Was there a lost advanced globe spanning civilization at the end of the last ice age? This is the question the gram- hold on a second. Hmm, yeah no that doesn't look very good does it? Ah, there we go, how do you like that? I figure this has this is my first full year of having this as my actual full-time job I should invest in a real big boy camera and at least pretend that I'm a professional. And another one over there, what's going on? Wow. Yeah look at this, it's all coming together. Anyway, let's get to it. There was a lost globe spanning advanced civilization at the end of the last ice age. This is the claim the gram-handcock makes in his most recent Netflix series ancient apocalypse.
Now, now I love this claim. It makes us think of the lost civilizations that we dreamed of as kids, the things that we thought of when we watched Indiana Jones or played uncharted. And it's a compelling hypothesis, one that we need a lot of evidence to support it, but I'm sure if there was a dedicated researcher they'd be able to put in the legwork. Now if this hypothesis were proven true, the implications of it would be enormous. Not only for the archaeological world, which would have to reckon with the fact that it has a entire chapter that has just been left out of the books.
But also for our modern world, as we could look to the past to find ways to cope with the present, as we struggle under the weight of globalization. So what is the evidence for this incredibly bold claim? Well, luckily for us, Graham Hancock spends eight episodes of 30 minutes each telling us all of his evidence for this claim. And luckily for you, I watched all eight of those episodes more times that I care to admit. I took a lot of notes, I got a lot of headaches, and I drank a lot, like this.
And so today, ladies and gentlemen, you and I are going to analyze every single one of Graham Hancock's claims. We are going to assess which ones hold water and which ones don't. And at the end, be able to determine whether or not there truly is enough evidence to support the theory that there was a lost, advanced, globe-spanning civilization at the end of the last ice age. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Milo, and God damn it feels good to be back.
女士们,先生们,今天你我将一起分析 Graham Hancock 的每一个主张。我们会评估哪些主张站得住脚,哪些不成立。最后我们将能判断是否有足够的证据支持这样一个理论:在上一个冰河时代末期,是否存在一个失落的、先进的、全球范围的文明。女士们,先生们,我是 Milo,太高兴又回来了。
Who is Graham Hancock? Oh wait. If you're asking this question, I envy you. Graham Hancock is a person. He is a person who some may call a researcher. I am one of those people. But more predominantly than that, Graham Hancock is a writer. His foundational text is called Fingerprints of the Gods. You may have heard of it. It was published in 1995, and it sets the stage for the theory, which he will propose in many of his later works. In Fingerprints of the Gods, Graham Hancock proposes that there was a lost, advanced, civilization that existed in Antarctica.
The Graham Hancock, apparently, really loved this theory because he went on to publish a lot more books. His most recent text America before is one that he ties in a lot with this ancient apocalypse show. And now all of these books have one thing in common. It's a theorized that every civilization that we know of was inspired or started by a lost, advanced, civilization that ruled the world until the end of the last ice age. It's a big claim. So you might be thinking, well, Graham Hancock must be an archaeologist, right?
Well, Graham Hancock does hold a degree in sociology. That is the most important qualification an archaeologist can have. Now, I wouldn't write this one if Graham Hancock didn't bring it up himself multiple times throughout the course of his show. But he frequently likes to remind us that his Wikipedia page lists him as a pseudoscientist. Behold, Graham Hancock's resume. Now, I do put this one in here a little bit facetiously because I want to try and take a balanced and respectful view of the things that Graham Hancock claims, because he does genuinely take his theories very seriously.
And whether or not I personally agree with them, it would be bad science for me to ignore them altogether, or to treat them as though his evidence would be any worse than any other person's. Now, you know who Graham Hancock is. But who is me? Hi, my name's Milo. I'm an archaeologist, an environmental scientist. What else am I? Archaeologists. An archaeologist. That's an excellent idea, Brit. Is it an archaeologist? An archaeologist? And an asshole. And a racon term. My job is to tell stories. My job is to tell facts. And that is what I do.
无论我个人是否同意他们的观点,完全忽视他们或者认为他们的证据比其他人的差是很不科学的。你们知道 Graham Hancock 是谁。但我是谁呢?你好,我叫 Milo。我是一名考古学家和环境科学家。我还是个什么呢?考古学家。一个考古学家。Brit,这真是个好主意。是个考古学家吗?一个考古学家?还有个混蛋,还有个讲故事的达人。我的工作是讲述故事,也是提供事实。而这正是我所做的。
Now, I want to talk about this one for a second. Something that Graham Hancock will talk about repeatedly throughout the course of his series is mainstream archaeology. Now, mainstream archaeology is the kind of people who, you know, they sit in front of a blackboard with a pile of dusty textbooks. Oh, fuck. It's sort of the tweed suit and bow tie archaeology that Graham Hancock wants you to think all archaeologists are. You know, the kind that don't listen to anyone else and are totally set in their ways.
Well, lucky for you, I am not a mainstream archaeologist. My job is making YouTube videos and I'm still completely jacked full of early 20s hormones that make me completely incapable of working with other people. So mainstream is something you do not have to worry about me doing. So you might be wondering, Milo, why are you even bothering to do this? Couldn't you be doing something more productive with your life? Absolutely. But I'm going to do this anyway. At the end of the day, I would go as so far as to say that Graham Hancock is a scientist. He has a hypothesis and he is doing experimentation and research in order to see if he can prove that hypothesis. And I would be a bad scientist to ignore that claim outright.
Now, the purpose of science is to ask questions. So I cannot blame Graham Hancock for asking a question like was there a global earth conquering civilization at the end of the last ice age, even if the question is a little bit ridiculous. It is through these kind of ridiculous questions that so many of the most important fundamental ideas of science have been discovered, which is why I want to take a critical lens to what Graham Hancock has to say. Like it or not, you are watching this video because you're participating in science. You want to further understand a topic and develop your own opinions on it, a process which is at the core of the scientific method. And I hope to be able to facilitate that by applying some of my knowledge so that you can better inform your decisions. That's my honorable reason for doing this, I guess.
