The True History Of America - Graham Hancock

Chris Williamson 0:00 Yesterday was the anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America.

Graham Hancock 0:04 Oh.

Chris Williamson 0:05 How fitting.

Graham Hancock 0:05 (laughs) I guess it is, but of course he didn't discover it. Um, in fact, uh, the Americas may have been discovered as early as 130,000 years ago, uh, which, uh, makes 1492 AD pale in-

Chris Williamson 0:23 (laughs)

Graham Hancock 0:24 ... insignificance. Uh, of course, this is a matter that's disputed by archeologists. Nevertheless, there's a highly professional team from the San Diego Natural History Museum, uh, who've excavated what is called the Ceruti Mastodon site just south of San Diego. Um, and I've been there and to the museum and talked to the, the leading expert, Tom Demaré. And what they found was mastodon bones that had been crushed systematically and in an organized way using some kind of stone tool to extract the marrow, uh, and the only interpretation they're able to put upon this is that this was human beings. Whether it was other kinds of human species like Denisovans, perhaps even Neanderthals, or whether it was anatomically modern humans, all of us were around 130,000 years ago. But it's human behavior that we're looking at, the systematic killing of an animal and then the fracturing of its bones to extract the, the marrow. Now of course this is regarded as some kind of terrible heresy by archeologists who've been wedded to the idea of a very recent settlement of the Americas for, for a very, very, very long time. Um, but gradually, reluctantly kicking and screaming, spitting nails as they go along, archeologists have begun to accept that the peopling of the Americas, uh, happened a lot earlier than they had, than they had thought. And presently, the kind of date that is being considered, uh, accepted in fact by, by the majority of archeologists is around 23,000, 24,000 years ago, that's White Sands, New Mexico, and the human footprints there which we, which we feature in, uh, episode one of, uh, season two of Ancient Apocalypse. But, uh, there's a recognition that it could be older than that, could be 30,000 years old, and then there's sites in South America which may be even older, 36,000, 40,000, 50,000 years old. Uh, so the whole issue is very much up for grabs, but the one guy who was really late to the party was Columbus.

Chris Williamson 2:30 (laughs) Is the Americas often overlooked when it comes to the history of human civilization?

Graham Hancock 2:37 Yes, because, because there's been this, this prejudice that, that, uh, the Americas could have had nothing to do with the origins of civilization because human beings supposedly weren't in America until... It- it was called the Clovis First model, it was held until really about 10 years ago that, that no humans had been in the Americas before 13,000 years ago. Uh, so you can see that the Ceruti Mastodon site multiplies that by 10 to, to 130,000 years ago. But, but there's gradually been an acceptance of a, of, of an- an earlier settlement than that. And they're still fighting over the Ceruti Mastodon site, whether to accept that or not. There's been a back and forth of papers in, uh, Nature, uh, a reasonably respectful discussion going on between archeologists who disagree over this. But yes, the, the, that model of a very late settlement of the Americas, I mean, the view is that anatomically modern humans came into Europe about 60,000 years ago, maybe, maybe 50,000 years ago. Uh, we have anatomically modern humans in Australia between 50 and 60,000 years ago as well. Uh, and of course anatomically modern humans were in Africa going back 300,000 years. The, the, um, the earliest known, uh, anatomically modern human remains are from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco and they date to 310,000 years ago, uh, and they're, uh, identical to, pretty much identical to, to, to modern humans today. And we can assume that their brains were, uh, pretty much identical as well. It may be that earlier examples of anatomically modern humans will be found. This is why one of my pet sayings is, "Stuff just keeps on getting older." Because it's not that long ago when, when, uh, the view was, I mean back in the '90s, when, when the view was that, uh, there were no anatomically modern humans before 50,000 years ago, and then new discoveries kept pushing that back, and then it switched to about 110,000 years ago with a discovery in Ethiopia, and now more than 300,000 years ago. So who knows how far that timeline will go back. Um, but, but, um, the, the, the, the general view has been, uh, we will not look for the origins of civilization in the Americas 'cause they were recently settled. Uh, and these new discoveries are, have to change that picture. O- archeology is very slow to change its paradigms, but, but this is one that is going to need to be changed, and the result is that the Americas have not been seriously studied for the specific issue of the origins of civilization, that thing that we call civilization.

