Dr. John Walliss
Research Associate, Dept. of Sociology, University of Warwick, UK
Mr. Wayne Spencer
Independent Researcher, UK
Abstract
In recent years, a number of commentators have discussed the emergence
of a "spiritual supermarket" within western societies, wherein, among
a general "deregulation" of the spiritual "marketplace," old and established
spiritual "products" have to increasingly compete with newer ones.
In this article, our aim is to discuss one manifestation of this phenomena;
namely "fringe" or "alternative archaeology." In particular, we intend
to discuss the modern version of the Atlantis myth promoted by the
British author, Graham Hancock, exploring in particular how it may
be understood within the context of the contemporary "spiritual supermarket."
Introduction
[1] "Make the past serve the present" was an organising slogan for
archaeology and other intellectual disciplines in China in the 20
years following 1959. However, the use of representations of the past
in the service of present social objectives has not been restricted
to Maoist China. In the sphere of politics, nationalist movements
are perhaps the paradigmatic instance of social movements that appeal
to historiographical depictions in order to provide motivation and
legitimation for present social projects. Thus, nationalists across
the globe have constructed connections between their target audiences
and various putative genealogical or cultural-ideological forebears
in an attempt to stimulate or maintain the creation of nation states
(see, for example, Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds., 1983; Graves-Brown,
Jones and Gamble, 1996; D?faz-Andreu and Champion, eds., 1996; Kohl
and Fawcett, 1996). Similarly, within the sphere of religion, both
mainstream and new religious movements generally look backwards for
the foundation of their belief systems. For example, various early
practitioners of twentieth century Paganism, such as Gerald Gardner,
depicted themselves as literally reviving a religious tradition that
developed in Palaeolithic times, coexisted with Christianity during
the early centuries of the Christianisation of Europe, and then was
driven underground by a series of persecutions that culminated in
the witch-hunts of the Early Modern period (see Hutton, 1999; York,
1999).
[2] Attempts to make the past serve the present have differed in
their degree of closeness to the dominant social forces and scientific
orthodoxies of their times, and that remains the case today. Some
of these attempts can be classified as manifestations of "cult" or
"fringe" archaeology. These terms refer to a broad range of radical,
new and typically sensationalist theories about the past that are
promoted as outside and against archaeological orthodoxy and the archaeological
profession (Cole, 1980; Harrold and Eve, 1995). Insofar as these theories
relate to ancient history, they can be crudely but usefully divided
into two sub-categories: "Danikenism" (stemming from the writings
of Erich Von Daniken; see Von Daniken, 1972) and "Atlanticism" (Ashworth,
1980). These two types of historical theories have in common the notion
that ancient historical civilisations possessed knowledge and technology
that was hugely more advanced than that thought to have existed by
contemporary archaeology. They also share the idea that these accomplishments
later came to be destroyed or degraded, surviving today only more
or less obliquely in the form of ancient monuments, mythical writings
and the teachings of esoteric groups. Where Danikenism and Atlanticism
part company is in the matter of the ultimate origins of the ancient
social, philosophical, religious and scientific phenomena they postulate.
Danikenism attributes them to extraterrestrial visitors to Earth,
while Atlanticism assigns them to a golden age of human activity.
[3] In this paper, we shall be looking at the work of perhaps the
most prominent exponent of Atlanticism today: the popular author,
lecturer and broadcaster, Graham Hancock. Although Hancock can properly
be seen as falling within the intellectual tradition of Atlanticism,
we are of the view that one must also look to contemporary social
conditions in order to more fully understand the nature of his ideas
and the processes by which they are diffused and consumed within advanced
industrial societies. One useful analytic tool that may be applied
to Hancock's work is that of the "spiritual supermarket" or "spiritual
marketplace" (Roof, 1999; Lyon, 2000). According to this perspective,
there has been a "de-regulation" of the religious "market-place" and,
as a result, existing "brands" (the Churches and denominations) increasingly
have to compete for "customers" with newer, rival products (such as
New Religious Movements, New Age spiritualities and charismatic forms
of Christianity). As a correlate of this, religion has increasingly
become a site of choice, experimentation and consumption rather than
duty or social obligation. Moreover, globalisation has increased the
number of products available to the consumer, whether these be electrical
goods, motor cars, religious traditions or even children. For example,
whereas just over a century ago, Buddhism and Hinduism were almost
exclusively the preserve of the western academic and social elite,
now, through increased travel, immigration and the rise of global
telecommunications and the internet, they are now an accepted part
of the Western religious and cultural landscape (Laqueuer, 1996).
