The Diary of a CEOArchaeology WARNING: They Secretly Found Antarctica 300 Years Before Us! - Graham Hancock
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
105 min read · 21,170 words- 0:00 – 2:38
Intro
- GHGraham Hancock
This could be the last time I speak about myself, my work, because there's a chance that I might not make it off the operating table this month, and a journalist who has very bad blood towards me has been trying to publish a story on me for more than two years now, and it will come out in the next month or two, and I didn't want that to be the last word on my life. [laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
What do you want the last word of your life to be?
- GHGraham Hancock
I'm here to communicate about the possibility of a major forgotten episode in human story. I'm talking about a lost civilization .
- SBSteven Bartlett
So most people think civilization started six thousand years ago?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But you believe there's strong evidence that there could have been a previous civilization-
- GHGraham Hancock
Twenty thousand years ago, and I'm going to present the evidence for that here, Steven. And it suggests a golden age where there was no violence, no cruelty, where great healers and sages were at work. They're extremely sophisticated. However, if you follow the myths further, as I've done, you find something odd happens. You find that they stepped away from the original purity and become a culture that begins to impose its power on others around the world. And then sewn into those myths is scientific information which record a gigantic cataclysm all but wiping out the human race.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If what you're saying is true, what does that mean for our lives? I guess also our future.
- GHGraham Hancock
Well, there's always this feeling in the myth that we brought this upon ourselves, and when I look at our civilization today, I see a civilization that ticks all the mythological boxes for the next lost civilization, and that we are most likely to be the cause of that cataclysm ourselves unless we wake up.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Graham Hancock, what will you care about on your last day?
- GHGraham Hancock
Most of all...
- SBSteven Bartlett
This is super interesting to me. My team give me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe, and some of you have told us, according to this, that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here, to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you wanna hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of The Diary Of A CEO, and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show.
- 2:38 – 6:38
Do Humans Have A Hidden Past?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Graham Hancock, I guess the first question I wanted to ask you is what is it you've committed the last more than thirty years of your life to understanding?
- GHGraham Hancock
What it is is a pu- a puzzle. I'm puzzled by aspects of the human past. There could be, and I think there's a lot to suggest there was, a major forgotten episode in the human story. That's why I refer to us as a species with amnesia. When I use that phrase, I need to give credit to Immanuel Velikovsky, who wrote a book called Mankind in Amnesia. I think we are a species with amnesia. I think we have forgotten something very important in our own past. And when I turn to the experts, I find much of what they say very interesting and very useful, but some of what they say extremely unsatisfactory and, and not responding to the problems that, that I have in the past. And that's led me to, to take my own approach to the past, to look at that and, and to offer, uh, readers, 'cause I'm mainly an author, occasionally make TV shows, to offer them an alternative point of view, which is rational and, and, and solidly based, but which is contrary to key aspects of the mainstream narrative. We only have decipherable written scripts from the last five and a half thousand years maximum. Before that, we don't have any, any writing that we can, at any rate, read. Go back ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty thousand years, all you can base it on from an archaeological point of view is what they can dig out of the ground. And I think what they're missing, the ancients did leave us memories of what they went through. We have myths and traditions and scriptures from all around the world which record a gigantic cataclysm affecting the human race and all but wiping out the human race. Everybody knows the story of the flood of Noah, of course. The flood of Noah is just an one example of hundreds like that of stories from around the world. Uh, archeologists pour scorn on Plato's story of Atlantis, uh, but Atlantis is another of those stories that remembers a global flood that wiped out a former era of existence, leaving only a few survivors. And the archaeological response to them is, "There was a local river flood. They exaggerated it. It was a big deal for them, so they said it happened to the whole world." And I'm sick of archeologists saying that. This is the memory banks of our species. This is the record, the only record we have of a period before six thousand years ago, and we shouldn't despise it and scorn it as primitive superstition. We should say, "What can we find in here that we can coordinate with scientific facts that we're aware of? Let's see if there's something to this," rather than just dismissing it. Many of these myths contain imagery and a series of numbers. A very important academic study published in the nineteen sixties, a book called Hamlet's Mill-By Giorgio de Santillana, professor of the History of Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Hertha von Dechend, professor of History of Science. This is not me speaking. This is major, major historians of science in the 1960s. They found encoded in those myths, numbers and imagery that could only relate to one thing, and that's an obscure astronomical phenomenon called the precession of the equinoxes. I'm not gonna go into the technical details.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
But to observe it and to record it and to predict it, to predict its effects in the future, involves very precise astronomical observations maintained over a very long period of time, hundreds and hundreds of years at least. So here we have myths of a global cataclysm. There is just so much else. There are ancient maps that show the world as it looked during the Ice Age, again, dismissed as just total coincidence and not significant by archaeology. I feel that archaeology has failed miserably in providing a nurturing, satisfying answer to the questions we all have.
- 6:38 – 11:29
Did A Global Cataclysm Reset Humanity?
- SBSteven Bartlett
So when you say g- global c- cataclysm-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... what does that mean? It means that some- something hit the planet. There was... We were wiped out?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. There, there, there are a number of options, and again, I, I need to stress this because, because there's so much propaganda in this business, I'll be immediately accused of lunatic fringe. The solid science that's been done on this, uh, is twofold. One aspect of it, the one that I think is... I find most persuasive, is called the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, and this is a mainstream hypothesis, but it is severely criticized within academia. The hypothesis is that about 20,000 years ago, a very large comet came in from deep space and went into orbit around the sun. This would be a comet of the diameter of 100 kilometers, maybe 200. Comes in, gets captured by the sun's gravity, goes into an orbit. That orbit crosses the orbit of the Earth. While you're dealing with one large object, the chances of getting hit are extremely low. It would be very bad if you did, but very low. Trouble is, nobody disputes this. Once comets are caught by the gravitational field of a very large planet or of a sun, they start to break up into multiple parts, and this is what happened to the Younger Dryas comet. Instead of being a single bullet, it became a shotgun blast. It became thousands and thousands of objects, of which we've cataloged quite a lot, numbers of them. Comet Encke is the best-known bit of that former comet. Many of the academics look at this, think that Comet Encke, which is about six kilometers in diameter and which does cross the orbit of the Earth, they think that, uh, that was the source comet. But whereas the other team are saying, "No, that's a bit of the source comet. There were many other bits as well." And 12,800 years ago, 12,860 approximately, the Earth went into a storm of these fragments, none of them big enough to compare with the object that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But all over the world, the Earth is turning. This stuff comes in. They found it in the West Coast of North America, they found it in Belgium, and they found it as far east as Syria. So it's like the Earth turns, and this stuff is just coming in. Most of it is blowing up in the air. It isn't even hitting the ground. But an airburst from an object that might be 100 meters in diameter is equivalent to a very substantial nuclear blast. So their argument is the Earth was hit by a comet storm, and this, they then argue, and I think they're right, uh, explains what happened then. Because 12,800 years ago, we were still in the Ice Age, uh, but the Earth was coming out of the Ice Age. In fact, for about 1,000, maybe 2,000 years before that, the Earth had been getting warmer, getting quite nice, and you would normally expect that to continue. But then suddenly, 12,800 years ago, give or take 60 years, there's a huge interruption. There's a radical change. The Earth, instead of warming, it suddenly goes back into a massive deep freeze, and this is the time when all the famous big animals of the Ice Age, the megafauna, are wiped out. The, the woolly mammoths, the mastodons, the giant sloths, these things are, like, 14 feet tall. You know, they're all, they're all wiped out in that window around about 12,800 years ago. And most important of all is a very mysterious sea level rise that occurs then. This you would not expect when the Earth is entering a cold phase. Normally, when the Earth enters a cold phase, ice accumulates on the existing ice caps. It doesn't melt and go into the sea. So the next thing is, how do we explain this sudden rise in sea levels at the beginning of Younger Dryas? It shouldn't have happened. The comet theory explains it perfectly. The, the, the mass, the impact, the heat, the airbursts, that would've been enough to send the ice sheets into meltdown and to cause this pulse of meltwater. Then the freeze sets in. You have about 1,200 years of freezing, desperately cold conditions, and then again, 11,600 years ago, whoomph, it suddenly warms up. I mean, these are radical climate changes. They're beyond anything that's happening now. And, uh, I, I think explanations are needed for them, and because 12,800 years ago may sound a long time ago, but it's really yesterday-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm
- GHGraham Hancock
... in the human story. Uh, so something very big happened to the Earth and happened to our ancestors 12,800 years ago. If it wasn't a comet, another theory that's been put forward is a radical change in solar activity. This might have been involved with it as well. I don't find that as persuasive as the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. And, you know, maybe some other explanation will come up. But what nobody disputes is that the Younger Dryas was a catastrophe, uh, it was global, uh, and, and it had huge effects.
- 11:29 – 12:37
Why Have This Conversation Now?
- SBSteven Bartlett
You, um, you chose intentionally to come and have this conversation-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... today. Why today?
- GHGraham Hancock
Well, I've been quite unwell, really noticeably unwell, since, uh, January, February, uh, this year, part- particularly veryVery short of breath. It's, it's because the, one of the failed valves in my, my heart is, um, causing blood to regurgitate inside the heart rather than pumping it through the body, and that means that oxygenated blood is not getting to my lungs. I probably would live another two or three years without the surgery, may- maybe even five, but the quality of life would be very low. I, I can't even walk up three stairs without being, being exhausted at the moment. So I've definitely decided to, to have the surgery. Why am I doing this interview now rather than postponing it until after the surgery and I've recovered? Well, there's a tiny chance, absolutely minuscule chance, that I might not make it off the operating table.
- SBSteven Bartlett
This month?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah, this month. And if that were the case, uh, this would be the last time I've spoken about myself, my work, my life, challenges I've faced, uh, in an open forum like this. And, and, and I, I, I
- 12:37 – 14:55
Why Is Your Work So Controversial?
- GHGraham Hancock
choose to do that, and I'm gonna say specifically why, without giving-- without mentioning names. I choose to do that because a journalist, uh, who has very bad blood towards me, has been trying to publish a story on me for more than two years now. Uh, and it will come out in the next, in the next month or two, and I didn't want that to be the last word on my life. [chuckles] That's why I'm here, Steven.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What do you want the last word of your life to be?
- GHGraham Hancock
I would, I would hope that people will come to understand that I'm not the person that a very small minority of archeologists have mobilized social media to present me as. I'm not a grifter. I'm not a hoaxer. I'm not a con man. I'm deeply committed to this. I've devoted my life to it for more than, for more than thirty years. I'm passionate about it. It matters to me. And I think, again, I'll be laughed at for saying this, but I feel called to do this. I feel, I, I feel it's my obligation and my responsibility to do this.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How is that disputed? 'Cause I, I guess I need to understand-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... human history to understand why the, the, the fundamental belief that you have that there was a civilization that we aren't talking about.
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm. I, I'd like to be clear, it's not a belief. Um, this is another, it's a mi- mistake that my, that my critics of- often make. They, they, they think that I'm dealing with some sort of belief system or some sort of cult here. No, I'm not. I'm, I'm just puzzled. I'm just puzzled by the past, and I'm puzzled by the memories that have been passed down to us, and I'm puzzled that those memories concur all around the world on a serious cataclysmic event.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is it that the-- your, people that aren't puzzled and are certain believe?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah, they think that, um, glacial lakes in North America, uh, gradually grew in size and overspilled the ice dams that held them in place, and that the, um, water from those lakes, some of it went into the Atlantic Ocean and cut the Gulf Stream. I don't dispute that. Glacial lakes were involved, but those lakes were filled up at a r- massive speed. Nobody disputes that the Younger Dryas was a cataclysmic event. It's just the, the degree of the cataclysm that's disputed and what caused it that's disputed.
