Were they far removed from academic consensus when they came out, or became so by the moving of academic perspectives?

Diamond's particular brand of geographic determinism was outdated by the 70s, let alone by when he published GG&S. I'm not sure Hancock has ever been in the same zip code as consensus, let alone ballpark, but criticizing him brings enough people out of the woodwork that I'm trying to word things more carefully.

Hancock was far removed when he first came onto the scene in the mid 90s, and is slowly finding his theories more and more supported.

I'm the one that mentioned him elsewhere in the thread. It's sad to me that he gets so much shit in scientific circles when he's quite reserved with making truth claims, instead making hypotheses that are unfortunately misaligned with current theories and so derided as pseudo-science or bullshit.