My petty reason for doing this is because Graham Hancock spends this entire series whining about how nobody listens to him. Not only did I take the time to listen to you, but I am going to tell you in explicit detail everything that I think about your theory. Let's get started. How do you prove a lost civilization? That's a big ask, isn't it? As this entire theory is predicated on whether or not Graham Hancock's evidence holds any water, I think it is important that we all understand what criterion we are going to use to judge his evidence. And this is something that is very important that I want us to not lose track of throughout the entire course of this lecture. We need reliable dates.
These would be things like cultural layers. A cultural layer is a stratigraphic layer that contains evidence of human habitation. This can be anything from charred animal bones and fire pits to stone byfaces or other signs of human habitation. It is by these layers that you were actually able to prove that a group of people was there for any period of time. So we need to see cultural layers that all have similar contents to one another that are deposited around 12,800 years ago, which is where Graham Hancock says this ancient civilization falls into our human history timeline.
Now building off that a little bit, we would also need to see some material culture. Material culture falls under the same categories, cultural layers. This is going to be things like statues, tools, architectural styles, writings, carvings, motifs, etc. You know, if you find the same language in two different places, those two places are probably related to one another. Similarly, if you find evidence of worship of the same God and whatnot, you can probably associate those two sites with one another. Go a little bit off that more.
We would need to see structural evidence. Structure evidence would be any actual physical remnants of this lost civilization. You can't just say it existed. You have to actually show it. Foundations, walls, roads, etc. etc. etc. Now, the most important piece of evidence that you could possibly have, the B all end all to prove that your lost civilization exists, is DNA genetic evidence. If you show me a bunch of skeletons from different parts of the world, you sequence their DNA and you're able to prove that they're related to one another, then you have convinced to me that there was a civilization that managed to conquer the globe.
This is the criterion that the world would need to see in order to prove that Graham Hancock's claim is true. Are we all on the same page? I think we're all on the same page. Now, thankfully, this evidence shouldn't be that hard to find. Again, Graham Hancock's claim is that they conquered the world 12,000 years ago. So, clearly, if they had that big of a grip, their evidence should be everywhere. Shouldn't it? Well, let's look for it. Alright, how's this series going to work? Let's go over one last agenda thing before we get this thing started.
This is syllabus week. So, because Graham Hancock talks about a lot of stuff throughout the course of this series, I think it's important that we start with some context. Because without context, Graham Hancock will capitalize on the fact that a lot of people don't have a knowledge base in some of the topics he's talking about, and it allows him to, I'll say, strategically mislead.
So, most importantly, the first thing I want to talk about is the younger, driest impact hypothesis. This is something which Graham Hancock uses as a fundamental building block for his theory, and it's something which you deserve to know the truth of before getting into the brunt of this video. And then, after we get that housekeeping out of the way, I am going to go over every single one of the episodes of ancient apocalypse in order and talk about every single point that Graham Hancock makes.
I have a 40 page script, and because of that, this video is going to be shot in multiple parts. They might be thinking, Milo, why don't you just make one two and a half hour long video instead of shooting this in multiple parts? A, no, B, it's called getting that bag. If Graham Hancock can make an eight episode series about nothing and get a Netflix deal, I can make a multi-part series on YouTube, and you'll be able to click through the episodes I promise.
Now, at the end of all of this, I'm going to talk about my conclusion. We're going to assess all of the evidence from every single one of these episodes and see if it holds any water. And last but not least, we're going to talk about the implications of this show, because I think that's something that not a lot of people have talked about yet. What does this show mean for the world of science and the world of fact?
And now, with that ominous intro out of the way, ladies and gentlemen, let's get the semester started with the younger, driest impact hypothesis. All right, we're going to do this quickly so that we can get into the mean potatoes of this quickly as we possibly can. We are in an ice age. Oh, it doesn't look like an ice age out there. I don't see any snow. It'll too bad because it is an ice age.
We are currently in an interglacial period and an ice age that has lasted for the last two million years. Now, when people say the end of the last ice age, it's sort of a colloquial way of referring to 10,000 years ago, which is the start of this interglacial period. Glaciers do this. Weeeeeee! As the temperature fluctuates during a glacial period, we will get points where there is ice and no ice.
Now, an important thing to note is that an ice age is defined by whether or not there is ice on the poles. So, yes, just because the climate has fluctuated quite a lot in the last two million years, the fact that we are about to have no more ice on our poles is not a normal thing. I feel the need to say that because every time I talk about the ice age, someone's like, Oh, look, it's been changing for thousands of years. Fuck out of here.
So anyway, we are currently in an interglacial period. This is when the ice caps have receded to the poles, leaving much of the rest of the world more or less ice free. About 10,000 years ago, the last ice age comes to an end. You can have a look at this sick graph showing the global temperature during the end of the ice age, but you'll notice on this graph that there is a strange dip, a point when the temperature plunges again.
This is called the Younger Dryas period. Now, I'm not going to go too deep into the Younger Dryas, but if you want to learn more about it, there's a great video by Stefan Milo. I highly recommend you check him out, especially because I'm Milo, and he's the back half of him is Milo as well. But the biggest thing to take away is that while this change looks very abrupt on a graph in the scale of human life spans took a really long time.
Now, at the end of the last ice age, sea levels were slowly rising. About 14,000 years ago, indicated here, the sea levels, ooh, the sea levels, rising by about that much. That's about 20 millimeters per year or about 0.8 inches per year. Then, by about 11,500 years ago, the rate of sea level rise had dramatically decreased. To about that much, about 4 millimeters or about 0.15 inches.
Needless to say, this is a amount of sea level rise that would be infinitesimal on the human perception scale. But then, by about 11,450 years ago, something wild happened. It is colloquially referred to as meltwater pulse 1B. Great name. I know. Scientists aren't going to name anything. It all just sounds so lame. They call something cool. It's the big one. Now, the big one was big.
