Archaeology WARNING: They Secretly Found Antarctica 300 Years Before Us - Graham Hancock

0:00 This could be The last time I speak about myself, my work. Because there's a chance that I might not make it off the operating table this month. And a journalist who has very bad blood towards me. has been trying to publish a story on me for more than two years now. And it will come out in the next month or two, and I didn't want that to be the last word on my life.

0:21 What you want the last word of your life to be? I'm here to communicate about the possibility of a major forgotten episode in Human Story. I'm talking about A lost civilization.

0:32 So most people think civilization started six thousand years ago? Yes. But you believe there's strong evidence that there could have been a previous civilization. Twenty thousand years ago. And I'm going to present the evidence for that here, Stephen. And it suggests a golden age. Where there was no violence, no cruelty, where great healers and sages were at work. They're extremely sophisticated. However If you follow the myths further, as I've done, you find something odd happens. You find that they stepped away from the original purity and become a culture that begins to impose its power on others around the world. And then thrown into those myths is scientific information which record a gigantic cataclysm, all but wiping out the human race. If what you're saying is true, what does that mean for our lives? I guess also our future. Well, there's always this feeling in the myth that we brought this upon ourselves. And when I look at our civilization today, I see a civilization that tic all the mythical boxes for the next lost civilization, and that we are most likely to be the cause of that cataclysm ourselves. Unless we wake up. Graham Hancock.

1:34 What will you care about on your last day? Most of all Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show The most shared episodes, the most rated episodes. I would love you to know. And a simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also it's the simple easy free thing that you can do to help us make this show better. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this one right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so so much.

2:15 Oh. Fram Hancock. I guess the first question I wanted to ask you is what is it you've committed the last More than thirty years of your life.

2:26 To understanding. What it is is a pu a puzzle. I'm puzzled. by aspects of the human past.

2:35 There could be And I think there's a lot to suggest there was. a major forgotten episode in the human story. That's why I refer to us as a species with amnesia. And when I use that phrase, I need to give credit to Immanuel Velikovsky, who wrote a book called Mankind in Amnesia. I think we are a species with amnesia. I think we have forgotten something very important in our own past. And when I turn to

3:01 The experts. I find much of what they say very interesting and very useful. But some of what they say extremely unsatisfactory and um not responding to the problems that that I have in the past. And that's led me to to take my own approach to the past, to look at that and and to offer

3:20 uh readers'cause I'm mainly an author. To offer them an alternative point of view, which is rational and and and solidly based. But which is contrary.

3:33 Of the mainstream narrative. We only have Decipherable written scripts from the last Five and a half thousand years maximum. Before that, we don't have any any writing that we can At any rate.

3:46 read, go back ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty thousand years. All you can base it on from an archaeological point of view is what they can dig out of the ground. And I think what they're missing The ancients did leave us memories of what they went through. We have myths and traditions and And scriptures from all around the world which record

4:09 A gigantic cataclysm. affecting the human race. all but wiping out the human race. Everybody knows the story of the Flood of Noah, of course. The Flood of Noah is just an one example of hundreds like that of stories from around the world. Uh archaeologists pour scorn on Plato's story of Atlantis. But Atlantis is another of those stories that remembers a global flood that wiped out a former era of existence, leaving only a few survivors. Then the archaeological response to them is There was a local river flood.

4:44 They exaggerated it. It was a big deal for them, so they said it happened to the whole world. And I'm sick of our illists saying that. This is the memory banks of our species. This is the record, the only record we have of a period before six thousand years ago. And we shouldn't despise it and scorn it as primitive superstition. We should say, what can we find in here that we can coordinate with scientific facts that we're aware of? Let's see if there's something to this, rather than just dismissing it. Many of these myths contain Imagery. And a series of numbers, a very important academic study.

5:19 Published in the nineteen sixties a book called Hamlet's Mill. by Giorgio de Santilliana, Professor of the History of Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Herha von Deshed, Professor of History of Science. This is not me speaking, this is major, major historians of science in the nineteen sixties. They found encoded in those myths Numbers and imagery that could only relate to one thing. And that's an obscure astronomical phenomenon called the pre-cession of the equinoxes. I'm not gonna go into the technicals, but to observe it and to record it and to predict it, to predict its effects in the future involves very precise astronomical observations maintained over a very long period of time, hundreds and hundreds of years at least.

5:59 So here we have myths of a global cataclysm. There is just so much else. There are ancient maps that show the world as it looked during the Ice Age, again dismissed as just total coincidence and not significant by archaeology. I feel that archaeology has failed miserably in providing a nurturing, satisfying answer to the questions we all have. So when you say g global c cataclysm, What does that mean? Means that some

6:23 Something hit the planet, there was we were wiped out. Yeah. sci that's been done on this uh is twofold. One aspect of it, the one that I think is I find most persuasive is called the younger dryers impact hypothesis. And this is a mainstream hypothesis, but it is severely criticised within academia. The hypothesis is that about

6:55 twenty thousand years ago. A very large comet. Came in from deep space. And went into orbit around the sun. This would be a comet of the diameter of a hundred.

7:07 kilometers, maybe two hundred. Comes in. Gets captured by the sun's gravity. goes into an orbit. That orbit crosses the orbit of the Earth. Yeah.

7:16 While you're dealing with one large object. The chances of getting hit are extremely low. It would be very bad if you did, but very low. Trouble is Nobody disputes this.

7:28 Once comets are caught by the gravitational field of a very large planet or of a sun, they start to break up. into multiple parts, and this is what happened to the younger dry ass comet. Instead of being a single bullet, it became a shotgun blast. It became thousands and thousands of objects. Of which we've catalogued quite a lot. Numbers of them Comet Enki is the best known bit of that former comet, many of the academics who look at this think that comet Enki, which is about six kilometers in diameter and which does cross the orbit of the Earth, they think that uh that was the source comet, but whereas the other team are saying, No, that's a bit of the source comet. There were many other bits as well, and twelve thousand eight hundred years ago, twelve thousand eight hundred and sixty approximately, the earth went into a storm of these fragments. None of them.

8:14 Big enough to compare with the object that wiped out the dinosaurs sixty five million years ago. But all over the world the earth is turning, this stuff comes in. They found it in the west coast of North America, they found it in Belgium, and they found it as far east as Syria. So it's like The earth turns and this stuff is just coming in. Most of it is blowing up in the air. It isn't even hitting the ground, but an airburst from an object that might be a hundred meters in diameter is equivalent to a very substantial nuclear blast. So their argument is the earth was hit by A comet storm.

8:47 And this they then argue, and I think they're right, uh explains what happened then, because twelve thousand eight hundred years ago We were still in the ice age. Uh but the earth was coming out of the Ice Age. In fact, for about a thousand, maybe two thousand years before that, the earth had been getting warmer.

9:04 Again, quite nice. Um You would normally expect that to continue. But then suddenly twelve thousand eight hundred Years ago, give it sixty years. There's a huge interruption.

9:16 There's a radical change. The earth, instead of warming, it suddenly goes back into a massive deep freeze. And this is the time when All the famous big animals of the Ice Age, the megafauna are wiped out. The the woolly mammoths, the mastodons, the Giant sloths, these things like fourteen feet tall, you know, they're all they're all wiped out in that window around about twelve thousand eight hundred years ago. And most important of all.

9:41 There's a very mysterious sea level rise that occurs then. This you would not expect when the earth is entering a cold phase. Normally when the earth enters a cold phase, ice accumulates on the existing ice caps. It doesn't. melt them go into the sea. So

9:57 The next thing is how do we explain this? sudden rise in sea levels at the beginning of younger drives. It shouldn't have happened. The comet theory explains it perfectly. The the the mass, the impact, the heat, the airbursts, that would have been enough. to send the ice sheets into meltdown and to cause this pulse of melt water. Then the freeze sets in.

10:17 You have about a thousand two hundred years of freezing Desperately cold conditions. And then again, eleven thousand six hundred years ago, womph, it suddenly warms up. I mean, these are radical climate changes. They're beyond anything that's happening now. And uh I I think explanations are needed for them. And because twelve thousand eight hundred years ago may sound a long time ago, but it's really yesterday in the human story. Uh so something very big. Happened to the earth. And happened to our ancestors twelve thousand eight hundred years ago. If it wasn't a comet, another theory that's been put forward is a radical change in solar activity. This might have been involved with it as well.

10:54 Don't find that as persuasive as the Younger Dryest impact hypothesis. And you know, maybe some other explanation will come up, but what nobody disputes is that the Younger Dryest was a catastrophe. Uh it was global uh and and it had huge effects. You um you chose intentionally to come and have this conversation today. Wha why today? Well. I've been quite unwell, r really noticeably unwell since uh January, February uh this year, particularly very

11:23 Very short of breath. It's it's because the one of the failed valves in my my heart is um causing blood to regurgitate inside the heart rather than pumping it through the body. And that means that oxygenated blood is not getting to my lungs. probably would live another two or three years without the surgery, maybe maybe even five. But the quality of life would be very low. I I I can't even walk up three stairs without being being exhausted at the moment. So I've definitely decided to to have the surgery. Why am I doing this interview now rather than postponing it until after the surgery and I've recovered? Well there's a Tiny chance, absolutely minuscule chance. that I might not make it off the operating table.

12:01 This month. Yeah. this month. And if that were the case, uh this would be The last time I've spoken about myself, my work. my life, challenges I faced, uh in an open forum like this. Um I I I

12:17 I choose to do that and I'm gonna say specifically why. Without giving without mentioning names. I choose to do that because a journalist uh who has very bad blood towards me. has been trying to publish a story on me for

12:32 More than two years now. Uh and it will come out in the next in the next month or two. And I didn't want that to be the last word of my life. That's why I'm here, Stephen. What you want the last word of your life to be? I would

12:47 I would hope that people will come to understand that I'm not the person that Very small minority. of archaeologists have mobilized social media to present me as. I'm not a grifter. I'm not a hoaxer. I'm not a con man. I'm deeply committed to this. I've devoted my life to it for more than for more than thirty years. I'm passionate about it. It matters to me. And I think Again, I'll be laughed at for saying this, but I feel called to do this. I feel I

13:17 I feel it's my obligation and my responsibility to do this. How is that? Disputed.'Cause I I I guess I need to understand human history to understand why The the the fundamental belief that you have that there was a civilization that we aren't talking about a belief. Um this is another it's a m mistake that my that my critics of often make. They th they think that I'm dealing with some sort of belief system or some sort of cult here. No, I'm not.

13:45 I'm just puzzled. I'm just puzzled by the past, and I'm puzzled by the memories that have been passed down to us and I'm puzzled that those memories Concur all around the world. On a serious cataclysmic event. Yeah, they think that um glacial lakes.

14:06 In North America. uh gradually grew in size and over spilt the ice dams that held them in place and that the um water from those lakes some of it went into the Atlantic Ocean and cut the Gulf Stream. I don't dispute that. Glacial lakes were involved, but those lakes were filled up at a r massive speed. Nobody disputes that the Younger Dryce was a cataclysmic event. It's just the the degree of the cataclysm that's disputed and what caused it that's disputed.

