Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #087_ STORY INSPIRE: Graham Hancock Reveals the Lost Civilization of Ancient History

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#087_ STORY INSPIRE: Graham Hancock Reveals the Lost Civilization of Ancient History · INSPIRE STORY

0:02
Speaker 1: Here we go. And boom, we're live. Graham, great to
0:06
Speaker 1: see you again. Nice to be back with you, Joe.
0:09
Speaker 1: And we were just talking about your new book. America
0:12
Speaker 1: before that there's two versions of it. There's one version
0:15
Speaker 1: and then there's a newer version that's a Barnes &
0:17
Speaker 1: Noble version that's specific to Barnes & Noble that has
0:19
Speaker 1: an extra whole chapter in it.
0:21
Speaker 2: That's correct, yeah.
0:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so they can get that at Barnes & Noble.
0:24
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to keep bookstores alive, man. They're on
0:26
Speaker 1: the way out.
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Speaker 2: I think it's really important and that's one of the
0:29
Speaker 2: reasons that I did this because I had finished the
0:32
Speaker 2: book and then Barnes & Noble came. came to me
0:35
Speaker 2: through my publishers and said they would like to do
0:38
Speaker 2: a special edition of the book. But in order to
0:40
Speaker 2: do that, I needed to write them some extra material.
0:44
Speaker 2: And I had a lot of material that I hadn't
0:46
Speaker 2: put in the book, and I thought, well, this is
0:48
Speaker 2: an opportunity to put that out there.
0:50
Speaker 1: Beautiful. So if people want that, it's a little bit
0:52
Speaker 1: different than there's a small gold square. Well, okay.
0:55
Speaker 2: So first of all, my website, grahamhancock.com, has a page
1:00
Speaker 2: about America Before. And the link to the Barnes &
1:03
Speaker 2: Noble edition is there as well as the link to
1:06
Speaker 2: the standard edition, which is on Amazon and iTunes and
1:09
Speaker 2: all kinds of other places. So GrahamHancock.com and the America
1:12
Speaker 2: Before page, the link to the Barnes & Noble edition
1:14
Speaker 2: is right there.
1:15
Speaker 1: All right. There it is. So how is this– before
1:18
Speaker 1: we even get into the book, what is it?
1:20
Speaker 2: Go to Talks and Events.
1:23
Speaker 1: Okay. We're on the Graham Hancock website. No.
1:25
Speaker 2: Go to Books. Go to Books. Go to America Before. Bam.
1:29
Speaker 1: Bam.
1:31
Speaker 2: There it is. Go to United States. You can see Amazon, Barnes,
1:35
Speaker 2: and there's Barnes & Noble.
1:36
Speaker 1: Special edition.
1:37
Speaker 2: Special edition. Click on that.
1:39
Speaker 1: There you go. And then the e-book as well.
1:41
Speaker 2: The e-book is available. The audio book, which I read myself,
1:44
Speaker 2: is available there. Then if you scroll down– oops, that
1:49
Speaker 2: shouldn't be there.
1:49
Speaker 1: Damn pop-ups.
1:51
Speaker 2: Damn pop-ups.
1:51
Speaker 1: Sons of bitches. I am so happy you read it yourself.
1:54
Speaker 1: I get angry when someone else reads someone who– I'm like,
1:57
Speaker 1: come on. He can talk.
1:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, I enjoy reading my books myself and what I've...
2:02
Speaker 2: what I've learned from feedback I get from audiences at
2:05
Speaker 2: presentations is people like me doing that.
2:07
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure.
2:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:09
Speaker 1: Yeah. A hundred percent. It's just weird when someone else
2:11
Speaker 1: is talking in your voice, like, Hey man, I know
2:13
Speaker 1: you're not Graham.
2:13
Speaker 2: You know that I write fiction as well as nonfiction.
2:16
Speaker 2: And the one thing I can't read is my fiction.
2:18
Speaker 1: Really?
2:19
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, because fictions requires accents. You really need an
2:21
Speaker 2: actor to read a fiction book who can get into
2:24
Speaker 2: the different characters. But for a nonfiction book like American before,
2:27
Speaker 2: it's very straightforward for me just to read it myself.
2:29
Speaker 1: I agree. I'm a tremendous Stephen King fan. But when
2:33
Speaker 1: I read Stephen King's books, where he reads them or
2:35
Speaker 1: I listen to them when he reads them, they're terrible.
2:38
Speaker 1: He's awful at it.
2:39
Speaker 2: I don't think a novelist should read their own novels.
2:42
Speaker 2: I think that's a job for an actor. Oddly enough,
2:44
Speaker 2: I've just been reading Stephen King's Dark Tower series.
2:47
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:47
Speaker 2: Very near the end of the seventh volume of that.
2:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just a giant fan of his. Me too.
2:51
Speaker 1: But man, when he reads it, he reads it like
2:53
Speaker 1: he's just reading it. Yeah. It's like, oof, this is rough.
2:56
Speaker 1: It's hard to get behind. Anyway … America before.
3:01
Speaker 2: So there's give us the website. There's there's details about
3:04
Speaker 2: the book. There's a page where there are links to
3:06
Speaker 2: the book. And also the other thing I would like
3:08
Speaker 2: to take this opportunity to mention is I'm in America
3:10
Speaker 2: and Canada for the next seven weeks. And I'm going
3:14
Speaker 2: to be doing something like 25 presentations in something like
3:17
Speaker 2: 20 American cities and then three Canadian cities in Vancouver,
3:22
Speaker 2: Montreal and Toronto. And that's all on the talks and
3:25
Speaker 2: events page of my website. So if anybody wants to
3:27
Speaker 2: come along, And meet this old man in person. I
3:31
Speaker 2: will be doing those events.
3:33
Speaker 1: And are you doing these at theaters? And do you
3:35
Speaker 1: allow Q & As? Absolutely.
3:38
Speaker 2: I allow Q & As. I encourage that. I feel
3:41
Speaker 2: as an author that, frankly speaking, I'm nothing without my audience.
3:45
Speaker 2: I owe my audience, my readers, big time. And what
3:49
Speaker 2: I try to do at events is to give back
3:52
Speaker 2: as much as I can.
3:52
Speaker 1: So if people want to.
3:53
Speaker 2: Take pictures with me, I am absolutely up for that.
3:56
Speaker 2: I don't understand why anybody would want to do that.
3:58
Speaker 2: But it's fun. It's kind of fun. And when people
4:00
Speaker 2: want to come to the desk where I'm signing and
4:02
Speaker 2: ask me personal questions, I'm ready to do that. Sometimes
4:05
Speaker 2: on the British Book Tour, which I just finished, I
4:07
Speaker 2: was behind in the event space for four hours after
4:10
Speaker 2: the event finished.
4:11
Speaker 1: Wow.
4:12
Speaker 2: Signing and taking pictures. But it's a joy. It's a
4:15
Speaker 2: real opportunity for me to interact with the people who
4:18
Speaker 2: actually make my work matter.
4:19
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. Beautiful. So what inspired this? I know there's
4:24
Speaker 1: always been– well, you– first of all, we should just
4:26
Speaker 1: say for people who don't know, You have been at
4:29
Speaker 1: the front of the line for decades talking about these
4:35
Speaker 1: lost civilizations and from reading your work, I mean, I
4:41
Speaker 1: think I first read your work in the 90s. You
4:44
Speaker 1: exposed me to a lot of these what were at
4:47
Speaker 1: the time controversial ideas that have now been substantiated by
4:51
Speaker 1: actual evidence, particularly Gobekli Tepe and I mean, all the
4:56
Speaker 1: water erosion stuff on the Sphinx, and I've since had Dr.
4:59
Speaker 1: Robert Schock on the podcast to talk about that as well.
5:01
Speaker 1: But all this stuff was at one point very controversial
5:06
Speaker 1: and now far less. I mean, whatever traditional academics and
5:11
Speaker 1: traditional historians that are trying to– I guess it's archaeologists–
5:14
Speaker 1: that we're trying to resist, they've let go a lot
5:17
Speaker 1: of that. They've had to with things like Gobekli Tepe.
5:19
Speaker 2: They've had to because the evidence has overwhelmed them. And
5:22
Speaker 2: Gobekli Tepe is an excellent example. Prior to the discovery
5:26
Speaker 2: and excavation of Gobekli Tepe, which is a site in
5:30
Speaker 2: Anatolia in Turkey, it was the view, very firm view
5:33
Speaker 2: of archaeologists that there had been no megalithic architecture anywhere
5:37
Speaker 2: on earth. And when I say megalithic, I mean literally
5:39
Speaker 2: big stones, stone circles, huge constructions, nothing like that before
5:43
Speaker 2: at the very, very earliest 6,000 years ago. And they
5:46
Speaker 2: would point to sites in, for example, Malta, a site
5:49
Speaker 2: called Gigantia, which is about 5,800 years old. That's the
5:52
Speaker 2: oldest megalithic architecture in the world. And they could understand
5:56
Speaker 2: how that was because these were agricultural societies. They generated surpluses.
6:00
Speaker 2: You could free up people who could become specialists in architecture,
6:04
Speaker 2: in astronomy, in geometry, and they could apply their skills
6:06
Speaker 2: to the construction of these sites. But what they never
6:08
Speaker 2: considered possible was that a society that was hunter-gatherers would
6:13
Speaker 2: have created a gigantic megalithic site. And then suddenly, Gobekli
6:17
Speaker 2: Tepe is discovered. It dates to 11,600 years ago. It's
6:21
Speaker 2: more than 5,000 years older than the supposedly oldest megalithic
6:25
Speaker 2: architecture in the world. And it is in a center
6:27
Speaker 2: where there had been no previous evidence of agriculture. But
6:30
Speaker 2: the moment Gobekli Tepe appears, agriculture appears as well. And
6:35
Speaker 2: this is just something that's really hard for archaeology to explain.
6:38
Speaker 2: They've suddenly got 5,000 years of missing of missing history
6:41
Speaker 2: that they've just never taken into account. And what I
6:43
Speaker 2: see them doing is largely avoiding the problem rather than getting,
6:47
Speaker 2: getting to grips with it directly. And in fact, there
6:50
Speaker 2: have been, there have been a great number of changes
6:53
Speaker 2: in the last 20 years, which, which have worked generally
6:58
Speaker 2: in favor of the arguments that I've, that I've proposed.
7:01
Speaker 1: Well, I'm so happy for you because I know that
7:03
Speaker 1: for a long time you were out there on your
7:05
Speaker 1: own with a lot of these theories.
7:07
Speaker 2: Very, very much so. And, and, uh, also subjected to
7:12
Speaker 2: the most blistering and deeply unpleasant criticism from the archaeological
7:18
Speaker 2: fraternity and from their friends in the media, like how
7:22
Speaker 2: dare this journalist propose that history might be different or
7:27
Speaker 2: that we might have a forgotten chapter in the human story.
7:30
Speaker 2: It was regarded almost as offensive that I would put
7:32
Speaker 2: this material out there, and archaeologists felt it was their
7:34
Speaker 2: responsibility to show the public that I was full of
7:38
Speaker 2: shit and that was the whole way my work was
7:42
Speaker 2: greeted and to a certain extent still is greeted by archaeologists,
7:45
Speaker 2: but things have changed. Central to my work was the
7:48
Speaker 2: notion of a global cataclysm roughly 12,500, 12,800 years ago.
7:52
Speaker 2: It made sense to me in 1995 when I wrote
7:56
Speaker 2: Fingerprints of the Gods, but there was no compelling evidence
7:59
Speaker 2: for a global cataclysm then. All the evidence seemed to
8:02
Speaker 2: point to that time and a massive global event. And
8:05
Speaker 2: then from 2007 onwards, you know, more than a decade
8:09
Speaker 2: after I wrote Fingerprints of the Gods, we get a
8:11
Speaker 2: group of more than 60 major scientists who are seriously
8:14
Speaker 2: proposing that the Earth was hit by multiple fragments of
8:17
Speaker 2: a giant comet 12,800 years ago and that this caused
8:20
Speaker 2: a huge rise in sea level and extinctions of megafaunas.
8:24
Speaker 2: They are not saying that it also wiped out a
8:26
Speaker 2: lost advanced civilization of prehistory. I'm saying that. But what
8:31
Speaker 2: has changed is that we now have compelling, hard scientific evidence.
8:35
Speaker 2: I'm not saying every scientist accepts it. It's the nature
8:37
Speaker 2: of science to dispute findings. But we have a group
8:40
Speaker 2: of 60 major figures who have seriously proposed this in
8:43
Speaker 2: all the leading mainstream journals. And it's changed the balance
8:46
Speaker 2: of power in this argument because one thing that they
8:50
Speaker 2: used to say is Hancock can't be right because there
8:52
Speaker 2: was no global cataclysm 12 or 13,000 years ago. Well,
8:54
Speaker 2: now we know there was. And there are various explanations
8:58
Speaker 2: for it. So that's moved things along. And the other
9:00
Speaker 2: thing that's changed a lot is the attitude of the
9:05
Speaker 2: man in the street to authority. That has changed. Back
9:09
Speaker 2: in the 90s, authority figures were the gatekeepers. They controlled everything.
9:13
Speaker 2: If an authority figure in a discipline like archaeology said,
9:17
Speaker 2: Hancock is completely wrong. He's made all this stuff up.
9:20
Speaker 2: That would generally be believed, not by everybody, but by
9:23
Speaker 2: the majority of people. Today, to have a mainstream authority
9:26
Speaker 2: figure say that to me is actually an advantage because
9:29
Speaker 2: people are so distrustful of authority and rightly so because
9:32
Speaker 2: we've been lied to by authority figures in all fields
9:35
Speaker 2: for so long. The bullshit has been so enormous that
9:39
Speaker 2: people are finally waking up. We can't trust what authority
9:41
Speaker 2: figures say.
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Speaker 1: I think we can thank the internet for that. We
9:44
Speaker 1: can thank the internet for that. I'm sure you've seen
9:46
Speaker 1: the more recent evidence of a crater that they just
9:49
Speaker 1: discovered like fairly recently.
9:51
Speaker 2: Greenland.
9:51
Speaker 1: Yes, enormous, enormous crater.
9:53
Speaker 2: It's an enormous crater. It's 18 miles wide. It had
9:59
Speaker 2: not been discovered before. because it's under ice. It's under
10:02
Speaker 2: a lot of ice. At the end of the ice age,
10:04
Speaker 2: Greenland was one area which never lost its ice cover completely,
10:07
Speaker 2: whereas North America, everywhere north of Minnesota, was covered in
10:11
Speaker 2: ice a mile, sometimes two miles deep. Europe, the same,
10:14
Speaker 2: northern Europe. But Greenland... kept its ice, whereas the other
10:17
Speaker 2: parts of the world lost their ice at the end
10:20
Speaker 2: of the Ice Age. And what's interesting about Greenland is
10:24
Speaker 2: there's already evidence of comet impact in Greenland, which goes
10:28
Speaker 2: back to papers published in the Proceedings of the National
10:31
Speaker 2: Academy of Sciences in 2013, that they found what are
10:35
Speaker 2: called impact proxies in Greenland. In other words, nanodiamonds, carbon spherules,
10:41
Speaker 2: and evidence of a lot of platinum and iron was
10:44
Speaker 2: found in a lair in the ice dated to 12,800
10:48
Speaker 2: years ago. But the next development, and you're absolutely right,
10:51
Speaker 2: and this was just a few months ago, was the
10:53
Speaker 2: discovery of this humongous crater in Greenland and evidence that
10:57
Speaker 2: it was caused by an iron impactor of some kind. Now,
11:02
Speaker 2: dating of it, I would be irresponsible to say that
11:04
Speaker 2: that crater definitely dates to 12,800 years ago, because the
11:08
Speaker 2: work has not been done to prove that yet. But
11:11
Speaker 2: what I can say and what the specialists who have
11:15
Speaker 2: explored and excavated the crater are saying is that it's recent.
11:19
Speaker 2: They can say for sure that it happened during the
11:21
Speaker 2: last ice age. Under it, under the crater is nothing
11:24
Speaker 2: but massively disturbed and destroyed and completely wrecked ice from
11:29
Speaker 2: the ice age, from the Pleistocene. Above it is smooth,
11:32
Speaker 2: perfect ice from our epoch, which is called the Holocene,
11:35
Speaker 2: which began about 11,600 years ago. All the evidence suggests
11:40
Speaker 2: that this crater dates to that period between 12,800 and 11,600
11:44
Speaker 2: years ago. But to absolutely confirm that, more work needs
11:47
Speaker 2: to be done. But it's part of a growing pattern.
11:50
Speaker 2: The Younger Dryas impact scientists, they call this the Younger
11:56
Speaker 2: Dryas impact hypothesis. And it's because there was a period
12:01
Speaker 2: in the Earth's geological history that geologists call the Younger Dryas,
12:04
Speaker 2: which lasted for 1,200 years from 12,800– to 11,600 years ago.
12:10
Speaker 2: It's a very mysterious period. We see all the megafauna
12:12
Speaker 2: dying off suddenly and rapidly. We see rises in sea level.
12:16
Speaker 2: We see a huge collapse in global temperature. It's a
12:20
Speaker 2: cataclysmic epoch. And what is becoming clearer and clearer is
12:27
Speaker 2: that the evidence that a comet was behind it is
12:31
Speaker 2: extremely strong. And as more and more evidence comes in,
12:34
Speaker 2: We realized how widespread it was, so they found evidence
12:36
Speaker 2: of the impacts as far south as Antarctica now. Previously,
12:39
Speaker 2: they were focused very much on North America. Now, as
12:41
Speaker 2: far south as Antarctica, as far east as Syria, this
12:44
Speaker 2: was truly a global event, and it changed the world.
12:48
Speaker 2: I think, and it's my case, that it wiped our
12:52
Speaker 2: memory of a previous episode of human civilization that right
12:56
Speaker 2: at the epicenter of this cataclysm was a civilization that
12:59
Speaker 2: we would regard as advanced, not a simple hunter-gatherer civilization.
13:03
Speaker 2: which was utterly wiped out in this cataclysmic event.
13:07
Speaker 1: And I should say for anyone who's really fascinated right now,
13:10
Speaker 1: please maybe pause and go listen to the two that
13:15
Speaker 1: you did with Randall Carlson, where it really goes into
13:18
Speaker 1: depth about the impact, the evidence of these impacts, the
13:21
Speaker 1: evidence of the very quick demise of the Ice Age
13:25
Speaker 1: and what may have resulted in all these floods that
13:28
Speaker 1: you read about in the Epic of Gilgamesh. that you
13:30
Speaker 1: read about in Noah's Ark, and that all these things
13:32
Speaker 1: are probably tales of stories that people passed down from
13:36
Speaker 1: generation to generation that survived this time.
13:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we now know that at that time, between 12,800
13:42
Speaker 2: and 11,600 years ago, truly global cataclysmic events involving rapid
13:47
Speaker 2: rises in sea level did occur. And suddenly the worldwide
13:50
Speaker 2: tradition of a global flood stops being just a myth
13:54
Speaker 2: and starts being a memory. an account of real events.
13:58
Speaker 2: It's been my privilege to work very closely with Randall Carlson.
14:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's amazing.
14:01
Speaker 2: Randall is absolutely amazing. He is a total genius. He's
14:05
Speaker 2: also a gentle giant and such a kind, generous, spirited person.
14:09
Speaker 2: It's a joy to work with him. And every minute
14:11
Speaker 2: spent with him is an education. I had the privilege
14:13
Speaker 2: of traveling across the Channel Scablands in Washington State with
14:16
Speaker 2: Randall and seeing things through his eyes really opened my
14:20
Speaker 2: eyes to the scale of this disaster. You know, you
14:21
Speaker 2: could look at these giant boulders called glacial erratics and
14:24
Speaker 2: They just look odd sitting there in the landscape. But
14:26
Speaker 2: when you really consider how they got there, that they
14:29
Speaker 2: got there in icebergs the size of oil tankers that
14:33
Speaker 2: were carried on floods that were at least 500 up
14:35
Speaker 2: to 1,000 feet deep that were tearing through the channeled scablands,
14:39
Speaker 2: literally ripping the landscape apart. Then the icebergs would ground
14:43
Speaker 2: on valley sides. The floodwaters would recede. The icebergs would
14:46
Speaker 2: be left there, giant icebergs. And as they melted away,
14:49
Speaker 2: they revealed the rocks that they had in chain that
14:52
Speaker 2: were caught up within them and they're scattered all over
14:54
Speaker 2: the landscape. And you look at that and you think
14:56
Speaker 2: anything that was underneath that 12,800 years ago is gone completely.
15:02
Speaker 2: There can't be anything left of it at all, utterly,
15:04
Speaker 2: utterly destroyed.
15:05
Speaker 1: And I would encourage people that are interested in this
15:08
Speaker 1: to please watch the YouTube videos of it because Randall
15:10
Speaker 1: provides all sorts of video and photographic evidence where you
15:14
Speaker 1: can Take a look at the landscape and you get
15:16
Speaker 1: a perspective of how immense this destruction was.
15:21
Speaker 2: It's really important to see that because it's easy enough
15:24
Speaker 2: to talk about floods and cataclysms. But actually to see
15:27
Speaker 2: its effect on the landscape directly is– it has an
15:33
Speaker 2: emotional impact. I felt emotional traveling across the Channel Scablands,
15:38
Speaker 2: realizing that this was the heart of an event today.
15:43
Speaker 2: changed the world completely. And the evidence continues to build.
15:49
Speaker 2: In America before, I've not gone over old ground that
15:52
Speaker 2: I went over in Magicians of the Gods that we
15:54
Speaker 2: covered in the various interviews and podcasts in which it's
15:58
Speaker 2: really a good idea that people take a look at.
16:00
Speaker 2: But what I have done is added the new information
16:03
Speaker 2: published since 2015, which further supports the Younger Dryas impact
16:07
Speaker 2: hypothesis and the notion that multiple fragments of a giant
16:11
Speaker 2: comet hit the earth and created an absolute global catastrophe.
16:15
Speaker 1: So what was the motivation behind creating this book, America Before?
16:21
Speaker 2: It's a curious mixture of things. I have been exploring
16:25
Speaker 2: the possibility of a lost civilization for more than 25 years.
16:30
Speaker 2: That was the essence of my book, Fingerprints of the Gods,
16:33
Speaker 2: that was published in 1995, that there has been a
16:36
Speaker 2: huge forgotten episode in human history. I continued to follow
16:39
Speaker 2: that in a series of other books. And by the
16:41
Speaker 2: time I got to 2002, when I published a book
16:45
Speaker 2: called Underworld that followed seven years of scuba diving on
16:49
Speaker 2: continental shelves, looking for structures that were submerged by rising
16:53
Speaker 2: sea levels at the end of the last ice age,
16:55
Speaker 2: I really felt I'd done it. I felt I'd walked
16:58
Speaker 2: the walk. I'd put out to the public a massive
17:02
Speaker 2: body of information. And I thought my role in this
17:05
Speaker 2: is over and I can breathe a sigh of relief
17:08
Speaker 2: because it's hot in this particular kitchen and I can
17:11
Speaker 2: go do something else and I ended up writing a
17:13
Speaker 2: book about psychedelics I ended up writing supernatural meetings with
17:16
Speaker 2: the ancient teachers of mankind about the role of psychedelics
17:19
Speaker 2: in the origins of the human story but then new
17:22
Speaker 2: information started to come out that touched on the lost
17:25
Speaker 2: civilization idea and I couldn't just stand by and ignore
17:28
Speaker 2: that information that's why I published magicians of the gods
17:31
Speaker 2: in 2015 and And then as I was researching that book,
17:35
Speaker 2: I became aware of something I hadn't realized before, that
17:38
Speaker 2: there's a mass of new information from the Americas, specifically
17:42
Speaker 2: from the Americas, which completely rewrites the story of human history,
17:45
Speaker 2: that the Americas have been misrepresented for a very long
17:51
Speaker 2: time by archaeology. And archaeologists will be annoyed with me
17:54
Speaker 2: for saying that. They have a way of forgetting their
17:57
Speaker 2: own errors. of saying, oh, well, we knew that all along.
18:00
Speaker 2: It wasn't the case. But the fact of the matter
18:02
Speaker 2: remains that for the best part of 50 years, from
18:04
Speaker 2: the 1960s through until about 2010, American archaeology was locked
18:09
Speaker 2: in a dogma that they actually had a name for,
18:13
Speaker 2: which was Clovis first, that they invented a name for
18:17
Speaker 2: a culture. They called them the Clovis culture. We don't
18:19
Speaker 2: know what they called themselves. They were hunter-gatherers. They first
18:24
Speaker 2: appear in the archaeological record 13,000 400 years ago, and
18:28
Speaker 2: they vanished from the archaeological record 12,600 years ago. And
18:32
Speaker 2: for a very long time, it was maintained adamantly that
18:35
Speaker 2: these were the first Americans, that no human being touched
18:39
Speaker 2: the soil of the Americas until 13,400 years ago. Just animals,
18:43
Speaker 2: but no human beings present at all. And any archaeologist
18:47
Speaker 2: who attempted to dispute that dogma, and I use the
18:50
Speaker 2: word deliberately, there should be no room for dogma in science,
18:54
Speaker 2: but Any archaeologist who challenged that would face severe problems
18:59
Speaker 2: with his or her career. They would be mocked and
19:03
Speaker 2: humiliated at conferences like an archaeologist called Jacques-Hank Mars from
19:07
Speaker 2: Canada who excavated in the Yukon. Humiliated at conferences, insulted,
19:12
Speaker 2: accused of making stuff up. Their research funding would be withdrawn. Basically,
19:17
Speaker 2: to challenge Clovis first was the end of your archaeological career.
19:20
Speaker 2: So naturally, very few archaeologists wanted to challenge Clovis first.
19:24
Speaker 1: What was this gentleman in the Yukon?
19:26
Speaker 2: He's called Jacques Sank Mars. And interestingly, the Smithsonian, just
19:30
Speaker 2: in 2017, did a big kind of mea culpa, a
19:34
Speaker 2: big admission about this, that everybody had got things wrong,
19:37
Speaker 2: that Jack St. Mars had been ruined by the Clovis
19:40
Speaker 2: First Lobby, but he'd been right all along. The site
19:43
Speaker 2: he excavated in the Yukon was re-excavated in 2017, and
19:47
Speaker 2: every single thing he said was correct, even though they
19:50
Speaker 2: had just sneered at him.
19:51
Speaker 1: Trevor Burrus And what year was he– Peter Robinson He.
19:54
Speaker 2: Was excavating in the 1980s and the 1990s. Trevor Burrus
19:55
Speaker 2: Is he still alive?
19:56
Speaker 1: Peter Robinson He's still alive.