So what happened during meltwater pulse 1B is all of the water, which had been melting off of the Continent-Spanning glaciers, had been pooling in enormous glacial lakes. These things were gigantic. Glacial lake, Missoula, on its own, which took up most of the space between the Rocky Mountains and the Bitterroot Mountains or the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho and Wyoming held more water than two of the great lakes combined. I can't remember which ones. We'll put it up here. Either way, the amount of water that was suddenly in the middle of North America was absolutely enormous. But as the glaciers receded, these lakes began to drain, and they dumped an enormous amount of cold, fresh water into the ocean. Now, when this happened, it wreaked environmental havoc. One has to look no farther than the climate today to see how small changes can have a massive impact on weather patterns.
So when all this water was dumped into the sea, all of a sudden two things happened. Firstly, the temperatures plunged as these global circulatory systems ground to a halt. And secondly, the sea level skyrocketed. Now, skyrocketed is a little bit of a hyperbole in this case. At its peak during the younger dryest, the sea levels were rising by about 40 millimeters per year, which is about 1.7 inches. You should probably be labeling these. There we go. These ones are so small, they don't matter. And now that is a lot. It's still not enough for people to really notice, but if you lived on a coastal city for 30, 40, 50 years, you'd probably notice that a lot of shit was underwater by that point. If the water continued to rise at that rate, which it didn't, for much of the younger dryest, the sea level rise was around that much. 0.3 inches are around 7 millimeters.
Now, you might be wondering, Milo, what does all this matter? Why are you telling us this? Because rapid sea level rise is something which Graham Hancock uses as a fundamental building block of his hypothesis. So it's important that you have an understanding of what was actually going on during the younger dryest, essentially. The younger dryest is, I don't know, only the single most studied climatic event in human history. So we have so much data on it that trying to act like it's some great mystery is really just sort of bending the truth. Now, with that being said, it's time for episode 1. Ancient Apocalypse Episode 1 Ghosts of a Drowned World. Where are we? There we go. Lord, give me strength. It's fighting back.
Ancient Apocalypse has about the strongest start of any TV show I have ever seen in my life. It quite literally opens with calling Graham Hancock a journalist who is picking a fight with academia. He might be saying, Milo, oh god, I still fucking water in my nose. Give me a second. Now, you might be thinking, Milo, isn't this show about archaeology? What the hell is he doing? Talking about how he's just like a pariah to academia. Now, you'd be right. This is a show that's supposed to be about archaeology, but you will notice right off the bat, the actual content of this show. Is Graham Hancock setting the stage to talk about how much everyone doesn't like him? And this is a theme that you will see play out through almost every running minute of this entire series.
And the best way to put it is this. Graham Hancock is more concerned with being a martyr than having his beliefs be accepted. Now, right off the bat, he does admit that he is not a scientist or an archaeologist, which I do appreciate him doing. But also, I think it leaves a bad taste in our mouths for when we imagine someone who isn't amateur at anything. I completely agree with him. I don't think that you should need a degree in order to be an archaeologist. Being passionate and conducting your own research is not something that should be synonymous with spitting in the face of professionals.
Now, pretty quickly into the episode, he gives us his thesis. There was a loss, advanced civilization, at the end of the last ice age. And he immediately tells you how much he really truly believes in this by going on to say that this idea is upsetting to the mainstream archaeologists. The experts who he says insist that only simple hunter gatherers existed at the end of the last ice age. And that because he has these feelings, he is enemy number one to archaeologists. Now, Graham Hancock, I assure you, you are not enemy number one to archaeologists. If you've ever seen any of the Indiana Jones movies, you know who enemy number one is to archaeologists. And I hope you're not one of those guys.
Now, as he gets the ball rolling here, he really wants to set the tone for what his opposition believes. He is trying to press this idea that archaeologists think that hunter gatherers were these simple people who couldn't really do anything. Which is the most foolish thing I have ever heard in my entire life. Throughout the course of this show, it becomes abundantly clear that Graham Hancock has been spoken to an archaeologist in about 30 years. The hunter gatherer period of human history is one of the most complex points in my opinion, and one that no one belittles to that extent. This is a way of thinking that was common in 1965. But if you talk to anyone who actually studies this in the last 40 years, no one would ever tell you that they are simple hunter gatherers.
But after complaining about the arrogant and patronizing attitudes of mainstream academia, he finally gets into the episode. For episode one, Graham Hancock takes us to Gunung Padong in Indonesia. Gunung Padong is a terrorist mountaintop made out of columnar basalt slabs, and it's a truly beautiful site. This is one of the first times I've seen it ever actually spotlighted in a real documentary, dare I say. And it's really wonderful to know that this spectacular site is something which is now available to a wider audience. It's just a shame that it's presented like this.
Firstly, Graham Hancock marvels at how large the stones are. He claims that there are about 50,000 stones at Gunung Padong. Each one of them weighing about one third of a ton. That's a lot, right? One third of a ton? It says ton. It's gotta be big. Oh, all right. That camera's offline. You're gonna just have to deal with it. Now, a third of a ton is about 600 pounds. Sounds a lot less impressive when you say it like that, isn't it? Now, don't get me wrong. 600 pounds is still stupidly heavy, but considering the heaviest deadlift ever was like 1100 pounds, you'd probably just need a couple strong dudes to be able to move one of those. If you were really ambitious, you probably wouldn't even need wheels for it or a pulley system.
To put this number into a little bit more perspective, the blocks of the great pyramid of Giza are about two and a half tons each. You like that? That's pretty good, right? The Moai heads on Easter Island weigh about 15 tons each. I don't think I can draw Moai. Wait a second. 15 tons each. And the stones at Stonehenge weigh a absolutely insane 25 tons. No, I promise I'm not just trying to dunk on the people who built Gunung Padong because I'm sure that moving 600 pound pieces of columnar basalt is no small feat. But Graham Hancock is trying to use a tactic here where he makes this sound way more impressive than it actually is so that you're almost grasping for a reason to justify it in your head as if it couldn't have happened unless there's some miraculous conclusion. But no, around this time people were working with enormous stones, these people would have been capable of doing it too. Let's keep going.