14:35 But everyone agrees that humans are Three hundred. Yeah. At present. When I started on this quest back

14:44 back in the late eighties, early nineties, it was felt that Anatomically modern human beings had not existed for more than Fifty thousand years. Very recent, really. But this turned out to be complete rubbish, because anatomically modern humans are much older than fifty thousand years ago. We have a hundred and ninety-six thousand-year-old anatomically modern human remains from Ethiopia. And then finally, three hundred and fifteen thousand uh years ago, a recent find in um Gebeler Hood in Morocco, uh again anatomically modern humans. So we can say that

15:21 If we define ourselves by Our anatomy. Uh brain size. capacity of the skull. If we define ourselves in those ways, we've been around for at least three hundred and fifteen thousand years, and probably much longer. That's that's just an accident of discovery. And that's one of the things that puzzles me. If we're anatomically modern, if we've got all the modern kit, if we've got the same brains, we've got the same urology, everything is there. Why do we wait

15:49 More than three hundred thousand years to establish something recognizable as a human Civilization. Why do we wait so long? We got all the kit. There's evidence that that our ancestors were aware of agriculture just chose not to use it much, much, much earlier than that.

16:07 The complex of events that leads to a city based civilization. which is the kind of civilization we have now all over the world. that you can only really trace that back to six thousand years ago. Yes, you can say that before six thousand years ago there was build up.

16:25 to what became the high civilizations? But my question is why not much earlier? Why wh wh wh why did we wait until that moment And and I don't find a satisfactory answer to that question except perhaps we didn't wait. Perhaps we're missing part of our story. And when I say a lost civilization, I do not mean a civilization like ours. I do not mean an industrial civilization. I don't mean they had cell phones or flew to the moon or any of that bullshit. I think they were very different civilization from ours, but they had conquered a number of peaks. And one of those peaks was navigation and ocean seafaring. hence the survival of maps which show the world as it looked during the Ice Age, and another was astronomy. Uh and another really important

17:14 breakthrough evidenced by by the ancient maps, but particularly a category of maps called the Portalanos, um is accurate relative longitudes. This is the Orantius Phineas map. It shows Antarctica. Uh right there. Uh and and um Th this is interesting'cause this map was drawn in fifteen thirty one.

17:33 Uh the problem is that we're not going to be able to Our civilization. didn't discover Antarctica until eighteen twenty. So its appearance on a map drawn in fifteen twenty-one. Particularly when we know that the map was based on older source maps and the map maker tells us in his own legend that he has uncovered material previously hidden in darkness. When we find that.

17:56 Uh we have to begin to wonder what is uh what is going on here. Had somebody found Antarctica long before, long before we did. Uh and mapped it with extremely accurate relative longitudes. And that's important because our civilization didn't crack the longitude problem until the mid eighteenth century. What that meant was that if you're on a vessel sailing west or east. Uh you might be three hundred miles Closer.

18:22 to a coastline than you think you are. And suddenly you're on it in the night and you're dead. Once you've got longitude work out, you know exactly where you are. We didn't get that until seventeen fifties, seventeen sixties there about with Harrison's chronometer. So finding good longitudes on very ancient maps is another puzzle that I don't think archaeology solved. So you think there could have been a civilization twenty thousand years ago which was before this young dry moment where um I mean I've got this photo here which I'll throw up on the screen. Yeah. I think you say it's evidence that something took place. It is. That's that's the younger dryass boundary. Uh and I'm with Alan West, who's one of the scientists from the from the comet research group who are working on the younger dryass hypothesis, and our hands are on that black stripe running through the middle of the drawer, and that is Sut that is evidence of wildfires burning. Uh it's full of nano-diamonds, tiny little diamonds microscopic size, which are a classic product of comet impacts. Uh microspheres, some platinum, some iridium

19:21 All signatures of a cometary impact. And there it is, it's about five inches thick. That layer is the Younger Dryas boundary layer. It dates to twelve thousand eight hundred years ago. So for anyone that can't see, it's just like a slice of earth and there's this black line going through through the earth. We're in a draw here where a river has cut a channel and it's exposed the sides of the channel, and on the sides of the channel we can see this black stripe running through, and that is precisely the Younger Dryest boundary. And the current hypothesis is from a lot of archaeologists is there wasn't a human civilization before this point twelve thousand years ago. But you believe there's strong evidence that there could have been. Yes. So civilization then in your definition of the word. How do you define that? A group of people gathering and working together? Fundamentally it involves it involves the willing organization or the unwilling organization of labor. If you look at a site like Gobekli Tepi in Turkey, we have it on our timeline here somewhere. It's eleven thousand

20:16 six hundred years old. Uh this is really an an extraordinary site. It's a it's a very sophisticated site. It's very large. It consists of large T shaped megaliths that can weigh up to twenty tons. There are precise astronomical alignments in it. Uh this was not done by two or three people working together. This was Well that's the Gebecki Teppi today covered by a a modern canopy, but to keep uh fair enough to keep the the weather off it,'cause it was previously deliberately buried by its builders. Um but of course there's much more around. Hundreds and hundreds more pillars are still underground. We know they're there because of ground penetrating radar, but they've not been excavated yet. So so this was a major project. And interestingly, the people who built Gobekli Tepe at that at the time Gobekli Tepi began There was no agriculture happening there. They were all hunter gatherers.

21:08 Mm-hmm. Nevertheless, they did something that archaeologists used to say hunter gatherers couldn't do. They organized themselves. They made a huge project, they implemented it, and they delivered it, and Gobekli Tep is not alone. It's one of dozens of sites like that all over An Anatolia in in in Turkey. This was a highly organized, sophisticated I'm I'm a little bit confused. So if the Ice Age ended eleven thousand seven hundred years ago, and Gebecki Tepe is eleven thousand six hundred years ago,

21:40 That means there's a hundred year gap between the end of the ice age and something as sophisticated as Gebecki Tepi. Not exactly. In this frame. spot on accurate dates. Some will say the Ice Age ended eleven thousand six hundred, some will say it ended eleven thousand seven hundred years ago. But the fact is that in this window the world was warming up again. It was getting better. And that's when this

22:06 project was was created. And the mystery is mystery for for archaeologists anyway, is that it was hunter gatherers. And archaeologists are now having to come to terms with that. You see the idea was you had to have an agricultural community first. In order to create projects like this. Because that allows people to become specialists. What If you generate a food surplus that you can rely on, then you can

22:29 Take people with certain skills and say, Focus on that, become an astronomer, become an architect, become an engineer, and we'll support you in doing that. That was the idea, and that was why it was felt that something like Gobekli Tepi couldn't be built until about six thousand years ago when there was widespread agriculture. But that turned out not to be true. Uh it was built by hunter-gatherers, but within a thousand years of it being built, agriculture. becomes present in that whole area. Hm. Origins of agriculture are definitely earlier than we've

22:58 than we've been taught. So uh funny because I don't know a lot about the Ice Age, but humans survived the Ice Age. Oh God, yes. We we we we did. It's just it's just um Where do you want to be during an Ice Age? That's the question. What am I options?

23:14 If you were a rational being, which most human beings are, You would immediately exclude Northern Europe. Absolutely no point in being in that frozen, miserable wilderness. You'd immediately exclude the northern part of North America, too. No point. in being there. It's just horrible at that time.

23:32 Siberia. Pretty rough. No, you'd look for the tropics. You'd go you'd go down close to the equator, you'd go to the places that weren't affected by the Ice Age that were actually the best real estate on earth. That's where you'd go. That's why

23:48 uh if we are looking for A missing Episode in the human story. we're wasting our time looking for it in Northern Europe or North America. Uh, we should be looking for it in Mexico, we should be looking for it in India, we should be looking for it in Indonesia, we should be looking for it uh

24:08 Around Papua New Guinea, all of these areas that were that were really great places to live during the Ice Age. That's that's the kind of place that the sort of civilization I'm talking about could have thrived. What is the difference? You know,'cause on here it says the earliest known humans were three hundred thousand odd years ago. Yeah. What is the difference between these humans three hundred thousand years ago And the civilization you're describing twenty thousand years ago that you believe existed? Apart from What is

24:35 Perhaps wrongly described as a slight refinement in human features. Natural selection operating on what humans perceive as beauty, I don't know, but otherwise the same. The same. The same, yeah. Yeah. And again that's not that not disputed. Nobody's saying that Jebel Erhood. human beings were somehow different from us. They're anatomically modern humans.

24:54 But how did they live, um versus your definition of a sip? Civilization. Uh they lived a simple hunter gatherer life. Okay, in small groups. Yeah. But somehow Around eleven thousand six hundred years ago.

25:08 People started Accumulating. Monuments that can only be made with large groups and organized. Organized labor. You've got to you you have to have a system. You have to have a pl can't build something like Gobekli Tepe without planning it out in advance. You've got to draw it out somehow. There has to be a plan.

25:23 It's not something you just wing. Uh so so there has to there there's a missing background to all of that, which bothers me. And again, so most people think civilization started What, six thousand years ago? Yes, that w that would be when civilizations become archaeologically visible. So

25:40 You have Uh ancient Sumer. Mesopotamia. Uh which

25:46 Roughly three thousand five hundred I'm gonna use B C because everybody's familiar with that. There are r roughly three thousand five hundred B C which is five thousand five hundred years ago, approximately, we start seeing citi. We start seeing the beginnings of writing taking place. Round about the same time, the same thing is happening in Egypt. Maybe a couple of hundred years later, but the new work that's being done in Egypt is pushing Egypt much closer to to Sumer. narrowing that that window. Effectively you can say that these two civilizations become archaeologically visible at the same time. And uh they're they're not alone.

26:22 Because on the other side of the world, in Peru. Uh there's a civilization now recognized called the Caral Soupe civilization, which built pyramids, uh which also goes back five thousand five hundred years. And and this is one of the mysteries I'm I'm looking at now, is is why we have these Apparently. coincidental emergence of high civilizations in the same window uh all around the world. In the Svalley civilization.

26:48 Roughly the same, five thousand years old. Yeah, we're looking at uh Corral here, I think, yeah. Yeah. And these classic these the features these circular plazas in front of them and then the pyramid with a And and uh you know these were not

27:03 And not expected in Peru. When archaeologists think of Peru, they tend to think of Machu Picchu, the Inca civilization. That's what gets all the Coverage And that's six hundred years ago. That's six hundred years ago. That's yesterday. Whereas these Carral Super. Pyramids, Coral, Aspero, Banduria.

27:23 Panico, these ones. Or Much older, Thousands of years older, they're extremely sophisticated. They built with an earthquake proof technology. They

27:35 Instead of using blocks they put small stones in in textile bags. Um those allow a certain amount of shifting so the thing doesn't collapse in an earthquake. And this is five thousand five hundred years old getting on. So again, not an agricultural civilization at the at that time. They're a hunter-gatherer civilization. So so Archaeologists are having to confront a reversal of their model at the moment, and I think there's room in that Reversal of the model for a forgotten episode in the human story. Tell me about this forgotten episode in the human story.

