomography prospecting – Figure 12b of Dr Natawidjaja and his team’s 2023 paper – there are two straight vertical white lines referred to by the team as “vertical structure” that cannot be explained via natural means yet can be explained by the presence of an entrance gate.⁹⁸ Finally, as evident from Figure 5c, the water that the team lost to the largest void when drilling the GP4 borehole was at a depth of 8-12 m, which was well above the “massive andesite lava” that Rossi claims could be a “lava tube”.⁹⁹

• Clearly, Hancock does not trick his viewers into believing a natural lava tube is a secret chamber; the conclusion that Dr Natawidjaja and his team came to as a result of ~13 years of investigations at Gunung Padang is that the three rectangular anomalies inside the structure are anthropogenic chambers.

Claim 7: “The radiocarbon dates obtained from Gunung Padang are culturally irrelevant”

In sum, Rossi claims that:¹⁰⁰

• Hancock doesn’t reveal what is inside the alleged 24,000 year old cultural layer;

• A “real archaeologist” probably obtained the date of 24,000 years and wouldn’t lie, so Hancock either lied or failed to realise that the date is culturally irrelevant.

Is this true?

• Once again, rather than engaging with the evidence obtained by Dr Natawidjaja et al, Rossi chooses to “assume” that a “real archaeologist” didn’t lie about the date, and “predicts” that Hancock manipulated the facts to associate the dates with a pyramid. All along, the data has been available for Rossi to consult, and he chose not to, thus resulting in misrepresentations and inaccuracies. A real evaluation would not contain presumptions or predictions, but concise engagement with the evidence on the topic at hand. Rossi failed to consult the evidence.

• Rossi and others have not understood that, in Dr Natawidjaja and his team’s words: “The research conducted at Gunung Padang breaks new ground by employing multi-high-resolution geophysical methods on a large scale, addressing the challenges associated with investigating vast ancient structures. By integrating these methods with extensive excavations and core drillings, the study offers a unique and comprehensive approach to exploring the hidden complexities of the site. This pioneering methodology provides valuable insights into the nature and construction of the structures, surpassing the limitations of traditional archaeological prospecting techniques focused on more minor features.”¹⁰¹

• Throughout their paper, Dr Natawidjaja and his team demonstrate the cultural significance of the site right down to Unit 4, the 25,000-14,000-year-old layer. Evidence of human activity is presupposed by the team’s findings that the entire structure cannot, in geophysical terms, be natural, and is, in archaeological terms, artefactual. Note that as Dr Akbar states when interviewed during Ancient Apocalypse; the data is preliminary, and the radiocarbon chronology is relative, not absolute; thus the intention of Hancock and Dr Natawidjaja and his team is to show how their data prompts more questions than it answers; the mysterious nature of their findings should inspire further study, not quash it.

To outline the artefactual nature of the site:

• Archaeologists unanimously agree that the site that’s visible on the surface of Gunung Padang is a punden berundak (stepped pyramid) that’s around 2,100 years old.¹⁰² What they, however, won’t accept is that this uncontested site is the latest iteration of a late Epipalaeolithic pyramidal structure that continues in multiple layers underground.

• Results of the archaeological excavations reveal how the uncontested punden berundak (stepped pyramid) visible on the surface of Gunung Padang (Unit 1) continues underground. The excavations also led to the recovery of distinctly manmade features, such as a wall made out of river stone that extends across the third and oldest phase of rock construction (Unit 3) as well as two ancient Sundanese “kujang” artefacts.¹⁰³ One of these artefacts was recovered from the base of the deliberately buried oldest layer of rock construction (Unit 3) and has been given a minimum Bayesian-modelled age of ~10,000 years old.¹⁰⁴ Following analysis in a physics lab, this same artefact has been found to have been crafted out of material that is not native to the site, according to the golden ratio, phi.¹⁰⁵ Other rock fragments imbued with peculiar tool marks have been recovered, for example the larger “kujang” artefact.¹⁰⁶ Traditional archaeological excavations also revealed that the manmade “mortar” or cement that binds the uniformly cut and shaped 1-2m long columnar blocks on the surface of the site continues down to the top of Unit 3, which sits just above the roof of the largest of three manmade chambers that cannot, in geological terms, be natural “lava caves”, because the seismic tomography results (Figure 12) have revealed them to be metres above the “massive andesite” lava core (Unit 4).¹⁰⁷ Cliff exposures have revealed weathered vertical pillars (Figure 3) in Unit 3 that are also visible within the same unit of the structure via the ERT survey (Figure 10).¹⁰⁸ In other words, manmade features that are visible to the naked eye, on the surface of the site, are also visible inside the structure via cutting edge x-ray technology.