In short, there exists a huge range of religious ideas and systems
available to the modern individual, and individuals can and do assemble
for themselves their own personal and shifting belief systems out
of the panoply of elements presented to them.
[4] Our examination of the work of Graham Hancock in the context
of the contemporary spiritual supermarket will have four key components.
First, we will outline briefly the development of discussions of Atlantis
from the "classical Atlanticism" of Plato, through to the "modern
Atlanticism" of authors such as Cayce, Blavatsky and Donnely. Second,
we will focus our attention on the British author Graham Hancock himself
as on one key proponent of modern Atlanticism. Third, we will propose
four ways in which Hancock's work may be understood within the context
of the spiritual supermarket. Fourth, to draw the paper to a conclusion,
we explore the appeal of Hancock's ideas. We conclude that although
Hancock's writings do not advance any overtly social, religious or
political message, they nonetheless hold out a twofold appeal to contemporary
consumers of spiritual ideas. In the first instance, they offer what
we term Transcendental Exemplars: actual persons who have purportedly
attained a status beyond the quotidian, and who serve the purpose
of providing seemingly concrete proof to those disinclined to use
mere faith as a basis of belief. But this concreteness is balanced
by a marked absence of prescription as to just how the Transcendental
Exemplars and other elements of Hancock's ideas are to be deployed
by the individual. That is, Hancock's writings also offer Transcendental
Possibilities, in the sense of creating a blank canvas on which
the spiritual consumer constructs his or her own spiritual universe,
utilising both Hancock's historical foundation and other products
of the Spiritual Supermarket.
Atlanticism
[5] While the term "Atlantean" goes back to Herodotus (c. 460 BCE),
it was in two dialogues by Plato, Timaeus and Critas,
that the story of Atlantis was first told. Plato's mouthpiece in these
dialogues, Critias, relates a story to Socrates and Timaeus of a massive
continent–Atlantis–that was once located in the Atlantic
Ocean. It was here, he claims, that the god Poseidon wedded a mortal,
Cleito, and fathered five sets of male twins who divided the continent
into ten kingdoms under the kingship of Poseidon's eldest son, Atlas.
The continent's natural resources were limitless (including mineral
resources, timber, domestic and wild animals, fruits, crops and cereals),
with anything not possessed being imported from oversees. With this
natural endowment, the Atlanteans were able to build an elaborate
circular metropolis fifteen miles in diameter of alternating rings
of water and land, the former being connected to the sea via a canal.
In addition, the Atlantean culture thrived and there were military
successes abroad with an empire stretching as far as Italy and Egypt.
However, over time the Atlanteans became more and more degenerate
as the blood that they had inherited from Poseidon became more diluted
and so Zeus decided to "reduce them to order by discipline." At this
point the Critias ends mid-sentence, with Zeus summoning all
the gods. However, earlier in Timaeus it is stated that "there
occurred violent earthquakes and floods of extraordinary violence"
and that after "a single dreadful day and night ... the island of
Atlantis was ... swallowed up by the sea and vanished" (Plato [trans.
Lee], 1971, 38).
[6] In the centuries immediately following the appearance of Plato's
writings, it appears that most commentators on the story of Atlantis
viewed it with "a coldly critical eye" (de Camp, 1970, 17). The rise
of a mystical Neoplatonism in the later Roman Empire changed this,
and both Neoplatonist writers and the Church Fathers discussed the
existence of Atlantis with greater credence (de Camp, 1970, 17-19).
Subsequently, however, the decline in interest in classical ideas
generally within Christian Europe appears to removed whatever currency
the Atlantis story may have among natural philosophers and theologians;
the only extant mention for many centuries after Kosmos' sixth century
Christian Topography is a brief reference in De Imagine Mundi,
an encyclopaedia by Honorious of Autun dating from around 1100 (de
Camp, 1970, 19). It is not until the discovery of the Americas in
the sixteenth century that interest in Atlantis substantially revived,
especially as the result of the influential claims by Spanish historian
Francesco López de Gómara in his 1553 General History
of the Indes that the newly discovered continent was in fact Atlantis
(de Camp, 1970, 28-9).