28:08 Yeah, it's uh it's remembered it's remembered all around the world as a golden age, where there was no Violence, no cruelty. Um Where great healers and sages were at work.

28:21 Where Powers that are scorned. In our society today. Such as telepathy and telekinesis, which are regarded as Completely non existent by our scientists.

28:33 Uh were regarded as a Matter of fact of life in in in this ancient world. That's uh a civilization that emerged out of shamanism. Made something good.

28:46 But then If you follow the myths further, as I've done, you find something odd happens. You find That they stepped away. from the original purity.

28:58 That they've become A culture that begins to impose its power. On others. around the world. And that's always given as the reason for the cataclysm. in the myths that that we angered the gods. It might have been with our noise, it might have been with our irreverence. We angered the gods and they

29:17 sent a flood. They weren't happy. with their creation. They wanted to start again. wipe the slate clean. And so there's this there's always this feeling in the myth and it's and I can't explain it. I don't know what what it comes from, but it's always there. Is that

29:32 In some way. We ourselves brought this upon ourselves. Is this Those people not understanding the forces of mother nature?

29:41 And trying to sort of Justify it as Today. Included amongst the forces of nature.

29:57 We we are a geological force. Uh and worse than that, we're a psychic force which is full of anger and hatred and suspicion and and and mutual destruction. That's not gonna be good for Nature. That's that's gonna be disturbing. We're an integrated system, in my view. We we we're not separate. Human beings are part of all of this and what we do affects all of that. And that's what the ancient myths Seem to testify to. So If I may finish on that.

30:26 When I look at our civilization today, I I don't want to go off on a rant, but when I look at our civilization today, I see a civilization that tic all the mythical boxes. Every single one for the next lost civilization. And I envisage a situation. Ten or fifteen thousand years from now. When we will be a myth.

30:46 A fantasy. That are Our ancestors actually could speak to one another on opposite sides of the planet that our ancestors they could fly to the moon. Uh you know, they could go to the depths of the ocean. The archaeologists of that time will say Complete fantasy. Just made up. Never happened.

31:03 But it did. We're that lost civilization. And we don't need a comet. We don't need solar activity. Because if we're so psychically messed up as a species, we'll probably end up doing it to ourselves.

31:19 That's what nuclear weapons are about. Mass species suicide. And the mental processes that drive that. Very dangerous.

31:32 very effective of the world we live in. Hatred is a psychic force and uh The way it's being generated around the world at the moment and mobilized and focused.

31:45 is um it's gotta be bad for all of us. Especially when we have such powers to self destruct. looking at the low consciousness level of the so called leaders on this planet. When I look around the whole bunch of them.

32:02 I just see very low consciousness individuals who define everything in material terms, uh who who are who are Who are focused on This also gets me into trouble, but I I think nationalism is something that humanity needs to grow out of. We need to grow out of nationalism. It's just an extension of tribalism. We need to grow out of it soon. And let me be clear, I am not talking about

32:31 World government. I don't want anything like I don't want any government. I'm an anarchist, basically. That's what anarchy means. It means without government. I don't want any Government. Hello. But we have to get past this notion that

32:44 By accident, I was born with this particular skin, you know. The notion is that this these accidents of birth define us. That we must somehow massively respect and love people who look like us and and and kinda hate and fear people who don't look like us. We have to get past that. We have to get past that as a species. It's really important. All human beings everywhere All the same, fundamentally. Of course we're vastly diverse. We have we have incredible different gifts. I value and appreciate the differences in different cultures all around the world. This is wonderful. But it doesn't have to come with and we are better than you uh and we're gonna kill you because you don't share our ideas. This is insane. It's it's crazy. We're not a mature species, we're a we're a childish species. Um leading our species.

33:32 Our leaders who have the mentality of um deranged teenagers. We elected them. Yeah, we did, very unfortunately, which shows how easy it is to manipulate Uh the narrative.

33:47 in the world today. Today who wins in elections isn't the best person, isn't the good person, isn't the person who's going to do good. It's the best communicator who wins. So this um ancient civilization that we could've theoretically forgotten, you were somewhat implying that maybe they were right, that their own actions Hm. Great flood, as they say. They they talk about it mythology. Notion, yeah. Yeah. They might but they might have been.

34:12 But it's enough to say that that's what they believed. Because that's what all the myths say. The Noah story is prefigured in ancient Sumer. Um with uh An almost identical flood myth. The gods are angry.

34:26 A great flood is going to be sent. The intention is to wipe out humanity. But This this god is called Enki.

34:34 Says to Atrahasis, I'm gonna save you. Build a boat. Build it now. A big one. Put into it the seeds of all things that you will need. Bring each animal of every kind into your boat. This is uh this is a kind of survival arc, which is exactly the same as Noah. Noah's arc is just copied on that. It's just borrowed from that.

34:53 And to people that say, Well, these are just stories, these are fictions that someone wrote and then they pass them down and there's no truth in these things at all. Uh I I I just happen to think they're not, and and my job has been to make that case. I do not claim that I have proved there was a lost civilization. Any archaeologist who says Hancock claims he's proved that is lying. I don't claim that. I claim I'm puzzled and mystified and I'm gonna I'm gonna conclude Complete that journey as long as I can. I'm going to carry on investigating and looking into all aspects of this because that's what I'm here to do. And that lost civilization you said they were sea bearing. Potentially. Seafaring, yeah. Yeah. Which means they had boats. Yeah. Yeah. So we know, for example, that anatomically modern uh human beings uh reached Australia sixty thousand years ago. Th those involved significant sea journeys. They uh reached Cyprus uh in the Mediterranean fourteen thousand years ago. Again they involve sea journeys not

35:49 Engine boats, not metal boats. You can do it on quite simple craft. Look at look at the Polynesians, look at the vast distances that they explored on outrigger canoes. Uh so yeah, boats, but not All kind of boats. Mm. I just don't understand how if if they're travelling the season boats

36:07 How they're they aren't classified as a civilization. Well Because According to the mainstream model, which I am trying to provide an alternative.

36:17 Two. They never existed. There was no such people. They never did these things. The maps are just Coincidences, irrelevance, just odd. They put Antarctica, they put a m a landmass in Antarctica'cause they felt it would balance the world. That's the theory that's given. And it's just to me it's not it's not satisfactory.

36:35 Doesn't it just doesn't add up. These things need to be explained. And it's why it's why in every society which wishes to make progress. Uh Mavericks, people who go against the grain. No matter

36:51 How much shit they have to take. Unneeded. they're needed in our society to provide a balance to this Overwhelming. mass that science now occupies. Science has now come to occupy the space that religion occupied in many people's minds.

37:07 And again I need to emphasise I'm not against science. Science science is about to save my life. I have major heart surgery coming up in two weeks time. I'm not against it at all, but I think it should be one weapon in our armory, not the only weapon. One of the um Things I was super curious about,'cause I was actually there last last week. Is this place. He's a

37:26 Pyramids of Giza. The Great Pyramid of Giza. Here we look at it. Attributed to the Pharaoh. Kfufu.

37:35 Who is a pharaoh of the fourth. Dynasty? What is the mystery here? So again, pyramids are this big stack of like concrete blocks in Egypt. What is the why is it so mysterious? Well first of all, they're not concrete. They're they're hewn limestone um and granite. Uh

37:53 First of all it's mysterious for The sheer size of it. Look. So you got roughly seven hundred and fifty feet along each side. Okay.

38:03 Um They vary in length by only fractions of an inch. Just about spot on exact on the side length, and you want that in a pyramid. 'Cause if you get it wrong, you're going to end up with a corkscrew rather than a pyramid. If you get it wrong at the bottom, those

38:20 Errors are gonna magnify and they're gonna get worse and worse and there's not gonna be a pyramid at the end of the day. Secondly Weight calculated at about six million tons. More than two million individual blocks of stone. I've climbed the pyramid five times.

38:38 Once I climbed it when there was an event taking place on the Giza Plateau Picnics, basically. And and uh a lot of Kyrie's just decided to climb the pyramid. As I say, I've climbed it four other times without other people there, but this time there were hundreds of people on the pyramid. That's when I realized how difficult this thing is to make, because the biggest danger was the other people.

39:00 Once you're up. You fall, you're dead. It's uh it's it's a fifty two degree slope. There's no way you're gonna stop. You're gonna come down and still every year people die on the Great Pyramid. That's why they've made it illegal to climb it now. So there's that. Then there's the almost perfect alignment of the Great Pyramid to true North. Not to compass North, which is about ten or eleven degrees off true north, but to astronomical north.

39:26 real North. The Great Pyramid is aligned within three sixtieths of a single degree. I put it that way because degrees are divided into sixty minutes, so three minutes of arc. The Great Pyramid is aligned to that level of precision, three sixtieths of a single degree to true north. And they've done that on a six million ton monument which is four hundred and eighty one feet high. If you Take account of its original height, which has a fifty two degree slope, which is filled with internal corridors and spaces. Grand Gallery, the ascending, the descending corridors.

39:57 All of this. Is Extremely difficult to do. It is it's not impossible to do because we see it there. Uh could our civilization do it? Yeah, I think we could. Uh but

40:09 Would we do it? No, I don't think we would. Uh the motive wouldn't be there. People say, well the why? I mean why do you want to align it perfectly to true north? It's enough to ask me to build a six million ton monument. But you want it aligned to true north as well? Come on. I mean that's a really difficult specification. We find that hard. Um Kind of. Artistry.

40:31 was put to work on the great pyramid as well as s skill. Let's get rid of any notion that slaves were involved. They were not. Th there wasn't slavery in the old kingdom anyway, but this is a work of love from the first to the last stone. It's a work done with great skill and care. It's a beautiful and extraordinary thing. Both inside. And out. It sits. Almost exactly on latitude thirty, which is one third of the way between the North Pole and the equator.

41:00 And uh It incorporates the dimensions of the earth. On a scale of one to forty three thousand two hundred in its own dimensions. So if you take the height of the Great Pyramid? and multiply it by 43,200. I'll explain why that number matters. Multiply it by that number, you get the polar radius of the Earth.

41:19 Measure the base perimeter of the Great Pyramid, multiply it by the same factor, 43200, you get the equatorial circumference of the Earth. I kill just know this. They say it's a coincidence. Total constants, just by chance.

41:35 However, I I could agree with them actually. If the scale. was not one to forty three thousand two hundred.

41:42 But the fact that it's 1 to 43,200 changes, because that belongs to a sequence of numbers that is found in ancient mythology all around the world. And those numbers are all multiples. And I mentioned at the beginning of our discussion The book by the great historian of

42:01 science Giorgio de Santilliana, press professor of the history of science at MIT. He was the first to identify that these numbers and the imagery that go with them Derive from a phenomenon called the precession of the equinoxes. I better explain that a little bit. The precession of the equinoxes. Everybody's heard the song. We live in the dawning of the age of Aquarius. I'm sure you've heard that.

42:27 Uh no comment. We live in the dawning of the age of Aquarius. That's astrology. At the moment, um for the last two thousand years, on the spring equinox, the sun has risen against the background of the constellation of Pisces. That's the age of Pisces. We live in the age of Pisces. It's not an accident that the early Christians used the fish as their symbol. Mm-hmm.

