‘Ancient Apocalypse’ and ‘Unknown: Cave of Bones’ circulate unverified science, many archaeologists say. Filmmakers defend their storytelling.
Two recent Netflix documentaries have ignited a firestorm among members of the scientific community who have challenged the credibility of the work.
The popular shows are “Unknown: Cave of Bones,” which explores what could be the world’s oldest graveyard, and “Ancient Apocalypse,” about an advanced civilization hypothesized to have gone extinct around the last ice age. Each made the Netflix global top 10 list when they debuted in July 2023 and November 2022, respectively.
But many archaeologists and anthropologists—in critiques published in scientific journals, academic and professional websites, YouTube videos, and a letter to Netflix—argue the shows promote theories that don’t represent a scientific consensus and shouldn’t be labeled as documentaries.
Netflix declined to comment.
The conflict raises questions about the responsibility media companies have for the content they commission and distribute and about the influence that content has on the public’s evolving understanding of science. Filmmakers and stars of the shows defend the productions, saying the established research community is too wedded to the peer-review framework as a means of communicating science.
The titles sound like shitty discovery channel entertainment.
There’s a reason for that.
Ancient apocalypse is what happens when you give a someone who is an outlier opinion in a field they never formally studied money to create a documentary. I would say it’s the ramblings of a bad journalist, but it’s pretty well done honestly. If you are up for “no one has studied this so no one knows this yet (please ignore anyone who says otherwise) but historians are lying to you! One thing they don’t want you to know, click here to learn more!” With nice pictures and some amount of actual information, and a lot of guessing, it’s pretty good. Not scientific, doesn’t pretend it can be backed up with facts, mostly “I’m just asking questions here” vibe. I would note the actual information I mentioned is “this site has been determined to be this old and is located in this geographic location and here are some pretty pictures of it”. There isn’t a ton of factual information, but that’s where each episode starts. He tries to find ‘experts’ and sometimes he will find someone else who hasn’t studied the topic either who will agree with him. Sometimes the best he can find is someone who generally works near by and won’t tell him he is explicitly incorrect.