Thread by @NevilleMorley

One of the many interesting issues raised by @FlintDibble’s recent threads on Atlantan pseudoarchaeology, and still more the furious reaction of the programme makers, is the question of authority in constructing accounts of the past.

https://twitter.com/FlintDibble/status/1433866892599599110

Is a claim necessarily true because it’s made by an academic specialist? Obviously not, given that academics disagree with one another the whole time. Is a claim necessarily false because it’s made by a non-academic? Again, obviously not.

One might argue that an academic claim - within their area of expertise - comes with a certain level of credibility, given training and expertise, and the fact they’re used to continual peer review of different kinds; a non-academic has to work harder to get the same credibility.

Put another way; an academic talking about their area of expertise should probably be taken seriously (not the same as believing whatever they say) unless/until they demonstrate that they’re not worth taking seriously.

But, to non-academics this can look very like a closed shop; not just that the academics exclude/ignore everyone who isn’t in their club, but also that they judge everyone in terms of adherence to conventional views, and therefore reject new ideas simply because they’re new.

The amateur who makes a radical discovery, rejected by the stuffy establishment but eventually vindicated, is a powerful cultural image; see e.g. Schliemann and Troy. It easily morphs into the idea that anyone whose idea is rejected by the stuffy establishment must be right.

And this idea is often quite deliberately employed by the authors of pseudo-archaeology and mystical alternative history; their claim to attention is precisely that they are revealing The Hidden Truth that the stuffy establishment denies, whether aliens building pyramids...

...or the secret location of lost Atlantis or the mysteries of the Templars or whatever. Long before the idea that “people have had enough of experts”, the ‘Ancient Worlds’ sections of bookshops were pushing a gnostic version of world history in which hidden truths were revealed.

It ties into what I once called the X-Files View of History - the sort of “everything is connected to everything else” view brilliantly satirised in Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. Everything fits, everything coheres, the hidden truth makes everything make sense.

Whereas a hallmark of academic history/archaeology is that it remains fragmented, uncertain, disputed; it often admits to doubt and debate, it leaves gaps - which can look, from the outside, to be a weakness, in comparison to the certainty of the revelation of ancient mysteries.

I take some small satisfaction from the fact that more than twenty years ago I was worrying about the problem of drawing distinctions between academic and pseudo-history, especially where the latter can adopt much of the presentational style of the former.

And I didn’t have a terribly good answer then, beyond “read lots of ancient history and it’ll start to become clear that some is more credible than others”. My sense is that it’s got worse, that it’s all too easy for attempts at research to lead deeper into fictional nonsense...

...if not in fact dangerous racist far-right conspiratorial twaddle. It remains the case that some people will genuinely develop an interest in the ancient world as a result of watching programmes on Atlantis, just as I’ve had students who started as Graham Hancock fans.

Our task is not to invoke academic authority in simply declaring that they’re deluded, but to teach them the actual skills of analysis and interpretation that will, in due course, allow them to realise for themselves that their old beliefs don’t actually make sense.

And while reacting to “Someone is wrong on the internet!” is an endless and pointless enterprise, giving a clear rejoinder to the mythographers and mystifiers and professional purveyors of conspiratorial twaddle is vital. All power to @FlintDibble for having the energy to do it!