42:52 The next constellation on the zodiac. When you go backwards around it, is Aquarius. And the precession is actually caused by a wobble on the axis of the earth. I'm gonna pretend that this is the earth. Okay. Um Instead of just doing this.

43:07 While it's doing that, it's also doing that. It's wobbling. And that affects the rising time and season at which particular stars rise. It affects Two things noticeably. One thing it affects is the pole star. At the moment the pole star is Polaris. The pole star, this is a stron astronomical north. It's the star towards which the extended north pole pole of the earth points most directly. Okay. At present it's Polaris. It hasn't always been Polaris four thousand years ago, it was Thhuban in the constellation of Draco. That's because the Earth's axis is doing this. At the horizon, it does the same thing with the zodiacal constellations. We shift gradually through each constellation, lasts about two thousand years in each constellation.

43:49 The great year where we come back to square one is just under twenty-six thousand years, twenty-five thousand nine hundred and twenty years is the convention that's applied in ancient mythology. So the fact that one of those numbers is the scale used to encode the dimensions of the earth in the Great Pyramid cannot be accidental, in my view. It's a deliberate choice. If it was one to fifty seven thousand, I wouldn't pay attention to it. If it was one to twenty One thousand. I wouldn't pay attention to it, but one to forty three thousand two hundred that's the number of syllables in the Rig Veda, for example, you find this All over the world. Everywhere. So what does that imply?

44:25 Uh, what it suggests is that incorporated into the building of the Great Pyramid was knowledge that was not supposed to have existed four and a half thousand years ago. In fact, knowledge that was not supposed to have existed until two thousand years ago. Hippocus of Alexandria is the Greek who was supposed to have discovered procession. the incorporation of procession in the structure of the Great Pyramid says to me that that knowledge is much older. It was already old then. I really want to make sure I'm clear on this procession thing,'cause I'm not I'm not super clear. Yeah. Um what does it what does it mean, procession?

44:59 It means that there's a certain star pattern that we see once every twenty thousand years? It goes backwards. Okay. The direction through the z through the zodiac is is forwards. in the normal year, but in the long term year because of the wobble, the sunrise against the background of the spring equinox. The sun rises perfectly due east. It always does. It also rises perfectly due east on the autumn equinox. On the summer solstice, the sun rises in the northern hemisphere north of east and south of east on the On the winter solstice. The key moment. for the ancients was the equinox.

45:34 It was considered to define the character of the year. And what defined it was the constellation that housed the sun, that was the house of the sun. Okay, so the star pattern. Yeah. A Zodiacal. These are the The constellations of the zodiac lie along what is called the ecliptic, the path of the sun. Okay. Okay? The the earth, the moon, we're all on the ecliptic.

45:58 Within And and therefore these are constellations that we can see the sun against the background of. Constellation like Orion, you'll never see the sun against the background of it. You're only going to see it against the background of the zodiacal constellations that lie on the so called path of the sun. And those are the twelve familiar constellations of the zodiac. And as I say, We're living in the age of Pisces right now, and uh according to ancient astrology, we're going to be making the transition

46:29 into Aquarius within about the next hundred and fifty years, the sun will have left. Pisces and will be rising in Aquarius. So actually the song is true. We do live in the dawning of the age of Aquarius. The only question is whether that means anything or not. The ancients thought it did. Uh we think it doesn't. Uh I'm not sure who's right. I I'm gonna repeat this back to you to check if I'm I've got it correctly. Mm-hmm. Within the design of the pyramids. There was

46:54 A number which you said was forty three thousand T. The scale that's used For the height. And the base perimeter of the Great Pyramid. Base perimeter measure. four sides, add it together, height the actual height of the Great Pyramid. It's true original height. It lost about thirty feet in an earthquake in thirteen hundred and one. But you can calculate the true original height from the angle of the

47:17 of the sides. Um and when you take that height And multiply it by 43,200. you get the polar radius of the Earth. You get the radius of the ear. to the edge of the earth. It's not the diameter of the earth. The diameter is twice the radius. It's the pol it's the polar radius. Okay. A key dimension of the earth.

47:41 Measure the sides. And you get On the same scale, one to forty three thousand two hundred, you get the equatorial circumference of the earth, what the earth measures at its equator, its largest its largest measure. Yeah. Um and and that

47:56 Uh is either a coincidence Or it's deliberate. And because of the number chosen and because that number is all over ancient mythology. I think it's deliberate.

48:07 D that means that they must have known. The circumference of the earth. Yeah. It means that they knew the circumference of the earth and it means they chose A place to put the Great Pyramid, which also was relevant. Uh this isn't latitude.

48:19 twenty three or latitude. Mm. This is just a fraction of latitude thirty degrees north, so therefore one third of the way between the equator and the North Pole. It's a it's a rel it's a significant relative. This monument speaks to the earth. This monument is locked into the true North.

48:38 This monument gives you the dimensions. of this planet. This monument is speaking. to this planet. How could they possibly know the circumference of the earth four thousand five hundred years ago? Because they're a lost civilization. Because the m the knowledge comes down from a former time. I don't think the Egyptians knew it.

48:57 I think it came down. I think it was inherited knowledge. From When I'm here to advocate for and to speak for. the possibility of a major forgotten episode in the human story.

49:09 Which could be twenty thousand years ago. And they've passed it down in in myths and stories. Yes. Passed it down, but not only in myths and stories. Um this is something else that I will. I'll just hint at here I'll that I intend to get into the In the new book.

49:26 is that there appear to have been organizations. in each of these civilizations. In Egypt they were called The followers of Horace. In Sumer they were called the Apkal.

49:40 They served as advisors to kings. They were called sages. There's a reference to them. Many cultures refer to them as the seven sages. They provided advice to kings in the historical period. And I'm wondering whether we're looking at some kind of

49:56 Long lived organization here. which is carrying down information, looking for the right time. to switch the engine of civilization back on again. I know it's Sounds extreme, but uh that's what I do. I explore I explore extreme ideas and see whether

50:13 And see whether they fit or not. And I'm beginning to find this idea does fit. It be it fit it fits with a whole range of information which will be in the next book. A sage that reports to the king and totally reports to the king that advises the king. On what? On everything. On what to do. Yeah. The upcaloo in the ancient traditions of Sumer, they

50:35 existed in the pre deluvian world. They were there in the world before the flood. Then they're and and they taught mankind. knowledge them.

50:45 But The flood came, the cataclysm came, they were wiped out but Some of the Apkalu. survived and they appear after the flood as advisors to the earliest historical kings of Sumer. And I'm just wondering whether You know, there are there are

51:01 Religions. In the world? which have maintained traditions and maintained offices, priesthoods, for example, for thousands of years. I don't see why the same shouldn't be true here, why there shouldn't have been some driving motive at the end of the Ice Age to preserve in a way what they knew and to find mechanisms to pass it down. One mechanism is to embed it in wonderful stories that will go on being told. And another mechanism is to set up Some kind of secret society.

51:28 which is operating the scenes to guide and steer society. I'm not going to present the evidence for that here, but it's an avenue I'm pursuing. If I if I don't find it a satisfactory avenue, I'll abandon it. But at the moment it's looking very interesting. Then where did all this information Go. You know. 'Cause if the people he built the pyramids of Giza had this information, where did the sages go and with their information? Yeah, it's very it's very odd actually. What what happens after Giza is fascinating.

51:56 Um because Once you Once you leave the fourth dynasty. Period. Get into the fifth. Six dynasties.

52:05 Pyramid building. collapses. The stuff they're making in the fifth dynasty, like the pyramid of UNAS. Fifth Dynasty Pyramid. In Sakara. Inside.

52:16 It's stunningly beautiful. Beautiful tomb chamber. stars on the ceiling, incredible hieroglyphs on the side, is vr magical. But outside it's just a pile of dust. It's a mess. It doesn't even you could hardly recognize it as a pyramid. And it's true of all those. So this is odd in itself. Normally When human cultures Create something.

52:40 They continue to work on it, and it tends to get better and better, not worse and worse. So it's odd what happens to the pyramids. That they get worse and worse in Egypt. It's like Job done. Done that. Move on. And that's there. And that's gonna speak.

52:54 To human beings, not just for a generation, not just for a hundred years. It's gonna be there speaking to us for thousands of years. It's gonna be sitting there on the Giza plateau like an enormous question mark. calling towards it those who don't see it just as a heap of stones, but actually see it as something wonderful and magnificent and mysterious. Calling them toward and saying Learn about me. Figure me out. And in the process of learning about me, you're going to learn so much else. Well, in learning about the Great Pyramid, I find that it is encoded with astronomical information that should not be there if the current model of

53:29 Yeah. Science is correct. I think the current model of the history of science is wrong. I think this information was known much earlier and it's encoded in the Great Pyramid. Once I know that, then I have to start thinking what else does that mean? And what else it means to me. Is A big

53:45 Forgotten episode in our story. Again, why? Because they had intelligence that they're not credited with having at that time. Yes. Because it's there. Because there should not be a monument of this Scale.

53:59 Which incorporates into it information that was not supposed to be available to human beings for another two and a half thousand years. So they must have got it from somewhere. Yes. They must have got it from somewhere. And and uh the fact that it's there is It's just a fact. Either it's a coincidence. Complete coincidence. Or

54:21 It's the result. Of a deliberate decision. And if it's the result of a deliberate decision. That ways. Much more towards a deliberate decision because of the scale chosen. Because the scale is part of a system.

54:33 that is found all over the ancient world. It's not a random number. It's a very specific number. And it's a number that is derived from a motion of the earth itself, from the precession of the earth's axis. It is derived from that. So I'm situated at a significant latitude, I'm oriented to true north, and I incorporate The measurements of your planet. On a scale derived from your planet itself. That's what the Great Pyramid is saying to us. And it's saying Figure that out.

55:03 Do you think there's something underneath it? Oh, there's definitely something underneath it. Yeah. When you go into the Great Pyramid now, you go in through what is What is called the robber's tunnel or Mamon's hole. The Kalifa Mamun. Had a notion that There would be a entrance to the Great Pyramid in its northern face.

55:26 Mm, other pyramids had been found with entrances in the northern face. But at that time the Great Pyramid was completely covered with perfectly smooth limestone facing stones and nobody could see the entrance. They came off later in that earthquake in thirteen hundred and one, but when he broke in in the ninth century They didn't know where the door was. Apparently there was a

55:46 You could have a little bit more. almost literally press the switch and open that door. But they couldn't find it. So they broke in with sledgehammers and chisels and they smashed their way into the Great Pyramid and then At a certain moment when they're about sixty or seventy feet into the Great Pyramid, they hear something dropping in a hollow space. A big something has fallen in a hollow space. Make head towards that sound.

56:08 And then they enter the original corridor system of the Great Pyramid. And that's the way we all go in now. We go in through that Roberts Tunnel and then we go up the Grand Gallery, but we can also go down. We can go down to the subterranean chamber. which is a hundred feet vertically beneath the base of the Great Pyramid, deep in the bedrock. I actually think that was the original sacred site on that monument is that subterranean chamber. I don't advise anybody with claustrophobia to go down there.

