Kind: captions
Language: en
the big question for me in that timeline
is why didn't we do it sooner why did it
take so long why did we wait until after
12,000 years ago really after 10,000
years ago to start seeing the beginnings
of
civilization the following is a
conversation with Graham Hancock a
journalist and author who for over 30
years has explored the controversial
possibility that there existed A Lost
Civilization during the last ice age and
that it was destroyed in a global
cataclysm some 12,000 years ago he is
the presenter of the Netflix documentary
series ancient apocalypse the second
season of which has just been released
and it's focused on the distant past of
the Americas a topic I recently
discussed with the archaeologist Ed
Barnhart let me say that Ed represents
the kind of archaeologist scholar I love
talking to on the podcast extremely
knowledgeable humble open-minded and
respectful in
disagreement I'll do many more podcasts
on History including ancient history our
distant past is full of mysteries and I
find it truly exciting to explore those
Mysteries with people both on the inside
and the outside of the mainstream in the
various disciplines
involved this is Alex Freedman podcast
to support it please check out our
sponsors in the description and now dear
friends here's Graham
Hancock let's start with a big
foundational idea that you have about
human history that there was a an
advanced Ice Age civilization that came
before and perhaps seated what people
now call the six cradles of civilization
Mesopotamia Egypt India China Indies and
meso America so let's talk about this
idea that you have can you at the
highest possible level describe it it
would be better to describe it as a
foundational sense of puzzlement and
incompleteness uh in the story that we
are taught about our past which
envisages more or less there have been a
few ups and downs but more or less uh
straightforward evolutionary
progress uh we start out as Hunter
foragers then we become
agriculturalists the hunter for forager
phase could go back hundreds of
thousands of years uh I mean this is
where it's also it's also important to
mention that anatomically modern humans
and were not the only humans we we had
neanderthals from I don't know 400,000
years ago to about 40,000 years ago they
were certainly human because
anatomically modern humans interbred
with them and we carry we carry Neal
genes there were the denisovans maybe
300,000 to perhaps even as recently as
30,000 years ago and again interbreeding
took place they're obviously a human
species so you know we've got this
background of humans who didn't look
quite like us and then we have
anatomically modern humans and I think
the earliest anatomically modern human
skeletal remains are from Jeb Hood in
Morocco and date to about 310,000 years
ago so the question is what were our
ancestors doing after that and I think
we can include the Neanderthals and the
denisovans that in that General picture
and why did it take so long this is one
of the puzzles one of the questions that
bother me why did it take so long when
we have creatures who are physically
identical to us we we cannot actually
weigh and measure their brains but from
the work that's been done on on the
crania it looks like they had the same
brains that we do with the same the same
wiring so so if we've been around uh for
300,000 plus years at least and if
ultimately in our fure future uh was uh
the the process to create civilization
or civilizations Why didn't it happen
sooner why did it take so long why why
why was it such a long time even the
story of of anatomically modern humans
has kept on changing I I remember a time
when it was said that there hadn't been
anatomically modern humans before 50,000
years ago and then it became 196,000
years ago with the findings in Ethiopia
and then
310,000 years ago um there there's a lot
of a lot of missing pieces in the in the
puzzle there um but the big question for
me in that timeline is why didn't we do
it sooner why did it take so long why
why why did we wait until after 12,000
years ago really after 10,000 years ago
to start seeing the beginnings what are
selected as the beginnings of
civilization uh in in places like like
turkey for example and then there's a a
relatively slow process of adopting
Agriculture and and by 6,000 years ago
we see ancient Sumer uh emerging as a
civilization and we're then in the
predynastic period in ancient Egypt as
well 6,000 6,000 years ago beginning to
see definite signs of what will become
the the dynastic civilization of Egypt
about about 5,000 years ago and
interestingly round about the same time
you have the indis valley civilization
popping up out of nowhere and and by the
way the IND valley civilization was A
Lost Civilization uh until the 1920s
when uh Railway workers accidentally
stumbled across some some ruins I've
been to haraa and madaro uh and these
are extraordinarily beautifully
centrally planned cities these clearly
they're the work of an already
sophisticated uh civilization one of the
things that strikes me about the indis
valley civilization is that we find a a
steti seal uh of an IND individual
seated in a a recognizable yoga posture
and that seal is 5,000 years old uh and
the yoga posture is mulab bandana which
involves a real contortion of the ankles
and twisting the feet back it's an
advanced yoga posture so there it is
5,000 years ago and that then raises the
question well how long did yoga take to
get to that place when it was already so
Advanced five 5,000 years ago what's the
what's the background to this China the
yellow the Yellow River civilization
again it's around about the same period
5 to 6,000 years ago you get these first
signs of something happening so it's
very odd that that all around the world
uh we have this this sudden upsurge of
civilization about 6,000 years ago
preceded by what seems like a a natural
evolutionary process that would lead to
a to a civilization um and yet certain
ideas being being carried down and
manifested and expressed in in many of
these in many of these different
civilizations
I just find that that whole idea very
puzzling and and very and very
disturbing uh especially when I look at
