0:01

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out! The

0:04

Joe Rogan Experience. Train

0:06

by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night,

0:08

all day! All

0:14

right, well this took a lot of

0:16

time to organize, but I'm very excited

0:18

and I'm happy you're both here. Thank

0:20

you. Flint, please introduce yourself to

0:22

everybody, what you do. Yeah,

0:25

hi, my name is Flint and I'm an archaeologist.

0:27

I've done archaeology my whole life. My

0:29

dad was an archaeologist and I'm just

0:31

very passionate about sharing archaeology and what

0:33

we do, I find in

0:36

general that people don't really understand what modern

0:38

archaeology is about. And so I'm

0:40

going to try to get that across while here, you know, that's

0:42

my goal. Fantastic. Take that

0:44

microphone and try to keep it about a fist from

0:46

your face. One second, we have

0:48

to, his HDMI is not

0:50

working, it's not going through. Mine is not.

0:53

All right, we had a bit of a

0:55

technical issue, but we're up. So Flint, you

0:57

were just explaining how your

0:59

passion is archaeologist, you're an archaeologist, and

1:03

you have this opportunity to sort of

1:05

educate people on how archaeology is done.

1:08

Yeah, that's my goal, is to try to share what we

1:10

do, why we do it, and what our goals are with

1:12

it. Okay, terrific. And

1:15

Graham, everybody knows you. We've been on

1:17

this podcast about ten times. Well, largely thanks to

1:19

you, Joe. I'm very happy. Happy

1:21

and interest the world to it. Are we okay, Flint,

1:23

with the HDMI? I think we've been doing shows together

1:25

since 2011. You,

1:28

I think, were one of my first real

1:30

guests. You might be the first real guest.

1:33

Because before that it was just my friends, just comedians.

1:36

And it was all in my house and

1:38

we ate pizza and it was fantastic. Jamie's

1:41

setting everything up, making sure we're good to go.

1:45

Okay, the way we

1:47

agreed to do this is Flint, you wanted to open

1:49

and you wanted to do about ten minutes and just

1:51

sort of explain things. And so we'll let you

1:53

do that and then Graham, you'll have an opportunity

1:55

to respond. Yeah, thank you. Jamie,

1:58

do you mind pulling up my screen? Here

2:01

we go. All right. So look, one

2:03

of the things that I see when I'm

2:05

online or in person sharing archaeology is I

2:07

find it tough to get across what it

2:09

is. And so I wanted to start with

2:11

a fun example. So I understand that maybe

2:13

not everybody can see the screen. So Joe,

2:15

do you mind actually just kind of describing

2:18

what this artifact is? Oh, you're putting

2:20

this on me, buddy. Well,

2:23

this is an Athenian red figure

2:25

from 470 B.C. and

2:29

it is two people having sex. It's a man on

2:31

top of a woman. You see his penis. You

2:33

see it's

2:36

very graphic. It is very graphic. So what do

2:38

you think this shares about what archaeology is? Any

2:40

ideas? Well, I mean

2:43

you're finding artwork and parts of

2:45

civilization that were left behind and

2:47

have been around in

2:49

this case since over 2,000 years. Yeah,

2:52

and for a long time scholars thought

2:54

that a piece like this described sort

2:56

of life in Athens, and they connected

2:59

to Athenian text sort of like Plato

3:01

describing people having sex even, right? And

3:04

on the other hand, however, every single

3:06

piece of Athenian artwork with graphic sex

3:08

like this, couples actually fucking with penises

3:10

and stuff like that, ends up

3:12

in Italy. It's part of an

3:14

Athenian pornographic export market. And Kathleen

3:16

Lynch and Sean Lewis and others

3:19

have published on this. And so the real point

3:21

is that what we're looking at is the

3:24

painters are designing something for consumers in

3:26

Italy, and particularly in Etruria. And

3:29

this instead fits better in with telling us

3:31

about life in Etruscans and the kind of

3:33

stuff that they show in their tombs, sort

3:35

of romance between people or the kind of

3:37

sexual scenes that they designed themselves in Italy

3:39

as well. And the whole point

3:41

here is that archaeology is not really about

3:43

an artifact. It's not about a monument. It's

3:45

about our patterns. And so when we sort of

3:47

look at how much archaeology there is

3:50

in the world, this is a map that

3:52

shows the Horn of Africa with every single

3:54

archaeological site that's been surveyed there. And there's

3:56

171,000 of them. That's

3:59

incredible. It looks amazing. It's just,

4:01

and this is just because of the terrain,

4:03

most of the, many of these are tombs,

4:05

for example, Islamic and pre-Islamic tombs, and so

4:08

they're visible on the surface. And

4:10

so in many ways, when we think about

4:12

archaeology today in the 21st century, we're thinking

4:15

about big data sets and trying

4:17

to analyze them statistically and

4:19

understand the kind of patterns they put together. And

4:22

we use innovative technology, sort of LIDAR

4:24

lasers from the sky to see these

4:26

things underground, for example, here are this

4:28

publication by Canuto in 2018 records 61,480

4:30

structures, still

4:34

to be excavated, found with LIDAR and

4:36

surface survey, right? And so at

4:39

the same time- This is it for

4:41

people listening. It says ancient lowland Maya

4:43

complex as revealed by airborne laser scanning

4:45

of northern Guatemala. That's amazing. Yeah.

4:48

And so, I mean, we have this huge data set, and

4:50

with it we get high resolution, for example, the

4:52

bottom image in red. It shows LIDAR's

4:54

trenches, because while there's a lot of

4:56

archaeology, because people have been everywhere, it's

4:58

very fragile and it's at risk. And that's something

5:01

I also want to take some time to get across

5:03

a bit while I'm here. And

5:05

my own research is very much big data oriented

5:07

too. I've studied nearly a million

5:09

animal bones and teeth and horn fragments from

5:11

ancient Greece, like this pile here from the

5:14

island of Crete from Azoria. And

5:16

in particular, I also want to get

5:18

across the kind of precision we have.

5:20

Right now, I do what's called isotope

5:22

analysis. I look at oxygen and carbon

5:25

isotopes in the teeth of these animals.

5:27

And by taking multiple samples on different

5:29

parts of the teeth, you can see

5:31

the different areas that I've drilled on that tooth on the

5:33

right, right? And what that does is

5:35

it lets me understand the diet of the

5:37

animal and where it's moving in the landscape

5:39

seasonally. So in different seasons of the year,

5:41

I can understand the kind of ways that

5:43

people are raising animals. We can do this

5:45

with human remains too. And we

5:47

can get this high level of resolution

5:49

and precision that people don't always realize

5:51

that we have. Right? And

5:53

so in this case, I'm here to try

5:56

to discuss with Graham and

5:58

to test his lost civilization He

6:00

has this, he's written about

6:02

it many books and he's given many

6:05

talks here and on Netflix and he's

6:07

talked about this idea of a lost

6:09

advanced civilization from the Ice Age, an

6:11

advanced civilization that's around the globe, right?

6:14

And in particular he thinks there was a global

6:17

cataclysm at that time and

6:19

the survivors introduced agriculture,

6:21

architecture, astronomy, and arts

6:23

to hunter-gatherers. And so

6:25

I'm trying to tackle this with an open mind

6:27

and I want to tackle this with the

6:29

perspective of my own experience and my own

6:31

expertise. And so in that

6:34

sense if you think about what

6:36

Carl Sagan says, extraordinary claims require

6:38

extraordinary evidence. Graham is in

6:40

many ways the first person to admit that the

6:42

evidence he has is fingerprints. It's

6:44

kind of what he thinks is

6:46

this technological transmission to hunter-gatherers but

6:49

he does not have any direct

6:51

dated evidence of this civilization. It's

6:54

after all a lost civilization, right?

6:56

And so what I've been thinking through is

6:59

how can my own experience and expertise kind

7:01

of test this hypothesis in a fair way?

7:03

That's kind of my goal here, while here.

7:06

And so I'm here to, doing a lot of research, I'm

7:08

here to present what I see are two clear

7:11

disproofs of a lost

7:13

advanced Ice Age civilization. And I

7:15

mean, archeologists were fairly sure this

7:17

does not exist. We've been looking for

7:19

this kind of civilization for several hundred

7:21

years. This idea of

7:24

a pre-flood civilization has been around for several

7:26

hundred years. And so what I want to

7:28

do is focus on where my own experience

7:30

and expertise is. My dad was an Ice

7:32

Age archeologist. He studied Neanderthal caves. And so

7:34

I want to dig into some of the

7:36

stuff that he's excavated and surveyed. These are

7:38

for example hundred thousand year old stone tools

7:40

from Egypt. And so we have

7:42

just so much Ice Age evidence.

7:45

And Graham usually ignores it. And

7:48

he claims that his civilization- Do you

7:50

have your notifications on or something? I don't know

7:52

what the dongle is doing there. Sorry.

7:55

If you hit mute, maybe it might stop. Yeah, I

7:57

just muted it. Okay. Sorry about that.

8:00

There's no worries. And so this- So

8:02

your claim was that Graham ignores this? My claim

8:04

is that he ignores most of the

8:06

evidence for hunter-gatherers in the Ice Age, which is- Is

8:09

that he ignores it or that he doesn't focus on

8:12

it as much as he's focused on the ancient

8:14

advanced civilization? I

8:16

mean I think that's one and the same. I think if

8:18

you're going to look at the Ice Age, we need to

8:20

look at the totality of evidence to understand what's there. And

8:23

so, for example, he proposes the reason

8:25

why the Ice Age civilization isn't there

8:27

is because it's underwater. It's been- We've

8:30

had 200 feet of sea level rise since

8:32

the Younger Dryas and therefore

8:35

it's not accessible. And so I really

8:37

want to focus on Ice Age coastlines,

8:39

evidence from Ice Age coastlines and excavations,

8:42

underwater evidence from the Ice Age, things like

8:44

that. These areas where he says that archaeologists

8:47

don't look, but we are looking.

8:49

And what we find is the

8:51

ephemeral traces of hunter-gatherers rather than

8:53

some sort of advanced civilization. And

8:55

so that's one thing I want to show. I want to

8:57

share this kind of evidence. Some of it's new, some of

9:00

it's not, but I think it's the kind of thing that

9:02

has a direct bearing on looking for

9:04

such an Ice Age civilization. When

9:06

you're studying these coastal areas where

9:08

these Ice Age people lived and

9:10

you're studying these underwater whatever,

9:14

what would you call them? Are they cities?

9:16

Are they towns? Are they villages? No, these

9:18

are- So in this case, this is a

9:20

really brand new find from like a month

9:22

ago. It's actually a hunting wall off the

9:24

coast of Germany. So it's where they had

9:26

their camp? Yeah, or maybe just where they

9:28

drove game along to hunt them. But most

9:30

of what's underwater are lithic scatters, scatters of

9:32

stone tools. Stuff like this. What

9:35

do you have there? I have a series of different stone

9:37

tools. Come on, do it. I'll show them off a little

9:39

later. Let me catch one then. Yeah, sure. How

9:42

old is this? These are all modern replicas made

9:44

by archaeologists. Some of them are made

9:46

by my dad and some of them have been made by-

9:48

I thought you could hook us up with some real stuff.

9:50

Sorry, no, I can't bring real stuff. I have a real

9:52

arrowhead from here. I do

9:54

have an ancient corn cob right here

9:57

from about 1200 years ago from the

9:59

Southern Methodist University archaeology collection and I'll

10:01

explain why this is here in a bit.

10:04

My question for you though was how much

10:06

of the ground do you think has actually

10:08

been studied when you're looking

10:10

at these ancient ice age Neanderthal

10:13

populations or were they homo sapiens as well? These

10:15

are homo sapiens. This is from right at the

10:18

end of the ice age. So this is modern

10:20

humans. So when you're

10:22

finding remnants of ancient

10:24

hunter gatherers, how much

10:26

of the ground do you

10:28

think you've studied? We've definitely not

10:31

studied most of the ground. But as I'll show,

10:33

we've studied a lot and we actually put together

10:35

predictive models on how to find this stuff. And

10:37

so there, because it's really expensive to go diving,

10:39

right? And so how many dives do you think

10:41

have been done? Like how many times? Thousands. Thousands.

10:44

Yeah. Oh yeah. And

10:48

specifically it was done to try to locate

10:50

these. To try to locate stone age, ice

10:52

age stuff. Yeah. Okay.

10:54

Yeah. So the second thing I'd

10:57

like to focus on is food. I am

10:59

an archeologist who studies ancient food. I'm an

11:01

environmental archeologist. I've studied millions of

11:03

animal bones from the past. I've helped collect

11:06

thousands and thousands of seeds like these. And

11:09

it's something that people don't realize we can get. We've

11:12

developed sampling methods and we now at

11:14

this point have millions of archeobotanical remains.

11:18

So seeds from ancient civilizations and ancient societies

11:20

all over the world. And I want to

11:22

sort of show you how we understand domestication

11:24

as a process. And we can see where

11:26

it happened in real time, in real space.

11:28

The sort of evolution from a wild plant

11:31

to a domestic plant. Because

11:33

that counters Graham's idea that the

11:35

civilization introduced agriculture. It

11:38

was not an introduction. It's something that happened

11:40

in a real space. And we'll track how

11:42

we can see humans taking control of the

11:44

reproductive life cycle of these plants. It's what

11:46

I want to show you. Can I pause

11:48

you for a second? Yeah. Of

11:50

course. Like right now on Earth there

11:52

are people that are living in essentially a Stone

11:54

Age manner. I wouldn't call it a Stone

11:56

Age manner. Let's say people

11:59

in uncontacted. indigenous tribes in

12:01

the Amazon. I mean they

12:03

essentially are living with animal skins and bows

12:05

and arrows and they're living very similar to

12:07

the way people live 10,000 years

12:09

ago. I think there's plenty of people living

12:11

today in their traditional lifestyles, yeah. Right, but

12:13

then there's also people that live in Tokyo.