• The GPR surveys reveal how the underground stone terraces appear horizontal against the flat ground surface and are inclined beneath sloping surfaces, such as the ramp between Terrace 1 and Terrace 2, thus demonstrating the artificial structure. Importantly, they also reveal that the overall geometry of the site is consistent with the core drilling results that distinguish between manmade and natural material or deposits; some artificial mortar, some naturally occurring gravel; some weathered, some well preserved artificially-placed material; some imported, some naturally occurring soil; all variously weathered, depending on the amount of time it was exposed to the elements. And not only this; the core drilling (borehole) data is consistent with the excavation results, enabling the team to confidently distinguish between periods where the construction was abandoned, intentionally backfilled, re-discovered (excavated) or renovated by subsequent occupants.¹⁰⁹ For example:

  “Two distinct soil fills were encountered. The first type, referred to as ancient soil fills [deliberate burial with imported soil] was found in GP5 and GP2 boreholes [core drilling] and exposed in the Echo1 and Echo2 trenches [the archaeological excavations]. These fills have a thickness of up to 7m [deep] and completely bury Unit 3 [the oldest layer of construction], indicating no gradual in situ [in its natural place] weathering (refer to Figures 4c, 5b and SC.8). The sharp contact between the soil fills [imported soil] and the top of Unit 3 [the oldest period of rock construction] further suggests their human origin rather than natural soil formations [as does the wall made out of river stone of Unit 3]. GP5 borehole revealed three different types of soils in the fills, further supporting their artificial nature. The second type of soil fill was found in Terrace 4, Terrace 3 and Terrace 2 on the west side of the columnar rock truncated line (see Figure 2h). The GP1 borehole on Terrace 2 revealed that Unit 2 [the second oldest phase of rock construction] had been almost entirely excavated [by a subsequent culture] before the soil fills covered the remaining structures [another deliberate burial event by the culture whose punden berundak is still present on the surface of the site].”¹¹⁰

• The core drilling results – particularly the GP4 borehole data – was what first alerted the team to the presence of voids within the structure; for example, they lost over 32,000 litres of water at a depth of 14 meters when drilling beneath the megalithic ramp between Terraces 1 and 2.¹¹¹ To investigate further, they conducted ERT surveys in 2D and 3D; the 3D survey outlined the chambers clearly, in their exact dimensions, the largest being 10 x 10 x 15cm (width x height x length), a size entirely consistent with the aforesaid GP4 borehole water loss data and inconsistent – especially in geometric terms – with a naturally occurring cave.¹¹² The 2D ERT survey provides imagery of tunnels that connect the three chambers, as well as a water spring at the bottom of the megalithic stairway. As already stated, the chambers, tunnels and passageways cannot, in geophysical terms, be natural lava caves and tunnels, because they are situated within Unit 3, meters above the “massive andesite lava” (Unit 4) that the team distinguished via core drilling and the ERT and ST surveys. Furthermore, the two vertical white lines within the main Unit 3 chamber on the ST survey (Figure 12b) reveal a “vertical structure” that is consistent with the presence of a gate or thick manmade wall.¹¹³ This is corroborated by the GP7 borehole material, which recovered thick basaltic andesite from a depth entirely consistent with its location on the ST survey.¹¹⁴ That these features have been shaped by humans is not only the most parsimonious (simplest) and scientifically sound explanation; when the data is considered holistically and comprehensively, it defies geologic explanation.

