I spent less than one minute googling, and came up with this [0] on my first try:

> I am quite clear, however, having spent more than quarter of a century walking the walk across many of the most intriguing ancient archaeological sites on earth, and digging into ancient texts and traditions from all around the world, that NO ancient archaeological site and NO ancient text or tradition that I have yet come across provides persuasive evidence for the “ancient astronaut hypothesis”.

> ... My own view is that all of the anomalies of history and prehistory pointed to by advocates of the ancient astronaut hypothesis are far better and more elegantly explained as emanating from a lost, advanced HUMAN civilization of prehistoric antiquity than from high-tech alien visitors from another planet.

So, you just made that up, even though he expressly says the opposite on his own website. Why would you do that?

0 -https://grahamhancock.com/ancient-aliens-or-a-lost-civilizat...

I don't know what to tell you, there are direct quotes from his books in my first comment. Here's another one:

> Shamanism is not confined to specific socio-economic settings or stages of development. It is fundamentally the ability that all of us share, some with and some without the help of hallucinogens, to enter altered states of consciousness and to travel out of body in non-physical realms - there to encounter supernatural entities and gain useful knowledge and healing powers from them.

- Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind

Here's a whole book about these supernatural beings who assisted primitive humanity: https://grahamhancock.com/visionary/.

I do think it's different than the "ancient astronauts" theory, but anything living that isn't from Earth is an alien, so entities from other realms clearly qualify.

Edit: Sorry, rereading the thread I see the misunderstanding, you are right that he doesn't think aliens were involved in building the pyramids specifically and I didn't mean to imply that. I'm just saying that he thinks aliens were involved in the general development of the human species.

> he thinks aliens were involved in the general development of the human species.

That's still a gross mischaracterization of his stance, I think.

It sounds like you've never had a psychedelic experience yourself? If you had, I think you'd find it much easier to believe there's something to the 'stoned ape' theory. Especially when you realize that basically every culture ever - I know of no exceptions - has developed some way of leaving their normal state of reality.

No one has ever left the normal state of reality. Only perception. Certainly humans have been hallucinating and imagining things forever. Also, lying about your knowledge is a pretty universal human trait. Graham Hancock is proof of that.

I didn't say *the* normal state of reality, I said their normal state.

And that's not untrue, so why do you think you've proved Hancock a liar?

There's only one reality that we're all in all the time.

And you just happen to know the precise shape of it all? Reality just unfolded its entire mysteries for you and you alone, I guess.

No. But it didn't unfold itself to anyone else either. Shamans have never produced a single falsifiable hypothesis. Reality is exposed but by bit through observation and experimentation. Preferably while sober.

The combination of plants that creates ayahuasca appeared in a dream. Shamans have identified cancers and illnesses in people. If science can’t cope with these realities, that’s a science problem.

That's it. Shamans appear in disparate cultures over millenia upon millenia, helping people in astounding and near-inexplicable ways... And modern academia is just like, 'well, they believe in spirits and take drugs so they must be dumb - now off I go to work to pay my $400,000 mortgage, because that's sensible'.

We owe these traditions an astonishing unacknowledged debt, and the people telling us so are ferociously attacked.

It's a shame. And it will change.