12:16

Of course. So the world is huge. So

12:18

if you find evidence of agriculture that dates

12:20

back to a specific period where you can

12:22

see the wild plants and you can see

12:24

this transition into domesticated plants, is

12:27

it possible that we're dealing with a region?

12:30

And I think part of the theory

12:32

about the Younger Dryas Impact Theory was

12:34

that although it probably devastated the entire

12:36

human race, it didn't

12:38

impact all the places the same way.

12:41

Just like the, like right now, if a

12:43

volcano goes off in Iceland, we don't even

12:45

notice it, right? But over there it's devastating.

12:48

Yes, but in this case what I'm thinking

12:50

about is, unlike you know, I know you

12:52

guys have mentioned at times you can't radiocarbon

12:54

date stone. We can date these seeds. So

12:56

we can date that transition from domestic to...

12:58

And one of the oldest seeds that you

13:00

found? Oh, the oldest seeds we have go

13:03

back tens of thousands of years. The oldest

13:05

domesticated crops we have go back about

13:07

11,000 years. And

13:09

where are those from? From Syria, Turkey,

13:12

the Fertile Crescent area, yeah. Is

13:14

it possible that there was domestication before that in

13:16

other parts of the world? I'm gonna show you

13:18

why that's not possible. Okay. Yeah, that's kind of

13:20

my goal there, yeah. Because, and it's not even

13:23

that it's not even a disproof of an advanced

13:25

civilization. It's a disproof of agriculture period in the

13:27

Ice Age. There's a lot of reasons why there

13:29

was no agriculture and so I want to get

13:32

into the weeds on that, let's say. Okay.

13:35

So just to kind of go off, I also want

13:37

to explain. More penis... I know, man. What are you

13:40

doing to us here? Hey, you got to get the

13:42

audience somehow, right? These are penis pipes? Is that a

13:44

pipe? Yeah, they are. Not pipes, it's a lamp. But

13:49

so, you know, archaeology... Those are cool. I

13:51

think archaeology should be open. But of course

13:53

in the 20th century, the mores of certain

13:55

Italian museums like here in Naples, they kept

13:57

this stuff hidden. So did they hide this...

14:00

of the graphic nature of it. But it's now

14:02

open. For the last 20 years, if you go

14:04

to the museum in Naples, they have what's called

14:06

the Gabinetto Segretto, and it has all the erotic

14:08

art from Pompeii and Herculaneum and things like that.

14:11

And archaeologists, look, we're underfunded, we're

14:13

not perfect, but our goal, most of

14:15

us, is to publish everything open data.

14:18

And we have at this point millions upon millions

14:20

of archaeological records available from things

14:23

like Open Context, the Archaeology Data

14:25

Service, the Digital Archaeological Record, even

14:27

the Radiocarbon Paleolithic Europe Database. So

14:29

when you're talking about the Ice

14:31

Age, we have radiocarbon dates directly

14:33

dated from 13,000 sites

14:35

in Europe and Siberia. We have quite

14:37

a bit of evidence of this ephemeral

14:40

evidence for hunter-gatherers, if you see what

14:42

I mean. And so the

14:44

evidence is just enormous, this database for

14:46

hunter-gatherers. And so I think it's important

14:48

that we deal with the existing evidence

14:50

and see where it leads us, if you see

14:52

what it means. And what is the oldest evidence

14:55

for hunter-gatherers, just for the audience? Oh, God. It

14:57

goes back a million years

14:59

or something, pretty homo sapiens. Okay.

15:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, but in

15:04

terms of what we would consider a

15:06

Stone Age man or early homo sapien,

15:10

what is

15:13

the earliest buildings that we know of?

15:15

What's the earliest tools that we know

15:17

of? What do we have? The earliest

15:19

tools we know of are many hundreds

15:21

of thousands of years, right, before modern

15:24

homo sapiens. Similar to the ones you just showed

15:27

us. Well, they're bigger. They're probably, this isn't quite

15:29

it either. This is a middle paleolithic style core

15:31

that my dad made. But the earliest

15:33

stone tools are quite large, many

15:35

of them. But as time goes on, they

15:37

become smaller and smaller because humans become more

15:40

efficient at using this raw material, right?

15:42

Because there's only a few different kinds of stones that

15:44

you can nap. It's what's called a conchoidal fracture. I'll

15:46

pass some of these around at some point. We'll do

15:48

a show and tell. And I'll show you how

15:51

we can tell the difference between kind of a man-made

15:53

stone tool versus just a piece of shatter.

15:55

I actually just watched a documentary on it.

15:57

Or a YouTube video, I should say. It

16:00

was really fascinating watching them nap them. Yeah,

16:02

exactly. How they do it with a

16:04

piece of leather on their leg and they knock the

16:06

top of it. It's very interesting. You even have some

16:08

lovely deer antler that could be used for that, right?

16:11

Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah. Okay,

16:13

so continue. So you were saying that we

16:15

have a very clear chain. Essentially, you're saying

16:18

there's a clear chain between what

16:20

we know of in terms of hunter-gatherers

16:22

and then more modern civilizations.

16:24

It's a pretty linear line.

16:27

No, I don't see it as a linear line. I

16:29

actually think- Not linear, that's a bad, but that you

16:31

know at what point in time it started,

16:34

I should say. I think what we

16:36

can say is we can understand and start pinpointing the

16:38

starts of domestication and things like that. But

16:40

I think that what this big data set that we

16:42

now have shows is there is no

16:44

linear trajectory to human culture. It's

16:46

actually very heterogeneous what happens. It's different

16:49

in different areas of the world and

16:51

therefore we need to understand the local

16:53

context to understand them. That's

16:55

really what it's picturing. I mean, in many ways, I

16:58

think Graham's TV show is fun and

17:00

interesting TV, but I think it misrepresents

17:02

what we think of as the birth

17:05

of civilization. We don't really write

17:07

or teach about that anymore. It's very

17:09

different in different places. Even the very

17:12

term civilization is something that everybody has

17:14

a different definition for, so we almost

17:16

never use it. I never use the

17:18

term civilization while teaching or writing, for

17:20

example. It's a term that

17:22

you can use to mean anything. It's

17:25

like this grand narrative approach to

17:27

human prehistory is something that's

17:29

from the 20th century and not really a

17:32

component of 21st century archeology is what I

17:34

would say. Got it. Okay.

17:37

I just want to end with a couple questions for Graham, if he's

17:39

willing. At different

17:41

times, he's described that civilization that he's looking

17:44

for from 12,000 years ago, it

17:46

was advanced to say our own civilization in the

17:49

late 18th or early 19th century. As

17:53

an archeologist, we study technology, we

17:55

study the material remains of

17:57

the past. I wonder what we're trying to look

17:59

for. for, right? And so I know that

18:01

this is kind of how the last conversation

18:04

with Michael Shermer started. And so I get

18:06

that. But I do want to just quickly

18:08

say Graham has acknowledged that there's a good

18:10

chance there's no metallurgy, for example, with

18:13

this civilization. He said maybe a decision was

18:15

made not to use metals. And I'd say we

18:17

could definitively prove there was no large scale

18:19

metallurgy in the ice age. If you

18:22

look at ice cores in the Arctic,

18:24

right, we can track metallurgy of the

18:26

Roman period, of medieval periods based on

18:28

lead emissions that end up in these

18:30

ice cores. And there are no emissions

18:32

from metallurgy in the ice age. So

18:34

we can be sure that there's no

18:36

global metallurgical civilization that's doing a lot

18:38

of mining and smelting. Certainly they're not

18:41

doing burning fossil fuels like they might

18:43

be in the 18th or 19th century.

18:45

So we know that could not have

18:47

been around that early because it would show up

18:49

in the atmosphere. Likewise, we can

18:51

think about shipwrecks, right? Graham

18:54

has mentioned that the bulk of marine archaeology

18:56

has focused on shipwrecks and not the continental

18:58

shelves. And so the thing is, at

19:00

this point, we have something like 3

19:03

million shipwrecks from around the world. And

19:06

so one of my questions for Graham is that this

19:08

is a global civilization with ships. Why

19:10

is it that we don't have shipwrecks

19:12

from this global civilization? I see this

19:14

as a big, big problem. If we're

19:16

looking for a civilization

19:18

that's traversing the oceans, we should

19:20

find these shipwrecks. And similarly, these

19:23

shipwrecks are located near the coast.

19:25

They're located on the submerged continental

19:27

shelves. We are actually exploring these

19:29

submerged continental shelves in detail.

19:31

We're able to find scattered

19:33

ephemeral shipwrecks, but not monuments of some

19:36

sort of civilization. And the shipwrecks,

19:38

what's the oldest one that we've found so far? Well,

19:40

there was one that was just published from about, I

19:42

think it was about 6,000, 7,000

19:44

years ago off the coast of Italy that I saw.

19:46

Something around there was, I'd

19:48

say, is around the oldest that we have,

19:50

yeah. And at what point in time do

19:53

these are mostly wooden boats? Yeah, these are

19:55

mostly wooden boats, yeah. What point in time

19:57

would they deteriorate completely? Well, so actually underwater

19:59

is Underwater environments are really good for the

20:01

preservation of organic remains, which is why we

20:03

actually get wood in waterlogged environments rather than

20:06

on land, for example. You either need to

20:08

be in a really dry environment for wood

20:10

to preserve or a really wet

20:12

environment or with those seeds I was showing

20:14

it needs to be charred. So

20:16

in general, wood will decay. So

20:19

in a lot of underwater environments, it'll

20:21

just preserve as long as it's in

20:23

homeostasis. Which is why that explorers boat

20:25

that sank, that hit the... whose

20:27

boat was that? You know the

20:29

boat I'm talking about? Famous Explorer is this

20:31

beautiful wooden boat that's almost completely intact at

20:33

the bottom of the ocean. I

20:36

think it hit an iceberg. Which

20:38

explorer was that, Jamie? You remember that dude? There's

20:42

an amazing video of it. It's amazing. Like

20:44

they're just zooming in on this boat

20:47

and it just looks almost exactly like it

20:49

looked when it sank because the water's freezing

20:51

cold. That's it right there. Look at that.

20:54

Ernest Shackleton. Oh yeah, okay. I have seen

20:57

this. Yeah. Imagine

20:59

would have been on that boat back then. I

21:01

mean the preservation underwater is amazing. There's this shipwreck

21:03

off the coast of Italy that I just presented

21:06

what was on the Bad Boy of Science YouTube

21:09

about shipwrecks and stuff. And there's

21:11

still the vine netting that was

21:13

holding the Roman cargo was still

21:15

preserved. Wow. And so the just

21:17

underwater preservation is just freaky. And

21:19

would it stay that way for 20,000 years you

21:21

think? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. There's

21:24

this idea that things just decay the older

21:26

they are. And that's really not true. It

21:28

depends on the burial environment that they're in. So

21:31

the capponomy is what archaeologists use to study

21:33

how things survive and how they are there.

21:35

And so typically when things are buried, they're very

21:38

stable. Or when they're sitting, it depends on where

21:40

you are on the bottom of the ocean. But

21:43

typically it's very, very stable. In fact,

21:45

the worst place to be is the

21:47

tidal zone. So when sea level rise

21:49

is very slow and an area is

21:51

stuck in that tidal zone, things will

21:53

get battered. Things are deeply deposited quickly

21:55

or sea level rise is very quick.

21:58

That actually helps preserve stuff. And

22:00

so that's how we can still find these kind

22:02

of shipwrecks and ice age sites and other sort

22:04

of settlements underwater. Now, what about the shifting of

22:06

sediment at the bottom of the ocean when you're

22:08

dealing with things like 10, 20,000 years ago, 30,000

22:10

years ago? Yeah,

22:13

so there's actually, I was just talking with Jessica

22:15

Cook Hale out of Bradford about this. And

22:18

actually, so she's done some studies off the coast of Florida

22:20

of sort of hurricanes that are coming

22:23

in today because she's excavating stone-age shell

22:25

mounds there. And it turns out actually

22:27

that the hurricanes coming in today really don't disturb them

22:29

much at all. Yeah, she's published

22:31

on that. So obviously it's going to- It's

22:33

mostly surface. Yeah, it's going to depend on

22:35

the specific environment is the answer. So

22:38

certain environments, it's not going to preserve

22:40

others, it will. Yeah, it's variable is

22:42

the reality of it. Was

22:44

there any other questions for Graham? Wait

22:46

a second. I just wanted

22:49

to end by saying, look, archeologists,

22:51

what we find is what we

22:53

publish, right? We are not trying

22:55

to keep stuff hidden. If I

22:57

found Atlantis, I would publish Atlantis.

22:59

Klaus Schmidt found Gobekli Tepe. He

23:01

published Gobekli Tepe. And so

23:04

I think that that's really important. We

23:06

want to change and rewrite history. That's

23:08

how we make a name for ourselves.

23:10

Every article I have published and most

23:12

of my colleagues have published is something

23:14

that is adding and changing our picture

23:16

of the past. We're not locked in on

23:18

a specific narrative. What we're trying to do

23:20

is update the picture of the past for

23:23

each other, for our colleagues and for people

23:25

all around the world to sort of give

23:27

a sense of human culture and

23:29

the diversity of it, the resilience of it,

23:31

and how we've survived this long so that

23:33

we can learn from it. Okay.

23:37

Graham. Flint,

23:39

first of all, thank you for joining

23:42

me here. Oh, yeah. Thank

23:44

you, Graham. It's in a way a historic occasion

23:47

because as far as I know, this is

23:50

the first time ever that

23:52

a mainstream archaeologist has sat

23:54

down in a public forum and

23:56

debated somebody who's

23:59

looking at the past from an alternative point of view.

24:02

And I'm grateful to you for sitting

24:05

in the hot seat and doing that.

24:09

I think it's really valuable

24:11

and I hope the audience will

24:13

find it useful. I'm

24:15

going to try and recall a few of

24:18

your questions. The lost civilization that I'm thinking

24:20

of, it's like a black hole in

24:22

space to me. It's like something missing in

24:24

the story of our past to the extent

24:26

that I can put

24:29

form on it. I think we're looking

24:31

at a civilization like all civilizations that

24:33

emerged out of shamanism. I

24:36

believe that they did have rather advanced

24:39

astronomy and

24:42

a knowledge of the world. But

24:44

I don't compare – when I

24:46

speak of a 19th century level of technology,

24:49

I'm talking specifically about

24:52

knowledge of longitude, longitude

24:55

problem was not solved by our civilization

24:58

until the middle of the 18th century.