- 14:55 – 18:59
How Old Is Humanity Really?
- SBSteven Bartlett
But everyone agrees that humans are three hundred-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yes
- SBSteven Bartlett
... fifteen thousand years old?
- GHGraham Hancock
I mean, at present. When I started on this quest back, back in the late eighties, early nineties, it was felt that anatomically modern human beings had not existed for more than fifty thousand years. Very recent, really.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
But this turned out to be complete rubbish, because anatomically modern humans are much older than fifty thousand years ago. We have a hundred and ninety-six thousand year old anatomically modern human remains from Ethiopia. And then finally, three hundred and fifteen thousand years ago, a recent find in, um, Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, uh, again, anatomically modern humans. So we can say that if we define ourselves by our anatomy, uh, brain size, capacity of the skull, if we define ourselves in those ways, we've been around for at least three hundred and fifteen thousand years, and probably much longer. That's, that's just an accident of discovery, and that's one of the things that puzzles me. If we're anatomically modern, if we've got all the modern kit, if we've got the same brains, we've got the same neurology, everything is there, why do we wait more than three hundred thousand years to establish something recognizable as a human civilization? Why do we wait so long? We got all the kit. There's evidence that, that our ancestors were aware of agriculture, just chose not to use it much, much, much earlier than that. The complex of events that leads to a city-based civilization, which is the kind of civilization we have now all over the world, that you can only really trace that back to six thousand years ago. Yes, you can say that before six thousand years ago, there was build-up to what became the high civilizations. But my question is, why not much earlier? Why, why, why did we wait until that moment? And, and I don't find a satisfactory answer to that question, except perhaps we didn't wait. Perhaps we're missing part of our story. And when I say a lost civilization, I do not mean a civilization like ours. I do not mean an industrial civilization. I don't mean they had cell phones or flew to the moon or any of that bullshit. I think they were a very different civilization from ours. But they had conquered a number of peaks, and one of those peaks was navigation and ocean seafaring, hence the survival of maps, which show the world as it looked during the Ice Age. And another was astronomy. Uh, and another really important breakthrough evidenced by, by the ancient maps, p- particularly a category of maps called the portolanos, um, is accurate relative longitudes. This is the Orentius Finnaeus map. It shows Antarctica, uh, right there. Uh, and, and, um, th- this is interesting because this map was drawn in 1531.Uh, the problem is that our civilization didn't discover Antarctica until 1820. So its appearance on a map drawn in 1521, particularly when we know that the map was based on older source maps, and the mapmaker tells us in his own legend that he has uncovered material previously hidden in darkness. When we find that, uh, we have to begin to wonder what is, uh, what is going on here. Had somebody found Antarctica long before, long before we did, uh, and mapped it with extremely accurate relative longitudes. And that's important because our civilization didn't crack the longitude problem until the mid-18th century. What that meant was that if you're on a vessel sailing west or east, uh, you might be three hundred miles closer to a coastline than you think you are, and suddenly you're on it in the night and you're dead. Once you've got longitude worked out, you know exactly where you are. We didn't get that until 1750, 1760s, thereabouts, with Harrison's chronometer. So finding good longitudes on very ancient maps is another puzzle that I don't think
- 18:59 – 20:16
The Evidence Behind The Lost Comet Theory
- GHGraham Hancock
archaeology solved.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So you think there could have been a civilization 20,000 years ago, which was before this Young Dryas moment-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... where, um-- I mean, I've got this photo here, which I'll throw up on the screen.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Which I think you say is evidence that something took place.
- GHGraham Hancock
It, it is. That's, that's the Younger Dryas boundary. Uh, and I'm with Alan West, who's one of the scientists from the, from the Comet Research Group. We're working on the Younger Dryas hypothesis, and our hands are on that black stripe running through the middle of the draw, and that is soot. That is evidence of wildfires burning. Uh, it's full of nanodiamonds, tiny little diamonds, microscopic size, which are a classic product of comet impacts, uh, microspherules, some platinum, some iridium, all signatures of a cometary impact. And there it is. It's about five inches thick. That layer is the Younger Dryas boundary layer. It dates to 12,800 years ago.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So for anyone that can't see, it's just like a slice of earth, and there's this black line going through-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... through the earth.
- GHGraham Hancock
We're in a draw here where a river has cut a channel, and it's exposed the sides of the channel, and on the sides of the channel, we can see this black stripe running through, and that is precisely the Younger Dryas boundary.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And the current hypothesis is, from a lot of archaeologists, is there wasn't a human civilization before this point 12,000 years ago.
- GHGraham Hancock
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But you believe there's strong evidence that there could have been.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yes.
- 20:16 – 23:19
What Truly Defines A Civilization?
- SBSteven Bartlett
So civilization then, in your definition of the word, how do you define that? A group of people gathering and working together?
- GHGraham Hancock
Fundamentally, it involves, it involves the willing organization or the unwilling organization of labor. If you look at a site like Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, we have it on our timeline here somewhere. It's 11,600 years old. Uh, this is really an, an extraordinary site. It's a, it's a very sophisticated site. It's very large. It consists of large T-shaped megaliths that can weigh up to twenty tons. There are precise astronomical alignments in it. Uh, this was not done by two or three people working together. This was... Well, that's the Göbekli Tepe today, covered by a, a modern canopy to keep, uh, fair enough, to keep the, the weather off it, because it was previously deliberately buried by its builders. Um, but of course, there's much more around. Hundreds and hundreds more pillars are still underground. We know they're there because of ground-penetrating radar, but they've not been excavated yet. So, so this was a major project. And interestingly, the people who built Göbekli Tepe, at that-- at the time Göbekli Tepe began, there was no agriculture happening there. They were all hunter-gatherers.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- GHGraham Hancock
Nevertheless, they did something that archaeologists used to say hunter-gatherers couldn't do. They organized themselves. They made a huge project. They implemented it, and they delivered it, and Göbekli Tepe's not alone. It's one of dozens of sites like that all over An- Anatolia in, in, in Turkey. This was a highly organized, sophisticated hunter-gatherer civilization that was involved in making this place.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm, I'm, I'm a little bit confused. So if the Ice Age ended 11,700 years ago-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and Göbekli Tepe is 11,600 years ago-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that means there's a hundred-year gap between the end of the Ice Age and something as sophisticated as Göbekli Tepe.
- GHGraham Hancock
Not exactly.
- SBSteven Bartlett
No?
- GHGraham Hancock
Because, because dates in this frame, th- they're not spot-on accurate dates. Some will say the Ice Age ended 11,600. Some will say it ended 11,700 years ago. But the fact is that in this window, the world was warming up again. It was getting better. And that's when this project was, was created. And the mystery is, mystery for, for archaeologists anyway, is that it was hunter-gatherers. And archaeologists are now having to come to terms with that. You see, the idea was you had to have an agricultural community first in order to create projects like this, because that allows people to become specialists. W-- If you generate a food surplus that you can rely on, then you can take people with certain skills and say, "Focus on that. Become an astronomer, become an architect, become an engineer, and we'll support you in doing that." That was the idea, and that was why it was felt that something like Göbekli Tepe couldn't be built until about 6,000 years ago when there was widespread agriculture. But that turned out not to be true. Uh, it was built by hunter-gatherers, but within a thousand years of it being built, agriculture becomes present in that whole area.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
Origins of agriculture are definitely earlier than we've, than we've been taught.
- 23:19 – 24:38
Did Humans Survive The Ice Age?
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, uh, it's f- funny because I, I don't know a lot about the Ice Age, but humans survived the Ice Age?
- GHGraham Hancock
Oh, God, yes. We, we, we, we did. It's just, it's just, um... Where do you want to be during an ice age? That's the question.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What are my options?
- GHGraham Hancock
If you were a rational being, which most human beings are, you would immediately exclude Northern Europe.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
Absolutely no point in being in that frozen, miserable wilderness.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
You'd immediately exclude the northern part of North America, too. No point in being there. It's just horrible at that time. Siberia, pretty rough. No, you'd look for the tropics. You'd go, you'd go down close to the equator. You'd go to the places that weren't-Affected by the Ice Age that were actually the best real estate on Earth. That's where you'd go. That's why, uh, if we are looking for a missing episode in the human story, we're wasting our time looking for it in Northern Europe or North America. Uh, we should be looking for it in Mexico. We should be looking for it in India. We should be looking for it in Indonesia. We should be looking for it, uh, around Papua New Guinea. All of these areas that were, that were really great places to live during the Ice Age. That's, that's the kind of place that the sort of civilization I'm talking about could have thrived.
- 24:38 – 28:24
What Were Early Humans Really Like?
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is the different-- You know, 'cause on here it says the earliest known humans were 300,000 odd years ago.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is the difference between these humans 300,000 years ago and the civilization you're describing 20,000 years ago that you believe existed?
- GHGraham Hancock
Apart from what is perhaps wrongly described as a slight refinement in human features, natural selection operating on what humans perceive as beauty, I don't know, but otherwise the same.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The same?
- GHGraham Hancock
The same. Yeah, yeah. And again, that's not, that's not disputed. Nobody's saying that Jebel Irhoud human beings were somehow different from us. They're anatomically modern humans.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But how did they live, um, versus your definition of a civ- civilization?
- GHGraham Hancock
Uh, they lived a simple hunter-gatherer life.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay. In small groups.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. But somehow, around 11,600 years ago, people started accumulating monuments that can only be made with large groups and organized, organized labor. You've got to, you, you have to have a system. You have to have a pla- ... You can't build something like Göbekli Tepe without planning it out in advance. You've got to draw it out somehow. There has to be a plan. It's not something you just wing. Uh, so, so there has to-- There, there's a missing background to all of that, which bothers me.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And again, so most people think civilization started, what, 6,000 years ago?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yes. That would, that would be when civilizations become archaeologically visible. So you have, uh, ancient Sumer, Mesopotamia, uh, which roughly 3,500... I'm gonna use BC because everybody's familiar with that. Roughly 3,500 BC, which is 5,500 years ago, approximately, we start seeing cities being built. We start seeing the beginnings of writing taking place. Round about the same time, the same thing is happening in Egypt. Maybe a couple of hundred years later, but the new work that's being done in Egypt is pushing Egypt much closer to, to Sumer, narrowing that, that window. Effectively, you can say that these two civilizations become archaeologically visible at the same time, and, uh, they're, they're not alone because on the other side of the world in Peru, uh, there's a civilization now recognized called the Caral-Supe civilization, which built pyramids, uh, which also goes back 5,500 years. Uh, and, and this is one of the mysteries I'm, I'm looking at now is, is why we have these apparently coincidental emergence of high civilizations in the same window, uh, all around the world. Indus Valley Civilization, roughly the same, 5,000 years old. Yeah, we're looking at, uh, Caral here, I think. Yeah, yeah. These classic, this s- That feature is these circular plazas in front of them, and then the pyramid with a... And, and, uh, you know, these were not, uh, not expected in Peru. When archaeologists think of Peru, they tend to think of Machu Picchu, the Inca civilization. That's what gets all the coverage.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that's 600 years ago.