19:58
Speaker 2: He's still alive, yeah. Trevor Burrus Is he better? Peter
19:59
Speaker 2: Robinson Well, I think he's vindicated, you know, and it's
20:02
Speaker 2: kind of nice to be vindicated. There's almost a place
20:05
Speaker 2: in folklore for the individual who is scorned and humiliated
20:09
Speaker 2: by by others but who turns out to be right
20:13
Speaker 2: and he was right but my point about this is
20:16
Speaker 2: that what it meant was Since it was the dogma
20:20
Speaker 2: that Clovis was first, that the oldest dates were 13,400
20:24
Speaker 2: years ago, there seemed to be no logic to archaeologists
20:27
Speaker 2: in digging deeper. You know how it is with archaeology
20:30
Speaker 2: that the upper levels are the youngest and the deeper
20:32
Speaker 2: you go, the older it gets. That's why we say
20:35
Speaker 2: upper Paleolithic for the late Ice Age and lower Paleolithic
20:38
Speaker 2: for the late Stone Age and lower for the older
20:42
Speaker 2: Stone Age. And the feeling was no need to dig
20:45
Speaker 2: below the Clovis lair because we already know that there
20:48
Speaker 2: were no human beings there before that. And then a
20:50
Speaker 2: few archaeologists, I've mentioned Jack St. Mars, but another is
20:54
Speaker 2: Al Goodyear from the University of South Carolina who excavated
20:58
Speaker 2: a site called Topper in South Carolina. Now, Topper is
21:02
Speaker 2: an incredibly rich Clovis site. It's full of their tools,
21:05
Speaker 2: their points. They made these special flint points that were
21:08
Speaker 2: used as arrowheads and spears great Clovis site. He finished
21:12
Speaker 2: excavating the Clovis level and then he did something that
21:17
Speaker 2: was supposed not to be done. He decided to dig
21:19
Speaker 2: deeper and he carried on digging down and there was
21:22
Speaker 2: a layer of about a meter and a half of
21:25
Speaker 2: barren soil and then beneath that more human artifacts and
21:29
Speaker 2: they finally date those back to more than 50,000 years ago.
21:31
Speaker 2: And then in 2017, published in Nature, by Tom Demaree,
21:38
Speaker 2: who's the chief paleontologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum,
21:42
Speaker 2: and a bunch of other very high-level paleontologists, published in
21:46
Speaker 2: Nature magazine, evidence for human presence in North America 130,000
21:51
Speaker 2: years ago. Now, this has really put the cat amongst
21:54
Speaker 2: the pigeons. Now, if humans were present in North America 130,000
21:58
Speaker 2: years ago, and archaeologists have been telling us for 50
22:00
Speaker 2: years that they were only present from 13,000 years ago,
22:02
Speaker 2: that's 10 times as long. That we've had humans in
22:07
Speaker 2: North America capable of doing stuff and the archaeological dogma
22:11
Speaker 2: has prevented any search for what they were doing until
22:14
Speaker 2: very recently.
22:15
Speaker 1: What was the evidence from 130,000 years ago?
22:17
Speaker 2: Okay, so what– it's not the– let me be clear
22:20
Speaker 2: about this because this is something that is often misrepresented
22:24
Speaker 2: in my views. It is not the evidence for an
22:27
Speaker 2: advanced civilization that we find 130,000 years ago in America.
22:32
Speaker 2: The evidence that we find is evidence for human presence.
22:35
Speaker 2: And what they were doing was very much Stone Age stuff.
22:38
Speaker 2: It's a mastodon. It's a mastodon skeleton that was excavated.
22:43
Speaker 2: It was actually found by accident during road construction near
22:46
Speaker 2: San Diego. And an archaeologist was attached to the road
22:51
Speaker 2: construction crew and immediately stopped construction. And they investigated it thoroughly.
22:56
Speaker 2: And what they found was so much dynamite in the
23:00
Speaker 2: early 1990s when they found it that they decided not
23:03
Speaker 2: to publish at the time. Because what they found was
23:05
Speaker 2: evidence that those mastodon bones had been cracked open by
23:08
Speaker 2: human beings using tools and that the marrow had been extracted.
23:13
Speaker 2: That one tusk had been left standing upright in the
23:16
Speaker 2: ground and another had been left beside it. That a
23:19
Speaker 2: femur of the animal had been taken away completely from
23:22
Speaker 2: the site. And there was assemblages of instruments that were
23:26
Speaker 2: used to smash and break the bones. And the conclusion
23:28
Speaker 2: of the team was that only one kind of creature
23:31
Speaker 2: could have done that work using tools on a mastodon.
23:35
Speaker 2: And that's human beings. That's classic, classic human behavior. So
23:39
Speaker 2: this sets the goalposts in a totally different place. Suddenly,
23:43
Speaker 2: we have to consider that humans have been in America
23:45
Speaker 2: for 130,000 years. We already know that a dogmatic approach
23:49
Speaker 2: of archaeology has rather refused to look at anything older
23:52
Speaker 2: than 13,000 years ago. And what it does is it
23:56
Speaker 2: generates an engine of demand that we need to be
23:59
Speaker 2: looking at those missing 100,000 plus years. We need to
24:02
Speaker 2: be looking at it hard. Of course, the immediate reaction
24:04
Speaker 2: has not been to go looking for stuff in the
24:06
Speaker 2: other 100,000 years. Most archaeologists have responded by saying this
24:10
Speaker 2: is impossible. It can't be so. But that's precisely what
24:13
Speaker 2: they said to Jacques Saint-Germain's. who said that humans were
24:16
Speaker 2: in bluefish caves in the Yukon 25,000 years ago. And
24:19
Speaker 2: it's precisely what they said to Al Goodyear, who said
24:21
Speaker 2: humans had been at Topper 50,000 years ago. And they
24:24
Speaker 2: were both right. And I believe that Tom Desmarais and
24:28
Speaker 2: his team, you don't get a big article published in
24:31
Speaker 2: Nature unless it's already pretty solidly based and pretty much
24:34
Speaker 2: peer reviews. It has produced a reaction. I would be
24:36
Speaker 2: wrong to say that it's universally accepted. It's very much challenged,
24:40
Speaker 2: but it's intriguing.
24:41
Speaker 1: What is the challenge of it?
24:42
Speaker 2: The challenge fundamentally comes from we archaeologists know that there
24:46
Speaker 2: were no human beings in the Americas that far back.
24:49
Speaker 2: To put it in perspective, it's about 60,000 years before
24:52
Speaker 2: the first evidence of human beings in Europe. it's about 60,000
24:56
Speaker 2: years before the first evidence of human beings in Australia.
24:59
Speaker 1: And this is just evidence of the first human beings?
25:01
Speaker 2: Yes.
25:01
Speaker 1: We have to point out how difficult it is to
25:03
Speaker 1: find evidence of human beings.
25:04
Speaker 2: It's extremely difficult to find. You know, sometimes we imagine
25:07
Speaker 2: that archaeologists are working with masses of skeletal material. No,
25:10
Speaker 2: they're not. They're not. I mean, this is one of
25:13
Speaker 2: the ironies. The whole Clovis first dogma, you would think
25:16
Speaker 2: that they had masses of material to work with. They
25:18
Speaker 2: did have the tools. But in terms of skeletal remains,
25:21
Speaker 2: just one. Just one single skeletal remain.
25:24
Speaker 1: From that period. Now, one of the things that Michael
25:26
Speaker 1: Shermer had sent me was this dispute that perhaps the
25:31
Speaker 1: bones had been cracked open by the excavation material. Yeah.
25:34
Speaker 1: By the excavation machines.
25:36
Speaker 2: I saw Michael's email last night and I appreciate that
25:39
Speaker 2: Michael wants to continue to engage with this subject. And
25:43
Speaker 2: that's his job. He's a professional skeptic and it's his
25:46
Speaker 2: role to do so. But what he– What he misses
25:48
Speaker 2: out– it's true that a new paper has been published
25:51
Speaker 2: which raises questions over the– what's called the Cerruti Mastodon site,
25:57
Speaker 2: which is the site that Tom Desmarais at San Diego
25:59
Speaker 2: Natural History Museum excavated. And what's interesting, since I can–
26:05
Speaker 2: since Michael took the trouble to write the questions, can
26:08
Speaker 2: I just– Sure. Can I just read you something that
26:11
Speaker 2: I– responded to on this, which is that basically this
26:19
Speaker 2: paper was in no way a refutation of the original
26:25
Speaker 2: paper in Nature. As a matter of fact, the gentleman
26:28
Speaker 2: who wrote that paper never even looked at the archaeological
26:32
Speaker 2: remains that are now in the San Diego Natural History Museum.
26:38
Speaker 2: What he based it on is reference, I'm quoting from
26:42
Speaker 2: the abstract of the paper itself. reference to a freeway
26:47
Speaker 2: right-of-way map and construction plans, contemporary road building practices, and
26:52
Speaker 2: worksite photographs available on the internet. In other words, the
26:56
Speaker 2: site was not visited. They simply looked at secondary references.
26:59
Speaker 2: They did not look at the archaeological material, and they
27:02
Speaker 2: ignored the entire argument of Tom Desmarais and his colleagues
27:05
Speaker 2: who had already addressed that issue.
27:07
Speaker 1: They didn't look at the bones?
27:08
Speaker 2: They did not look at the bones. When you break
27:12
Speaker 2: a fresh bone, it has a characteristic kind of spiral
27:15
Speaker 2: fracture that does not happen when you break a fossilized bone.
27:18
Speaker 2: And Tom Demare and his team specifically ruled out road
27:22
Speaker 2: making machinery as responsible for this breaking pattern because they
27:26
Speaker 2: actually carried out experiments on modern elephants, deceased elephants, and
27:30
Speaker 2: they broke their bones. And the kind of fracture that
27:33
Speaker 2: you get in a fresh green bone is completely different
27:36
Speaker 2: from the kind of fracture you get in a fossilized bone. So, unfortunately,
27:40
Speaker 2: this paper pays no attention to that. It just looks
27:43
Speaker 2: at road plans and says there was road work there.
27:44
Speaker 2: It must have been done by road work. I think
27:46
Speaker 2: it's very sloppy, very weak, and it's certainly not the answer.
27:49
Speaker 2: We can expect ongoing debate, and that is healthy, but
27:53
Speaker 2: this is not a strong case at all.
27:55
Speaker 1: So this points to the first evidence that we found.
27:59
Speaker 1: And is there any effort underway to try to uncover
28:02
Speaker 1: more evidence from a similar time period?
28:04
Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to cite Tom Desmarais, the chief paleontologist
28:08
Speaker 2: at the San Diego Natural History Museum. That's what he
28:10
Speaker 2: would like to see. He makes the point to me.
28:13
Speaker 2: I interview him. I spent a day with him at
28:15
Speaker 2: the National History Museum. He was very generous with his time.
28:17
Speaker 2: I did an extended interview, and I quote from it
28:20
Speaker 2: in America before. And his wish is that archaeologists, instead
28:24
Speaker 2: of spending all their time trying to find ways to
28:27
Speaker 2: dismiss and get rid of his findings. His wish is
28:31
Speaker 2: that they would spend a little bit of that time
28:33
Speaker 2: looking at deposits older than 13,400 years and even being
28:37
Speaker 2: willing to go back as far as 130,000 years. That
28:42
Speaker 2: would be a proper scientific response. Here is a thorough
28:45
Speaker 2: body of work put forward by a very senior group
28:49
Speaker 2: of scientists who hesitated before they published it. They had
28:52
Speaker 2: the information back in the 1990s, but it wasn't until
28:54
Speaker 2: refined research dating techniques later than in the 21st century
28:59
Speaker 2: that they finally were sure what they had and that
29:01
Speaker 2: they published it in Nature in 2017. It's an important
29:06
Speaker 2: study and I think what's going to happen is that
29:10
Speaker 2: we're going to find much more evidence of a very
29:13
Speaker 2: ancient human presence in the Americas. And that's what Tom
29:16
Speaker 2: Demery thinks as well. And as he points out, if
29:20
Speaker 2: we don't look, then we're never going to find. If
29:22
Speaker 2: we allow dogma to stop us looking and saying, oh,
29:25
Speaker 2: it's impossible that humans were in the Americas 130,000 years ago,
29:28
Speaker 2: so we won't bother to look. What a failure of
29:30
Speaker 2: science that is. And to spend all the time instead
29:33
Speaker 2: trying to get rid of the evidence that doesn't fit
29:36
Speaker 2: the current paradigm.
29:37
Speaker 1: But it's so fascinating that just as fortuitous discoveries during
29:40
Speaker 1: a construction site could change the way people perceive things.
29:43
Speaker 1: You've got to wonder how much of that stuff is,
29:47
Speaker 1: I mean, how deep did they have to go to
29:48
Speaker 1: find these mastodon bones?
29:49
Speaker 2: Well, so this is a road cut that's being made.
29:52
Speaker 2: So those would be pretty deep down, 10, 15 feet down.
29:55
Speaker 2: The grader is going through and flattening them. It varies
30:00
Speaker 2: from place to place depending on soil deposition, the stratification
30:04
Speaker 2: of the soil. But the key point is that what
30:07
Speaker 2: you need to do is go deeper than 13,400 years ago.
30:10
Speaker 2: And you need to do so with dedication and vigor
30:15
Speaker 2: and with some kind of funding. And at the moment,
30:17
Speaker 2: archaeology doesn't see the point of that. If the paper
30:22
Speaker 2: in Nature by Tom Desmarais was alone, if there were
30:26
Speaker 2: nothing else than that, I wouldn't place so much trust
30:30
Speaker 2: in it. But I've spent a lot of time during
30:32
Speaker 2: the researching of this book.
30:33
Speaker 3: With archaeologists who did dig deeper. And what those archaeologists
30:41
Speaker 3: all confirm is that there have been human beings in
30:43
Speaker 3: the Americas for tens of thousands of years. And it's
30:46
Speaker 3: not surprising that that can be pushed back to 130,000
30:50
Speaker 3: years ago because part of the argument about the peopling
30:52
Speaker 3: of the Americas has to do with a place that
30:54
Speaker 3: we now call the Bering Straits. between Alaska and Siberia,
31:00
Speaker 3: which during the Ice Age were at times a land bridge.
31:05
Speaker 3: They were exposed because of lowered sea levels. But migrants
31:09
Speaker 3: who crossed that land bridge from Siberia on many occasions
31:14
Speaker 3: over periods of tens of thousands of years would find
31:16
Speaker 3: themselves confronted then by the North American ice cap, which
31:20
Speaker 3: oddly wasn't at the tip of Alaska but began further in,
31:23
Speaker 3: So there was living space in a bit of Alaska,
31:25
Speaker 3: but you couldn't get through.
31:26
Speaker 2: The ice mountains. These literally ice mountains, two miles deep,
31:30
Speaker 2: covering the whole of North America and preventing access to
31:34
Speaker 2: the unglaciated parts of America. The thing is that what
31:39
Speaker 2: happened around 13,400 years ago, there had been a period
31:43
Speaker 2: of global warming and the ice sheets began to melt
31:46
Speaker 2: and a corridor opened up between what's called the Cordillera
31:49
Speaker 2: Ice Sheet and the Laurentide Ice Sheet, the two major
31:51
Speaker 2: ice keeps in North America. And it's thought that the
31:54
Speaker 2: migration came through that corridor. Well, the thing is that
31:57
Speaker 2: exactly the same thing happened between 140,000 years ago and 120,000
32:02
Speaker 2: years ago. There was an episode of global warming, an
32:04
Speaker 2: ice-free corridor opened up, and the same opportunity to enter
32:08
Speaker 2: the Americas was there at that period than it was
32:10
Speaker 2: at the later period. And Tom Demery's point and mine
32:13
Speaker 2: is that we have to pay much more attention to
32:15
Speaker 2: that earlier period. And that's really why I've gone ahead
32:19
Speaker 2: and written this book, is to try to put before
32:23
Speaker 2: a broad general audience, hopefully in language that makes sense,
32:29
Speaker 2: an assembly of all the latest information that casts doubt
32:33
Speaker 2: on the story we've been told. Because my goodness, if
32:35
Speaker 2: archaeology is wrong about the story of the peopling of
32:39
Speaker 2: the Americas, if it's radically wrong, as it now appears
32:42
Speaker 2: to be, then our whole understanding of human history has
32:45
Speaker 2: to change. It's not just the history of the Americas.
32:48
Speaker 2: It's the history of the entire world. It has been
32:51
Speaker 2: an absolute article of faith amongst archaeologists that civilization began
32:56
Speaker 2: in the old world. And indeed, I have a book
33:01
Speaker 2: in my library called History Begins at Sumer. And it's
33:06
Speaker 2: by Samuel Noah Kramer, a very renowned archaeologist. And it's
33:10
Speaker 2: a good book, actually. But the argument is that this
33:13
Speaker 2: is where civilization began in the culture that we call
33:16
Speaker 2: the Sumerians in Mesopotamia between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers.
33:20
Speaker 2: and that it began about 6,000 years ago, and that
33:23
Speaker 2: civilization is entirely an invention of the old world. It
33:27
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with the new world at all
33:29
Speaker 2: because the new world was populated so late. This has
33:34
Speaker 2: been the argument, and this is the argument that now
33:36
Speaker 2: radically and suddenly begins to change, that the Americas, this
33:40
Speaker 2: enormous landmass, resource-rich, bountiful in every way, south of Minnesota,
33:47
Speaker 2: south of the ice cap, Vast land areas that are
33:50
Speaker 2: bountiful get into Central America, South America, the Amazon, just
33:54
Speaker 2: huge areas of land that were very, very– offered great
33:58
Speaker 2: potential for human occupation. Dogma has said there were no
34:02
Speaker 2: humans there. Now the first bits of evidence are coming
34:04
Speaker 2: out that says there were humans there. And if that's
34:08
Speaker 2: the case, then we must consider the possibility that the
34:10
Speaker 2: story of civilization might have begun in the Americas, not
34:13
Speaker 2: in the old world at all. It might be a
34:15
Speaker 2: new world invention, not an old world invention.
34:17
Speaker 1: Some of the more fascinating pieces of evidence in South
34:20
Speaker 1: America have come out recently about these channels and pathways
34:24
Speaker 1: that they've found in the Amazon that could not have
34:27
Speaker 1: been created any other way but by humans creating irrigation,
34:32
Speaker 1: humans creating– it appears like grids, like a city grid. Definitely.
34:37
Speaker 2: The Amazon is a colossal mystery, and it's one of
34:40
Speaker 2: the subjects that I explore in depth in America before.
34:44
Speaker 2: First of all, to give some basic figures, the Amazon
34:46
Speaker 2: basin is huge. The Amazon basin is 7 million square
34:52
Speaker 2: kilometers in area. And within it, 5.5 million square kilometers
34:59
Speaker 2: remains almost entirely unstudied by archaeologists. And that's the 5.5
35:03
Speaker 2: million square kilometers that is still covered by by dense rainforest.
35:07
Speaker 2: And to put that into perspective, five and a half
35:10
Speaker 2: million square kilometers is the size of the entire Indian subcontinent.
35:14
Speaker 2: So it's like saying, we've done world archaeology, but we've
35:17
Speaker 2: just ignored India. We've done world archaeology, but we've just
35:22
Speaker 2: ignored the Amazon. It's the same argument, five and a
35:25
Speaker 2: half million square kilometers. The view was, again, there was
35:27
Speaker 2: a dogma. There was a preconception. Human beings couldn't have
35:31
Speaker 2: flourished in the Amazon. It's a It's not a resource-rich area.
35:35
Speaker 2: The soils are poor. It's a difficult area, challenging to
35:39
Speaker 2: get to, very far from the Bering Straits. So the
35:42
Speaker 2: view was that humans hadn't entered the Amazon until about 1,000
35:44
Speaker 2: years ago. And then gradually, little by little, that view
35:49
Speaker 2: has begun to change. And it's begun to change because
35:52
Speaker 2: of the tragic clearances of the Amazon, because the Amazon
35:55
Speaker 2: rainforest is literally being cut down and turned into soya
35:59
Speaker 2: bean farms and cattle ranches. And in that cutting down
36:03
Speaker 2: process has emerged things that shouldn't be there at all.
36:07
Speaker 2: For example, evidence that large cities flourished in the Amazon,
36:11
Speaker 2: enormous cities, which were larger cities. There was a Spanish
36:15
Speaker 2: explorer who went down the Amazon River system in 1541
36:19
Speaker 2: to 1542. He was the first European to cross the
36:21
Speaker 2: entire length of South America from west to east along
36:25
Speaker 2: the Amazon. He reported seeing incredible cities, advanced arts and crafts,
36:30
Speaker 2: millions of people, a thriving culture. And 100 years later,
36:35
Speaker 2: when other Europeans got into the Amazon, they couldn't find
36:37
Speaker 2: these cities. So they said, oh, Francisco Oriana, that was
36:40
Speaker 2: his name, made it all up. It was just a fantasy.
36:43
Speaker 2: And then in the last decade, as the clearances of
36:46
Speaker 2: the Amazon have proceeded, we've begun to see the traces
36:48
Speaker 2: of those cities. What happened was that the Spaniards brought
36:52
Speaker 2: smallpox into the Amazon. devastated the local population because there
36:57
Speaker 2: was no immunity to it. There was a massive die-off.
37:00
Speaker 2: The cities were deserted. Within 50 years, they were completely
37:03
Speaker 2: overgrown by the jungle, and that's why they were not
37:06
Speaker 2: seen by the explorers who came in 100 years later.
37:08
Speaker 2: But now the jungle is being cleared, those cities are emerging.
37:11
Speaker 2: And we can say that a city like London, which
37:13
Speaker 2: had a population of roughly 50,000 in the 16th century,
37:17
Speaker 2: there were cities of that size all over the Amazon,
37:19
Speaker 2: huge numbers of them. And a possible total population of
37:23
Speaker 2: the Amazon that exceeded 20 million people. What? Yes, 20 million.
37:28
Speaker 2: This is the latest evidence from the Amazon. And then
37:30
Speaker 2: you ask yourself, how did they do that? How did
37:32
Speaker 2: they feed 20 million people in the Amazon? Because it's
37:35
Speaker 2: a fact. Rainforest soils are poor. It's one of the
37:38
Speaker 2: reasons these soya bean farms are a really stupid idea.
37:41
Speaker 2: Because once you clear the rainforest, the land is largely
37:44
Speaker 2: unfertile and you can't grow stuff on it for very long.
37:47
Speaker 2: So how did they feed all these people? The answer was...
37:50
Speaker 2: They invented a soil, and that soil has a name.
37:54
Speaker 2: It's called terra preta. Archaeologists refer to it as Amazonian
37:58
Speaker 2: dark earths or Amazonian black earth. It's a man-made soil.
38:01
Speaker 2: It's thousands of years old. It's full of microbes that
38:05
Speaker 2: are not found in adjoining soil. It's based around biochar.
38:10
Speaker 2: And you can take a handful of 8,000-year-old terra preta,
38:14
Speaker 2: and you can add it to barren soil, and that
38:16
Speaker 2: soil will instantly become fertile. It's highly sought after in
38:20
Speaker 2: the Amazon and it explains how they fed these people.
38:22
Speaker 2: There was science in the Amazon.
38:23
Speaker 1: How did they create this?
38:25
Speaker 2: Well, this is something that's not understood. It's still not
38:27
Speaker 2: understood by sole experts to this day as to how
38:29
Speaker 2: that was done. But it's one of many intriguing evidences,
38:32
Speaker 2: pieces of evidence of much higher development in the Amazon
38:37
Speaker 2: that it has been given credit for and of a
38:39
Speaker 2: kind of science in the Amazon.
38:41
Speaker 1: Jamie's got an image of it up there. So this
38:42
Speaker 1: is it?
38:43
Speaker 2: This is terra preta, yeah.
38:44
Speaker 1: Wow.
38:45
Speaker 2: Exactly.
38:45
Speaker 1: So was that done by burns? Did they use controlled burns?
38:49
Speaker 2: They did. One way that it was achieved was to
38:53
Speaker 2: do wet burning of middens. They would be burned and smolder.
38:58
Speaker 2: They wouldn't burn fiercely, which just produces charcoal. They would
39:01
Speaker 2: burn and smolder. And that, what is called biochar, would result.
39:06
Speaker 2: And that's part of the fertility of the soil. But
39:08
Speaker 2: the mystery is the microbial part. content of this soil,
39:11
Speaker 2: which is completely different from the microbes in neighboring soils.
39:15
Speaker 2: And that remains unexplained.
39:17
Speaker 1: So what are the theories? Composting? Some sort of advanced composting?
39:21
Speaker 2: Some sort of advanced composting. But again, what has not
39:24
Speaker 2: been explained is the microbial content of these soils. So there,
39:29
Speaker 2: first of all, is an issue of how two things
39:32
Speaker 2: how large populations get fed in the Amazon and evidence
39:36
Speaker 2: that there was a culture in the Amazon that was
39:38
Speaker 2: capable of manipulating the environment in such a way that
39:41
Speaker 2: it could support large populations with the invention of terra
39:44
Speaker 2: preta secondly new evidence previously not recognized the Amazon is
39:48
Speaker 2: basically a garden The Amazon is a man-made rainforest. There
39:53
Speaker 2: are certain trees like Brazil nut trees or the ice
39:56
Speaker 2: cream bean tree, which are food crops, which are very,
40:00
Speaker 2: very valuable. And they dominate the tree regime in the Amazon.
40:05
Speaker 2: They're what's referred to as hyper-dominant species. In other words,
40:08
Speaker 2: people living in the Amazon over thousands of years selected
40:11
Speaker 2: certain trees, which they then cultivated and grew. So the
40:15
Speaker 2: whole thing is not simply a wild pristine rainforest. It's
40:19
Speaker 2: a very ancient man-made environment and emerging from that man-made
40:23
Speaker 2: environment as well as evidence of large cities, large populations
40:27
Speaker 2: and this mysterious dark earth are huge geometrical structures. And again,
40:34
Speaker 2: I go into this at length in America before because
40:36
Speaker 2: I love this mystery. We have in the UK structures
40:41
Speaker 2: that are called henges. I live in the city of
40:44
Speaker 2: Bath and about 30 miles away there's a beautiful site
40:47
Speaker 2: called Avebury and another more famous site called Stonehenge. And
40:52
Speaker 2: what a henge is is a ditch which has been
40:56
Speaker 2: dug deep and then an embankment has been pushed up
40:59
Speaker 2: outside the ditch. When people first saw these structures they
41:02
Speaker 2: wondered if they'd been built for defense. But then it
41:05
Speaker 2: became obvious they hadn't been built for defense because if
41:07
Speaker 2: you want to create a moat you put it outside
41:11
Speaker 2: your embankment not inside your embankment so a henge is
41:14
Speaker 2: an earthwork which consists of a deep moat with a
41:17
Speaker 2: large embankment outside it and it can be circular it
41:20
Speaker 2: can be square and in the uk and other parts
41:23
Speaker 2: of europe it often contains stone circles megalithic stone circles
41:26
Speaker 2: as well but the henge itself is entirely an earthwork
41:29
Speaker 2: what we find in the amazon is are thousands of
41:32
Speaker 2: henges that are now beginning to emerge from the cleared
41:35
Speaker 2: area of the jungle and others that have been identified
41:38
Speaker 2: for the first time with LIDAR. LIDAR technology is being
41:41
Speaker 2: employed in the Amazon. It's non-destructive. You can see what's
41:44
Speaker 2: under the trees.
41:45
Speaker 1: What is LIDAR?