• Given that the structure is demonstrably manmade, and that the radiocarbon dates correspond directly to the four discerned phases of construction, Dr Natawidjaja and his team provide a relative chronology that can be tested via further study. In the authors’ words:

  “In consideration of concerns about the accuracy of radiocarbon dates from soil samples, our methodology adhered to established laboratory protocols for sample selection, analysis, and calibration. Moreover, it meticulously considered observed weathering patterns and stratigraphic contexts, detailed in Table 2, Figure 7, and Supplementary Figures D. The dating study comprehensively involved organic remains extracted from layers within Unit 1, Unit 2, and Unit 3, encompassing both the soil foundation and the ancient soil fill, which were deduced to be associated with man-made constructions or human activities (Table 2, Figure 7a). Criticisms that overlook this foundational premise result in an inaccurate interpretation of the carbon dating analysis.

  Acknowledging the study’s inherent limitations—such as constraints related to sample quantities, potential uncertainties stemming from contaminants, and methodological challenges—we advocate for future extensive radiometric dating studies, as suggested in section 4.2”.¹¹⁵

• As Dr Akbar states when prompted by Hancock in part 1 of Ancient Apocalypse, relative dating has been applied to Gunung Padang; the dates are not absolute. However, the dates that the team did obtain are remarkably consistent with the geo-archaeological data – so consistent that they provide a working hypothesis: that Gunung Padang is a late Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic monumental terraced pyramid built in four phases by hitherto “lost” prehistoric Sundanese civilisations.

• Dr Natawidjaja and his team’s sophisticated, peer-reviewed study that concluded years of meticulous work was published in 2023 in the journal Archaeological Prospection, only to be retracted in 2024 due to an alleged “major error” that remains undocumented and unexplained to this day.¹¹⁶ The retraction of this article rather than commentary within the journal in the form of comments and replies could inhibit further study at the site, which would be to the detriment of scientific progress. Glaring gaps remain in Indonesian prehistory that will only be filled by sophisticated, sufficiently funded investigations by Indonesian scientists like Dr Natawidjaja and his team, with the support of collaborative and constructive dialogue between members of the wider scientific community.

Claim 8: “Hancock claims that Nan Madol was built by a lost civilisation 12,800 years ago, which is disrespectful to the people of Pohnpei whose ancestors built it”

In sum, Rossi claims that:¹¹⁷

• Hancock claims that Nan Madol is 12,800 years old and his evidence for this is that the site is “slightly under water”;

• Hancock’s claim is disrespectful to the descendants of the architects of Nan Madol, who live on the island;

• Hancock presents Nan Madol so it’s “masked in…pseudo-mystical bullshit”;

• His “critique” of Hancock and Ancient Apocalypse is respectful.

Is this true?

• The transcript of the relevant part of Ancient Apocalypse Episode 1 reads as so:

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: “Gunung Padang suggests that some culture was around, in the area of the Sunda Shelf, which was capable of creating a gigantic megalithic structure. One that specialised in building with blocks of columnar basalt. It’s a style of construction I’ve seen before in this part of the world. On the tiny Pacific island of Pohnpei, at a site known as Nan Madol. It too was constructed using volcanic basalt blocks, laid out one atop the other, just as at Gunung Padang. Archaeologists believe most of the construction visible at Nan Madol today dates to around 900 years ago when the blocks were quarried at a neighbouring island. But during my explorations on previous visits, I found several of its megalithic pillars extending out below the waterline, suggesting that earlier versions may have been constructed when sea levels were lower, during the last Ice Age. Could Gunung Padang’s architects have made it across the South Pacific to Micronesia? And if so, what happened to them? Well I believe it has something to do with what happened around 12,800 years ago when the Ice Age suddenly and quite dramatically shifted gears.” (Timecode, Ancient Apocalypse Episode 1: 00.23.45-00.25.12).

• Evidently, Hancock does not claim that Nan Madol is 12,800 years old; he notes that the site on the surface has been dated to around 900 years ago, and that when he investigated Nan Madol, he found evidence to suggest that “earlier versions” may have been built when sea levels were lower, which was around the time that Dr Natawidjaja and his team suggest that Unit 3 of Gunung Padang was constructed. He notes that the building style is similar, and that it’s possible that the two sites are in some way connected. He does not dispute that the over-water site of Nan Madol is 900 years old, nor does he claim that the people credited for building it did not do so. It is however common for sacred sites to be built upon existing sites, so the possibility that Nan Madol was constructed upon the foundations of an older site that was lost to sea level rise is not far-fetched, nor does this possibility presuppose that the indigenous population of Pohnpei did not construct Nan Madol, as Rossi surmises. On the contrary, the presence of underwater sites at Nan Madol raises the possibility that their ancestors – including the Saudeleurs – were related to, influenced or influenced by at least some of the architects of Gunung Padang, who built monumental architecture and shared skills and ideas from as far as Java, Indonesia to Pohnpei, Micronesia.

