Talking to the Guy on the Airplane
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TALKING TO THE GUY ON THE AIRPLANE Donald H. Holly Jr. here’s a popular meme that my archaeology Daily Show, ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption, and friends have been circulating on social me- HGTV’s House Hunters International. They rep- Tdia lately: a picture of Giorgio Tsoukalos, resent far more people than will ever take an ar- a producer of the popular History Channel show chaeology class. It is worth noting that the History Ancient Aliens, overlaid with the caption “I’m not Channel also produces American Unearthed, a saying it was aliens, but it was aliens.” The caption largely hyperdiffusionist take on North American is a play on Tsoukalos’s and others’ claims that antiquity, and Search for the Lost Giants, which the archaeological and historical record contains (yep!) examines “evidence” for giants in antiquity. ample evidence for alien visits to earth in antiquity. And this is just the History Channel. Check out To wit, past episodes of the show have suggested this generation’s TV (the Internet) if you dare. that Kachinas, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and in- If Amazon.com’s best-seller list is any indica- digenous rock art depict aliens; that much of the tion (Amazon 2014), people are even reading (yes, monumental art and architecture of ancient reading) books about ancient aliens, giants, and Mesoamerica, South America, Near East, Easter pseudoarchaeology. Peruse Amazon and you will Island (of course), Malta, and elsewhere represents see that most of the best-selling books in the genre the genius of extraterrestrial visitors; that Mayan of what we may call “genuine” archaeology tend kings were not really people but alien overlords; to be textbooks. The great bulk of these fall some- that extraterrestrials were responsible for the where between the 90,000 and 400,000 mark on demise of many civilizations— if not the di- their best-selling book list. On a positive note, we nosaurs, too— and so on. My archaeologist friends could conclude that sales of these books are prob- post the meme because they think it is hilarious, ably better than the rankings suggest because the but sometimes I wonder whether we are the only list does not aggregate different editions of the ones laughing. A lot more people seem to be lis- same book. On the other hand, when weighing tening, and even nodding in agreement. popularity, we must concede the sad fact that nearly Ancient Aliens first aired on the History Chan- all of these sales are coerced— that students are nel in 2010. Over 80 episodes have appeared since buying them for class, and then likely not reading then, and the show is currently in its seventh sea- them. I doubt, however, that many faculty members son (History Channel 2015). The show has been are assigning The Ancient Giants of North America such a success that a spinoff, In Search of Ancient (Dewhurst 2014) for classroom use, and yet it Aliens, now also airs on the History Channel. An- ranked 4,500 on Amazon’s best-seller book list cient Aliens cracked the top 100 TV shows on ca- and #4 in the category of archaeology books in ble (among 25–54 year olds) eight times in 2013, Politics and Social Sciences in the Spring of 2014. with an average of over a million viewers per Nor do I suspect that The Ancient Alien Question showing (Zap2it 2014). While not Monday Night (Coppens 2012) is required reading for many ar- Football, on some nights about as many people chaeology courses, but it ranked about 38,000 on watched it as they did the Comedy Channel’s The the Amazon best-seller list in the Spring of 2014. American Antiquity 80(3), 2015, pp. 615–629 Copyright © 2015 by the Society for American Archaeology DOI: 10.7183/0002-7316.80.3.615 615 616 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 80, No. 3, 2015] It had also been rated some 239 times, with 81 communities. But perhaps we need to not only percent of readers giving the book four or five write for the public, but listen to them and address stars. And then consider that the current #1 best- their interests and questions too. This was essen- seller in Amazon’s Prehistory category is Finger- tially the take-away point of a session on prints of the Gods (Hancock 1995), with Before pseudoarchaeology organized by David Anderson, Atlantis (Joseph 2013) not far behind at #7. For Jeb Card, and Ken Feder at the SAA meetings in comparison, two excellent books that critically ex- Memphis in 2012: that we devote some time in amine pseudoarchaeology claims, Frauds, Myths, our introductory courses to address pseudoarchae- and Mysteries (Feder 2014) and Archaeological ology and seize the opportunity of “teaching mo- Fantasies (Fagan, ed. 2006), ranked about 365,000 ments” outside of the classroom to inform and and 