41:46
Speaker 2: Light Imaging and Detective Radar. They bounce laser beams down
41:49
Speaker 2: into the jungle. There's a whole pattern of them. You
41:51
Speaker 2: need helicopters, but it doesn't damage the rainforest. And you
41:55
Speaker 2: can strip away and see what's there. If this isn't
41:58
Speaker 2: too much of a diversion, let me give you the
41:59
Speaker 2: example of Guatemala. Guatemala is a small country, if I
42:03
Speaker 2: remember correctly. It's not much more than 100,000 square kilometers
42:07
Speaker 2: in size. It is filled with intriguing Mayan ruins. Everybody
42:12
Speaker 2: has heard of Tikal. What archaeologists didn't know was that
42:16
Speaker 2: literally within walking distance of Tikal, surrounding that whole area
42:21
Speaker 2: were more than 60,000 structures that they hadn't identified. And
42:24
Speaker 2: these have all been identified by LIDAR in a country
42:28
Speaker 2: that's just 100,000 kilometers in area. So you have to
42:31
Speaker 2: ask yourself, in that five and a half million square
42:34
Speaker 2: kilometers of the Amazon, if LiDAR technology could be applied comprehensively,
42:38
Speaker 2: what would we find beneath there? And the evidence already
42:42
Speaker 2: is extremely tempting and extremely tantalizing. And I'm intrigued by
42:47
Speaker 2: these huge geometrical figures, which involve primarily circles and squares.
42:55
Speaker 2: And they are classic hinges in the sense that they
42:57
Speaker 2: are deep ditches surrounded by huge embankments. They're extremely geometrical.
43:03
Speaker 2: For example, you can find an octagon surrounding a square.
43:07
Speaker 2: At a place called Jakosar in the Amazon, you can
43:09
Speaker 2: find a square perfectly enclosing a circle. Now, that is
43:13
Speaker 2: an exercise called squaring the circle that our academics have
43:18
Speaker 2: given to the Greeks. They said the Greeks were the
43:20
Speaker 2: first people who performed that exercise. But now we find
43:23
Speaker 2: in dated sites in the Amazon that this was being
43:25
Speaker 2: done in the Amazon long before the Greeks.
43:27
Speaker 1: What are the dates?
43:28
Speaker 2: The earliest dates that have been found in these sites
43:31
Speaker 2: now are about 3,500 years old. About 3,500 years old.
43:35
Speaker 2: But the evidence is that the sites have been constantly remade.
43:38
Speaker 2: And what intrigues me is what remains in that five
43:43
Speaker 2: and a half million square kilometers that has not been
43:45
Speaker 2: investigated yet. We are just, I think, looking at the
43:48
Speaker 2: edges of a mystery. The archaeologists involved, who are mainly
43:51
Speaker 2: from Finland and also from Brazil, feel the same. Their
43:55
Speaker 2: estimate is that there are thousands of these structures remaining
43:58
Speaker 2: in the jungle, and they're open as to how old
44:00
Speaker 2: they may ultimately prove to be. The investigation needs to
44:04
Speaker 2: be done. But what's fascinating about them is this very
44:08
Speaker 2: powerful theory geometry and astronomy. So a number of the
44:11
Speaker 2: sites are perfectly aligned to true north, true south, true
44:14
Speaker 2: east and true west. I'm not talking about magnetic north.
44:17
Speaker 2: I'm talking about true astronomical north. To do that, there's
44:19
Speaker 2: only one way to do it, and that's with astronomy.
44:22
Speaker 2: So that tells us that astronomers were at work in
44:24
Speaker 2: the Amazon. The geometry is very complex and very precise.
44:28
Speaker 2: That tells us that people with geometrical skills were at
44:31
Speaker 2: work in the Amazon. And thirdly, the scale of the
44:33
Speaker 2: sites of hundreds of meters, gigantic earthworks on the scale
44:36
Speaker 2: of hundreds of meters, tells us that this was a
44:39
Speaker 2: highly organized project that was undertaken on a very large
44:42
Speaker 2: scale by very large numbers of people. It's a wonderful
44:45
Speaker 2: mystery and, and it deserves much further, much further attention.
44:49
Speaker 2: And I'm, I'm yeah, that's Jack. Exactly. The squares squaring
44:53
Speaker 2: the circle. So you can see the outside embankment and
44:57
Speaker 2: then inside it is the square ditch. And then there's
44:59
Speaker 2: another embankment inside that and a circle and a circle inside.
45:03
Speaker 1: That made a road right through that modern road. Yeah.
45:06
Speaker 2: You know, because, because there's no respect for, there's no
45:09
Speaker 2: respect for the ancient, for the ancient world, unfortunately.
45:11
Speaker 1: And there's another one. Look at that. Wow, that's incredible.
45:15
Speaker 2: So there are thousands of these things.
45:17
Speaker 1: The stuff that they found in the Amazon, what imaging
45:20
Speaker 1: technology were they using to find all this?
45:23
Speaker 2: Initially, it was entirely found because areas of the rainforest
45:27
Speaker 2: had been cleared. Economic interest said, we want to make
45:30
Speaker 2: a cattle ranch here or we want to make a
45:32
Speaker 2: soya bean farm here. So we're just going to. clear
45:34
Speaker 2: the rainforest. In the process of clearing the rainforest, they
45:36
Speaker 2: start discovering these earthworks that had previously been completely overgrown
45:41
Speaker 2: by the jungle. Then the next step was to say,
45:44
Speaker 2: what can we do to find out more about this? Obviously,
45:47
Speaker 2: they don't want to destroy more jungle. And luckily, we
45:51
Speaker 2: have a technology, which is LiDAR, as I mentioned, which
45:54
Speaker 2: uses radar. And using LiDAR, they've been able to identify
45:59
Speaker 2: many more of these sites. And then to get to
46:01
Speaker 2: the sites without destroying the jungle is and to begin
46:04
Speaker 2: excavations on them, and to find that they go back,
46:07
Speaker 2: in the cases of the ones that have been explored
46:09
Speaker 2: so far, at least 3,000 years. This is an intriguing development,
46:15
Speaker 2: completely unexplained in our understanding of the Amazon. And what
46:18
Speaker 2: it suggests is a heritage of extremely ancient knowledge. You
46:22
Speaker 2: don't wake up one morning and create a perfectly geometrical
46:26
Speaker 2: square or circular earthwork that's perfectly aligned to true north, south, east,
46:30
Speaker 2: and west on an enormous scale. There has to be
46:33
Speaker 2: a background to that. There has to be a reason
46:34
Speaker 2: for doing it. And the evidence is none of these
46:36
Speaker 2: sites were lived in. There's no habitation refuse found in
46:40
Speaker 2: them whatsoever. We don't know what they were used for.
46:44
Speaker 2: I make the case in America before that they're connected
46:48
Speaker 2: to a system of ideas which is found all around
46:51
Speaker 2: the world, which is to do with death. and the
46:55
Speaker 2: afterlife destiny of the soul. And I go into the
46:59
Speaker 2: issue of ayahuasca in this book because first of all,
47:03
Speaker 2: ayahuasca is itself another example of Amazonian science. As you
47:09
Speaker 2: and I and many of the listeners and viewers know,
47:12
Speaker 2: the active ingredient of ayahuasca is DMT, dimethyltryptamine. But dimethyltryptamine
47:19
Speaker 2: is not normally accessible through the gut. We have to
47:22
Speaker 2: smoke it or vape it to get that rocket ship
47:26
Speaker 2: to the other side of reality. And the journey lasts, what, 10,
47:30
Speaker 2: 12 minutes, not much more than that, and sometimes quite
47:34
Speaker 2: a lot less. What ayahuasca does is it makes DMT
47:38
Speaker 2: available through the gut. The reason it's not available through
47:41
Speaker 2: the gut is because of an enzyme in the gut
47:43
Speaker 2: called monoamine oxidase. That switches off DMT. on contact. The
47:48
Speaker 2: ayahuasca vine, which is one of the two ingredients of
47:50
Speaker 2: the ayahuasca brew, the other ingredient is leaves that contain DMT.
47:54
Speaker 2: The ayahuasca vine contains a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, which switches
47:59
Speaker 2: off the enzyme in the gut and allows the DMT
48:02
Speaker 2: to be accessed orally, which produces a rather different journey
48:06
Speaker 2: from the smoked or vaped DMT trip. It's a much
48:09
Speaker 2: longer journey. It's four or five hours. It allows you
48:11
Speaker 2: to integrate and to interrelate with the strange landscapes in
48:15
Speaker 2: which you find yourself amongst. And The entities that you encounter,
48:18
Speaker 2: I'm not making any claims about the reality status of
48:21
Speaker 2: those entities, but what I am saying, and it's a fact,
48:24
Speaker 2: is that people who work with DMT and ayahuasca do
48:26
Speaker 2: encounter what they construe to be entities who communicate with
48:30
Speaker 2: them intelligently. So somebody in the Amazon, out of 150,000
48:34
Speaker 2: different species of plants and trees, selected two that are
48:38
Speaker 2: not psychoactive on their own, but when put together, create
48:42
Speaker 2: an extraordinary visionary brew. And ayahuasca means the vine of
48:48
Speaker 2: the dead. And what it's connected to in South American
48:52
Speaker 2: religious and spiritual thinking is what happens to us when
48:57
Speaker 2: we die. And the Tucano, who are an Amazonian people
49:02
Speaker 2: who work regularly with ayahuasca, I mean, the Tucano actually
49:05
Speaker 2: will give a teaspoonful of ayahuasca to a newborn infant.
49:09
Speaker 2: They feel ayahuasca is so important. that there is a
49:12
Speaker 2: hidden realm around us which we are not normally aware
49:14
Speaker 2: of and we need to be aware of it and
49:16
Speaker 2: ayahuasca is an important part of that. In their ayahuasca journeys,
49:21
Speaker 2: the Tucano shamans experience visions and they will then come
49:24
Speaker 2: back to an alert, normal, problem-solving state of consciousness and
49:28
Speaker 2: they will paint and depict their visions and what's intriguing
49:30
Speaker 2: and I go into it in the book is that
49:32
Speaker 2: quite a number of the Tucano paintings of the other world,
49:35
Speaker 2: of the afterlife realm, of the entrance to the other
49:38
Speaker 2: world are geometrical and And they look exactly like the geoglyphs.
49:42
Speaker 2: So I'm beginning to wonder whether these geoglyphs were part
49:45
Speaker 2: of a system of spiritual ideas concerning what happens to
49:50
Speaker 2: us after death and what we need to do in
49:52
Speaker 2: this life to ensure a beneficial outcome. And oddly enough,
49:56
Speaker 2: that same system of ideas is found in the Mississippi Valley.
50:00
Speaker 2: In the Amazon, it involves particularly ayahuasca and the belief
50:04
Speaker 2: that the ayahuasca journey takes you to the afterlife realm
50:07
Speaker 2: and a journey along the Milky Way. In the Mississippi Valley,
50:12
Speaker 2: the mound builder sites up and down the Mississippi Valley,
50:14
Speaker 2: particularly Moundville in Alabama, exactly the same system of religious
50:19
Speaker 2: ideas associated with geometrical constructions. That on death, the soul,
50:24
Speaker 2: they're very specific, ascends to the constellation of Orion and
50:27
Speaker 2: transits from the constellation of Orion to the Milky Way,
50:30
Speaker 2: makes a journey along the Milky Way, which they call
50:33
Speaker 2: the path of souls, and encounters challenges and ordeals where
50:37
Speaker 2: the soul must account for the life that it has lived.
50:41
Speaker 2: Then we go to Egypt, and what do we find?
50:44
Speaker 2: The same system of ideas. The soul must rise up
50:48
Speaker 2: to the constellation of Orion. There's a narrow shaft cut
50:50
Speaker 2: through the southern side of the Great Pyramid of Giza,
50:53
Speaker 2: which targets directly the lowest of the three stars of
50:55
Speaker 2: Orion's belt. widely accepted as a star shaft or a
50:59
Speaker 2: soul shaft. The soul would rise up through that shaft,
51:02
Speaker 2: get to the constellation of Orion, which stands by the
51:04
Speaker 2: banks of the Milky Way. It would then transit to
51:07
Speaker 2: the Milky Way, which the ancient Egyptians called the winding waterway.
51:10
Speaker 2: And it would make a journey along the Milky Way
51:13
Speaker 2: where it would be confronted by challenges and ordeals. Very
51:15
Speaker 2: similar idea to the Tucano. Very similar idea to the
51:18
Speaker 2: Mississippi Valley. As far as we know, none of these
51:21
Speaker 2: cultures were in contact with one another. Either we're dealing
51:24
Speaker 2: with a huge, unbelievable, extraordinarily detailed coincidence involving architecture and ideas,
51:31
Speaker 2: or we're looking at the legacy that was inherited in
51:34
Speaker 2: all of these different places. from a remote common ancestor. And,
51:38
Speaker 2: and I believe that that's what we're looking at.
51:39
Speaker 1: What do we think the people from the ancient Mississippi Valley,
51:42
Speaker 1: that culture, what do we think they were using if
51:45
Speaker 1: they weren't using ayahuasca or do we think that that's
51:47
Speaker 1: what they were using?
51:49
Speaker 2: Well, that's, that's, that's an interesting question. Whether, whether visionary
51:52
Speaker 2: substances are the only way, uh, to get into altered
51:56
Speaker 2: states of consciousness. And, and, uh, I would say they, they,
51:59
Speaker 2: they are definitely not. Uh, of course there are visionary
52:02
Speaker 2: substances which are, which are used in native American, uh,
52:05
Speaker 2: vision quests. I've had the privilege of peyote ceremony with
52:11
Speaker 2: the Native American church.
52:13
Speaker 1: I've never done that. What is that like? I loved it, actually.
52:16
Speaker 2: I thought it was amazing. It doesn't overpower you in
52:20
Speaker 2: the way that DMT or ayahuasca does. It's much gentler.
52:24
Speaker 2: You feel much more integrated and connected with nature. Your
52:27
Speaker 2: thought processes are quite clear. It felt It felt just
52:31
Speaker 2: like a very beautiful and healing experience. And I love
52:33
Speaker 2: the ceremony that I'm inside a teepee with 30 or
52:37
Speaker 2: 40 other people. And there are specific roles that are
52:40
Speaker 2: assigned to those different individuals. One will keep the door.
52:42
Speaker 2: Another will be responsible for the fire, which is a
52:44
Speaker 2: work of art in itself. Just gazing into that fire
52:47
Speaker 2: and the glowing embers is enough to induce an altered
52:50
Speaker 2: state of consciousness on its own. Incredible drumming, which drives
52:55
Speaker 2: your state of consciousness into a kind of peak experience.
52:58
Speaker 2: This is a technology. for accessing other levels of experience
53:03
Speaker 2: and other levels of reality. And it's clear that the
53:05
Speaker 2: Native Americans had a number of advanced technologies in this area.
53:09
Speaker 2: The Sundance doesn't use a substance, but it uses austerity,
53:13
Speaker 2: it uses pain to drive an altered state of consciousness.
53:16
Speaker 2: The objective in every case seems to be Let's just
53:19
Speaker 2: for a while get ourselves out of the narrow, rigid
53:22
Speaker 2: frame of the alert problem-solving state of consciousness. We all
53:25
Speaker 2: need that. It's incredibly useful. Hunter-gatherers need it just as
53:28
Speaker 2: much as people in cities need it. But it's not
53:31
Speaker 2: the only state of consciousness available to human beings. And
53:34
Speaker 2: maybe that's one of the big mistakes that we're making
53:36
Speaker 2: in our culture and was not made in shamanistic societies.
53:43
Speaker 1: That is a really interesting breakdown that maybe that is
53:47
Speaker 1: one of the big mistakes we're making in our culture.
53:48
Speaker 1: When people point to the problems that we have in
53:50
Speaker 1: this country, one of the problems we have is our
53:53
Speaker 1: inability to connect with each other or to recognize that
53:56
Speaker 1: we're all sharing this space and time together and instead
53:59
Speaker 1: wanting to uphold our own religious or ideological ideas as
54:04
Speaker 1: being the only one way to get going, the only
54:06
Speaker 1: one way to get through. And one of the things
54:08
Speaker 1: that I've found These psychedelic experiences, it really makes ideologies seem,
54:16
Speaker 1: if not preposterous, at the very least, insignificant in comparison
54:19
Speaker 1: to human experiences. Absolutely. The experience of camaraderie and friendship
54:24
Speaker 1: and love, you realize, oh, this is what's important. This
54:28
Speaker 1: is what it's really about. Not enforcing your ideas or
54:33
Speaker 1: pushing them on other people and forcing people to behave
54:35
Speaker 1: the way you behave, but instead, love.
54:38
Speaker 2: And think about … religious ideas which cause so much division,
54:42
Speaker 2: so much chaos, so much hatred, so much fear, so
54:45
Speaker 2: much suspicion in the world today. Is it really what
54:49
Speaker 2: we want to do as human beings? Simply to accept
54:52
Speaker 2: a package of ideas that were believed in by our ancestors,
54:56
Speaker 2: to accept them whole without question. as absolute fact, which
55:00
Speaker 2: we regard as such authoritative fact that in some cases
55:03
Speaker 2: we're willing to be deeply unpleasant to people who hold
55:06
Speaker 2: different views or perhaps even kill them. We've had this,
55:09
Speaker 2: you know, this recent event in Sri Lanka, primarily a
55:13
Speaker 2: religiously motivated terrorist event. It happens all over the world.
55:18
Speaker 2: People feel so convinced that the inherited package of ideas
55:22
Speaker 2: that they had nothing to do with creating and that
55:24
Speaker 2: they have never questioned, they're so convinced that those ideas
55:27
Speaker 2: are right that in extreme cases they're actually prepared to
55:30
Speaker 2: kill other human beings who hold different ideas. Are they
55:34
Speaker 2: so insecure in their own beliefs that they're prepared to
55:39
Speaker 2: go to that level of actually murdering another human being?
55:42
Speaker 2: They're so threatened by the other beliefs that other human
55:45
Speaker 2: beings hold. So it's an abnegation. of our responsibility as
55:48
Speaker 2: human beings. We should be questioning things. We should not
55:51
Speaker 2: be accepting packages of ideas intact, fully formed, and using
55:54
Speaker 2: them to drive the way we behave towards one another.
55:58
Speaker 2: That was part of the human story, but we need
55:59
Speaker 2: to move on from that. It's a very dangerous situation
56:02
Speaker 2: in a very complex modern world with billions of human
56:05
Speaker 2: beings on the planet. to have these kind of energies
56:08
Speaker 2: being generated where certain groups of people are saying, we
56:10
Speaker 2: are absolutely right and you are absolutely wrong. We are superior.
56:14
Speaker 2: You are inferior. This is a very, very dangerous path
56:18
Speaker 2: that we're on and it needs to be changed. Personally,
56:21
Speaker 2: I know this is not a comment that will go
56:24
Speaker 2: down well with many people, but I am strongly opposed
56:27
Speaker 2: to nationalism. I don't see any virtue in nationalism. It
56:31
Speaker 2: is an accident of birth which nation you were born in.
56:35
Speaker 2: It was nothing that you did for your own merit.
56:37
Speaker 2: You didn't earn that. You were born by accident in
56:41
Speaker 2: a particular nation. Why should we automatically feel that other
56:45
Speaker 2: people who were born by accident in that particular nation
56:47
Speaker 2: have something special in common with us and that we
56:50
Speaker 2: together are a group who are much more important than
56:52
Speaker 2: other groups of people? I've been privileged to spend my
56:54
Speaker 2: life traveling around the world, living with communities all over
56:58
Speaker 2: the world. And one thing that really comes across to
57:01
Speaker 2: me strongly, it should be a cliche, and yet it's not.
57:05
Speaker 2: is that we are all one family, that humans are
57:07
Speaker 2: intimately interconnected all around the world, that you can go
57:10
Speaker 2: to the remotest area of the Amazon jungle and find
57:13
Speaker 2: the same hopes, the same fears, the same dreams that
57:17
Speaker 2: we have in industrialized cities shared by the hunter-gatherers in
57:21
Speaker 2: the middle of the Amazon. So our similarities as human
57:25
Speaker 2: beings and what we share in common at the emotional
57:27
Speaker 2: level and the level of love and at the level
57:29
Speaker 2: of heart are far more important than our differences that
57:33
Speaker 2: are defined by the nation or the political group in
57:35
Speaker 2: which we grew up in. And when I say I'm
57:38
Speaker 2: against nationalism, I need also to make clear that does
57:42
Speaker 2: not mean And I hope I'm not taken out of
57:45
Speaker 2: context by others who are listening to this. That does
57:47
Speaker 2: not mean I'm in favor of world government. I detest governments.
57:52
Speaker 2: That's another thing we need to grow out of. We
57:54
Speaker 2: don't need governments anymore. If we have them, they should
57:57
Speaker 2: have a very minimal role in our society. I think
58:00
Speaker 2: it's possible for the human race to relate as one
58:02
Speaker 2: family without leaders and governments who are exploiting society. the
58:06
Speaker 2: worst aspects of our character, the lowest common denominator of
58:09
Speaker 2: our society, deliberately encouraging fears and hatreds and suspicion. What
58:14
Speaker 2: responsible leaders should be doing is encouraging love and unity.
58:18
Speaker 2: And their failure to do that, in my view, disqualifies
58:22
Speaker 2: them from the leadership role entirely. And that's why I've
58:26
Speaker 2: often said, I would like to see a situation in
58:30
Speaker 2: which no head of state can be appointed to that
58:33
Speaker 2: position unless he or she has first had 12 sessions
58:36
Speaker 2: of ayahuasca. That would be the condition. Don't even bother
58:41
Speaker 2: applying for the job if you haven't done this.
58:43
Speaker 1: And we have to be there where you have it.
58:45
Speaker 2: And we have to be. We want to see that
58:47
Speaker 2: you're drinking every drop. And we want an experienced shaman
58:51
Speaker 2: present who's really going to guide you through the journey.
58:54
Speaker 2: And I suspect that that would be a transformative experience.
58:57
Speaker 2: for many of our political class and that they would
58:59
Speaker 2: start to question why they do what they do, why
59:03
Speaker 2: they exploit fears in order to magnify their own position.
59:06
Speaker 2: They'd start to question that and to wonder about a
59:08
Speaker 2: different destiny for humanity. But that's a dream. I guess
59:10
Speaker 2: it's not going to happen.
59:11
Speaker 1: It's very, very, very well said. And I couldn't agree more.
59:14
Speaker 1: My hope is that what you were saying and what
59:16
Speaker 1: we were discussing earlier about how the internet has sort
59:18
Speaker 1: of eroded our faith in many institutions as being the
59:23
Speaker 1: only or the primary source of knowledge, that I hope
59:26
Speaker 1: that that takes place globally in terms of the way
59:30
Speaker 1: we view government yeah and that we do and that
59:32
Speaker 1: your idea of like i love what america stands for
59:36
Speaker 1: and what america stands for is kind of a nation
59:38
Speaker 1: that's where people go to you know this is one
59:42
Speaker 1: of the more insidious problems with this idea of building
59:47
Speaker 1: walls and keeping people out and making incredibly difficult to
59:50
Speaker 1: get here The reason why I'm here is because it
59:53
Speaker 1: was pretty easy to get here. That's why I'm here.
59:56
Speaker 2: That's the essence of America, a free and open society.
59:59
Speaker 1: Come here and do better. That's the whole idea behind it.
1:00:01
Speaker 1: And I would hope that this idea of being able
1:00:05
Speaker 1: to just– if you want to do better, you can
1:00:09
Speaker 1: anywhere in the world. This could eventually spread out. This
1:00:13
Speaker 1: is my hope.
1:00:14
Speaker 2: I believe it can spread out. And I see many
1:00:18
Speaker 2: signs of hope in America. America has become a big
1:00:23
Speaker 2: part of my life, not just because I wrote this book,
1:00:26
Speaker 2: but because I have children who are now living in America.
1:00:29
Speaker 2: I have a son and daughter-in-law who live in LA.
1:00:32
Speaker 2: I have another son and daughter-in-law who live in Boston. America,
1:00:36
Speaker 2: I'm British, but America has become a very central part
1:00:38
Speaker 2: of my life. And it's a fascinating and amazing country.
1:00:41
Speaker 2: And it's been my privilege to travel thousands of miles
1:00:44
Speaker 2: across America, across many, many, many different states. And I
1:00:47
Speaker 2: love this country. It's an amazing place. Only In America,
1:00:52
Speaker 2: could we see happening what has happened with cannabis? You know,
1:00:56
Speaker 2: the fact that at a local level, individuals have got together,
1:01:00
Speaker 2: mobilized petitions, organized votes, and changed the law, changed the law,
1:01:07
Speaker 2: literally stuck a finger up at central government and said,
1:01:10
Speaker 2: fuck off. This is none of your business. What I
1:01:13
Speaker 2: do with my consciousness in the inner sanctum of my
1:01:15
Speaker 2: own life is not the business of the state. That's
1:01:17
Speaker 2: a very American feeling. It's something that you don't find
1:01:21
Speaker 2: often in other countries where the state is granted much
1:01:23
Speaker 2: more power and much more authority than it perhaps should be.
1:01:26
Speaker 2: Americans are naturally questioning of government authority. And that is
1:01:32
Speaker 2: what has led to the legalization, increasing legalization of cannabis,
1:01:36
Speaker 2: which is going to change the world in lots of ways.
1:01:39
Speaker 2: But then ironically, at the same time, see the thing
1:01:43
Speaker 2: about democracies is that it's In order to get things
1:01:49
Speaker 2: done in a democracy, you need to persuade people of
1:01:52
Speaker 2: your point of view. So information becomes very important in democracies.
1:01:56
Speaker 2: And information can be abused. People can be misled with information.
1:01:59
Speaker 2: They can be told that what they're receiving is the truth, whereas,
1:02:03
Speaker 2: in fact, it's not the truth. And you can end
1:02:05
Speaker 2: up with a kind of dictatorship that the people have
1:02:08
Speaker 2: given their assent to on the basis of false information. And, frankly,
1:02:11
Speaker 2: I'd rather have a real dictatorship, which is out in
1:02:14
Speaker 2: the open and clear. rather than one that has been
1:02:17
Speaker 2: subtly manipulated into position through manipulating the views of the voters.
1:02:23
Speaker 2: But I am and remain enormously encouraged by America. It
1:02:28
Speaker 2: may seem like a trivial issue, but the fact that
1:02:31
Speaker 2: state by state, cannabis is being legalized, and that is
1:02:34
Speaker 2: resulting from a grassroots movement, that this enormous change has
1:02:38
Speaker 2: been made. It's ironic, it's strange that at the federal level,
1:02:41
Speaker 2: even though, what, eight states now totally legal for recreational cannabis, 23,
1:02:45
Speaker 2: 24 states legal for medical use that at the federal level,
1:02:49
Speaker 2: it's still a schedule one controlled drug. This is a
1:02:52
Speaker 2: huge state of dissonance that exists and America is going
1:02:55
Speaker 2: to have to put it right. What it says to
1:02:57
Speaker 2: me is that people can change things. People can get
1:03:00
Speaker 2: together at the local level and they can make a
1:03:02
Speaker 2: better world because there's no doubt that the cannabis laws
1:03:04
Speaker 2: were vicious and wrong and cruel and evil and ruined
1:03:08
Speaker 2: people's lives for decades. And it's people who've changed that.
1:03:12
Speaker 2: It's not government who's changed that. It's the people at
1:03:14
Speaker 2: the grassroots level. America is a country where that can happen.
1:03:16
Speaker 2: And I remain encouraged about the role of the American people,
1:03:21
Speaker 2: while often in despair about the role of the American state.