• When Hancock states that he visited the site previously and found “earlier versions” of the site underwater, he is referring to his book that he co-authored with photographer Santha Faiia entitled, Heaven’s Mirror, in which they base their interpretation of the site directly on the testimony of Pohnpeians whose ancestors were the Saudeleurs.¹¹⁸ They note, for example, that the “…two mythical founders of the city… Olosopa and Olosipa” are said to have selected the site’s location “…after climbing to the top of a high peak in order to survey the island. From this vantage point, looking down to the blue Pacific Ocean far below, they saw a city under water. They took this as a sign that they should build their own city there and, further, built Nan Madol as a “mirror image” of its sunken counterpart”.¹¹⁹ Shortly after, they report that, “Skimming across the turquoise waters inside the reef, we passed rich green hillsides, isolated mesas, and strange pyramid-shaped mounds. One of these, the double hummock of Takium Peak, is particularly striking and we wondered whether it might have been from this vantage point that Olosopa and Olosipa caught their first glimpse of the legendary underwater city of Khanimweiso.”¹²⁰ Hancock and Faiia evidently take Pohnpeian oral history about the Saudeleur origin story seriously, and it is on this basis that Hancock reports Nan Madol in Ancient Apocalypse. Rossi’s argument that Hancock makes disrespectful claims about the history of Nan Madol is clearly unfounded.

• Rossi’s claim that Hancock’s interpretation of Nan Madol is “pseudo-mystical bullshit” is however deeply disrespectful and his claims about Hancock’s intention are unsupported. The claims he makes about Hancock’s position are, moreover, misrepresentations. Rossi neither engages with the oral history of the people of Pohnpei, nor with Hancock.

(Note that between 00.34.35 and 00.39.28 of Rossi’s video, all claims are made by Dr McCafferty. These are explored in an upcoming publication.)

Claim 9: “Hancock claims that pyramids around the world were built according to a “master plan” taught by aliens or Atlanteans”

In sum, Rossi claims that:¹²¹

• In saying that it’s mysterious that pyramids around the world whose builders apparently had no contact with one another have many things in common, Hancock reveals himself as a conspiracy theorist;

• Hancock believes that because multiple parts of the world have pyramids, they must be part of a “master plan” taught by aliens or Atlanteans;

• One needs no more context than to simply look at images of the pyramids that Rossi provides – of the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt; the Ziggurat of Ur, Iraq; the Cahuachi pyramid, Peru; El Tajin pyramid, Mexico; the Meroe pyramids, Sudan; and Chichen Itza pyramid, Mexico – to say that they have “very little in common with one another”.

Is this true?

• Hancock has never claimed that aliens could be responsible for ancient monuments on Earth, and at no point in Ancient Apocalypse are aliens implied. That Rossi brings aliens into his so-called “evaluation” of Ancient Apocalypse says a lot of his integrity and calls his self-entitled role of “science communicator” into question.¹²²

• Hancock does not claim that any of the pyramids that Rossi refers to in the relevant part of the Ancient Apocalypse episode were built by Atlanteans, nor does he claim that any of the builders were taught by Atlanteans; he suggests, to quote the relevant part of Ancient Apocalypse that Rossi is referring to directly, that the spiritual ideas underpinning pyramids around the world could represent, “…A shared legacy from a lost global civilisation that provided the seeds and the spark of inspiration from which many later civilisations grew”.¹²³ A shared legacy does not equate to Atlanteans teaching or building the respective pyramids.

• Rossi’s statement that “You would need no more context [than looking at images of the pyramids] to be able to tell me that those pyramids have very little in common with one another” is intellectually vacuous and fails to engage with the points that he claims to be referring to. In fact, in stating this, Rossi offers no constructive point at all, merely ridicule.