- GHGraham Hancock
That's 600 years ago. That's yesterday. Whereas these Caral-Supe pyramids, Caral, Aspero, Bandurria, Peñeco, these ones are much older, thousands of years older. They're extremely sophisticated. They're built with an earthquake-proof technology. They, instead of using blocks, they put small stones in, in textile bags, and those allow a certain amount of shifting, so the thing doesn't collapse in an earthquake. And this is 5,500 years old getting on. So again, not an agricultural civilization at the, at that time. They're a hunter-gatherer civilization. So, so archaeologists are having to confront a reversal of their model at the moment, and I think there's room in that reversal of the model for a forgotten episode in the
- 28:24 – 29:58
The Missing Chapter In Human History
- GHGraham Hancock
human story.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Tell me about this forgotten episode in the human story.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. It's, uh, it's remembered, it's remembered all around the world as a golden age where there was no violence, no cruelty, um, where great healers and sages were at work, where powers that are scorned in our society today, such as telepathy and telekinesis, which are regarded as completely nonexistent by us as scientists, uh, were regarded as a matter of fact of life in, in, in this ancient world. That's, uh, a civilization that emerged out of shamanism, uh, and made something good. But then if you follow the myths further, as I've done, you find something odd happens. You find that they've stepped away from the original purity, that they've become a culture that begins to impose its power on others around the world. And that's always given as the reason for the cataclysm in the myths, that, that we angered the gods. It might've been with our noise. It might've been with our irreverence. We angered the gods, and they sent a flood. They weren't happy with their creation. They wanted to start again, wipe the slate clean. And so there's this, there's always this feeling in the myths, and it's-- and I can't explain it. I don't know what, what it comes from, but it's always there. Is that in some way, we ourselves brought this upon ourselves.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is
- 29:58 – 35:13
Could We Become The Next Lost Civilization?
- SBSteven Bartlett
this those people not understanding the forces of mother nature and trying to sort of justify it as
- GHGraham Hancock
Uh, or, or perhaps a deeper understanding of the forces of Mother Nature
- SBSteven Bartlett
Maybe
- GHGraham Hancock
Perhaps the way that human beings are operating in the world today, um, should be included amongst the forces of nature. We, we are a geological force. Uh, and worse than that, we're a psychic force, which is full of anger and hatred and suspicion and, and, and mutual destruction. That's not gonna be good for nature. [laughs] That's, that's, that's gonna be disturbing. We're an integrated system, in my view. We, we're, we're not separate. Human beings are part of all of this, and what we do affects all of that, and that's what the ancient myths seem to testify to. So if I may finish [laughs] on that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
When I look at our civilization today, I, I don't want to go off on a rant, but when I look at our civilization today, I see a civilization that ticks all the mythological boxes, every single one, for the next lost civilization. And I envisage a situation 10 or 15,000 years from now when we will be a myth, a fantasy, that our, our ancestors actually could speak to one another on the opposite sides of the planet, that our ancestors, they could fly to the moon. Uh, you know, they could go to the depths of the ocean. The archeologists of that time will say, "Complete fantasy, just made up, never happened." But it did. We're that lost civilization, and we don't need a comet, and we don't need solar activity. Because of we're so psychically messed up as a species, we'll probably end up doing it to ourselves. That's what nuclear weapons are about, mass species suicide. And the mental processes that drive that, very dangerous, very effective of the world we live in. Hatred is a psychic force, and, uh, the way it's being generated around the world at the moment and mobilized and focused is, um, is gonna be bad for all of us.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Especially when we have such powers to self-destruct.
- GHGraham Hancock
Oh, it's terrible. This, th-this is what drives me nuts, is, is looking at the low consciousness level of the so-called leaders on this planet. When I look around the whole bunch of them, I just see very low consciousness individuals who define everything in material terms, uh, who, who are, who are f- who are focused on... This also gets me into trouble, but I, I think nationalism is something that humanity needs to grow out of. We need to grow out of nationalism. It's just an extension of tribalism. We need to grow out of it soon. And let me be clear, I am not talking about world government. I don't want anything like... I don't want any government. I'm an anarchist, basically, and that's what anarchy means. It means without government. I don't want any government at all. But we have to get past this notion that by accident I was born with this particular skin, you know? The notion is that this, these accidents of birth define us, that we must somehow massively respect and love people who look like us and, and, and kind of hate and fear people who don't look like us. We have to get past that. We have to get past that as a species. It's really important. All human beings everywhere, all the same, fundamentally. Of course, we're vastly diverse. We have, we have incredible different gifts. I value and appreciate the differences in different cultures all around the world. This is wonderful, but it doesn't have to come with, "And we are better than you, uh, and we're gonna kill you because you don't share our ideas." This is insane. It's, it's crazy. We're not a mature species. We're, we're a childish species. And leading our species are leaders who have the mentality of, um, deranged teenagers.
- SBSteven Bartlett
We elected them.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah, we did, very unfortunately, which shows how easy it is to manipulate, uh, the narrative in the world today. Today, who wins in elections isn't the best person, isn't the good person, isn't the person who's going to do good. It's the best communicator who wins.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So this, um, ancient civilization that we could have theoretically forgotten, you were somewhat implying that maybe they were right, that their own actions-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... caused the Great Flood, as they say.
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
They, they talk about it in mythology.
- GHGraham Hancock
Oh, I floated that notion, yeah, yeah. They might, they might have been. But it's enough to say that that's what they believed, because that's what all the myths say. The Noah story is prefigured in ancient Sumer, um, with, uh, an almost identical flood myth. The gods are angry. A great flood is going to be sent. The intention is to wipe out humanity. But this, this god, who's called Enki, says to Atra-Hasis, "I'm gonna save you. Build a boat. Build it now, a big one. Put into it the seeds of all things that you will need. Bring each animal of every kind into your boat." This is, this is a kind of survival ark, which is exactly the same as Noah. Noah's Ark is just copied on that. It's just borrowed from that.
- 35:13 – 37:57
How Do We Know These Stories Are True?
- SBSteven Bartlett
And to people that say, "Well, these are just stories, these are fictions that someone wrote, and then they passed them down-"
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and there's no truth in these things at all."
- GHGraham Hancock
They're welcome to say that. Uh, I, I, I just happen to think they're not, and, and my job has been to make that case. I do not claim that I have proved there was a lost civilization. Any archeologist who says Hancock claims he's proved that is lying. I don't claim that. I claim I'm puzzled and mystified, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna complete that journey as long as I can. I'm gonna carry on investigating and looking into all aspects of this, because that's what I'm here to do.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that lost civilization, you said they were sea-bearing, potentially.
- GHGraham Hancock
Seafaring, yeah. Yeah, definitely.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Which means they had boats?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah, yeah. So we know, for example, that anatomically modern, uh, human beings, uh, reached Australia 60,000 years ago. That, those involve significant sea journeys. They reached Cyprus, uh, in the Mediterranean 14,000 years ago. Again, they involve sea journeys. Not-engine boats, not metal boats. You can do it on quite simple craft. Look at, look at the Polynesians. Look at the vast distances that they explored on outrigger canoes. Uh, so yeah, boats, but not our kind of boats.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm. I just don't understand how i-if they're traveling the seas in boats, how they're, they aren't classified as a civilization.
- GHGraham Hancock
Well, because according to the mainstream model, which I am trying to provide an alternative to, they never existed. There was no such people. They never did these things. The maps are just coincidences, irrelevances, just odd. They put Antarctica, they put a ma- a land mass in Antarctica because they felt it would balance the world. That's the theory that's given. And it's just, to me, it's not, it's not satisfactory. It doesn't, it just doesn't add up. These things need to be explained. And it's why, it's why in every society which wishes to make progress, uh, mavericks, people who go against the grain, no matter how much shit they have to take, are needed. They're needed in our society to provide a balance to this overwhelming mass that science now occupies. Science has now come to occupy the space that religion occupied in many people's minds. And again, I need to emphasize, I'm not against science. Science, science is about to save my life. I have major heart surgery coming up in two weeks' time. I'm not against it at all, but I think it should be one weapon in our armory, not the only weapon.
- SBSteven Bartlett
There should be a button just down below here, and if it says Subscribe, you're already subscribed. If it says Subscriber, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know, and according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank
- 37:57 – 42:20
The Unsolved Mystery Of The Great Pyramid
- SBSteven Bartlett
you so much. One of the, um, things I was super curious about, because I was actually there last, last week, is this place.
- GHGraham Hancock
Giza.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Pyramids of Giza.
- GHGraham Hancock
The Great Pyramid of Giza. Here we look at it. Attributed to the Pharaoh Khufu, who was a pharaoh of the fourth dynasty.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is the mystery here? So again, pyramids are this big stack of like concrete blocks in Egypt. What is the, why is it so mysterious?
- GHGraham Hancock
Well, first of all, they're not concrete. They're, they're hewn limestone, um, and granite. Uh, first of all, it's mysterious for the sheer size of it. Look. So you've got roughly seven hundred and fifty feet along each side, okay? And they vary in length by only fractions of an inch. They've got it just about spot on exact on the side length, and you want that in a pyramid because if you get it wrong, you're gonna end up with a corkscrew rather than a pyramid. If you get it wrong at the bottom, those errors are gonna magnify, and they're gonna get worse and worse, and it's not gonna be a pyramid at the end of the day. Secondly, weight calculated at about six million tons, more than two million individual blocks of stone. I've climbed the pyramid five times. Once I climbed it when there was an event taking place on the Giza Plateau, picnics basically, and, and a lot of Cairenes just decided to climb the pyramid. As I say, I've climbed it four other times without other people there, but this time there were hundreds of people on the pyramid. That's when I realized how difficult this thing is to make because the biggest danger was the other people. Once you're up two or three courses, you fall, you're dead. It's a, it, it's a fifty-two degree slope. There's no way you're gonna stop. You're gonna come down, and still every year people die on the Great Pyramid. That's why they've made it illegal to climb it now. So there's that. Then there's the almost perfect alignment of the Great Pyramid to true north. Not to compass north, which is about ten or eleven degrees off true north, but to astronomical north, real north. The Great Pyramid is aligned within three sixtieths of a single degree. I put it that way because degrees are divided into sixty minutes, so three minutes of arc. The Great Pyramid is aligned to that level of precision, three sixtieths of a single degree to true north. And they've done that on a six million ton monument, which is four hundred and eighty-one feet high, if you take account of its original height, which has a fifty-two degree slope, which is filled with internal corridors and spaces, Grand Gallery, the ascending, the descending corridors. All of this is extremely difficult to do. It is, it's not impossible to do because we see it there. Uh, could our civilization do it? Yeah, I think we could. Uh, but would we do it? No, I don't think we would. Uh, the motive wouldn't be there. People say, "What the, why? I mean, why do you want to align it perfectly to true north? It's enough to ask me to build a six million ton monument, but you want it aligned to true north as well? Come on. I mean, that's a really difficult specification." We'd find that hard. Um, a kind of artistry was put to work on the Great Pyramid as well as skill. Let's get rid of any notion that slaves were involved. They were not. There, there, there wasn't slavery in the Old Kingdom anyway. But this is a work of love from the first to the last stone. It's a work done with great skill and care. It's a beautiful and extraordinary thing, both inside and out. It sits almost exactly on latitude thirty, which is one third of the way between the North Pole and the equator. And, uh, it incorporates the dimensions of the Earth on a scale of one to forty-three thousand two hundred in its own dimensions. So if you take the height of the Great Pyramid and multiply it by forty-three thousand two hundred, I'll explain why that number matters. Multiply it by that number, you get the polar radius of the Earth. Measure the base perimeter of the Great Pyramid, multiply it by the same factor, forty-three thousand two hundred, you get the equatorial circumference of the Earth. Archaeologists know this. They say it's a coincidence, total coincidence, just by chance.However, I, I could agree with them actually, if the scale was not one to forty-three thousand two hundred.