this radical break that takes place in
not just the human story but the story
of all life on Earth which was the last
great cataclysm that the Earth went
through uh which was the young Adas
event uh it was an extinction level
event uh that's when all the great
of the Ice Age went extinct
it's after that it's after that event
that we start seeing this what what are
taken to be the beginnings of the first
gradual steps towards civilization we
come out of the upper Paleolithic as
it's defined the old end of the Old
Stone Age and into the Neolithic and
that's when the wheels are supposedly
set in motion to start civilization
rolling but but what happened before
that and why did that why did that
suddenly happen then and I can't help
feeling and I've felt this for a very
long while that there are major missing
pieces in our story it's often said that
I'm claiming to have proved that there
was an advanced Lost Civilization in the
Ice Age and I am not claiming to have
proved that that is a hypothesis that I
am putting forward uh to answer some of
the questions that I have uh about about
prehistory um and and um I think it's
worthwhile to inquire into those
possibilities because the younger dras
event was uh a massive
uh Global cataclysm whatever caused it
uh and and um it's strange that just
after it we start seeing these these
first signs so the current understanding
in mainstream Archaeology is that after
the younger Drass is when the
civilizations popped up in different
places of the globe with a lot of
similarities but they popped up
independently independently and and and
by coincidence and by coincidence those
those big civiliz ations that we all
remember as the first civilizations Su
Egypt the indis valley civilization
China they all pop up at the pretty much
the same time um that is that is that is
the mainstream View and they don't just
pop up they kind of build up gradually
first there's some settlements oh
definitely yes and then there's
different dynamics of how they build up
and the RO of the role of agriculture in
that is uh also non obvious but it's
just there's a first a kind of
settlement a stabilization of where the
people are living then they start using
agriculture then they start getting
Urban centers and that kind of stuff it
seems like an entirely reasonable
argument everything everything about
that makes sense there is no doubt that
you're seeing uh evolutionary progress
uh social Evolution taking taking place
in those thousands of years before Sumer
uh emerges but what's happening now
really I spent much of the '90s and the
late 1980s investigating this issue of A
Lost Civilization I wrote a series of
books about it but by 2002 when I
published a book called underworld which
was the result most massive and most
heavy book that I've ever written
because I was writing very defensively
at the time um by the time I finished
that book my wife Santa and I spent
seven years scuba diving all around the
world looking for structures underwater
often led by local fishermen or local
divers to anomalies that they had seen
underwater by the time that book was
finished I I thought actually I've done
this story I've walked the walk I I
really don't have much more to say about
it and I I I turned in another Direction
and I I wrote a book called Supernatural
meetings with the ancient teachers of
mankind recently retitled uh Visionary
and that was about the role of
fundamentally about the role of
psychedelics in in the evolution of
human human culture and I didn't think
that I would go back to the Lost
Civilization issue but gobec Lee in
Turkey kept on forcing itself upon me
the more and more discoveries there the
11,600 Year date from enclosure D which
has the two largest megalithic pillars
and I I reached a point where I I
realized I have to get back in I have to
get back in the water and I have to
investigate this again and and gockley
tee was a game changer but I think it's
a GameChanger for everything because
gockley tee the uh extraordinary nature
of it we're looking at a major
megalithic site which is at least 5 and
a half thousand years older than say
gigantia in Malta which is was
previously considered to be the oldest
megalithic site in the world and uh this
led of course to a huge amount of
interest and attention both from uh the
Turkish government who see the potential
tourism potential of of having the
world's oldest megalithic site and and
from archaeologists and this in turn has
led to exploration and excavation
throughout the region and what they're
finding throughout that whole region
around
goeke uh and going down into Syria and
further down into the Jordan Valley as
far far as Jericho uh and even across a
bit of the Mediterranean into Cyprus uh
is what Turkish archaeologists are now
calling the Tas civilization they're
calling it a civilization the Stone
Hills
civilization uh with uh very definite
identifying characteristics semi-
Subterranean circular structures the use
of t-shaped megalithic pillars sometimes
not anywhere near as big as those at
gockley tee it's clear that gockley Tee
now was not the beginning of this
process it was actually in a way the end
of this process it was the summation of
everything that that ston Hills
civilization had had achieved uh but
what what is becoming clear is that this
is a period between before the
foundation of gocke as far as we know
that date of 11,600 years ago is the
oldest date for gck tee but of course
there's a lot of gocke still underground
so we we can't say for sure that that's
the oldest but it's the oldest so far uh
excavated what we're what we're seeing
uh is that in that whole region around
there there was something was in motion
and it began to go into motion round
about the beginning of the younger drers
and and this is where these two dates
are really important the younger dras
I'll round the figures off begins around
12,800 years ago and it ends around
11,600 years ago so gockley te's
construction date if it is 11,600 years
ago if they don't find older materials
marks the end of the younger dryers um
but the beginning of the younger dryers
we're already seeing the stirrings of
the kind of culture that manifests in
full form uh at
gocke uh and and after the construction