Claim 10: “Hancock’s definition of a pyramid is “a series of terraces that rises to a summit,” which is really really bad”

In Rossi’s words (timecode 00.46.30-00.47-05):

“Now, you may remember in the first lesson in Episode One we specifically quoted what Graham Hancock’s definition of a pyramid is and I think it would be very interesting to apply it to this list. “Series of terraces that rises to a summit” – huh, looks like the Great Pyramid of Giza isn’t a pyramid then, Graham. Hilariously, if we are to use Graham Hancock’s definition of a pyramid, the Ziggurat at Ur, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Meroë pyramids would all not be pyramids. You just can’t make this shit up. Now obviously I’m being a little bit facetious here, all of these are pyramids, Graham Hancock agrees that all of these are pyramids, I’m just trying to show that this definition is really really bad.”

Is this true?

• To contextualise Hancock’s statement, the transcript of the relevant part of Ancient Apocalypse Episode 1 reads as so:

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: What Dr. Hilman started to realise as he put together all his data was that Gunung Padang is much more than just a hill. This is the ancient site of Gunung Padang. The north side features a stairway, climbing more than 300 feet until it reaches the first of five terraces. Over an area about 490 feet long by 130 feet wide. The entire hill is ringed by retaining walls of columnar basalt. Using an estimated 50,000 blocks it’s a massive terraforming project that remodelled the volcanic hill in to what can best be described as a step pyramid.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: So this is all manmade terraces here.

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: Yeah. It’s not as the same shape of pyramids like Mayan or Giza pyramids.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: No. It’s a similar idea, that it rises in terraces to a pyramid shape, yeah.

  DR. DANNY HILMAN NATAWIDJAJA: Yeah. But it has the circular features.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: Indeed. There’s a question of definitions here, how do we define a pyramid? But if we define it as a structure that rises in a series of terraces to a summit, that’s what we’re looking at, at Gunung Padang. And the fact that such an ancient pyramid exists here at all could radically alter what we know about the capabilities of our ancestors….

  (Timecode, Ancient Apocalypse Episode 1: 00.12.33-00.14.00.)

• In sum, Hancock states that Gunung Padang “can best be described as a step pyramid” because it was a “massive terraforming project that remodelled the volcanic hill”. But as expert on Gunung Padang Dr Natawidjaja notes, its form is slightly different to the Gizan and Mayan pyramids in it being more “circular” and so Hancock concludes that what unites the form of pyramids is that they are a series of terraces that rise to a summit. Given that in the context of a pyramid, steps and terraces are near-synonymous, with terraces constituting wider “steps” – Rossi’s claim about Hancock’s pyramid definition is not only a moot point, but also exposes his “deflect and ridicule” tactic.

• Gunung Padang, the Ziggurat at Ur and the Meroë pyramids are all “stepped” or “terraced” pyramids. The irony of Rossi’s claim, “you can’t make this shit up” is palpable.

Claim 11: “North African and Near Eastern pyramids were associated with death, whereas South and Central American pyramids were associated with celebration, so Hancock is wrong when he claims that pyramids around the world are “universally associated with very specific spiritual ideas,” because pyramids are divided into cultural regions based on what they were designed for.”

Claim 12: “Hancock claims that pyramids around the world are all the same because they are associated with similar ritual purposes to intentionally mislead his viewers.”

In sum, Rossi Claims that:¹²⁴

• In saying that ancient pyramids around the world are “universally associated with very specific spiritual ideas”, Hancock is technically correct, but he does not disclose that the spiritual ideas are “wildly different from one another”;

• The Pyramid of Giza, the Ziggurat at Ur and the Meroë pyramids are “all burial structures” either “designed to have the dead interred” or “be some sort of memorial for the deceased”. Thus North African and Near Eastern pyramids are all “associated with death rituals”;

• Cahuachi was designed “to make offerings with regard to agriculture”, El Tajin “is part of a huge ceremonial complex that includes multiple buildings and ball courts”; and “Chichen Itza was a sacred site for Quetzlcoatl”; thus all pyramids in South and Central America were designed for “ceremony and celebration”;

• Hancock chose to not include Rossi’s aforesaid observations and instead just said the pyramids were used for “ceremonial purposes”;

• In saying that these pyramids are “all the same because they are associated with similar ritual purposes is such a misleading statement, because you can literally divide all of these into different cultural regions based on the things that they were designed to do”;

• “You can literally see how these ideas spread and like disseminated through the parts of the world where they arose”;

• “The fact that South America associated pyramids with ceremony and celebration, whereas North Africa and the near East associated it with death rituals – once you know what these pyramids were actually used for, you are able to completely dismantle everything that Hancock says, which is probably why he didn’t tell you that”;

• Hancock’s barely even telling “the story”.