- 42:20 – 47:25
The Real Meaning Of The Age Of Aquarius
- GHGraham Hancock
But the fact that it's one to forty-three thousand two hundred changes everything, because that belongs to a sequence of numbers that is found in ancient mythology all around the world, and those numbers are all multiples of the number seventy-two. And I mentioned at the beginning of our discussion the book by the great historian of science, Giorgio de Santillana, press- professor of the history of science at MIT. He was the first to identify that these numbers and the imagery that go with them derive from a phenomenon called the precession of the equinoxes. I better explain that a little bit. The precession of the equinoxes. Everybody's heard the song, We Live in the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius. I'm sure you've heard that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh, no comment. [laughs]
- GHGraham Hancock
[laughs] We live in the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Th- that's astrology. At the moment, and for the last two thousand years, on the spring equinox, the sun has risen against the background of the constellation of Pisces. That's the Age of Pisces. We live in the Age of Pisces. It's not an accident that the early Christians used the fish as their symbol.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- GHGraham Hancock
The next constellation on the Zodiac when you go backwards around it is Aquarius. And the precession is actually caused by a wobble on the axis of the Earth. I'm gonna pretend that this is the Earth.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- GHGraham Hancock
And instead of just doing this, while it's doing that, it's also doing that. It's wobbling.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
And that affects the rising time and season at which particular stars rise. It affects two things noticeably. One thing it affects is the Pole Star. At the moment, the Pole Star is Polaris. The Pole Star, this is astron- astronomical north. It's the star towards which the extended north po- pole of the Earth points most directly.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- GHGraham Hancock
At present, it's Polaris. It hasn't always been Polaris. Four thousand years ago, it was Thuban in the constellation of Draco. That's because the Earth's axis is doing this. At the horizon, it does the same thing with the zodiacal constellations. We shift gradually through each constellation, lasts about two thousand years in each constellation. The great year where we come back to square one is just under twenty-six thousand years. Twenty-five thousand nine hundred and twenty years is the convention that's applied in ancient mythology. So the fact that one of those numbers is the scale used to encode the dimensions of the Earth in the Great Pyramid cannot be accidental in my view. It's a deliberate choice. If it was one to fifty-seven thousand, I wouldn't pay attention to it. If it was one to twenty-one thousand, I wouldn't pay attention to it. But one to forty-three thousand two hundred, that's the number of syllables in the Rig Veda, for example. You find this all over the world, everywhere.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So what does that imply or suggest?
- GHGraham Hancock
Uh, what it suggests is that incorporated into the building of the Great Pyramid was knowledge that was not supposed to have existed four and a half thousand years ago. In fact, knowledge that was not supposed to have existed until two thousand years ago. Hipparchus of Alexandria is the Greek who was supposed to have discovered precession, uh, but the incorporation of precession in the structure of the Great Pyramid says to me that that knowledge is much older. It was already old then.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I really wanna make sure I'm clear on this precession thing, 'cause I'm not, I'm not super clear.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, what does it, what does it mean, precession? It means that there's a certain star pattern that we see once every t- twenty thousand years?
- GHGraham Hancock
It, it, it, it precesses, it goes backwards.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- GHGraham Hancock
The, the direction through the z- through the zodiac is, is forwards in the normal year, but in the long-term year because of the wobble, the sunrise against the background of the spring equinox, the sun rises perfectly due east. It always does.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- GHGraham Hancock
It also rises perfectly due east on the autumn equinox. On the summer solstice, the sun rises in the northern hemisphere, north of east, and south of east on the, on the winter solstice. The key moment for the ancients was the equinox. It was considered to define the character of the year, and what defined it was the constellation that housed the sun. That was the house of the sun.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay, so the star pattern.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Right.
- GHGraham Hancock
The, a zodiacal constellation. These, the constellations of the zodiac lie along what is called the ecliptic, the path of the sun.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- GHGraham Hancock
Okay? The, the Earth, the Moon, we're all on the ecliptic within a few degrees above or below it. And, and therefore, these are constellations that we can see the sun against the background of.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
Constellation like Orion, you'll never see the sun against the background of it. You're only gonna see it against the background of the zodiacal constellations that lie on the so-called path of the sun, and those are the 12 familiar constellations of the zodiac. And as I say, we're living in the Age of Pisces right now, and, uh, according to ancient astrology, we're going to be making the transition into Aquarius within about the next hundred and fifty years. The sun will have left Pisces and will be rising in Aquarius. So actually the song is true. We do live in the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. The only question is whether that means anything or not. The ancients thought it did. Uh, we think it doesn't. Uh, I'm not sure who's right.
- 47:25 – 50:05
Did The Ancients Know The Size Of Earth?
- SBSteven Bartlett
So I, I, I'm gonna repeat this back to you to check if I'm, I've got it correctly.
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But I suspect I might not have. Within the design of the pyramids, there was a number which you said was forty-three thousand two hundred.
- GHGraham Hancock
It's a scale.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's a scale.
- GHGraham Hancock
It's a scale that's used for the height and the base perimeter of the Great Pyramid. Base perimeter, measure four sides, add it together. Height, the actual height of the Great Pyramid. Its true original height, it lost about 30 feet in an earthquake in 1301, but you can calculate the true original height from the angle of the, of the sides.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Ah, yeah. Right.
- GHGraham Hancock
Um, and when you take that height and multiply it by forty-three thousand two hundred, you get the polar radius of the Earth.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You get the radius of the Earth.
- GHGraham Hancock
The, the-- That's from the center of the Earth to the edge of the Earth. It's not the diameter of the Earth. The diameter's twice the radius.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
It's the po- it's the polar radius.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- GHGraham Hancock
A key dimension of the Earth. Measure the sides, and you getOn the same scale, 1 to 43,200, you get the equatorial circumference of the Earth, what the Earth measures at its equator, its largest measure. Um, and, and that, uh, is either a coincidence or it's deliberate. And because of the number chosen, and because that number is all over ancient mythology, I think it's deliberate.
- SBSteven Bartlett
D- that means that they must have known the circumference of the Earth?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. It means that they knew the circumference of the Earth, and it means they chose a place to put the Great Pyramid, which also was relevant. Uh, this isn't latitude 23 or latitude 37. This is just a fraction off latitude 30 degrees north, so therefore one third of the way between the equator and the North Pole. It's a, it's a re- it's a significant relevant. What it's telling us is this monument speaks to the Earth. This monument is locked into the true north of this planet. This monument gives you the dimensions of this planet. This monument is speaking to this planet.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How could they possibly know the circumference of the Earth 4,500 years ago?
- GHGraham Hancock
Because they're a lost civilization. [laughs] Because the ma- the knowledge comes down from a former time. I don't think the Egyptians knew it. I think it came down, I think it was inherited knowledge from what I'm here to advocate for and to speak for, the possibility of a major forgotten episode in the human story.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Which could be 20,000 years ago.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And they've passed it down-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in, in myths and stories?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yes, yes. Passed it down, uh, but not only in myths and stories. Um, this is something else that I will, I'll just hint at here, uh, that I intend to get into in the new book, is
- 50:05 – 52:20
Were Ancient Secrets Passed Down Through Time?
- GHGraham Hancock
that there appear to have been organizations in each of these civilizations. In Egypt, they were called the Followers of Horus. In Sumer, they were called the Apkallu. They served as advisors to kings. They were called sages. There's a reference to them. Many cultures refer to them as the Seven Sages. They provided advice to kings in the historical period, and I'm wondering whether we're looking at some kind of long-lived organization here, which is carrying down information, looking for the right time to switch the engine of civilization back on again. I know it's, sounds extreme, but, uh, that's what I do. I explore, I explore extreme ideas and see whether, and see whether they fit or not, and I'm beginning to find this idea does fit. It be- it fit, it fits with a whole range of information, which will be in the next book. [laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
A sage that reports to the king and to tell-
- GHGraham Hancock
No, not really reports to the king, that advises the king.
- SBSteven Bartlett
On what?
- GHGraham Hancock
On everything, on what to do.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, okay.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. The Apkallu in the ancient traditions of Sumer, they existed in the prediluvian world. They were there in the world before the flood. Then they... And, and they taught mankind knowledge then. But the flood came, the cataclysm came, they were wiped out. But some of the Apkallu survived, and they appear after the flood as advisors to the earliest historical kings of Sumer. And I'm just wondering whether, you know, there are, there are religions in the world which have maintained traditions and maintained offices, priesthoods, for example, for thousands of years. I don't see why the same shouldn't be true here, why there shouldn't have been some driving motive at the end of the Ice Age to preserve, in a way, what they knew, and to find mechanisms to pass it down. One mechanism is to embed it in wonderful stories that will go on being told, and another mechanism is to set up some kind of secret society which is operating behind the scenes to guide and steer society. I'm not going to present the evidence for that here, but it's an avenue I'm pursuing. If I, if I don't find it a satisfactory avenue, I'll abandon it. But at the moment, it's looking very
- 52:20 – 54:26
Where Did Humanity's Lost Knowledge Go?
- GHGraham Hancock
interesting.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And where did all this information go? You know, 'cause it's, if the people who built the pyramids of Giza had this information, where did the sages go and with their information?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah, it's very, it's very odd, actually. What, what happens after Giza is fascinating, um, because once you, once you leave the fourth dynasty period, get into the fifth and sixth dynasties, pyramid building collapses. The stuff they're making in the fifth dynasty, like the Pyramid of Unas, fifth dynasty pyramid in Saqqara, inside it's stunningly beautiful. Beautiful tomb chamber, stars on the ceiling, incredible hieroglyphs on the side. It's v- v- magical. But outside, it's just a pile of dust. It's a mess. It doesn't even... You could hardly recognize it as a pyramid, and it's true of all those. So this is odd in itself. Normally, when human cultures create something, they continue to work on it, and it tends to get better and better, not worse and worse. So it's odd what happens to the pyramids, that they get worse and worse in Egypt. It's like, "Job done. Done that. Move on." And that's there, and that's gonna speak to human beings, not just for a generation, not just for 100 years. It's gonna be there speaking to us for thousands of years. It's gonna be sitting there on the Giza Plateau like an enormous question mark, calling towards it those who don't see it just as a heap of stones, but actually see it as something wonderful and magnificent and mysterious, calling them to it and saying, "Learn about me. Figure me out, and in the process of learning about me, you're gonna learn so much else." Well, in learning about the Great Pyramid, I find that it is encoded with astronomical information that should not be there if the current model of the history of science is correct. I think the current model of the history of science is wrong. I think this information was known much earlier, and it's encoded in the Great Pyramid. Once I know that, then I have to start thinking, what else does that mean? And what else it means to me is a big forgotten episode in our story.
- 54:26 – 55:41
Do The Pyramids Point To A Lost Civilization?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Again, why?Because they had intelligence that they're not credited with having at that time?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yes, because it's there. Because there should not be a monument of this scale which incorporates into it information that was not supposed to be available to human beings for another two and a half thousand years.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So they must have got it from somewhere.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yes, they must have got it from somewhere. And, and, uh, the fact that it's there is, is, is just a fact. And all that's left for us to say is either it's a coincidence, complete coincidence, or it's the result of a deliberate decision. And if it's the result of a deliberate decision, that weighs much more towards a deliberate decision because of the scale chosen, because the scale is part of a system that is found all over the ancient world. It's not a random number. It's a very specific number. Uh, and it's a number that is derived from a motion of the Earth itself, from the precession of the Earth's axis. It is derived from that. So I'm situated at a significant latitude, I'm oriented to true north, and I incorporate the measurements of your planet on a scale derived from your planet itself. That's what the Great Pyramid is saying to us, and it's saying, "Figure
- 55:41 – 57:38
Is Something Hidden Beneath The Great Pyramid?
- GHGraham Hancock
that out."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you think there's something underneath it?