of GOC tee in fact even during the
construction of gole teepe uh we see
agriculture beginning to be adopted the
the people who created gock teepe were
all Hunter foragers at the beginning but
by the time gockley was finished and it
was definitely deliberately finished
closed off closed down deliberately
buried covered with Earth covered with
rubble uh and then topped off with a
hill which is which is why gocke is
called U what it is gocke means pot
belli Hill or the hill of the naval for
a long time gockley Tey was thought to
be just a hill that looked a bit like a
pot belly can you say how it was
discovered I think I think this is one
of the most fascinating things on earth
period so maybe can you say what it is
and how it was discovered well go
gockley teepe is first of all the the
oldest fully elaborated megalithic site
that we know of anywhere in the world it
doesn't mean the older ones won't be
found but it is the oldest so far found
um the part of the site that's been
excavated which is a tiny percentage of
the whole site we do know my first visit
to he was in 2013 and Dr Clash Smidt
the late Dr Clash Smidt who was who who
died a year later uh was very generous
to me and showed me around the site over
a period of three days and he he
explained to me that they've already
used ground penetrating radar on the
site and they know that there's much
more gockley tee still underground um so
anything is anything is possible in
terms of the in terms of the dating of
Quebec T but what we have at the moment
is a series of almost circular but not
quite circular enclosures which are
which Are Walled with relatively small
stones and then inside them you have
pairs of megalithic pillars and the the
archetypal part of that site is
enclosure d uh which contains the two
largest upright megaliths about 18 ft
tall and reckoned to weigh somewhere in
the range of 20 tons uh if I have my my
memory correct they're they're
substantial Hefty pieces of stone it
isn't it isn't some kind of
extraordinary feat to create a 20ft tall
or 20 ton megalith uh nor is it an
extraordinary feat to move it uh there's
nothing there nothing magical or or
really weird about that human beings can
do that and always have besides the
Quarry for the megalith is right there
it's within 200 meters of the of of the
main enclosure so that's not a mystery
but the mystery is the mystery is why
suddenly this this new form of
architecture this massive massive um
megalithic pillars appear and the the
pillars what one of the things that
interests me about the pillars is their
alignment and there is good work that's
been done which suggests that enclosure
d uh aligns to the rising of the star
serus and the rising points of the star
serus appear to be mapped by the other
enclosures which are all oriented in
slightly different
directions it was the work entirely of
Hunter foragers but by the time gobec
tapy was completed
uh agriculture was being introduced and
and was was was taking place there now
you asked how gockley was found the
answer to that is that there was a
survey of that potbellied hill in the
1960s by um some American archaeologists
and they were looking absolutely looking
for Stone Age material for material from
the Paleolithic um and they had found
some Paleolithic flints upper
Paleolithic flints around there so it
looked like a good place to look but
then they noticed sticking out of the
side of the Hill some very finely cut uh
Stone bits of very large and and very
finely cut stone and looking at that the
workmanship was so good that those
archaeologists were confident that it
had nothing to do with the Stone Age and
they thought they were looking at
perhaps some bantine uh remains and they
abandoned the site and and never looked
at it further and it wasn't until the
German archaeological Institute got
involved and particularly CLA smidth who
I think was was a genius had real
insight into this uh and and started to
dig at gockley teepe that they realized
what they'd found that they that they'd
found potentially the oldest megalithic
site in the world uh and they'd found it
at a place where agriculture according
to the established historical timeline
that's where agriculture at any rate in
in Europe and Western Asia begins it
begins in Anatolia in turkey and then it
gradually disseminates Westward from
there and yet the understanding is
it was created by hunter gatherers it
was created by hunter gatherers yeah
they were there there was no agriculture
11,600 years ago in goeke but by the
time gocke was decommissioned and I use
that word deliberately was closed down
uh and and buried uh agriculture was all
around it uh and and and this was
agriculture of of people who knew how to
cultivate cultivate plants do we have an
understanding when it was turned into a
if I could say a time capsule so
protected by forming a mound around it
is it around that similar time it stood
from roughly
11,600 years ago to about 10,400 years
ago to about 8,400 BC so around 12200
years it was there and it continued to
be elaborated as a site and while it was
being elaborated as a site we see
agriculture I'm going to use the word
being introduced uh it had there had
been no sign of it before for and
suddenly it's there and to me that's
another of the mysteries about Glee and
then with the new work that that's being
done we realize that it's part of a much
wider phenomenon uh which it spreads
across an enormous distance um and and
um the puzzling thing is that after
gocke there almost seems to be a decline
things things fall down again and and
then we enter this long slow process of
the Neolithic thousands of years uh
gradual developments until we come to
ancient Sumer and and and Mesopotamia
but agriculture has taken a firm a firm
route by then actually one of the thing
I'll just say this in passing when when
I talk about A Lost Civilization
introducing ideas to people I'm often
accused of stealing credit from the
indigenous people who had those ideas in
the first place so I do find it slightly
hypocritical that Archaeology is fully
accepts that the idea of Agriculture was
introduced to Western Europe from Turkey
uh and that that the Western Europeans
didn't invent agriculture it was
absolutely introduced by Anatolian