1:03:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm encouraged as well. And it's interesting. Ben and
1:03:27
Speaker 1: Jerry released something yesterday, which is really on 420, I
1:03:30
Speaker 1: should say, which was talking about the drug laws in
1:03:35
Speaker 1: this country and talking about how many– it's really opening
1:03:39
Speaker 1: the idea of how unjust these laws were and how
1:03:44
Speaker 1: many of these laws targeted people of color and how
1:03:46
Speaker 1: many people who are white people have profited off of
1:03:50
Speaker 1: this and how many people are still in jail.
1:03:52
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:03:53
Speaker 1: For crimes that they committed, air quote crimes, that are
1:03:57
Speaker 1: no longer crimes.
1:03:58
Speaker 2: That are no longer crimes.
1:03:59
Speaker 1: Yeah. And this is ridiculous. These records should be expunged.
1:04:03
Speaker 1: They should be completely expunged.
1:04:04
Speaker 2: I see that California has made some steps in that direction.
1:04:07
Speaker 2: There has been some expunging of records.
1:04:09
Speaker 1: Well, we can only hope that also what opens up
1:04:11
Speaker 1: next is– psilocybin is now going to be on the ballot.
1:04:15
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
1:04:15
Speaker 1: And when that opens up, I mean, what you really
1:04:17
Speaker 1: think marijuana is a gateway drug. Well, guess what it is.
1:04:20
Speaker 1: If psilocybin gets in. Yes. Because psilocybin can legitimately change
1:04:24
Speaker 1: the world.
1:04:25
Speaker 2: It certainly can.
1:04:25
Speaker 1: It really, I mean, I think marijuana can change the world.
1:04:28
Speaker 1: And I really do think that cannabis is changing the,
1:04:30
Speaker 1: people's perceptions and making people more calm and friendly. And
1:04:35
Speaker 1: even what they talk about with paranoia, I welcome that.
1:04:39
Speaker 1: And the reason why I welcome that is I think
1:04:40
Speaker 1: people are entirely too cocky. The life we live is
1:04:44
Speaker 1: bizarre as you could ever imagine in a book. And
1:04:47
Speaker 1: we're just accustomed to it because it's our day-to-day existence.
1:04:49
Speaker 2: Take it all for granted.
1:04:51
Speaker 1: Marijuana removes those blinders. It does. And it really makes
1:04:54
Speaker 1: you understand that this is a strange, strange life. And
1:04:58
Speaker 1: a lot of these pitfalls and problems that we have
1:05:02
Speaker 1: in our society are due to fear. And they're due
1:05:04
Speaker 1: to ignorance. And they're due to this lack of connection
1:05:08
Speaker 1: with each other. And cannabis and many of these other
1:05:11
Speaker 1: psychedelic drugs... they encourage this connection with each other, which is,
1:05:15
Speaker 1: I think, what we need.
1:05:16
Speaker 2: It's certainly what we need, and it's an aberration in
1:05:19
Speaker 2: human culture that we've created a society that demonized these
1:05:23
Speaker 2: substances and made them illegal. It's a relatively recent thing.
1:05:26
Speaker 2: It's really just the last hundred years. It's a tiny
1:05:29
Speaker 2: part of the human story, and yet we're so arrogant
1:05:32
Speaker 2: as a society that we set aside thousands of years
1:05:35
Speaker 2: of human tradition and experience and wisdom working with the
1:05:38
Speaker 2: plant medicines. We just Set it aside, turn them into
1:05:41
Speaker 2: criminal substances and say we know everything. What a huge
1:05:45
Speaker 2: and stupid mistake that is. On cannabis as a quote-unquote
1:05:51
Speaker 2: gateway drug, it absolutely is in this sense that the
1:05:54
Speaker 2: legalization of cannabis is going to open the doors, as
1:05:58
Speaker 2: you say, to the legalization of psychedelics because what's happening
1:06:01
Speaker 2: is that the population is completely waking up to the
1:06:05
Speaker 2: fact that they have been bullshitted and lied to about cannabis.
1:06:09
Speaker 2: for the best part of a century. And once that
1:06:13
Speaker 2: dawns on people, the realization at a direct personal level,
1:06:16
Speaker 2: here's this herb I love, I have been lied to,
1:06:20
Speaker 2: systematically misinformed by central government about this herb, that leads
1:06:26
Speaker 2: to questioning of everything that central government does. And so
1:06:29
Speaker 2: in that sense, it is a gateway to a questioning society.
1:06:33
Speaker 2: The psychedelics are different in that psilocybin actually does lead
1:06:39
Speaker 2: you to question stuff. It leads you to really ask
1:06:42
Speaker 2: questions about everything, about your role in the world, about
1:06:46
Speaker 2: you as a person, about how you relate to other people,
1:06:48
Speaker 2: and about the whole system on this planet and the beautiful,
1:06:52
Speaker 2: gorgeous planet that we have and what we're doing to it.
1:06:55
Speaker 2: That also enters awareness.
1:06:58
Speaker 1: It erodes confidence and authority, and it also erodes confidence
1:07:01
Speaker 1: and authority that doesn't have experiences that you've experienced.
1:07:03
Speaker 2: Exactly.
1:07:04
Speaker 1: That's the part of the problem is that these people
1:07:06
Speaker 1: that are holding people back from these psychedelic experiences. They've
1:07:09
Speaker 1: never had them.
1:07:10
Speaker 2: They've never had them.
1:07:10
Speaker 1: So they don't even know what they're rallying against.
1:07:12
Speaker 2: They're coming to it from a place of fear and prejudice.
1:07:16
Speaker 2: They're simply accepting stuff that they've been told without really
1:07:19
Speaker 2: thinking it through and examining it. And again, it's a
1:07:22
Speaker 2: failure of what human beings should be doing. We have
1:07:26
Speaker 2: to get rid of this fear.
1:07:27
Speaker 1: And ironically, it's bad for them as well. It's bad
1:07:30
Speaker 1: for the people that are actually encouraging these laws to
1:07:33
Speaker 1: be enforced.
1:07:34
Speaker 2: Yes. It's bad for the whole of society.
1:07:36
Speaker 3: Yes.
1:07:38
Speaker 2: Because it is healthy for a society where adults become
1:07:42
Speaker 2: self-realized individuals, where they make their own responsible choices about
1:07:47
Speaker 2: their own lives, where they don't say, oh, government must
1:07:50
Speaker 2: make this choice for me. That's the next step for humanity.
1:07:53
Speaker 2: We need to start becoming our own leaders and making
1:07:57
Speaker 2: our own choices. And that is what's being revealed now
1:08:01
Speaker 2: that we're getting to the skull beneath the smile of
1:08:04
Speaker 2: the war on drugs. we're realizing that it's part of
1:08:06
Speaker 2: a big program of lying that has been about keeping
1:08:10
Speaker 2: people's minds closed down, not wanting free thinking. I've made
1:08:14
Speaker 2: this point several times, but our society is not against
1:08:17
Speaker 2: altered states of consciousness as such. Our society will allow
1:08:21
Speaker 2: big pharma to make billions of dollars with drugs that
1:08:24
Speaker 2: alter consciousness like Ceroxat and Prozac antidepressants, which in my opinion,
1:08:28
Speaker 2: having had some experience of them, are amongst the most
1:08:31
Speaker 2: horrible drugs on the planet. They are very harmful, very
1:08:34
Speaker 2: dangerous drugs, but they're completely legal and they're encouraged with
1:08:37
Speaker 2: our system. Likewise, alcohol, very dangerous drug, causes fights, causes
1:08:42
Speaker 2: drunk driving accidents, leads to cirrhosis of the liver, completely
1:08:45
Speaker 2: legal and open. Our society is not against altered states
1:08:48
Speaker 2: of consciousness. As such, it's against particular kinds of altered
1:08:51
Speaker 2: states of consciousness that lead to questioning of the existing
1:08:55
Speaker 2: control system. That's what's going on here.
1:08:59
Speaker 1: Hear, hear. Well said.
1:09:01
Speaker 2: And as you know, I have my own story with cannabis.
1:09:05
Speaker 1: Yes. Well, you and I had a moment.
1:09:07
Speaker 2: We had a moment, which was quite a life-changing moment
1:09:10
Speaker 2: for me. Because if I may just rehearse a little
1:09:12
Speaker 2: bit of this for the audience. In 2011, I had
1:09:15
Speaker 2: a series of ayahuasca sessions. in which it was shown
1:09:21
Speaker 2: to me that I was using cannabis completely wrong, that
1:09:25
Speaker 2: it had become a dominant force in my life, that
1:09:28
Speaker 2: it was making me, you're speaking about paranoia, and I
1:09:30
Speaker 2: agree with you, paranoia is a useful thing, if only
1:09:33
Speaker 2: to overcome it, that it was making me paranoid, that
1:09:35
Speaker 2: it was making me suspicious, that I approached everybody around
1:09:37
Speaker 2: me in a state of suspicion. And I was shown
1:09:40
Speaker 2: this by ayahuasca, and given a very strong message, you
1:09:44
Speaker 2: need to quit cannabis. What I didn't realize at the
1:09:48
Speaker 2: time is that the problem was not cannabis. The problem
1:09:51
Speaker 2: was me, that I needed to fix those aspects of
1:09:55
Speaker 2: myself before I could have a proper relationship with cannabis.
1:09:58
Speaker 2: So after that ayahuasca session, having smoked cannabis for decades,
1:10:03
Speaker 2: literally 16 hours a day, seven days a week, I quit.
1:10:06
Speaker 2: I quit for three years. And then I'm on your show.
1:10:10
Speaker 2: And we're sitting opposite one another as we are now.
1:10:13
Speaker 2: And you asked me a question earlier. Are you still
1:10:15
Speaker 2: off the cannabis? And I say, well, I'm thinking of
1:10:18
Speaker 2: dipping my toes back in the water, at which point
1:10:20
Speaker 2: you produce a joint. And we smoke it together. First
1:10:24
Speaker 2: of all. After three years, your tolerance is way down
1:10:28
Speaker 2: on cannabis. So I got really stoned. I did listen
1:10:31
Speaker 2: to that interview back, and somehow I held it together.
1:10:34
Speaker 1: Oh, you held it together brilliantly. You opened up, and
1:10:36
Speaker 1: it was like a wave of information came pouring out
1:10:39
Speaker 1: of you. It was wonderful to watch.
1:10:40
Speaker 2: It was a liberation for me. And what it said
1:10:42
Speaker 2: to me is, it's time to go back to cannabis,
1:10:46
Speaker 2: but perhaps in a different way. I need a different
1:10:49
Speaker 2: relationship with this amazing medicine. And if I can forge that,
1:10:52
Speaker 2: if I can make that different relationship happen, then it
1:10:55
Speaker 2: can be a constructive and positive part of my life.
1:10:57
Speaker 2: And I can say definitely that that has been the case.
1:11:00
Speaker 1: That's excellent.
1:11:01
Speaker 2: And so it's all thanks to you, Joe. I probably
1:11:02
Speaker 2: would still be off cannabis if it hadn't been for
1:11:04
Speaker 2: that joint.
1:11:05
Speaker 1: Well, I think people can develop these patterns of behavior
1:11:08
Speaker 1: that are destructive with anything, whether it's with alcohol or
1:11:11
Speaker 1: cannabis or sex or anything. People get … They get
1:11:15
Speaker 1: in ruts. It doesn't mean that the cannabis is bad.
1:11:18
Speaker 1: It means that you are on a bad mental path.
1:11:20
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
1:11:22
Speaker 1: I mean I'm not encouraging it for everybody because some
1:11:24
Speaker 1: people genuinely biologically doesn't jive with them. Yeah, yeah.
1:11:28
Speaker 2: But the fundamental thing is we as adult human beings
1:11:31
Speaker 2: need to take responsibility for our own lives and our
1:11:34
Speaker 2: own decisions. And we need not hand that responsibility over
1:11:38
Speaker 2: to governmental institutions, especially when it concerns something as intimate
1:11:42
Speaker 2: and personal as … as our consciousness. And my view
1:11:46
Speaker 2: is the ancient world had the right attitude to this
1:11:49
Speaker 2: kind of thing. And the modern world does not. And
1:11:52
Speaker 2: that we can sit down and learn a lot from.
1:11:55
Speaker 1: The ancient world.
1:11:56
Speaker 2: A lot of people ask me, you know, Hancock, you've
1:11:59
Speaker 2: been arguing that there's a loss. There's been a lost
1:12:01
Speaker 2: civilization in the, in the, in the human story, but,
1:12:05
Speaker 2: What sort of civilization do you think it was? Well,
1:12:08
Speaker 2: one of the things I think is it was a
1:12:09
Speaker 2: civilization that used psychedelics. I think it was a civilization
1:12:12
Speaker 2: that emerged from shamanism, but did not stay at the
1:12:15
Speaker 2: hunter-gatherer stage, but that took the essence of shamanism and
1:12:18
Speaker 2: integrated it into a very different kind of civilization from
1:12:21
Speaker 2: our own. which pursued things in different ways. A lot
1:12:24
Speaker 2: of archaeologists have said to me, but we don't find
1:12:27
Speaker 2: any plastic bottles from the Ice Age. That means there
1:12:30
Speaker 2: was no advanced civilization during the Ice Age. Well, hang on.
1:12:33
Speaker 2: Maybe an advanced civilization might have decided never to get
1:12:36
Speaker 2: involved in plastic in the first place. Maybe there would
1:12:38
Speaker 2: have been a clear choice not to make plastic. Maybe
1:12:41
Speaker 2: they did things in completely different ways.
1:12:44
Speaker 1: Maybe they.
1:12:46
Speaker 2: Cultivated powers of the human mind that we dismiss and
1:12:50
Speaker 2: regard as completely unimportant. You know, woo-woo.
1:12:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the thoughts about Egypt, correct?
1:12:57
Speaker 2: It's about Egypt and about other things. I mean, the
1:13:01
Speaker 2: specific example I give is above the king's chamber in
1:13:06
Speaker 2: the Great Pyramid are five further chambers. And these chambers
1:13:12
Speaker 2: are roofed and floored with granite beams that weigh about
1:13:16
Speaker 2: 70 tons each. And there are hundreds of them. And
1:13:19
Speaker 2: these 70-ton granite beams, which to put in context, a
1:13:23
Speaker 2: 70-ton beam is equivalent in weight to 35 large SUVs.
1:13:27
Speaker 2: These 70-ton granite beams have been elevated to a height
1:13:30
Speaker 2: of more than 350 feet above the ground and carefully
1:13:33
Speaker 2: and precisely placed in position. It is very hard. for
1:13:39
Speaker 2: archaeologists to explain how that was done using purely leverage
1:13:43
Speaker 2: and mechanical advantage. You can say, oh, perhaps they built
1:13:46
Speaker 2: a ramp and hauled the stones up the ramp. But
1:13:50
Speaker 2: then you have to confront basic laws of physics. You
1:13:52
Speaker 2: can't haul a stone weighing tens of tons up a
1:13:57
Speaker 2: slope that exceeds 10 degrees. Then you start doing the calculation.
1:14:01
Speaker 2: How long a ramp do I need with a 10
1:14:04
Speaker 2: degree slope to get to 350 feet above the ground?
1:14:07
Speaker 2: And the answer is you need a fucking long ramp.
1:14:10
Speaker 2: which should still be there because it couldn't have been
1:14:13
Speaker 2: a sand ramp. It would have collapsed under the weight
1:14:16
Speaker 2: of those stones. It had to be as massive as
1:14:17
Speaker 2: the pyramid itself. So this begins to seem like an
1:14:20
Speaker 2: absurd idea, the idea that is foisted on us by archaeology.
1:14:25
Speaker 2: Maybe the idea that they regard as absurd, namely that
1:14:28
Speaker 2: psychic powers were cultivated by ancient civilizations, that they could
1:14:32
Speaker 2: use powers of the human mind that we have allowed
1:14:34
Speaker 2: to lapse, maybe that idea deserves further consideration. We have
1:14:39
Speaker 2: gone down a path of leverage and mechanical advantage. We're
1:14:42
Speaker 2: used to relying on machines. But we hear anecdotal reports
1:14:46
Speaker 2: of people who have telekinetic powers, who can move things
1:14:49
Speaker 2: with their minds, of people who have telepathic powers. And
1:14:52
Speaker 2: our automatic reaction is to just dismiss all of that
1:14:55
Speaker 2: because science says it's impossible because science regards consciousness as
1:15:01
Speaker 2: local consciousness. to the brain and doesn't see how it
1:15:04
Speaker 2: can exert itself outside of that. But maybe we should
1:15:07
Speaker 2: open up to those possibilities that we're dealing with a
1:15:09
Speaker 2: very different kind of culture that used techniques that we
1:15:12
Speaker 2: have allowed to lapse. And maybe we could wake those
1:15:14
Speaker 2: techniques up again. Maybe the ability of human beings to
1:15:17
Speaker 2: do almost superhuman things is resident within all of us,
1:15:23
Speaker 2: but sleeping.
1:15:24
Speaker 1: Well, it's pure speculation that they use some sort of
1:15:27
Speaker 1: a telekinetic power, but it's pure speculation, but it's absolute
1:15:30
Speaker 1: that they did something that we don't understand if If
1:15:32
Speaker 1: you think about the distance between us and the construction,
1:15:36
Speaker 1: just the modern accepted construction dates of the Great Pyramid,
1:15:39
Speaker 1: it's more than 5,000 years ago or close to 5,000
1:15:42
Speaker 1: years ago.
1:15:42
Speaker 2: The Great Pyramid is supposed to be about 4,500 years old, yeah.
1:15:45
Speaker 1: That's really old.
1:15:46
Speaker 2: It's incredibly old, yeah.
1:15:48
Speaker 1: To think that someone back then could do something that
1:15:50
Speaker 1: would perplex us today with modern machinery and that somehow
1:15:54
Speaker 1: or another they figured this out. It's almost like What
1:15:58
Speaker 1: they had done was leave behind something that was so stupendous,
1:16:03
Speaker 1: so monstrously impressive that it would transcend time and that
1:16:09
Speaker 1: you would have to look at it even thousands and
1:16:11
Speaker 1: thousands of years later and say, hey, like this defies
1:16:16
Speaker 1: conventional explanation. This is not a simple– and I've seen
1:16:19
Speaker 1: some of the conventional explanations of the construction of the
1:16:22
Speaker 1: pyramid and they– conveniently neglect those chambers above the king's
1:16:25
Speaker 1: chamber they do they conveniently neglect a lot of those
1:16:28
Speaker 1: massive stones yeah and it's because it's it's one of
1:16:31
Speaker 1: those things you just go oh i don't know what
1:16:34
Speaker 1: is this jamie There are.
1:16:36
Speaker 2: The chambers above the king's chambers and each one of
1:16:39
Speaker 2: those floors consists of a row of 70-ton granite blocks
1:16:44
Speaker 2: that have been raised 350 feet above the ground. And
1:16:47
Speaker 2: not only that but brought from Aswan in the south
1:16:49
Speaker 2: of Egypt, 500 kilometers south of the Great Pyramid.
1:16:52
Speaker 1: If there's any time in history where you could go
1:16:55
Speaker 1: in a time machine and go back and observe, would
1:16:58
Speaker 1: that be the time?
1:17:00
Speaker 2: I am just completely fascinated by the Ice Age at
1:17:04
Speaker 2: the moment.
1:17:05
Speaker 1: If you had one shot to go back and see
1:17:07
Speaker 1: what it was like in some place, you wouldn't go
1:17:10
Speaker 1: to the construction of the Great Pyramids?
1:17:12
Speaker 2: I think right now where I'd go is 12,800 years
1:17:15
Speaker 2: ago in the beginning of the Younger Dryas.
1:17:17
Speaker 1: Ah, just to see.
1:17:18
Speaker 2: Because I think that's where the whole human story changes.
1:17:21
Speaker 2: I think that's where we change tracks from one path.
1:17:24
Speaker 2: to another path and following those cataclysmic events of the
1:17:28
Speaker 2: Younger Dryas between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago, following those,
1:17:32
Speaker 2: the signs of civilization that we see emerging are not
1:17:35
Speaker 2: the beginnings of civilization. They're a restarting of civilization that
1:17:40
Speaker 2: had existed before the cataclysm. And for that reason, I
1:17:45
Speaker 2: would like to be present. during that cataclysmic event, if
1:17:49
Speaker 2: only to satisfy myself that it was indeed a comet.
1:17:51
Speaker 2: You see, the one thing there's no dispute about anymore
1:17:55
Speaker 2: is that the Younger Dryas was a cataclysm. You can't
1:17:59
Speaker 2: argue about that. The megafauna that die off, the disruption
1:18:03
Speaker 2: of human activity that takes place at that time, the
1:18:05
Speaker 2: huge climate changes... This was a cataclysm by any standards.
1:18:08
Speaker 2: Where the argument still goes on is what caused the cataclysm.
1:18:13
Speaker 2: I vote strongly for comets, multiple fragments of a comet
1:18:17
Speaker 2: hitting the North American ice cap and hitting Greenland as well.
1:18:21
Speaker 2: But there are other researchers in the field like my
1:18:23
Speaker 2: colleague Robert Shock who thinks that the sun– is more
1:18:26
Speaker 2: involved this is healthy this is very very healthy that
1:18:29
Speaker 2: there should we should be approaching this problem from many
1:18:31
Speaker 2: different perspectives and trying to figure out what the fuck
1:18:34
Speaker 2: caused this extraordinary event that occurs at a pivotal moment
1:18:39
Speaker 2: in the human story the end of the stone age
1:18:41
Speaker 2: the beginning of the mesolithic the end of the ice
1:18:44
Speaker 2: age the beginning of the current age of the earth
1:18:46
Speaker 2: and suddenly we see these signs of civilization appearing and
1:18:49
Speaker 2: in places like Gobekli Tepe, those signs already include highly
1:18:52
Speaker 2: sophisticated knowledge. And that's why I feel we really need
1:18:57
Speaker 2: to investigate the Amazon. There are three places in the
1:19:01
Speaker 2: world which are really lacking in the investigation right now.
1:19:05
Speaker 2: One of them is the Amazon, five and a half
1:19:07
Speaker 2: million square kilometers, very little archaeology done. Another is the
1:19:11
Speaker 2: Sahara Desert. The Sahara Desert, tough place to work. I
1:19:15
Speaker 2: can understand why there's little archaeology done there. But the
1:19:17
Speaker 2: Sahara Desert was green during the Ice Age. It had
1:19:19
Speaker 2: a completely different climate regime. We should consider the possibility
1:19:22
Speaker 2: that missing parts of the human story are there. And
1:19:24
Speaker 2: then under the continental shelves. because sea level rose 400 feet.
1:19:28
Speaker 2: These are three domains that archaeology has largely not investigated,
1:19:34
Speaker 2: and it has largely not done so. They say, well,
1:19:36
Speaker 2: why would we spend the money on marine archaeology? It's
1:19:38
Speaker 2: much better to spend it on looking for shipwrecks rather
1:19:41
Speaker 2: than looking for signs of a lost civilization, because we
1:19:43
Speaker 2: archaeologists know there was no lost civilization. So that's the
1:19:46
Speaker 2: argument for the resources there. And the same with the
1:19:50
Speaker 2: Amazon and the same with the Sahara Desert. Places in
1:19:53
Speaker 2: the very places in the world that... those amongst us
1:19:56
Speaker 2: who are charged with the responsibility of interpreting the past
1:20:00
Speaker 2: have not looked at are the very places we should
1:20:04
Speaker 2: be looking at.
1:20:05
Speaker 1: I had a thought once while I was under the
1:20:07
Speaker 1: influence and it was a thought that one day computational
1:20:13
Speaker 1: powers will reach a point where they will be able
1:20:17
Speaker 1: to take into consideration all of the objects on earth
1:20:21
Speaker 1: and what we know about the history and and vividly
1:20:25
Speaker 1: recreate the past through, through computation to the point where
1:20:28
Speaker 1: you could actually know who did what, when people did things.
1:20:32
Speaker 1: And that, I mean, I don't even know if this
1:20:34
Speaker 1: would be physical today, certainly not be possible, but with
1:20:40
Speaker 1: the exponential increase in computational power and technology and innovation
1:20:45
Speaker 1: that one day we'll reach a point where you'll be
1:20:47
Speaker 1: able to watch the You'll be able to see what happened,
1:20:51
Speaker 1: and they'll be able to recreate what happened exactly, and
1:20:54
Speaker 1: that this would be something that would be– it's impossible
1:20:59
Speaker 1: for us to imagine that someone would be able to
1:21:01
Speaker 1: do that right now. But that one day with technology,
1:21:05
Speaker 1: as it gets more and more advanced, we will reach
1:21:08
Speaker 1: some sort of a– some innovation or some sort of
1:21:11
Speaker 1: an invention that will allow us to go back and see,
1:21:16
Speaker 1: literally see what, what happened, how things were done.
1:21:19
Speaker 2: Technology is, is changing our whole understanding of the past
1:21:23
Speaker 2: and what you're envisaging is perfectly possible. We will, we
1:21:27
Speaker 2: will come to a time.
1:21:28
Speaker 1: If a hundred years, 500 years, perhaps less.
1:21:30
Speaker 2: If, if we don't, you know, first destroy ourselves entirely
1:21:34
Speaker 2: as a civilization, we will come to a time where
1:21:36
Speaker 2: our cleverness and our techniques will will allow a much
1:21:39
Speaker 2: wider opening up of the past than has presently happened,
1:21:42
Speaker 2: but it is already happening. One of the areas of
1:21:46
Speaker 2: science that I go into in America before is genetics
1:21:51
Speaker 2: and DNA. This is an area of science that was
1:21:55
Speaker 2: not much informing archaeology until about the 1990s, but since
1:22:01
Speaker 2: the 2000s has become very important in archaeology because the
1:22:04
Speaker 2: technology has been developed where ancient DNA can be extracted
1:22:09
Speaker 2: and tested and you can actually genotype an entire individual
1:22:12
Speaker 2: from DNA that may be 15, 20,000 years old. And
1:22:17
Speaker 2: this new technology of genome sequencing and DNA is another
1:22:23
Speaker 2: factor that is raising huge question marks over the past
1:22:27
Speaker 2: of the Americas. And one of the issues I go
1:22:30
Speaker 2: into in this book is the presence in the Amazon
1:22:35
Speaker 2: rainforest of a very specific, clearly identifiable pattern of DNA,
1:22:42
Speaker 2: which is only found in one other place in the world.
1:22:44
Speaker 2: And that is in Australasia, in Papua New Guinea, and
1:22:48
Speaker 2: amongst Australian Aborigines. It's Australasian DNA. Now, not only in
1:22:55
Speaker 2: South America, but in the depths of the Amazon rainforest
1:22:59
Speaker 2: amongst tribes who have only been contacted in the last
1:23:01
Speaker 2: 20 or 30 years. And furthermore, although skeletal remains are rare,
1:23:07
Speaker 2: It has been found in ancient skeletal remains that are
1:23:10
Speaker 2: close to 11,000 years old in the Amazon. So that
1:23:13
Speaker 2: tells us that this DNA signal has been in the
1:23:15
Speaker 2: Amazon for at least 11,000 years. The geneticists think that
1:23:19
Speaker 2: it came to the Amazon during the last ice age.