Now, the first layer of this site is dated to around 500 BC. And the second layer dates to around 5200 BC. Now, if this date is proven to be correct, that means that this site would be a staggering 10,000 years old. And you know what? I'm totally here for it. Absolutely. Graham Hancock then goes on to say that there is no evidence that at this time the people of this area were anything other than simple hunter gatherers. Well, I gotta say, if they built that, apparently not. It's ironic that he speaks like he's trying to dismantle the idea that hunter gatherers were simple and primitive, but without that preconception, his idea completely falls apart.
He wants you to believe that archaeologists think that hunter gatherers weren't capable of doing anything like this because once you accept the reality that they were capable of doing stuff like this, then this isn't a mystery anymore. Hello, Louis. Do you have anything to say to the people? Oh, I know. You're the reason I have to use a lint roller every time I go and set Louis. I hope you're proud of yourself. You get a little cameo in every video. Now, he also says that these columnar basalt stones are cut. It was a little thing, but I felt the need to include it because it's wrong. They didn't cut the columnar basalt; columnar basalt cracks. It comes in these like massive pillars, but now is when we get into my favorite part of this episode.
Pyramids, you love them. You hate them. You can film with mummies or you can film with bass pro shops merch. So it's important that we write down what Graham Hancock's definition of a pyramid is because it's very important. A series of terraces that rises to a summit. The Graham Hancock dictionary definition of a pyramid. Now, the reason that I bring up this quote is because this quote is going to be very useful in like two episodes. So please write this one down because it will be on the test. Because of this definition, Graham Hancock qualifies Gunung Padong as being a pyramid.
Now, let's have a look at Gunung Padong. That doesn't look like a pyramid to me. That looks like a terraced hill, but I guess if a series of terraces is part of your definition of a pyramid, then sure, it's a pyramid. It's at this point when Graham Hancock brings up something very mysterious. A secret chamber. This is what the liberal media doesn't want you to know about. Beneath the ruins of Gunung Padong, there is some sort of cavity which can be seen on ground penetrating radar.
So what is it? Is it a burial chamber? Is it full of treasure? Is it the lost city of Atlantis? I'd be willing to put my money on it is none of those things. And the reason why is a little detail which Graham Hancock conveniently leaves out of his documentary. The astute view can probably already put it together. You know that Gunung Padong is built out of Kalener Basalt. You know the environment in which Kalener Basalt is formed. Gunung Padong is on a volcano. Now, what happens inside of volcanoes? Lava tubes.
Lava tubo. How did I manage to do that? Lava tubo. Lava tubes, chambers, all this stuff. It all happens inside of volcanoes. And because Gunung Padong is built on top of a volcano, I would be willing to bet that that mysterious chamber, which is far below the level of the pyramid, is probably a lava tube. Now, again, I don't know. I am not going to sit here and claim that I know what it is. Because who knows? Maybe it is the lost city of Atlantis.
But my point is you can't try and wrap this thing in mystery when there is a very logical reason that it probably isn't a lost, you know, chamber. There's a little saying that I think is going to be very important throughout this series. If you hear hooves, think horses not zebras. So if you see a chamber underground on a volcano, think lava tube, not secret place where they're hiding the true city that was once there 12,800 years ago by the lost civilization that conquered the entire world.
But I'm looking for evidence for it. You think it goes back and do a rhetoric about how nobody thinks that hunter gatherers would be able to build this, which is stupid. But then we get into the smash hit part of this episode. The part where he claims that in a core sample of drilling, they found evidence that there is a layer of this pyramid which dates back to 24,000 years ago, making it nearly twice as old as the next oldest megalithic structure on earth.
Do I doubt that they found a layer which is dated to 24,000 years? Not in the slightest. Do I know if it's a cultural layer or not where there is anyone actually living? I have no idea because they never talk about it. The wonderful thing about dating material is that at least with radio carbon dating, which I presume is what they did here, you can do with any natural material, meaning that it doesn't need to be something that was modified by people at any point.
But now let's say that they did honor a cultural layer that was dated to 24,000 years ago. They never tell us what was in this cultural layer which would literally be the most important piece of evidence in proving his point. Let's say you got a mountain, it's Indonesia, the resemblance is uncanny. Then at the top you got some hunter gatherers, you know, they make their little fire, voila.
Time goes on, the hunter gatherers go away, they all die and their little cultural pile is left there. Over time vegetation grows, the mountain is covered in more and more dirt and then you get some more people who show up, who start to build with their call nervous salt layers and make their little mound on top. Then you get Graham Hancock standing at the top like that and he asks someone who drilled down and found this layer and then dated it.
I'm going to act in good faith because I know that Graham Hancock didn't get this date because he doesn't actually do archaeology. So this had to be gathered by a real archaeologist and I would assume that they're not going to lie and would actually, you know, check their information before publishing it. So my prediction is that they found a cultural layer at that site dated to 24,000 years ago and Graham Hancock was willing to associate that site with the pyramid that is now built on top of it without realizing the fact that people really like to be on top of mountains.
Either way, I think this is a very flimsy argument to support the idea that there was a global world conquering civilization at the end of the last ice age moving swiftly along. For my next trick, Graham Hancock will go to, oh look, there he goes, want to read? Okay, sweet. Non-Modol is an archaeological site on Pompeii Island and the reason why it gets lumped into this, you know, lost civilization hypothesis so much is because it is very slightly below the water line. Graham Hancock's theory is that his lost civilization was wiped out during the younger dryest impact, the sea level rose and, you know, drowned them all off the face of the earth. However, non-Modol is a bless you. However, non-Modol is only very slightly below the water line and most of that reason is because it was built to be intentionally in the water. It is made up of a series of locks and canals and places where people were supposed to boat through.
No archaeologists have been able to date this site to be about 900 years old. They know this because they have gotten uranium series dating and have been able to date it with other cultural layers around the island. You know, science, 900 years old or about 1100 sea. Now, Graham Hancock has an alternative hypothesis. He claims that non-Modol is actually 12,800 years old. Now that's a big claim. We're willing to push back in the date of this construction by 12 times. So you need a lot of evidence to be able to back something like that up. So what is Graham Hancock's evidence that this site is actually 12 times older than the archaeological date? Say it is, his evidence is that it's slightly underwater and that his hypothesis would be supported better if it was older than that. But it isn't. So there's that, I guess.