farmers who who who traveled West so the
the notion of dissemination of ideas
perhaps shouldn't be so um annoying to
archaeologists as it is and perhaps we
should also state if you look at the
entirety of history of
hominids humans or hominids have been
explorers I I didn't even know this When
I Was preparing for this yeah looking at
homoerectus yeah 1.9 million years ago
abely almost right away they spread out
through the whole world and we Homo
sapiens evolved from them and we should
also mention since we're talking about
sort of controversial debates going on
as I understand there's still debates
about the Dynamics of all that was going
on there like we mentioned in Africa
that it's the you know I think the
current understanding we didn't come
from one particular point of Africa that
there's multiple locations this is the
Out of Africa Theory I think it's more
than a theory it's it's really strongly
evidenced why because we're part of the
great ape family and it's and it's an
African family there's no doubt that
that human beings are deep Origins are
in Africa but then there as you rightly
say there were these very early
migrations Out of Africa uh by species
that are likely ancestral to
anatomically modern humans including
definitely Homo erectus and and and this
astonishingly distant travels that they
undertook yes I think I think there is
an urge to explore in in in all of
humanity I think there is an urge to
find out what's around the next corner
what's over the brow of the of the next
Hill uh and I think that goes very deep
into human character and I think it was
being manifested in those those Early
Adventures of people who left Africa and
traveled all around the world and then
settling in different parts of the world
uh I think a lot of a lot of
anatomically modern human evolution took
place outside Africa as well not not
only in Africa so I guess the the
general puzzlement the you're filled
with is given that these
creatures explore and spread and uh try
out different environments why did it
take hundreds of thousands of years for
them to develop complicated Society
settlements that's the first big
question why did it take so long and
that raises in my mind a hypothesis a
possibility May maybe it didn't take so
long maybe maybe things were happening
that we haven't yet got hold of in the
archaeological record which which await
to be discovered um and of course there
are huge parts of the world that have
not been studied At All by archaeology
but the fact that the fact that huge
parts of the world have not been studied
At All by Archaeology is not in it on
its own enough to suggest that we're
missing a chapter in the human story uh
the reason that I come to that isn't
only puzzlement about 300,000 year Gap
it's also to do with the fact that
there's common iconography there's
common myths and traditions and there's
common spiritual ideas that are found
all around the world um and and uh
they're found amongst cultures that are
geographically distant from one another
uh and that are also distant from one
another in time they don't necessarily
occur at the same time and this is where
I think that archaeology is perhaps
desperately needing a history of ideas
as well as just a history of things uh
because an idea um Can can manifest
again and again uh throughout the human
story so that so there are particular
there are particular issues uh for
example the notion of the afterlife
Destiny of the Soul uh what happens to
us when we die um and believe me when
you reach my age that's something you do
you do think about what what what
happens I to feel Immortal when I was in
my 40s but now that I'm 74 I definitely
know that I'm that that that I'm not
well it would be natural for human
beings all around the world to have that
same that same feeling that same idea
but why would they all decide that what
happens to the soul after death is that
it makes a leap to the Heavens to the
Milky Way that it makes a journey along
the Milky Way that there it is
confronted by challenges by monsters by
closed Gates the course of the life that
that person has lived will determine
their Destiny in that afterlife journey
and this idea the the path of souls the
Milky Way is called the path of souls
it's very strongly found in the Americas
right from South America through Mexico
through into North America but it's also
found uh in ancient Egypt uh in Ancient
India in ancient Mesopotamia the same
the same idea uh and I don't feel that
that can be a coincidence I feel I feel
that what we're looking at is an
inheritance of an idea a legacy that's
been passed down from a remote common
source to cultures all around the world
and that and then has taken on a life of
its own within those cultures so the
remote common source would explain both
the similarities and the differences uh
in the expression of these ideas the
other thing very puzzling thing is um
this sequence of numbers that are a
result of the precession of the
equinoxes at least I think that's the
best theory to explain them um here I
think it's important
to pay tribute to the work of Georgio to
santiana and her of vend Geor Georgio de
Santana was professor of History of
Science actually at MIT where where
you're based back in the
60s um and he vend was professor of the
history of science at Frankfurt
University and they wrote an immense
book in the 1960s called Hamlet's Mill
uh and and Hamlet's Mill uh
differs very strongly from established
opinion on the issue of the phenomenon
of precession and I'll explain what
pression is in a moment um generally
it's held that it was the Greeks who
discovered the
pression uh and the dating on that is
put back not very far maybe 2,300 years
ago or so santiana and vesan are
pointing out that knowledge of
procession is much much older than that
thousands of years older than that and
and they do actually trace it I think
I'm quoting them pretty much correctly
to some almost unbelievable ancestor
civilization reading that book was one
of the several reasons that I got into
this this mystery in the first place
okay now the procession of the equinoxes
to give it its full name is is uh
results from the fact that our planet is
the viewing platform from which we