25:00

And I'm

25:02

talking about knowledge of very hard

25:05

to observe astronomical phenomena such as

25:07

the precession of the equinoxes. That

25:09

knowledge is normally attributed to the

25:11

ancient Greeks. But

25:13

I think there's compelling evidence that

25:16

it's much, much earlier than that.

25:18

I'm not quite sure where

25:21

to start with my first presentation, but

25:24

you're telling us that archaeology is very

25:26

keen on new ideas and wants to

25:28

really explore and investigate the past. Is

25:30

that right? That's my perspective. Yeah. Here's

25:33

your perspective. All right. Let's have a look

25:35

at Clovis first. Now, tell

25:37

me what your view on the Clovis

25:40

first thesis is. Well,

25:42

when I was an undergraduate student, I was taught

25:44

that there were people here before Clovis and that

25:47

was over 20 years ago. And that

25:49

would be what decade? That would be the early 2000s.

25:52

The early 2000s. So would you feel that the

25:54

whole Clovis first idea, Clovis first

25:56

is the idea that... It's

26:01

a culture that archaeologists call the Clovis

26:03

culture. The reason that

26:05

they call it the Clovis culture is because

26:07

its artifacts were first found in a place

26:09

called Blackwater Draw, and

26:12

nearby Blackwater Draw is

26:14

the town of Clovis, New Mexico. So

26:16

archaeologists named this culture the Clovis culture

26:19

after that, and it was for a

26:21

long while thought to be the first human presence in the

26:23

Americas, and the dating that was put

26:28

on that was around 13,400 years ago. This

26:32

culture crossed the Bering Straits, which were then a

26:34

land bridge, as you can see from this

26:36

image on the screen. They crossed

26:38

the Bering Straits and entered

26:41

into North America. They came

26:43

down through, often it

26:45

was argued an ice-free corridor, although that's

26:47

very debatable, and then

26:49

they entered the main part of

26:51

the Americas and gradually made their way

26:53

further south. This was a

26:56

dominant paradigm until, I

26:58

would say, the 1990s when it began

27:00

to be seriously questioned. But

27:03

I would wonder whether the

27:05

ghost of Clovis first is

27:08

still not haunting archaeology.

27:10

So let me just say a few

27:12

words on this subject. So

27:15

across the Bering Straits, 13,400 years

27:18

ago, and the

27:24

single common origin, supposedly that was

27:26

the idea with Clovis first. And

27:31

there had been recent genetic discoveries showing

27:34

a very close relationship between Australasians

27:36

and certain peoples of the Amazon

27:38

rainforest. We talked about this before

27:40

on your show, Joe, and I can go into that

27:42

in more detail later. A

27:46

huge amount of evidence from South America

27:48

has a bearing on this subject. This

27:50

is the typical toolset that the Clovis

27:53

people were thought to have used. And

27:57

despite the fact that... You're

28:00

telling us that Clovis First has been

28:02

debunked since the 1990s really, and you

28:04

were taught

28:07

that it was debunked in the 2000s. We

28:10

can find new

28:13

scientists publishing unless in 2013

28:16

questioning the Clovis First model. And

28:19

those who did question the Clovis First

28:21

model, I mean I do love your

28:24

picture of this free and open and

28:26

generous archaeology, but actually archaeologists can be

28:28

very, very mean to other archaeologists who

28:30

disagree with them. And the

28:33

example of this is Jacques Ankh-Mars,

28:35

who investigated bluefish caves in the

28:37

Yukon and found evidence of human

28:39

beings there more than 20,000 years ago. Now

28:42

if that evidence were correct, it would blow the

28:44

Clovis First model out of the water. People

28:47

are suddenly in America more than 7,000 years before Clovis.

28:51

The reaction to that was not welcoming. The

28:53

reaction to that was fury

28:56

at Jacques Ankh-Mars. And

28:58

here's the Smithsonian. Rather than launching a

29:00

major new search for more early evidence,

29:02

the fine-stared fierce opposition and a bitter

29:05

debate, one of the most acrimonious and

29:07

unfruitful in all of science, though to

29:09

the general nature. And

29:12

it was a brutal experience for Jacques Ankh-Mars. He

29:14

likened it to the Spanish Inquisition. Audiences

29:18

paid little heed to his evidence at academic

29:20

conferences. They gave short shrift to the evidence.

29:23

Then his competence was questioned. When

29:26

Jacques proposed that bluefish caves were 24,000

29:28

years old, it was not accepted, says

29:31

William Josie. And

29:34

the fact is that Jacques Ankh-Mars

29:36

was ruined by the archaeological

29:38

reaction to his discovery. His

29:40

career was rocked. His research

29:42

funding was withdrawn. He

29:45

was ignored by colleagues in the halls

29:47

of academia. He was insulted and humiliated.

29:49

It destroyed his life. But

29:52

he was right. And the fact

29:54

that he was right was later confirmed. It

29:57

was confirmed that indeed human beings.

29:59

beings had been at Bluefish Caves.

30:02

And there's the publication

30:04

from 2017, I think. Yes, January 2017,

30:10

confirming that all along Jacques Hanc-Mardes had

30:12

been right and that the ruining and

30:14

destruction of his reputation for

30:17

saying something that other archaeologists disagreed with

30:19

had been wholly unnecessary. And again, the

30:21

Smithsonian, the study raises serious questions about

30:24

the effect of the bitter decades-long debate

30:26

over the peopling of the New World.

30:28

Did archaeologists in the mainstream marginalize dissenting

30:31

voices on this key issue? And if

30:33

so, what was the impact on

30:36

North American archaeology? Did the intense

30:38

criticism of pre-Clovis sites produce a

30:40

chilling effect, stifling new ideas and

30:42

hobbling the search for early

30:45

sites? So here's Clovis

30:49

debunked. You're telling me that it

30:51

was debunked in the 90s, Flint,

30:53

but here's Clovis being debunked again

30:55

in 2007, National Geographic. Here's

30:57

Clovis being debunked in 2012.

31:00

I mean, for a theory that was debunked in the

31:02

1990s, it's weird to see it still being debunked in

31:05

2012. It's like there's something

31:07

still there to debunk, isn't there?

31:10

And Wikipedia entry,

31:14

recently the scientific consensus has changed

31:16

to acknowledge the presence of pre-Clovis

31:19

cultures in the America, ending

31:21

the Clovis first consensus. This was a

31:25

piece from the 15th of April, 2023.

31:28

My God, here's the big, big think,

31:30

April 2022. Clovis apparently still needs

31:35

to be debunked. It's like a

31:37

zombie. It keeps on haunting archaeology

31:39

and people keep on having to

31:41

debunk it. And I'd

31:44

like to just mention Tom

31:46

Dillahey. Tom Dillahey excavated

31:50

the site of Monteverde in Chile and

31:53

he found evidence that human beings have been there 14,000, maybe as much

31:55

as 18,000 years ago in the deep… South

32:00

of South America. And

32:02

again, the archaeology that Flint would

32:04

like us to believe exists would

32:07

have welcomed that find. But no,

32:09

that find was not welcomed. That

32:11

find was massively attacked, particularly by

32:13

American archaeologists. And

32:16

we now know that

32:18

Tom DeLay has

32:20

been vindicated that

32:25

he was absolutely correct all along,

32:27

that human beings were in Monteverde

32:30

thousands of years before Clovis.

32:34

And he

32:36

was eventually vindicated. Now, what I want to

32:38

do, if you don't mind, is just play

32:41

a tiny little clip from

32:43

Tom DeLay himself. I

32:46

don't have audio set up for you to do that. Can

32:50

you send it to him? I just have

32:52

HDMI cable. Rapidly be sent to you. Can

32:54

you do that? Sure. Okay. How

32:57

do I send it to you? You can you give a Mac? We'll

33:02

pause. Yeah. After a slight technical hitch.

33:05

Okay, we're back. After

33:08

a slight technical hitch, let's

33:11

play this clip from Tom DeLay, who

33:14

was the discoverer

33:16

and excavator of Monteverde. I

33:22

put together an interdisciplinary research

33:24

team of people, got National

33:26

Geographic funding and National Science

33:28

Foundation funding. And

33:32

that went pretty well the way

33:34

we expected to. And I found

33:37

that the scientists were open-minded. This

33:39

includes archaeologists. We had Australian, Chilean,

33:42

and Argentinian archaeologists working with

33:44

us. Accumulatively speaking, those people,

33:46

besides myself, probably had close

33:48

to 100 years

33:50

of experience amongst them. What

33:53

surprised me on the other side of the coin

33:55

was the stiff, closed-mindedness

33:58

of many North American American

34:00

archaeologists. But I

34:03

some of the North American colleagues

34:07

were very difficult to deal with and

34:09

I think at times presenting a very

34:11

unhealthy atmosphere, cutting

34:15

us off before we can present the data at

34:17

meetings, not talking with

34:19

this about it, refusing

34:21

to even look at the data, this sort of thing.

34:27

So I

34:31

think I've got a few minutes left of

34:34

my presentation time and

34:36

I would like to deal with the issue

34:39

that Flint has mentioned

34:41

of archaeology

34:44

somehow knowing that

34:48

there was no lost civilization.

34:52

If we could call this up on the screen, Jamie.

34:57

So the Society for American

34:59

Archaeology of which Flint is a

35:01

member wrote an

35:03

open letter to Netflix shortly

35:06

after the release of my show

35:08

Ancient Apocalypse, really

35:12

asking Netflix to cancel

35:15

the show. Not to cancel it, this is quite

35:17

cleverly put, they said don't, they

35:19

said reclassify it as science fiction.

35:22

Now to my mind what is the result of 30 plus

35:25

years of work on my part being reclassified as

35:27

science fiction is as good as cancelling

35:30

it. Netflix did not reclassified

35:32

as science fiction but archaeology,

35:35

the Society for American Archaeology

35:37

says that it really sees

35:40

no evidence for an

35:42

advanced lost civilization of the Ice

35:45

Age and that

35:47

my series is simply entertainment

35:50

with ideological goals. So

35:53

I want to get into

35:55

the parts of the world

35:57

that archaeology has not looked at, It's

36:00

kind of interesting though from that

36:02

statement, just the last thing. Contrary

36:04

to Hancock's claims, archaeology does not

36:07

willfully ignore credible evidence, nor

36:09

does it seek to suppress it in a

36:11

conspiratorial fashion. But we just showed that. Yeah,

36:14

we just showed in the case

36:16

of Tom Dillahey that his evidence

36:18

was suppressed, that in the case

36:20

of Jack Sanguars, his evidence was

36:22

suppressed, that archaeology was not open-minded

36:24

about the work of these guys,

36:26

that they suffered humiliation and great

36:28

difficulty in advancing their

36:31

work. And furthermore, I'd like to make

36:33

another point, Clint. I don't think

36:35

there's an archaeological conspiracy against me. I'm

36:39

not so conceited. I don't imagine there's

36:41

a conspiracy. I don't think archaeologists are

36:43

sitting together in a cabal conspiring

36:45

against me. I think

36:47

that archaeology is locked into a mindset

36:49

about the past where my ideas simply

36:51

seem preposterous. And I think

36:53

it's very annoying to archaeology that those

36:56

ideas have some resonance with the

36:58

public. But I absolutely refute

37:00

any suggestion that I have ever said

37:02

that archaeology is involved in a conspiracy

37:04

against me or is trying to suppress

37:06

my work. That is not the case.

37:09

Look, there's the Sahara Desert. A

37:13

bit of archaeology has been done in the Sahara Desert, but

37:15

we're looking at 9.2 million square

37:19

kilometers of the Sahara Desert. Tell me how

37:21

much of the Sahara you think has actually

37:23

been excavated by archaeologists. I'd

37:25

say a bunch of it has been surveyed, including by my

37:27

dad. No, no, no. How much has

37:29

actually been excavated? What sort

37:31

of percent do you have? Well, a lot of

37:34

desert archaeology does not have excavation. It's eroded away

37:36

due to the wind. What's your answer

37:38

to my question? How much

37:40

does archaeology really know about

37:42

the past of the Sahara? Well,

37:45

we understand about the domestication of Pearl Millot

37:47

in the Sahara from when

37:49

the Sahara was much more habitable because it

37:51

was not desert. So

37:54

we can see the domestication of Pearl Millot in Sorghum.

37:57

No. We can see sites for objects.

37:59

My question is related to the specifically to

38:01

my subject, has enough of

38:03

the Sahara been excavated for

38:06

archaeology to exclude any possibility that

38:08

they've missed anything important in the

38:10

Sahara? We have found thousands of

38:12

sites of ephemeral hunter-gatherer remains in

38:15

the Sahara. You're still not answering

38:17

my question. How much of the Sahara has archaeology

38:19

actually looked at? I have no idea, but quite

38:21

a bit, Graham. What do

38:23

you mean by quite a bit? What

38:25

I mean is that due to remote

38:28

sensing, due to surface survey, and due

38:30

to archaeological excavation, we actually have reasonable

38:32

coverage across the Sahara. We understand that

38:35

during green periods in the Neolithic, we

38:37

can see agricultural villages, and before the

38:39

Neolithic, we can find ephemeral hunter-gatherer camps

38:41

where they were napping stones. But

38:44

the fact of the matter is, around about 1% of

38:46

the Sahara has been excavated, and 99% hasn't.