Now the thing that I think is the most interesting about non-Modol is, again, it's a site that not a lot of—by Louis, it's a site that not a lot of people talk about. Unless it's associated with conspiracies. The very first time that I heard of non-Modol, it was reviewing some stupid TikTok. And I didn't even know what island it was on until I did research for this video. And it was only after doing research for this video that I was actually able to learn the history of the island and the people that lived on it. Non-Modol was the seat of government for an entire empire. They were called the Souda-Ler. Souda-Ler? I don't know if I spelled that right. S-A-U-D nailed it. The Souda-Ler dynasty. And I believe they were called the Souda-Ler dynasty because the king, the monarch, was the Souda-Ler. If I'm saying any of these words wrong, please feel free to correct me.
Again, I only know about this site after doing research on it for this video. But anyway, non-Modol was the seat of government for, you know, this entire dynasty. The site dates to about 1180 CE, not only from archaeological data, but from the data and the stories of the people who actually live there. Just because a site was not mentioned in your archaeology textbooks does not mean that it was created by a lost civilization. The people who are descended of those who built this site still live on the island. It's just disrespectful, honestly. And it's such a shame because so many of the people who are watching this series, it's probably the first time they've heard of non-Modol. And I mean, look at it. It's fascinating. It screams to that piece of us that wants to know about the past, but the problem is it's being presented to us in a way that is masked in this pseudo-mystical bullshit.
And it's so frustrating that the first time people hear about this, it is not being presented factually. It's not being presented by those who are actually responsible for building it and telling their stories and telling the truth and the facts of the site. Okay. Tone it down. We're doing this respectfully. Respectfully. Well on camera. Now Graham Hancock actually ends this episode with a phenomenal point. Goodness knows what has been lost to rising sea levels. And Graham, you are absolutely right. Because for most of human history, the sea level has been drastically lower and being a species that likes to build our nests alongside coastal areas, a lot of those have been lost.
Graham Hancock expresses his dismay towards archaeologists no longer doing research and potentially finding more about these underground chambers or other historical aspects of the site. But this is frankly a bit of a foolish thing to say. To blame archaeologists for not continuing this work is like blaming construction workers for not fixing potholes. It's frankly not up to them. Every single one of us has to answer to someone higher up. Every single one of us is at the whim and the mercy of however much funding we get. So Graham, if you truly are frustrated by how little digging archaeologists get to do, welcome to the club. But I do hear that you just came across a pretty penny from a particular Netflix deal. So if you're willing to fund a dig, Graham Hancock, I'd be willing to lead it. I know you already have my email, so feel free to respond when you're ready to launch.
Graham Hancock 对于考古学家不再进行研究,无法更多地了解这些地下室或该遗址的其他历史方面表示失望。然而,这样的说法实在有些不明智。责怪考古学家不继续这项工作,就像责怪建筑工人不去修补路面坑洼一样。这实际上不是他们能决定的。我们每个人都要听命于比自己职位更高的人,我们每个人都受限于所能获得的经费。所以,Graham,如果你真因为考古学家挖掘工作少而感到沮丧,欢迎加入我们的阵营。不过我听说你刚从一项Netflix协议中赚了一笔不小的钱。如果你愿意为一次发掘提供资金,Graham Hancock,我愿意带队。我知道你有我的邮箱地址,所以,当你准备好启动时,请随时联系。
Graham Hancock ends this episode by saying that we are a species with amnesia, referring to the fact that we have lost or forgotten a huge chapter of our history. It's a compelling claim and one that he will spend the next seven episodes working to back up. That is the end of episode one. The ladies and gentlemen believe me when I say that we are just getting started. Whoa, Milo, that jacket is awesome. I can hear you saying from through the computer screen, you know it is awesome. It's awesome and distracting. So distracting, you probably didn't even notice that I'm here to give you an ad read. I want to wear this again. Oh my god, the inside of it is like fully gold. Oh yeah, that's so much better.
Graham Hancock在这一集的结尾说,我们是一个失忆的物种,指的是我们遗失或遗忘了很大一部分历史。这是一个引人注目的说法,也是他在接下来的七集中将努力证明的观点。这是第一集的结束。各位先生女士,相信我,当我说我们才刚刚开始的时候。哇,Milo,那件夹克真是太棒了。我仿佛通过电脑屏幕听到你在说,它真是太棒了。这么棒的夹克让人分心,你可能甚至没有注意到我正在给你介绍一个广告。我想再穿一次。天哪,它的里面竟然全部是金色的。哦,对,这好多了。
Are you kidding me? Because today's bludger is ground news. Are you sick of the news? Are you sick of all the clickbait and the terrible articles and the immense biases everywhere you look? Yeah? Well, welcome to America, baby. The problem with news is that it is manipulative of algorithms. It tries to take advantage of the things that you look at and just tries to feed you more of it. And considering that the whole thing I do here is try and talk about facts. I'm sure you know how I feel about only being fed one opinion. But that is why I like ground news so much. They are the first news comparison platform, meaning that they are providing you with a truly unbiased look at, well, all the news. Ground news will show you multiple news articles on the same topic from different sources.
It will also indicate the biases into which these sources lie, allowing you to be able to understand if you are being fed a bias source, say, balance source or a bias source in the other direction. Now ground news is great because they give you your classic news feed and all that. But one of the things that I personally really love about is looking at a very politically polarizing topic and seeing how all sides of the political spectrum are reporting on it. It never ceases to amaze me how well different political parties can change a news headline to fit their agenda. But ground news isn't only for the US. They offer international news, which is one of my favorite things because I know this is hard to believe, but there are other countries out there.
And by allowing its users to customize their feeds, I have customized my feed to have not only United States news, but also international news. Again, I'll cover it from different sides of the political spectrum. I personally found that this allows me to just drop better conclusions as to what's going on in the world around me. And it also allows me to be able to spot when I hear other people whose opinions seem to lean towards one side, even though they say that they're unbiased. And it really goes to show just how much unbiased news really does lean in one direction or another. So if you are looking for a better way to get your news, then look no further than this link. A link that is also in the description.