Chris Williamson 5:07 What was or is the established history? What, what was the story that's been told by archeologists up to now about how the Americas were settled, when, what mode, et cetera?

Graham Hancock 5:18 Right. Well, the, the, the story that stuck for a very long time, like 30 or more years, um, was the notion that a people who archeologists call the Clovis culture, uh, entered North America across the Bering Land Bridge, we call it the Bering Straits today, but during the Ice Age, and 13,400 years ago was during the Ice Age, sea level was much lower and it was possible to cross by land from Siberia, um, into Alaska, and thus to enter the Americas without making a, a, a sea voyage. And part of the prejudice that archeologists did have against our ancestors is they didn't think they were capable of making sea voyages, uh, and therefore this seemed like the most likely way that, that they came into the Americas. And that stuck for a very long time, and that was called the, the Clovis First hypothesis, and it became the subje- if I can just complete, it became the subject of a bitter battle amongst archeologists because there was a, a, a group of archeologists, very powerful, very influential, very widely published, who clung on to this Clovis First doctrine, that there was no culture here before the Clovis culture, for a very long time. And anybody who brought new evidence to the table suggesting an older human presence in the Americas w- were running the risk of having their careers destroyed.... and, and this happened in several, the case of several individuals, were, were running the risk of being, of being humiliated, of having funding withdrawn from their research, and so on and so forth. So that, that doctrine, the Clovis First doctrine, stuck until the evidence became utterly overwhelming. For example, Tom Dillehay finally managed to, to demonstrate, even to the most skeptical of his colleagues, that Monte Verde in South America, uh, had, uh, dated at least 14,000 years ago, well before Clovis, and maybe 15 and more thousand years ago. Um, and, and Jacques Cinq-Mars, uh, this classic example, brilliant man, excavated Bluefish Caves in the Yukon, uh, back in the 1970s, uh, and found evidence that humans had been there 24,000 years ago. And he received the full machine gun fire of the entire archeological profession, and they literally destroyed his career. But back in twenty-s- uh, in 2017, he was finally proved to be right. He was absolutely 100% right. Humans were in the Yukon.

Chris Williamson 7:35 Is he still around?

Graham Hancock 7:36 He is still around, but, but, but very, very, uh, old now and retired-

Chris Williamson 7:40 Mm.

Graham Hancock 7:40 ... um, and, and, and broken by, by what happened to him.

Chris Williamson 7:44 It's interesting, you talk about coming over the Bering Land Bridge into north, the northeast of North America-

Graham Hancock 7:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 7:50 ... and then trickling down from there.

Graham Hancock 7:51 Trickling down from there, yeah.

Chris Williamson 7:52 But if, if you were to suggest that that happens around about 13,000 years ago, let, let's say that the, um, markings that were found in South America that you just mentioned-

Graham Hancock 8:01 Mm.

Chris Williamson 8:01 ... were found i- u- shortly after that, that is a long way-

Graham Hancock 8:05 It's a long journey.

Chris Williamson 8:05 ... to travel.

Graham Hancock 8:06 It's a long-

Chris Williamson 8:06 If you're starting at the top and coming down-

Graham Hancock 8:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:08 ... you would presume that the disbursement would be more centered at the top as opposed to at the bottom.