38:50

So to say that there's no possibility of any

38:53

traces of a lost civilization in the

38:55

Sahara seems to me a bit premature,

38:57

particularly since during the African humid period,

38:59

and there were several of them, the

39:01

Sahara was green and fertile and

39:03

was a very attractive environment in

39:06

which to live. I might

39:08

come on to the ancient maps issue, but

39:10

there's an ancient map up there which shows

39:12

a green and fertile Sahara, and oddly, it

39:14

coincides very much with a radar survey of

39:17

the Sahara done in 2015, showing

39:21

river channels in exactly the places shown in that

39:23

ancient map. It's one of the horrors

39:26

of fascinating underserved area by archaeology, and

39:28

the plain fact of the matter is, it's

39:31

very expensive to work there, it's very difficult

39:33

to work there, and archaeology has done very

39:35

little work in the Sahara. Not no work,

39:37

not no work, but very little. Not enough

39:40

to write off the possibility that evidence might

39:42

be found in the future. You know, you're

39:44

basing this on our technology now. Let's

39:47

look 200 years in the future. Look how much archaeology

39:49

has progressed in the last 50 years. 200

39:52

years in the future, the technologies might be

39:54

so much more advanced, there's so much stuff

39:56

that is simply not being looked at, and

39:58

the Sahara is one of those underserved areas

40:00

as far as I'm concerned. So

40:02

is the Amazon. 6.7 million square

40:05

kilometers, about five and a half

40:07

still covered by rainforest. It's

40:09

bigger than India. And

40:13

well, here's an article from

40:15

Nature. 95% of the Amazon

40:17

has simply not been

40:19

investigated at all, and those bits

40:22

that have been investigated are miniscule

40:24

by comparison. Yet, where investigation is

40:26

taking place in the Amazon, astonishing

40:28

finds are being made. And

40:31

these are in the Brazilian state of

40:33

Acre and Geoglyphs have

40:35

been found there. And I've recently

40:38

been with not all archaeologists are

40:41

as opposed to my work as you

40:43

and your colleagues have. But I've been

40:45

with Marty Parsonen, who's

40:48

a leading archaeologist studying

40:50

the Amazon. I've been with Alceo

40:53

Z, who's a geographer from Brazil,

40:56

and with Fabio de Vaias Filho,

40:58

who's a Lidar expert. This

41:01

is very recently, actually. And

41:03

we did some Lidar work in

41:07

that area. And this is the

41:09

kind of this is the kind

41:11

of things being found huge, enormous

41:14

earthworks, geoglyphs, which were

41:17

we to find them in the West, we

41:19

would recognize them as almost as hinges. The

41:22

amount of workmanship that goes into

41:25

these earthworks is stunning. And

41:28

they are very precise, very geometrical, you

41:30

have squares, here you have a square

41:33

enclosing a circle. More

41:36

of the same. Takino

41:38

is a gigantic site. These

41:40

are just scratching the surface.

41:43

The archaeologists who are working on

41:45

these sites believe that there are

41:47

thousands and thousands more of these geoglyphs sites.

41:49

So they're just touching the edge. When I

41:51

was there with them back

41:53

in September 23, I think

41:55

it was, we actually did a bit of Lidar

41:57

work. We put up a drone with Lidar attack.

42:00

matched, and we found new geoglyphs,

42:02

geoglyphs that had not been found

42:04

before within a mile of

42:07

geoglyphs that had been found but still

42:09

covered by canopy rainforest. And Marty and

42:11

Alséo are of the view that if

42:13

we were to really investigate the whole

42:15

of the Amazon from this point of

42:17

view, we would have to revolutionize our

42:19

whole view of human history, that archaeology

42:21

has hardly touched this incredibly important region.

42:24

And therefore, I do not believe that archaeology

42:26

can tell us that it can rule out

42:28

any possibility of a lost civilization, while it

42:30

has so failed to serve the Amazon and

42:32

is only now beginning to do so, and

42:34

those who are doing that work are convinced

42:36

that there's much, much, much more to

42:38

be found, thousands more of these

42:40

geoglyphs, for example. 27

42:42

million square kilometers of the

42:45

Earth's surface was above water

42:47

during the Ice Age and it's underwater today.

42:49

So yes, there has been quite a bit of marine archaeology.

42:52

I think Nick Fleming says there's about 3,000

42:55

sites have been investigated underwater over the

42:58

years, but it's again, you're looking at

43:01

a tiny fraction of 1%

43:03

of the submerged areas

43:06

that have been investigated. I was very excited when I

43:08

saw this, but it turned out that it

43:10

was just another search for shipwrecks.

43:14

And fortunately, some new work is now being

43:16

done. Archaeologists are beginning to

43:18

look at the submerged area, Doggerland, for

43:21

example, between what is now

43:23

Britain and continental Europe, a

43:25

submerged landmass, and beginning to investigate this.

43:28

It's not just me at all. If lots of

43:30

evidence of hunter-gatherers is found in these submerged areas,

43:32

I would expect that to be the case. But

43:35

to say that enough work has been

43:37

done to rule out the possibility of a

43:39

lost civilization seems to be absurd when we're

43:41

dealing with 27 million square kilometers. And I

43:44

just want to say that I

43:46

and my wife, Sansa, have done a great deal

43:48

of diving. We did seven years of scuba diving

43:50

all over the world. And what we did was

43:52

we followed up local accounts

43:54

of underwater structures, fishermen, local divers, and we

43:57

went where they took us. This is none

43:59

at all. on the island of

44:01

Penape. You go a bit further underwater

44:03

and you start finding structures underwater. Go

44:05

a bit further still and you find

44:07

this huge column underwater. This is

44:10

a depth of 27 meters.

44:12

That column has been

44:14

submerged for more than

44:16

13,000 years and

44:18

it compares very interestingly with this column. If

44:20

you see on the left the submerged column

44:23

at Namadol, on the right this column from

44:25

Tinian, the island of Tinian, also

44:27

in that region of the Pacific. I wonder if the megaliths

44:30

of Tinian have been misstated. What

44:33

we're looking at here, and I apologize to

44:35

listeners who are listening and not watching, but

44:37

what we're looking at here are my fins

44:40

disappearing into a

44:43

tunnel. That tunnel looks to

44:45

me, this is in Japan by

44:47

the way, off the island of Yaguni, that

44:49

tunnel looks to me very

44:51

man-made, particularly when I get inside it and

44:53

find two on each side two

44:56

big megaliths piled one on top of the

44:58

other. Then when you come to the end

45:00

of the tunnel you see ahead of you

45:02

these two massive megalithic blocks directly

45:06

in view from the tunnel. That's

45:09

a shot that Santa took of me diving

45:12

beside those megalithic blocks just to give you

45:14

a sense of the scale of them. They're

45:16

enormous, no they did not fall from a

45:18

cliff above, there is no cliff above. There's

45:22

the there in context. We're looking at a

45:24

huge rocky outcrop with these two megalithic

45:26

blocks on the side. But let's go round

45:29

to the right of that rocky outcrop and

45:31

we find a rock-hewn

45:33

area with steps and

45:36

those steps archaeologists

45:39

tend to argue this is all completely

45:41

natural. I have done more than 200 Dives

45:44

at Yalaguni. Santa and I risked our lives.

45:47

We are not dilettantes, we are in

45:49

this out of conviction. we're in this out

45:51

of passion for our subject. We've done more

45:53

than 200 dives at Yalaguni. I've been hands-on

45:55

with this structure and all the other

45:57

structures around it and I am absolutely. The

46:00

confident that we looking at a

46:02

rough hewn stretchered a natural rock

46:04

face that was cut and safe

46:06

for human beings here at Caramel.

46:09

We're. Looking at a stone circle under water.

46:12

That. Thirty meters that to

46:14

meet his i think been

46:16

submerged again for more than

46:18

thirteen thousand years where I'm

46:20

detailing. For. Scale You can

46:22

see somebody down that decide

46:25

that. Central Medalists. Flynn

46:27

do. You think they to made that. I.

46:30

Seen her Penicillin being fair maid of that's

46:32

A is a huge. You see no evidence

46:34

of that being manmade. You see a national

46:36

up right. You see upright surrounding it. You

46:38

see the. Outer Care

46:40

the in a curve of the outer mega

46:42

with matching the out to cover the central

46:44

make them to you. That's that's not even

46:47

interesting. I mean even those photos your shiny

46:49

Yonaguni showed a lot of natural fractures along

46:51

straight lines. And so I think that it's

46:53

really easy to confuse what can happen naturally

46:55

and geologically with something that looks kind of

46:57

Anthropogenic. But this does not look man made

46:59

to me. It does not like anything I've

47:01

ever seen. Well, that's interesting. So I took

47:03

a geologist diving their Wolf Whitman A. He's

47:05

very skeptical. He he was skeptical about Yonaguni,

47:07

but he did confess after we came up

47:09

from a dive. Karama that there's no

47:12

way in his opinion that this

47:14

could have been made by by

47:16

nature. This is a rock walls

47:18

offer taiwan. Again

47:20

south and I went diving there. That's a

47:22

local dive a cold Steve Sia. He's showing

47:24

us this rock wall and we can get

47:27

in close to it. We can see a.

47:30

Pediment in front of it. Unless you get up

47:32

close you can see that is actually made of

47:34

individual blocks of put together. Let's

47:37

go to India. South east coast

47:39

of India of. I was Sansa

47:41

is it was born in Malaysia

47:43

but serb ceased of Tamil South

47:45

Indian origin so we had a

47:48

great advantage in South India. In.

47:50

Talking to local fishermen and divers because Sansa

47:52

speak the Tamil language fluently and we had

47:54

our summit other any such as underwater of

47:57

here and they said you bet there are

47:59

there are. there's a whole city underwater here

48:01

and we've complained to the government about it because

48:03

we keep catching our nets on it and fishermen

48:06

have to go down and sometimes they die trying

48:08

to free the nets. We'd like the whole thing

48:10

clear away. So we said would you take us

48:12

out there and shoot us? And

48:15

it took some time to put it together.

48:17

This is an expedition with the scientific exploration

48:19

society in Britain that I put together. As

48:21

you can see it's a very low-tech expedition

48:23

but when we got out there, come on

48:25

Flint, tell me these are man-made, tell me

48:27

these are natural pots. That's a very blurry

48:29

picture, Graham. Tell me the natural blocks. I

48:33

cannot tell for sure with these photos. Okay, there

48:36

I'm putting my diving knife between two blocks

48:40

and there and then a curved wall.

48:44

Actually the team from the National

48:46

Institute of Oceanography in India who

48:49

were with us were intrigued by this. Do you

48:51

have any more photos of that? That are maybe

48:53

more convincing? No, that's

48:56

what I've got. But

48:59

I'm trying to keep it short. Some of them do

49:01

have characteristics of stone walls for sure but it's hard

49:03

to tell. That's the top of a

49:06

stone wall. The rest of it is buried in

49:08

sand on the left there. On the right, a

49:10

stone wall with a standout feature above

49:12

it. To suggest that

49:14

these things are natural seems to

49:16

me completely absurd. My

49:18

point is that if Santa and

49:20

I, with no external funding, the

49:23

only funding we have, I've never had financial

49:25

sponsorship from anybody, the only

49:27

funding that we have is the kind

49:31

readers who buy my books and allow

49:34

us to undertake this research. We've

49:36

risked our lives for 30 years investigating

49:38

this research and if we can find

49:41

structures of this nature underwater on

49:44

a very limited basis, then I

49:47

would imagine that a detailed archaeological

49:49

survey would find much more. So

49:51

the submerged continental shelves, the Sahara

49:53

Desert and the Amazon alone, these

49:55

are three large underserved areas by

49:57

archaeology and I think it's premature

49:59

for archaeology. to say

50:01

that they can rule out

50:03

any possibility of a lost civilization. Well, there's

50:05

so much of the Earth that remains to

50:07

be studied. And actually, how much of the

50:11

so-called developed industrial countries,

50:13

how much of the land area of those countries

50:16

have been investigated? I mean,

50:18

so look, A, I fully agree with you

50:20

that I'd like to see more archeology done

50:22

in ethical, informed ways. I'm not trying to

50:25

argue against searching for sites in

50:27

the Sahara, the Amazon, or

50:29

underwater. I think we can

50:31

hopefully agree that more archeology needs to be done. I

50:34

would say in developed countries our coverage

50:36

is even better, though, mainly due to

50:38

the fact that laws require archeological excavation

50:40

and survey prior to construction. So

50:42

whenever there's sort of construction going on

50:45

in cities, there's archeology happening. Whenever pipelines

50:47

or highways or things like that are

50:49

being done, there's survey and there's excavation.

50:51

So I mean, at this point, our

50:54

numbers of archeological sites are well in

50:56

the millions, right, and billions of artifacts

50:58

that have been found. And so it's

51:00

not trying to say it's perfect, though,

51:02

and at the same time, the kind

51:04

of excavations that happen sort of on

51:06

a rescue basis before construction, they're not

51:08

going to have the same kind of

51:10

investment that an academic project

51:13

will have. On the other hand, an academic

51:15

project is going to make a much smaller

51:17

hole, because we are

51:19

focusing on maximizing the evidence

51:21

that we can get. And so in

51:23

no way am I trying to say

51:25

that archeology has perfect coverage, but we

51:27

do have quite a bit of coverage

51:30

that people are unfamiliar with, and we

51:32

do have quite a bit of coverage

51:34

of this late Ice Age period where

51:36

we have many, many thousands

51:38

of sites from ephemeral hunter-gatherers, underwater,

51:40

above water, and elsewhere. As we

51:42

do above water. Would

51:46

you mind showing Yanaguni again?

51:48

Because Those other images aren't

51:50

nearly as compelling to me as

51:52

some of the right angles and

51:54

what looks like passageways and that

51:56

curved surface underground. Sure. The

52:00

me that's a wild one see the

52:02

other stuff for my things look weird

52:04

nature sometimes I'm not an expert and

52:06

so I look at Dynamite has blurry.

52:08

it's green, it's odd. yeah it's odd

52:10

at maybe if you are they are

52:12

physically you'd have a different impression of

52:14

it. maybe would look more like as

52:17

a stone wall but Yonaguni to me

52:19

to blows me away the dispose me

52:21

away. but the other image blows me

52:23

away of the curved front of that

52:25

feature and with of sidesteps to the

52:27

right of it. So there's that tunnel

52:29

that's crazy. To that's crazy too because

52:31

the the lines lineup, it looks like

52:34

two blocks for cotton place on each

52:36

side. And. The seems like a

52:38

very clear passage way in between them. Especially.