Is this true?

• The transcript of the relevant part of Ancient Apocalypse Episode 2 reads as so:

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: So this pyramid building project must’ve been carried out by multiple generations, over a span of 1,700 years, and possibly longer. A fact now acknowledged by archaeologists. Yet modern scholarship knows next to nothing about the original architects. Or why they chose to build a pyramid here. Precisely the mysteries that most interest me.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: Do you get the sense of something maybe missing from the archaeological and historical story of ancient Mexico?

  DR. GEOFFREY McCAFFERTY: Well not to be overly dramatic but I think that a better understanding of Cholula would fundamentally change the perception of Mesoamerican history. It is a black hole. It is a black hole in Mexican history.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: Do you think there was something here before that first pyramid was built?

  DR. GEOFFREY McCAFFERTY: The pyramid was built over an important spring, and the spring represents a – a passageway in to the underworld, so it was clearly an important, sacred space as well as a ceremonial focus.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: The fact that the pyramid was the structure that was chosen to be built upon that site is not accidental. On the contrary, I believe it’s a critical clue to understanding the motivations of the original builders. Because that repeats a theme that we find all around the world. We’ve already uncovered evidence of a similar terraced pyramid in Indonesia at Gunung Padang that also has a sacred spring at its heart. It’s a pattern found not just in Mexico or Indonesia. That’s the case with the subterranean chamber beneath the Great Pyramid of Giza, in my view that is the first sacred place on the Giza Plateau, and the pyramids are later built on top of it to honour it. The Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan sits on top of a natural cavern. They modified it somewhat, and then they built a pyramid on top of it, but the first thing was the place itself, the sacred place and the pyramids mark this. You start off with a place that for one reason or another is regarded as sacred, that had a special magnetism that people could sense that made it important and that made it matter. The Great Pyramid of Cholula shares another key feature with ancient pyramids all around the world. Hints of hidden chambers. Not long after the Spanish conquest of Mexico a reliable eye witness, Father Bernardino de Sahagún, reported that the Great Pyramid of Cholula was full of mines and caves within. Today, modern investigators have confirmed that observation.

  DR. GEOFFREY McCAFFERTY: One of the former archaeologists found somewhere inside the pyramid erm, an open room. And there were tunnels feeding in to it. It’s never been published, I don’t know what the current situation is.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: That’s a very tantalising hint.

  DR. GEOFFREY McCAFFERTY: You think so?

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: Has that – well has that – has that room ever been excavated? Has it ever been revisited?

  DR. GEOFFREY McCAFFERTY: Not that I know of.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: Why hasn’t this inner chamber ever been revisited? What secrets could it hold about the intentions of the original builders? Regardless, the fact that the Great Pyramid of Cholula has a hidden inner chamber at all, like its cousins in Gunung Padang, and Giza, is yet another striking feature shared by these structures. And there’s more.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: So it’s pretty well established that the structure is oriented to the setting sun on the summer solstice?

  DR. GEOFFREY McCAFFERTY: That’s correct. The sun is setting between the two volcanoes to the west, so it’s very much a – a solstice related orientation. We know that the indigenous Mesoamericans were very clued in to astronomical cycles.

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: As were the ancient Egyptians who built their Great Pyramid of Giza to align precisely to true astronomical north. The fact that these ancient pyramids, whose builders supposedly had no contact with one another, have so much in common is a mystery. Is it just coincidence? I don’t think so. The general view that archaeology puts forward is that pyramids around the world were built in the form that they have because that’s the easiest way to make a high building. The problem is that these structures are universally associated with very specific spiritual ideas. What happens to us after death, this is always connected with pyramid structures, and that’s the case whether you find them in Mexico or whether you find them in ancient Egypt, or whether you find them in Cambodia or whether you find them in India.