Graham Hancock 8:12 Yes, you would. And, and, and archeologists are, are beginning now to open up to the idea that, that our ancestors were seafarers. (laughs) Uh, I mean, they have to be open to that idea because even at the peak of the Ice Age when sea level was at its lowest, it was not possible, uh, to get to Australia without a sea voyage. Um, you just couldn't do it. And, uh, particularly when you're settling a new land, you can't just go by accident with two or three people. You have to go with a substantial group who bring the means of survival with them at that point. Otherwise, they'll become extinct very, very rapidly. And Australia was systematically settled about 50,000, maybe as much as 60,000 years ago, and undoubtedly, boat, boat journeys were involved, and, and the same goes for Cyprus. Uh, of course, Cyprus is an island today, but it was an island during the Ice Age too. It's surrounded by colossal deeps at that end of the Mediterranean, and it was never connected to the land. And yet Cyprus was settled around 14,000 years ago, and the evidence is it was a highly organized project, uh, which involved, uh, sophisticated shipping and large numbers of people carrying animals with them who s- who settled in Cyprus. So, there shouldn't be an argument that our ancestors could, could, you know, could use ships, and it's beginning to happen now. Now that Clovis First has finally died the death it long ago deserved, archeologists are beginning to accept that, that maybe human beings did use ships to come to the Americas, but they don't like the idea of them doing something like crossing the whole Pacific Ocean directly. They prefer the idea that they kind of island hopped from Siberia down the coast of Alaska and thence into North America, and finally into South America. But this, um, raises one highly significant problem, which is, first of all, that the South American sites, by and large, are older than the North American sites. And secondly, and again we, we feature this in season two of Ancient Apocalypse, there's intriguing DNA evidence which, which connects the peoples of, um, Melanesia, uh, uh, New Guinea and Australian Aborigines, uh, and certain peoples who are indigenous in Taiwan as well, which connects them directly with three tribes, uh, in the Amazon rainforest, in the west of the Amazon rainforest. And that particular genetic signal is not found anywhere in North America at all, and it should be if they got there by a land route coming through North America. It's only found in South America, and, and the most parsimonious way to explain it, even leading geneticists admit this, although they know that it's not an idea that archeologists are going to accept, the easiest way to explain it is that there was a direct crossing of the Pacific Ocean by sea. And since those re- those remains that have been found are already very old, more than 10,000 years old, uh, we're, we're looking at a sea crossing that could have happened thousands of years before that. It's just an accident of discovery that complete skeletal remains were found that are 10,000 years old, which have this DNA signal, which is still present in the modern populations.

Chris Williamson 11:12 Pretty big ocean on either side of the Americas. The-

Graham Hancock 11:15 Big ocean on either side of the Americas.

Chris Williamson 11:16 ... if you're gonna sail it, it's not... I mean, Cyprus, it's deep, whatever, in the Mediterranean, but it's not a-

Graham Hancock 11:21 It's, y-

Chris Williamson 11:21 ... Pacific or an Atlantic crossing.

Graham Hancock 11:23 ... no. You're talk... In the case of Cyprus and Australia, at the peak of the Ice Age, uh, uh, a large part of the, uh, the Indonesian archipelago was all joined into a landmass called Sunda. Uh, and that went down as far as Timor, and, and, um, it, it was, it was still necessary to have a crossing of open ocean of about 90 kilometers to get to New Guinea, and which was then joined to Australia. It was a paleocontinent called Sahul.

Chris Williamson 11:49 Easy one. Easy one.

Graham Hancock 11:49 It was about 90 kilometers. And s- in the case of Cyprus, it was about 50 or 60 kilometers, but the notion of human beings actually crossing the Atlantic O- the Pacific Ocean, uh, crossing thousands of miles of the Pacific Ocean, uh, more than 10,000 years ago is, is, uh, still a very tough one for archeologists to accept. But at the same time, they can't deny the genetic evidence, and they must look for some explanation. And there's been all kinds of, of, um, hysterical wriggles to try to, to try to explain that anomaly. I still think the simplest explanation is the best.

Chris Williamson 12:20 You think Pacific, not Atlantic crossing?

