Netflix's popular new series Ancient Apocalypse has been criticised by experts on Pacific history who say it is founded on "racist" and "white supremacist" ideologies and promotes pseudoscience.
Hosted by British writer Graham Hancock, the eight-part series travels to locations around the world looking for evidence of lost civilisations dating to the last Ice Age in a bid to "overthrow the paradigm of history".
"We have forgotten something incredibly important in our own past," Hancock says, setting the stage in the first episode.
"And I think that incredibly important forgotten thing is a lost advanced civilisation of the Ice Age."
Hancock posits that a global flood wiped out this civilisation and points to a recurring great flood myth in religions and cultures across the world — from Noah's Ark in the Bible to Deucalion in Greek mythology — as proof.
"The worldwide tradition of global flood stops being just a myth, and starts being a memory, an account of real events," he says.
Last week, the program ranked in Netflix's top 10 television shows worldwide, including in Australia and New Zealand.
But experts like Patrick Nunn, from the University of the Sunshine Coast, who specialises in Pacific geography and archaeology, say Ancient Apocalypse is misleading.
"There is an audience for these kinds of programs, but if you scratch the surface, you find most of what is proposed in this is without any kind of scientific foundation," Professor Nunn says.
An 'alternative' history
In the first episode, Hancock offers up a revised version of Indo-Pacific history.
"In a cold and forbidding world, this huge South East Asian landmass would have been amongst several warm and inviting locations where early humans might have had a real stab at developing an advanced and sophisticated civilisation," he says.
Using two lesser-known archaeological sites as examples – Gunung Padang in Indonesia and Nan Madol in the Federated States of Micronesia – Hancock theorises that an advanced civilisation built both sites over 20,000 years ago during the last Ice Age.
That's tens of thousands of years earlier than archaeologist believe the sites were built.
"It's my job to offer an alternative point of view," Hancock says.
"Perhaps there's been a forgotten episode in human history. But perhaps the extremely defensive, arrogant and patronising attitude of mainstream academia is stopping us from considering that possibility."
Series 'furthest from the truth'
Professor Nunn says Nan Madol, in the Federated States of Micronesia's Pohnpei, was built by ancestors of present day Pohnpeians, with construction beginning about 1,000 years ago.
It's been dubbed by some as the "eighth wonder of the world" and others as the "Venice of the Pacific".
The reference to Venice comes from the canals that connect 93 man-made islets spread over 200 acres built with basalt and coral boulders.
The version of Micronesian history put forward in Ancient Apocalypse is "the furthest from the truth", according to Augustine Kohler, the acting director of the Federated States of Micronesia Office of National Archives and Cultural and Historic Preservation.
"We have oral histories of our ancestors building this city, so to say that it was built by aliens — it's not something that we take seriously," Mr Kohler says.
Pohnpeians can trace their ancestry back to the builders of Nan Madol.
"When you're born, you belong to a certain clan … your clan has a function in society and some of the clans were responsible for building this site. All over Pohnpei, we can trace it back," he says.
Moves from the pseudoscience playbook
Mark McCoy, an expert in Pacific Island archaeology from the Southern Methodist University, says Ancient Apocalypse uses classic moves from the pseudoscience playbook.
"The production value is high … presenting itself as sort of a factual series," he says.
"Another one is, of course, to demonise the experts – 'the experts are always against me', and archaeologists are certainly the bad guys in this series."
Professor Nunn says: "There's absolutely no evidence to suggest [Nan Madol] wasn't constructed by the ancestors of the present Pohnpeian who live on these islands.
"[Their claims] are really incredibly insulting to the ancestors of the Pohnpeian that did create these structures."
Debunking Hancock's claims
Gunung Padang is a megalithic complex built of earth and stone on an extinct volcano about 90 kilometres from Indonesia's capital Jakarta in West Java.
Hancock suggests the "blocks of columnar basal", or volcanic rock, used in both Gunung Padang and Nan Madol is proof of megalith architecture from a lost civilisation.
Professor McCoy points out that columnar basalt is found at volcanic hotspots around the world.
"What you just happen to have is two groups of people who are building using the same sort of natural [material]," Professor McCoy says.
Hancock then says the fact some of Nan Madol's ruins are below sea water suggests it was built earlier than first thought.
"I found several of its megalithic pillars extending out below the waterline, suggesting that earlier versions may have been constructed when sea levels were lower during the last Ice Age," he says.
"Could Gunung Padang architects have made it across the South Pacific to Micronesia?"
Professor McCoy says he would be "extraordinarily surprised" if none of the columnar basalt building blocks were underwater because "that's where these pillars naturally occur".
A recent paper by Professor McCoy and his team analysed nearby mangrove soil and revealed that the site was likely built on dry land without canals in mind and later inundated by the sea.
The researchers found the sea level rise was due to subsidence, and was less than 1 metre in the nearly 1,000 years since the site was constructed.
'Racist' advanced civilisation myth
Professor Nunn says theories about who built Nan Madol strip Indigenous peoples of their rich histories and can be traced back to "racist philosophies" and "white supremacist ideologies" of the 19th century.
According to these theories, "it's simply not possible for people who were not Europeans to have built such incredible structures", he says.
Professor McCoy says Ancient Apocalypse is creating fantasy with people's real heritage.
"If the roles were reversed and Micronesians were making up these stories about Stonehenge … Europeans would probably find it offensive," he says.
He says ancient DNA recovered from Nan Madol is a "very close match" to living Pohnpeians, descendants of those who built it.
According to Professor Nunn, "as soon as you start to take it seriously, then you are engaging with nonsense and demeaning, racist-informed agendas," he says.
"And I think that's where it becomes really dangerous."
Hancock and ITN Productions, the production company behind the series, have been contacted for comment.
Natural for history of flooding to be exaggerated
Professor Nunn, who has written books about ancient societies lost to sea level rises, said Hancock's global flood theory is "simply a geological impossibility".
He says sometimes people exaggerate details for the sake of a good story, and that this human quirk helps explain the global flood myth.
"When there was a devastating flood locally, it was natural for the memories of that to be preserved in people's oral traditions and it was natural — when the next flood came and the next flood came — for the history of flooding to be exaggerated over time, so that the stories would remain memorable," he says.
Professor Nunn says ancient societies didn't have the advantage of the modern-day, connected world where people hear about natural disasters affecting other parts of the globe in real time.
"It's quite possible that people living locally thought there had been a flood that had affected everywhere," he says.
The great flood myth is a convenient tool Hancock uses to put all his evidence out of reach, according to Professor McCoy.
"[Hancock says] all the things that would prove [his] ideas are underwater, right, which is pretty convenient considering there are many parts that aren't underwater, currently, that he cannot point to as supporting evidence [of a lost civilisation]," he says.
