With an entire internet of cryptids, conspiracies, and wild claims, the world at large has grown rather accustomed to the presence of pseudoscience. Pseudoscience and pseudoscientific beliefs permeate our culture, finding root in our TV shows, our daily horoscopes, even, sometimes, our science classes. Many of these beliefs seem harmless. What’s the matter with letting people attribute certain personality traits to the position of the stars? What the harm in letting some crazies rant online about how the pyramids were built by aliens?

While many of these pseudoscientific, and specifically pseudoarchaeological ideas, may at first seem silly or harmless, they have a more sinister side that reveals itself upon closer examination. Cole et al, Feder, and Fagan and Feder all tackle exactly this in their 1990, 1984, and 2005 papers in the field of pseudoarchaeology and the appropriate, ethical response the archaeological community should have to it. 

Pseudoscience is not problematic in a vacuum – if people acknowledge the fact that it is not science, and it is not real. Knowing that horoscopes are not grounded in reality and still checking yours is different than advocating that people solve their problems by consulting the stars, or using faulty logic to defend the ‘truth’ behind star charts. However, when people imbibe pseudoscientific ideas, they often are swallowing an ideological ‘pill’ with whatever seemingly benign belief the pseudoscience actually advocates. In some cases, these ideologies have serious consequences. A person who buys into the pseudoscience of the anti-vaccine movement may risk their and other children’s lives by neglecting to give and get life-saving vaccines. In other cases, the impacts can be more subtle. Those who use alternative medicine, even supplementary to accepted medical practice, are often still accepting the fallacious ‘appeal to ancient wisdom,’ the idea that because the ancients did it, we should too. This may cause them to buy into other pseudoscientific claims, and put them at risk for believing similar arguments with more dire components. If you can buy that the older something is, the more correct it is, who’s to stop a clever debater from convincing you as to the ‘natural’ place of women? The superiority of ‘ancient’ systems like slavery, social darwinism and serfdom. If the ancients were ‘right’ about one thing why shouldn’t they be right about others?

The selective rhetoric of pseudoscience gives people an unrealistic and flawed perspective of what science is, and the intentions of science. By placing themselves against legitimate scientists and archaeologists, pseudoscientists make you feel that if you are allied with them you are specifically allied against mainstream science, and this is dangerous. People should be able to feel they can trust the academic establishment to come about things rationally and legitimately, and reasonless distrust of authority often leads to skepticism about important findings and claims, things people need to listen to. 

Pseudoarchaeology not only incorporates the fundamental flaws of pseudosciences but often has a distressing and harmful message at its core. Although it may not seem unreasonable to let some loonies believe that Atlantis may still be out there somewhere, or that their ancestors came to the new world before other Europeans, there are troubling assumptions at the core of these beliefs. By delegitimizing the ability of non-European ancients to have constructed great works, or claiming that all culture came from one common source, pseudoarchaeologists give weight and gravity to the claims of radical idealists, racists, and neo-Nazis. At the center of these beliefs is the idea of the superiority of one group (Europeans) over another group, and a harmful dismissal of the impact non-white cultures could have had on the world. And in many cases, these ideas do not stay contained to pseudohistorical theories. Many of the nazis who advocate for ethnic cleansing of “white” homelands do so by arguing that they need to restore the Atlantian, Aryan “master culture.” They do so because of a pseudohistorical belief that such a thing existed, and that, because it did, they have a right to return things to the way they “used to be.” These ideas are reinforced, intentionally or not, by pseudoarchaeologists who pull scattered, unscientific theories together to justify how the Egyptians could never have built the pyramids, how scientists are covering up important parts of history, how those who attack their “theories,” if they even can be called that, are only looking out for their own careers. And by doing so, they give radical white nationalists a reason to not believe the things they have been taught – to not believe the evidence against their own beliefs and to not believe the logical conclusions of the scientific establishment. To only believe what benefits their worldview.

Pseudoarchaeology, like all pseudosciences, relies on the viewers’ ignorance – ignorance of the scientific method, ignorance of archaeological methodologies, ignorance of scholarly conventions and ignorance of academia itself. And this is ignorance that archaeologists and other academics are well equipped to respond to. As Feder argues, it is to the advantage of archaeology itself to have a critical and archaeologically well-informed public. Although there will always be “crazies” who believe in pseudoscience, such education will play a valuable role in preventing the layman by being caught up in pseudoscientific ideas and ideologies, to look critically at those spewing hatred in the name of science, and to understand why certain theories are accepted or debated and why other claims are dismissed outright.