- GHGraham Hancock
Oh, there's definitely something underneath it. [laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
'Cause we think of it as this sort of like building with the, with tunnels inside it, but-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. When you go into the Great Pyramid now, you go in through what is, what is called the Robbers' Tunnel or Mamun's Hole. The Caliph al-Mamun had a notion that there would be a entrance to the Great Pyramid in its northern face. Other pyramids had been found with entrances in their northern face. But at that time, the Great Pyramid was completely covered with perfectly smooth limestone facing stones, and nobody could see the entrance. They came off later in that earthquake in 1301. But when he broke in in the ninth century, they didn't know where the door was. Apparently, there was a place you could almost literally press a switch and open that door, but they couldn't find it. So they broke in with sledgehammers and chisels, and they smashed their way into the Great Pyramid. And then at a certain moment, when they're about 60 or 70 feet into the Great Pyramid, they hear something dropping in a hollow space. A big something has fallen in a hollow space. They head towards that sound, and then they enter the original corridor system of the Great Pyramid. And that's the way we all go in now. We go in through that Robbers' Tunnel, and then we go up the Grand Gallery. But we can also go down. We can go down to the subterranean chamber, which is 100 feet vertically beneath the base of the Great Pyramid, deep in the bedrock. I actually think that was the original sacred site on that monument, is that subterranean chamber. I don't advise anybody with claustrophobia to go down there. You're very conscious that you've got a 6-million-ton monument sitting right above you, and the place has earthquakes. Um, it can be quite oppressive. But that's just a hint of what's under the Giza Plateau. That's just, that's an accessible bit. Uh, but it's, it's, it's already obvious that there, that there is so much more. Some of it's been picked up with ground-penetrating radar. And I'll take this opportunity
- 57:38 – 58:59
Why Mainstream Science Pushes Back
- GHGraham Hancock
to say that the hysterical reaction of mainstream scientists to the announcement by Filippo Biondi, uh-
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is he saying?
- GHGraham Hancock
He's saying that there are enormous structures under the second pyramid. They're not the Great Pyramid, under the pyramid attributed to Khafre, Khufu's successor. The, the structures that go hundreds of feet deep under there, structures that involve spiral kind of stairways. The reaction has been overwhelmingly dismissing this. Archaeologists have not-- They won't look further. They say it's impossible, and they won't look at it. And I think that's shameful for people who imagine they're scientists. They should be looking further. I'd like to see the technology trialed in Turkey. There are underground cities in Turkey, Kaymakli, for example. We know every room in those underground cities. Run this technology on them. If they accurately reproduce what we already know is there, then we can be pretty sure they're accurately reproducing what's under the Giza pyramids. We need to do a lot more work before dismissing this. So I'm, I remain open to the notion that a huge underworld awaits discovery under Giza, and the ancient Egyptians themselves felt that way. They felt that Giza, the ancient name for it was Rostau. It was an entrance to the underworld. They saw it as an entrance to the afterlife realm. It makes sense that there would be much, much underground structures
- 58:59 – 1:00:42
Alone Inside The Great Pyramid
- GHGraham Hancock
there.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And you've been alone in the pyramids?
- GHGraham Hancock
Being with large groups in the pyramid is difficult in the sense that the pyramid to me feels like a personality. When I'm in there with a large group, I, I feel the pyramid withdrawing. It, it, it's like it doesn't want to speak to you anymore. It's, it-- The place becomes a dead space. But, but if you can be in there with a very small group or be there alone and just be still, let the silence descend, sit in that silence in the very low lighting that's in there, just pause and remind yourself that you're in the last surviving wonder of the ancient world, and it's an incredible privilege to be there, and just let it speak to you. And it does. Th-this is, of course, my critics will say another proof that Hancock's a lunatic. Uh, but, uh, I, I'm just telling you what hap- what, what, what happens to me. It's a-- I, I think it's a monument that communicates.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What did it say to you?
- GHGraham Hancock
It said to me, "Go further." [laughs] Very much so. I've-- I, I, I feel in a weird way validated by the Great Pyramid. I think it's, um, not only me, others as well, who've devoted big chunks of their lives to the Great Pyramid, like Robert Bauval, who is a great man, by the way. The Orion correlation, the recognition that the three pyramids on the ground are laid out in the pattern of the belt stars of the constellation of Orion makes radical and important changes to our understanding of ancient Egypt. Again, that's another thing that's been leapt upon by the archeological mafia, uh, because they want to destroy every new idea, uh, rather than spend a bit of time thinking about
- 1:00:42 – 1:02:44
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- GHGraham Hancock
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- SBSteven Bartlett
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- 1:02:44 – 1:03:40
What A Lost Civilization Means Today
- SBSteven Bartlett
If what you're saying is true around the, you know, the first civilizations being twenty plus thousand years ago, what does that mean for us, for our lives?
- GHGraham Hancock
Oh, it's really important, m-meaning for us because, because it will finally remind us and tell us once and for all that we're not what it's all about.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
It's not all about us. The whole human story is not about us. It's not inevitable that it comes to this, and that we are temporary like every other civilization. We are so filled with arrogance and pride right now in our technological achievements, our great abilities, our great powers, and, uh, the arrogance that comes with that. The Greeks used to call that hubris. It's, it ultimately ends in nemesis, ultimately brings you down. Arrogance, arrogance is not a good thing. It's not a good thing in an individual, and it's a terrible thing in a civilization.
- 1:03:40 – 1:05:46
Should We Rethink Astrology And Telepathy?
- SBSteven Bartlett
It also means that a lot of the things that we've dismissed as, you know, conspiracy or ho- you know, hocus pocus, whatever, might not be.
- GHGraham Hancock
Hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I mean, you talk a lot about like astrology and stuff like that, and-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. I think we should keep open to, to systems that the ancients used, which we've dismissed.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like?
- GHGraham Hancock
Which might be very... Astrology is one of them. What does astrology ultimately say? That it ultimately says that we, these beings, these humans, aren't isolated, but are connected to the universe and are affected by everything that happens in the universe. And it's, and it's recognizing that there may be patterns in that. And instead of, instead of just rubbishing that or doing a few investigations, I think it'd be maybe worth looking further into that. Worth looking further into telepathy too. My friend Rupert Sheldrake, a serious scientist, one of the very few who's doing serious scientific work on issues like telepathy and like telekinesis, being able to move things with your mind. Mainstream scientists, most of them will just laugh at that. "Absolute rubbish. Yeah, go away. You're a lunatic." But why are we lunatics to look into those things? It's really interesting, and it's really worth investigating. We re- should realize that we have a heritage of hundreds of thousands of years, and I believe it's even older than three hundred and fifteen thousand years. We do not have a heritage of a hundred years, which is the heritage of modern science. Well, let's p- let's be generous. Let's put modern science even back to the Greeks in a way, but it doesn't become what we would recognize as science until the nineteenth century, really. So it's a very young thing. On, on... If you take the human being as the, as the heart of this and, and, and you were to find a little pimple on the nose of that human being, that would be science.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
It's a pimple on the nose of hundreds of thousands of years of human experience. Why should we be so arrogant to dismiss those hundreds of thousands of years of human experience in the favor of a hundred and fifty years maximum of so-called
- 1:05:46 – 1:09:09
New Discoveries Beneath The Amazon
- GHGraham Hancock
science?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I mean, one of the interesting things is, uh, I actually did go to the Amazon rainforest-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in Peru. Um, and they've discovered these, like, big square things underground.
- GHGraham Hancock
I've been involved in that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is, what is that?
- GHGraham Hancock
Well, the, the name that's been given to them is, uh, is geoglyphs.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Geoglyphs.
- GHGraham Hancock
I think I know this one. Nobody knew they existed at all until about forty years ago.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- GHGraham Hancock
And, uh, because the Amazon rainforest is a rainforest and, and densely covered with a canopy, however, it's constantly being settled. This is a problem in itself. It's constantly being settled. The Amazon is being cleared, and it's being turned into farms. It's the clearance of bits of the Amazon initially that exposed these huge geometric structures-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- GHGraham Hancock
... under the rainforest. No longer under because they cleared the rainforest. Now with LIDAR, I've been involved with Martti Parssinen. In fact, he was on my Netflix show. He's an archaeologist from Finland and, and with Alceu Ranzi, a Brazilian geographer. Um, what they're doing is adense LIDAR survey of the whole of Acre province in Brazil. This is in Acre province as well. The areas that are still under canopy rainforest. And LIDAR can see through the canopy, and it can see raised objects underneath, and it can actually give you the shape of that object. Then they can go in low, uh, you know, low impact, just a few of them go in, check it out, see what's there, and then begin the archeology on the site.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I mean, this is a prime example. I've got a, I've got a list here of things that we used to believe-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and things that, how those beliefs have changed, and one of them was that we used to believe that the Amazon was an untouched wilderness.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. That's right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But in the 1970s we discovered-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yep
- SBSteven Bartlett
... what, 1,000 of these structures?
- GHGraham Hancock
At least. Uh, they, they, they're confident now from the LIDAR work that they're talking of thousands. Three, five, 6,000. There are also roadways that run for 100 kilometers plus. Uh, there's absolutely no doubt that the Amazon once supported a population of millions with, um, extraordinary clever management of rainforest soils by creating a man-made soil that they call terra preta. It's still used in Brazil today. We are having to completely reconceive the Amazon. It was thought of as a pristine rainforest, which a few human beings wandered around aimlessly in, hunting, whatever. Now we know that it was the homeland of a very large population who lived in city-sized communities, um, who joined those communities with long, straight roadways. It's, it's as though the veil is being pulled back and we're beginning to see a completely untold story in the Amazon. And these geoglyphs, very precise rectangles, triangles, circles, squares, all of these, it's geometry. It's geometry. What, what, what's it, what's it doing there in the Amazon? And, and when I, when I talked to a local shaman about this, and I did on, on camera in the, in the, in the Netflix show, um, he talked to me about how important these places still are to him, that these places were made by their ancestors, that they're places for shamanic gatherings, places for shamans to use specifically to contact the world
- 1:09:09 – 1:09:56
What Shamanism Gets Right
- GHGraham Hancock
beyond. L- let's be clear about this. All civilizations, including ours, although we may deny it, all of them emerged from shamanism. Shamanism is the essence, uh, of the human adventure. Uh, and, and all civilizations emerge from shamanism and this one was no-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Shamanism?
- GHGraham Hancock
Shamanism, yes. Sh-
- SBSteven Bartlett
What-
- GHGraham Hancock
Shamanism being the system of using altered states of consciousness to gain direct access to other levels of reality.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like psychedelics?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. Psychedelics or you can fast for a month. Uh, that will give you some visions too. Uh, there, there are, there are other ways, but, but psychedelics are the most efficient way to enter the altered state of consciousness, and shamans are masters of the use of plant medicines everywhere in the world, but particularly in the Amazon rainforest. This is, this is where you, you see
- 1:09:56 – 1:13:04
A Journey With Ayahuasca
- GHGraham Hancock
it most strongly. And DMT, the active ingredient of ayahuasca, is very fast-acting in the way that it's normally consumed. Okay? It's normally vaped or smoked. Uh, it produces a 10-minute journey literally to the other side of reality. Uh, and there's not much you can do about it once you're in there. But then you're out again. Ayahuasca is a very clever technology. The ayahuasca brew contains DMT. DMT is not orally active, so you can drink a tea made of, with loads of DMT in it and it's not gonna do anything to you because there's an enzyme in the gut that destroys it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
The ayahuasca vine contains a chemical that shuts that enzyme down and allows the DMT to be absorbed orally, producing an experience that can last for hours, that can be physically very uncomfortable. Um, what they're doing at Imperial College is they're giving them DMT by intravenous infusion-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm
- GHGraham Hancock
... using basically anesthesia technology to constantly top up the dose to keep the individual in the peak state, and unlike other psychedelics, there's no tolerance with DMT, so you can keep on dosing people.
- SBSteven Bartlett
When you-- You've taken ayahuasca what, 80 times?