There is a free version of ground news or you can get the subscription version, which gets you access to all the, you know, fancy frills. But needless to say, ground news has the endorsement of Cool Jacket Milo. Once again, I'd like to thank ground news for sponsoring this video. You can check them out with the link in my description. And now let's get right back into it. All right, open your textbooks to chapter. Where the hell is it? Chapter 2. Let's make this happen. It begins with Graham Hancock saying, could we have forgotten our own story? I am Graham Hancock and archaeologists hate me for trying to find out.
No, Graham, archaeologists don't hate you for trying to find out. They hate you because you're a whiny little bitch. No, Graham Hancock, nobody hates you. As I mentioned in episode one, it is interesting that he starts off every single one of his episodes and trying to make himself seem like a pariah. I think he's trying to make it come across in some way that he's some upstanding, you know, presenter of the truth. It doesn't really come across like that, though. It comes across as just being a little bit more childish.
Anyway, that's neither here nor there. In this episode, Graham Hancock is taking us to the great pyramid of Chalua. No, as I was putting together this episode, I was, you know, working on scripting a whole thing to tell you about the great pyramid of Chalua. And then I was like, I am not qualified enough to give you the full rundown of it. But I do know someone who is.
Hello, Dr. McAfryty, can you hear me? Oh, there. Well, I'm an emeritus professor from the University of Calgary. I have a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Binghamton. And much of my career has been focused on questions about the culture history of Chalua, Mexico, about 25 years ago when I followed migration stories about indigenous populations leaving Chalua and going to Nicaragua. And so most of my recent archaeological work has been in the Pacific area of Nicaragua, along the shore of the lakes, looking for evidence of this migration and colonization in Nicaragua by people from Central Mexico, specifically from Chalua.
Well, tell me a little bit more about Chalua. I guess, give me a little bit of your, you know, your history synopsis. Okay. Chalua is continuously occupied for about 3,000 years. The earliest archaeological evidence we have dates to about 1,000 before the common era. Earliest evidence of monumental construction dates to about 500 before the common era. And that pyramid continued to expand with subsequent layers, well, like one over the top of the enough of another, pretty much up until the present. So there is a major Catholic church on top of the pyramid that was built in the 18th century. And it continues to be an important pilgrimage center.
That's amazing. So you say that the oldest evidence of this site, the oldest history goes back to about 500 years. What is the oldest datable material record that you guys have found at the site? Dates to about 500 BC at the common era. Yes, we based that on ceramics that we can use for relative dating as well as radio carbon dating. And the oldest radio carbon date that we have from Chalua currently is about 800 BCE.
Wow, that's amazing. In the ancient apocalypse show, Graham Hancock implies that the history of the site may be far older than is currently agreed upon. What would you have to say to this claim? Well, far older is a rather big term. How old is he talking about? I know he's wanting to push things back to 12,000 BC. The human occupation far back in Chalua itself. There are some remains that have been found in the basin of Mexico. For example, a woolly mammoth butchering site has some pretty early dates. But these are hunter gatherers that were basically hunting big game. And there's limited information about that.
Chalua itself was located on the shore of a shallow lake or a lagoon. And it would have been a likely spot for big game to have been there. So is it confirmed that there would have been some sort of human presence in Mexico around that 12,000 years ago date? Because I know that we, you know, recently with discoveries like the White Sands, footprints and whatnot, we've been able to trace the population of North America back, you know, 23,000 years or some odd. So is it correct to assume that there were people in this area at the time? However, they just weren't creating these enormous structures as Graham Hancock sees to imply.
That's correct. There were certainly people there and now you mentioned that Chalua is built along the remains of an ancient lake shore. Do you believe that that is the reason why Chalua was located where it was or is there some other sort of significance of this site that is theorized why people began to build here? Well, I think that the ecological setting was very important. I think it was an area with an abundance of plants and animals.
Why the pyramid was built where it is. We've got a couple of lines of evidence to go with that. The pyramid was built over the top of a spring. And so water bubbles up from its base. Currently, there is a well that has been built going down from the side of the pyramid down into the water table. Also, the pyramid was built on an orientation. So it faces the setting sun at some solstice. So essentially that would be the longest day of the year. And as the pyramid grew up, it would have been illuminated with the last rays of the sun on the longest day of the year. It probably was some solar worship functions to it.
Wow, that's amazing. Throughout the course of the show, there's some evidence that Graham Hancock gives that comes from primary documents. What is the written records of this site like? Whether it be from indigenous authors or whether it be from Spanish colonizers? Well, especially relating to the so-called Chalua massacre of 1519, there are many different accounts. So about a dozen, some written in Spanish, some written in the Aztec language, and some simply depictions in the pictographic style of the Native peoples. So we have good information about that. But we also have a number of Spanish chroniclers, and they were using indigenous informants to fill out the ancient history. So we have actual accounts as well as myths that were reported.
One of the things that we that we have from from Chalua is an account of the building of the pyramid, which occurred in sort of the third age of man, the chronicler, Ishtel and Sochi, who wrote that there were five different sons or ages in the history of Mexico. And during the third age, the great pyramids were being built. Ishtel, Sochi, who describes these as being built by a race of giants, Quiname, Tenime. Sort of out of that comes another tradition of a giant known as Chalua. And this is the one that Hancock was referring to.
In fact, the story of Chalua's dates to the 19th century. So about 400 years after the conquest and has relatively little historical grounding. Really? So do we know where this story arose from? Is this a misinterpretation of an older story or is it a complete fabrication? Well, it seems to be a conglomeration of several different stories. And probably ultimately based on these Quiname, Tenime, but the name Chalua that Hancock was using really has no basis.
However, in the later 20th century, people were trying to sort of reinvent this tradition. And so there is a statue in Chalua dedicated to Chalua. And although while we were filming the program, I explained to Hancock that it had relatively little historical significance. He insisted on going there and making a filming that, including that in the program. This is a modern statue that was made of Chalua, who Hancock was claiming was the giant that built the pyramid.
