Civilizations Lost In Time (Graham Hancock + Joe Rogan)

Graham Hancock is obsessed with an idea: our species has amnesia. We think civilization is recent - a few thousand years old. But there are clues pointing at advanced and older civilizations - now lost to our collective memory. A memo on deep history, natural disasters, & more.

History moves back: Historians believed no large monuments were built before 6000 years ago. Then Göbekli Tepe was discovered - a complex site more than 10,000 years old. The established timeline of civilization keeps getting pushed further into the past. 

That’s odd: South American skeletons have DNA only found in Australian tribes from halfway across the world. These skeletons are more than 10k years old. Advanced sea faring people weren’t supposed to be around then - but how else did some Australians get to South America? 

Strange maps: Some old maps accurately show how the planet looked in the ice age - this implies a sea faring people who mapped the world 12,000+ years ago. They show Antarctica - which wasn’t “discovered” until the early 19th century. 

Clovis were a people that lived in America about 12k years ago - and were widely considered to be the first inhabitants of the continent. This dogma had a name “Clovis first.” But now there is strong evidence of human activity more than 24k years ago in North America.

All of this data points in the same direction: Civilization is older than we think and hasn’t moved linearly. There were advanced civilizations in the past that we have forgotten about. But what happened to these people? A possible answer: The younger dryas impact hypothesis.

What is this hypothesis? In short: comet fragments hit the Earth about 12,800 years ago, and changed the trajectory of life. The ice age ended, massive sea level rise followed, most of the megafauna went extinct, & - this is Graham’s idea - an advanced civilization was lost.

Proof emerges in support of this hypothesis: Nanodiamonds, platinum, and iron were found buried under ice in Greenland - and this layer has been dated to around 12,800 years ago. This hints at a comet strike that flung metal residue around the planet.

Where no man has gone before: The Amazon basin’s area: 7 mil sq km. The unexplored area: 5.5 mil sq km. Graham believes that if nonintrusive lidar tech is used to scan this area, many ancient cities will be found. Early research has already found tens of abandoned villages.

Bottom line: The story of human civilization is older and stranger than we thought. New proof from archeology, geology, & genetics points in the same direction: Ancient - & very capable - civilizations that predate known history by thousands of years.