56:37 You're very conscious that you've got a six million ton monument. sitting right above you and place that has earthquakes. Um it can be quite oppressive. But that's just a hint of what's under the Giza Plateau. That's just That's an accessible bit. But it's it's it's already obvious that there that there is so much more. Some of it's been picked up with ground penetrating radar. And I'll take this opportunity to say that the hysterical reaction of mainstream Scientists to the

57:05 Announcement by Filippo Biondi. Uh what is he saying? He's saying that there are enormous structures under the second pyramid, that not the Great Pyramid, under the pyramid attributed to Kafre. Kufu's successor, the the structures that go hundreds of feet deep. Under There. Structures that involve spiral

57:25 Kind of stairways. The reaction has been overwhelmingly. dismissing this. Archaeologists have not they won't look further, they say it's impossible, and they won't look at it. And I think that's shameful for people who imagine they're scientists. They should be looking further. I'd like to see the technology trialed in Turkey. There are underground cities in Turkey, Kimakli, for example. We know every room in those underground cities. run this technology on them. If they accurately reproduce what we already know is there, then we can be pretty sure they're accurately reproducing what's under the Giza pyramids. We need to do a lot more work before dismissing this. So I'm I remain open to the notion that a huge underworld awaits discovery under Giza. And the ancient Egyptians themselves felt that way. They felt that Giza, the ancient name for it, was Rostau. It was an entrance to the underworld. They saw it as an entrance.

58:16 to the afterlife realm. It makes sense that there would be much, much underground structures there. And you've been alone in the pyramids. Being with large groups in the pyramid is difficult. In the sense that the pyramid to me feels like a personality when I'm in there with a large group I I feel the pyramid withdrawing. It it it's it's like it doesn't want to speak to you anymore. It's it the place becomes a dead space. But but if you can be in there with a very small group or be there alone.

58:43 And just be still. Let the silence descend. sit in that silence, in the very low lighting that's in there. Just pause. Um

58:56 Remind yourself that you're in the last surviving wonder of the ancient world. And it's an incredible privilege to be there. And just let it speak to you. And it does.

59:06 This is of course my critics will say another. proof that Hancock's the lunatic. Uh but uh I I'm just telling you what h what what what happens to me. It's a I I think it's a monument that communicates. What did it say to you? It's that to me go further. Yeah.

59:23 Very much so. I I I feel In a weird way. Validated. By the Great Pyramid.

59:32 I think it's um Not only me, others as well. Yeah. who've devoted big chunks of their lives to the Great Pyramid like Robert Aval.

59:41 Who is a great man, by the way. The Iran correlation. The recognition that the three pyramids on the ground are laid out in the pattern of the belt stars of the constellation of Orion makes radical and important changes to our understanding of ancient Egypt. Again, that's another thing that's been leapt upon by the archaeological mafia, uh, because they want to destroy every new idea rather than spend a bit of time thinking about it. You guys know that I only drink one type of coffee these days and it's called Comitea. If you don't know the brand, they flash freeze coffee at the perfect moment to lock in all of the amazing flavor. They've done something incredible. They've gone all around the world and they found the most delicious coffees from all of these places, and they've created a world mug.

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1:02:07 If what you're saying is true. Around the You know, the first civilizations being twenty. What does that mean? For

1:02:17 Us. For our lives. Will finally remind us and tell us once and for all that we're not what it's all about. It's not all about us. The whole human story is not about us. It's not inevitable that it comes to this. And that we are temporary, like every other civilization. We are so filled with arrogance and pride right now and our technological achievements and our great

1:02:42 Abilities are great powers. And uh the arrogance that comes with that. The Greeks used to call that hubris. It's it's the ultimately ends in Nemesis. Ultimately brings you down. Arrogance arrogance is not a good thing. It's not a good thing in an individual. And it's a terrible thing in a civilization. It also means that a lot of the things that we've dismissed as

1:03:07 you know, conspiracy or ho you know, hocus pocus whatever might not be. systems that the ancients used, which we've dismissed. Right which might be very astrology is one of them. What does astrology ultimately say? It ultimately says that We, these beings, these humans. Aren't isolated.

1:03:33 but are connected to the universe and are affected by everything that happens in the universe. And it's and it's recognizing that there may be patterns in that. And instead of Instead of just rubbishing that or doing a few investigations. I think it'd be maybe worth looking further into that. Worth looking further into telepathy too. My friend Rupert Sheldrake serious scientist one of the very few who's doing serious scientific work on Issues like telepathy. And like

1:04:01 telekinesis, being able to move things with your mind. Mainstream scientists, most of them will just laugh at that. Absolute rubbish. Go away, you're a lunatic. But why are we lunatics to look into those things? It's really interesting and it's really worth investigating. We Re should realize that we have a heritage of hundreds of thousands of years, and I believe it's even older than three hundred and fifteen thousand years. We do not have a heritage of a hundred years, which is the heritage of modern science. Well let's put let's be generous. Let's put modern science even back to the Greeks in a way.

1:04:35 But it doesn't become what we would recognize as science until the nineteenth century, really. So it's a very young thing. Uh on uh i if you take the human being as the That's the heart of this and and and You were to find a little pimple on the nose of that human being, that would be science. of hundreds of thousands of years of human experience. Why should we be so arrogant to dismiss

1:05:01 those hundreds of thousands of years of human experience in the favor of a hundred and fifty years maximum of so-called science. I mean one of the interesting things is uh I actually did go to the Amazon Rainforest in Korea. Um And they've discovered these like big square things underground. I've been involved in that. What is what is that?

1:05:20 Well The the name that's been given to them is uh is Geoglyphs. Glith. I think I know this one. Nobody knew they existed at all. Until about

1:05:31 Forty years ago. Really? And uh Because the Amazon Rainforest is a rainforest and um densely covered with uh Canopy.

1:05:40 However It's constantly being settled. This is a problem in itself. It's constantly being settled. The Amazon is being cleared and it's being turned into farms. It's the clearance of bits of the Amazon initially that exposed These huge geometric structures. Mm-hmm.

1:05:57 Under the rainforest. No longer under because they cleared the rainforest. Now with Lidar, I've been involved with Marty Parsonin. In fact he was on my Netflix show. He's a archaeologists from Finland and and with Alta Ranzi, a Brazilian geographer. Um what they're doing is a Dense LIDAR survey of the whole of Acre province in Brazil. This is in our Cray province as well. The areas that are still under canopy rainforest. And LIDAR can see through the canopy and it can see raised objects underneath and it can actually give you the shape of that object. Then they can go in, low uh you know, low impact, just a few of them go in. Check it out, see what's there, and then begin the archaeology on the side. And things that

1:06:44 w how those beliefs have changed and one of them was that we used to believe that the Amazon was an untouched wilderness. But in the nineteen seventies we discovered what a thousand of these structures? At least. Uh the the they're they're confident now from the Lidar work that they're you're talking of Thousands. Three, five, six thousand. There are also roadways that run for a hundred kilometers plus. Uh there's absolutely no doubt that the Amazon once supported a population of millions with um extraordinary clever management of uh rainforest soils by creating a man made soil that they call terra preta. It's still used in Brazil today. We are having to

1:07:22 Completely reconceive the Amazon. It was thought of as a pristine rainforest. A few human beings wandered around aimlessly in Hunting. Whatever.

1:07:35 Now we know That it was The homeland. Of a very large population who lived in city sized communities.

1:07:44 Um Who joined those communities with Long straight roadways. It's it's as though the veil is being pulled back and we're beginning to see a completely untold story in the Amazon. And these geoglyphs Very precise. Rectangles.

1:08:01 Triangles, circles, squares, all of these th it's geometry. Geometry. Wha wh what's it what's it doing there in the Amazon? And and when I when I talked to a local shaman about this, and I did on on camera in the in the in the Netflix show, um he Talk to me about how important these places still are to him, that these places were made by their ancestors, that they're places for shamanic gatherings. Places for shamans to use. Specifically to

1:08:29 Contact the world beyond. All of them emerged from shamanism. Shamanism is the essence. uh of the human adventure. Uh and and all civilizations have merch from shamanism and this one was shamanism, yes. Shamanism being the system of

1:08:49 Using altered states of consciousness. to gain direct access to other levels of reality. Yeah. Psychedelics or you can fast for a month. Uh that will give you some visions too. Uh there there are there are other ways, but but psychedelics are the most efficient way to enter the altered state of consciousness. And shamans are masters of the use of plant medicines everywhere in the world, but particularly in the Amazon rainforest. This is this is where you you see it most strongly. And DMT, the active ingredient of ayahuasca.

1:09:21 It's very fast acting in the way that it's normally consumed. Okay. It's normally vaped. Or smoked. Uh it produces a Ten minute journey.

1:09:32 literally to the other side of reality. Uh and there's not much you can do about it once you're in there. Then you're out again. Ayahuasca. is a very clever technology.

1:09:43 The ayahuasca brew contains DMT. DMT is not Orally active. So you can drink a tea made of with loads of DMT in it and it's not going to do anything to you.

1:09:54 Because there's an enzyme in the gut that destroys it. Mm. Yeah. The ayahuasca vine. contains a chemical that shuts that enzyme down.

1:10:04 and allows the DMT to be absorbed orally. Producing an experience that can last for hours. That can be physically very uncomfortable. Um What they're doing at Imperial College is they're giving them DMT by intravenous infusion. Uh

1:10:18 Using Basically anesthesia technology to constantly top up the dose, to keep the individual in the peak state, and unlike other psychedelics, there's no tolerance with DMT, so you can keep on Dosing people. When you you've taken I ask it eighty times. Something like that. Something like that. Um It's not just

1:10:40 It's important to be clear. About a number of things. First of all All psychedelics. are extremely serious. They are not to be taken trivially. They are extremely serious.

1:10:54 Experienced use of ayahuasca. One of the very common reports is this moral dimension. That you are presented With your own life. with what you've done with your own life, with the pain that you may have caused to others. And suddenly that pain that you cause to another person, which you dismissed as they just deserve that. They just deserve those words. You suddenly get it from their point of view. You feel the agony that your words caused that person.

1:11:21 I need. And you find yourself, Did I do that? Did I say that? You suddenly see What you are.

1:11:29 You can't go back into your own past. And change negative and useless and pointless things that you did. You can't do that. But you can avoid repeating them in the future. And it's that teaching of a moral lesson. uh that I find most valuable in ayahuasca. It's helped me to come to terms with my tendency to swift anger.

1:11:50 I'm I'm very aware that that's a problem I have and it's something I need to do something about. And I ayahuasca's helped me with that. I've I've become gentler and and softer. Not gentle enough, maybe. It's a journey. It's not a it's not an overnight transformation, not a magic pill. Uh the main work with ayahuasca comes after. the medicine. The main work comes with what you do with the experience, how you integrate it into your life. That's where the work begins. People say it's so easy to take a A brew. Well, it's not actually not that easy because you've got to vomit and have diarrhea, but but easy. Um but that's where the work begins, not where it ends. And then emotion, is that does that stem back to your relationship with your parents?