Wow, that is such an interesting piece of context there. Because I think that a theme that we see reoccur through this show is the idea that archaeologists and anthropologists are opposed to the idea of analyzing folklore as holding some sort of truth behind it. As a professional archaeologist, what is your opinion on using folklore within your field? Well, I think we have to use everything we can, but with a critical eye. Obviously, histories in the past, as well as in the present, are written with a specific purpose in mind. Sometimes it is to glorify the victors, sometimes to glorify some other element or to integrate certain characteristics. We just have to be very critical of that.
There's nuggets out there that are important. And these stories can add some life to the stories that we try to tell. Absolutely. Very well said. I like that. How do you feel about the way that archaeology as a field was portrayed throughout the series, ancient apocalypse? Well, there's been a lot of debate about that. And the Society for American Archaeology, among others, has written letters to Netflix saying that it was not a balanced presentation. I see that Graham recently responded to that as well. So the debate goes on. I was pleased to have the opportunity to go on the show and talk about Chalua. Partly because I'm setting up a new project. We hope to be starting later this month.
And to get a free ticket to go to Chalua and talk to my colleagues was a, you know, was nice. Absolutely. At the time that Netflix contacted me, they asked if I would be interested in discussing the great pyramid of Chalua. And they didn't tell me that it was Graham Hancock that was going to be involved. Really? It was only after I had agreed. They said, oh, by the way, this is how this is going to go down. That's interesting. And they did it very hesitantly because there is quite a bit of friction between the archaeological establishment and Hancock and other pseudo-archeology practitioners.
It didn't bother me. I mean, I've talked classes on what we call fringe archaeology or fantastic archaeology, things like that. And obviously Graham Hancock was part of that. I think that it's an important role for archaeologists to confront that in a reasoned fashion. There are some of us in our discipline that are a little bit more rabid about this than I am. But it's, you know, it's popular, popularizing archaeology and popularizing the past. And I think, you know, that's to all of our benefit.
But I think that there are lots of good stories to tell without having to go down the rabbit hole that of Atlantis and lost civilizations that are fantastic. Yeah, I completely agree. One of the things that really stood out to me after watching the show is, you know, it really made me realize how much I would love to have seen a show that talks about all the plays that Hancock did, but in a more factual sense, I suppose. But I really commend the fact that you were, despite the fact that it was Graham Hancock conducting the interview, still willing to do this.
Do you think that if you had known that it was Graham Hancock off the bat, you would have either gone into this with some reservations or changed your decision to conduct this interview entirely? No, no. I was happy to have the opportunity to meet him and discuss it with him. He's a charming man. I enjoyed meeting him very much. We had very good conversations. I wish we could have chatted longer.
He had a list of 20 questions for me. It was like taking my doctoral exams all over again. And they were good questions, and he clearly read my answers and incorporated it into what he was thinking. But once my time was done, the producer cleverly made me go to a different part of the site at which point Hancock sat down and gave his spin to it. And I didn't have any idea what that was going to, I had suspicions. But no idea what he was saying until I actually saw the program last November.
I was curious in watching all of the professionals who talked about the series, how much of their actual words and their opinions were truly represented throughout the show. The archaeologists from Malta, for example, seemed to be quite unhappy with the way their interviews were twisted. I felt that they did a very fair job with my interviews. I thought it came out relatively well. I wish I had had more airtime just because I want to be that much more famous.
But no, I wish I had been able to have a more in-depth discussion with Mr. Hancock at the time. If you had one thing to give to anyone who has watched this show, what would you want to say to them? There are lots of civilizations out there, places that we haven't fully explored, haven't fully understood. But you don't have to drink the kool-aid to find those. There's real good archaeology out there that has exciting stories to tell.
And then to my archaeological colleagues, we need to get better at telling those stories, to make it as compelling as Graham Hancock's stories are. I'd like to give a massive thank you to Dr. McAfrin for agreeing to join us for this series. It's always really refreshing and exciting to talk to someone who just really knows what they're talking about. So I hope my excitement was palpable.
And now we get to my favorite part. Graham Hancock begins listing all the similarities between all these different pyramids. Graham Hancock shows us the pyramid of Chalula and the, I guess, Terrace Tale at Gondeng Padang or in Graham Hancock's words, the pyramid. And he makes one of the boldest claims that he makes throughout this entire series.
现在到了我最喜欢的部分。Graham Hancock 开始列举所有这些不同金字塔之间的相似之处。Graham Hancock 向我们展示了查卢拉金字塔和,我想,大概是轰登巴东的梯田,或者用 Graham Hancock 的话说,就是金字塔。他在整个系列中提出了最大胆的主张之一。
The fact that these ancient structures, whose builders supposedly had no contact with one another have so many things in common remains a mystery. No, Graham Hancock, it does not. This crops up all the time in these archaeological conspiracy theories. The idea that multiple parts of the world have pyramids and therefore must have either been, I don't know, taught by aliens or Atlanteans or there was some master plan which taught all of them how to make pyramids.
But thankfully Graham Hancock doesn't end there. He goes on to give us a list of different pyramids that are all part of this, I guess, master plan of his. Graham Hancock's pyramid extravaganza. All right, now let's have a look at all of these pyramids. And you know, I might be thinking yourself, Miley, can't be serious. Are you telling me that this guy thinks that all of these pyramids are related to one another? Yes, that is exactly what I am telling you.
But how do you know that? How do you know? Maybe he's just suggesting that there could be a master plan? Oh, well, he goes on to say, is this a coincidence? I don't think so. Which sounds a lot to me like he's saying that these things are all related to one another. So I'm going to treat it as such.
Yet again, this could be your very first archaeology class and you would need no more context to be able to tell me that those pyramids have very little in common with one another. But you may remember in the first lesson on episode one, we specifically quoted what Graham Hancock's definition of a pyramid is. And I think it would be very interesting to apply it to this list.