Graham Hancock 12:23 Well, this was definitely a Pacific crossing because the connection is between peoples who live on the east side of the Asian landmass down into Australia, and peoples on the west side of the South American landmass, so.

Chris Williamson 12:34 That's just for the genetic component though.

Graham Hancock 12:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:36 There's other, uh, people that were there. There's more evidence that's there. How did those people get there earlier than...

Graham Hancock 12:43 Well, that's the, that's an unanswered question.

Chris Williamson 12:45 Yes.

Graham Hancock 12:46 Um, that's a, that's a completely unanswered question. There are, there are, there are a number of sites, all of which are strongly disputed, uh, in S- in South America, which are, which are much, much older. And how did they get there? We, we, we don't know. The, what has to, what has to be seriously questioned is the notion that the entry was only through North America-

Chris Williamson 13:05 Yeah.

Graham Hancock 13:05 ... and that they kind of-

Chris Williamson 13:06 And only 13,000 years ago.

Graham Hancock 13:08 Thir- or even 23,000 years ago-

Chris Williamson 13:11 Yeah.

Graham Hancock 13:11 ... and that they had to find their way through North America down to South America. And the reason that I- South America's not being considered as a possible first place of human habitation in the Americas is precisely because of that prejudice that, of course, our ancestors couldn't have sailed the entire Pacific Ocean.

Chris Williamson 13:27 What's interesting about the Amazon from a history-

Graham Hancock 13:31 Everything is interesting about the Amazon. Um, I lo- I love the Amazon. It's, it's a god, or I would prefer to say a goddess. Uh, the Amazon is a, a force. It's, uh, an amazing and extraordinary thing. It's very tough. Uh, the heat and the humidity are intense. The insects, the snakes, uh, the creatures that will eat you up, the piranhas in the river, uh-

Chris Williamson 14:00 It sounds pretty inhospitable as a place that you're going to settle.

Graham Hancock 14:02 But at the same, at the same time, it's a, it's a garden in which humans can flourish and which humans did flourish. So what's interesting about the Amazon, first and foremost, this is one of those areas of the world that is massively under-researched by archeology. And I don't say that that's, uh, uh, a, an act of irresponsibility on the part of archeology, that's because it's incredibly expensive to go and research in the Amazon. And when you are of the opinion that you're not gonna find much there, then, then, uh, undertaking that research has never seemed worthwhile. But new information keeps on coming in, which is, which is changing that. I mean, statistically, we're, we're looking about five to six million square kilometers that are still under dense canopy rainforest, and, uh, as a res- and again, this is, this is an issue that we've gone into in season two of Ancient Apocalypse because e- I think everybody knows that the Amazon is under attack at the moment, that large parts of the Amazon are being cut down, uh, and turned into soya bean farms and cattle ranches, and the soya beans are primarily to feed the cattle. Um, as a result of these clearances, uh, strange things have begun to emerge into plain sight, uh, and these include gigantic, perfectly geometrical earthworks. Now if we talk about the earthworks in the UK, when, when ev- I mean, everybody's heard of Stonehenge or, or, or, or Avebury. A henge actually is an earthwork. It's the, it's the ditch that surrounds the stone circle. It's not particularly prominent in the case of Stonehenge, but it's massively prominent in the case of A- Avebury, uh, a big deep ditch with an embankment on, on either side. These, these earthworks in the Amazon, they don't have the standing stones in the middle of them 'cause there is no stone in that part of the Amazon, but they do have these, these huge earthworks, which can take very intriguing geometrical forms, uh, for example, a perfect square with a perfect circle inside it, but on a scale of hundreds of meters, uh, rectangles, um, square enclosures with sort of scallops cut out of one corner of them, uh, the, the whole thing, and lots and lots of circles. Uh, many of these, these structures appear to be aligned to the cardinal directions, um, and-

Chris Williamson 16:29 What's the cardinal direct-

Graham Hancock 16:30 North, south, east, and west. N- and, and it's very important to be clear on that. North, south, east, and west on a compass are not the same as true north, south, east, and west. Uh, there's an error of about 10 or 11 degrees in compass, which is a magnetic reading. True north is defined by astronomy.