- GHGraham Hancock
Something like that. Something like that. Um, it's not just... It, it's important to be clear about a number of things. First of all, all psychedelics are extremely serious matters. They are not to be taken trivially.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
They are, they are extremely serious. With, uh, experienced use of ayahuasca, one of the very common reports is this moral dimension, that you are presented with your own life, with what you've done with your own life, with the pain that you may have caused others. And suddenly, that pain that you caused to another person, which you dismissed as they just deserved that, they just deserved those words, you suddenly get it from their point of view. You feel the agony that your words caused that person. And you, and you find yourself, "Did I do that? Did I say that?" You suddenly see what you are. You can't go back into your own past and change negative and useless and pointless things that you did. You can't do that. But you can avoid repeating them in the future. And it's that teaching of a moral lesson, uh, that I find most valuable in ayahuasca. It's helped me to come to terms with my tendency to swift anger. I'm, I'm very aware that that's a problem I have, and it's something I need to do something about, and ay- ayahuasca has helped me with that. I've, I've become gentler and, and softer. Not gentle enough, maybe. It's a journey. It's not a, it's not an overnight transformation, not a magic pill. Uh, the main work with ayahuasca comes after the medicine. The main work comes with what you do with the experience, how you integrate it into your life. That's where the work begins. People say, "Oh, it's so easy to take aA brew. Well, it's not actually not that easy 'cause you're gonna vomit and have diarrhea, but, but easy. Um, but that's where the work begins, not
- 1:13:04 – 1:15:57
Strange Experiences From Childhood
- GHGraham Hancock
where it ends.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that emotion, is that-- does that stem back to your relationship with your parents? Because I was reading about your early, your early years.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. Look, we're all frail human beings. We're all messed about in lots of ways. We all have, we all have issues in our lives. Um, and-
- SBSteven Bartlett
You said regret.
- GHGraham Hancock
Regret. Yes, I, I do regret saying hurtful and unkind things to a number of people, uh, over the years. I do, I do regret that very much. I do regret very much that I wasn't, I wasn't mature enough to realize why my parents were so difficult, uh, that I never really forgave them for that. I never really forgave them for the strangeness of my childhood and, and, uh, the various things that, that, that, that happened. I never really saw it from their point of view. My mother lost three children aside from me. I'm an only child, but her first child was carried to term before me and born dead. Then I was born, I lived, and then the next two both died at the age of a year. Well, I know now, as a father, I know, I know what, what kind of catastrophe that is for a person, for a, for a mother to, to lose three children like that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You said weird childhood.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. [clears throat] So this is me. This is little Graham here with my mother and my father. I was-- It was nineteen fifty-four that we landed in India, which my father was a surg- consultant surgeon, and so he went as a missionary surgeon to India to a place called the Christian Medical College in Vellore in South India, um, and we lived in a tin hut. But he was following his faith. He was doing what was, what was right for him. He was giving his skills to help, to help people. I, I, I realize that now, and a lot of resentment I have towards him, I probably, you know, shouldn't have. Um, he was an odd guy. He was very eccentric. He used to take me in to watch dissections. Um, there, there were still hangings in India at that time, and he would dissect the prisoners after the hangings. He had me in there watching it. Um, he took me later on-
- SBSteven Bartlett
At what age?
- GHGraham Hancock
Um, uh, five.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You were watching bodies being cut up at five?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. Mm, I was, yeah. Absolutely. Very strange. See, it was presented to me as completely normal, um, but, but it was. It, it, it was strange. Fundamentally, he was a good man, I believe.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But I think allowing a four to five-year-old child to be, uh, uh, to see those things is deeply traumatic-
- GHGraham Hancock
It is
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in a way that you probably don't recognize-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... until later.
- GHGraham Hancock
I, I agree. It's, it's come home to me more and more as the years have gone by that what happened to me in those years in India scarred me deeply. It wasn't just the operating theaters and the dissections, the dissections. It was the gloom and the misery and the despair that settled over my family at that time, and I don't think I ever really recovered
- 1:15:57 – 1:17:13
Did You Have Nightmares?
- GHGraham Hancock
from that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Did you have nightmares?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what, what were those nightmares?
- GHGraham Hancock
Um, usually nightmares of loss. Usually nightmares of suddenly I'm alone. I'm in a, I'm in a-- I'm completely isolated, lost, alone.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The reason I ask these questions is there's only ever been one other guest who I sat here with a couple of years ago-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... who I believe's dad was a surgeon.
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And his dad brought him in to watch operations-
- GHGraham Hancock
Oh
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and dissections when he was young.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it scarred him-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in a way that he didn't realize until later.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And he told me about the nightmares of waking up in the night and seeing those bodies of those people around his bed on a predictable basis and told me he, he's actually the guy that, um, coached Michael Jordan-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and then, um, Kobe be-uh, before Kobe Bryant, um, passed away. And he told me still as an adult, those bodies join him at nighttime. So he'll wake up at nighttime, and he'll see them around, around his bed. So-
- GHGraham Hancock
Well, thank you, universe. That didn't happen to me. I, I, I do not have-- I don't remember having gruesome nightmares. I remember a feeling of l-loneliness and abandonment. That's what
- 1:17:13 – 1:18:29
Why Being An Outsider Matters
- GHGraham Hancock
I remember.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Loneliness and abandonment.
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm. I've always felt that way. I was always an outsider at school, uh, everywhere I've been, all my life. That's what I'm for. I'm here to be an outsider. I've come to that conclusion. And, and, uh, I need to do that well. I need to provide an alternative point of view on the past.
- SBSteven Bartlett
There's a real cost to being an outsider.
- GHGraham Hancock
Oh, yeah. But there are also some benefits. You know, we are what we are. A-and, and for me, I was always strange. I had this childhood in, in, in India. I didn't fit into the British school system. I was a total failure at school. I could not connect. I could not connect with any of it. It seemed I just didn't get it. What was this about? And, and, and the cruelty, the viciousness. My, my dad went to a boarding school and had a good experience, so he sent me to a boarding school in Durham in the north of England. It was the cruelest place. Beatings going on. I, I was repeatedly beaten about the bare buttocks by a, a sadistic headmaster with a cane. I couldn't fit in with the other kids at school, and, uh, I don't feel victimized for being an outsider. I feel, I feel it's a privilege. I feel I've been given, I've been given an opportunity to take a different view of things as a result of being an outsider.
- 1:18:29 – 1:20:30
Don't Let Life Pass You By
- SBSteven Bartlett
Are there words unsaid here with these two people in your life?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yes, there are, there are so many words unsaid. I'd like to go back to my mum and say, "You know, I understand why you were so obsessed with keeping me alive and making sure that I did something with my life." And I'd like to say to my dad, "Look, you, you were pretty crazy, but you, you did at least inspire me to be eccentric." It's a funny thing getting older. I'm seventy-five, seventy-six in August. One of the things it does is itYou realize how collapsed life actually is. I remember being a teenager, and I remember being a young man, and, and I remember being middle-aged. And the feeling is you're immortal. It's gonna go on forever. Everything's gonna go on forever, and it's long. It's long, and lots of time to do the things you want to do. I have a message. No, it's not long. There is not lots of time. If there's things you want to do with your life, start now. Start right away. Don't wait, otherwise you'll not have the opportunity. Life is very short. It's a beautiful, beautiful gift that the universe has given to us. We are responsible for returning that gift by, as far as possible within the circumstances that the universe has given us, living a full life and contributing something worthwhile to that life. Not being a robot, not being commanded what to do, not... We, we need to learn to think for ourselves. It-- This is something that is so easily forgotten. It's a miracle that you and I are sitting here at all, that I'm here, that you're here, that we're here together. It's a absolute miracle. It's a result of billions and billions of years of processes in the universe which had nothing to do with us randomly bring us together at this, at this point. It's, it's really quite a miraculous situation. To be alive, to be born at all is a miracle. Um, I think it was Voltaire who, talking about reincarnation, uh, who said, um, "It's no more extraordinary to be born twice than to be born once." Uh, and I think there's a point in that.
- 1:20:30 – 1:22:38
Are Religion And Spirituality The Same?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Are you religious? Do you believe in a god or?
- GHGraham Hancock
I would say that I am, um, that I pay attention, close attention to what I would regard as the spiritual, non-physical side of life. Um, but I do not belong to any organized religion. One of the things I don't like about organized religion is that your relationship to the divine, whatever you call the divine, spirit world, whatever you want to call it, your relationship is mediated in some way. Some priest or rabbi or mullah teaches you how to mediate that relationship. And I, I think what's important in, for me anyway, in, in the spiritual inquiry is a direct relationship, a direct experience. Rather than being taught something, I want to experience it for myself. And that's why I found ayahuasca very, very valuable, um, because it has enabled me to experience something that is absolutely impossible to experience in normal everyday life. We're so plugged in. We're so plugged in to the physical world, and we have to be. We've got to be. We've got to obey the laws of physics. We've got to deal with the economics of our circumstances. You know, we have to make our way through life. All of those things we've got to do. Um, but if they become our total focus, we become shut off from everything and anything else that may exist. And what the big psychedelics can do if they're taken in the right circumstances with the right advice, with sincere intention, what they can do is get you out of your own way and allow you to connect to that wider realm that normally you cannot connect to. And yes, I do believe that a wider realm exists. Uh, just in the same way that, uh, y- y- y- y- you know, before the invention of the microscope-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm
- GHGraham Hancock
... we had no idea that there were bacteria. I think I'm right about that. We start seeing these tiny little things swimming around. Gosh, major discovery. Well, they were always there. We just didn't have the kit to see them. And I'm suggesting that what psychedelics can be, and certainly what they're used as shamans by... for, is a technology, a device, uh, for getting you out of your own way and allowing you c- to connect with other levels of reality that in daily life it doesn't serve you to be connected
- 1:22:38 – 1:25:40
Why Do People Experience The Same Psychedelic Visions?
- GHGraham Hancock
with.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The interesting thing about DMT in particular is when you speak to people who have done DMT... You know, I spent about a year working in a quite big psychedelics company just to-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I got really fascinated. I'd left my company. I didn't have anything to do with my time, so I started this podcast, and I also... uh, on YouTube, and I also started working in a psychedelics business-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... 'cause I found the f- the studies on mental health and psychedelics really interesting.
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So I have quite a deep understanding, I guess higher than average, of ibogaine and-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... ayahuasca and DMT. And my partner, um, is very, very spiritual and has done all these things as well. So one of the fascinating things is how similar people's experiences are on something like DMT.
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The fun- funnily enough, your description of these creatures saying, "You're, you belong to us now," is almost verbatim what, what o- o- one of my friends described-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... two weeks ago.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
That they were teleported into this, like, four K realm-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... where these creatures that are, like, slightly animal in their anatomical structure-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... maybe slightly a little bit human as well, basically was s-- like had, had taken hold of him, and they were very curious and inspecting him.
