'Archaeologist Criticizes Seol Min-seok's Errors, After Reading Only Chapter 2 of Yu Hyun-jun's Book: "Many Inaccuracies"'

Archaeologist Gwak Minsu Criticizes Architect Yoo Hyunjoon's Book
"Many Inaccurate Facts in the Content"

Gwak Minsu, director of the Korea-Egyptology Research Institute, pointed out that many incorrect contents were included in the book by Yoo Hyunjoon, a professor in the Department of Architecture at Hongik University.

On the 9th, Director Gwak opened his remarks on his social networking service (SNS) by saying, "I read Yoo Hyunjoon's book that has been a hot topic since yesterday. When curious about a widely talked-about person, reading their book is helpful." He explained, "I started reading the book titled 'Space Created by Space' this morning. The impressive title caught my attention. Especially Chapter 2, 'Climate Change That Gave Birth to Civilization,' was more interesting to me as it relates to my major. However, I could only read up to this Chapter 2."

Archaeologist Gwak Minsu, architect Yoo Hyunjun. Gwak Minsu Instagram, YouTube 'Sherlock Hyunjun'

He continued, "The author seemed to attempt quite a progressive logical leap based on fragmentary factual evidence, and such ‘leap thinking’ was not to my taste." He added, "Among the factual bases that he takes as premises for his leap thinking, many of the facts were not accurate. Although I did not verify this throughout the entire book, at least in Chapter 2, which I could verify based on my major in archaeology, this was the case. Reading beyond Chapter 2, which is a collection of these uneasy sentences, was by no means an easy task for me."

Director Gwak specifically pointed out, "'In Sumer of Mesopotamia, farming began around 9500 BCE, and in China around 2500 BCE,' is a highly questionable sentence," and stated, "The earliest confirmed farming area is the eastern Turkey-Syria region."

He also criticized, "'The claim that global warming led humans to start farming' is an explanation completely opposite to the latest archaeological research," and continued, "'The first city of humanity was Uruk in the Mesopotamian region,' but generally '?atalh?y?k' is mentioned." Along with this, he pointed out, "The author said, 'Through agriculture, humans created spaces with population densities about 2,000 times higher than hunting and gathering, leading to significant changes in human intelligence,' but in reality, agriculture as a subsistence economy did not bring changes to human intelligence."

Previously, Director Gwak served as an advisor for the Cleopatra episode of tvN's 'Seol Minseok's Naked History,' but when many errors appeared in the actual broadcast content, he refuted and exposed them. At that time, he publicly admonished history lecturer Seol Minseok, saying, "Mixing verified facts with rumors and gossip while trying to make history stories entertaining is a really big problem." In response, the production team apologized, saying, "We apologize for some errors during the process of researching vast ancient history materials," and Seol Minseok also expressed his apology, stating, "This happened because of my shortcomings. I will show a more sincere attitude going forward."