52:41

Since at the end of the passageway

52:43

have confronted by this this is what

52:45

you look at. These are crazy as

52:47

it is if these are natural formations.

52:50

They are so bizarre that you have

52:52

enormous straight lines and right angles that

52:54

look like they're caught and not just

52:56

straight on one side, straight on all

52:58

sides. You might go yes a

53:00

look at the slide. you can see them to

53:02

the right of those two blocks as the what

53:05

grams calling bless you can see the sort of

53:07

straight angles that are made. You can see another

53:09

of a vertical one to the left to right.

53:11

Well how do you think they're placed in that

53:13

manner lied on those. They were place settings a

53:15

thing where are loaded. They just broke off at

53:17

some point in history and Linda like that. I

53:20

think I am. This is compelling to me but

53:22

not as compelling as the other one. Show me

53:24

the other one with of the front curved surface

53:26

this no sex this looks crazy like just the

53:28

whole thing was crazy. The steps of

53:30

crazy the the the fact that

53:32

it's all this one uniform slap

53:34

lines with. Sees.

53:37

Yeah, some of these what? Bizarre.

53:40

Nature. Sometimes the socket. So I'm

53:42

right yeah no I I is. If

53:44

I am, I'm assuming that people have

53:46

investigated as like geologist and stuff from

53:48

yeah my family Professor Masaki Kimura. Has

53:52

investigated it and he said published extensively

53:54

on it and he's up to his

53:56

geologist is absolutely convinced that Yonaguni has

53:58

been worked extensively by human. And

54:00

have another geologist like Robert shot suggested that

54:02

it's not. Yeah, I took Robert their. His

54:04

initial impression was that it was that it

54:07

was my maid. Later he chooses you must

54:09

find he did to three days there. But

54:11

I mean I don't know. I've seen a

54:13

lot of crazy natural stuff and I see

54:15

nothing here That to me reminds me of

54:17

human architecture. and I've seen human architecture over

54:20

the world. Jimmy go that one that words

54:22

was around with Graham it's hub of law

54:24

right leg below the main image to the

54:26

right inside the of the next one that

54:28

when. It's

54:34

certainly crazy I'll give you that. Separates

54:36

said are that every my that is

54:38

our as a slot said surfaces very

54:40

bizarre and how it shuts off and

54:42

it's flat below and in uniform lines.

54:45

The curved surface of the front of

54:47

it is very bizarre to that at

54:49

the other room is that you had

54:51

graham but stone oftentimes fractures in straight

54:53

way for I know that's how it

54:55

fractures naturally he I get it, I

54:57

get it is just it is the

54:59

the. Appearance of those

55:01

stones stacked is to any

55:03

uniform manner in that tunnel.

55:05

All. These things. And.

55:07

That this exists. Somewhere.

55:10

Else it's very similar. Renderings

55:15

of what they think it looks. I

55:17

mean regardless, we still have no dates

55:19

from this. We have no artifact. really.

55:21

Isn't this? What will you have? Days

55:23

from the submergence you're looking at material.

55:25

This is more than twelve thousand years

55:27

old when you are. So this this

55:30

this was a this was as a

55:32

tough guys massive current slats. This is

55:34

Karen much of a consumer in the

55:36

economic group of Islands of Denise. It

55:38

is stunning that you that you see

55:40

that as a totally natural thing. but

55:42

I guess we just got very different

55:44

eyes. the central

55:46

upright surrounded by upright mega lists

55:48

all cut out of the bedrock

55:50

very similar to the that the

55:52

chamber recently excavated that current happy

55:54

where you have a price cut

55:57

out of the bedrock as well

55:59

as It seems to me inconceivable

56:02

that nature could have made this, that nature

56:04

could have separated out this

56:06

central upright and then created the upright

56:08

surrounding it in such a perfect way.

56:11

But it's not totally perfect, right? Look at the back.

56:14

The back is much larger. Yeah, it's not. There's a piece

56:16

on the side that seems like it's cut out and then

56:18

there's a piece in front that seems like it's cut out.

56:21

But even the one to the lower left is

56:24

not cut the same. It's odd that

56:26

you have that passageway when you're looking down and

56:28

it's sort of uniform on all sides around

56:30

the monolith. That's pretty fascinating. It's

56:34

interesting. My

56:36

point is not nearly enough work has

56:38

been done by archaeology. And how long

56:41

ago was supposedly was this above ground?

56:44

About 13,000 years ago, somewhere of that order.

56:47

Somewhere of that order. That was

56:49

the last time it could have been done above

56:51

ground. Otherwise, nature is, I believe

56:54

so, has done it. But I'm pretty

56:56

confident we're looking for new ones. What

56:58

is the most compelling evidence that you've

57:00

seen in an underwater site of

57:02

man-made construction or moving

57:05

of stones? I repeat, this is Kerama.

57:08

I am not showing, I'm only

57:10

showing a fraction of the slides that

57:12

we have from Yonaguni. Yonaguni

57:14

isn't simply that terrace. It's a whole

57:17

series of monuments which continue over a

57:19

distance of a couple of miles underwater.

57:23

There's a huge stone face carved out of

57:25

the rock. There's a

57:27

passageway. Down at the bottom

57:29

of Yonaguni there, as rocks have been cleared to the

57:31

side away from the passageway. It's

57:35

the combination of all of these

57:37

different things across an area of

57:39

two miles off the island of

57:41

Yonaguni that make that

57:44

one of my high-priority sites for

57:47

man-made workmanship. And the Indian sites

57:49

are also extremely intriguing. And unfortunately,

57:52

none of that work has been

57:54

followed up, which

57:56

is a pity. And

57:58

when we come to... What

58:00

you call rescue archaeology for instance, if we come

58:02

back to Northern Europe, for

58:04

example, I mean the last place on

58:06

earth that I would look for the

58:09

remains of a lost civilization is Northern

58:11

Europe. Because Northern

58:13

Europe was a frozen wilderness during the Ice

58:15

Age and any lost civilization worth

58:17

its salt would not have

58:19

focused a lot of effort on Northern Europe in

58:21

that time. The place to look is down near

58:23

the tropics, down near the equator.

58:25

It's in places that weren't horrifically

58:28

cold and unbearable during

58:31

the Ice Age. When you talk about

58:33

rescue archaeology, this is one of the problems I have

58:35

is that there is no

58:37

targeted search for the possibility of a lost

58:40

civilization because archaeology is already convinced

58:42

that no such thing could have existed.

58:45

So what we get is accidental discovery.

58:47

Somebody's building a road or building a

58:49

dam. They call in the archaeologists to

58:51

see if there's any archaeology that's going

58:53

to be disrupted and some archaeology is

58:56

found sometimes. That's how the Surrutii Mastodon

58:58

site in near

59:00

San Diego was discovered because roadworks

59:02

were being done there. But

59:05

this is not a targeted search for a lost

59:07

civilization. This is accidental discovery. I would maintain that

59:10

in the Amazon rainforest, in the Sahara

59:12

Desert, in the 27 million square kilometers

59:15

of continental shelves, massively

59:17

underserved by archaeology and in other

59:20

areas of the world, archaeology's focus

59:22

is on very limited

59:24

parts of those, not on massive parts of them.

59:27

Then I'm sure you know this, Flint, that when

59:29

it comes to most archaeological sites, the

59:32

amount of the site that is excavated is rarely more

59:34

than 5% and often less than that. That's

59:38

for good motives, to preserve the

59:40

site for future generations of archaeologists

59:42

to investigate. But again, it doesn't,

59:45

I think, allow archaeologists to lay such claim

59:47

to the past that they

59:49

can absolutely rule out any possibility of

59:51

a lost civilization. Flint? Yeah.

59:55

I mean, so if you want to, Jamie, do

59:57

you want to look up the site Pavlopetri? L-O-P-E-T-R-I.

1:00:03

This is a site in the Aegean. And this is

1:00:05

an example of kind of what a, I

1:00:08

mean, I can boot it up on my computer. So

1:00:13

if you look at this, you have very

1:00:15

clear stone courses, for example, underwater. And it's

1:00:17

not just sort of stone courses and walls

1:00:20

that we find, this is from a few

1:00:22

thousand years ago. What we find actually are

1:00:24

a ton of artifacts with it, right? They

1:00:26

dive, they excavate, they pull up ceramics, they

1:00:29

pull up stone tools, and they are able

1:00:31

to therefore show that this was an occupied

1:00:33

place. This is obviously not due to sea

1:00:35

level rise, this is due to tectonic activity,

1:00:38

that this is now underwater. Helique off the

1:00:40

north coast to Greece also is another one

1:00:42

that people have suggested might've inspired

1:00:44

Plato's Atlantis because it happened during

1:00:46

Plato's lifetime that that city was

1:00:48

submerged underwater. And so we actually

1:00:50

do find, you know, from more

1:00:53

recent times, actual underwater

1:00:55

sites aplenty. And

1:00:57

Pavlopetri, what year was that? I

1:01:00

think it's from about 3000, oh, 3000 years ago or so. So

1:01:03

like 1000 BC-ish, I could be off

1:01:06

back. Are you saying those are natural blocks

1:01:08

at Pavlopetri? No, I'm saying you can say,

1:01:10

see clear stone courses that looks exactly like

1:01:12

the type of architecture we have above ground.

1:01:15

And so the same kind of stone courses, what

1:01:17

you have at Yona Guni- You would expect that

1:01:19

from the historic period, no? You would expect that

1:01:21

from the historic period? Yeah, we would. And so

1:01:23

I would expect though, if you're gonna make an

1:01:25

argument for something like Yona Guni, that it would

1:01:27

look like architecture, maybe even the type of architecture

1:01:30

that you have- Looks like megalithic architecture to me.

1:01:32

Looks like rock-hewn architecture. It looks like the rock-hewn

1:01:34

areas of Sac-Sehuaman, for example, Jamie actually

1:01:36

pulled out- No, we've seen many different

1:01:39

blocks at Sac-Sehuaman. We see multiple courses

1:01:41

of blocks that one on top of

1:01:43

each other. No, I've never been there,

1:01:45

Graham. So how can you possibly talk about it? Because I've seen photos

1:01:47

of it. Well, I've been there dozens of times. Wait, wait, how can

1:01:49

you actually- I was there just a few weeks ago. Wait

1:01:53

a second. Okay, but let's look at the

1:01:55

images because

1:01:57

Sac-Sehuaman is a very complicated site. Yes, there are-

1:02:00

huge blocks in the zigzag walls of Sa'ikawala,

1:02:02

but they're also huge rock-cut areas with steps

1:02:04

in them. I don't understand how being there

1:02:06

lets you talk about it better than me.

1:02:08

You've been there as a tourist to see

1:02:10

how archaeologists have conserved it and preserved it

1:02:12

and presented it for people coming by.

1:02:14

That is not the same thing as excavating a

1:02:16

site. That is not the same thing with understanding

1:02:18

archaeological literature. Tell me that I've not been there

1:02:21

so I cannot talk about it. It's obvious that

1:02:23

you're ignorant of the site, Flint. You're ignorant of

1:02:25

the site because you don't know what the site

1:02:27

looks like. You don't know the huge areas that

1:02:29

are cut out of solid rock. You just talk

1:02:31

about blocks. Let's have a bigger here and let's

1:02:33

look at it and discuss it. Yeah, let's do

1:02:36

that. Let's look at it. How do you spell

1:02:38

that? S-A-Y-H-U-A-M-A-M. Okay, got

1:02:40

it. Now

1:02:52

that's the blocky walls you've been talking about.

1:02:54

Yeah and that doesn't look anything like Yonaguni.

1:02:56

But they confront another area. You were showing

1:02:59

us some pictures of it earlier, Jamie. A

1:03:03

whole rock-hewn hillside. I

1:03:06

don't know. None of that looks like Yonaguni. This looks like

1:03:08

actual architecture. Yeah, it is actually architecture. Yeah,

1:03:10

I agree. But this

1:03:12

is not the picture that I would like to see. Do

1:03:18

you want to find a gram and put it

1:03:20

up through HDMI? Because Jamie obviously- I know what

1:03:22

he was asking for about it. You had it

1:03:24

up a few minutes ago, Jamie. I just stumbled

1:03:26

across it though. It wasn't there on purpose or

1:03:28

anything. It was probably in here somewhere and how

1:03:30

I got there, I was clicking

1:03:32

around. Let's

1:03:35

see if we can get- And

1:03:38

I mean, part of the goal though is to

1:03:40

also have a date. So some of that stuff

1:03:42

that you showed off the coast of India. In

1:03:45

that one there. Okay. There's lots of

1:03:47

this in Saaksehwa Manfrinz, as you would know if you'd been there.

1:03:51

This still does not look anything like Yonaguni. It doesn't

1:03:53

look like a series of steps cut out of rock?