  [VISUALS: Pyramids of Meroe, Sudan; Chichen Itza, Mexico; El Tajin, Mexico]

  GRAHAM HANCOCK: It’s a detail that defies the accepted mainstream view that various human civilisations around the world independently invented pyramids. What it suggests to me is that something else was going on behind the scenes. Could we be witnessing the unfolding of some extraordinary masterplan? A shared legacy from a lost global civilisation that provided the seeds and the spark of inspiration from which many later civilisations grew. (Timecode, Ancient Apocalypse Episode 2: 00.07.48-00.13.50).

• Again, Rossi, who claims to “be taking a balanced look” at the points Hancock makes in Ancient Apocalypse and “weighing each piece of evidence presented” does not report Hancock’s points accurately or engage with the evidence he presents. When Hancock states that the “structures are universally associated with very specific spiritual ideas”, he is referring to “what happens to us after death” in the context of the astronomical alignment of the structures, the presence of hidden chambers within them, and their placement on sites of pre-existing spiritual significance.

• To “weigh up the evidence presented”, Rossi would have to engage with Hancock’s points – about each site’s alleged a) astronomical alignments, b) hidden chambers and c) placement on sites of pre-existing spiritual significance. He would then be expected to show how these three factors do not relate to a preoccupation with, in Hancock’s words, “what happens to us after death,” and put forward another interpretation supported by evidence. However, Rossi reports Hancock’s points inaccurately, using ridicule, masking the vacuousness of his own claims – that pyramids are obviously “wildly” different just by looking at them, and also divisible into categories based on their design and location.

• Evidently, according to the transcript of the relevant part of Ancient Apocalypse Episode 2, Hancock does not claim that the pyramids he either mentions or are shown on screen are “all the same”. He also does not mention “ritual purposes,” but “spiritual ideas”. The fact that Rossi states that this “is such a misleading statement” when he has totally misquoted Hancock, exposes his default tendency to misinform. His sensationalised use of the word “literally” makes his unevidenced point sound convincing when in reality, his statement is vacuous and has little evidential grounding.

• In two punctuated phrases, without citing any evidence, Rossi claims to have sufficiently explained the function of six ancient pyramids. And by presenting these two unevidenced punctuated phrases, members of his audience, who have been told that Rossi “watched Ancient Apocalypse so [they] don’t have to”¹²⁵ would not only be able to “completely dismantle everything Hancock says” but can also walk away from his video knowing that Hancock intentionally withholds the truth as told by Rossi.

• In reality, Rossi’s claim that all pyramids in North Africa and the Near East were for interring the dead or memorialising the deceased and all pyramids in South and Central America were designed for celebrations and ceremonies, is factually incorrect, and one needn’t look further than the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s page about Teotihuacan in Mexico for confirmation:

  The Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, echoing the shape of the mountains surrounding the valley, served as focal points for Teotihuacan’s urban layout. Beneath the pyramids are earlier structures; perhaps even tombs of Teotihuacan rulers are to be found within their stone walls. When the Pyramid of the Sun was completed circa 200 A.D., it was some 63 meters tall and 215 meters square. One of the largest structures ever built in the ancient Americas, its aspect today is the result of reconstruction and consolidation carried out in the early part of the twentieth century. Excavations in 1971 directly under the Pyramid of the Sun revealed a tunnel-like cave, ending in a cloverleaf-shaped set of chambers, apparently the scene of numerous ancient fire and water rituals. This cave may have been a “place of emergence”—the “womb” from which the first humans came into the world in central Mexican thought. Caves are a key part of symbolic imagery associated with creation myths and the underworld throughout Mesoamerican history. The location and orientation of this cave may have been the impetus for the Pyramid of the Sun’s alignment and construction. The Pyramid of the Moon, at the northern end of the Street of the Dead, was probably completed around 250 A.D. Recent excavations near the base of the pyramid staircase have uncovered the tomb of a male skeleton with numerous grave goods of obsidian and greenstone, as well as sacrificial animals. One of the most significant tombs yet discovered at Teotihuacan, it might indicate that even more important tombs lie buried at the heart of the pyramid.¹²⁶

Claim 13: “Hancock belittles ancient cultures and contradicts himself by stating how complex they are on the one hand, and on the other saying that they needed people from Atlantis to teach them how to stack rocks”

In Rossi’s words (timecode: 00.49.53-00.50.27):

“And now the most obvious one and the one which is always the perfect argument when talking about pyramids is that it is just the best way to stack rocks: you got four sides and it goes up, you really can’t beat that. And to say that all of these cultures in different parts of the world needed someone to come teach them how to do it is pretty belittling. I don’t know how he didn’t see that it’s hilarious how he tries to push this idea of being like “the ancients were so much more complex than we thought” and then is like “well did they stack up those rocks on their own? No, they needed people to come from Atlantis to teach them to do that one.”