[7] The notion that the Americas were Atlantis was promulgated in
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by various writers,
including Buffon, and helped to keep the story of the island alive
in the West (de Camp, 1970, 29). However, the visibility and acceptance
of the reality of Atlantis, especially among the general public, began
to burgeon only with the publication in 1882 of Atlantis: The Antediluvian
World by Ignatius Donnelly, a book that went through 50 reprints
by 1949 (de Camp, 1970, 37) and many more since. Donnelly radically
reinterpreted, and in fact went far beyond, Plato's dialogue
in four main ways. First, he claimed that the story of Atlantis was
historic fact and that it was the source of all civilisation. Moreover,
not only had it been "the true Antediluvian world ... where mankind
dwelt for ages in peace and happiness" (Donnelly quoted in James,
1995:23), but its inhabitants had been the Gods and Goddesses of the
ancient myths. Thirdly, he claimed that Egypt was an Atlantean colony
and that consequently its culture had blossomed all at once rather
than evolving slowly. Finally, again in contrast to Plato, he claimed
that a few survivors had escaped the destruction of the island, taking
their advanced culture and the story of the destruction with them
(James, 1995; Jordan, 2001).
[8] Donnelly's book was shortly followed in 1888 by the first volume
of another work that has proved important for the diffusion of belief
in Atlantis, namely Madame Helene B. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine:
The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy. Blavatsky situated
the history of humanity within an evolutionary sequence of seven historical
cycles, during each of which a different "Root Races" predominates.
The fifth Root Race is humanity; the fourth were the Atlanteans. Blavatsky
herself had relatively little to say about Atlantean society, but
subsequent writers influenced by her–such as Arnold P. Sinnett,
Annie Besant, Rudolf Steiner and Manly P. Hall–have greatly
elaborated on this theme, often ascribing advanced technological capacities,
occult powers, and philosophical wisdom to the denizens of the island
(de Camp, 1970, 60-70). One important later figure was Edgar Cayce,
the "sleeping prophet." Over the period 1923 to 1944, Cayce produced
over 700 clairvoyant accounts of what he claimed to be the lives of
individual Atlanteans (subsequently collected by his son in Cayce,
1968). Cayce too described an highly advanced Atlantean society, and
like Donnelly he suggested that Atlantis had a central role in the
cultural development of the known civilisations; however, the singular
importance of Cayce lies less in any originality in his description
of Atlantis than the resources employed to diffuse that account. Cayce's
work has been preserved and promulgated by the Association for Research
and Enlightenment (ARE), a non-profit corporation with headquarters
in the United States. ARE's activities have been extensive. By the
early 1960s, it had 90 study groups and 2,500 members within the United
States (Lucas, 1995, 355). By 1970, there were 1,023 groups and 12,000
members (Lucas, 1995, 355). By 1981, the ARE boasted 1,784 groups
(now including groups outside the United States), 32,000 members,
146 paid staff, and an operating budget of $3,916,000; and it was
running some 24 international lectures workshops and conferences each
month (Lucas, 1995, 356, 358). Subsequently, ARE has expanded still
further with membership reaching 90,000, and visitors to the corporation's
headquarters numbering over 40,000 (Lucas, 1995, 359). It may reasonably
be suspected that this considerable body of organised effort has had
some effect in popularising occult ideas about a sophisticated and
seminal civilisation in a lost continent of Atlantis, especially among
those with an interest in the paranormal.
[9] The work of ARE in relation to Atlantis has been complemented
by several generations of authors. For example, Kukal (1984), writing
almost two decades ago, estimated that over 3,600 works of "popular
science" had been written on the topic, 85% of these being written
in the twentieth Century. These have included hypotheses concerning
Atlantis' current location; its role as the "cradle of humanity";
comparisons of the destruction of Atlantis with the Biblical deluge;
and even channelled messages from Atlanteans. Foremost, however, among
the contemporary exponents of modern Atlanticism is the British author
Graham Hancock.
