Bruce Kennedy ’92’s Show About Ice Age Theory Angers Archaeologists

Ancient history intrigued Bruce Kennedy ’92 so much at Princeton, he majored in classics. He’s since built a career in film and television, but in the past few years he’s dived back into history by writing and producing a wildly popular Netflix series: Ancient Apocalypse, which explores the theory that an advanced Ice Age civilization was wiped out by a comet. 

This time, however, he has aligned with a controversial and even dangerous subject. Furious archaeologists are calling the theories pseudoscience and demanding Netflix label the series science fiction. Worse, they say, the theories are damaging to Indigenous American peoples and fan the flames of racist ideologies. 

Yet Kennedy, who won an Emmy for a Discovery Channel documentary about President Lyndon Johnson, dismisses his critics, saying he isn’t a nose-to-the-grindstone documentary filmmaker and doesn’t pretend to be. “I make television,” he says, “and I do a lot of entertainment stuff, as well as what I hope to be smart stuff, but it runs all over the place.” 

Ancient Apocalypse is largely based on the work of Graham Hancock, a British author who has written 12 books on similar subjects and appeared in history-themed documentaries since 1996. Kennedy both wrote and produced the series after coming across Hancock’s work in 2019, when he attended one of the author’s lectures in New York City.  

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Kennedy, left, and Hancock.

Courtesy of Bruce Kennedy ’92

“I was expecting to see a bunch of old guys interested in ancient history,” Kennedy recalls, but was surprised to find the room “filled with young 20-something guys from Brooklyn.” Hancock’s appeal to hipsters puzzled Kennedy, until he learned that Hancock had been a repeat guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast, where Rogan occasionally traffics in conspiracy theories. Seeing the potential for a large audience, Kennedy, who holds a master’s in performance studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, met with Hancock and worked with him to pitch the series to Netflix.  

Kennedy’s instincts proved correct: In its first week in 2022, Ancient Apocalypse was ranked as the No. 2 show on Netflix and garnered an estimated 6 million to 7 million viewers. The second season featured a cameo by actor Keanu Reeves, drew 2 million viewers in its first week in October, and reached Netflix’s “Top 10” list in 31 countries.  

Two Princeton archaeology professors declined to speak with PAW, citing Hancock as a fraud and vehemently arguing that the magazine has no business examining and “platforming” a controversial documentary series, even though it has been seen by millions of viewers internationally. But archaeologists who have spoken up charge that the series adopts an anti-intellectual tone that feeds into increasing distrust of institutions, science, and medicine in America and around the world.  

Flint Dibble, an archaeologist at Cardiff University who debated Hancock for four and a half hours on The Joe Rogan Experience in April, says Hancock’s theories undermine the heritage of Indigenous peoples by claiming that their ancestors were not capable of constructing their own monuments without the assistance of an earlier, more “advanced” civilization. Not only does this lead tourists to disrespect Indigenous sites, it hands white supremacists support for their racist ideas, says Dibble. The Guardian called Ancient Apocalypse “the most dangerous show on Netflix.” 

In 2022, the Society of American Archaeology released an open letter, drafted by Dibble and John Hoopes, an archaeology professor at the University of Kansas, asking Netflix to reclassify the series as science fiction. Hoopes notes that Hancock’s theories are hardly new, but rather drawn from two 19th-century books by Rep. Ignatius Donnelly of Minnesota, whom Hancock cites in his work. Similar ideas had been adopted by President Andrew Jackson in pursuing the policy of Indian Removal and the Trail of Tears, by arguing that Native Americans had not created the monumental Mounds found all across North America, as well as by the leaders of the German Nazi Party, who believed that an Atlantean civilization created by an Aryan master race predated all other human societies.  

Kennedy says the show was “triple-fact-checked” by a research team at ITN, the series’ production company, and argues “the master race stuff is silly.” Pointing to the great flood in Gilgamesh and the Biblical story of Noah, he says, “what’s not silly is the idea that a cataclysm might have destroyed a civilization that we lost.” He says his goal for the series is to instill curiosity about the world: “What is the harm in exploring those old stories and trying to wonder if there’s a kernel of truth in them?” 

Stephanie Halmhofer, an archaeologist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Alberta who studies how white supremacists have interacted with pseudo-archaeological beliefs, says that argument is an old one that “reverses the burden of proof” so it’s on the critics, not the people making the claims. She also says that pseudo-archaeology tends to open doors to other believers in fringe theories, like Flat Earthers and climate change deniers.  

And it isn’t harmless, she says. For example, in her research she found that Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon Shaman” who achieved notoriety (and was later convicted) for his part in the Jan. 6 insurrection, is a fan of Hancock’s work. She also found that Hardy Lloyd, a white supremacist convicted on charges of harassing jurors in the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting case in Pittsburgh, has said on extremist internet sites that Hancock’s books have served as useful recruitment tools for white supremacists.  

Kennedy encourages people to watch the show and decide for themselves. “It’s a show about ancient archaeology that speculates some fun stuff,” he says. “It doesn’t tell people to storm the Capitol. It doesn’t tell people that their doctors are wrong.” 

For Kennedy, the series’ guiding star has always been about tapping into the mysteries of the distant past. “The appeal to me is the mystery and the fun of speculating about that mystery,” he says.  

Hoopes, however, says the “fun” can only go so far. “The more ignorance, the more mystery,” he says. “If you want mystery, just remain ignorant.”