1:12:30 Because I was reading about your early You ready? Look, we're all frail human beings. We're all messed about in lots of ways. We all have we all have issues in our lives. Um regret. Regret. Yes, I I do regret saying hurtful and unkind things to a number of people. uh over the years. I do I do regret that very much. I do regret very much that I wasn't

1:12:55 I wasn't mature enough to realise why my parents were so difficult. Uh that I never really forgave them for that. I never really forgave them for The strangeness of my childhood and and uh The various things that we're going to do. that that that happened. I never really saw it from their point of view. My mother lost three children aside from me. I'm an only child, but her first child was

1:13:17 Carried to term before me and born dead. Then I was born I lived and then the next two both died at the age of a year. Well I know now. As a father, I know I know what what a catastrophe that is for a person, for a for a mother to to lose three children like that. You said.

1:13:34 Weird childhood. Yeah. So this is me This is little Graham here.

1:13:41 With my mother. And my father. That we landed in India, which my father was a surge consultant surgeon. And so he went as a missionary surgeon to India, to a place called the Christian Medical College in Velore in South India. Um and we lived in a tin hut. But he was following his faith. He was doing what was what was right for him. He was giving his skills to help to help people. I I I realise that now and a lot of resentment I have towards him. I probably

1:14:09 You know. Shouldn't have. Um he was an odd guy. He was very eccentric. He used to take me in to watch dissections. Um there were still hangings in India at that time and he would dissect the prisoners after the hangings. He had me in there watching it. Um he took me later on. Um Uh five. You were watching bodies being cut up at five. I was, yeah.

1:14:33 Absolutely. Very strange. See it was presented to me as completely normal. Um but but it was. It it w it was strange. Fundamentally he was a good man. I believe. But I think it's a good thing. Allowing a four to five year old child

1:14:47 Yeah. To see those things is Deeply traumatic in a way that you probably don't recognize until later. I I agree. It's it's come home to me more and more as the years have gone by that what happened to me in those years in India. Scard me. deeply. It wasn't just the operating theatres and the dissections. The dissections. It was

1:15:10 The gloom. And the misery. and the despair that settled over my family at that time and I don't think I ever really recovered from that. Did you have nightmares? Yeah.

1:15:21 And w what were those nightmares? Um Usually nightmares of loss. Usually nightmares of Suddenly I'm alone. I'm in a I'm in a

1:15:33 I'm completely isolated, lost, alone. The reason I ask these questions is there's only a Ever been one other guest? Who I sat here with a couple of years ago. Who I believe's dad was a surgeon. Mm-hmm.

1:15:48 And his dad brought him in. To watch. Operations and dissections when he was young. And it scarred him in a way that he didn't realise until later. Yeah. And he told me about the nightmares of waking up in the night and seeing those bodies of those people around his bed.

1:16:05 on a predictable basis and told me he he's actually the guy that um coached Michael Jordan. And then um Kobe. And he told me still as an adult those

1:16:18 Bodies jo join him at night time, so he'll wake up at night time and he'll see them around. Around his bed, so Well thank you, Universe. That didn't happen to me. I I I do not have I don't remember having gruesome nightmares. I remember a feeling of l loneliness and abandonment. That's what I remember. Loneliness and abandonment. I've always felt that way.

1:16:39 I was always an outsider at school. Uh Everywhere I've been. All my life. That's what I'm for. I'm here to be an outsider. I've come to that conclusion.

1:16:50 And and uh I need to do that well. I need to provide An alternative point of view on the past. Oh yeah, but there are also some benefits. You know, we are what we are.

1:17:02 Uh and and for me I was always strange. I had this childhood in in in India I didn't fit into the British school system I was a total f Failure at school. I could not connect. I could not connect with any of it. It seemed I just didn't get it. What was this about? And and the cruelty, the viciousness. So he sent me to a boarding school in Durham in the north of England. It was the cruelest place. Beatings going on c I I I was repeatedly beaten about the bare buttocks by a a sadistic headmaster with a cane. I couldn't fit in with the other kids at school. And uh

1:17:40 I don't feel victimised for being an outsider. I feel I feel it's a privilege. I feel I've been given I've been given an opportunity to take a different view of things as a result of being an outsider. With these two people in your life. There are there are so many words unsaid. I'd like to go back to my mum and say

1:18:00 You know, I understand why you were so obsessed with keeping me alive and making sure that I did something with my life. And I'd like to say to my dad, look, you you were pretty crazy, but You you did at least inspire me to be eccentric. Funny thing getting older. I'm seventy five, seventy six in August. One of the things it does is it you realize how collapsed life actually is. I remember being a teenager, and I remember being a young man, and and I remember being middle aged. And the feeling is You're immortal.

1:18:31 It's gonna go on forever. Everything's gonna go on forever. And it's long. long, lots of time to do the things you want to do. I have a message. No. It's not long. There is not lots of time. If there's things you want to do with your life, start now. Start right away. Don't wait. Otherwise you'll not have the opportunity. Life is very short. It's a beautiful, beautiful gift that the universe has given to us. We are responsible for returning that gift.

1:18:58 By as far as possible within the circumstances that the universe has given us, living a full life and contributing something. worthwhile to that life. Not being a robot. Not being commanded what to do, not w we we need to learn to think for ourselves. It's so easily forgotten.

1:19:19 It's a miracle. that you and I are sitting here at all, that I'm here, that you're here, that we're here together. It's an absolute miracle. It's the result of billions and billions of years of processes in the universe. which had nothing to do with us, randomly bring us together at this at this point. It's it's really quite a miraculous situation. To be alive, to be born at all, is a miracle. Um, I think it was Voltaire who talking about reincarnation. Uh who said um it's no more extraordinary to be born twice than to be born once. Uh and I think there's a point in that.

1:19:51 Are you religious, do you believe in a God or I would say that I am um That I pay. Attention. close attention to what I would regard as the spiritual, non physical side of life. Um but I do not belong to any organized religion. One of the things I don't like about organized religion is that your relationship to the divine, whatever you call the divine spirit world, whatever you want to call it, your relationship is mediated. In some way.

1:20:17 Priest or rabbi or muller teaches you how to mediate that relationship. And I I think what's important in for me anyway in in the spiritual inquiry is a direct relationship, a direct experience. Rather than being taught something, I want to experience it for myself. And that's why I found ayahuasca very, very valuable, um, because it has enabled me to experience something that It's absolutely impossible to experience in normal everyday life. We're so plugged in. We're so plugged into the physical world and we have to be. We got to be. We've got to obey the laws of physics. We've got to deal with the economics of our circumstances. You know, we have to make our way through life. All of those things

1:20:56 We've got to do. Um But If they become our total. We become shut off from anything. Everything and anything else that may exist. And what

1:21:09 the big psychedelics can do if they're taken in the right circumstances with the right advice. With sincere intention, what they can do is get you out of your own way. and allow you to connect to that wider realm that normally you cannot connect to. And yes, I do believe that a wider realm exists. Just in the same way that uh you y you know, before the invention of the microscope, we had no idea that there were bacteria. I think I'm right about that. We start seeing these tiny little things swimming around. Gosh. major discovery. Well they were always there. We just didn't have the kit to see them. And I'm suggesting that what psychedelics can be and certainly what they used as shamans by for is Technology.

1:21:50 a device uh for getting you out of your own way and allowing you to connect with other levels of reality That in daily life it doesn't serve you to be connected with. The interesting thing about DMT in particular. is when you speak to people who have done DMT. You know, I spend about a year working in a quite a big psychedelics company just to I got really fascinated. I'd left my company. I didn't have anything to do with my time. So I started this podcast and I also uh on YouTube and I also

1:22:18 started working in a psychedelics business because I found the the studies on mental health and psychedelics really interesting. So I have quite a deep understanding, I guess higher than average, of Ivergame and Ayahuasca and DMT and my partner. um is very, very spiritual and has done all these things as well. So One of the fascinating things is how similar people's experiences are on something like DMT. The funn funnily enough, your description of these Creatures saying.

1:22:44 Your You belong to us now is almost verbatim. Wha what w one of my friends described two weeks ago. Yeah. that they were teleported into this like four K realm where these creatures that are like slightly animal in that anatomical structure, maybe slightly a little bit human as well.

1:23:02 Basically was that like had had taken hold of him. And they were very curious and inspecting him, very colourful realm, and then they kinda sent him back, or at least, you know, after that. And it and it does make one wonder. I think one of my conclusions was if if inhaling a small chemical Can completely take me to another place. Then and and if you from a reasoning perspective, it's just a it was an inhal one inhaled of a chemical.

1:23:27 Then It goes to say that my current perception of reality Yeah. Is just is as fragile as an inhale. Of a chemical. Like me thinking that I'm here with you now.

1:23:39 Is as fragile. Inhaling. One chemical. So to think that this is base reality. When the difference between this and being with some grasshopper people in 4K exactly. It's an extraordinary realization when that comes and it causes us to question the nature of r reality itself. And this is um

1:24:04 This is what's really important about these medicines. First and foremost, you're right. Th these um psychedelic medicines are Proving. incredibly effective as therapeutic tools. And that's great. I I I really I think that's incredibly valuable, but there's another level to go, which is the the inquiry into the nature of reality and the inquiry into what consciousness is. These medicines are very effective means to conduct that inquiry and that's why I applaud what they're doing at Imperial College in London. They're also going to be doing trials at the University of California, San Diego.

1:24:40 Um, they're going to be doing trials in Costa Rica. Uh a whole range of places now are looking into this because it's really interesting. People coming back and reporting the same experience when they haven't compared notes yet. How do we explain that? Because it's in a vision. And people say that. At the moment the default mode is to dismiss it and say that's just rubbish, don't waste time on it. Our preconceptions about the nature of reality should not limit our inquiry to

1:25:09 Into the nature of reality. And at the moment Still, unfortunately, there are preconceptions about the nature of reality, which is that it's material based, that there's nothing else to it, really. Everything is reduced to matter, even consciousness is reduced to matter, it's reduced to the physical matter of the brain. We don't know that for sure. We don't know What's going on? Consciousness is absolutely not understood. And so when we have mysteries like people who are injected a small dose of a chemical like DMT and go off into a completely other reality. That's really interesting. And it's it's it's

1:25:44 It's at least as interesting, if not more interesting, than exploring other planets right now. I think we need to I think we need to explore ourselves first. We need to we're not in shape as a species to start exploring the universe. We don't want to export our t toxicity to other parts of the universe until we've overcome it, until we've grown up as a species, which we haven't done yet. We need to know ourselves. Psychedelics are one way to do that. Not Used irresponsibly, but used responsibly in a structured They Can be very

1:26:20 Helpful. in knowing ourselves. That's the journey we need to do first. Uh yeah, go to Mars by all means, you know, go to the moon. Go even further. But do this first. Know who you are first before you start doing those bigger and wider investigations. Get all that sorted out because we've hardly sorted out anything on this planet, and we're talking about exploring other planets. Well, I'm all in favor of exploring other planets, but I'd like to sort out things on this planet first. That's where the resources should be going, and we should stop kidding ourselves that we can just escape this planet and make a complete shithole of it, leave it and go and live somewhere else. No, we can fix this. We are capable of fixing this. We're capable of fixing everything. Human beings have enormous potential. We're just using

1:27:05 A fraction of one percent of it at the moment. The question I yeah, I mean the obvious question that comes to mind is how? Maybe I don't know, maybe some kind of leader comes along. Could be.