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Very colorful realm, and then they kinda sent him back, or at least, you know, after the-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it, and it does make one wonder. I think one of my conclusions was if, if inhaling a small chemical can completely take me to another place-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... then... And, and if you, from a reasoning perspective, i- it's just a, it was an inha- one inhale of a chemical, then it goes to say that my current perception of reality-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... is just, is as fragile as an inhale of a chemical. Like-
- GHGraham Hancock
Absolutely
- SBSteven Bartlett
... me thinking that I'm here with you now-
- 1:25:40 – 1:29:25
Why Humanity Must Look Inward First
- GHGraham Hancock
Our preconceptions about the nature of reality should not limit our inquiry into the nature of reality. And at the moment, still unfortunately, there are preconceptions about the nature of reality, which is that it's material-based, that there's nothing else to it really. Everything is reduced to matter. Even consciousness is reduced to matter. It's reduced to the physical matter of the brain. We don't know that for sure. We don't know what's going on. Consciousness is absolutely not understood. And so when we have mysteries like people who are injected a small dose of a chemical like DMT and go off into a completely other reality, that's really interesting. And it's, it's, it's, it's at least as interesting, if not more interesting, than exploring other planets right now.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- GHGraham Hancock
I think we need to, I think we need to explore ourselves first. We need to... W-w-we're not in shape as a species to start exploring the universe. We don't want to export our toxicity to other parts of the universe until we've overcome it, until we've grown up as a species, which we haven't done yet. We need to know ourselves. Psychedelics are one way to do that, not used irresponsibly, but used responsibly in a structured, careful, thoughtful way. They can be very helpful in knowing ourselves. That's the journey we need to do first. Uh, go to Mars by all means, you know, go to the moon. We go even further. But do this first. Know who you are first before you start doing those bigger and wider investigations. Get all that sorted out because we've hardly sorted out anything on this planet, and we're talking about exploring other planets. Well, I'm all in favor of exploring other planets, but I'd like to sort out things on this planet first. That's where the resources should be going, and we should stop kidding ourselves that we can just escape this planet and make a complete shithole of it, leave it, and go and live somewhere else. No, we can fix this. We are capable of fixing this. We're capable of fixing everything. Human beings have enormous potential. We're just using a fraction of one percent of it at the moment.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The question I, you know, I mean, the obvious question that comes to mind is how? Obviously, you know, maybe, I don't know, maybe some kind of leader comes along.
- GHGraham Hancock
Could be. Um, I think we need to, need to move past leaders.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I just don't know how else humans would change without some kind of leadership.
- GHGraham Hancock
It's very difficult to see. I agree with you. It's very, it's very difficult to see how it happens one person at a time, um, slowly through, through word of mouth, through experience. But look, everything in the ayahuasca garden is not all flowers either. There's a lot of very wrong behavior going on there. People are exploiting that medicine. Basically, drug dealers are exploiting that medicine and offering it irresponsibly to people in groups of a hundred or even more. That, that, that's, that's actually really, really stupid to do that. Ay- ayahuasca is an intimate experience, and it needs to be done in a very small group, not a very large group. So it's not, it's not all roses. I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to paint these medicines in a, in, in, in a false light. They have their downsides. They have their problems. They are extremely serious. We should always research and investigate before any experience with psychedelics. But they have a part to play, and it's an important part, and thank God we're seeing its effects. Psilocybin effect on long-term depression, very important. Post-traumatic stress disorder, very important. These therapeutic breakthroughs hopefully will open the door to further inquiries into the kind of work that's being done at Imperial College. What does this really tell us about the mystery of consciousness? What does this really tell us about what we think
- 1:29:25 – 1:30:26
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- GHGraham Hancock
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- SBSteven Bartlett
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- 1:30:26 – 1:33:15
What Consciousness Really Is
- SBSteven Bartlett
Through your journey through-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
...um, ancient civilizations, what have you come to learn about what this consciousness thing is, if anything at all? Or at least what people believed-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
...um, and how those sim- mythologies were similar.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yes, I've partly, I've partly come to this through the ancient texts. There's a very specific, uh, scene in a number of the ancient Egyptian funerary texts, and it's called the judgment scene. And what you see is you see the deceased entering into a hall, into a room at the end of which sits the god Osiris enthroned. And, uh, the deceased is led into the hall by the goddess Maat. She's recognized by a feather that she wears in her headdress. She's the goddess of truth, justice, and cosmic harmony.He enters the hall. There's a scale in the hall. In one pan of the scale is an object that represents his heart, oblique his soul. Heart and soul were the same thing for the Egyptians in that sense. And in the other pan is the feather of Ma'at, the feather of truth, harmony, and cosmic justice. You do not want your heart to outweigh the feather at that moment. You want, at the very least, to be in balance. And in order to be in balance then comes into question the whole way that you've lived your life. Up on the wall of the hall, there are 42 little figures. They're called the 42 Negative Assessors. Each one of them is gonna ask you a question. Did you steal? Did you kill? Actually, the Ten Commandments are all in there, and a lot more as well. Ideally, you should be able to answer no to all of those questions, but the ancient Egyptians always understood how frail human beings are and that we can always make mistakes. The question is, what do we do when we make a mistake? Do we learn from it or do we keep on repeating it? And what I read into that is you were given, you the deceased, you were given an incredible opportunity. We allowed you to be born in a human body. You could have a range of experiences that no other physical form on your planet could have. You, you, you had this huge brain. You had this enormous capacity. We gave it, this to you. What did you do with it? Did you use it well, or did you squander it and waste it? And at that moment, you'd better be there with some answers about how you used it well. So as I come towards the end of my life, I look very carefully at my life. I, and, um, I try to undo wrongs that I have done in the past if I can, and I try to make sure I don't do any more in the future. I want to be a nurturing and positive and useful person to the people around me.
- 1:33:15 – 1:34:09
How Illness Changed My Perspective
- SBSteven Bartlett
The, the health situation you've gone through has clearly made you quite introspective, probably more so than you, you might have been ten years ago, I'm guessing.
- GHGraham Hancock
Oh, yeah. Ab-abs-absolutely. I was still immortal ten years ago. [chuckles]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- GHGraham Hancock
Listen, each and every one of us, every single human being on this planet could die in the next minute. Life is that fragile. It's that sudden. You can never predict y-y- how long you're going to live. But what something like this does, it focuses the mind, and it does make me wish more and more that I can leave this life with as few regrets as possible, and that I can feel that I played a useful and positive role in the life of others, and that I even played, in some way, a useful and positive role in the life of the species to which I belong.
- 1:34:09 – 1:40:14
Why Love Matters Most
- SBSteven Bartlett
Are you happy?
- GHGraham Hancock
I am very happy in a lot of ways. I'm blessed to have lived the life I've lived, to have traveled the world, to have the adventures that I have had. I'm blessed with a beautiful and wonderful wife and companion, my wife, Santha.
- SBSteven Bartlett
We've got this wonderful picture of her.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
She just glows.
- GHGraham Hancock
That's me and Santha. We met when we were about 40 years old, and, um, I don't think we've been apart more than four days in the entire 30-plus years, uh, since then.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wow.
- GHGraham Hancock
Uh, we do everything together. We travel together. Santha's a photographer, brilliant photographer. And, and, and, uh, I do not have a great visual eye, so we work together. I do the words, Santha does the pictures. We have the adventures together. We did the scuba diving together. Santha nearly lost her life twice in intense currents scuba diving. She's brave. She's an adventurer. She's a wonderful mother. This is so important. Santha and I have six children between us. Santha brought two from her previous marriage. I brought two from my first marriage and two from my second marriage. So six children from three broken marriages is a potential disaster. Santha brought them all together into a group of loving, deeply committed siblings who care for one another, who are constantly in each other's lives, who are there to support one another. Santha did that by just being a brilliant, loving person. So I'm very happy to have such a great partner who's stood by me through thick and thin and who's brought out these wonderful characters in, in, in our children and now our grandchildren. You know, nine grandchildren, six grandkids. All of it's down to Santha.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's remarkable that through all the wonders of human history and all the things we talked about, that love, like this kind of romantic love, is so central, so important, so central to our happiness. I just thought, oh, it's, uh, it's just a wonderful reminder of, um, how easy it is to get caught up in the material and-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and all the toxic. Whereas, you know, so much of it comes from just the simplicity of falling in love with someone.
- GHGraham Hancock
Love is what it's all about. And, and love is, love is giving. It's giving yourself to somebody else. It's putting the other person... [smacks lips] Sorry, I'm gonna end up crying. This, [coughs] this is what my wife does all the time with everybody. She puts other people first, and, uh, others benefit enormously from that. I'm very fortunate. I think, I think if I hadn't met Santha when I did and we hadn't formed this joint life, I think I would have made nothing of my life. Nothing at all.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- GHGraham Hancock
I think it would have just gone down the tubes. I needed a loving steering hand at that point. Anyway, very lucky. I, I, I am happy. There are things that make me unhappy, of course, just like every, every, every other human being. I, I don't understand why those who are bitterly opposed to my work want to try andpresent me as some kind of fraud or grifter, but I suppose it's a easy way to lazily dismiss somebody else. Uh, another thing that has been used is because I've considered the possibility of a lost civilization having an influence on other known historical civilization, uh, I've been accused of racism as well. That I've been, I've been accused of taking away the authenticity of indigenous achievements. Um, and, and that, again, has been without, without any receipts. It's not been-- It's just thrown out there as an accusation. Now, for me, with, with a multi-ethnic family, uh, that racism abuse that has been thrown at me constantly, uh, is extremely hurtful and extremely painful. It's one of the few things that have been thrown at me that I actually cannot forgive. It's unforgivable to use that lazy, easy dismissal in a society where a lot of people don't read anymore. I can pretty much guarantee people who hear that on the internet, they're not gonna go and read the books and actually find out what I said. They're just gonna take it as face value. So that does hurt, and it does make me sad. But generally, I'm blessed. I'm lucky. I've lived a fantastic, privileged life. I've explored the world. I'm surrounded by love and onwards and upwards as far as I'm concerned.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Well, you know, Graham, I think at the end of the day, the thing that endures is the impact, the curiosity that you've, you've provoked in people, allowed them to wander beyond the narrowness of our lives, which is quite miserable.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
A narrow life is, feels quite like a miserable life where you can't be open-minded and explore and-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that's why I love these conversations. It's not to say that I, that I always accept when I have these kind of conversations everything to be a hundred percent true, but the net benefit for me is just expanding my mind-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... to possibility.
- GHGraham Hancock
Absolutely.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And, like, please don't rob me of the opportunity to expand my mind to possibility.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What would my life become without possibility or hope-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... all these things? And, and actually, when I look at graphs like this that show how our beliefs, uh, and under- scientific understanding has changed, even in recent times, as, as recent as two thousand and seventeen on this particular graph, I go, "Well, I would have some arrogance to assume that I know it all today."
- GHGraham Hancock
Totally. Thing, things, things are constantly changing. You know, every turn of the spade in an archaeological dig can change the whole story.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
Change the whole story. This is not limited to archaeology. This is found in all fields where there are specialists, that they, they tend to get locked into a particular reference frame and actually defend it in a territorial way.
- 1:40:14 – 1:44:53
What Ancient Civilizations Teach Us Today
- GHGraham Hancock
unhappy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What else do I need to know about the, the possibility of an ancient civilization that might inform how I think about myself, my life, and I guess also our future? What I found so fascinating is especially we're, we're in a moment of this, uh, AI revolution-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... where you've got these sort of big forces of you've got nuclear weapons over here, you've now got this advanced intelligence. There's humanoid-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... robots on the horizon. And if there was ever a moment where the word, you know, existential-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... is being used in a, in a way that is probably appropriate, for me, it feels like now.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. It feels like now to me too. Uh, this is, uh, no doubt, uh, our species is poised on the edge of an abyss right now. Uh, our technology has outgrown our mentality, uh, and we're not, uh, we're not in good shape to deal with the challenges that lie ahead. I, I un-un-unfortunately, the chances of a nuclear exchange are just higher and higher. That's just a realistic assessment of the way the world is with these m-maniacal leaders. So what could we learn from the past? We can-- I, I, I believe we can learn that there's another way to live, that we don't have to do it this way. We don't have to.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How do you know?
- GHGraham Hancock
I, I-- That's, that's something I believe.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay, believe.