1:23:22
Speaker 2: And this raises a huge mystery because the peopling of
1:23:25
Speaker 2: the Americas is supposed to have occurred from Siberia. across
1:23:29
Speaker 2: the Bering Straits, down through that ice-free corridor into North America,
1:23:34
Speaker 2: down through North America, into South America, into Central America,
1:23:37
Speaker 2: and finally into South America. If that was the whole story,
1:23:41
Speaker 2: then we would find this DNA signal in North America
1:23:45
Speaker 2: and in Central America. We would not find it only
1:23:48
Speaker 2: in the Amazon. And I talked to some of the
1:23:50
Speaker 2: leading geneticists about this, but specifically Professor S.K. Willislev at
1:23:56
Speaker 2: the University of Copenhagen, who's been the lead author in
1:23:59
Speaker 2: a number of major studies of ancient DNA. And I
1:24:02
Speaker 2: asked him, what do you make of this Australasian DNA
1:24:06
Speaker 2: in the Amazon? And he said, honestly, we don't have
1:24:09
Speaker 2: a proper explanation for it at the moment. But what
1:24:12
Speaker 2: he did say is that the most parsimonious explanation, he
1:24:16
Speaker 2: used that specific word, the most parsimonious explanation is that
1:24:20
Speaker 2: a group of people during the Ice Age crossed the
1:24:23
Speaker 2: Pacific Ocean settled up and ended up in South America
1:24:27
Speaker 2: and settled in the Amazon and brought their DNA with
1:24:30
Speaker 2: them that would account perfectly for the DNA data and
1:24:34
Speaker 2: when a scientist says the most parsimonious explanation what that
1:24:37
Speaker 2: scientist is saying is he likes that explanation that it's
1:24:39
Speaker 2: a simple direct clear explanation of the DNA mystery but
1:24:43
Speaker 2: then he added however it doesn't make practical sense and
1:24:47
Speaker 2: I asked him well why doesn't it make practical sense
1:24:49
Speaker 2: and he said because the archaeologists tell me that that
1:24:52
Speaker 2: no human population was capable of crossing the Pacific Ocean
1:24:56
Speaker 2: during the Ice Age, at which point it was natural
1:24:58
Speaker 2: for me to say, do you really trust the archaeologists?
1:25:02
Speaker 2: And he said, well, in science, we do trust the
1:25:04
Speaker 2: work of other scientists. We don't really question it. We
1:25:06
Speaker 2: don't really investigate it. That's their side of the business.
1:25:10
Speaker 2: And my view is that that is, rather than taking
1:25:17
Speaker 2: this weird anomalous Australasian DNA signal in the heart of
1:25:23
Speaker 2: the Amazon as something to be explained away and as
1:25:27
Speaker 2: something for it to be denied that it could be
1:25:31
Speaker 2: connected to a voyage across the Pacific Ocean. Maybe it's
1:25:35
Speaker 2: the first compelling evidence that voyages were taking place across
1:25:38
Speaker 2: the Pacific Ocean during the Ice Age. And maybe we
1:25:41
Speaker 2: should be opening up that whole issue for exploration. And again,
1:25:44
Speaker 2: I think a lost civilization is the best answer. And
1:25:48
Speaker 2: that near the end of the Ice Age, When the
1:25:51
Speaker 2: Younger Dryas cataclysm unfolds, it's not an overnight thing. It's
1:25:55
Speaker 2: very bad 12,800 years ago. There's about 1,200 years of horror.
1:26:00
Speaker 2: I don't think the civilization went down in a single
1:26:03
Speaker 2: day and night. I think there were survivors. I think
1:26:06
Speaker 2: bits of it were left. I think their project was
1:26:08
Speaker 2: to restart civilization. And I suggest very strongly that where
1:26:13
Speaker 2: they tried to mount that project was amongst the hunter-gatherers.
1:26:16
Speaker 2: who coexisted in the world with them at that time.
1:26:21
Speaker 2: We ourselves are an advanced civilization, at least that's what
1:26:24
Speaker 2: we call ourselves, and we coexist in the world with hunter-gatherers.
1:26:29
Speaker 2: It's not an odd idea that an advanced civilization and
1:26:31
Speaker 2: hunter-gatherers should coexist. And there is separation between us and
1:26:35
Speaker 2: the Amazonian hunter-gatherers. There are tribes in the Amazon that
1:26:38
Speaker 2: are uncontacted and that we don't know even exist. If
1:26:43
Speaker 2: a catastrophe on the level of the Younger Dryas, were
1:26:47
Speaker 2: to occur today, I don't think that our civilization would
1:26:51
Speaker 2: make it through. We are the spoiled children of the earth.
1:26:56
Speaker 2: We are just used to having everything laid on. You know,
1:26:59
Speaker 2: the supermarket shelves are groaning with food. We can get
1:27:05
Speaker 2: food delivered to our homes. We have roofs over our head.
1:27:07
Speaker 2: We have shelters. We have clothing. Everything is taken for granted.
1:27:10
Speaker 2: I guess you're an exception, but very few people in
1:27:14
Speaker 2: modern Western culture know how to survive. They don't have
1:27:16
Speaker 2: survival skills. They don't know how to hunt. They don't
1:27:19
Speaker 2: know how to gather. They don't know how to grow
1:27:21
Speaker 2: crops because they've handed that responsibility over to others. We
1:27:24
Speaker 2: live in a society that's highly segmented and specialized and
1:27:27
Speaker 2: different people specialize in different things, but nobody has the
1:27:30
Speaker 2: vast general survival skill that a hunter-gatherer has. So in
1:27:34
Speaker 2: a global cataclysm, actually, at first counterintuitively, the people who
1:27:38
Speaker 2: would survive it would be the hunter-gatherers. And an advanced
1:27:41
Speaker 2: civilization would be smart if they were survivors to seek
1:27:45
Speaker 2: refuge amongst hunter-gatherers, to make that the place where they
1:27:49
Speaker 2: might try to restart their civilization. And that's why I
1:27:52
Speaker 2: think that this Australasian DNA signal in the Amazon may
1:27:57
Speaker 2: be part of the evidence for a sort of outreach
1:27:59
Speaker 2: effort that was being made by a lost civilization, seeing
1:28:02
Speaker 2: the disaster coming down on it and realizing that something
1:28:05
Speaker 2: needed to be done.
1:28:06
Speaker 1: Well, it's fascinating to me that the geneticists would rely
1:28:09
Speaker 1: on the archaeologists being that the geneticists have the actual
1:28:12
Speaker 1: DNA they can examine where the archaeologists are piecing things together. Yeah, absolutely.
1:28:17
Speaker 1: Little tiny bits of information over the entire landscape.
1:28:21
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:28:22
Speaker 1: And then you consider how much information they don't have
1:28:24
Speaker 1: access to that's in the ground. Exactly.
1:28:28
Speaker 2: I strongly resist the idea that archaeology is a science.
1:28:31
Speaker 2: I don't think it should be described as a science.
1:28:33
Speaker 1: What do you think it should be described as?
1:28:34
Speaker 2: It's more like a kind of philosophy. It's an attempt
1:28:36
Speaker 2: to interpret the... past based on rather flimsy and limited evidence.
1:28:44
Speaker 2: And what you find in that interpretation is that the
1:28:46
Speaker 2: preconceptions of the individuals involved are being imposed upon the
1:28:50
Speaker 2: evidence which then turns out to support their preconceptions. And
1:28:53
Speaker 2: that's not a scientific way of doing things. A scientific
1:28:56
Speaker 2: way of doing things is testing testing hypotheses and false
1:28:59
Speaker 2: seeking to falsify them and seeing if they, if they,
1:29:01
Speaker 2: if they work out.
1:29:02
Speaker 1: So the problem is drawing these conclusions and then being
1:29:05
Speaker 1: too rigid with these conclusions on the further evidence.
1:29:08
Speaker 2: That's, that's my view that, that, that, that, um, archeology
1:29:12
Speaker 2: has been, has been much too rigid and, and, and
1:29:14
Speaker 2: that there's a, there's a climate of fear in archeology.
1:29:18
Speaker 2: I don't mean to pick particularly on archeologists here. I
1:29:21
Speaker 2: think this is generally true, uh, across other disciplines as well. Um,
1:29:27
Speaker 2: These days, academics are driven by the need to publish
1:29:30
Speaker 2: research papers. That's what they build their careers on. If
1:29:32
Speaker 2: they can get a paper on their bit of research
1:29:35
Speaker 2: published in Nature or the Proceedings of the National Academy
1:29:37
Speaker 2: of Sciences, etc., that's good for their careers. But then
1:29:41
Speaker 2: you confront the gatekeepers in those publications who regard any
1:29:46
Speaker 2: archaeological idea that is not part of the mainstream accepted
1:29:49
Speaker 2: consensus with great suspicion and are most reluctant to publish
1:29:54
Speaker 2: that information.
1:29:58
Speaker 1: Now, what is the mainstream– when archaeologists talk about seafaring humans,
1:30:04
Speaker 1: what do they date that to?
1:30:06
Speaker 2: Well, the great seafaring adventure that is accepted by archaeology
1:30:12
Speaker 2: is called the Polynesian expansion. And it's a remarkable story.
1:30:15
Speaker 2: And that occurs roughly 3,000 to 3,500 years ago. And
1:30:20
Speaker 2: those Polynesians were amazing ocean navigators. They could cross distances
1:30:25
Speaker 2: of thousands of kilometers with pinpoint accuracy. I mean, it's
1:30:29
Speaker 2: not an accident that the Polynesians found Easter Island. Finding
1:30:33
Speaker 2: Easter Island is a really challenging project. Easter Island is 2,000
1:30:38
Speaker 2: miles from the coast of South America. It's 2,000 miles
1:30:41
Speaker 2: from the nearest other island, which is Tahiti. It's just
1:30:43
Speaker 2: a little speck. in the middle of the ocean, but
1:30:46
Speaker 2: the Polynesians found it and settled there and appear to
1:30:49
Speaker 2: have brought a reproductively viable population there and appear to
1:30:52
Speaker 2: have made voyages back and forth. But that was 3000
1:30:56
Speaker 2: to 3500 years ago. That was not 12,800 years ago.
1:31:01
Speaker 2: And this is where archaeology's adamant position that ocean voyaging
1:31:07
Speaker 2: was begun by the Polynesians and that there was no
1:31:10
Speaker 2: major ocean voyages before that, I think, needs to be
1:31:12
Speaker 2: strongly questioned. And it needs to be strongly questioned in
1:31:14
Speaker 2: the light of this DNA evidence from the Amazon rather
1:31:17
Speaker 2: than rejecting the evidence. And attempts should be made to
1:31:20
Speaker 2: consider what that might mean.
1:31:21
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting because we know that the Egyptians had boats.
1:31:25
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:31:25
Speaker 1: And so, I mean, if there were boats 4,500 years ago,
1:31:29
Speaker 1: why do we think that they didn't try them out
1:31:31
Speaker 1: in the ocean? That doesn't make any sense, especially if
1:31:33
Speaker 1: they existed a thousand years prior, which is also possible.
1:31:36
Speaker 2: Archaeologists wouldn't argue that the Egyptians had boats, but that
1:31:40
Speaker 2: is still within the framework of accepted history. It's the
1:31:44
Speaker 2: notion of a global navigating culture in the Ice Age
1:31:49
Speaker 2: that archaeologists can't swallow. It's a subject that I've kept
1:31:53
Speaker 2: on coming up against over a number of years i
1:31:55
Speaker 2: think the best evidence for it is ancient maps which
1:31:59
Speaker 2: show the world as it looked during the last ice
1:32:02
Speaker 2: age i first explored this in fingerprints of the gods
1:32:04
Speaker 2: and i've touched on the mystery again and i have
1:32:06
Speaker 2: an appendix on the subject in in in this book
1:32:09
Speaker 2: because i think these are very important we're talking about
1:32:11
Speaker 2: maps that were drawn roughly between the 1300s and the
1:32:14
Speaker 2: 1700s in other words in relatively recent history However, these
1:32:21
Speaker 2: maps were largely based on much older source maps, which
1:32:26
Speaker 2: they copied. And we can say that for sure, because
1:32:29
Speaker 2: one of the famous maps is the Piri Reis map,
1:32:31
Speaker 2: which was created by a Turkish admiral called Piri Reis
1:32:34
Speaker 2: in the year 1513. Actually, only a corner of his
1:32:37
Speaker 2: map has survived. It was originally a world map. We
1:32:40
Speaker 2: now just have a bit that shows the east coast
1:32:42
Speaker 2: of South America and North America and the west coast
1:32:45
Speaker 2: of Africa. Piri Reis writes in that map that it
1:32:49
Speaker 2: is in his own handwriting that he based it on
1:32:51
Speaker 2: more than 100 older source maps, some of which had
1:32:55
Speaker 2: come from the Library of Alexandria. In other words, when
1:33:00
Speaker 2: the Library of Alexandria had been destroyed in the 4th
1:33:03
Speaker 2: century AD or whenever it was, some of its contents
1:33:05
Speaker 2: had been rescued and brought to Constantinople, which became the
1:33:08
Speaker 2: Turkish capital, and Piri Reis had access to those maps,
1:33:11
Speaker 2: and he incorporated information from those maps on his maps,
1:33:15
Speaker 2: as well as incorporating more recent navigational information. And this
1:33:19
Speaker 2: is one of a whole category of maps which are
1:33:22
Speaker 2: extremely hard to explain. All of them based on older
1:33:25
Speaker 2: source maps now lost. All of them incorporating extremely precise
1:33:30
Speaker 2: relative longitudes and latitudes. Latitude is not that difficult a
1:33:34
Speaker 2: technological feat. But longitude is a difficult technological feat. Longitude
1:33:39
Speaker 2: involves a chronometer. It involves knowing the time at the
1:33:42
Speaker 2: place you began your voyage and the local noon as well.
1:33:45
Speaker 2: And calculating the difference between them. You need a chronometer.
1:33:48
Speaker 2: that will keep accurate time at sea with the motions
1:33:52
Speaker 2: of a ship. And it's just a plain fact that
1:33:53
Speaker 2: our civilization did not invent such a chronometer until the
1:33:57
Speaker 2: late 18th century. Before that, we didn't know what longitude
1:34:02
Speaker 2: we were at, and ships were constantly sailing unexpectedly into
1:34:05
Speaker 2: coastlines that they thought were hundreds of miles further away.
1:34:08
Speaker 2: So the discovery of the technique to do longitude was
1:34:11
Speaker 2: a major civilizational advance. Its presence in maps based on
1:34:16
Speaker 2: much older source maps that actually show the world as
1:34:18
Speaker 2: it looks during the last Ice Age, suggests that somebody
1:34:21
Speaker 2: during the last Ice Age was mapping the world and
1:34:24
Speaker 2: had mastered the technique of calculating longitude. Classic example of
1:34:30
Speaker 2: these maps, and I make a point of this, is
1:34:34
Speaker 2: what's called the Pinkerton World Map, which was drawn in
1:34:38
Speaker 2: the year 1818. And it was based on the latest
1:34:42
Speaker 2: navigational information at that time. I reproduced that map in
1:34:46
Speaker 2: the book. What's missing from the map, entirely missing, is Antarctica.
1:34:50
Speaker 2: There's just a hole at the bottom of the world.
1:34:53
Speaker 2: There's nothing there. And the reason there's nothing there, there's
1:34:58
Speaker 2: another Pinkerton map that shows that. The reason that you
1:35:05
Speaker 2: need to find one that's centered on Antarctica. The reason
1:35:09
Speaker 2: that Antarctica is not there is that our civilization hadn't
1:35:12
Speaker 2: discovered Antarctica in 1818. So they couldn't authentically put it
1:35:16
Speaker 2: on a map in 1818. Actually, we discovered it in 1819,
1:35:21
Speaker 2: and that's when it starts appearing on modern maps. The
1:35:24
Speaker 2: problem is that Antarctica appears repeatedly on these much older maps,
1:35:30
Speaker 2: and it appears in the right place and a bit
1:35:33
Speaker 2: bigger than it is today, but very much as it
1:35:35
Speaker 2: looked during the last ice age. So what all of
1:35:37
Speaker 2: this suggests to me is that the world was mapped
1:35:40
Speaker 2: and explored by a global seafaring culture with a level
1:35:43
Speaker 2: of technology that was at least equivalent to ours at
1:35:46
Speaker 2: the end of the 18th century during the Ice Age.
1:35:49
Speaker 1: Wasn't there also a map of Greenland that showed it
1:35:52
Speaker 1: underneath the ice? Yes, there are.
1:35:54
Speaker 2: And another intriguing thing, I mentioned the Piri Reis map
1:35:59
Speaker 2: just now. Shown on the Piri Reis map lying off
1:36:02
Speaker 2: the east coast of North America is a large island
1:36:06
Speaker 2: that with a row of megaliths, like a road of megaliths,
1:36:09
Speaker 2: running up the middle of it. That island is in
1:36:13
Speaker 2: the exact place of the Grand Bahama Banks. And... Is
1:36:17
Speaker 2: it on?
1:36:18
Speaker 1: Is it on this one? Yeah, it is.
1:36:21
Speaker 2: But can I point it out to you?
1:36:23
Speaker 1: Sure, sure. It's there.
1:36:26
Speaker 2: That's right there. Okay, this thing.
1:36:27
Speaker 1: That one.
1:36:28
Speaker 3: Okay.
1:36:28
Speaker 1: Right here.
1:36:29
Speaker 2: That's great that you can bring this up, Jeremy.
1:36:31
Speaker 1: That's really good, isn't it?
1:36:32
Speaker 2: So this island is sitting there off the southeast coast
1:36:35
Speaker 2: of North America.
1:36:36
Speaker 1: Look at the way they used to draw things back
1:36:38
Speaker 1: then too.
1:36:38
Speaker 2: And what you see running down the middle of it
1:36:41
Speaker 2: is this road-like feature of a megalith.
1:36:44
Speaker 1: Yes, I see. Right there, yeah.
1:36:47
Speaker 2: He's here. Now the thing is … It was a
1:36:49
Speaker 2: long period of my life when I did a lot
1:36:51
Speaker 2: of scuba diving and I was looking at underwater structures.
1:36:54
Speaker 2: And one of the sites I dived on was the
1:36:56
Speaker 2: Bimini Road, which is in the Grand Bahama Banks. And
1:37:00
Speaker 2: the Bimini Road is exactly where that island is. And
1:37:03
Speaker 2: here's the issue. I don't care whether the Bimini Road
1:37:06
Speaker 2: is natural or man-made. For me, the mystery is that
1:37:09
Speaker 2: it is shown above water on that map. And the
1:37:12
Speaker 2: last time it was above water was thousands and thousands
1:37:15
Speaker 2: of years ago. So for me, this is all evidence
1:37:17
Speaker 2: that That we shouldn't dismiss the possibility that our ancestors
1:37:21
Speaker 2: had achieved a level of technology where they could explore
1:37:23
Speaker 2: and map the world's oceans. We shouldn't dismiss that.
1:37:26
Speaker 1: There it is right there. So we don't know what
1:37:27
Speaker 1: those stones are or how they were created, but boy,
1:37:31
Speaker 1: do they look artificial.
1:37:32
Speaker 2: That's Yonaguni in Japan we're looking at now.
1:37:35
Speaker 1: Go back to that image, Jimmy, the last image that
1:37:37
Speaker 1: we were just looking at. Look at that. I mean,
1:37:38
Speaker 1: that looks so man-made.
1:37:40
Speaker 2: And you can see that it's rather like the pattern
1:37:43
Speaker 2: that's shown on the island in the map.
1:37:45
Speaker 1: How deep is that today?
1:37:46
Speaker 2: Oh, it's not very deep. It's about 20 feet.
1:37:48
Speaker 1: But we think that that was above water at some
1:37:50
Speaker 1: point in history?
1:37:51
Speaker 2: It was definitely above water during the last ice age.
1:37:54
Speaker 2: When it finally went underwater may have been as late
1:37:57
Speaker 2: as 8,000 or 9,000 years ago.
1:37:58
Speaker 1: Is there anything else compelling that's in the immediate area
1:38:00
Speaker 1: that seems to indicate that there was some sort of
1:38:02
Speaker 1: a man-made structure?
1:38:03
Speaker 2: Well, nobody's looked for it. And the whole effort of
1:38:06
Speaker 2: archaeology has been to dismiss the significance of the Bimini Road.
1:38:09
Speaker 1: How would they dismiss that?
1:38:10
Speaker 2: Well, they say it's totally natural.
1:38:13
Speaker 1: Come on! Is it? Go back to that image again.
1:38:16
Speaker 2: This is the argument.
1:38:18
Speaker 1: Go back to that image that we just saw. Are
1:38:21
Speaker 1: you sure?
1:38:22
Speaker 2: As somebody who spent a lot of time diving on
1:38:24
Speaker 2: the Bimini Road, I can tell you I absolutely do
1:38:26
Speaker 2: not think it's natural. I think it's a man-made structure.
1:38:28
Speaker 2: But the argument is that it's a kind of beach
1:38:30
Speaker 2: rock that forms in these blocky formations.
1:38:33
Speaker 1: Does it?
1:38:33
Speaker 2: Yes, beach rock does form in blocky formations. But here
1:38:36
Speaker 2: I believe that the beach rock has been used as
1:38:38
Speaker 2: a construction material. But I repeat, the key issue is
1:38:42
Speaker 2: not whether the Bimini Road is man-made or not. The
1:38:46
Speaker 2: key issue is that it features on a map above water.
1:38:49
Speaker 2: And that is a dating project. That tells us that
1:38:52
Speaker 2: somebody was mapping that bit of the world when it
1:38:55
Speaker 2: was above water. And that takes us back a very
1:38:58
Speaker 2: long way into the past.
1:38:59
Speaker 1: The one that you just pulled up. Yeah, look at
1:39:01
Speaker 1: that one.
1:39:01
Speaker 2: That's a stunning place. It's an amazing sight.
1:39:04
Speaker 1: It's just like the odds of that being in that
1:39:07
Speaker 1: order with those uniformly sized rocks. How long is that?
1:39:11
Speaker 2: Oh, hundreds of feet. It's a huge, it's actually shaped
1:39:14
Speaker 2: like the letter J. It's a giant underwater structure. It's really,
1:39:17
Speaker 2: really an enormous thing and very, very beautiful to dive on.
1:39:20
Speaker 2: And there's lots of very gentle, sweet nurse sharks down
1:39:22
Speaker 2: there that you can play with.
1:39:23
Speaker 1: So that looks much more like random.
1:39:26
Speaker 2: That's more random. And bits of it do look more random.
1:39:28
Speaker 2: And bits of it look highly constructed. I would not
1:39:31
Speaker 2: seek to.
1:39:34
Speaker 2: To claim that the Bimini Road is absolutely man-made. My
1:39:37
Speaker 2: claim about the Bimini Road is it's really fucking weird
1:39:40
Speaker 2: that it appears on a map above water, a map
1:39:43
Speaker 2: that was drawn in 1513 based on older source maps.
1:39:46
Speaker 1: Now, when they found that ancient Greek uh computer thing
1:39:51
Speaker 1: and what is that called.
1:39:52
Speaker 2: The anti-kythera mechanism yes yeah again that testifies to a
1:39:56
Speaker 2: lost navigational skill that yes that we have not taken account.
1:40:00
Speaker 1: Of incredibly complex and it took a long time for
1:40:03
Speaker 1: them to figure out what that even is what do
1:40:05
Speaker 1: they think that is now.
1:40:08
Speaker 2: It tracks the movements of the planets. It's a navigational device.
1:40:11
Speaker 2: It's a geared, cogged system that allows you to track
1:40:16
Speaker 2: the passage of time and figure out where you are.
1:40:18
Speaker 2: It's some kind of navigational device. It's not fully understood.
1:40:21
Speaker 1: And how old is that?
1:40:22
Speaker 2: I think that goes back to Greek times. I'm guessing
1:40:25
Speaker 2: here because the Greek times are not of great interest
1:40:28
Speaker 2: to me, but I'm thinking around about 500 BC.
1:40:31
Speaker 1: So at least 2000 years old, 2000 plus. And we
1:40:35
Speaker 1: know that there had to be more than one of
1:40:38
Speaker 1: these things.
1:40:38
Speaker 2: Yes. You can't, you can't have something like that without,
1:40:42
Speaker 2: without a vast effort behind it. Human beings were working
1:40:46
Speaker 2: on creating this geared and cogged machinery and that reflected
1:40:51
Speaker 2: the patterns in the sky.
1:40:51
Speaker 1: Oh, is that a recreation of it?
1:40:52
Speaker 2: That's a recreation.
1:40:53
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah. Can you buy one of those? It looks
1:40:58
Speaker 1: like you can buy that. Dude, bookmark that. We need
1:41:02
Speaker 1: one right there, right next to the plastic cells.
1:41:05
Speaker 2: So such a thing is a cultural artifact which doesn't
1:41:08
Speaker 2: just appear out of nowhere. It has to have a context.
1:41:10
Speaker 2: It has to have a background. And again, my suggestion
1:41:14
Speaker 2: would be perhaps a secret technology. It's very odd that
1:41:19
Speaker 2: Very few of these have been found and it may
1:41:21
Speaker 2: be that ship owners and navigators in Greek times were
1:41:25
Speaker 2: extremely careful about who they shared this technology with. Of course.
1:41:29
Speaker 2: It may have been as top secret as nuclear power
1:41:33
Speaker 2: is in our world today.
1:41:35
Speaker 1: That makes sense.
1:41:36
Speaker 2: But the fact is that then we have to– it exists.
1:41:40
Speaker 1: It's real.
1:41:41
Speaker 2: It's there. And then we must consider technology. What's behind it?
1:41:45
Speaker 2: What led to that? Is that just the latest manifestation
1:41:48
Speaker 2: of something that goes much more deeply back into human culture?
1:41:53
Speaker 2: And I think that is. I suppose my main message
1:41:56
Speaker 2: is that we have a so far untold backstory, that
1:42:00
Speaker 2: we're concentrating entirely on the front story. And the backstory
1:42:04
Speaker 2: is missing, very largely missing from the picture. And what
1:42:07
Speaker 2: I've tried to do is to fill in bits of
1:42:08
Speaker 2: the backstory.
1:42:09
Speaker 1: Do you have anything in this book about the Olmecs?
1:42:12
Speaker 2: No, not really. I mentioned them briefly. I explored the
1:42:18
Speaker 2: Olmec mystery in considerable depth.
1:42:21
Speaker 1: Can you explain that to people that maybe haven't heard?
1:42:23
Speaker 2: In Fingerprints of the Gods.
1:42:24
Speaker 1: Yes.
1:42:25
Speaker 2: So, it's considered to be the earliest high culture of
1:42:28
Speaker 2: Central America. Everybody's heard about the Aztecs. Everybody's heard about
1:42:33
Speaker 2: the Maya. But before the Aztecs and before the Maya
1:42:36
Speaker 2: … There were a culture who are referred to as
1:42:40
Speaker 2: the Olmecs. Again, we don't know what they called themselves.
1:42:45
Speaker 2: That's what the Aztecs called them. They called them the Olmecs.
