Adjudications
Contested claims, checked one at a time
Each page states the claim at its strongest before laying a finger on it, gives both cases at comparable length, and ends with a label and the sources. Where we cannot call it, we say so.
The Architect Question
Is Graham Hancock right? A checkable answer, claim by claim
The right answer is not one answer. Break the position into its separate claims and they score differently: one is a live scientific controversy, one is solidly established, several are unsupported, and one is a genuinely good argument that mainstream archaeology has answered badly. Treating it as a single yes or no is what makes the conversation useless.
Refuted"Mainstream archaeology suppresses this." The strongest real examples, checked
Refuted as stated, and there is a real problem underneath it that deserves a better name. Findings that contradict the model get published, and Göbekli Tepe is the proof. What actually happens is slower and less dramatic: unfashionable questions go unfunded, and negative results go unpublished. Those are real, and they are not suppression.
Under reviewThe recall argument is available to Hancock, and here is exactly where it stops
The first half is true and we can prove it with our own numbers. Our detector recovers about a third of known monuments and is blind to entire classes. What the argument cannot do is get from a measured blind spot to a specific thing inside it, particularly one that would also leave evidence outside.
RefutedThe impact and the lost civilisation are two different claims
That sentence contains two claims welded together, and they have nothing to do with each other. One is a live geophysics controversy with peer-reviewed papers on both sides. The other is a claim about human societies with a completely separate and much thinner evidence base. Separating them is the most useful thing anyone can do here.
CandidateSea level was 134 metres lower. What that does and does not explain
The sea level part is solid and larger than most people think. It was about 134 metres lower at the Last Glacial Maximum, and the coasts people would have lived on are genuinely submerged. What it explains is why we should expect gaps. What it cannot do is fill one.
The Younger Dryas
Did a cosmic impact cause the Younger Dryas?
Unresolved, and properly so. It is a live scientific controversy with four papers arguing it out in one journal between 2021 and 2024, both sides peer-reviewed and both still publishing. Neither side is fringe. Anybody telling you it is settled, in either direction, is telling you about themselves.
Under reviewThere is no Younger Dryas crater. What that costs both sides
No crater of the right date has been identified, and that is a real cost to the impact case. It is not a disproof. An airburst leaves no crater, and airbursts are real. But an explanation for why the evidence is missing is not itself evidence, and the impact case has to carry that.
Under reviewNanodiamonds: three papers, two teams, and a citation that does not exist
The marker has been attacked by two separate teams in two separate papers, and it has not been abandoned. Worth knowing before you cite any of it: the two papers are routinely conflated, including by us in an early draft, which produced a citation that would send a reader to a paper that does not exist.
RefutedWhat would actually settle the Younger Dryas argument
It is resolvable, and both sides could agree on the test in advance. Pre-register a marker, a set of sites, a measurement protocol and a threshold, then have laboratories that have never published on this run it blind. The reason that has not happened is not that the question is unanswerable.
The labels are the same five used everywhere on this site, and what each one means is on the standard. How the instruments behind these arguments actually work is in the method pages. The long version is Answering the Architect Question, book 4 of the series, and advance readers can read it before it goes on sale.