observe the Stars uh and our planet of
course is rotating on its own axis at
roughly 1,000 M hour at the equator uh
but what's less obvious is that it's
also wobbling on its axis and that it so
if you imagine the extended North Pole
of the earth pointing up at the sky in
our time it's pointing at the star
Polaris and that is our pole star but
Polaris has not always been the pole
star precisely because of this wobble on
the axis of the earth uh other stars
have occupied the pole position and
sometimes the extended North Pole of the
earth points at empty space there is no
pole star that's one of the obvious
results of the wobble on the Earth's
axis the other one is that there are 12
well-known constellations in our time
the 12 constellations of the zodiac that
lie along what is referred to as the the
path of the sun the Earth is orbiting
the Sun uh and we are seeing what's
behind it what's what's in direct line
with the sun in our in our view and the
zodiacal constellations all lie along
the path of the sun so at different
times of the year the sun will rise
against the background of a particular
zodiacal
constellation uh Today We Live in the
age of Pisces uh and it's definitely not
an accident that the early Christians
used the fish uh as their symbol uh this
is another area where I differ from
archaeology I think I think the
constellations of the zodiac were Recon
recognized as such much earlier than we
suppose anyway to get to the point uh
the key marker of the Year certainly in
the northern hemisphere was the Spring
Equinox uh this was the question was
what constellation is rising behind the
sun what's what constellation is housing
the Sun at dawn on the Spring Equinox uh
right now it's Pisces in another 150
years or so it'll be Aquarius we we do
live in the dawning of the age of
Aquarius uh back in the time of um the
late ancient Egyptians it was Aries
going back to the time of rames or
before before that it was Taurus and so
on and so forth It's backwards through
the Zodiac uh until 12,500 years ago you
come to the age of Leo when the
constellation of Leo houses the sun on
the Spring Equinox now this process
unfolds very very very very slowly it un
the whole cycle and it is a cycle it
repeats itself roughly every 26,000
years put a put a more exact figure on
it
25,920 years uh that may be a convention
some Scholars would would say it was a
bit less than that a bit more but you're
talking fractions it's it's in that area
25,920 years um and and uh to observe it
you really need more than one human
lifetime because it unfolds very very
slowly at a rate of one degree every 72
years and the parallel that I often give
is hold your finger up to the Horizon
the distant Horizon the movement in one
lifetime in in a period of 72 years is
about the width of your finger uh it's
not impossible to notice in a lifetime
but it's but it's difficult you got to
pass it on um and and what seems to have
happened is that some ancient culture
the culture that santiana and vesan call
some almost unbelievable ancestor
culture worked out the entire process of
procession and selected the key numbers
of procession of which of which the most
important number the governing number is
the number 72 uh but but we also have uh
numbers related to the number 72 72 + 36
is 108 108 divided by 2 is 54 uh these
these numbers are also found in
mythology all around the world there
were 72 conspirators uh who um were
involved in killing the god OS ciris in
in ancient Egypt and nailing him up in a
wooden Coffer and dumping him in the in
the Nile um there are
432,000 in the rig basa 432,000 is a
multiple of
72 uh and and um at Anor in Cambodia for
example you have uh the bridge to Anor
Tom and on that bridge you have figures
on both sides sculpted figures which are
holding the body of a serpent uh that
serpent is vuki and what they're doing
is they're churning the Milky ocean it's
the same metaphor of churning and
turning that's defined in the story of
Hamlet's Mill of aml's Mill uh there are
54 on each side 54 plus 54 is 108 108 is
72 + 36 it's a pressional number
according to the work that santiana and
vesan did and the fascination with these
this number system and its Discovery all
around the world uh is one of the
puzzles that that intrigue me and and
suggest to me that we are looking at
ancestral knowledge that was passed down
and probably was passed down from a
specific single common source at one
time but then was spread out very very
widely around the world so one of the
defining ways that you
approach the study of human history that
I think contrasts with mainstream
archaeologies do you take this sort of
astronomical symbolism and the
relationship between humans and the
Stars very seriously I do as I believe
the Ancients did I think it's important
to sort of uh consider what humans would
have thought about back then now we have
a lot of distractions we have social
media we can watch videos on YouTube and
whatever but back then especially before
sort of electricity the stars is like
yeah the sexiest thing to talk about
there's no light pollution there's no
light pollution so there's there it's
Majesty of the heavens every single
night you're spending looking up at the
stars and you can imagine there's a lot
of sort of status value to be the guy
who's very good at studying the stars
and sort of the scientists of the day
and I'm sure there's going to be these
Geniuses that emerge yeah they're able
to uh do two things one tell stories
about the gods or whatever based on the
stars and then also as we'll probably
talk about use the Stars practically for
navigation for example oh yeah so like
it makes sense that the Stars had a
Primal importance for the ideas of the
times for the status the for religious
Explorations it was an everpresent
reality yes and it was bright and it was
brilliant and it was full of Lights uh
it it it's inconceivable that the
Ancients would not have paid attention
to it it was it was an overwhelming
presence and that's one of the reasons
why I'm really confident that the the
constellations that we now recognize as
the constellations of the zodiac were
recognized much earlier because it's
hard to miss when you pay attention to