1:03:55

I mean it looks like a series of steps, yeah,

1:03:57

but it doesn't look like- It actually looks like a-

1:04:00

a room there even is what i see on

1:04:02

the left for example is not a really good

1:04:05

looks similar but not similar in that

1:04:07

whole room area in the left-hand side that

1:04:09

is i don't think anybody could look at

1:04:12

that and never argued that that was

1:04:14

a made by humans think that's so clear

1:04:16

whereas if you look at go back but

1:04:18

i also don't know if this is fact

1:04:21

they hold on this is on quora right

1:04:23

you know let's go look at the

1:04:25

little photo by something is so it is

1:04:27

okay but i do like that but

1:04:31

the the difference to me is like there's

1:04:33

some it like instances like in

1:04:35

between the steps when you look at that

1:04:37

flat surface and and the the uniform line

1:04:40

across the flat surface that does look similar

1:04:42

to yanaguni uh... some of

1:04:44

the stuff on the right looks much more

1:04:46

refined then what you see in yanaguni but

1:04:48

that also could be attributed to the underwater

1:04:50

erosion right and thousands and thousands

1:04:52

of years whereas how old is

1:04:54

saxay huaman supposed to be well

1:04:56

that's an ongoing argument you know hmm well

1:04:58

i don't see as a delay on mentioned

1:05:01

it was only built a hundred years before

1:05:03

he was there the difference between in my

1:05:05

mind is actually one month shows all those

1:05:07

other things that are so clearly architecture so

1:05:10

clearly stone blocks fitted and piled

1:05:12

onto each other you don't

1:05:15

quite see that level of sophistication at the

1:05:17

on a good side but you do see

1:05:19

some stuff that's very bizarre and doesn't look

1:05:21

like it's not and i suggest if we

1:05:23

were to look further and spend the money

1:05:25

and investigate thoroughly we would find a lot

1:05:27

more i'm i'm simply raising this to address

1:05:31

flint apparent point that uh... archaeology has done

1:05:33

enough already to rule out the possibility of

1:05:35

a lot of civilization that certainly what said

1:05:37

in the essay is letter to netflix inflam

1:05:40

what is your position on that is for

1:05:42

specifically with what he's talking about top america

1:05:44

that top america would be a place where

1:05:47

an advanced civilization with thrive because it wouldn't

1:05:49

during the ice age time because wouldn't be

1:05:52

experiencing the brutal cold that northern european

1:05:55

no i but i still think we'd want to

1:05:57

find some sort of evidence of things like agriculture

1:05:59

right and so i would We can look at

1:06:01

the development of agriculture in South America and in

1:06:03

Mesoamerica. I have slides on that. And

1:06:05

we can see that it actually, we can

1:06:07

see the transition from wild to domestic in

1:06:09

real space and time. In which areas though?

1:06:11

So, in Mesoamerica we can see it with

1:06:14

Teosinte, further south in the northern part of

1:06:16

South America. We can see it with

1:06:18

a variety of different crops. And these are all areas that

1:06:20

are outside of the rainforest? No, some of them are the

1:06:22

edges of the rainforest. The edges. And so,

1:06:24

I mean, look, we've done a lot of work

1:06:26

in the rainforest with Lidar in particular, and that's

1:06:28

been dated based on excavations. Stefan Roestain just published in

1:06:30

2024 a series of

1:06:33

Lidar structures that were all connected

1:06:35

with one another alongside major roads.

1:06:38

And based on excavations of several of them, it dates to

1:06:40

about 2,500 years ago. And

1:06:42

so, this is the key thing is we want

1:06:44

to understand clear dates for stuff. And

1:06:47

that is the key thing. We have

1:06:49

plentiful evidence. Do you mind if I show you some

1:06:51

of our ice age evidence that we have? Yeah, sure. Every

1:06:53

setting, I think the HDMI resets when you're shutting the computer.

1:06:56

Did I shut my computer? Yeah. Sorry.

1:06:59

Should I unplug it then? Yeah. Okay.

1:07:03

I don't know. Sorry,

1:07:05

I have a cheap computer. I need to, I work

1:07:08

for a public university and have a small grant. I

1:07:10

don't think it's the computer's problem. I

1:07:12

think it's all good. Let me pull up my

1:07:15

actual one. So let's look at some of the

1:07:17

ice age stuff that we can look exactly where

1:07:19

Graham says we're not looking. And I

1:07:22

want to show you what we do have. No, no, I say

1:07:24

you're not looking enough. Okay. But I

1:07:26

want to show you what we find when we

1:07:28

do look. Because I completely agree, Graham, I actually

1:07:30

hope the people who are interested in more archaeology

1:07:32

happening donate to things like the Archaeological

1:07:35

Institute of America, the European Association of

1:07:37

Archaeologists, and the Society for American Archaeologists.

1:07:40

That can help fund more surveys

1:07:42

and exercises. If somebody wanted to do that, where would it go? To

1:07:46

their websites, saas.org, archaeological.org.

1:07:48

I think

1:07:52

it's archaeological.org. Can

1:07:55

I give you guys the links to put it on the YouTube and

1:07:57

stuff like that? Sure. Yeah.

1:08:00

archeological.org for the Archeological Institute of America.

1:08:03

And I'll give you guys the links for that so you can show that. I

1:08:05

just wanted to get it out there while

1:08:08

it's still in people's minds. Yeah. Look it

1:08:10

up. Archeological Institute of America, Society for American

1:08:12

Archeology, and European Association for Archeologists. They

1:08:14

are great institutions that support stuff. I just

1:08:16

want to dedicate this quick thing to my

1:08:18

dad. He was an Ice Age archaeologist.

1:08:21

He innovated how to do mapping and how to

1:08:23

look at stone tools. And please blame him for

1:08:25

any of my mistakes, any of his

1:08:27

colleagues that are listening. So

1:08:29

I want to talk about one of his surveys that he actually

1:08:31

did in the upper deserts

1:08:33

of Egypt, above Abydos. Abydos is

1:08:36

famous because that's where the pre-dynastic

1:08:39

dynasty came from in Egypt. But

1:08:41

up in the upper areas, him

1:08:43

with Debelshevsky and Shannon McFerrin, they

1:08:45

went and they surveyed 2,100 different places where, based

1:08:48

on sort of the geology of the areas, they

1:08:50

thought there was a decent chance that people might

1:08:52

have been there in the past because of it

1:08:55

being not a desert environment, but more

1:08:57

of a savanna and more green. And

1:08:59

because of erosion, there might be stuff visible.

1:09:03

So they targeted these areas and they found, what, nearly

1:09:05

200 different sites, all dating to the Ice Age,

1:09:09

dense scatters, some of them dense, not all

1:09:11

of them are dense, like this one on

1:09:13

the right, of lithics, of stone tools, that

1:09:15

showed people working in place, and they mapped

1:09:17

them out in the desert. They

1:09:20

have 36,000 different artifacts that they

1:09:22

found in this survey. And

1:09:25

in many places, they could actually refit these

1:09:27

back together, so they

1:09:29

could understand that people were doing this right here in

1:09:31

this spot. And so, you know,

1:09:33

one of the great things about desert survey is because

1:09:35

of all the wind erosion, we

1:09:38

actually should have exposed more architecture,

1:09:40

more artifacts, and because it's so

1:09:42

dry, things like organic material preserves

1:09:44

sometimes as well. And

1:09:46

so we actually have this picture of stuff that's

1:09:49

different than say, you know, in a more

1:09:51

temperate zone. But if we start

1:09:53

looking at underwater sites, I

1:09:55

talked with Dr. Jessica Cook-Hale, who's now at the University

1:09:57

of Bradford, who is in the middle of a study,

1:10:00

done underwater dives and found

1:10:02

Ice Age sites off the coast of Florida.

1:10:04

So this is in the Gulf of Mexico.

1:10:06

Jamie, oh, I have to give this to you. Sorry.

1:10:10

I have a video here for you. You

1:10:12

could air drop it. I don't

1:10:14

know if I have air drop. No, just give the

1:10:17

class. Yeah. I'm low tech, Graham.

1:10:19

Well, it's just windows. Yeah, no, I

1:10:21

know. Isn't

1:10:23

that a part of a big lawsuit right now? And

1:10:26

so one of the things that she does is

1:10:28

she is an underwater archeologist who focuses on the

1:10:30

Stone Age and this period that we're talking about

1:10:32

at the end of the Ice Age. And what

1:10:34

we're looking at here, she'll talk about it. It's

1:10:36

just a short one minute clip, is this site's

1:10:39

underwater. They all date to the end of the

1:10:41

Ice Age. And so there are lithic scatters, just

1:10:43

like my dad found in the Sahara Desert, of

1:10:46

hunter gatherers underwater

1:10:48

sites though. And so let's see what some of

1:10:50

these look like. Can I ask you something? How

1:10:52

do they go about choosing these areas to

1:10:54

search? Yeah, she's going to explain that.

1:10:57

So what she does is she develops

1:10:59

predictive models based on the geomorphology. This

1:11:02

is her, actually her colleague, finding some

1:11:04

stone tools. So they look at the

1:11:06

underwater geomorphology. They take known sites above

1:11:09

water and then they predict where they

1:11:11

might be able to go and successfully

1:11:13

find material. And then they go dive

1:11:15

and often enough they do

1:11:17

find that material and they're able to find.

1:11:20

Here we go. Yeah. Has

1:11:22

some of the densest terminal pylocysteine and

1:11:24

early Holocene occupations in the American Southeast

1:11:26

or definitely in Florida. We don't just

1:11:28

do random dives. We go back from

1:11:30

the known to the unknown. We look

1:11:32

at terrestrial patterns. We look at cultural

1:11:34

types. So periods where people were using

1:11:37

shellfish and subsistence data. It's really important

1:11:39

to look at those types on land

1:11:41

and say, what are the factors? What

1:11:43

environmental patterns or cultural patterns can we

1:11:45

tease out of these larger distribution? And

1:11:47

then we project it offshore. And if

1:11:49

we're fortunate, then after we pull all

1:11:51

those threads together, this is what we get. And

1:11:55

so, yeah, this is just like with my dad

1:11:57

when he targeted areas in the Sahara. Now she's

1:11:59

going to be at University of Bradford and

1:12:01

they're doing dives in different areas of

1:12:03

Europe, and they're specifically targeting this kind

1:12:05

of stone age material from this period

1:12:07

and they're able to successfully find it.

1:12:09

And so I think that that's important

1:12:11

to understand because this material is there

1:12:13

to find, even though it's

1:12:15

very much ephemeral material from hunter-gatherer camps.

1:12:17

And this is oftentimes outcrops of stone

1:12:20

for making these kind of stone tools.

1:12:22

So that's what they're actually finding is

1:12:24

where they're making it, looking at the

1:12:26

geomorphology to find them. And so if

1:12:28

we, sorry, let's get past this.

1:12:31

We already talked about this wall, but I also

1:12:33

wanted to brought up other kinds of underwater finds

1:12:35

that have been found from the stone age. Cosco

1:12:37

Cave, it's a painted cave. It's 115 feet underwater

1:12:39

off the coast of

1:12:42

Marseille, found recently in 1985 by

1:12:44

Almerie Koskay, and it's dated to 27,000 and 19,000 years

1:12:48

ago and dated by radiocarbon. It's actually the

1:12:50

painted cave with the most radiocarbon dates from

1:12:53

it, right? And this is what we have. We

1:12:55

have panels of black horses. We have, it's

1:12:57

one of the only painted

1:12:59

caves with sea creatures. For example, these

1:13:01

ox, I think there's this,

1:13:03

some stuff that they describe as jellyfish. There's

1:13:06

a black stag. And so we

1:13:08

actually are looking underwater and

1:13:10

successfully finding this kind of material,

1:13:13

but it's not just underwater. Cos I don't think

1:13:15

we need to stop there. If we look at

1:13:17

this culture in Europe at the end of the

1:13:19

Ice Age, this Magdalenean culture that's associated with most

1:13:22

of these painted caves from about 17,000 to 12,000

1:13:24

years ago, the exact period that Graham

1:13:28

civilization should date to, we

1:13:30

have radiocarbon dates from a large

1:13:32

number of these caves, very clearly

1:13:34

locked in in time. And

1:13:37

what do we see? We are actually, even

1:13:39

with sea level rise, they're only a couple

1:13:41

miles from the Ice Age coast. So

1:13:43

these are very, very close. There's

1:13:45

not room for some sort of

1:13:47

empire there or civilization. I

1:13:50

claim no empire. Okay, that's fine.

1:13:52

That's just another way you misrepresent

1:13:54

my work. Okay, I'm sorry

1:13:56

for misrepresenting your work, Graham, but there's no

1:13:58

room for some sort of large agricultural

1:14:00

civilization along most of these coasts

1:14:02

because the way sea level rise

1:14:04

has worked is it's variable in

1:14:07

different places. And so we

1:14:09

actually have a whole lot of coverage near

1:14:11

to Ice Age coasts from the end of

1:14:13

the Ice Age, not the glacial maximum. Could

1:14:15

you explain those lines? Yeah, so

1:14:17

these are lines based at 100 meters and

1:14:19

120 meters of sea level rise, which is about

1:14:23

the amount that existed from the Younger

1:14:25

Dryas. There's more from the glacial maximum, but

1:14:28

that's 20,000 years ago. We're talking

1:14:30

about 12,000 years ago at the end of the Ice

1:14:32

Age. And so all these

1:14:34

caves on the north of Spain are

1:14:36

only a few miles away from that

1:14:38

Ice Age coastline. So just

1:14:40

short walking distance. Right. So

1:14:43

anything that had been submerged would have

1:14:45

to be within those boundaries. Yeah, exactly.

1:14:48

And there's only a few miles there.

1:14:50

It's not like a huge untapped landscape

1:14:53

to look at, if you see what I mean. Not in the Bay

1:14:55

of Biscay. Not in the Bay of Biscay.

1:14:57

Not in many places. But take the cinder

1:14:59

shelf, for example. Okay. Enormous

1:15:02

amount of submerged material there.

1:15:04

I'm not disputing that

1:15:06

we're going to find

1:15:08

hunter-gatherer sites underwater. I'm simply saying,

1:15:10

and you seem to keep evading

1:15:12

this issue, that not enough has

1:15:14

been done to rule out

1:15:16

the possibility of a lost civilization. There

1:15:19

were hunter-gatherers all over the world during

1:15:21

the Ice Age, and of course we're

1:15:23

going to find hunter-gatherer sites underwater. But

1:15:26

to say that we've done enough

1:15:28

underwater archaeology to rule out the

1:15:30

possibility that something very surprising might

1:15:32

be found underwater, to me is

1:15:34

actually dishonest. There's just not

1:15:36

enough being done. There's not enough being

1:15:38

done in the Sahara. There's not enough

1:15:40

being done in the Amazon. And there's

1:15:43

not been done enough on those 27

1:15:45

million square kilometers of submerged continental shelves.

