This is a shorter tape today, with three episodes of Horizon. The first two form something of a two-parter starting with Atlantis Uncovered. This programme looks at some of the myths of the story of Atlantis, and the evidence that debunks those myths. It’s a nice combination of ‘Ancient Alien’ woo and good old fashioned archaeology.
I particularly liked Ken Fader, who teaches about Atlantis myths, particularly the idea that the lost Atlantis was the source of all civilisation. After al, lots of geographically distinct civilisations build pyramids, or use symbols to write, so surely they must have all got the idea from one place, hence Atlantis. Fader has plenty of evidence that these developments were definitely independent, and not related.
There’s some great archive footage about carbon dating. Although to be fair this could be anything.
A blast from the past, with Erich von Daniken, from a 1977 Horizon episode. “Chariots of the Gods, man. They practically owned South America.”
From the same programme, a clip of Carl Sagan.
And the modern version of von Daniken, Graham Hancock, of whom more later.
There’s a lot of interesting archaeology in this one. One of the Atlantis arguments is that the Egyptian hieroglyphics on tombs are very sophisticated, so why don’t we see cruder writing forms showing the development. And as with similar arguments used in the Creationism vs Evolution field, the answer turns out to be “here they are, we just hadn’t found them.’ Some recent excavations had unearthed examples of writings going back much further than before, and the development of the writing system from crude markings to more sophisticated hieroglyphs was obvious.
The programme closes with a reminder about how ‘pernicious myths’ about a glorious old civilisation can lead to very bad things happening indeed. See also: Brexit and Trump.
BBC Genome: BBC Two – 28th October 1999 – 21:30
The next programme concentrates on the ‘theories’ of Graham Hancock, who we briefly saw in the last programme. He was flavour of the month in ‘alien astronaut’ circles at this time, and the programme spends a lot of time dismantling his ideas.
A lot of his theories involve picking ancient sites, and matching them to the positions of stars in constellations. For example, the three pyramids at Giza are supposed to match the positions of the stars in Orion’s belt. But Dr Kate Spence from Cambridge explains how the location constrained the positions of the pyramids.
Dr Eleanor Mannikka spent 20 years mapping the ancient structures around Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and she looks at Hancock’s claim that the structures reflect the stars in the constellation Draco.
It’s not a particularly strong match. Hancock’s response: “There’s a rather good correspondence, by no means absolutely spot-on accurate.” It’s very weak. And Mannikka can cite well documented historical reasons for the placement of all the temples – the tallest hill, the site of a great battle, etc.
And the real kicker is that there are more than 60 temples in the region, and Hancock picked ten of them.
“Horizon has made a discovery which further questions his basic theory.” an arrangement of unique monuments with a pattern of stars – the constellation Leo the Lion. The monuments include Macy’s, Grand Central Station, Madison Square Gardens and Times Square. “The Leo Masterplan doesn’t account for every Manhattan landmark, but using Hancock’s criteria, it doesn’t have to.” This is brutal stuff.
BBC Genome: BBC Two – 4th November 1999 – 21:30
Before the final episode there’s a trailer for Besieged.
Then, another Horizon – The Midas Formula. This looks at the Black-Scholes model for calculating the ideal price of a financial option. It was seen as a miracle as it appeared to allow the trader to eliminate risk by taking two options together.
I don’t pretend to understand the trading market, as it’s mostly just gambling with stupid jackets on, and (as this programme relates) plenty of experiments have been run which shows that a random number generator does as well as most traders.
Naturally, there’s horror stories where the trading companies lost enormous sums – $500,000,000. And if the company went down, something like a trillion dollars would be lost. (Nobody ever explains where that money goes, though.) The company had to be bailed out, and there’s a clip of Bernie Sanders asking why billionaires are being bailed out by the Federal Reserve.
I might be biased against this whole world. When I went to university, I had to take an Economics course, even though I was studying Software Engineering. And I had to drop out because I kept failing the exam, mostly because I just couldn’t be bothered, since Economics is mostly just made up anyway. Not that I have a chip on my shoulder – I’ve spent my entire working life working in the field I wanted to work in, and the lack of a degree hasn’t hindered me. I just hate Economists.
BBC Genome: BBC Two – 2nd December 1999 – 21:30
After this there’s a trailer for Omnibus on Stephen King. Then the tape ends.