1:27:18 Um I think we need to Need to move past leaders. I just don't know how else humans would change without some kind of leadership. It's very difficult to see. I agree with you. It's very it's very difficult to see how it happens one person at a time, um slowly, through through word of mouth, through experience. But look Everything in the ayahuasca garden is not all flowers either. There's a lot of Very wrong behavior going on there. People are exploiting that medicine. Basically drug dealers are exploiting that medicine and offering it irresponsibly to people in groups of a hundred or

1:27:50 Even more. Th that that's that's actually really, really stupid to do that. I ayahuasca is an intimate experience and it needs to be done in a very Small group, not a very large group. So it's not it's not all roses. I'm not uh you know, I'm not trying to

1:28:06 paint these medicines in a i i in in a false light. They have their downsides, they have their problems. They are extremely serious. We should always research and investigate before any experience with psychedelics, but they have a part to play. And it's an important part and thank God we're seeing its effects of psilocybin effect on long term depression. Very important. Post-traumatic stress disorder, very important. These therapeutic breakthroughs. Hopefully. will open the door to further inquiries into the

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1:29:48 Through your journey through um ancient civilizations, what have you come to learn about what this consciousness thing is? Or at least what people believed. Yeah. Um and how those similar mythologies were similar. Yes, I've partly I've partly come to this through

1:30:03 The ancient texts. uh scene in a number of the ancient Egyptian funerary text. It's called the Judgment Scene.

1:30:14 And what you see is you see the deceased entering into a hall, into a room, at the end of which sits the god Osiris enthroned. Yeah. And uh the deceased is led into the hall by the goddess Mart. She's recognized by a feather that she wears in her head dress. She's the goddess of truth. Just as well.

1:30:33 And cosmic harmony. He enters The whole there's a scale. In the hole. In one pan of the scale.

1:30:43 is an object that represents. His heart. Oblique. His soul. Heart and soul were the same thing.

1:30:50 And in the other panel is the feather of Mart. The feather of truth. harmony and cosmic justice.

1:30:59 You do not want your heart. To outweigh the feather. At that moment. You want At the very least, to be in balance.

1:31:09 And in order to be in balance. Then comes into question. The whole way that you've lived your life.

1:31:15 Up on the wall of the hall there are forty-two little figures. They're called the forty-two negative assessors. Each one of them's gonna ask you a question. Did you steal? Did you kill actually the Ten Commandments are all in there, and a lot more as well. Yeah. Ideally.

1:31:31 You should be able to answer no to all of those questions. But the ancient Egyptians always understood how frail human beings are. And that we can Always make mistakes. The question is What do we do?

1:31:41 When we make a mistake, do we learn from it or do we keep on repeating it? And what I read into that is You were given. You, the deceased, you were given an incredible opportunity. We allowed you to be born in a human body.

1:31:55 you could have a range of experiences that no other physical form on your planet could have. You you you have this huge brain, you have this enormous capacity. We gave it this to you. What? Did you do with it? Did you use it well? Or did you squander it and waste it?

1:32:13 And at that moment You'd better be there with some answers about how you use it well. Yeah. So as I come towards the end of my life, I look very carefully at my life. I and um

1:32:24 I try to undo wrongs that I have done in the past if I can. And I try to make sure I don't do any more in the future. I want to be a nurturing And useful person. To the people.

1:32:36 Around me. The the health situation you've gone through has clearly made you quite introspective, probably more so than you you might have been ten years ago, I'm guessing. Oh yeah, I've absolutely I was still immortal ten years ago. Mm. Listen. Each and every one of us, every single human being on this planet.

1:32:53 could die in the next minute. Life is that fragile. It's that sudden. You can never predict. You you But what Something like this does, it focuses the mind. And it does make me wish

1:33:07 More and more. That I can leave this life with As few regrets as possible. and that I can feel that I played a useful and positive role. In the life of others.

1:33:20 And that I Even played. In some Way. a useful and positive role in the life of

1:33:27 Yeah. to which I belong. Are you happy?

1:33:33 I am very happy. In a lot of ways. I'm Blessed. To have lived the life I've lived?

1:33:41 To have Travel the world. To have the adventures. That I have had? I'm blessed with a beautiful and wonderful wife and companion, my wife Santha. That's me and Santha.

1:33:55 We met when we were about forty years old. And um I don't think we've been apart more than four days in the entire thirty plus years uh since then. Wow. Uh we do everything together. We travel together. Santa's a photographer. Brilliant photographer. And and and uh I do not have a great visual eye. So we work together. I do the words, Santa does the

1:34:17 Pictures. We have the adventures together. We did the scuba diving together. Santa nearly lost her life. twice in in tense currents. Scuba diving. She's brave, she's an adventurer. But she's a wonderful mother.

1:34:31 This is so important. Santa and I have six children between us. Santha brought two from her previous marriage. I brought two from my first marriage and two from my second marriage. So

1:34:41 Six children from three broken marriages is a potential disaster. Santa brought them all together. Into a group of loving, deeply committed siblings. Who care for one another. who are constantly in each other's lives, who are there to support one another. Santha did that. But

1:34:58 Just being a brilliant loving Person. So I'm very happy. To have such a great partner. Whose

1:35:05 Stood by me through thick and thin. these wonderful characters in in in our children and now our grandchildren. You know, nine grandchildren, six grandkids. All of it's down to something that's not. That love.

1:35:23 Like this kind of romantic love. Is So central, so important, so central to our happiness. I just thought oh it's uh it's just a wonderful reminder of um how an easy it is to get caught up in the material and And all the toxic whereas Yeah.

1:35:39 So much of it comes from just the simplicity of falling in love with someone. Love is giving. It's giving yourself. To somebody else. It's

1:35:49 Put in the other person. So I'm gonna end up crying this. This is what my wife does. All the time. With everybody. She puts other people first.

1:36:01 And uh Others benefit. Enormously from that. I'm very fortunate. I think I think if I had

1:36:08 Hadn't Met. Santa. When I did and we hadn't form this joint life.

1:36:15 I think I would have made nothing of my life. Nothing at all. I think it would have just gone down the tubes. I needed a loving steering hand at that point. Anyway, very lucky. I I I am happy. There are things that make me unhappy, of course, just like every every every other human being. I I

1:36:32 Don't understand why those who are bitterly opposed to my work want to Try and present me as some kind of fraud or grifter, but I suppose it's a easy way to lazily dismiss somebody else. Another thing that has been used It's because I've considered the possibility of a lost civilization.

1:36:51 having an influence on Other known historical civilization, uh, I've been accused of racism as well. that I've been I've been accused of taking away the authenticity of indigenous achievements. Um and that again has been without without any receipts. It's not been it's just thrown out there as an accusation. Now for me with with a multi ethnic family, uh that racism abuse that has been thrown at me

1:37:19 constantly uh is extremely hurtful and extremely painful. It's one of the few things that have been thrown at me that I actually cannot forgive. It's unforgivable to use that lazy Easy dismissal. In a society where a lot of people don't read anymore. I mean, pretty much guarantee people who hear that on the internet, they're not gonna go and read the books and actually find out what I said. They're just gonna take it as face value. So that does hurt and it does make me sad. But generally I'm blessed, I'm lucky, I've lived a

1:37:51 Fantastic. privileged life. I've explored the world. I'm surrounded by love. And Onwards. And upwards as far as I'm concerned.

1:38:01 Well, you know, Graham. I think at the end of the day, the thing that endures is the impact, the curiosity that you've You've provoked in people, allowed them to wander beyond the narrowness of our lives, which is quite miserable. A narrow life is feels kinda like a miserable life where you can't be open minded and explore and and that's why I love these conversations. It's not to say that I that I always accept when I have these kind of conversations everything to be a hundred percent true. But the net benefit for me is just expanding my mind. Yeah.

1:38:28 A possibility. Absolutely. And like please don't rob me of the opportunity to expand my mind to possibility. What would my life become without possibility or hope or all these things? And and actually when I look at Graphs like this that show how our beliefs Uh an under scientific understanding has changed even in recent times, as as recent as two thousand and seventeen. On this particular graph. Totally. Things that things are constantly changing.

1:38:56 Turn of the spade in an archaeological dig can change the whole story. Change the whole story. This is not limited to archaeology. This is found in They they tend to get locked into a particular reference frame. And actually

1:39:11 Defend it in a territorial way. It becomes like a war. And they've they've they feel absolutely responsible to defend that territory against all covers and will use any dirty tricks that are needed to be used in order to defeat the enemy. So you asked me a straightforward question, d uh am I happy? Yes, I am happy. And I honestly answered you that there are certain things, particularly The racism assaults on me that do make me extremely unhappy. What else do I need to know about the the possibility of an ancient civilization that might inform how I think about myself, my life and

1:39:46 I guess also our future. What I found so fascinating is especially w we're in a moment of this uh AI revolution, where you've got these sort of big forces of you've got nucle weapons over here, you've now got this advanced intelligence, there's humanoid robots on the horizon. And if there was ever a moment where The word, you know, existential is being used in a in a way that is probably appropriate for me it feels like now. Yeah. Feels like now. To me too. Uh this is uh no doubt uh

1:40:12 Our species is poised on the edge of an abyss. Right now. uh our technology has outgrown our mentality. Uh and we're not.

1:40:21 Uh we're not in good shape. to deal with the challenges that lie ahead. I I unf un unfortunately the Chances of a Nuclear exchange are just higher and higher. That's just a realistic assessment of the way the world is with these m maniacal leaders. So what could we learn from the past? We ca I I I believe we can learn that there's another way to live, that we don't have to do it this way. I I that's that's something I believe.

1:40:45 I can't believe. That's something I don't know. Okay. I guess I'm optimistic. that human beings have made it through.

1:40:53 All these centuries, all these thousands of years. All these hundreds of thousands of years. That we've made it through, we've made terrible mistakes, d terrible things. I mean, look at the second world war. God know how many people were killed there, memory, twenty million Russians alone, if I remember correctly. It was just horrific, absolute horror. It's only

1:41:14 When I was born in nineteen fifty, the Second World War was only five years away and the end of it and it hung over us, you know, you our our generation were aware of that, but it seems to me People today aren't aware of the horror of global war in the way that they were then and and and uh That adds to the to the danger that we will immolate ourselves.

1:41:36 I think a new approach to the nature of reality is really vital. I think we we need to begin to understand consciousness better. And what I would wish to do. For the human species. Is that we understand we are actually all one. Incredibly diverse.