1,100,000, respectively. With this in mind, educate the public (Anderson et al. 2013). Cer- should we really be surprised that the content of tainly, given the popular state of knowledge of pseudoarchaeology programs and books has crept archaeology, it is clear that donning noise-can- into the popular consciousness? celling headphones and peering out the window When I present popular misconceptions re- is not working (Anderson et al. 2013; Feder garding evolution, the archaeological record, the 2006:95). It’s time we talk to the guy sitting next age of the earth, dinosaurs, race, and so forth in to us on the airplane. my classes I often invoke a semi-fictitious char- Some say that by merely engaging with acter I call “the guy on the airplane.” I met the in- pseudoarchaeology we legitimize it by creating spiration for him years ago on a flight to an an- the appearance of a debate (Anderson et al. 2013), thropology conference; he was sitting next to me and I agree, but would offer that ignoring reading a dog-eared copy of the aforementioned pseudoarchaeology has a similar effect, as one of Fingerprints of the Gods. But I’ve encountered the main assertions of pseudoarchaeologists is him (or her) plenty of times since then: in my that there is an establishment conspiracy to bury classes, at drinking establishments, and even in their work (see Fagan 2006). Thus, no matter what the halls of academia. It seems that I am running we do, we give them ammunition. But the reviews into him now more than ever. At a party just last that follow are not for them. As Ken Feder’s winter, he asked me what I knew about the lost (2006) research has shown, a surprising number race of people that had mined silver in Appalachia. of college students are what he calls “fence sit- And then in the spring semester he came up to ters.” They do not completely dismiss the claims me after class to remind me that the ancient Egyp- of pseudoarchaeology, but nor are they true be- tians had light bulbs. For those few of you who lievers. I suspect that the vast majority of the peo- have not yet met the type, you should know that ple we encounter in bars and on planes can be “the guy on the airplane” is rarely belligerent or characterized the same way. Accordingly, the main obstinate (see also Anderson et al. 2013). In fact, intent of these reviews is to offer the silent and he is often friendly. If anything, he tends to be curious majority that is interested in these works undecided about alternative archaeological expla- a professional perspective on them, and for those nations. And therein lies our opportunity. archaeologists who are unfamiliar with them, a Anthropologists and archaeologists have been primer on pseudoarchaeology today. advocating for some time that we need to write books for the public. Some of this may reflect a References Cited nostalgia for an age when the works of Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Ashley Montagu, and V. Amazon 2014 Book Department. Electronic document, Gordon Childe were read by common folk; jeal- http://www.amazon.com/, accessed June 11, 2014. ousy that our work has often been more success- Anderson, David S., Jeb J. Card, and Kenneth L. Feder fully synthesized by others rather than our own; 2013 Speaking Up and Speaking Out: Collective Efforts in the Fight to Reclaim the Public Perception of Archaeology. and an ethical obligation to make our work— The SAA Archaeological Record 13(2):24–28. which is often funded by tax-dollars and depen- Coppens, Philip dent on an indigenous record— accessible and 2012 The Ancient Alien Question: A New Inquiry into the Existence, Evidence, and Influence of Ancient Visitors. meaningful to the broader public and descendant New Page Books, Pompton Plains, New Jersey. REVIEWS 617 Dewhurst, Richard J. 2013 Frauds, Myth, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudo- 2014 The Ancient Giants who Ruled America: The Missing science in Archaeology. 8th ed. McGraw-Hill, New York. Skeletons and the Great Smithsonian Cover-Up. Bear Hancock, Graham and Company, Rochester, Vermont. 1995 Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth’s Fagan, Garrett G. Lost Civilization. Crown Publishers, New York. 2006 Diagnosing Pseudoarchaeology. In Archaeological History Channel Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the 2014 Ancient Aliens Episode Guide. Electronic document, Past and Misleads the Public, edited by Garrett G. Fagan, http://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens, accessed pp. 23–46. Routledge, London. June 11, 2014. Fagan, Garrett G. (editor) Joseph, Frank 2006 Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology 2013 Before Atlantis: 20 Million Years of Human and Pre- Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public. Routledge, human Cultures. Bear and Company, Rochester, Ver- London.