Chris Williamson 16:46 And which one does this follow?

Graham Hancock 16:47 Uh, this follows true north, yeah, yeah. True north, south, east, and west, the true cardinal directions. So anyway, um, as a result of the clearances, we've started to see these puzzling earthworks a- appearing, and, and that has led a, a team who we cooperated with in Ancient Apocalypse. Uh, the lead archeologist is Martti Parsinen from the University of Helsinki, uh, and his partner in the project is Alceu Ranzi who's a very distinguished geographer, uh, from Brazil. Um, and it was actually Alceu who was the first to spot these geoglyphs, uh, uh, that's what he called them, bi- because it, it struck him that there was a similarity to the Nazca Lines. These things are so big that you can only really see what they are when you're up in the air. And he was on a flight over and suddenly thou- saw this, and he thought, "What the hell is that?" And that led him to begin to investigate and find there wasn't just one, there were dozens of them that had already been produced by the clearances. And now what Alceu and Martti are doing is a detailed lidar study, uh, in the areas touching on those parts that have already been cleared, they're going deeper into the jungle. And while we were there, they, they found half a dozen new structures under the canopy rainforest. You see, lidar will allow you to see through the rainforest canopy and to see relief features underneath it without destroying anything, and then you can go in very, very low tech, you can just go in, not destroy anything, and begin to investigate what the lidar has picked up. And what the lidar's picked up is these just extraordinary geometrical structures extending into the jungle as far as the range of the drone on that day. And, and, um, both Martti and Alceu are of the opinion that there are thousands of these things still waiting to be discovered and indigenous people, um, I- I spent time with, uh, with an elder of the Apurina people who, who, tf- for whom these geoglyphs are, are sacred. Um, they, they s- they say that there are thousands of them throughout the jungle, and they still venerate them and value them today, and that they are places that shamans use, um, to work healing medicine on the people.

Chris Williamson 18:50 How old are they?

Graham Hancock 18:52 The ones that have been, uh, found up till now, uh, go back about 2,000 to 3,000 years, and that's based on dating of organic material found in the earthworks, it's a- it's a rough guess. Uh, however, what they've- what they've found, that those preci- precise areas on which the earthworks now stand, once you go down- once you excavate down deeper than about two or three meters, you find that they have been intensely used by human beings, and there's an enormous amount of- of charcoal and carbon down there. And those- those dates... So what they're saying is that these sites actually appear to have been selected and appear to have been sacred to people for at least 10,000 years, uh, and we see the latest incarnation of them, uh, in the earthworks that- that have survived, uh, to this day. So there's a big project now going on in the Amazon to open it up and to find out... I don't mean to open it up by destroying the rainforest. I mean to use LiDAR to find out what's going on there, and- and- and other results of this have- have included absolute confirmation that there were huge cities in the Amazon, that the Amazon did have a population, before the Spanish conquest, of tens of millions. This was- this was a completely different place from the place that we imagine, this kind of pristine rainforest inhabited by a few tribes of hunter-foragers. No, uh, there were large-scale permanent settlements in the Amazon, uh, and they were joined by perfectly straight roadways that ran, in some cases, for hundreds of kilometers. Uh, we are seeing the traces, literally, of a lost civilization in the Amazon, and the work is just beginning to get to grips with the- with the dates on these, and this is just tiny bits of the Amazon that have been looked at thus far. So I'm of the opinion that the Amazon has a great deal more to tell us, uh, and, uh, I've done my best to- to bring the case for that to the viewers in- in Ancient Apocalypse. And besides, what a privilege to spend time in the Amazon.