1:42:47
Speaker 2: It means the rubber people because they– a rubber-producing area
1:42:51
Speaker 2: of Mexico. They worked in giant megalithic constructions. They're most
1:42:58
Speaker 2: famous for– is these huge carved human heads, which can
1:43:03
Speaker 2: be on a scale of up to 20 to 25
1:43:05
Speaker 2: tons in weight, and which have curious features, which have
1:43:10
Speaker 2: been interpreted variously as Polynesian, African, don't look like classic
1:43:16
Speaker 2: Native American features. But one of the things I've realized
1:43:21
Speaker 2: is that there is no classic Native American feature, that
1:43:24
Speaker 2: Native Americans are have a very complex genetic story with
1:43:29
Speaker 2: very many different elements brought into it. And we shouldn't
1:43:32
Speaker 2: be necessarily surprised by the supposedly non-Native American look of
1:43:37
Speaker 2: these armachets.
1:43:38
Speaker 1: What do we think those helmets were that they were wearing?
1:43:41
Speaker 2: Nobody knows because no physical example of such a helmet
1:43:44
Speaker 2: has ever been found, just like no physical example of
1:43:47
Speaker 2: an Egyptian pharaoh's crown has ever been found. All we
1:43:50
Speaker 2: see is the stone the stone reproductions of them.
1:43:53
Speaker 1: Do they universally wear these helmets in these stone reproductions?
1:43:56
Speaker 2: They pretty much all wear these helmets in the Olmec stonework.
1:44:00
Speaker 2: There's another fascinating figure from La Venta, one of the
1:44:06
Speaker 2: Olmec sites, which is the earliest ever image of a
1:44:10
Speaker 2: plumed or feathered serpent. The feathered serpent is a famous
1:44:14
Speaker 2: icon in Central America. Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl, who's the god of peace,
1:44:19
Speaker 2: the bringer of civilization. who is associated, for example, with
1:44:23
Speaker 2: the famous pyramid of Kukulkan, which is just another name
1:44:27
Speaker 2: for Quetzalcoatl, Chichen Itza, where on the spring equinox, a
1:44:31
Speaker 2: shadow effect creates the image of a serpent coiling down
1:44:35
Speaker 2: the stairway and joining with the carved head of the serpent.
1:44:38
Speaker 2: There's the image from La Venta. That's the earliest image
1:44:41
Speaker 2: of a plumed serpent. in the Americas. And sitting in
1:44:45
Speaker 2: the middle of it, and I made a big deal
1:44:47
Speaker 2: out of this because I think it is a big
1:44:48
Speaker 2: deal in Magicians of the Gods, sitting in the middle
1:44:50
Speaker 2: of it is this human figure who's holding this strange
1:44:54
Speaker 2: bag in his hand. And it's just a fact that
1:44:58
Speaker 2: those identical bags are found in ancient Sumer in the
1:45:01
Speaker 2: hands of individuals who were considered to be civilization bringers.
1:45:05
Speaker 2: And they also show up on Pillar 43 at Gobekli Tepe.
1:45:10
Speaker 2: I call them man bags. And in that case at
1:45:12
Speaker 2: Gobekli Tepe, we know they're at least 11,600 years old.
1:45:15
Speaker 2: So I wonder if we're looking at a sort of
1:45:16
Speaker 2: badge of office of a group of civilizers who traveled
1:45:19
Speaker 2: around the world trying to bring back to life a
1:45:21
Speaker 2: lost civilization and pass down I deploy a concept in
1:45:25
Speaker 2: this book that I actually got from Richard Dawkins. Richard
1:45:29
Speaker 2: Dawkins is the author of the book called The Selfish Gene.
1:45:32
Speaker 2: And he's not one of my favorite people because he's
1:45:35
Speaker 2: a materialist reductionist and he doesn't believe in spirit or
1:45:39
Speaker 2: any mystery in life that we're just accidents of chemistry
1:45:41
Speaker 2: and biology.
1:45:42
Speaker 1: He also has no psychedelic experience.
1:45:44
Speaker 2: And he said– no, I did challenge him at a
1:45:46
Speaker 2: public event to go have a dozen sessions of ayahuasca.
1:45:49
Speaker 1: Just take acid once.
1:45:50
Speaker 2: Oh, just once would be enough. But he has an
1:45:53
Speaker 2: excellent out because– and sadly, he's had a stroke. So
1:45:56
Speaker 2: he has a good excuse for not doing that. But
1:45:59
Speaker 2: he's a clever man. And one of his concepts that
1:46:01
Speaker 2: he's introduced into human culture is the concept of the
1:46:04
Speaker 2: meme concept. We're all, I think, familiar with that word.
1:46:07
Speaker 2: Genes are physical reproductive mechanisms. They reproduce themselves down the generations.
1:46:13
Speaker 2: They replicate. They multiply. They're passed on from one individual
1:46:16
Speaker 2: to another. Memes are cultural objects, cultural ideas that are
1:46:20
Speaker 2: passed on and replicate and reproduce themselves. And what I
1:46:23
Speaker 2: see right across the Americas and right across the old
1:46:27
Speaker 2: world as well is a set of memes that involve
1:46:30
Speaker 2: the sky, that involve the ground, that involve geometry and
1:46:34
Speaker 2: that involve notions of life after death. And I think
1:46:38
Speaker 2: the only way to explain these is that they have
1:46:40
Speaker 2: been inherited from an earlier culture that was in some
1:46:43
Speaker 2: way connected with the ancestors of all of these cultures.
1:46:48
Speaker 2: I think that's what we're looking at in the Amazon.
1:46:49
Speaker 2: We're looking at a meme which was deliberately created. Once
1:46:53
Speaker 2: you mobilize a population to start creating huge geometrical structures,
1:46:58
Speaker 2: you are also facilitating many other possibilities that an organized
1:47:02
Speaker 2: population allows. I think that's what happened at Gobekli Tepe.
1:47:05
Speaker 2: I think that's why they created the megalithic site there,
1:47:08
Speaker 2: to mobilize the local population of hunter-gatherers, to give them
1:47:12
Speaker 2: a project to do, to engage them, and in the
1:47:14
Speaker 2: process of engaging them, to teach them the skills of agriculture,
1:47:18
Speaker 2: which are fundamental to any concept of civilization. And it's
1:47:23
Speaker 2: weird the way agriculture just suddenly appears in Gobekli Tepe.
1:47:28
Speaker 2: And there's huge agricultural mysteries in the Amazon as well.
1:47:33
Speaker 2: May I share a couple of those mysteries with you?
1:47:35
Speaker 1: Before you do that, though, can you pull up that
1:47:37
Speaker 1: image from Gobekli Tepe of Pillar.
1:47:40
Speaker 2: 43 in Enclosure D?
1:47:43
Speaker 1: I would like to see that guy holding that bag.
1:47:46
Speaker 1: That is really fascinating.
1:47:48
Speaker 2: The bags are in a row along the top of
1:47:50
Speaker 2: the pillar. It's Pillar 43 in Enclosure D at Gobekli Tepe.
1:47:57
Speaker 1: Is there an image of that online that's available? Okay,
1:47:59
Speaker 1: here we go. Yeah, there's the bags.
1:48:01
Speaker 2: So there's the bags in a row along the top.
1:48:05
Speaker 2: It's the same sort of square-shaped bag with a curved
1:48:07
Speaker 2: handle that you find on the earliest image of the
1:48:10
Speaker 2: feathered serpent. No, you have to go above that, Jamie.
1:48:16
Speaker 2: Just a little bit higher up the pillar.
1:48:17
Speaker 1: Those bags right at the top there.
1:48:20
Speaker 2: It's odd that this symbol crops up in many different
1:48:23
Speaker 2: cultures and tends to be associated with some kind of.
1:48:25
Speaker 1: … What's the mainstream interpretation of those bags?
1:48:27
Speaker 2: There is no mainstream interpretation of those bags. That's my
1:48:30
Speaker 2: interpretation of those bags, which I freely confess. That's how
1:48:35
Speaker 2: I read them. I'm intrigued by the anomaly that the
1:48:37
Speaker 2: similar bag turns up in the hands of the Quetzalcoatl
1:48:40
Speaker 2: figure and turns up in Mesopotamia repeatedly. in the hands
1:48:44
Speaker 2: of the individual so-called the Apkallu, the magicians of the gods,
1:48:48
Speaker 2: the bringers of civilization.
1:48:50
Speaker 1: And the plumed serpent, Quetzalcoatl, it's an Aztec god, right?
1:48:54
Speaker 2: Quetzalcoatl is an Aztec god, but the Aztecs acquired him
1:48:59
Speaker 2: from earlier cultures. The very fact that an image of
1:49:01
Speaker 2: the plumed serpent is given such priority in Olmec culture
1:49:05
Speaker 2: tells us that that system of ideas was present during
1:49:07
Speaker 2: Olmec times. which takes us back at least to 1500 BC,
1:49:13
Speaker 2: probably quite a bit earlier than that, whereas the Aztecs
1:49:15
Speaker 2: are 1500 AD, so there's 3,000 years between the Aztecs
1:49:19
Speaker 2: and the Olmecs, and that same system of ideas is
1:49:21
Speaker 2: running through all of those cultures.
1:49:23
Speaker 1: And the Mayans had a name for it as well?
1:49:25
Speaker 2: Kukulkan.
1:49:26
Speaker 1: And what do you think that plume serpent was?
1:49:30
Speaker 2: I think it's very clear from the accounts that have
1:49:33
Speaker 2: survived that what he's associated with are two things in particular.
1:49:38
Speaker 2: One of them, he's a god of peace. He's not
1:49:40
Speaker 2: a war god. And the other thing that he's primarily
1:49:45
Speaker 2: about is giving the gifts of civilization. This is what
1:49:49
Speaker 2: you human beings need to know in order to move
1:49:53
Speaker 2: on to the next level. That is the function and
1:49:56
Speaker 2: the role of Quetzalcoatl. And there are very similar– we
1:50:01
Speaker 2: could refer to them as civilizing heroes– who are found
1:50:04
Speaker 2: in other cultures and other locations. Osiris in Egypt plays
1:50:08
Speaker 2: that role as a bringer of civilization. There's hardly a
1:50:12
Speaker 2: culture in the ancient world that doesn't remember a time
1:50:15
Speaker 2: far back in remote prehistory when some kind of supernaturals
1:50:21
Speaker 2: or advanced human beings, and I prefer the latter, that
1:50:24
Speaker 2: some kind of advanced human beings were involved in a
1:50:28
Speaker 2: project to disseminate civilization. I mentioned the Tucano in the Amazon,
1:50:34
Speaker 2: who are big drinkers of ayahuasca. The Tucano have a
1:50:40
Speaker 2: fascinating origin myth. They say that their origin myth states
1:50:45
Speaker 2: specifically that their ancestors were brought to the Amazon. They
1:50:49
Speaker 2: were brought to the Amazon by a group of supernaturals
1:50:52
Speaker 2: who included the daughter of the sun and an individual
1:50:56
Speaker 2: called the helmsman who steered the serpent canoe. in which
1:51:00
Speaker 2: this settlement mission in the Amazon was performed. And what
1:51:03
Speaker 2: these so-called supernaturals did was they brought the ancestors of
1:51:07
Speaker 2: the Tucano to the Amazon and they showed them the
1:51:09
Speaker 2: best places to settle, the best places where they might
1:51:12
Speaker 2: find hunting, the best places where they might create a village,
1:51:15
Speaker 2: the best places for agriculture. And then they left, but
1:51:18
Speaker 2: they left them behind one gift. And that gift was ayahuasca.
1:51:23
Speaker 2: That's the story of the origin myth of the Tucano.
1:51:26
Speaker 2: And it sounds to me, Rather like the other side
1:51:29
Speaker 2: of the story of that DNA signal in the Amazon,
1:51:32
Speaker 2: that a group of people were deliberately settled in the
1:51:36
Speaker 2: Amazon by human beings who they chose to regard as supernaturals.
1:51:42
Speaker 2: That's what makes sense of it to me.
1:51:44
Speaker 1: When I interrupted you to talk about Quetzalcoatl, what were
1:51:47
Speaker 1: you about to say?
1:51:48
Speaker 2: I can't remember. I'm in California. I've been smoking lots
1:51:51
Speaker 2: of dope.
1:51:54
Speaker 1: We were talking about different things in the Amazon. Should
1:51:56
Speaker 1: we rewind and figure out what we said? Yeah, the
1:51:58
Speaker 1: serpent guy you were talking about. Before Quetzalcoatl, before that.
1:52:03
Speaker 1: I have another question. The Olmecs, you were talking about
1:52:06
Speaker 1: the genetics of these people that live in Native Americans.
1:52:11
Speaker 1: They vary widely. But the Olmecs seem to have very
1:52:15
Speaker 1: similar features, the thick lips, the wide noses. Why do
1:52:18
Speaker 1: we think that is?
1:52:19
Speaker 2: Well, this is part of a– A curious mystery that
1:52:24
Speaker 2: is not unconnected to the genetic mystery. It's been known
1:52:28
Speaker 2: by archaeologists for quite a long time that there are
1:52:31
Speaker 2: anomalous skulls in parts of Brazil, which appear to show
1:52:39
Speaker 2: very strongly Polynesian or African features, very much like the
1:52:44
Speaker 2: features that we see on the Olmec heads. And a
1:52:48
Speaker 2: number of archaeologists who got into trouble with their colleagues
1:52:51
Speaker 2: for this have used that to argue many years ago, 30,
1:52:54
Speaker 2: 40 years ago, that the settlement story of the Americas
1:52:58
Speaker 2: is much more complicated than we've realized. And what the
1:53:05
Speaker 2: DNA is doing is it's telling us that there was
1:53:09
Speaker 2: something really weird happened with settlement. You see, what happened
1:53:14
Speaker 2: with those– African or Polynesian looking skulls was that they
1:53:19
Speaker 2: were tested for DNA when DNA technology was not as
1:53:24
Speaker 2: advanced as it is today and what that DNA showed
1:53:28
Speaker 2: was that they were more closely related to modern Native
1:53:31
Speaker 2: Americans than they are to any other people in the
1:53:34
Speaker 2: world so the notion that there was some connection with
1:53:36
Speaker 2: Polynesia or Africa was dismissed but now that we have
1:53:41
Speaker 2: very firm evidence of an Australasian genetic signal Australian Aborigines,
1:53:48
Speaker 2: Papua New Guinea, Melanesians, with those kind of features. Now
1:53:51
Speaker 2: that we have the genetic evidence that that is found
1:53:53
Speaker 2: in the Amazon, we have to go back to that
1:53:55
Speaker 2: old evidence and reconsider it.
1:53:57
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, I would love to find out what that is.
1:54:01
Speaker 1: They've always fascinated me. The Olmecs, it's always been such
1:54:05
Speaker 1: a strange image, the large heads with the helmets on
1:54:09
Speaker 1: them and how Did they universally look like that?
1:54:13
Speaker 2: All of the features are very similar.
1:54:15
Speaker 1: Wow.
1:54:16
Speaker 2: Very similar.
1:54:16
Speaker 1: And always with the helmets.
1:54:18
Speaker 2: And almost always. I won't claim that every single Olmec
1:54:21
Speaker 2: head has a helmet of it because I think I've
1:54:23
Speaker 2: seen one that didn't. It's quite a while ago since I...
1:54:26
Speaker 2: explored the Olmec area. But what's fascinating about them is
1:54:29
Speaker 2: they are supposedly the first high civilization of Central America,
1:54:33
Speaker 2: that they create structures on a massive scale, that you
1:54:36
Speaker 2: can see connections between them and the later Maya. That
1:54:40
Speaker 2: whole mystery of the Mayan calendar was clearly inherited from
1:54:43
Speaker 2: the Olmecs. It wasn't something the Maya made up. The
1:54:45
Speaker 2: Olmecs used that same symbolism. So the Mayan calendar is
1:54:49
Speaker 2: actually an Olmec calendar. And if we then consider the
1:54:52
Speaker 2: possibility that the Olmecs may just be the latest, the
1:54:56
Speaker 2: earliest surviving manifestation of that calendar. It could go back
1:54:59
Speaker 2: much further than that.
1:55:01
Speaker 1: Do you plan on having any debates with people that
1:55:04
Speaker 1: oppose these ideas?
1:55:06
Speaker 2: Well, it was interesting on your very show, Joe, to
1:55:10
Speaker 2: have the debate that involved Michael Shermer, who's the editor
1:55:14
Speaker 2: of the Skeptic magazine, and some colleague of his who
1:55:18
Speaker 2: came in online, who I got a bit annoyed with,
1:55:23
Speaker 2: and myself and my great friend and colleague, the genius
1:55:28
Speaker 2: Randall Carlson. And I felt that that was a very
1:55:33
Speaker 2: useful debate. I felt that it's possibly the first time
1:55:37
Speaker 2: that those of us on the alternative side of the
1:55:40
Speaker 2: argument about history we're given an opportunity really to put
1:55:44
Speaker 2: our evidence forward and to confront so-called skeptics. Well, so-called,
1:55:49
Speaker 2: that's what he calls himself, Michael Shermer, with this evidence.
1:55:53
Speaker 2: And obviously I'm biased, but I don't feel that he
1:55:58
Speaker 2: fielded the situation particularly well. I don't think mainstream archaeology
1:56:02
Speaker 2: came out of that looking really good. I think it
1:56:04
Speaker 2: came out of that looking rather ignorant and uninformed. And
1:56:10
Speaker 2: a man like Michael Shermer, who is a professional skeptic,
1:56:14
Speaker 2: cannot begin to match the knowledge of a man like
1:56:17
Speaker 2: Randall Carson, who has devoted his whole life to walking
1:56:20
Speaker 2: the walk of the geology of the end of the
1:56:23
Speaker 2: Ice Age in North America. And that showed on that debate.
1:56:28
Speaker 2: So I think the debate was worth doing. I think
1:56:31
Speaker 2: it showed that the alternative side isn't just wishy-washy stuff
1:56:35
Speaker 2: out there on the fringes of things, that there are
1:56:36
Speaker 2: those of us working in this field who are using
1:56:39
Speaker 2: really solid information and who our project is to rewrite history.
1:56:44
Speaker 2: And we're not going to do that with slight information.
1:56:46
Speaker 2: It has to be solid information. I think we have
1:56:48
Speaker 2: the opportunity on your show to say that that solid
1:56:52
Speaker 2: information is there. I'm not claiming it was a complete
1:56:56
Speaker 2: victory for the alternative side. Michael Sherm is a smart guy.
1:56:59
Speaker 2: And he put forward some good arguments too. And there
1:57:02
Speaker 2: were constructive aspects of that debate, which I appreciated. I'd
1:57:05
Speaker 2: like to see much more engagement and much more positive approach.
1:57:08
Speaker 2: I wish the skeptics– welcome to their skepticism, but I
1:57:12
Speaker 2: wish they'd be less hateful, less full of derision, less despising.
1:57:17
Speaker 1: Well, they're so defensive with their ideas.
1:57:19
Speaker 2: And so defensive with their ideas when the possibility is
1:57:22
Speaker 2: there for a constructive debate. debate you know.
1:57:26
Speaker 1: Well what's interesting to me is that as this evidence
1:57:30
Speaker 1: piles up and it seems to be continuing to pile
1:57:32
Speaker 1: up as more like the the these impact sites and
1:57:37
Speaker 1: more of this uh ancient civilization material gets unearthed it's
1:57:42
Speaker 1: almost insurmountable.
1:57:44
Speaker 2: Yeah it's almost and this is how this is how
1:57:46
Speaker 2: paradigms shift i mean everybody's familiar with the concept of
1:57:49
Speaker 2: a paradigm shift and and there's a book called the
1:57:52
Speaker 2: structure of scientific revolutions by thomas coon which outlines the
1:57:55
Speaker 2: What a paradigm shift is where an established model in
1:58:00
Speaker 2: some discipline of science that has been in control of
1:58:02
Speaker 2: people's thinking for a very long time suddenly falls apart.
1:58:06
Speaker 2: And it doesn't fall apart suddenly. What happens is that
1:58:09
Speaker 2: there's an accumulation. of evidence which that model cannot explain.
1:58:13
Speaker 2: That paradigm cannot explain it. It seemed like a great
1:58:16
Speaker 2: paradigm at one point, but then it doesn't explain this.
1:58:19
Speaker 2: And then it doesn't explain that. Like the paradigm that
1:58:22
Speaker 2: says that megalithic architecture is only 6,000 years old and
1:58:25
Speaker 2: that the first megalithic architecture was in Malta. That can't
1:58:28
Speaker 2: explain the massive megalithic site of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey 5,500
1:58:32
Speaker 2: years before that. It's evidence like that, the slow accumulation
1:58:36
Speaker 2: of evidence that the existing system cannot explain, that at
1:58:39
Speaker 2: an eventual point, no matter how strongly the advocates of
1:58:43
Speaker 2: the existing system hold onto it, no matter how determined
1:58:46
Speaker 2: they are in their defense, no matter what dirty tricks
1:58:50
Speaker 2: they may choose to deploy to undermine their opponents, sooner
1:58:53
Speaker 2: or later the evidence overwhelms them and the paradigm goes
1:58:56
Speaker 2: down and you have a new way of thinking. And
1:58:59
Speaker 2: that is the story of science. And it is a
1:59:02
Speaker 2: story that I think we're at a tipping point in
1:59:05
Speaker 2: our understanding of the past of the human species. I
1:59:07
Speaker 2: am not saying that I am 100% right. I believe
1:59:11
Speaker 2: that what I'm doing that's worthwhile is I'm asking questions
1:59:14
Speaker 2: about the past that haven't been asked enough. I'm putting
1:59:18
Speaker 2: archaeologists on the spot and demanding that they explain themselves.
1:59:22
Speaker 2: I don't claim that I'm right. I'm offering an alternative
1:59:25
Speaker 2: theory and my objective is to get people to think
1:59:28
Speaker 2: for themselves, to think about this stuff and not to
1:59:31
Speaker 2: accept the voice of authority as the sole medium of truth.
1:59:36
Speaker 2: That's what I've tried to do.
1:59:38
Speaker 1: Have you had any archaeologists review any of this work
1:59:43
Speaker 1: and change their opinions?
1:59:44
Speaker 2: No, I haven't. But what I have found, and I
1:59:49
Speaker 2: found it interestingly during the research trips for America before,
1:59:54
Speaker 2: is a younger generation of archaeologists who are in the field.
1:59:59
Speaker 2: And they are quite different from the older generation of
2:00:02
Speaker 2: archaeologists who were running the whole scene 25 years ago.
2:00:05
Speaker 2: Now we have a very different younger generation, a younger
2:00:07
Speaker 2: generation that has been exposed to open-minded thinking, that has
2:00:12
Speaker 2: been exposed to the Internet. that itself as part of
2:00:15
Speaker 2: the general pattern of the younger generation is suspicious of authority.
2:00:19
Speaker 2: I'm meeting young archeologists on sites. For example, I met
2:00:21
Speaker 2: a couple of really amazing young minds on a site
2:00:24
Speaker 2: called Blackwater Draw in Arizona, New Mexico, where one of
2:00:31
Speaker 2: the first Clovis sites. The young archeologists I met there
2:00:35
Speaker 2: were incredibly open-minded and really willing to consider extraordinary possibilities
2:00:40
Speaker 2: about the past and privately admitted to me that they'd
2:00:43
Speaker 2: read my books.
2:00:44
Speaker 1: Well, that's where I get the hope. I get the
2:00:46
Speaker 1: hope in this young generation that is growing up with
2:00:48
Speaker 1: the internet that does understand that there's a lot more
2:00:52
Speaker 1: out there than just what they're being taught in schools.
2:00:54
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah. This is where the hope lies, and it
2:00:58
Speaker 2: lies in every area. And it's why one of the
2:01:02
Speaker 2: intriguing things that has happened with me, and your show
2:01:06
Speaker 2: is an important part of this, is that when I
2:01:09
Speaker 2: go around giving public events, doing a public presentation, of
2:01:14
Speaker 2: my work. The demography of the audience is extremely interesting.
2:01:18
Speaker 2: And this is true whether I'm giving the talk in Britain,
2:01:20
Speaker 2: whether I'm giving it in Canada, whether I'm giving it
2:01:23
Speaker 2: in America. Part of the audience are older people who
2:01:26
Speaker 2: read me in the 1990s, who got onto my work
2:01:29
Speaker 2: with Fingerprints of the Gods in 1995, and they've stuck
2:01:32
Speaker 2: with me, and they've carried on reading my work. But
2:01:36
Speaker 2: Another part of the audience, a very big part of
2:01:38
Speaker 2: the audience, consists to a large extent of young people,
2:01:42
Speaker 2: most of whom are men, but there are women amongst
2:01:44
Speaker 2: them as well. And what those mainly young men come
2:01:48
Speaker 2: up to me and say at the end of the
2:01:50
Speaker 2: event is, we first encountered your work on Joe Rogan's show.
2:01:55
Speaker 2: And it completely opened our minds. It changed it. I've
2:01:59
Speaker 2: had so many young men say, this has changed my life.
2:02:02
Speaker 2: And then I ask myself, well, why should a different
2:02:04
Speaker 2: take on the past change people's lives? Why should people
2:02:08
Speaker 2: feel that their lives have been changed by a different
2:02:10
Speaker 2: take on the past, which I add they would not
2:02:12
Speaker 2: know about unless you'd had the good grace to bring
2:02:15
Speaker 2: me on your show. These ideas would not be known,
2:02:17
Speaker 2: but they are known because of the amazing outreach of
2:02:20
Speaker 2: your show. And the answer to that question, why does
2:02:23
Speaker 2: it change a person's life, is that once we realize
2:02:28
Speaker 2: that we have been misinformed about our past– that everything
2:02:33
Speaker 2: that we've built our idea of who we are upon
2:02:36
Speaker 2: and of where we're going as a culture may be
2:02:39
Speaker 2: founded on falsehoods and perhaps even deliberate lies. Once that
2:02:45
Speaker 2: is realized, then all the questions about the nature of
2:02:48
Speaker 2: the society we live in become open. And young people
2:02:53
Speaker 2: are feeling the need to take an independent path, not
2:02:57
Speaker 2: to follow the path that has been set down for them.
2:03:00
Speaker 2: by previous generations and in some way and I'm very
2:03:03
Speaker 2: gratified to hear this the fact that I I'm an
2:03:06
Speaker 2: elder now I'm 69 next next birthday the fact that
2:03:10
Speaker 2: I look great thank you the fact that I as
2:03:13
Speaker 2: an elder have consistently pursued an independent past path have
2:03:18
Speaker 2: been willing to put up with the shit that's been
2:03:22
Speaker 2: thrown at me over the years but have stuck to
2:03:24
Speaker 2: my guns and have continued to add new information to
2:03:28
Speaker 2: the dossier of information that I put forward. That is,
2:03:31
Speaker 2: and I'm encouraged to see this, that's found as inspiring
2:03:34
Speaker 2: by younger people. And what better gift could an old
2:03:37
Speaker 2: guy hope to leave to the world than a younger
2:03:40
Speaker 2: generation who feel inspired by that person's work to change
2:03:43
Speaker 2: the world?
2:03:44
Speaker 1: Well, I'm very, very thankful that I could introduce people
2:03:46
Speaker 1: to you because your first book that I read of you,
2:03:50
Speaker 1: Fingerprints of the Gods, changed my view of the world.
2:03:52
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember putting that book down after I
2:03:55
Speaker 1: was finishing going, wow, like if he's right, like this
2:03:59
Speaker 1: whole thing is a mess.