the sky that the sun over the course of
the solar year is month by month Rising
against the background of different
constellations and then there's a much
longer process the process of procession
which takes that Journey backwards and
where we have a period of
2,160 years for each sign of the zodiac
I think it would have been hard for the
Ancients to have missed that they might
not have identified the constellations
in exactly the same way we do today that
may well be a Babylonian or Greek uh
convention but that the constellations
were there uh I think was very clear and
that they were special constellations
unlike other ones higher up in the sky
uh which were not on the path of the sun
that that people paid attention to well
but detecting the procession of the
Equinox is hard because especially they
don't have any writing systems they
don't have any mathematical systems so
everything is told through words yeah
they well they have let's not
underestimate oral Traditions uh the or
oral Traditions that's something we've
lost in our culture today one of the
things that happens with the written
word uh is that you gradually lose your
memory um actually there's a nice story
from from ancient Egypt about the God th
the god of wisdom who is very proud of
himself because he has invented
writing look at this gift he says to uh
mythical pharaoh of that time look at
the gift that I am giving Humanity
writing this is a wonderful thing it'll
enable you to preserve so much that you
would otherwise lose and and um the
Pharaoh in this story replies to him no
you have not given us a wonderful gift
you have destroyed the art of memory uh
we will forget everything words will
roam free around the world not
accompanied by any wise advice to set
them into context and actually that's a
that's that's that's a very interesting
point and and we do know that cultures
that still do have oral Traditions are
able to preserve information for very
long periods of time one thing I think
is clear in in any time in any period of
history is human beings love stories we
we love great stories and and one way to
preserve information uh is to encode it
embed it in a great story uh and and so
carefully done that that actually it
doesn't matter whether the Storyteller
knows that they're passing on that
information or not uh the story itself
is the vehicle uh and as long as it's
repeated Faithfully the information
contained within it will be will be
passed on and I I do think this is this
is part of the the story of the pre
preservation of knowledge so that's one
of the reasons that you take myths
seriously I take them very seriously and
and the other many reasons but but I
can't help being deeply impressed and
deeply puzzled by the worldwide
tradition of a global cataclysm within
human memory I mean we know that we know
scientifically that there have been many
many cataclysms in the past going back
millions of years I mean the best known
one of course is the kpg event as it's
now called that made the dinosaurs
extinct 65 million or or or 66 million
years ago but has there been such a
cataclysm in the lifetime of the human
species um yeah the Mount Toba eruption
about 70,000 years ago was pretty bad uh
but a global cataclysm the younger dras
really ticks all the boxes as a as as a
worldwide disaster which definitely
involved sea level rise both at the
beginning and at the end of the younger
dras it definitely involved the
swallowing up of lands that previously
had been above water uh and I think it's
a an excellent candidate uh for this
worldwide tradition of a global
cataclysm of which one of but not the
only distinguishing characteristics was
a flood an enormous flood and the
submergence of lands that had previously
been above water uh underwater the fact
that this story is found all around the
world uh suggests to me that the
archaeological explanation is look
people suffer local floods all the time
I I mean as we're talking there's
there's there's flooding in Florida uh
but I I I don't think anybody in Florida
is going to make the mistake of
believing that that's a global flood
they they know it's they know it's local
um but that's the argument largely of
archaeology dealing with the flood myths
or that some local population
experienced a a nasty local flooding
event and they decided to say that it
was that it affected the whole world I
I'm not persuaded by that particularly
since we know there was a nasty Epoch
the younger dras when flooding did occur
and when the Earth was subjected to
events cataclysmic enough to extinguish
entirely the meapa of the Ice Age so
there is the younger D impact hypothesis
that provides an explanation of what
happened during the period yeah that
resulted in such rapid environmental
change so can you explain this
hypothesis yes um the the younger dras
impact hypothesis yd for short uh is uh
is not a lunatic fringe Theory as its
opponents often attempt to write it off
um it's the work of more than 60 major
scientists uh working across many
different disciplines including
archaeology uh and and including
oceanography as well
um and and uh they are collectively
puzzled by the sudden onset of the
younger dryers and by the fact that is
it is accompanied 12,800 Years Ago by a
distinct lay in the earth uh you can see
it most clearly at uh Murray Springs in
Arizona for example you can you can see
it's about the width of a human hand uh
and there's a a drawer there that's been
cut by flash flooding at some time and
that draw has revealed the sides of the
drawer and you can you can see the
cross-section and in the cross-section
is this distinct dark layer that runs
through the Earth and it contains
evidence of wild fires there's a lot of
soot in it uh there are also Nano
diamonds in it there is shocked Quartz
in it there is quartz that's been melted
at temperatures in excess of 2,200 de
Centigrade um there are carbon
microspherules all of these are proxies
for some kind of cosmic impact I talked
a moment ago about the extinction of the
dinosaurs Lewis and Walter Alvarez who
who made that incredible Discovery uh
initially their their Discovery was
based entirely on impact proxies just as
the younger druses there was no crater
and for a long time they were