Is this true?

• At no point in the episode that Rossi claims to be evaluating does Hancock mention Atlantis, nor has he ever stated or implied that ancient cultures needed people from Atlantis, or people from anywhere, to teach them how to build pyramids. Hancock’s suggestion is that in understanding the nuances of the spiritual beliefs of ancient cultures around the world that built pyramids and other monumental structures, we could be witnessing the fingerprints of a lost civilisation whose knowledge, skills and spiritual ideas were transferred to and adapted by subsequent civilisations around the world, over many millennia.

• Rossi’s claim is based on no specific points made by Hancock; neither in the Netflix series, nor in any of his books published over the past three decades. It is, therefore, merely a gross misrepresentation shrouded in ridicule.

Chapter Five: “Miniminuteman is a conspiracy theorist”

Investigating the claim that Milo Rossi aka Miniminuteman is a conspiracy theorist

In calling himself “conspiracy debunker”, Rossi intends to prove that ‘archaeological conspiracies’ exist where they are often absent. This became particularly apparent in Dr Hafford’s response to Rossi’s interpretation of ‘the Baghdad Battery’, and Rossi’s explanation of his ‘Awful Archaeology’ method: In selecting a topic from a pre-prepared list of 75 alleged ‘archaeological conspiracy theories’ before comprehensively researching the topics, Rossi has been found to force evidence to fit his preconceived opinions and disseminate inauthentic information. Evidently, the same can be said about his approach to Hancock’s Netflix series.

We’ve also found, thanks to Langois’ response to Rossi’s evident lack of knowledge about archaeological ethics, that though Rossi refers to himself as an archaeologist, he isn’t one.

We’ve also deduced, thanks to Dr Miano and Dr Hoopes’ detailed descriptions of what constitutes ‘pseudoarchaeology’, that Rossi thoroughly fits the description of a pseudoarchaeologist.

We’ve shown that Rossi’s self-entitled role as ‘archaeology conspiracy debunker’ who’s defending ‘The Truth’ of science against a malignant ‘other’ is wildly misguided. Archaeology is neither a hard science to be “believed in” like microbiology (i.e. vaccine development), nor is it compatible with claims to ‘The Truth’ without posing a tangible danger: A wrongful conspiracy accusation is a witch-hunt where the accused is a victim of harmful allegations, and the ‘Truth defender’ a conspiracy theorist whose allegations are insufficiently grounded.

Such was the major finding of Chapter Four: of thirteen consecutive harmful allegations made by Rossi against Hancock, not a single one have been found to be accurately reported, sufficiently evidenced, reasonable or True.

Such is the irony of a wrongful conspiracy allegation: in claiming a conspiracy is present where it’s absent, Rossi the self-entitled “conspiracy debunker” has outed himself as a deceptive conspiracy theorist.

Granted, our exploration of Rossi’s claims about Hancock only covered one of four videos of his ‘I watched Ancient Apocalypse so you don’t have to’ series. However, Rossi’s choice of series title, which seeks to discourage his viewers from watching Hancock while convincing them of his trustworthiness; his failure to report a single point made by Hancock in Episode 1 to his viewers accurately; his masquerade as an archaeologist when he isn’t one; his evident lack of archaeological ethics and failure to seek out primary data when formulating his interpretations; the excuses he makes about paywalled research expenses when he earns abundantly per video; his insulting failure to report expert opinions on topics, like that of Dr Natawidjaja and his team at Gunung Padang; and his jeering, sneering mockery and wrongful, harmful accusations directed at other people and their work, are enough to demonstrate that Milo Rossi aka ‘Miniminuteman’ cannot be trusted.