2:04:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, a complete mess. Because our idea of who we
2:04:04
Speaker 2: are is very much founded in our idea of who
2:04:06
Speaker 2: we were. And one of I think one of the
2:04:09
Speaker 2: mistakes that's made in our civilization is that we are
2:04:14
Speaker 2: very conceited. We're very big headed and we tend to
2:04:17
Speaker 2: review the view the whole story of history as though
2:04:20
Speaker 2: it's a project that leads to us. that we're what
2:04:23
Speaker 2: it's all about. And I think what is, how can
2:04:28
Speaker 2: I put it, undermining of the existing system about a
2:04:32
Speaker 2: new take on the past is the notion that we're
2:04:37
Speaker 2: not what it's all about at all. That there may
2:04:40
Speaker 2: have been an earlier civilization that reached a high level
2:04:44
Speaker 2: of advancement, perhaps different from ours, but nevertheless an advanced civilization.
2:04:48
Speaker 2: which was just taken out of the story completely by
2:04:51
Speaker 2: a global cataclysm. Then we suddenly realized that in a
2:04:55
Speaker 2: way we're here accidentally, that it's not been a process
2:04:58
Speaker 2: that's been all about us. And that if we've been
2:05:01
Speaker 2: misinformed about how we got here, then we need to
2:05:04
Speaker 2: get the true information about what's going on. So these are,
2:05:09
Speaker 2: in a way, profoundly revolutionary ideas. They do lead people
2:05:13
Speaker 2: on a path of inquiry that leads to questioning of everything.
2:05:17
Speaker 1: And our fears that you were just discussing earlier about
2:05:21
Speaker 1: how soft we are in comparison to past civilizations in
2:05:25
Speaker 1: terms of our ability to live off the land, that's
2:05:28
Speaker 1: one aspect that bothers me. But one of the big
2:05:31
Speaker 1: ones that bothers me is the fact that everything is digital.
2:05:34
Speaker 1: All of our information is stored on hard drives.
2:05:36
Speaker 2: You bet.
2:05:37
Speaker 1: And if that goes down, there's not much left. You
2:05:40
Speaker 1: have paper books and a few thousands of years– imagine
2:05:46
Speaker 1: what would be left. We would lose all of our advancement.
2:05:50
Speaker 2: Well, I can speak to this at a personal level.
2:05:53
Speaker 2: There was a time when I was an excellent map reader.
2:05:58
Speaker 2: I could navigate anywhere with maps. My wife, Santa, and
2:06:02
Speaker 2: I did huge journeys in Mexico back in the early
2:06:05
Speaker 2: 1990s in really cheap hire cars with maps. And we
2:06:09
Speaker 2: found our way everywhere without any problem. Today, I can
2:06:13
Speaker 2: hardly use a map. The skill of using a map
2:06:16
Speaker 2: has lapsed within me. Why? Because of GPS. GPS technology
2:06:20
Speaker 2: has come along and it always tells me where I am.
2:06:24
Speaker 2: And being a bit lazy... I just accept that technology.
2:06:29
Speaker 2: But then I had cause to ask myself this just
2:06:32
Speaker 2: the other day. Supposing GPS, supposing all those satellites go
2:06:35
Speaker 2: down and there's no GPS, is the whole industrialized human
2:06:39
Speaker 2: race is going to suddenly be lost? All those Uber
2:06:41
Speaker 2: drivers who don't know their way from A to B
2:06:44
Speaker 2: and who rely entirely on their GPSs, they won't know
2:06:47
Speaker 2: where they're going. And it's true with digital data. Digital data,
2:06:52
Speaker 2: unlike print data, is very fragile and requires programs in
2:06:58
Speaker 2: order to access and interpret it that are much more
2:07:01
Speaker 2: complicated than simply cracking the code of a lost language.
2:07:04
Speaker 1: I mean the programs vary between different phone platforms.
2:07:07
Speaker 2: Exactly.
2:07:08
Speaker 1: They vary in computer platforms. It's just– it's so fragile
2:07:12
Speaker 1: and it's so– I mean I don't know if there's
2:07:14
Speaker 1: any precautions that have been taken in place to preserve
2:07:16
Speaker 1: this information in case of– Like what Robert Shock described,
2:07:20
Speaker 1: coronal mass ejection or something crazy.
2:07:22
Speaker 2: Take down all the satellites.
2:07:22
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:07:23
Speaker 2: No, I don't think preparation has been made. And it's
2:07:27
Speaker 2: very clear that preparation is not being made for the
2:07:30
Speaker 2: risk of another cosmic impact. And again, a point that
2:07:36
Speaker 2: I'd like to make about this is that we are
2:07:40
Speaker 2: in a sense in a place where history can repeat itself.
2:07:44
Speaker 2: That there are certain cycles at work. The work on
2:07:48
Speaker 2: the comet impact 12,800 years ago has very clearly and
2:07:54
Speaker 2: specifically identified the debris trail of that comet. And that
2:07:58
Speaker 2: debris trail is the... torrid Meteor stream and it's called
2:08:02
Speaker 2: the torrid meteor stream because it appears to emanate from
2:08:05
Speaker 2: the region of the sky in which the constellation of
2:08:07
Speaker 2: Taurus sits It doesn't it's within our solar system. It's
2:08:11
Speaker 2: an optical illusion the torrid meteor stream is a giant
2:08:15
Speaker 2: complex of debris and It is 30 million kilometers wide.
2:08:21
Speaker 2: What you had was an original comet that might have
2:08:24
Speaker 2: been 100 to 200 kilometers in diameter, a small moon,
2:08:28
Speaker 2: which fragmented and broke up into multiple, multiple parts. And
2:08:32
Speaker 2: those parts began to spread out along the whole orbit
2:08:35
Speaker 2: of the torrid meteor stream and to widen, the whole
2:08:38
Speaker 2: thing widened. So it's like a giant tube of debris.
2:08:42
Speaker 2: And the evidence and the argument is that 12,800 years ago,
2:08:45
Speaker 2: several large bits of that debris fell out of the
2:08:48
Speaker 2: taurid meteor stream and impacted with the Earth. The problem
2:08:52
Speaker 2: is that the taurid meteor stream still exists, and our
2:08:56
Speaker 2: planet still passes through it twice a year. And those
2:09:00
Speaker 2: passages take place in June and in November, and each
2:09:03
Speaker 2: passage takes 12 and a half days. And the same
2:09:07
Speaker 2: group of scientists who are looking at the evidence for
2:09:10
Speaker 2: the impacts 12,800 years ago are deeply concerned that we
2:09:14
Speaker 2: may face future impacts from the Taurid meteor stream, that
2:09:17
Speaker 2: there are still large objects up there. This is not theory.
2:09:20
Speaker 2: This is a fact. There's a comet up there called
2:09:23
Speaker 2: Comet Enki, which is part of the Taurid meteor stream.
2:09:26
Speaker 2: It's a large fragment of the original giant comet. Comet
2:09:29
Speaker 2: Enki has a diameter of, I don't know, five or
2:09:32
Speaker 2: six kilometers. There's 19 recognized huge objects within the Taurid
2:09:37
Speaker 2: meteor stream. Calculations indicate that there may be as much
2:09:39
Speaker 2: as 200 asteroids within the taurid meteor stream of a
2:09:44
Speaker 2: diameter of a kilometer or more which would have catastrophic
2:09:46
Speaker 2: effect if they hit the earth and responsible astronomers regard
2:09:51
Speaker 2: the taurid meteor stream as the greatest collision hazard facing
2:09:53
Speaker 2: mankind at the present time and it's not something that
2:09:57
Speaker 2: we need to fall into despair about because it's perfectly
2:10:00
Speaker 2: within the level of our technology to do something about it.
2:10:04
Speaker 1: What could they do?
2:10:06
Speaker 2: To give you an example, commercial interests are looking right now,
2:10:09
Speaker 2: and the technology is there, to mine asteroids. We can
2:10:12
Speaker 2: go to asteroids if the commercial interest is high enough.
2:10:15
Speaker 2: We can go to them. We can mine them. We
2:10:17
Speaker 2: can extract minerals. We can bring them back to the Earth.
2:10:19
Speaker 2: The same technology would allow you to move asteroids or
2:10:23
Speaker 2: comet fragments. You don't want to blow them up with
2:10:26
Speaker 2: a nuke. That would be a really bad idea. That
2:10:29
Speaker 2: would turn … one large object into multiple smaller objects
2:10:35
Speaker 2: which could cause equally massive devastation and would be very
2:10:38
Speaker 2: difficult to predict where that devastation was going to fall.
2:10:41
Speaker 2: What you want to do is to nudge them and
2:10:43
Speaker 2: move them out of the dangerous orbit into a less
2:10:46
Speaker 2: dangerous orbit and the evidence is in the next 30
2:10:49
Speaker 2: years we are going to be passing through dangerous filaments
2:10:52
Speaker 2: of the torrid meteor stream and if we were smart
2:10:54
Speaker 2: we would be devoting some resources to to protecting our
2:10:58
Speaker 2: cosmic environment. Just as there are many issues that we
2:11:00
Speaker 2: need to devote resources to, unfortunately, the one that's most
2:11:04
Speaker 2: attractive to our politicians at the moment is warfare. We
2:11:09
Speaker 2: devote limitless resources to technologies of mass destruction. There really
2:11:14
Speaker 2: is no end to the amount that we're prepared to
2:11:17
Speaker 2: spend on that in terms of our so-called security. We
2:11:20
Speaker 2: feel somehow we're making ourselves more secure by having these
2:11:23
Speaker 2: incredible weapons and spending trillions of dollars on them But
2:11:27
Speaker 2: the cosmos doesn't give a fuck about any of that.
2:11:30
Speaker 2: The cosmos is out there with these giant, giant objects,
2:11:35
Speaker 2: which have a far greater explosive power than all the
2:11:37
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons stored on Earth at the present time. The
2:11:42
Speaker 2: comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which hit Jupiter in 1994, had a
2:11:48
Speaker 2: total calculated explosive power of 300 gigatons. If you took
2:11:52
Speaker 2: the entire nuclear arsenal of the world today and blew
2:11:55
Speaker 2: it all up at once, it would yield 6.4 gigatons.
2:11:58
Speaker 2: So these objects are producing catastrophic results on a scale
2:12:02
Speaker 2: that far beyond anything that we ourselves could do with
2:12:05
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons. It's time we spent a bit less time
2:12:08
Speaker 2: and money on weapons of mass destruction and a bit
2:12:11
Speaker 2: more on looking after this beautiful garden that we call
2:12:14
Speaker 2: the Earth and that is our home and it will
2:12:16
Speaker 2: be the home of our children and our children's children.
2:12:18
Speaker 2: I'm a grandfather now. I feel passionately about this. We
2:12:21
Speaker 2: need to look after this planet. It's our responsibility as
2:12:24
Speaker 2: a human species to do so. And one of the challenges,
2:12:27
Speaker 2: it's not the only challenge. There are many, many other challenges.
2:12:30
Speaker 2: One of the challenges is to pay attention to our
2:12:33
Speaker 2: cosmic environment and to realize that the cosmos can intervene
2:12:38
Speaker 2: cataclysmically in the human story and that the torrid meteor
2:12:42
Speaker 2: stream in particular may have been a hidden hand in
2:12:44
Speaker 2: human history, that there may have been other impacts in
2:12:46
Speaker 2: the last 13,000 years. that have affected and changed the
2:12:50
Speaker 2: course of humanity on this earth. And the ancients were
2:12:54
Speaker 2: very good at paying attention to the sky. We ourselves
2:12:57
Speaker 2: have amazing tech to study the sky, but for some
2:13:00
Speaker 2: reason we're ignoring this problem of cosmic impacts. And that's
2:13:04
Speaker 2: incredibly irresponsible because, as I said a moment ago, it
2:13:07
Speaker 2: is a solvable problem. It is within the limits of
2:13:10
Speaker 2: our technology. It would require a global cooperative effort to
2:13:14
Speaker 2: sweep our cosmic environment clean, but it could be done.
2:13:17
Speaker 2: And a side product of that global cooperation might be
2:13:20
Speaker 2: a friendlier, more nurturing, more loving, more positive human community.
2:13:25
Speaker 1: It is very odd that we have this infantile nature,
2:13:29
Speaker 1: even as grown adults and world leaders, that we do
2:13:34
Speaker 1: like to ignore imminent danger as long as it hasn't
2:13:37
Speaker 1: affected us in the past.
2:13:38
Speaker 2: Yes.
2:13:39
Speaker 1: There's no real moment we can point to other than Tunguska.
2:13:44
Speaker 1: In photographic history, modern history where you could take pictures
2:13:48
Speaker 1: of things.
2:13:50
Speaker 2: If I can pause you on that very point, the
2:13:52
Speaker 2: evidence is compelling that the Tunguska event was an object
2:13:56
Speaker 2: that fell out of the Taurid meteor stream. That happened
2:13:58
Speaker 2: at the peak of the Beta Taurids in June 1908.
2:14:01
Speaker 2: It's extremely likely that that Tunguska object came from the
2:14:07
Speaker 2: Taurid meteor stream because we were passing through the Taurid
2:14:10
Speaker 2: meteor stream at exactly that time. And what the Tunguska
2:14:13
Speaker 2: object is estimated to be between 60 and 190 meters
2:14:17
Speaker 2: in diameter. So it's not a very big object. It's
2:14:19
Speaker 2: not a kilometer scale object. It's big, but it's not
2:14:23
Speaker 2: that big. It doesn't even hit the earth. It's an airburst.
2:14:27
Speaker 2: It explodes in the sky above, fortunately, an uninhabited area
2:14:32
Speaker 2: of Siberia. But the devastation It wasn't even noticed for
2:14:37
Speaker 2: some years afterwards until scientific teams went in and studied
2:14:40
Speaker 2: the area and discovered that 80 million trees across 2,000
2:14:43
Speaker 2: square kilometers had been completely flattened by that airburst. And
2:14:48
Speaker 2: to put that in context, 2,000 square kilometers is the
2:14:50
Speaker 2: size of London. So anybody who knows London is aware
2:14:54
Speaker 2: that there's a ring road around London called the M25.
2:14:56
Speaker 2: If that airburst had taken place over central London, everything
2:15:00
Speaker 2: of London out as far as the M25 would have
2:15:02
Speaker 2: been gone.
2:15:03
Speaker 1: Completely is that what it looks like today.
2:15:07
Speaker 2: Pretty close it says like 100 years later there's no
2:15:09
Speaker 2: trees yeah and and if you go you look above
2:15:13
Speaker 2: there you're looking at the black and whites that were
2:15:14
Speaker 2: taken in the early 1900s yeah which which revealed the
2:15:18
Speaker 2: extent of this of of this damage so it's just
2:15:21
Speaker 2: stupid of us not to pay a bit more attention
2:15:23
Speaker 2: to this especially when we have the tech to actually
2:15:26
Speaker 2: do something about it.
2:15:27
Speaker 1: We have that that nature though when it comes to
2:15:30
Speaker 1: climate change.
2:15:31
Speaker 2: There's a curious denial there's a denial um of the
2:15:35
Speaker 2: role of cataclysms in the human story and there there
2:15:38
Speaker 2: is even a word for that in in science and
2:15:40
Speaker 2: it's called uniformitarianism and and this is a particular philosophy
2:15:45
Speaker 2: of science where the view is that Everything as we
2:15:48
Speaker 2: see it in the world today is how things have
2:15:50
Speaker 2: always been. So if we don't see cataclysms today and
2:15:53
Speaker 2: they're not playing a major part in our story today,
2:15:56
Speaker 2: then there weren't cataclysms and they didn't play a major
2:15:59
Speaker 2: part in our story in the past. That's why, although
2:16:02
Speaker 2: it's before the time of human beings, when the evidence
2:16:06
Speaker 2: that the dinosaurs were made extinct by a comet or
2:16:09
Speaker 2: an asteroid first came out, Lewis and Walter Alvarez, the
2:16:13
Speaker 2: father-son team who were behind that science, were ridiculed.
2:16:17
Speaker 1: By their colleagues.
2:16:17
Speaker 2: And they were told it's absolutely absurd. Of course, no
2:16:21
Speaker 2: cosmic event could have made the dinosaurs extinct. They spent
2:16:24
Speaker 2: 10 years taking that ridicule until they found the crater
2:16:27
Speaker 2: in the Gulf of Mexico. Since then, the whole scientific
2:16:30
Speaker 2: community has accepted that the course of life on this
2:16:34
Speaker 2: planet was radically changed by a cosmic impact. And, you know,
2:16:39
Speaker 2: I like to joke about it, but it was a
2:16:41
Speaker 2: cosmic impact that was big enough literally to turn dinosaurs
2:16:45
Speaker 2: into chickens. Because that's what's left of the dinosaur line is,
2:16:49
Speaker 2: you know, the birds. And at the same time, skulking
2:16:54
Speaker 2: in those primeval forests is this little mammal. And it
2:16:57
Speaker 2: looks a bit like a shrew 65 million years ago
2:17:01
Speaker 2: going nowhere. The dinosaurs rule the earth. Then the cosmos intervenes.
2:17:06
Speaker 2: The dinosaurs are swept out of the way. And what happens?
2:17:09
Speaker 2: The mammals start to evolve very rapidly and they start
2:17:11
Speaker 2: to occupy niches that were previously closed to them. And
2:17:15
Speaker 2: the bottom line is we would not be here. The
2:17:17
Speaker 2: human species would not be here. We would not be
2:17:19
Speaker 2: having this conversation if the dinosaurs had not been made
2:17:22
Speaker 2: extinct 65 million years ago. So these are. world-changing events
2:17:27
Speaker 2: and my argument is that such a world-changing event occurred
2:17:29
Speaker 2: between 12 800 and 11 600 years ago and it's
2:17:32
Speaker 2: high time we paid more attention to it.
2:17:36
Speaker 1: Is there any evidence that there was other species of
2:17:39
Speaker 1: human beings that existed in the americas like we're finding
2:17:43
Speaker 1: in russia and there's many of them that are being
2:17:48
Speaker 1: discovered all over the world now these subspecies of human beings.
2:17:52
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is an issue that I go into in
2:17:57
Speaker 2: America before. And what first drew me into it was
2:18:01
Speaker 2: Denisova Cave in Siberia. I think everybody's heard of the Neanderthals.
2:18:06
Speaker 2: And these days, I think everybody's heard of the Denisovans
2:18:08
Speaker 2: as well.
2:18:09
Speaker 1: A lot of people have.
2:18:10
Speaker 2: Well, I guess a lot of people haven't. But first
2:18:12
Speaker 2: of all, let's take the Neanderthals. For a long time,
2:18:15
Speaker 2: it was held that the Neanderthals were stupid, primitive subhumans, shambling,
2:18:20
Speaker 2: lacking symbolism. Turns out that that's not true at all.
2:18:23
Speaker 2: The latest scientific evidence on the Neanderthals is that they
2:18:26
Speaker 2: were symbolic creatures, that they did do art, that they
2:18:29
Speaker 2: were in every sense human. And they were in every
2:18:31
Speaker 2: sense human because... anatomically modern humans interbred with Neanderthals. You
2:18:36
Speaker 2: can't interbreed with another species. They clearly were human beings,
2:18:41
Speaker 2: but they looked rather different from us. And that's why
2:18:43
Speaker 2: certain populations in the world today still have three to
2:18:47
Speaker 2: 5% of Neanderthal DNA. Then in Russia, in Denisova Cave,
2:18:53
Speaker 2: they find a single pinky bone from a little finger.
2:18:57
Speaker 2: And they do The DNA testing on it, they're able
2:19:00
Speaker 2: to get a complete genome from it. And what they
2:19:03
Speaker 2: discover is this isn't a Neanderthal. This isn't an anatomically
2:19:07
Speaker 2: modern human being. This is another human species who they
2:19:11
Speaker 2: named the Denisovans. They think they're more closely related to
2:19:14
Speaker 2: Neanderthals than they are to anatomically modern humans. But they're
2:19:17
Speaker 2: clearly another human species. And they also... interbred with anatomically
2:19:22
Speaker 2: modern humans. And Denisovan DNA survives, interestingly enough, it survives
2:19:28
Speaker 2: predominantly in Australasia, in Papua New Guinea and amongst Australian Aborigines.
2:19:35
Speaker 2: So as part of the research for this book, I
2:19:36
Speaker 2: went to Denisovan Cave. I had an amazing, actually just
2:19:41
Speaker 2: incredible trip to Russia. I hadn't expected it to be
2:19:45
Speaker 2: like that at all. Siberia I mean, America is vast,
2:19:48
Speaker 2: but my God, crossing Siberia, this is endless rolling planes,
2:19:54
Speaker 2: you know, this just vast area.
2:19:55
Speaker 1: How did you cross it?
2:19:57
Speaker 2: We took a car. You can't travel independently in Russia.
2:20:01
Speaker 2: It's very difficult. You have to get permission and you
2:20:04
Speaker 2: have to state in advance where you're going to be
2:20:07
Speaker 2: stopping off at. So what I found, and I just
2:20:09
Speaker 2: did so through the internet, was a local guy called
2:20:12
Speaker 2: Sergei Kurgin. who had a little tour business in Siberia,
2:20:19
Speaker 2: in the city of Novosibirsk. I got in touch with him.
2:20:23
Speaker 2: He found a translator who would translate my emails. And
2:20:26
Speaker 2: I said, we want to make this journey to Denisova Cave.
2:20:30
Speaker 2: And can you set this up for us and get
2:20:32
Speaker 2: all the permissions? And he did. And so we flew
2:20:34
Speaker 2: into Novosibirsk. Sergei and his translator, who turned out to
2:20:38
Speaker 2: be a Russian student who spoke good English, joined us,
2:20:42
Speaker 2: and we did this immense journey across Siberia.
2:20:44
Speaker 1: How long did it take?
2:20:45
Speaker 2: Oh, it took us three days to get to Denisova Cave.
2:20:48
Speaker 2: Three days of driving every day? Three days of driving
2:20:50
Speaker 2: every day. Some stopping off along the way. Incredible hospitality
2:20:53
Speaker 2: of the Russians that we were amongst. Very independent people.
2:20:57
Speaker 2: People who are living out there in the wilderness and
2:20:59
Speaker 2: who actually do know how to survive. It's the first
2:21:02
Speaker 2: time I've ever drunk milk fresh from the cow. Literally
2:21:05
Speaker 2: milked right out of the cow and poured down my throat.
2:21:08
Speaker 1: How was it?
2:21:09
Speaker 2: It was delicious. And the cream. I mean, thick, thick cream. So,
2:21:13
Speaker 2: there's a lot of things about Russia that surprised me.
2:21:15
Speaker 2: Denisova Cave is a fascinating, beautiful place to visit. It's
2:21:19
Speaker 2: another example of a missing chapter in the human story
2:21:23
Speaker 2: that is beginning to be pieced together. It's obvious now.
2:21:26
Speaker 2: that we were not alone, that there were multiple other
2:21:28
Speaker 2: human species who were human enough to interbreed with us
2:21:31
Speaker 2: and leave DNA.
2:21:33
Speaker 1: And this Denisovan species was only discovered in, like, was
2:21:36
Speaker 1: it 2000-something?
2:21:37
Speaker 2: Very recently, the 2000s. It's a very recent discovery.
2:21:41
Speaker 1: Did they leave behind art?
2:21:45
Speaker 2: Better than that. They left behind certain physical objects which
2:21:50
Speaker 2: are extremely hard to explain. One of them is a
2:21:54
Speaker 2: green stone bracelet. And that bracelet is in the form
2:21:59
Speaker 2: of a torque, which was therefore slipped on sideways onto
2:22:02
Speaker 2: the hand. It's not a full ring. And a hole
2:22:06
Speaker 2: has been drilled through the bracelet. And from that hole,
2:22:09
Speaker 2: it's been possible to reconstruct that a pendant was hung.
2:22:12
Speaker 2: Then the archaeologists started to take a look in detail
2:22:18
Speaker 2: at the drill marks on that hole. And what they
2:22:21
Speaker 2: discovered was a huge anomaly, that that was drilled with
2:22:24
Speaker 2: a stable, fixed drill. And it was drilled at extremely
2:22:28
Speaker 2: high speed. This is thought to be 40,000 or 50,000
2:22:33
Speaker 2: years old. There is not supposed to have been any
2:22:35
Speaker 2: such technology in that period that was capable of drilling
2:22:38
Speaker 2: with a stable, fixed drill. And yet there it is,
2:22:42
Speaker 2: and there it appears. So there are also incredible, very
2:22:47
Speaker 2: fine needles, bone needles that the Denisovans made, very long ones,
2:22:51
Speaker 2: which suggest that they were stitching very heavy stuff together.
2:22:54
Speaker 2: And the suggestion has been, were they making skin boats,
2:22:56
Speaker 2: for example, to use to navigate? That would explain how
2:22:59
Speaker 2: they managed to get themselves to Australia, which is where
2:23:02
Speaker 2: the largest amount of Denisovan DNA is. survives today. There's
2:23:07
Speaker 2: one of those needles. So there are indications of strangely
2:23:11
Speaker 2: out of place technology amongst the Denisovans, which is 20, 30,000
2:23:15
Speaker 2: years earlier in the human story than it should be.
2:23:18
Speaker 2: Those kind of needles, that kind of bracelet, you could
2:23:21
Speaker 2: expect to find them in what archaeologists call the Neolithic.
2:23:23
Speaker 2: But to find it in the Paleolithic is very puzzling
2:23:27
Speaker 2: and very odd. And it suggests that the Denisovans were
2:23:30
Speaker 2: certainly not shambling subhumans. They were refined creatures.
2:23:35
Speaker 1: Can you find out what year they discovered the Denisovans, Jamie?
2:23:37
Speaker 1: Can you Google that real quick? I want to say
2:23:39
Speaker 1: it's in the 2000s. But, I mean, imagine that human
2:23:44
Speaker 1: beings have been around for this long. Here we are
2:23:46
Speaker 1: in 2019, and within the last decade or so, they
2:23:49
Speaker 1: figured this out.
2:23:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're discovering new stuff about ourselves. We're discovering that
2:23:54
Speaker 2: our story is much richer, much more textured, much more layered.
2:23:59
Speaker 2: than we thought it was. It's not a simple story.
2:24:02
Speaker 2: It's a very complicated story and we ourselves are a
2:24:06
Speaker 2: hybrid species. We are the result of interactions with all
2:24:10
Speaker 2: kinds of different looking human beings and the end result
2:24:13
Speaker 2: is ourselves. So it's not just that we carry Neanderthal
2:24:16
Speaker 2: or Denisovan DNA. In a sense, we are Neanderthals and Denisovans,
2:24:22
Speaker 2: you know, and they are part of the anatomically modern
2:24:26
Speaker 2: human heritage. You make a good point. The fact that
2:24:30
Speaker 2: this is only being discovered now and that it's incredibly important,
2:24:33
Speaker 2: I mean, it completely rewrites the story of our ancestry.
2:24:37
Speaker 2: The notion– That.
2:24:39
Speaker 1: Was in the 1970s.
2:24:39
Speaker 3: 1970s.
2:24:39
Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
2:24:41
Speaker 1: I'm way off.
2:24:41
Speaker 2: The real work that's been done in Denisova Cave has
2:24:44
Speaker 2: been done in the 2000s from 2006, 2007 onwards. Genetic examination.
2:24:48
Speaker 2: That's when the major papers have been– 2008, there it is.