1:41:54 full of creativity and differences, but but all one. And A mother In the middle of sub Saharan Africa And a mother in New York City. They love their kids in exactly the same way.

1:42:06 They hope for their kids in exactly the same way. There's no difference. between them at all. As long as we're as long as we're indoctrinated into this notion of Divisive differences. I'm all in favor of

1:42:19 differences between human beings. That's part of our creativity as our species, but divisive differences. That's what's gonna kill us off. Uh and that's I think the message that comes down from the past. Whether it's a correct message or not, the message is We A former civilization.

1:42:39 Made. A terrible mistake. And it resulted In a cataclysm. That brought us down.

1:42:46 I think we need to realise that can happen again. Uh and that we are. most likely to be the cause of that cataclysm ourselves. Uh there may there may be a danger of further comet impacts. The Younger Dryas comet fragments. It's called the Torid Meteor Stream. The Earth passes through it twice a year in June and in October, November. Uh there are hundreds of deadly objects in the Torid Meteor Stream. It could happen. But I think a much more likely way that we're going to

1:43:17 Bring our civilization. Back almost to the Stone Age. Is nuclear war. We can do it to ourselves. Unless we wake up.

1:43:29 Unless we become more conscious of what it is to be a human being, of the privilege and the gift. of being a human being and how that privilege of gift belongs to every human being. Not just to us. But I don't know how that's gonna be done. I I I

1:43:44 Do you think psychedelics can play a role? I've said many times, and I'll say it again, if I if I had the I would insist that every World leader.

1:43:54 Has at least. at least a dozen sessions of ayahuasca before they even apply for the job. Because you believe that would give them the same feeling of oneness that I think most of them wouldn't apply for the job at all. Oh really? And those who did would would Probably do a much better job.

1:44:12 Because they'd understand themselves better. Graham, what is the most important thing we haven't discussed as it relates to Our past teach us or Yeah, how it might inform how we choose to live our lives today. Um that we haven't discussed.

1:44:27 Look, the most important thing as far as as far as I'm concerned is independent inquiry. We need to start thinking for ourselves and that's true of the past and it's true of everything else. Uh to the to the extent that I that I do get Positive feedback from young people. And I do.

1:44:44 A lot. That feedback is Thank you for being an example to question everything. Mm-hmm. It happens that what I'm questioning

1:44:53 Is the past. But That can be a model for questioning. Everything.

1:44:59 I I feel that That's Very poor journalism. being used To smear my name.

1:45:08 Because I asked. questions and because I asked them vigorously. And because Most important of all. I reached a large audience.

1:45:17 That's it really. They won't smear smear your name if you don't reach a large audience. You're not worth their trouble. I know the feeling. Yeah. But I think you do. But you know, for me my thing has always been that um

1:45:28 All it's done is made me clearer. Like, you know, if you have a bigger platform, more people. um watching you, et cetera, and talking about you. All it's done for me is made me clearer on my principles and what I believe. Yeah. And I'm actually really thankful for that in a weird way. Yeah. Because you're forced to, you know, when you hear so many things said about you or written about you, whatever, it does focus one mind on okay, like who am I? Yeah and what matters. What am I uh w where am I uncompromising in terms of the conversations I want to have, the way I wanna do it. And that's given me a huge amount of clarity. And one of the things that I'm really I really want to make sure is that it doesn't make me

1:46:00 Um bitter or resentful in any way. And you can see how it happens. Yeah, I can I can absolutely see how it happens. injustice potentially or Being mischaracterized or whatever. So

1:46:14 It's easy to see how one can slip off into bitterness and resentment and uh That's a b that's a big part of the work I'm doing on myself at the moment. I I'm Confident. I am doing the right thing with my life. I'm doing no harm to anyone.

1:46:27 And I'm putting ideas out there that are worth thinking about. I'm confident of that. I have no I have no doubts about that. And what will you care about on your On your last day.

1:46:37 Most of all The love of my family. That's the most important thing to me. And um I don't know.

1:46:46 The feeling that I did my best. I did the best I could. Two Carry out the

1:46:56 Task that uh Fell upon me. Quite by accident. I didn't I was a current affairs journalist in the nineteen eighties, so I had no idea I was gonna go down this rabbit hole into the ancient world. It was a series of accidents that led to it. But having gone down it I feel very, very, very committed to it.

1:47:14 It's interesting'cause w one of the ways that I um I've always chosen to conduct my interviews is just to f um Judge people as I find them. I remember once upon a time I had Brian Johnson coming on my podcast and you know, he's quite a He's a He has some radical beliefs about living forever, et cetera. He's the longevity guy. And I remember one of my team members walking up to me beforehand and saying before he arrived and saying, What you think of him? And I remember saying, I have no idea, I've not met him yet. Yeah.

1:47:35 And then I sat down with him, had this interview, and he said this thing to me at the end of the interview where he goes, Thank you and I go, What do you mean? He goes, Thank you. This is the first time I've done an interview in my life where the interview had like no preconceptions of me. And he goes, it meant that I was relaxed and able to be myself and blah blah. And I and I say that because Mike? Opinion of you is someone who is really curious about

1:47:56 about humanity and has this interesting idea that is really expensive for one's mind about what could have happened. And um Again, the net benefit for me of that is just Expanding my mind in a way that makes me Empathetic to other people. Yeah. Makes me feel like me and you aren't.

1:48:15 Different. Yeah. Like I've met you today, but we're probab you know, we we we go back a long way. Maybe consciously we're the same, but In our history and our lineage, we are We are one of the same. And um it also gives me a huge Amount of respect for

1:48:30 other living things including my ancestors. In a way that you kinda think of your ancestors as these like monkeys that lived in trees potentially. But actually hearing some of these stories makes me go, Oh my gosh. And actually it gives me a huge sense of responsibility. to leave this planet and this earth in a way that's gonna be good for The future. The future kids that will live twenty thousand years from now in the future and that'll probably look at Oh. And fossil records in Wonder.

1:48:59 Mm. Ver very very definitely. Uh I mean we're living in this strange new world. beginning of the nineteen nineties. This this the this world of communication that we live in now. And there's no doubt that that um This is where influence. Can be applied.

1:49:17 And and If that influence is Encouraging all that's good. In the human race, then that's really great. It's a wonderful thing.

1:49:26 And if it's encouraging all that's dark and negative and cruel and unkind and vicious in the human race,'cause that's also out there on the internet, then it's not so good. Grim, we have a um closing tradition on the show where the Lancaster Guest leaves the question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is Is there a danger? Of a sleepwalking.

1:49:46 into worshiping a machine god. You want me to answer that question? Yes. We're already worshiping a machine god. As I said earlier in our discussion Uh In the minds of many science has already been elevated to occupy the space that was once occupied by religions.

1:50:05 Yeah. That is A belief in a machine, fundamentally, that's taking place there. Science should be seen as a Cool. one amongst many tools that we as human beings have at our disposal. It should never

1:50:19 Be the only tool. And it should never be worshipped. I don't ever want to hear the words. Trust. The science.

1:50:28 The words for me are Investigate the science. See whether it's right for you or not. See what else is available. Don't just Routinely without thought, without question.

1:50:41 Trust the science, don't do that. That's That's betraying science as well. One of the fundamental ethics of science is not to trust the science, it's to question And challenge the science.

1:50:53 That's what we should be doing. with the science. And yes, we are in danger of creating a kind of multi dimensional machine which reaches into all aspects of human consciousness and and controls us. Yeah. We've got to stop worshiping science. That's for sure. We gotta

1:51:12 put it in its rightful place as an incredibly valuable tool which which Can do great things for human beings, but which can also do terrible harm and damage. Yeah. When you put your trust in anything, you better have good reason to put your trust in it. If I if I'm gonna

1:51:32 Trust another human being. With my life. Yeah. I really want to know that I can trust that person. I'm I'm not just gonna say Oh, you're a doctor, so I trust you, no.

1:51:41 It's not that's not enough. I want to know more about that. Doctor. pursued that just recently. Science is great. Science is really useful, but we're not We're not being what we should be. We're not living up to the potential that the universe gave us if we just go around trusting everything all the time. We're here to ask questions. That's what we've got these enormous brains for and this incredible connectivity is to ask questions.

1:52:11 Anybody who says don't ask questions is doing a great deal of harm. Well I hope my audience are very curious. Um and I think they must be by now if they're still hanging around uh on this platform. Yeah because we've had lots of very curious conversations and uh hopefully expansive I with this acronym DOAC obviously stands for Directo, but also we think of it as like Being for dreamers and open minded people, which is the O and the the A being about expanding awareness and the C really being about feeling more connected. Brilliant. Like hearing your story and about your your partner and your journey and your parents all makes me all you know, I think it there's it makes us like Spiritually connected in a way that's increasingly rare. If people want to learn and read more.

1:52:49 Where do they go? I mean you've written so many wonderful books, you've got another one on the way. I'll link all of these books you've written and the others that aren't here below. Um The book that put me on the map was Fingerprints of the Gods.

1:53:03 Yeah. And that's the book where I really investigate begin to investigate the possibility of a lost civilization. Before that came the sign and the seal, which was which was about Ethiopia's claim to possess the lost Ark of the Covenant. It happened that as a reporter in the nineteen eighties I spent a lot of time in Ethiopia and I came across this tradition which is fundamental to all religious life in Ethiopia. Uh and and um ended up writing a book about it. That put me on the track of a lost civilization led to fingerprints of the gods. Then the after Fingerprints of the Gods there's a book that's not here, which is Keeper of Genesis that I wrote with Robert Baval. And the world this was seven years of scuba diving that Santa and I did all around the world, following up

1:53:49 Tips from Local fishermen, local divers, they'd seen something interesting, something that looked man-made at a depth of thirty meters, just offshore there, and they would take us and we would find it. So the Underworld is about all those flooded continental shelves, twenty-seven million square kilometers of continental shelf. were flooded at the end of the ice age. That's twenty seven million square kilometers, that's Europe and China and a bit more combined. uh were the best real estate on earth uh twenty thousand years ago and are all under water today. And and there's signs that there was life there. Oh yeah, absolutely. Civilizations there. Yeah. Um so that's that's uh Underworld. Then after Underworld I wrote Supernatural, which is that one there.

1:54:36 which has been reissued in America under the title Visionary. And that's where I went deep into the shamanistic medicines, the the ayahuasca Silocybin the and and and the whole notion that Cave art. The art that we see in the painted caves. Is

1:54:57 an art of visions. That this is shamans who had entered deeply altered states of consciousness, they'd remembered what they'd seen. And when they came back to the everyday state of consciousness, they painted their visions in caves. It's the best explanation for cave arts and why cave art is so similar all around the world. And so similar to the visions of ayahuasca shamans to this day. Graham, thank you so much for all that you do. I I won't repeat every all the reasons why, but you've you've blown my mind open in a way that's just driven curiosity. And um I think that's maybe The start of all inquiry is deep curiosity and that's what you've done for not just myself, but the hundreds of millions of people that have watched you over the years, um, all over the world, and I hope long may it continue, and good luck with your heart operation. And hopefully we'll be back again to continue this conversation soon. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's brilliant.

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