Know Your Archaeoporn: Impossible Knowledge Part III

In the last post on Impossible Knowledge, I looked at Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval’s attempt to develop a reasoning behind the arrangement of for the Giza Pyramids, and its failures. This was, however, not Hancock’s only attempt to develop a source for ancient African societies. In his novel, Sign and the Seal, [...]

Know Your Archaeoporn: Impossible Knowledge Part II

Earlier in this series, I started by looking at Afrocentrist claims of the origins of Western culture and some examples of its acceptance of myth over fact.
Not surprisingly, many pseudo-archaeologists and fraudulent-historians have failed to get their minds around the idea that even a society as ancient as the Egyptians could have developed the knowledge [...]

Ethiopian Ark

Don’t get me wrong, I like BoingBoing, and I have been reading them for years. However, the posters tend to be attracted to the farthest forms of woo imaginable, from cryptozoology to aliens. This tends to have them spotlight some rather questionable, or even worthless pieces. Such happened last week, when they [...]

Genesis 1:1

So what is archaeoporn?  Well, other than the once annual cover of Biblical Archaeology Review, its a term used by Bill Dever in discussing the Tomb of Jesus special aired this year on the discovery channel.  It refers to a presentation of archaeological theory or information that is showy and attractive, particularly to a lay [...]