Graham Hancock
[10] Hancock was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Following his graduation
from Durham University with a First Class Honours degree in Sociology,
he went on to pursue a career in "quality journalism," writing for
The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent,
and The Guardian. He also served as co-editor of New Internationalist
magazine in East Africa between 1976 and 1979, and as a correspondent
for The Economist from 1981 to 1983. Consequently, Hancock's
earliest books were on travel and developmental issues, and included
such now out-of-print titles as Journey Through Pakistan (1982),
Under Ethiopian Skies (1983), Ethiopia (1985), Ethiopia:
The Challenge of Hunger (1985), AIDS: The Deadly Epidemic
(1987) and Lords of Poverty: The Freewheeling Lifestyles, Power,
Prestige and Corruption of the Multi-Billion Dollar Aid Business
(1989). However, beginning with his 1992 bestseller The Sign and
the Seal: A Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant, Hancock has
largely dedicated his public efforts to expounded unorthodox theories
of ancient history and other scientific matters. His work in this
vein includes the multi-million selling books Fingerprints of the
Gods (1995), Keeper of Genesis (1996), Mars Mystery
(1998) and Heaven's Mirror (1998), the television/video series
Quest for the Lost Civilization, public lectures, and more
recently, Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilisation (2002)
(Hancock, n.d. "Biography").
[11] Broadly speaking, the thesis developed by Hancock in the late-1990s
comprised six key elements;
- A Lost Civilisation: While not speaking of Atlantis by
name, the central dramatis personae in Hancock's narrative
is a lost civilisation with advanced scientific, technological and
spiritual knowledge that existed down to some 12,500 years ago.
- Cultural Diffusion: Following the destruction of this civilisation
(in Fingerprints of the Gods, he initially located it in
Antarctica) at the time the last Ice Age, Hancock claimed that a
small number of refugees fled with their advanced knowledge and
colonised ancient "primitive" cultures. When the colonists left,
the cultures returned to their former, "savage" state.
- Myths as Historical Narrative: Hancock claims that this
momentous contact between advanced and primitive societies is recalled
through the latters' myths and religious narratives in the stories
of "Gods" visiting the earth, myths of Golden Ages, the Biblical
Deluge and so on
- Earth/Sky Alignments: The most important manifestation
of the technological prowess imparted by the lost civilisation to
the ancient cultures they colonised is the ability to construct
giant monuments, such as the Pyramids of Geza, the temples at Angkor
Wat in Cambodia or the Mayan temples in South America. Borrowing
from archaeoastronomy the idea that archaeological inferences can
derived from alignments between elements of archaeological sites
and astronomical phenomena, and drawing upon the earlier work of
fellow popular authors Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert (1995),
Hancock suggests that these monuments revealingly correspond with
certain constellations. For example, he claims that when the locations
of certain selected aspects of the Geza pyramid complex are joined
together on a map, they form a shape that resembles the constellation
Orion as it would have appeared in 10,500 BCE. Similarly, he argues,
if the locations of some of the temples in Angkor Wat in Cambodia
are joined, the shape that emerges is that of Draco as it would
have appeared in 10,500 BCE.
- A Message: Encoded in the alignments of these monuments,
Hancock claims, is a message that only modern civilisation can decode.
The content of this message, however, changes over the course of
Hancock's books from an apocalyptic warning in Fingerprints of
the Gods and The Mars Mystery to a more Gnostic one in
Heaven's Mirror.
- The Arrogance and Narrow-Mindedness of "Experts": Finally,
Hancock claims that Egyptologists are too conservative to entertain
new, radical theories which would overturn their cherished theories
and undermine their privileged status. As a result they are dismissive
of the ideas of Hancock and his fellow authors. For example, in
an essay on his website, Hancock refers to "the almost pathological
eagerness of intellectuals to disparage any intelligent interest
in the unexplained puzzles of the past as 'mystery fever' and to
persuade us that any opposition to the dominant historical paradigm
must be the work of 'archaeological dreamers'" (Hancock, 2003).