- GHGraham Hancock
That's something I don't know.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- GHGraham Hancock
I guess I'm optimistic that human beings have made it through all these centuries, all these thousands of years, all these hundreds of thousands of years, that we've made it through. We've made terrible mistakes. Done terrible things. I mean, look at the Second World War. God know how many people were killed there. Maybe twenty million Russians alone, if I remember correctly. It was just horrific, absolute horror. It's on-- When I was born in nineteen fifty, the Second World War was only five years away, and the end of it, and it hung over us, you know. You, our, our generation were aware of that. But it seems to me people today aren't aware of the horror of global war in the way that they were then. And, and, and, uh, that adds to the, to the danger that we will immolate ourselves. I think a new approach to the nature of reality is really vital. I think we, we need to begin to understand consciousness better. Uh, and what I would wish for the human species is that we understand we are actually all one. Incredibly diverse, full of creativity and differences, but, but all one. And a mother in the middle of sub-Saharan Africa and a mother in New York City, they love their kids in exactly the same way. They hope for their kids in exactly the same way. There's no difference between them at all. As long as we're, as long as we're indoctrinated into this notion of divisive differences. I'm all in favor of differences between human beings. That's part of our creativity as our species, but divisive differences, that's what's gonna kill us off. Uh, and that's, I think, the message that comes down from the past. Whether it's a correct message or not, the message is we, a former civilization, made a terrible mistake, and it resulted in a cataclysm that brought us down.I think we need to realize that can happen again, uh, and that we are most likely to be the cause of that cataclysm ourselves. Uh, there may, there may be a danger of further comet impacts. The Younger Dryas comet fragments, it's called the Taurid meteor stream. The Earth passes through it twice a year, in June and in October/November. Uh, there are hundreds of deadly objects in the Taurid meteor stream. It could happen, but I think a much more likely way that we're going to bring our civilization back almost to the Stone Age is nuclear war. We're gonna do it to ourselves. Unless we wake up, unless we become more conscious of what it is to be a human being, of the privilege and the gift of being a human being, and how that privilege of gift belongs to every human being, not just to us. But I don't know how that's gonna be done. I, I, I do think psychedelics can play a role. I've said many times, and I'll say it again, if I, if I had the power to do so, I would insist that every world leader has at least, at least a dozen sessions of ayahuasca before they even apply for the job.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because you believe that would give them the same feeling of oneness that you have?
- GHGraham Hancock
I think most of them wouldn't apply for the job at all.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, really?
- GHGraham Hancock
And those who did would, would probably do a much better job.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm. Interesting.
- GHGraham Hancock
Because they'd understand themselves better.
- 1:44:53 – 1:47:12
The Power Of Independent Thinking
- SBSteven Bartlett
Graham, what is the most important thing we haven't discussed as it relates to our past and what it might teach us or, you know, how it might inform how we choose to live our lives today, um, that we haven't discussed?
- GHGraham Hancock
Look, the most important thing as far, as far as I'm concerned is independent inquiry. We need to start thinking for ourselves, and that's true of the past and it's true of everything else. Uh, to the, to the extent that I, that I do get positive feedback from young people, and I do a lot, that feedback is, "Thank you for being an example to question everything."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- GHGraham Hancock
It happens that what I'm questioning is the past, but that can be a model for questioning everything. I, I feel that, that very poor journalism being used to smear my name because I asked questions and because I asked them vigorously, and because most important of all, I reached a large audience. That's it really. They won't sne- smear your name if you don't reach a large audience. You're not worth their trouble.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I know the feeling.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But I think-
- GHGraham Hancock
I know you do
- SBSteven Bartlett
... but, you know, for me, my thing has always been that, um, all it's done is made me clearer. Like, you know, you have a bigger platform, more people, um, watching you, et cetera, and talking about you. All it's done for me is made me clearer on my principles and what I believe.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I'm actually really thankful for that in a weird way.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because you're forced to... You know, when you hear so many things said a- said about you or written about you, whatever, it does focus one's mind on, okay, like, who am I?
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what matters.
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What am I, uh, w- where am I uncompromising in terms of the conversations I wanna have-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... the way I wanna do it. And that's given me a huge amount of clarity, and one of the things that I'm really, I really wanna make sure is that it doesn't make me, um, bitter or resentful in any way.
- GHGraham Hancock
Very important. Very-
- SBSteven Bartlett
And you can see how it happens.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because-
- GHGraham Hancock
I can, I can absolutely see how it happens
- SBSteven Bartlett
... 'cause you, you have to live with this sort of, um, injustice potentially or being mischaracterized, whatever. So it's easy to see how one can slip off into bitterness and resentment-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and to-
- GHGraham Hancock
That's a, that's a big part of the work I'm doing on myself at the moment. I, I'm confident that I am doing the right thing with my life. I'm doing no harm to anyone, and I'm putting ideas out there that are worth thinking about. I'm confident of that. I have no, I have no doubts about that.
- 1:47:12 – 1:47:52
What Will Matter On Your Last Day?
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what will you care about on your, on your last day?
- GHGraham Hancock
Most of all, the love of my family. That's the most important thing to me. And, um, I don't know, the feeling that I did my best. I did the best I could to carry out the task that, uh, fell upon me, quite by accident. I didn't-- I was a current affairs journalist in the 1980s. I had no idea I was gonna go down this rabbit hole into the ancient world. It was a series of accidents that led to it. But having gone down it, I feel very, very, very committed to it.
- 1:47:52 – 1:50:14
Living Without Judging Others
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's interesting because w- one of the ways that I, um, I've always chosen to conduct my interviews is just to f- um, judge people as I find them. I remember once upon a time I had Bryan Johnson coming on my podcast, and, you know, he's quite a, he's a, he has some radical beliefs about living forever, et cetera. He's the longevity guy.
- GHGraham Hancock
Hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I remember one of my team members walking up to me beforehand and saying, before he had arrived, and saying, "What do you think of him?" And I remember saying, "I have no idea. I've not met him yet."
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then I sat down with him, had this interview, and he said this thing to me at the end of the interview where he goes, "Thank you." And I go, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Thank you. This is the first time I've done an interview in my life where the interviewer had, like, no preconceptions of me."
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And he goes, "It meant that I was relaxed and able to be myself," and blah, blah, blah.
- GHGraham Hancock
Hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I, and I say that because my opinion of you is someone who is really curious about, about humanity and has this interesting idea that is really expansive for one's mind about what could have happened. And, um, again, the net benefit for me of that is just expanding my mind in a way that makes me empathetic to other people.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Makes me feel like me and you aren't different.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like I've not met you today, but we're probab- you know, we, we, we go back a long way. Maybe consciously we're the same, but-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in our history and our lineage, we are, we are one of the same. And, um, it also gives me a huge amount of respect for other living things-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... including my ancestors.
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
In a way that you kind of think of your ancestors as these, like, monkeys that lived in trees potentially.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But actually hearing some of these stories makes me go, oh my gosh. And actually it gives me a huge sense of responsibility-
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... to leave this planet and this earth in a way that's gonna be good forYou know, the future, the future kids that will live 20,000 years from now in the future.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that will probably look at our-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... fossil records and wonder.
- GHGraham Hancock
I, I think, I think those of us who have a, a platform do have a responsibility.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- GHGraham Hancock
Very, very, very definitely. Uh, I mean, we're living in this strange new world. The, the, the, the, this world was inconceivable even in the beginning of the 1990s.
- 1:50:14 – 1:56:39
Will We One Day Worship AI?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Graham, we have a, um, closing tradition on this show where the last guest leaves the question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for, and the question left for you is: Is there a danger of us sleepwalking into worshiping a machine god?
- GHGraham Hancock
You want me to answer that question?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. [laughs]
- GHGraham Hancock
Yes. We're already worshiping a machine god. As I said earlier in our discussion, uh, in the minds of many, science has already been elevated to occupy the space that was once occupied by religions. That is a belief in a machine, fundamentally, that's taking place there. Science should be seen as a tool, one amongst many tools, that we as human beings have at our disposal. It should never be the only tool, and it should never be worshiped. I don't ever want to hear the words, "Trust the science." The words for me are, "Investigate the science." See whether it's right for you or not. See what else is available in the, in the, in the situation. Don't just routinely, without thought, without question, trust the science. Don't do that. That's, that's betraying science as well. One of the fundamental ethics of science is not to trust the science. It's to question and challenge the science. That's what we should be doing with the science, and yes, we are in danger of creating a kind of multidimensional machine which reaches into all aspects of human consciousness and, and controls us, yeah. We gotta stop worshiping science, that's for sure. We gotta put it in its rightful place as an incredibly valuable tool which, which can do great things for human beings, but which can also do terrible harm and damage.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because when we trust science, there's something we stop listening to?
- GHGraham Hancock
Well, when you put your trust in anything, you better have good reason to put your trust in it. If I, if I'm gonna trust another human being with my life, I, I really want to know that I can trust that person. I'm, I'm not just gonna say, "Oh, you're a doctor, so I trust you." No. It's not s- that's not enough. I wanna know more about that doctor, and, uh, in- indeed I have pursued that just recently. Science is great. Science is really useful, but we're not, we're not being what we should be. We're not living up to the potential that the universe gave us if we just go around trusting everything all the time. We're here to ask questions. That's what we got these enormous brains for and this incredible connectivity, is to ask questions. Anybody who says, "Don't ask questions," is doing a great deal of harm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Well, I hope my audience are very curious. Um, and I think they must be by now if they're still hanging around, uh, on this platform.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because we've had lots of very curious conversations and hopefully expansive. I, we have this acronym, DOAC, obviously stands for Diary of a CEO, but also we think of it as like being for dreamers and open-minded people.
- GHGraham Hancock
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Which is the O, and the, the A being about expanding awareness, and the C really being about feeling more connected.
- GHGraham Hancock
Brilliant.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like hearing your story and about your, your partner and your journey and your parents.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
All makes me all f- you know, I think of those, it makes us, like, spiritually connected in a way-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that's increasingly rare. If people want to learn and read more from you, Graham, where do they go?
- GHGraham Hancock
Hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I mean, you've written so many wonderful books. You've got another one on the way.
- GHGraham Hancock
I have, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'll link all of these books you've written-
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and the others that aren't here below.
- GHGraham Hancock
Okay. Um, uh, very briefly, the, the, the book that put me on the map was Fingerprints of the Gods.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yep.
- GHGraham Hancock
And that's the book where I really investigate, begin to investigate the possibility of a lost civilization. Before that came The Sign and the Seal, which was, which was about Ethiopia's claim to possess the Lost Ark of the Covenant. It happened that as a reporter in the 1980s, I spent a lot of time in Ethiopia, and I came across this tradition, which is fundamental to all religious life in Ethiopia, uh, and, and, um, ended up writing a book about it. That put me on the track of a lost civilization, led to Fingerprints of the Gods. Then after Fingerprints of the Gods, there's a book that's not here, which is Keeper of Genesis, that I wrote with Robert Bauval. Underworld, this was seven years of scuba diving that Santha and I did all around the world, following up tips from local fishermen, local divers. They'd seen something interesting, something that looked man-made, at a depth of 30 meters just offshore there, and they would take us, and we would find it. Uh, so Underworld is about all those flooded continental shelves. Twenty-seven million square kilometers of continental shelf were flooded at the end of the Ice Age. That's 27 million square kilometers. That's Europe and China and a bit more combined, uh, were the best real estate on Earth, uh, 20,000 years ago and are all underwater today. Um-
- SBSteven Bartlett
And, and there's signs that there was life there.
- GHGraham Hancock
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Civilizations there.
- GHGraham Hancock
Yeah. There, well, we found very large structures underwater. Um, so that's, that's, uh, Underworld. Then after Underworld, I wrote Supernatural, which is that one there, which has been reissued in America under the title Visionary, and that's where I went deep into the shamanistic medicines, the, the ayahuasca, psilocybin, the, and, and, and the whole notion that cave art, the art that we see in the painted caves, is an art of visions. That this is shamans who had entered deeply altered states of consciousness. They'd remembered what they'd seen, and when they came back to the everyday state of consciousness, they painted their visions in caves. It's the best explanation for cave arts and why cave art is so similar all around the world and so similar to the visions of ayahuasca shamans to this day.
Episode duration: 1:56:39
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Transcript of episode Xs94KBeIiAo