disbelieved because they couldn't
produce a crater uh but when they
finally did produce that deeply buried
chicks Glo crater that's when people
started to say yeah they have to be
right but they weren't relying on the
crater they were relying on the impact
proxies and they're the same impact
proxies that we find in What's called
the younger dest boundary layer all
around the world um so so it's the fact
that at the moment when the earth tips
into a radical climate shift it it it's
been warming up for at least 2,000 years
before 12,800 years ago people at the
time must have been feeling a great
sense of relief you know we've been
living through this really cold time but
it's getting better things are getting
better and then suddenly around 12,800
years ago some might say
12,860 years ago there's a massive
Global Plunge in global temperatures and
and the world suddenly gets as cold as
it was at the peak of the Ice Age and
and it it's almost literally overnight
it's very very very rapid normally in an
Epoch when the Earth is going into a
freeze you would not expect sea levels
to rise but there is a sea level rise a
sudden one right at the beginning of the
younger dryers and then you have this
long frozen period from 12,800 to 11,600
years ago and then equally dramatically
and equally suddenly the angoras comes
to an end and the world very rapidly
warms up and you have a a recognized
pulse of meltwater at that time as the
last of the glaciers collapse into the
sea uh called meltwater pulse 1B round
about 11,600 years ago so so this is um
this is a period uh which is very
tightly defined uh it's a period when we
know that human populations were were
grievously Disturbed that's when the the
so-called Clovis culture of North
America vanished entirely from the
record uh during the younger dras and
it's the time when the mammoths and the
saber-tooth tigers vanished from the
record as well is there a good
understanding of what happened
geologically whether there was an impact
or not like what explains this huge dip
in temperature and then rise in
temperature the abrupt cessation of the
global meridianal overturning
circulation of which the Gulf Stream is
the best known part uh the main Theory
that's been put forward up to now and I
don't dispute that theory at all is that
the sudden freeze was because was caused
by the cutting off of the Gulf Stream
basically uh which is part of the
central heating system of our planet so
no wonder it became cold but what's not
really been addressed before is why that
happened why
the Gulf Stream was cut why a sudden
pulse of meltwater went into the world
ocean and and it was so much of it and
it was so cold that actually stopped the
Gulf Stream in its tracks and that's
where the yeras impact hypothesis offers
a very elegant and very satisfactory
solution uh to the problem now the
hypothesis of course is broader than
that uh amongst the scientists working
on it are for example Bill Napier an
astrophysicist and astronomer um they
have assembled a great deal of evidence
which suggests that the culprit in the
younger dras
impact event or events was what we now
call the torrid meteor stream uh which
the Earth still passes through twice a
year it's now about 30 million
kilometers wide takes the earth a couple
of days to to pass through it on its
orbit it passed through it in June and
it passes through it at the end of
October the suggestion is that the torid
meteor dream is the end product of a
very large comet that entered the solar
system round about 20,000 years ago came
in from the or Cloud got trapped by the
gravity of the Sun and went into orbit
around the Sun an orbit that crossed the
orbit of the earth um however when it
was one object the likelihood of a
collision with the Earth was extremely
small but as it started to do what all
comets do which was to break up into
multiple fragments cuz these are chunks
of rock held together by Ice uh and as
they warm up they split and disintegrate
and break into pieces as it passed
through that its debris stream became
larger and larger and wider and wider
and the theory is that 12,800 years ago
the earth passed through a particularly
dense part of the torid meteor stream
and was hit by multiple impacts uh all
around the planet certainly from the
west of North America as far east as
Syria uh and that we are by and large
not talking about impacts that would
that would have caused craters although
there certainly were some uh we're
talking about Air Bursts when an object
is 100 or 150 m in diameter and it's
coming in very fast uh into the Earth's
atmosphere uh it is very unlikely to
reach the Earth it's going to blow up in
the sky and the best known recent
example of that is the tongus event in
Siberia which took place on the 30th of
June
198 the tunguska event was nobody
disputes it was definitely an airburst
of of of a cometary fragment and the
date is interesting uh because the 30th
of June is the height of the beta TDS
it's one of the two times when the Earth
is going through the torid meteor stream
well luckily that part of Siberia wasn't
inhabited uh but 2,000 square miles of
forest were destroyed if that had
happened over a major city would all be
thinking very hard about objects out of
the torid meteor stream and about the
risk of uh Cosmic impact so the
suggestion is that it wasn't One impact
it wasn't two impacts it wasn't three
impacts it was it was hundreds of Air
Bursts all around the planet coupled
with coupled with a number of bigger
objects which the scientists working on
this think hit the North American ice
cap largely some of them may also have
hit the northern European ice cap
resulting in that sudden otherwise
unexplained flood of melt water that
went into the world ocean um and and uh
caused the cooling that then that then
took place but this was a disaster for
life all over the planet and and it's
interesting that one of the sites where
they find the younger dras boundary and
where they find overwhelming evidence of
an air burst and where they find all the
shocked quartz the carbon micros ferial
the Nano Diamonds the trinitite and so
on and so forth all um of of those
impact proxies are found at Abu Herrera
that was a a settlement within 150 miles
