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Notes -
"Ancient Apocalypse" on Netflix has been a break out hit. Some of the reactions have been... interesting.
The Guardian declared it the most dangerous show on Netflix.
Boingboing says Archaeologists reveal the white supremacist nonsense behind Netflix's "Ancient Apocalypse"
So what's behind this?
Hitler famously cherry picked some ideas from archeology / anthropology to push his agenda. Post WW2 academics found that it was easy to push out rivals by claiming their ideas could result in a new Hitler.
As a result anthropology is filled with people who think that they have a vital role as guardians of society.
This mostly results in making historical narratives more dishonest and less cool. The Bell Beaker culture is often referred to as the Corded Ware culture. They claim it was spread as a peaceful diffusion of culture. Genetic testing that showed that as the culture expanded neighbouring Y-DNA haplogroups disappeared. This is dismissed as one of those great mysteries.
When a body is found carrying a spear and multiple hand axes, they are ceremonial trade goods instead of weapons. The arrows in the back of the body were presumably his change from the trading. That joke was stolen from an academic I can't track down.
Ancient Apocalypse is really just fun and harmless, but the reactions point to a deeper problem.
Is it about the Bronze Age Collapse?
No, earlier. His thesis is that the younger dryas sea rise wiped out an early agricultural society along the coasts.
The fastest sea rises back then were around 5 cm per year. A few generations of that plus the ensuing coastal erosion could wipe out fishing villages, and of course a few millennia of that redrew continents, but on the time scales of a society with agricultural technology it's nothing. Wouldn't some parts of that society have remembered to bring seeds with them, when they escaped the calamity by walking uphill slowly once every couple decades?
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