Hancock and the Spiritual Supermarket
[12] Looking at Hancock's work through the analytical lens of the
"spiritual supermarket," four key points may be drawn out. First,
at the obvious level, Hancock's ideas are something one buys/consumes
and, by extension, are part of a larger fringe archaeological market
comprising books, television series, videos, lecture tours, magazines,
internet sites and chatrooms. Clearly, then Hancock's work is perfectly
consistent with the commodity relations and the privative consumption
that characterises advanced capitalism. But, going further, it is
important to stress that Hancock's ideas are something that one only
consumes. They do not, for example, affect the customers' social identity;
unlike normative religion, they do not impose burdens on the reader
with moral prescriptions, duties, rituals, obligations, a socio-political
agenda or plans for action. In this regard, they are rather different
from the nationalism that creates nations and causes wars, but are
remarkably similar to the ideas about reincarnation that are typically
embraced in the West. As Walter and Waterhouse (1999,195) note in
their recent study on reincarnation belief, "entertaining the idea
of reincarnation is rather like being a nominal Christian–a
part of one's belief system, but with no great effects on one's life."
Consistent with this, surveys of US undergraduates have found that
while around 30% express belief in Atlantis, only 5-10% believe strongly
(Feder, 1984; Eve and Harrold, 1986). Likewise, a 1994 American telephone
survey that enquired as to what elements of the past were important
to a nationally representative sample of 808 persons, respondents
elicited no obvious spontaneous references to Atlantis in general
or the ideas of Graham Hancock in particular. In fact only 11 respondents
referred to ancient history (including ancient Egypt and Greece) as
being "very important" to them (Rosenzweig and Thelen, 1998).
[13] Second, Hancock's ideas are also by their very nature eclectic
and global in their content, emphasising both an amorphous lost, ancient
culture and (by way of evidence) extant sites in Egypt, Mexico, Cambodia,
the Pacific, Peru, Bolivia and, more recently, Japan. As with the
New Age Movement more generally, within Hancock's writings these sites
become divested of their "Otherness" and effectively become a blank
canvas or "virtual reality world" that the spiritual consumer re-populates
and re-invests with meaning. Thus, in the case of Egypt, its modern,
indigenous culture is stripped of its religion, history, culture and
so on until all that remains are ancient monuments–the Pyramids
and the Sphinx–and a small number of (translated) religious
texts such as the Book of the Dead. Viewed in this way, Hancock's
work may be seen as but a new example of a Western appropriation of
history that has, in various times and places, reinvented the histories
of non-Western peoples and cultures so that they accord with the material
interests and perspectives of Western imperialism (see, for example,
Trigger, 1984). Indeed, at a deeper level, perhaps in keeping with
its Victorian origins, the Atlanticism promoted by Hancock would appear
implicitly (and most likely unwittingly) to draw on ideas and images
bound up with the imperialistic notion of the "White Man's Burden";
as noted earlier, a central theme in Hancockism is of an advanced
people bringing "Culture" to a primitive one, who later, once the
colonists leave, revert back to their former state.
[14] Third, Hancock's writings emphasise the consumer's hermeneutic
authority: the (spiritual) customer, in other words, is always right.
Indeed, this in many ways is the chief rhetorical form that Hancock
deploys in his books. Thus, he presents the reader with his interpretation
of the evidence (which, it is believed, largely speaks for itself),
rhetorically offers a possible, tentative conclusion but then, most
importantly, leaves the question in the hands of the reader as the
ultimate arbiter of truth. For example, in Fingerprints of the
Gods, after comparing the theories of plate-tectonics and earth-crust
displacement theory he asks, "Continental Drift? Earth-crust displacement?
Both? Some other cause? I honestly don't know. Nevertheless, the simple
facts about Antarctica are really strange and difficult to explain
without invoking some notion of sudden, catastrophic and geologically
recent change" (Hancock, 1995, 474). He then goes on to list fourteen
"exhibits" pointing to the conclusion that Antarctica has not always
been a glacier.
[15] Finally, and related to the last point, Hancock's work is characterised
by an ambivalence towards those explanations associated with established
voices of authority. Hancock does not condemn or reject science and
rationality per se, but rather utilises the popular ambivalence
toward science by selectively drawing on the findings of scientific
research while simultaneously playing on the issue of scientific self-interest.
To quote again from his website:
There exists a vast array of academic "experts," on comfortable
and secure salaries [sic], with the resources of full university
departments behind them, whose life's work is to churn out endless
refinements and confirmations of the orthodox theory of prehistory.