of gockley teepe and it was hit 12,800
years ago and it was obliterated
interestingly it was reinhabited by
human beings within probably 5 years but
it was it was completely obliterated at
that time uh and it it it's difficult to
imagine that the people who lived in
that area would not have been very
impressed uh by what they saw Happening
by the the these massive explosions in
the sky and the the obliteration uh of
of Abu hrera now this is a theory the
younger dr's impact it's a hypothesis
actually it's not even a theory a theory
is I think considered a higher level
than a hypothesis that's why it's the
younger dras impact hypothesis and of
course it has many opponents and there
are many who disagree with it uh and
there there have been a series of of
peer-reviewed papers that have been
published supposedly debunking the
younger dras impact hypothesis one I
think was in 20 2011 it was called a a
requim for the younger dras impact
hypothesis and there's one just been
published a few months ago a year ago
you know called a a complete uh
refutation of the younger dras impact
hypothesis something something like that
some lengthy title um so so it's it's a
hypothesis that has its opponents and
even within within those of us who are
looking at the alternative side of
history there are different points of
view uh Robert shock from Boston
University the geologist who
demonstrated that the erosion on the
Sphinx May well have been caused by
exposure to a long period of very heavy
rainfall um he doesn't go for the
younger dras impact hypothesis he think
he he fully accepts that the younger
dras was a global cataclysm uh and that
the extinctions took place but he thinks
it was caused by some kind of massive
solar Outburst so there there what
everybody's agreed on is the younger
drus was bad um but there is dispute
about what caused it I person have found
the younger dras impact hypothesis to be
the most persuasive uh which most
effectively explains all the evidence
how important is the impact hypothesis
to your understanding of um the Ice Age
Advanced civilizations so is it possible
to have another explanation for
environmental factors that could have um
erased most of an advanced civilization
during this period in a sense it's not
the impact hypothesis that is Central to
what I'm saying it's the Young drus
that's Central to what I'm saying and
the younger drus required a trigger
something something caused it uh I think
the younger drus impact hypothesis the
notion that that we're looking at a
debris stream of a fragmenting comet and
we can still see that debris stream
because it's still up there and we still
pass through it twice a year uh is is
the best explanation but I don't mind
other explanations it's good that there
are other explanations the younger dras
is a big mystery and it's not a mystery
that's been solved yet and that word
Advan
civilization this is another word that
um that is easily misunderstood and I've
tried to make clear many many times that
when we when we consider the possibility
of something like a civilization in the
past we shouldn't imagine that it's us
that it's something like us we should
expect it to be completely different
from us but that it would have achieved
certain things so amongst the clues that
intrigue me are those precession numbers
that are found all around the world and
are a category of ancient maps called
Panos which suddenly started to appear
just after the Crusade that uh entered
Constantinople and sacked
Constantinople the Panos suddenly start
to appear and they're extremely accurate
Maps the most of the ones that have
survived are extremely accurate maps of
the Mediterranean alone but some of them
show much wider areas for example on
these portolano style Maps do find a
depiction of Antarctica again and again
and another thing that these maps have
in common is that many of the map makers
state that they base their maps on
multiple older Source Maps which have
not survived these maps are intriguing
because they have very accurate relative
longitudes our civilization did not
crack the longitude problem until the
mid- 18th century with Harrison's
chronometer which was able to keep
accurate time at Sea so you could could
have uh the time in London and you could
have the local time at sea at the same
time on and then you could work out your
longitude um there might be other ways
of working out longitude as well but
there it is the fact is these Panos have
extremely accurate relative longitudes
secondly some of them show the world to
my eye as it looked during the Ice Age
they show a much a much extended
Indonesia uh and Malaysian Peninsula and
the series of islands that make up
Indonesia today are all grouped together
into one land mass and that was the case
during the Ice Age that was the that was
the Sund shelf and the presence of
Antarctica on some of these Maps also
puzzles and intrigues me and is not
satisfactorily explained in my view by
archaeology which says oh those map
makers they felt that the world needed
something underneath it to balance it so
they put a a fictional land mass there
um I I I don't think that makes sense I
think somebody was mapping the world uh
during the last ice AG but that doesn't
mean that they had our kind of tech uh
it means that they were following that
exploration Instinct that they knew how
to navigate they'd been watching the
stars for thousands of years before they
knew how to navigate and they knew how
to build seagoing ships uh and they
explored the world and they mapped the
world those
Maps very very were made a very very
long time ago some of them I believe
were lightly preserved in the Library of
Alexandria I think even then they were
being copied and recopied we don't know
exactly what happened to the Library of
Alexandria except that it was destroyed
uh I I suggest it's likely this was
during the period of the Roman Empire I
suggest it's likely that some of those
Maps were taken out of the library and
taken to
Constantinople uh and uh that's where
they were liberated during the Crusade
and entered World culture again and
started to be copied and recopied so
from this perspective when uh we talk
about Advanced ice AG civilization it
could have been a relatively s