1:15:47

The whole area between the Malaysian

1:15:50

Peninsula, the Indonesian islands, out

1:15:52

over to New Guinea and Australia,

1:15:55

the submerged cinder shelf and

1:15:57

the Sahel. area

1:16:00

to me is absolutely fascinating and not

1:16:02

enough underwater archaeology has been done there

1:16:04

to rule out the possibility. I'm not

1:16:06

saying that we're not going to find

1:16:08

hunter-gatherer sites, of course we are, but

1:16:10

I'm saying that for archaeology to claim

1:16:12

and to quite

1:16:14

viciously and unpleasantly attack me

1:16:17

for suggesting the possibility that

1:16:19

there might be a lost

1:16:21

civilization, to make that claim

1:16:23

while having failed thus far

1:16:25

to investigate thoroughly the vast

1:16:27

areas of the submerged

1:16:29

continental shelves, the vast areas of the Amazon rainforest,

1:16:31

the vast areas of the Sahara desert that have

1:16:33

not been investigated, that claim is premature and that

1:16:36

claim is disingenuous. But we have thousands of sites

1:16:38

from these areas. I don't care how many sites

1:16:40

you've got. Graham, give me a second. There's 3,000

1:16:42

underwater sites that have been found. Graham, working with

1:16:44

archaeology is working from the known and what we

1:16:47

actually have towards the unknown. And when you say

1:16:49

that we're not investigating these areas, I'm showing you

1:16:51

that we have. We have evidence from all... No,

1:16:53

no, I admit you have. Okay, so let me

1:16:55

explain and share with people. Don't misrepresent me. I'm

1:16:57

not misrepresenting you. You've surveyed

1:17:00

some of those areas, yes. We've surveyed quite

1:17:02

a bit of them and quite a bit of them are online. What do

1:17:04

you mean by quite a bit? How

1:17:06

much of the submerged continental shelves have I seen

1:17:08

in studies? Graham, I'm going to keep showing you

1:17:10

areas that we have evidence for. Why do we

1:17:12

have so much evidence for ephemeral hunter-gatherers but not

1:17:14

evidence from an advanced civilization that is global? That

1:17:17

should leave behind monuments that are far easier to

1:17:19

find. Instead, what we get

1:17:21

are plentiful sites outside and in

1:17:24

caves that show coastal interactions. We

1:17:26

have evidence of these hunter-gatherers interacting

1:17:28

with the coastlines. They're collecting shellfish

1:17:31

and fish. They're turning them into

1:17:33

beads. They turn whale bones into

1:17:36

points to hunt with and to other kinds

1:17:38

of artifacts. And these whale bones and these

1:17:40

shells don't just end up on those coastal

1:17:42

sites. They end up further inland as

1:17:44

well. So we can see all over

1:17:46

the world this kind of coastal interaction.

1:17:48

And it's not just areas like

1:17:51

that. So for example, sea level

1:17:53

rise is not even everywhere. First

1:17:55

off, the southern coast of Crete. I've been

1:17:57

here. Dr. Tom Strasser has shown me around the

1:17:59

site. Very thankfully, I'm very much in debt

1:18:01

to him. This is an area where the

1:18:04

African tectonic plate is moving under the

1:18:06

European tectonic plate, and so the land

1:18:08

is rising faster than the sea level

1:18:10

has risen. And so Tom

1:18:12

specifically targeted it for a survey. He

1:18:14

found dozens of sites, and then

1:18:17

he excavated several of them. What this is,

1:18:19

is this is an uplifted sea cave. It's

1:18:21

a cave that was formed from wave

1:18:23

action, you know, before the

1:18:25

ice age. And then with tectonic uplift,

1:18:28

it raised up many, many, many

1:18:30

meters above the current sea level. And

1:18:32

what did he find? He found a

1:18:34

Stone Age hunter-gatherer camp. He excavated it.

1:18:36

He found obsidian. He found other kinds of lithic

1:18:38

tools. He found animal bones, and he dated it

1:18:41

to right at the end of the ice age,

1:18:43

right? None of that's surprising to me. Okay.

1:18:46

Just addressed by key points. So we can find

1:18:48

this stuff so easily. How much of the submerged

1:18:50

continental shells have actually been investigated by archaeology? It

1:18:52

doesn't matter. It does matter. No, it doesn't. 27

1:18:55

million square kilometers, the size of Europe and

1:18:57

China added together, and you've investigated less than

1:18:59

5% of it. That doesn't

1:19:02

matter. The fact that we found thousands of

1:19:04

these hunter-gatherer sites does not matter. It does matter.

1:19:06

Of course you're going to find them. Of all

1:19:08

the things. That's what I expect to find in

1:19:10

the world. Both things can be

1:19:12

true. Both can be true. Or

1:19:15

we can go to North America, where we have 12,000 different

1:19:18

sites, I think it is, with Clovis

1:19:20

points, and we can see where these

1:19:23

coastlines are. On the eastern seaboard, yes,

1:19:25

there's a large amount of submerged continental

1:19:27

shelf, including the area in Florida where

1:19:29

we saw Jessica Cocayel dived and found

1:19:31

sites. If you look at the western

1:19:34

seaboard, on the other hand, there is

1:19:36

not nearly as much of a submerged

1:19:38

continental shelf. And what's really interesting about

1:19:40

the western seaboard is not only have

1:19:42

we been exploring it for 40-plus years,

1:19:44

and we have multiple sites dating to

1:19:46

this period at the end of the

1:19:48

ice age, sometimes with wood and courting,

1:19:50

other times with stone tools. All of

1:19:52

them hunter-gatherers. One second, Graham. Sure. And

1:19:55

so you mentioned this Clovis First hypothesis,

1:19:57

right? It's been decades. You Bring

1:19:59

up.... Ah, news articles and

1:20:01

headlines that say that still. Been

1:20:03

debunked. That's not what archaeology

1:20:05

is. Our articles ourselves. Don't

1:20:08

say that Our articles and said

1:20:10

present new hypotheses like the Celts

1:20:12

Highway hypothesis. Because the scholars do

1:20:14

not write the headlines for media articles,

1:20:16

I cannot help how journalists portray what

1:20:18

we do okay and so what we're

1:20:20

looking. At is this new migration pathway,

1:20:22

the Kelp Highway hypothesis done by John

1:20:25

Aronson and others. And what we can

1:20:27

do is we can specifically target. Areas

1:20:29

that are above water. So what's happening

1:20:32

along the Pacific Coast north in Canada

1:20:34

is the. Glaciers melting and

1:20:36

that causes. Sea level rise, but

1:20:38

the weight of the glacier. Pushes down

1:20:40

the land so as it melts, there's less weight

1:20:43

on the land and it's hold ice. a static

1:20:45

rebound. So there's a whole chunk of

1:20:47

the Pacific Coast on on earth sorry

1:20:49

alone, Canada whereas above land right now

1:20:51

for us to excavate and people have

1:20:53

been targeting that out of the University

1:20:56

of Victoria, for example, Duncan Mclaren

1:20:58

has found footprints right there on

1:21:00

what is an end of the.

1:21:02

Ice Age coast from about fifteen

1:21:04

thousand years ago. These are footprints

1:21:06

in beach sand from three different

1:21:09

people From this analysis. And so

1:21:11

we can get these ephemeral. Traces of

1:21:13

hunter gatherers moving into the Americas

1:21:15

at this time? Maybe some of

1:21:17

them had lived there for a

1:21:19

few thousand years and we can

1:21:21

target these areas that are above

1:21:23

land that were ice age coast.

1:21:25

Using our knowledge of geology. That

1:21:27

is what we do. It's not that we're necessarily

1:21:29

looking. For one thing or another,

1:21:31

we're targeting areas that are

1:21:34

exposed that we can understand.

1:21:36

Coastal. Interactions at this early time

1:21:38

and whatever we find whether it's

1:21:40

footprints or something else. we work

1:21:42

to publish it and then we put together

1:21:45

clear dates of this to take your feet

1:21:47

in order to get it at high resolution

1:21:49

when these people were walking on this coastline

1:21:51

on this beach if you see what i

1:21:54

mean these three different people right here but

1:21:56

would it how did you feel when tom

1:21:58

delay him is er Tom,

1:22:00

Tom Dilla. Hey was the excavator Monteverde.

1:22:02

How did you feel when he was

1:22:05

describing what was ultimately true? But

1:22:07

was being dismissed and he was Being

1:22:10

shut off and people weren't willing to look

1:22:12

at the data. How do you feel as

1:22:15

an archaeologist? Oh, I think that's complete I

1:22:17

don't mean that what Graham's saying is bullshit

1:22:19

I think it's complete bullshit for any colleagues

1:22:21

of mine that try to shoot down actual

1:22:23

evidence that is ridiculous I'm not trying to

1:22:26

say that all of our kill our archaeology

1:22:28

is like any community of people There includes

1:22:30

some assholes. I have worked with

1:22:32

some assholes before right and so I

1:22:35

I would say though that to represent that as all

1:22:38

of archaeology is kind of silly

1:22:40

because most Archaeologists don't focus on

1:22:42

the peopling of America me I

1:22:44

do ancient Greek research when people

1:22:46

arrive in America does not impact

1:22:48

the research I do for example

1:22:50

all my Greek colleagues all people

1:22:52

that do Chinese archaeology people that

1:22:54

do archaeology of Australia None

1:22:56

of those people really have a horse in

1:22:58

the game for the peopling of America's and

1:23:01

so if there were a few asshole Archaeologists

1:23:03

well, then I condemn them. I think that is a Problem,

1:23:06

you know, and I think that there are

1:23:08

just like in any community of people whether

1:23:10

it's politicians entertainers or in your neighborhood There's

1:23:12

assholes. We should say that that's the wrong

1:23:15

way to be and if those people are

1:23:17

assholes, I think that's a problem Then

1:23:19

you were showing us a picture of Florida.

1:23:22

Yeah recently the the Submarish continental shelf around,

1:23:24

Florida. Mm-hmm Let's go back to that. Sure.

1:23:26

That's why I interrupted you And

1:23:29

apologies for doing that. You're fine. Now. We're

1:23:31

looking at the Florida Peninsula And

1:23:35

just to the right of that we're looking at a large Island

1:23:38

that was above water during the Ice

1:23:41

Age It's

1:23:43

in the light shaded green area. The dark

1:23:45

shaded bit is the island called Andros But

1:23:49

what we're looking at is the Bahama

1:23:51

banks that were above water

1:23:53

during the Ice Age So this might be

1:23:55

a good opportunity to get into the controversial

1:23:58

issue of The

1:24:00

Money which is much one of the

1:24:02

many issues that sir I featured in

1:24:04

Ancient Apocalypse and that I've been a

1:24:07

tax. You mind if I actually send

1:24:09

my Powerpoint first or. Oh. Go

1:24:11

ahead of guys that are his associates or

1:24:13

know you find our mobile go back to Bimini.

1:24:15

Yeah we can get to the money. And

1:24:17

second I do want to point out that right

1:24:19

in downtown Miami, right here is a archaeological

1:24:21

site called Cutler Ridge which also dates to the

1:24:24

under the ice age. It has sells. It

1:24:26

has lithic said has even I think human remains

1:24:28

and it shows that kind of coastal interaction.

1:24:30

Not too far from the I said coast just

1:24:32

a few miles way. I'm sorry the media

1:24:34

images no I don't think I do. I'm sorry

1:24:36

Nord, we could google it if we want

1:24:38

but I do wanna just sort of end. This

1:24:41

little thing by saying that we have

1:24:43

coastal ice age archaeology from around the

1:24:45

world. From Africa, from Asia from Australia,

1:24:47

Us from the Americas. Everywhere you look

1:24:49

there are ice age coastal sites. For

1:24:51

example the set of beads from of

1:24:53

a burial have a child from La

1:24:55

Madeleine. These are marine beads found inland.

1:24:58

They were embroidered into the into the

1:25:00

clothes that as child was buried and

1:25:02

right it's about a seven year old

1:25:04

a little child buried there and say

1:25:06

you get these kind of pictures of

1:25:08

the past of the people that lived.

1:25:10

In this sort of tough terrain

1:25:12

and exploited the coast all over

1:25:15

the world. and so I just

1:25:17

one of really emphasize underwater archaeology

1:25:19

it's we find things for example

1:25:21

like a sea walls off the

1:25:23

coast of Israel trying to combat

1:25:25

the coast level rise that was

1:25:27

happening in the stone age right?

1:25:29

We have lithic artifacts. it's like

1:25:31

on submerged archaeological sites. All over

1:25:33

the world from different periods and

1:25:35

so we really are looking for

1:25:38

this. Not, we're not just finding

1:25:40

shipwrecks and we are finding plentiful

1:25:42

stone age stuff hunter gatherer sites

1:25:44

and it just sort of. It

1:25:46

strikes me is unbelievable that we

1:25:48

have so many thousands of sites

1:25:50

that that show coastal interactions that

1:25:52

the under the ice age from

1:25:54

these hunter gatherers. but we have

1:25:56

no evidence of a Lhasa advanced

1:25:58

civilizations that strikes. There's maybe this doesn't

1:26:01

disprove it, but it makes it very, very

1:26:03

hard to swallow of you see what I

1:26:05

mean because nobody really understands how much archaeology

1:26:07

we have. We have a lot these days.

1:26:10

It is a study of big data. It's

1:26:12

not a study of just going to one

1:26:14

site after another. It's about aggregating this to

1:26:17

understand how people were living at the past

1:26:19

and sometimes zoom in to get pictures of

1:26:21

individual people and how they survived. To

1:26:24

draw I have to repeat myself, say

1:26:27

about whether Whitworth we're looking at some

1:26:29

feminists less than five percent of the

1:26:31

continental shelves the have been as tall

1:26:34

as he. I'm not surprised that we

1:26:36

find hunter gatherer traces underwater. I'm very

1:26:38

glad that we do, I would. It

1:26:40

was very surprised if we didn't. The

1:26:43

what I'm saying is that not enough

1:26:45

of that twenty seven million square kilometers

1:26:47

has been investigated. Only a tiny fraction

1:26:50

has been investigated. And that fraction is

1:26:52

not enough to draw the conclusion. That

1:26:54

we can absolutely says I was no lost

1:26:56

civilization. Same goes for the Amazon rainforest, Same

1:26:58

goes for the so hard to to put

1:27:01

can we say there's no evidence for an

1:27:03

advanced civilization and what they have started. In

1:27:05

what they have studied, yes we can say there's

1:27:07

no evidence for an advanced civilizations, but that's that.