These scholars, and their many fans and chums in the quality media,
do not hesitate to mount Doberman-like attacks on any who try to
argue in favour of a lost civilisation. The Dobermans also systematically
ignore all forms of evidence that cast doubt on the established
view (for example the implications of the astronomical alignments
of the Pyramids of Giza) while at the same time accusing us "alternative
historians" of being "pseudo-scientists" who dishonestly "select"
only evidence that supports our case and who ignore or even misrepresent
contradictory data (Hancock, 2003).
Thus, he challenges one set of experts while invoking the academic
credentials of another set of experts. In his discussion of the
age of the Sphinx, for example, he draws on the authority of the
geologist Robert Schock (representing a rigorous, hard science)
to attack the claims of (traditionalist) Egyptologists over the
dating of the Sphinx (see Bauval and Hancock, 1996). Moreover, while
expressly denigrating established experts, he appears in the guise
of an expert published by several respectable non-fiction publishing
houses and, in doing so, implicitly relies upon the trust afforded
to such experts in a complex world that cannot be independently
investigated and understood by the single individual (see, for example,
Sztompka, 1999).
Conclusion: The Appeal of Hancockism
[16] What, then, does Hancock offer his audience? In the absence
of direct evidence relating to Hancock's readers and viewers, we can
only advance some plausible hypotheses. This is perhaps best approached
by looking at what Hancock offers on both mundane and spiritual levels.
At the mundane level, Hancock may be consumed as just another populariser
of the past, picked up and perused by the casually curious layperson
seeking information about ancient history. Equally, the reader may
approach his books for the pleasure derived from their narrative,
which is part history, part mystery, part popular-science in style.
Alternatively, or in addition, his readers may even gain a sense of
aesthetic gratification from his books. Hancock's chosen sites are
often grand and beautiful, and increasingly his books are lavishly
illustrated. Hancock's Heaven's Mirror: Quest for the Lost Civilisation
(1998) is a case in point, illustrated as it is throughout by his
wife, the photographer, Santha Faiia (see Jordan, 2001). On this basis,
they may have the same appeal as another coffee-table book. They may
even serve as "alternative guidebooks" to the various sites.
[17] Turning next to the spiritual level, what should have become
clear is that Hancock's work does not offer any overt agenda, whether
spiritual or otherwise. Rather, at most it may be seen to offer two
things to the spiritual consumer. First, it hints at what we would
term Transcendental Exemplars: actual persons (albeit vaguely
described) who have purportedly attained a status beyond the quotidian
(albeit, again, vaguely described). In a secular world where rational-empirical
forms of thought are common, such exemplars serve the purpose of providing
seemingly concrete proof to those disinclined to use mere faith as
a basis of belief. In effect, Hancock's shadowy lost civilisation
stands as a concrete instance of human beings in possession of knowledge
and techniques that somehow transcend the limitations of the ordinary
human being at the start of the twenty-first century. The existence
of such phenomena is not a matter of arcane philosophical or theoretical
speculation, and knowledge of them does not require arduous discipleship
or faith in spiritual hierarchies of dubious integrity and invalidated
insight; it is all simply a brute historical fact. Second, and more
importantly, it hints at what we would term Transcendental Possibilities:
it creates a blank canvas on which the spiritual consumer constructs
their own spiritual universe, utilising both Hancock's historical
foundation and other products of the Spiritual Supermarket.
[18] The ideas of Graham Hancock build upon a long tradition of notions
about the existence of an ancient advanced civilisation destroyed
by catastrophic events yet still detectable amid the detritus of history.
In common with nationalists and other manipulators of the past, he
shapes and presents a historical narrative as part of an appeal to
the present. The past, we are told, has a message for us. But Hancock's
audience is not burdened with specific programmes of social change
or social action. The individual buys or views his work, and he or
she does so largely alone. The individual is left with the final say
as to whether Hancock is right in his views, and he or she does so
largely alone. The individual even decides what the ultimate message
of the past happens to be, and he or she does so largely alone. All
in all, Hancockism provides a mass-market consumable product that
can be transmitted through the ordinary commercial mechanisms of advanced
capitalist society and that can be consumed by individuals without
important social consequences and in accordance with their own subjective
preferences and desires. It is an ideal product on the shelves of
the spiritual supermarket.
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