2:24:53
Speaker 2: which have revealed the genome of the Denisovans and revealed
2:24:57
Speaker 2: the Denisovan connection to anatomically modern humans. The fact that
2:25:01
Speaker 2: we're only finding this out now, that we told the
2:25:04
Speaker 2: story of our past and weren't aware of this, raises
2:25:07
Speaker 2: the question, how much else in the story of our
2:25:09
Speaker 2: past is there that we're not aware of? Let's stop
2:25:11
Speaker 2: being so arrogant, so sure of ourselves, so confident in
2:25:14
Speaker 2: our findings. Let's be more tentative. Let's keep an open mind.
2:25:18
Speaker 2: and see where it takes us. That's the main message
2:25:21
Speaker 2: that I have from all of this. And I think,
2:25:25
Speaker 2: and I hope that this will be an effect of
2:25:28
Speaker 2: this book. I'm not kidding myself that the archeologists are
2:25:32
Speaker 2: going to jump on board overnight, particularly so since I'm
2:25:37
Speaker 2: very critical of American archeology in this book. And I'm
2:25:41
Speaker 2: critical of it specifically and explicitly because of the dominance
2:25:45
Speaker 2: of the Clovis first model for so long, which prevented
2:25:49
Speaker 2: other research taking place. And I have to say, archeologists
2:25:53
Speaker 2: like to insult me by calling me a pseudo scientist.
2:25:58
Speaker 2: I can't think of anything more pseudo scientific than the
2:26:02
Speaker 2: Clovis first doctrine, which locked American archeology for 50 years
2:26:06
Speaker 2: in a particular framework, which we now know was totally wrong.
2:26:10
Speaker 2: Nothing good about it at all. A complete mistake. What
2:26:15
Speaker 2: I'm hoping the book will do in the long run
2:26:18
Speaker 2: is that it will lead to more attention being focused
2:26:21
Speaker 2: on the Americas. This is a very neglected area of
2:26:25
Speaker 2: the world as far as deep and ancient archaeology goes.
2:26:30
Speaker 2: The recent history of the Americas has been relatively well studied,
2:26:33
Speaker 2: but the deep and ancient history has not been well studied.
2:26:37
Speaker 2: And I think America is going to contain... revelations for
2:26:42
Speaker 2: us about our story and about our past. And I'm
2:26:45
Speaker 2: serious when I suggest that America is the most plausible
2:26:51
Speaker 2: and the most likely home base for a lost civilization.
2:26:55
Speaker 2: If you're going to propose a lost civilization, there are
2:26:59
Speaker 2: certain preconditions. You can't have it on a small island.
2:27:02
Speaker 2: There's got to be a large landmass with enormous resources
2:27:05
Speaker 2: and the ability for population to grow and for those
2:27:07
Speaker 2: resources to be to be mobilized. And what I suddenly realized,
2:27:11
Speaker 2: you asked earlier why I started to write this book
2:27:14
Speaker 2: at all, is what the new evidence is pointing to
2:27:16
Speaker 2: is that the Americas have been wrongly neglected. That here
2:27:19
Speaker 2: we have a giant continental landmass with extraordinary resources that
2:27:24
Speaker 2: has just been ruled out of the story of human civilization.
2:27:27
Speaker 2: But once we take account of the fact that there
2:27:30
Speaker 2: was a giant cataclysm over North America 12,800 years ago,
2:27:34
Speaker 2: and once we start looking as I do in America before,
2:27:38
Speaker 2: at the incredible deep, in-depth similarities between, for example, the
2:27:43
Speaker 2: religious system of ancient Egypt and the religious system of
2:27:47
Speaker 2: the Mississippi Valley, then you realize that you're into a
2:27:51
Speaker 2: global mystery here and that the answer to that mystery
2:27:54
Speaker 2: may not at all be in the old world and
2:27:56
Speaker 2: may very much be in the Americas. See, it's odd.
2:28:00
Speaker 2: I mentioned Moundville earlier on. It's kind of odd that
2:28:04
Speaker 2: we should find what is essentially the ancient Egyptian religion
2:28:09
Speaker 2: manifesting in the symbolism of Moundville, the ascent to Orion,
2:28:13
Speaker 2: the transit to the Milky Way, the journey along the
2:28:16
Speaker 2: Milky Way. These are very specific and idiosyncratic ideas. And
2:28:20
Speaker 2: what makes it doubly odd is Moundville isn't that old.
2:28:24
Speaker 2: Moundville as a site is about a thousand years old.
2:28:27
Speaker 2: Ancient Egypt had already been gone completely from the world
2:28:32
Speaker 2: for at least 600 years before Moundville was created. The
2:28:36
Speaker 2: end of ancient Egypt, there's Moundville. And what we're looking
2:28:41
Speaker 2: at in the foreground is Mound B and we're looking
2:28:43
Speaker 2: at Mound A in the distance. And a complete circle
2:28:48
Speaker 2: of mounds. What is odd about it is we find
2:28:52
Speaker 2: this system of ancient Egyptian ideas in Moundville 500 years
2:28:55
Speaker 2: after ancient Egypt has gone from the world. The Romans
2:28:59
Speaker 2: were the end of ancient Egypt. By 400 AD, ancient
2:29:02
Speaker 2: Egypt is gone. Moundville doesn't even exist then, but 600
2:29:06
Speaker 2: years later, it is created and it manifests the entire
2:29:11
Speaker 2: set of ancient Egyptian ideas. Clearly, it did not get
2:29:13
Speaker 2: that as a result of direct transmission from ancient Egypt
2:29:16
Speaker 2: unless they were time travelers. The only way I think
2:29:18
Speaker 2: it could have got it is as a result of
2:29:20
Speaker 2: a legacy passed down from a much earlier civilization that
2:29:23
Speaker 2: had been influenced and affected many different parts of the world.
2:29:27
Speaker 2: And the characteristics of that civilization, the shamanistic heart of it,
2:29:32
Speaker 2: the use of altered states of consciousness, the focus on
2:29:35
Speaker 2: those are amongst the reasons that I would suggest that
2:29:38
Speaker 2: America is the place that we should be looking. And
2:29:40
Speaker 2: the big mysteries are in the areas that were so
2:29:43
Speaker 2: devastated at the end of the last ice age up
2:29:46
Speaker 2: in the north of North America. the channeled scablands in particular,
2:29:50
Speaker 2: and then the Mississippi Valley, the whole story of the
2:29:52
Speaker 2: Mississippi Valley. Yes, Moundville is a thousand years old, but
2:29:55
Speaker 2: then you can go back to Poverty Point in Louisiana,
2:29:59
Speaker 2: which is 2,700 years old. You can go to Watson
2:30:03
Speaker 2: Break in Louisiana, which is 5,500 years old. You can
2:30:07
Speaker 2: go to sites like Conley, which are 8,000 years old.
2:30:10
Speaker 2: The system keeps on going back and disappearing back into time.
2:30:14
Speaker 2: And I think the most fruitful new work on exploring
2:30:18
Speaker 2: the origins of civilization is going to occur counterintuitively in
2:30:22
Speaker 2: the Americas, the very last place on earth that archaeologists
2:30:26
Speaker 2: have ever thought to look.
2:30:27
Speaker 1: What do mainstream archaeologists, what do they think caused those
2:30:32
Speaker 1: drill marks in the Denisovan bracelets?
2:30:35
Speaker 2: They've not really explained it. The Russian archaeologists who published
2:30:40
Speaker 2: the report on that are themselves mystified by it, and
2:30:43
Speaker 2: they realize that it's dynamite. It's an explosive discovery. It's
2:30:48
Speaker 2: an out-of-place technology. And so they're trying to explain how
2:30:52
Speaker 2: come fixed stable drilling, which we thought was Introduced first
2:30:57
Speaker 2: in the Neolithic, maybe 7,000, 8,000 years ago. How come
2:31:01
Speaker 2: that is now found in a site that's 40,000 or 50,000
2:31:04
Speaker 2: years old?
2:31:04
Speaker 1: That's how old those bracelets are?
2:31:06
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
2:31:07
Speaker 1: Those bracelets are 40,000 years old?
2:31:09
Speaker 2: They may have been older. There's recent research suggesting that
2:31:12
Speaker 2: they may go back 65,000 to 70,000 years. Oh, my gosh.
2:31:16
Speaker 2: they're extremely ancient and therefore and therefore they're incorporating an
2:31:19
Speaker 2: out of place technology which doesn't fit with the timeline of.
2:31:23
Speaker 1: History that we realize how out of place it.
2:31:25
Speaker 2: Was very very out of place very very very odd
2:31:28
Speaker 2: feature that we have here so what this says to
2:31:31
Speaker 2: me is that we as a species and I've I
2:31:35
Speaker 2: guess this is kind of my pet phrase. We are
2:31:37
Speaker 2: a species with amnesia.
2:31:38
Speaker 1: It's my favorite phrase of yours.
2:31:40
Speaker 2: We have forgotten so much more about ourselves than we remember.
2:31:44
Speaker 2: And what the process of history and archaeology should really
2:31:47
Speaker 2: be about is a process of remembering. We shouldn't be
2:31:51
Speaker 2: imposing our ideas of what we should have been on
2:31:54
Speaker 2: the past. We should allow the past to speak for itself.
2:31:58
Speaker 2: And when it does so, it speaks eloquently. One of
2:32:03
Speaker 2: the sites that we visited and explored for America before
2:32:09
Speaker 2: was Serpent Mound in Ohio. I don't know if you've
2:32:13
Speaker 2: ever been there, Jim.
2:32:14
Speaker 1: No, I've heard of it, though.
2:32:15
Speaker 2: It is an amazing ….
2:32:16
Speaker 1: Jamie's from Ohio. Will you ever be there?
2:32:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jamie and I were talking about it earlier. There's
2:32:20
Speaker 2: Serpent Mound. There's an aerial view.
2:32:22
Speaker 1: Of Serpent Mound. Oh, that is crazy.
2:32:26
Speaker 2: But here's the thing.
2:32:28
Speaker 1: That's beautiful.
2:32:29
Speaker 2: You see the head end of Serpent Mound there? So,
2:32:31
Speaker 2: Santa and I went there at the summer solstice in 2017.
2:32:35
Speaker 2: We were there on June 21st, 2017. And my wife,
2:32:40
Speaker 2: Santa is a photographer and we acquired a drone for
2:32:43
Speaker 2: this specific purpose. And she flew the drone up 400
2:32:46
Speaker 2: feet above serpent mound. And we sat it up there
2:32:49
Speaker 2: watching the sunset and what happens on the summer solstice.
2:32:53
Speaker 2: And you can only see it perfectly with a drone.
2:32:55
Speaker 2: There's pictures of it in the, in the book here. Uh,
2:32:58
Speaker 2: what happens on summer solstice? You can see it from
2:33:01
Speaker 2: ground level, but you get up 400 feet. You really
2:33:03
Speaker 2: get it. The head of that serpent is pointing directly
2:33:07
Speaker 2: at a niche in the distant hills. through which the
2:33:10
Speaker 2: sun sets on the summer solstice, on the longest day
2:33:13
Speaker 2: of the year. So it's a sky-ground alignment, a perfection
2:33:18
Speaker 2: that is taking place there. It's a beautiful thing to see,
2:33:22
Speaker 2: to watch that sun majestically sinking down into the horizon
2:33:26
Speaker 2: and see this awesome figure of the serpent gazing directly
2:33:29
Speaker 2: at it with its jaws open, almost as though it's
2:33:33
Speaker 2: about to swallow the sun. And then we remember... that
2:33:37
Speaker 2: there are other sites around the world which are also
2:33:40
Speaker 2: aligned to key moments of the solar year, aligned to
2:33:44
Speaker 2: the winter solstice, for example, the Temple of Karnak in
2:33:47
Speaker 2: Upper Egypt. That kilometer-long axis targets exactly the rising point
2:33:52
Speaker 2: of the sun on the winter solstice. One of the
2:33:56
Speaker 2: interesting things about Serpent Mound, and I urge anybody listening
2:34:00
Speaker 2: to this, go visit Serpent Mound and especially go there
2:34:03
Speaker 2: on the summer solstice because that's the moment. That's the
2:34:05
Speaker 2: marriage of heaven and earth. That's when sky and ground
2:34:08
Speaker 2: unite in majesty at that place. But one of the
2:34:16
Speaker 2: mysteries of Serpent Mound concerns how old is this mound really?
2:34:20
Speaker 2: How far back does it go? And there have been
2:34:23
Speaker 2: arguments that there is a group of archaeologists who would
2:34:27
Speaker 2: like it to be just 1,000 years old, and they
2:34:29
Speaker 2: attribute it to a culture called the Fort Ancient culture.
2:34:32
Speaker 2: There's another group of archaeologists, in my view, who have
2:34:35
Speaker 2: done much more thorough work who attribute it to the
2:34:38
Speaker 2: Adena culture. The thing about, which goes back to 2,300
2:34:43
Speaker 2: years ago or so, there's evidence for an earlier construction enterprise.
2:34:46
Speaker 2: It looks like the site has been continuously reconstructed and remodeled.
2:34:51
Speaker 2: as we would do with any sacred site. If it
2:34:53
Speaker 2: begins to wear down, you remodel it. And then you
2:34:55
Speaker 2: get later organic material being introduced to the site that
2:34:59
Speaker 2: may give you the impression that the site is only
2:35:01
Speaker 2: that old. What's intriguing about Serpent Mound is it stands
2:35:05
Speaker 2: on a natural ridge. And that natural ridge, and this
2:35:08
Speaker 2: is entirely an accident of heaven and earth, that natural ridge,
2:35:13
Speaker 2: the head end of it, if you like, is naturally
2:35:16
Speaker 2: oriented to the summer solstice sunset. Somebody, a long time ago,
2:35:22
Speaker 2: noticed that natural orientation and they decided to monumentalize it.
2:35:26
Speaker 2: Here was a place where earth whispered to sky. The
2:35:30
Speaker 2: earth in her own nature looked directly at the place
2:35:33
Speaker 2: on the horizon where the sun was setting. This was
2:35:37
Speaker 2: a highly significant place. This place mattered. So they then
2:35:41
Speaker 2: created serpent mound on top of it. They memorialized it.
2:35:45
Speaker 2: They turned it into a special, special place that human
2:35:49
Speaker 2: beings had had a hand in making. to honor the
2:35:52
Speaker 2: marriage of heaven and earth. And what I found researching
2:35:55
Speaker 2: this book is that Serpent Mound is not alone in
2:35:58
Speaker 2: that respect. A lot of people are puzzled by Stonehenge
2:36:03
Speaker 2: in England. Stonehenge is built on Salisbury Plain and there
2:36:07
Speaker 2: are two kinds of big megaliths at Stonehenge. One of
2:36:11
Speaker 2: them are called Sarsens and the other are called the Bluestones.
2:36:15
Speaker 2: The Bluestones we know for sure were brought a long way.
2:36:18
Speaker 2: They were brought from Wales to Stonehenge, a distance of
2:36:20
Speaker 2: about 150 miles. The sarsens are found in abundance on
2:36:26
Speaker 2: a place called the Marlborough Downs, which is about 20
2:36:28
Speaker 2: miles from Stonehenge. But until very recently, it was thought
2:36:32
Speaker 2: there were no sarsens on Salisbury Plain at all. And
2:36:35
Speaker 2: archaeologists couldn't understand why Stonehenge wasn't built on the Marlborough Downs,
2:36:41
Speaker 2: where the big sarsen stones, the 20, the 30-ton megaliths,
2:36:44
Speaker 2: were available locally and didn't have to be brought there.
2:36:47
Speaker 2: Very recent research, 2018 research, has provided the answer that
2:36:51
Speaker 2: two of those sarsens were naturally in position all the
2:36:54
Speaker 2: time at Stonehenge. And they are sarsen stone 16 and
2:36:58
Speaker 2: the heel stone. And if you stand behind sarsen stone
2:37:02
Speaker 2: 16 and look at the heel stone at dawn on
2:37:04
Speaker 2: the summer solstice, you see the sun rising in direct
2:37:07
Speaker 2: alignment with the view. And the heel stone is like
2:37:10
Speaker 2: the sight on the barrel of a rifle targeting the sun.
2:37:13
Speaker 2: And that was there naturally. Earth was speaking to sky.
2:37:17
Speaker 2: The ancients saw that. They decided this was sacred. They
2:37:21
Speaker 2: went to huge lengths to bring the Sarsens, the rest
2:37:24
Speaker 2: of the Sarsens, from the Marlborough Downs to create the
2:37:26
Speaker 2: big stone circle at Stonehenge and then to put the
2:37:29
Speaker 2: blue stones inside. it but initially what they were celebrating
2:37:32
Speaker 2: was a natural union of heaven and earth and that
2:37:36
Speaker 2: brings us to the notion of as above so below
2:37:39
Speaker 2: that we are connected to the cosmos that it is
2:37:42
Speaker 2: that it is part of our heritage. We in modern
2:37:44
Speaker 2: cities forget the cosmos exists. We have all kinds of
2:37:47
Speaker 2: tech that can look at astronomy, astronomy programs. We can
2:37:51
Speaker 2: all do that, but actually looking at the stars is
2:37:54
Speaker 2: something that's very difficult for people who live in cities
2:37:56
Speaker 2: to do. We're cut off from the cosmos. We're cut
2:37:59
Speaker 2: off from the notion that it is sacred, that it
2:38:02
Speaker 2: matters to the human creature. And what the ancients seem
2:38:05
Speaker 2: to have done is to realize how vital that connection
2:38:08
Speaker 2: is and to memorialize it and to celebrate it and
2:38:11
Speaker 2: to draw our attention to the intimate connection between ground
2:38:16
Speaker 2: and sky.
2:38:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, light pollution sort of fuels our infantile existence in
2:38:20
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, right? Because it doesn't constantly remind
2:38:23
Speaker 1: us that we're a part of this great thing.
2:38:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, light pollution is a huge factor. It's very easy
2:38:30
Speaker 2: to forget that we live in a universe. Very easy
2:38:32
Speaker 2: to forget that. Very easy to believe that it's just
2:38:35
Speaker 2: about these cities that we live in and the intimate
2:38:37
Speaker 2: concerns of our But in fact, we're part of something much,
2:38:42
Speaker 2: much bigger. And my God, I mean, it's a mystery
2:38:46
Speaker 2: enough to be born a human being at all. Just
2:38:51
Speaker 2: to be alive is an extraordinary mystery to have the
2:38:57
Speaker 2: ability to love. to feel emotions, to understand beauty, to
2:39:05
Speaker 2: be moved by a symphony. All of these things we
2:39:09
Speaker 2: take for granted, but actually they're deeply mysterious. We don't
2:39:13
Speaker 2: really know what we are or who we are, which
2:39:18
Speaker 2: is one of the reasons I'm so fascinated by Rick
2:39:22
Speaker 2: Strassman's work. You presented his film. DMT, the spirit molecule.
2:39:26
Speaker 2: And on my upcoming speaking tour, I'm going to be
2:39:29
Speaker 2: doing an event with Rick on the 14th or 15th
2:39:32
Speaker 2: of May in Sedona. I think it'll be the first
2:39:35
Speaker 2: time that Rick has spoken publicly for quite a while.
2:39:38
Speaker 2: Rick has a colleague called Andrew Gallimore, who teaches at
2:39:42
Speaker 2: the University of Okinawa in Japan. And Rick and Andrew
2:39:46
Speaker 2: have together developed a technology for releasing DMT into human
2:39:52
Speaker 2: volunteers in a very slow drip that will keep them
2:39:55
Speaker 2: in the DMT state, if they wish, for hours on end.
2:40:00
Speaker 2: And the intention is to use this technology to explore
2:40:06
Speaker 2: and map the DMT realm.
2:40:09
Speaker 1: When do I sign up?
2:40:10
Speaker 2: As soon as possible.
2:40:11
Speaker 1: Where do I go?
2:40:11
Speaker 2: It's very close. Imperial College, it looks like Imperial College
2:40:14
Speaker 2: London is going to deploy this technology further research into
2:40:19
Speaker 2: DMT and that that research is not going to be
2:40:23
Speaker 2: purely and simply into the therapeutic potential of a psychedelic
2:40:27
Speaker 2: which is very important research to do it's going to
2:40:29
Speaker 2: be an investigation into the nature of reality using a psychedelic,
2:40:33
Speaker 2: the mysterious nature of reality. And it is odd, and
2:40:36
Speaker 2: you know this from personal experience, that when you get
2:40:39
Speaker 2: plunged into that DMT realm, it is so different from
2:40:43
Speaker 2: the realm of our daily world, filled with geometry, filled
2:40:46
Speaker 2: with these sprightly intelligences, completely internally coherent. How can that
2:40:52
Speaker 2: be generated by the brain? Or are we dealing with
2:40:56
Speaker 2: some other level of reality that we haven't encountered yet?
2:40:59
Speaker 2: I think that ancient cultures, and in particular, my lost
2:41:03
Speaker 2: civilization were deeply involved in exploring the mysterious nature of
2:41:07
Speaker 2: reality and used the plant medicines as part of that process.
2:41:12
Speaker 1: When it comes to the serpent mound where the head
2:41:14
Speaker 1: points in the summer solstice, does that take into account
2:41:17
Speaker 1: the procession of the equinoxes in terms of.
2:41:19
Speaker 2: Like trying to … The position of the summer solstice
2:41:21
Speaker 2: sun on the horizon is not affected by the procession. However,
2:41:24
Speaker 2: it is affected by another factor which is a slight
2:41:28
Speaker 2: nod on the axis of the earth.
2:41:30
Speaker 1: A nod but not a wobble?
2:41:31
Speaker 2: Not a wobble.
2:41:32
Speaker 1: What is the nod?
2:41:33
Speaker 2: A nod and it's called mutation and the axis of
2:41:38
Speaker 2: the earth nods back and forward over a cycle of
2:41:40
Speaker 2: about 41,000 years and that can, that does adjust the
2:41:45
Speaker 2: position of sunrise on the horizon over a very long
2:41:50
Speaker 2: period of time and it would in theory If this
2:41:53
Speaker 2: idea can be taken seriously enough, it would in theory
2:41:56
Speaker 2: be possible to use very precise observations using the latest
2:41:59
Speaker 2: modern tech, not simply being up there in a drone
2:42:02
Speaker 2: and seeing the general connection between the position of the
2:42:05
Speaker 2: sun on the horizon and the head of Serpent Mound.
2:42:07
Speaker 2: It would be possible to refine that and actually say
2:42:11
Speaker 2: astronomically the precise date on which Serpent Mound must have
2:42:14
Speaker 2: been first created to precisely target the rising sun on
2:42:17
Speaker 2: the equinox. Wow.
2:42:19
Speaker 1: And on that note, we just did three hours. Did we?
2:42:22
Speaker 1: Flew by.
2:42:23
Speaker 2: I would ask your listeners and viewers, while we're talking
2:42:26
Speaker 2: about Ohio, don't forget about Newark and High Bank.
2:42:30
Speaker 1: What are those?
2:42:31
Speaker 2: These are two incredible, amazing, absolutely stunning, gorgeous geometrical sites.
2:42:37
Speaker 2: It's sad, but one of them is preserved within a
2:42:40
Speaker 2: private golf course.
2:42:41
Speaker 1: Oh, no.
2:42:42
Speaker 2: However, it's not so sad because if it hadn't been
2:42:45
Speaker 2: preserved within a private golf course, it would be gone completely.
2:42:49
Speaker 2: More than 90% of the Native American earthworks that were
2:42:51
Speaker 2: documented in the 19th century are gone now. They've been
2:42:55
Speaker 2: plowed under for agriculture. That's another part of our missing story.
2:42:59
Speaker 2: There we're looking at Newark. See that octagon and circle combination?
2:43:03
Speaker 2: That's repeated at another site called High Bank, which is
2:43:06
Speaker 2: 60 miles away. Go back to that, Jamie.
2:43:09
Speaker 1: Give me a large image of that. So is this
2:43:12
Speaker 1: an overlay or is.
2:43:14
Speaker 2: That what it actually looks like? That's what it actually
2:43:16
Speaker 2: looks like. That's a graphic based on it. Well, the
2:43:18
Speaker 2: octagon circle combination in the top left of the image
2:43:20
Speaker 2: are best preserved. The other bits are not so well preserved.
2:43:23
Speaker 2: And the reason the octagon circle are best preserved is
2:43:26
Speaker 2: because they're in a private golf club. Otherwise, they would
2:43:29
Speaker 2: have been plowed under. The interesting thing is that that
2:43:32
Speaker 2: octagon-circle combination is 60 miles from high bank, but there's
2:43:36
Speaker 2: another octagon-circle combination there, and it is oriented at precisely
2:43:40
Speaker 2: 90 degrees to that one. That speaks of high science
2:43:43
Speaker 2: in the Mississippi Valley a very, very, very long time ago.
2:43:47
Speaker 2: There's so much to explore and so much to investigate
2:43:50
Speaker 2: and so much to inquire into in America. It's just
2:43:53
Speaker 2: an incredible land, and its mysteries have been hidden from us,
2:43:56
Speaker 2: and I'm hoping that With this book that I have
2:44:00
Speaker 2: managed to pull the veil back a little bit on
2:44:03
Speaker 2: those mysteries. And if we're really coming to the end
2:44:05
Speaker 2: of our– is it really three hours?
2:44:07
Speaker 1: My God.
2:44:08
Speaker 2: If we're really coming to the end of our three hours,
2:44:10
Speaker 2: can I repeat? I would love to see readers of
2:44:12
Speaker 2: my books at my events. I'm doing three events in Canada, Vancouver, Montreal.
2:44:18
Speaker 2: and Toronto, and I'm doing something like 17 or 18
2:44:22
Speaker 2: events in the United States. I'm just speaking continuously right
2:44:26
Speaker 2: the way across the US. I wish I could visit
2:44:28
Speaker 2: every state in the US, but my goodness, this is
2:44:30
Speaker 2: an enormous country. Every state in the US is as
2:44:33
Speaker 2: big as the entire British Isles, you know. But I'm
2:44:36
Speaker 2: visiting as many as I am. I'm going to be
2:44:38
Speaker 2: giving illustrated presentations. I'll be signing books afterwards. I'll be
2:44:41
Speaker 2: taking pictures. I would like to meet my readers. And
2:44:45
Speaker 2: please check out my website, grahamhancock.com. Look at the Talks
2:44:48
Speaker 2: and Events page, and you'll see where all these events
2:44:50
Speaker 2: are occurring over the next seven weeks. We're on the
2:44:52
Speaker 2: 22nd of April today. I will not leave North America
2:44:55
Speaker 2: until the 5th of June.
2:44:56
Speaker 1: Well, I hope I see you again then.
2:44:59
Speaker 2: Indeed.
2:44:59
Speaker 1: Listen, thank you so much. You're a treasure. And this book,
2:45:02
Speaker 1: I can't wait to get into it, America Before, and
2:45:04
Speaker 1: the audiobook is available now as well.
2:45:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, the audiobook is available.
2:45:07
Speaker 1: I read it. Thank you so much, Graham. It's always
2:45:10
Speaker 1: a pleasure having you here. I really, really appreciate you.
2:45:12
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me back on, Joe.
2:45:14
Speaker 1: Graham Hancock, ladies and gentlemen.
2:45:15
Speaker 2: Bye.