So I'm watching 60 Minutes earlier tonight...well, half watching and half hamming it up for Tess...and they had a segment titled, "In Search Of The Hobbit", about them thar bones they found a couple years ago of 3-foot adult humanoids in Indonesia, which have provided compelling evidence that the human ancestral tree is broader and more complex than our history books tell us. It's exciting stuff, especially considering the response from the skeptics, who typically arrive with their conclusions and egos armed at the ready. Their response is, no...these are just homo sapiens, and you just so happened to have dug up one with microcephaly, or "small brain", which is a (very) rare brain wasting disorder. If they find more of these skulls, and they likely will, these people will probably contend that it was a whole race of people afflicted with this disease. For them, such toss-outs are easier than to have to accept that the theses upon which they built their careers are in jeopardy.

The subject was recently covered in the esteemed Science magazine. This article is a good read. It basically comes down to this: Academia likes to think that it has all the answers to human history and those answers are rather tidy and comfortable and human civilization is about 5,000 years old. Those whose minds are tethered to their religion will go further, and claim that all of humanity is merely 5,000 years old, and if you go still further, you'll find the completely blind lot who claim that the Earth is only 5,000 years old.

We have enough bones already that prove all that to be nonsense, but these are especially interesting because they're 12,000 years old, and they are clearly different from modern humans but they were also clearly bipedal and users of tools, making them look an awful lot like a separate and unknown human species.

But anyway, I'm watching the program and listening to this wiry skeptic try to make a convincing argument for the brain disease theory. Just then, I was reminded of something that author/researcher Graham Hancock said in a History Channel (The Best channel on TV) episode about the underwater structures off the coast of the tiny Japanese island, Yonaguni. (You can become familiar with Hancock with a quick read from this excerpt from his best seller, Fingerprint of the Gods.)

Hancock has been researching ancient civilizations for decades and is the best-selling author of several books and etc. He has met many like-minded people, and he has met many academics to whom discovery means nothing. To them, everything significant has already been discovered and all that's left to do is expand and broaden existing theories and drive them into the population's brain until they become fact. But anyway, I was watching that HC program, when Hancock said something that intrigued me, so I hastily jotted it down. He said:

Archaeologists and historians regard themselves as the specialists of the past. They like to feel that they know everything that needs to be known. Therefore, the idea of a major forgotten episode in human history is a bit threatening, and when a very interesting phenomenon is found, such as the underwater structures of Yonaguni...instead of rationally and intelligently investigating that phenomena, most academics write it off at the outset, and don't even want to know.

It rings so true, and it really made me angry. So many Ph.D.s to protect out there. So many careers riding on conventional wisdom. They don't even want to know, which is one major reason why we remain, as Hancock so poignantly stated, "a species with amnesia."

If there's one thing that I believe, it's that there's a whole world of unconventional truths out there waiting to be revealed. The world needs more Graham Hancocks, and more importantly, eager eyes and ears.

Labels: ponderage