Write your own Alternative Archaeology book

How do you fight ‘Alternative’ archaeology? The obvious answer would be with the facts, but is that a good idea? A lot of the readers aren’t really that interested in the facts. They don’t want to read round books that might challenge their assumptions, they just want their prejudices confirmed. Supporters of the Kensington Rune Stone aren’t going to be bothered by the fact that there’s not a shred of evidence for Vikings in that part of Minnesota, nor that the runes are inaccurate for the period it’s faking. As for the undecideds who see one group claiming one thing and the other group claiming another, how do you get around that potato / po-tar-to problem?

A thing that is slowly gathering bytes on my hard drive is something inspired by the KLF. Loosely it’s “How to Write Alternative Archaeology the Easy Way”. Rather than say X is rubbish and Y is nonsense I wonder if it might be interesting to gather information about some of the staples of alternative archaeology and show how this rubbish is put together.

Take for instance the Bimini Road, which proves the Ancient High Ones built roads or whatever. You could say that it’s not a road and give the geological evidence as to why. If you think the Bimini Road is man-made then presumably you’ll be astounded by the Giant’s Causeway (photo by Mrpattersonsir right). Anyway you could do that. Might it be more helpful to get a mystery, work on the assumption that it’s a geological feature from the start, rather than disprove it’s artficial origin, and then show how you can twist data to make it look man-made. Point out that artifacts could be found on it, or by it. It’s a safe bet this is true as anything washed overboard would get sink to the seabed. By doing this you can then show why genuine archaeologists won’t believe it, the artefacts lack context, but how alternative archaeologists weasel their way out of this problem. Not only are you highlighting the archaeological and historical issues, you also expose how the ‘alternative’ deception is done.

Talk to a professional magician. They won’t mind someone standing up and telling the audience that it’s impossible to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but they’d hate it if someone explained how the deception was done. There is a danger that by explaining how to fake history that you give someone the weapons to produce more junk. But at a basic level the professional charlatans already know the tricks. Discussing how misdirection works in antiscience may alert people more to how frauds try to pull the wool over their eyes.

The aim of the project, if it ever happens, will be to try and reduce the effort in writing an alternative archaeology novel. To help I have a tool which generates alternative archaeology titles. If I’d realised how popular the Viking Name Generator would become, then I’d have probably put this up earlier instead. I’m baffled. I can’t work out why so many people are pleased to be Serial Arsonist. As for this one, the databank is smaller and it’s more satirical than funny.

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