1:27:10

Brings us to another issue of what

1:27:12

is studies and what is not studied

1:27:14

by archaeology which which we could get

1:27:16

into but I've we will get into

1:27:18

but i would like to go back

1:27:20

to since. In. Dyson map

1:27:22

of a day or of him and his

1:27:24

here. And

1:27:27

the. We. Just.

1:27:33

beneath the compass rose there you can

1:27:35

can we highlight that somehow down here

1:27:37

that that that the submerged bahama banks

1:27:39

the grab our banks here on them

1:27:41

now that was a big island above

1:27:44

water during the ice ages is actually

1:27:46

stayed above water until about six thousand

1:27:48

nine hundred years ago so let's just

1:27:50

talk because i know bimini has been

1:27:52

a very controversial issue i don't know

1:27:55

it's a controversial issue for you but

1:27:57

certainly for a large number of your

1:27:59

colleagues The suggestion that the so-called

1:28:01

Bimini Road is a man-made artifact

1:28:04

has been mocked and laughed

1:28:06

at a great deal. I'm not

1:28:08

sure if mocked is right, but I've definitely heard

1:28:10

it's a geological sand beach. It's the beach sand.

1:28:13

Can we see it? Are you

1:28:15

familiar with the

1:28:19

general work that's been done at Bimini? I

1:28:23

am not a geologist, so

1:28:25

I'll go with no. But

1:28:28

I've heard from other geologists that

1:28:30

it is definitely not man-made. Okay.

1:28:33

Well, can I put my HDMI?

1:28:36

I've got

1:28:38

so many different pairs of

1:28:40

glasses here. It's really crazy.

1:28:44

Bimini inundation. Yes,

1:28:47

I just want to say I worked with Dr.

1:28:49

Glenn Mill, who's a

1:28:51

leading geologist studying marine archaeology.

1:28:58

This is the Piri Rees map. And

1:29:02

I changed my glasses yet again. I'll tell you, old

1:29:05

age is a bitch. So

1:29:08

it's this map that I'm interested in.

1:29:10

It's this large island, and

1:29:12

the possibility that that large island

1:29:15

was depicted on, as it looked during the

1:29:17

last ice age, that it is the submerged

1:29:19

Bahama banks, and that running up the middle

1:29:21

of it is a depiction

1:29:24

of the so-called Bimini

1:29:26

Road. Now I'm

1:29:28

showing, as it looks

1:29:30

today, top left, where

1:29:33

the Bimini Islands are, and the

1:29:35

island of Andros. If you

1:29:37

go back 4,800 years, bottom

1:29:40

left, you can see that

1:29:42

the Grand Bahama banks were submerged. But up until

1:29:44

6,900 years ago, they were above water. And

1:29:49

12,400 years ago, they were above water. And

1:29:52

I must say that looks very much to me like

1:29:55

the island that's depicted on the Piri Rees

1:29:57

map. This is Glenn Milne. with

1:30:00

me on the inundation maps

1:30:02

from my 2002 book, Underworld.

1:30:05

I think you have to agree that he's a

1:30:07

very major expert in the field. And

1:30:13

these inundation maps that

1:30:16

he has given us

1:30:18

are a very accurate representation. And those

1:30:20

original maps, the ancient ones, how old

1:30:22

are they? That's the 1513

1:30:24

Piri Reis map, which

1:30:27

was based on more than 20 older source

1:30:29

maps, as he tells us on

1:30:31

his own handwriting. We only have a fragment of

1:30:33

the map. It's full of inaccuracies and problems. But

1:30:36

I'm just... You know what would convince me? What? So

1:30:39

I used to do a lot of GIS for archaeological

1:30:41

projects where I'd take historical maps and I'd try to

1:30:43

line them up with actual terrain like satellite imagery and

1:30:45

stuff like that. You should work on

1:30:47

geo-rectifying these maps to see how they line up

1:30:49

in real space. Because right now what I see, I

1:30:51

have to squint to see if it looks right

1:30:54

or not. And so I think working with

1:30:56

something like a GIS expert to geo-rectify this

1:30:58

stuff and show how actually accurate it would

1:31:00

be, where you could actually statistically measure that,

1:31:02

would make it a lot more convincing in

1:31:04

my mind. No, that's a very

1:31:06

good idea, Flint. Thank you. Can

1:31:08

we see images of the Bimini Road itself?

1:31:11

I'll show you a couple of slides if

1:31:16

I can put this up. Ah,

1:31:22

come on. And

1:31:26

that's me diving on the Bimini Road. And

1:31:33

so these are arranged in what fashion?

1:31:35

I see the small segments of it.

1:31:37

No, there's a huge extensive area. It

1:31:39

runs for about more than half a

1:31:42

mile right off the

1:31:44

coast of Bimini of these blocks. Now,

1:31:48

what I want to get to here is

1:31:51

the suggestion that this is totally

1:31:53

a natural site. You're

1:31:56

not familiar at all with the work that's been done on this,

1:31:58

Flint? It's not. my expertise now.

1:32:03

Because if you read the literature,

1:32:05

you'll find that archaeologists

1:32:08

constantly refer to

1:32:11

work that was done by

1:32:13

Eugene Shin and

1:32:17

a couple of other geologists arguing

1:32:19

that, a, the moon you wrote is

1:32:21

totally natural, and b, that it's pretty

1:32:23

young. It's only 3,000 years old or so.

1:32:28

This is an area where there's

1:32:30

a real problem, because

1:32:33

in the literature on that,

1:32:35

archaeologists cite the 1980 and

1:32:37

later work of Eugene Shin,

1:32:40

which itself cites his 1978 article. But

1:32:46

1978 article is very hard to find. I

1:32:49

had to do a lot of work to

1:32:51

get hold of it, and I did. And

1:32:53

actually the 1978 article contradicts almost everything that's

1:32:55

said in the 1980 and

1:32:58

later articles. The

1:33:00

whole authority for,

1:33:04

are there any artifacts from the Bimini Road? Because

1:33:07

I've excavated road surfaces and I've done a

1:33:09

lot of artifacts. But let

1:33:11

me just play you again, Jamie, I guess I'll have

1:33:13

to airdrop this to you. Let me just play you

1:33:15

a little clip from Eugene Shin, upon

1:33:18

whose authority the

1:33:20

Bimini Road is being dismissed as

1:33:23

totally natural and very recent. Could

1:33:26

we airdrop this, Jamie? And

1:33:31

then I'd like to show you what a road surface

1:33:33

looks like under excavation afterwards. From

1:33:35

a project I work on in Romania. So

1:33:43

this is the guy whose work on

1:33:45

Bimini is used by archaeology to dismiss

1:33:48

it as a, totally natural and be

1:33:50

totally recent. So we would hope that he would

1:33:52

be an honest person,

1:33:54

that he wouldn't disguise his

1:33:56

own findings from an earlier period of time. How

1:33:58

do I play it? Oh

1:34:01

you play it okay and

1:34:03

this is just a little clip from Eugene Shin. Yeah

1:34:06

well I remember when I first met you I was

1:34:08

a film grantor who speaks at the presence

1:34:10

and I remember running into you and you were carved

1:34:12

in this stone statue and somebody

1:34:15

asked you what you're doing with it and you said

1:34:17

you were taking it over the Bahamas and throwing overboard

1:34:19

and hoping that you sheep would find it.

1:34:23

So I don't know if you've followed up

1:34:26

on that. Well someone told me they saw

1:34:28

it in a magazine somewhere but I kept

1:34:30

waiting for you know something that really happened.

1:34:36

The guy who's planting artifacts on the Bimini

1:34:38

Road is the main

1:34:40

authority that is used to dismiss the

1:34:42

Bimini Road as a man-made structure. Did

1:34:45

he actually do that

1:34:47

or was he just joking around about it?

1:34:49

Not clear I think joking about it would

1:34:51

be in very bad taste as well. Yeah

1:34:53

and especially referring to the sheep who

1:34:56

think that it might be. Well it's

1:34:59

certainly not a scientific approach. It's not it's to

1:35:01

my mind it's not a scientific approach at all.

1:35:03

I think this is the moment where I'm

1:35:05

gonna do my sort of second major

1:35:07

presentation. Do you mind if I quickly show some

1:35:09

images of a roadsurf? Yeah please. I'm very happy

1:35:12

for you to do that. Jamie do you mind

1:35:14

showing an HDMI? I'd like to see better images

1:35:16

of Bimini Road maybe you know. Jamie there's

1:35:18

loads of images of Bimini Road on the

1:35:20

on the net. In

1:35:23

Romania we did a series of magnetometry

1:35:25

surveys this is called histria it's sometimes

1:35:27

referred to as the Romanian Pompeii and

1:35:29

so to ground truth our magnetometry survey

1:35:32

we opened up trenches to find these

1:35:34

Roman roads and so what you see

1:35:36

when you look at Roman

1:35:38

roads is you see pottery in the packing

1:35:40

of it you see animal bones in fact

1:35:43

they specifically use these complete toe

1:35:45

foot bones from cattle and

1:35:47

horses and amphoratos, amphora these

1:35:49

kind ceramic vessels

1:35:51

used to transport wine and olive oil

1:35:53

and things like that as drainage and

1:35:56

so you know as you dig into

1:35:58

a road surface you expect to find

1:36:00

this kind of material everywhere. I've excavated

1:36:02

roads in Greece, in Italy, and in

1:36:04

Romania. And how old are these roads?

1:36:06

These are from, this is about 2,000

1:36:08

years ago. Yeah. And

1:36:11

so this is the kind of packing that

1:36:13

you get. You get plentiful artifacts associated with

1:36:15

roads all the time. And there's

1:36:18

no reason, I could see maybe the

1:36:20

animal bones not preserving underwater, but ceramics

1:36:22

preserve really well. Those thousands

1:36:24

and thousands of shipwrecks that we've excavated, most

1:36:26

of what we find is the wood from

1:36:29

the ship and then ceramic vessels. And

1:36:31

so that survives. Ceramic is virtually indestructible

1:36:33

once it's high fired. And

1:36:35

so this is the kind of stuff that we

1:36:38

find alongside road surfaces and we find it everywhere

1:36:40

in the world. And

1:36:42

at Bimini, how much searching have they

1:36:44

done looking for things like that? A

1:36:46

great deal of work has been

1:36:48

done by amateurs who archaeologists have

1:36:50

poured really most unpleasant

1:36:53

scorn on for several

1:36:55

decades. And that work has,

1:36:58

in my view, been highly valuable and has

1:37:00

been worthwhile doing. I don't claim that the

1:37:03

Bimini Road is a road. That's just what

1:37:05

it's referred to these days. I

1:37:07

do claim that it's a very large megalithic

1:37:09

structure, which was submerged by

1:37:12

rising sea levels. So calling it

1:37:14

a road is an unfortunate term. You can't compare

1:37:16

it to this road. We don't know what it

1:37:18

is. But what it is, is a series of

1:37:20

megalithic blocks laid out side by side. But see

1:37:22

better images of it, perhaps something more that

1:37:24

gives you the scale of it. There's

1:37:27

a problem with looking at things up close.

1:37:29

Yeah. And can I just give a quick

1:37:31

shout out to UT Austin, which directs that project in Romania?

1:37:34

Yeah. Yeah. And Rabinowitz, UT Austin,

1:37:36

you guys rock. Shout out. Okay. So

1:37:39

that looks crazy man-made. That

1:37:43

last image though, go back to that last one. That's

1:37:46

crazy. I mean, that is, how big

1:37:48

are these stones? They

1:37:50

weigh a couple of tons each. They're about 12

1:37:52

feet long on one side by about 15 feet

1:37:55

long on the other. They're fairly uniform in size.

1:37:57

They're fairly uniform in size in many cases. contrary

1:38:00

has been claimed. In

1:38:02

many cases, they are propped up on

1:38:04

other blocks underneath them. There

1:38:07

are multiple layers and in many cases

1:38:09

the bedding planes do not in fact

1:38:11

slope as one would expect if this

1:38:13

were natural, they're horizontal and

1:38:15

this is one of the things that's been missed in the geological

1:38:19

literature. But

1:38:21

go to the one in the upper left-hand corner

1:38:23

Jamie, please. You

1:38:27

know I'm just looking for some proof

1:38:29

here. Things look cool, I get that,

1:38:31

but it's like a question of how

1:38:33

do we tell the difference between man-made

1:38:35

and natural and

1:38:37

that's not easy and I've never really again

1:38:39

seen architecture like this. We don't see stuff

1:38:41

like this on the sites that Graham goes

1:38:43

to in ancient apocalypse for example. It doesn't

1:38:46

look like this. If it's the same culture

1:38:48

at those places, we'd expect to see more

1:38:50

sites that look like this. We're

1:38:52

dealing with completely different parts of the world,

1:38:55

correct? Yeah, which is my point that it's

1:38:57

not all one culture. Yeah, I agree. So

1:38:59

this one is fascinating. Look at that one.

1:39:02

That doesn't intrigue you. You don't

1:39:04

look at that and go wow that really looks man-made.

1:39:06

I think it looks really cool but again, I've

1:39:09

seen a lot of it. But if you knew

1:39:11

for sure that was man-made, wouldn't

1:39:14

that sync up? If

1:39:16

you knew for sure, if this had been dated

1:39:19

and everyone knew where this came from and you

1:39:21

saw this and this was from an archaeological site

1:39:23

that was well known and established, you would look

1:39:25

at that and say yes, that

1:39:27

fits that. If we wouldn't look at

1:39:29

that, if it was in

1:39:32

a well-known archaeological site and say

1:39:34

oh this piece is man-made, all

1:39:36

the other stuff is clearly natural.

1:39:39

I mean look, to me I don't see anything that

1:39:41