Jesus, I'm running out of room. A series of terraces that rises to a summit. Looks like the great pyramid of Giza isn't a pyramid then, Graham. Polariously, if we are to use Graham Hancock's definition of a pyramid, the Ziggurat at Earth, the great pyramid of Giza and the Moro pyramids would all not be pyramids. You just can't make this shit up. Now obviously I'm being a little bit facetious here. All of these are pyramids. Graham Hancock agrees that all of these are pyramids. I'm just trying to show that this definition is really really bad.
But anyway, there's about a million things that are different between these. Some of them have steps to the top. Some of them don't. So what is it exactly that Graham Hancock uses to tie all of these pyramids together? Well, he says all of these period, period. He says how these pyramids are universally associated with very specific spiritual beliefs or spiritual ideas rather. From doing the air quotes, I may as well quote him correctly. Which technically is true.
But the problem and the thing that he doesn't say, which is the most important part of this, is that all of those spiritual beliefs are so wildly different from one another. Let me break this down. The pyramid of Giza, the Ziggurat at Earth, and the Moro pyramids are all burial structures. Each one of these pyramids was designed to have the dead in turn in it or be some sort of memorial for the deceased. Now, Kahwachi, El Tijin and Chichen Itza are all ceremonial pyramids. I don't really know what does a ceremony look like. We're going to just do the sun.
Kahwachi is a pyramid that was designed to make offerings in regards to agriculture. El Tijin is part of a huge ceremonial complex that includes multiple buildings and ball courts. And Chichen Itza was a sacred site for Ketsakuadil, the Mayan feathered serpent. Fun fact, Chichen Itza was actually designed so if you stand at the top and clap, it sounds like the chirping of a bird. Pretty neat. Doesn't really have anything to do with this video, but I thought I'd just.
Now, the astute viewer is noticing a theme here. What do the pyramid of Giza, the Ziggurat at Er and the Merot pyramids all have in common? And on the flip side, what do Kahwachi, El Tijin, and Chichen Itza all have in common? These are all in North Africa and the Near East. Interesting, isn't it? Now, I wonder if we're going to see a theme with, I don't know, the other three pyramids he chose.
Oh my god, would you look at that? South America and Central America. Wow. What do you know? You know, that seems like a pretty interesting detail that he probably should have included instead of saying just ceremonial purposes. So, yes, obviously, every single one of these pyramids was designed with a specific ritual purpose in mind, but each one of these rituals was really different from one another.
So, to say that they are all the same because they are associated with similar ritual purposes is such a misleading statement. Because you can literally divide all of these into different cultural regions based on the things that they were designed to do, which again is just such a fascinating archaeological concept to look at. You can literally see how these ideas spread and disseminated through the parts of the world where they arose.
The fact that South America associated pyramids with ceremony and celebration whereas North Africa and the Near East associated it with death rituals. Once you know what these pyramids were actually used for, you are able to completely dismantle everything that Hancock says. Which is probably why he didn't tell you that. God, I don't even want to say he's only telling half the story. He's barely even telling the story.
And now, the most obvious one and the one which is always the perfect argument when talking about pyramids is that it is just the best way to stack rocks. You got four sides and it goes up. You really can't beat that. And to say that all of these cultures in different parts of the world needed someone to come teach them how to do it is pretty belittling. Don't know how he didn't see that.
Just hilarious how he tries to push this idea of being like the ancients were so much more complex than we thought. And then it's like well, did they stack up those rocks on their own? No. They needed people to come from Atlantis to teach them to do that one. Oh man, that looks nice. I'm going to have to erase this. I hate my job. All right, turn to the next page. Bazinga.
Texcot Zingo is a 15th century Aztec pool complex. I would have pulled water from a spring, channeled it through many aqueducts and created a lush mountain top full of gardens and baths and waiting pools and whatnot. And like many of the things that the ancients did, it was really impressive. The Aztecs were highly proficient with irrigation systems and it shows at this site.
Now thankfully Graham Hancock spends the last half of this episode telling us the unique cultural history of this site. Oh wait, no, he actually doesn't do that. Never mind. Now Graham Hancock's claim about Texcot Zingo is that it is much older than archaeologists want to tell us. Thankfully, he has done tens of years of studies into this site dedicated millions of dollars of research and been able to publish many papers proving his hypothesis. Oh wait, hold on. Nope. He looked at a rock. Graham Hancock goes there with another guy and they look at a rock and they're like, this rock is way more weathered than it would be if it was carved in the 15th century and therefore this site must predate all of that, which is just a really bad argument.
There is something to be said for using the erosion on rocks to be able to date a site, but typically that only works when you really know what the original state of the rock was. But the problem when you're looking at an enormous boulder is you have no idea what the original state was. You don't know how long it's been there. You don't know any of its history and you're just looking at it and being like, yep, looks a little crusty to me. Must have been Atlantis. Towards the end of this episode he starts talking more about mythology. He talks about Ketsu Kwaddle, the Mayan feathered serpent. He talks about Prometheus. He talks about Maui. He talks about, I don't know, Frank Zappa, all the civilizing heroes, you know.
After this, Graham Hancock and Marco Vigado, they go to another place called Sotchi Calco. Did I spell that right? I don't think I spelled that right. I'm going to stop doubting myself. I'm pretty sure I've gotten all of these right so far. Sotchi Calco is a seventh century temple and it has depictions of the Ketsu Kwaddle feathered serpent around the outside of it. The reason why Vigado and Hancock go to this site is to prove that the folklore is true. Ketsu Kwaddle allegedly arrived from the sea on a raft of serpents and you know came and civilized everyone.
And so they prove that this actually happened by going to a temple dedicated to Ketsu Kwaddle and looking at the carving of Ketsu Kwaddle on the outside. I think I'm going to convert religions. So even if that is what this carving actually depicts, that would be like walking to literally any cultural interpretation or piece of art and taking it at face value. So next time you go to an art museum, remember that every single thing in it is a fact. The thesis is that this temple is a chronicle of the events that happened when the younger dryest impact happened. Despite this temple being built, you know, 8,000 years after this event, I'm done with this one.
So let's do a quick recap of what Grand Hancock has proven in this episode. Are we all on the same page? Write that down. It will be on the test. Next page, Lesson 3, Serious Rising.