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Graham Hancock 22:00 My first visit to the Amazon was in 2003. I was working on a book, uh, that I published in 2005 called Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind. It's- it's recently been retitled as- as Visionary. Uh, it's still out there, but- but, um, I was interested in the notion, uh, for which credit must be given to the late great Terence McKenna, uh, that, uh, sampling psychedelics, uh, played a key role in the evolution of- of human consciousness, um, and that we can see the evidence for the use of psychedelics. Uh, and here I want to pay tribute to the work of Professor David Lewis Williams of the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. We can see evidence for the use of psychedelics in cave art all around the world, and in rock art all around the world, and we can see that evidence in the Amazon very, very strongly. And furthermore, shamans in the Amazon who are drinking ayahuasca, drinking the powerful visionary brew ayahuasca, after their visionary experiences, if they have painting skills, and quite a number of them do, they paint their visions. And those paintings of those visions are astonishingly similar to the paintings that you see on ancient rock faces, such as in Colombia, in the Amazon, going back more than 12,000 years, and paintings that you see, uh, even in Europe, in caves like Lascaux, where the same geomat- geometric patterns and the same strange beings that are part mixture- a mixture of part animal, part human, uh- uh- appear. It's as though the visionary realm is being manifested in art, um, and I wanted to investigate that and- and I had not experienced ayahuasca before but I didn't feel I could write about it authentically without drinking ayahuasca. So went to the Amazon, first of all, in 2003 to drink ayahuasca with an indigenous shaman, um, and- and his name is Francisco Montes Shuna. Uh, and I had my first 11 sessions with- with-

Chris Williamson 24:01 11 sessions?

Graham Hancock 24:01 Yes.

Chris Williamson 24:01 First 11 s-

Graham Hancock 24:02 First 11, yeah. I've- I've- I've-

Chris Williamson 24:04 Okay.

Graham Hancock 24:04 ... had subsequently had about another 70. Um, but that was... The first 11 were for research purposes. The- the-

Chris Williamson 24:11 Of course.

Graham Hancock 24:11 ... the other- the other 70 is because ayahuasca has helped me to, uh, get to grips with issues in my life that, uh, I didn't even know I needed to get to grips with. But it's- it's- it's- it's helped me to do that. So I- I- I still feel... I think they're right in the Amazon to refer to ayahuasca as a teacher, uh, and I have- I have learned many useful and im- and important lessons to it. So the- from it... so the last time I had an ayahuasca session was actually while we were filming, um, uh, in, uh, Peru, in the Peruvian Amazon for season two of Ancient Apocalypse. Um, and it was with-

Chris Williamson 24:43 You peeled off from a day of shooting to go and...

Graham Hancock 24:45 And... Yeah. And it was the- the same shaman, Francisco Montes Shuna, who I'd drunk with 20 years before. So it was fascinating to- to be back there and to be in the midst of that-... majesty and surrounded by that, that wildness. There's, there's... Of course, you can drink ayahuasca pretty well anywhere in the world today, but, uh, it's better to do so, uh, in the hands of a shaman who really knows what he or she is doing. I'm not saying that there can't be Western shamans, there can and there are some, uh, but they need to sit down at the feet of shamans in the Amazon and learn techniques from them, because people can get into a very bad place on an ayahuasca trip and that needs to be handled. Uh, shamans see it as keeping dark forces at bay, that's, that's what their role is primarily in this. So it was very, very interesting to have, uh, to have another session there, and I was, I was joined by my good friend, uh, Luis Eduardo Luna, uh, who's a Colombian anthropologist, who is now based in Brazil. He's an ex- one of the world experts on, on ayahuasca, and we had some very interesting discussions about the mysteries of this brew. And the mysteries of the ayahuasca brew also touch upon the question of civilization in the Amazon.

Chris Williamson 25:57 How so?

Graham Hancock 25:57 Well, um, because ayahuasca is a very (laughs) complicated thing to make. Uh, it's, it is, um, a mixture of two ingredients. The best known form, which is actually called ayahuasca, and that's not even an Amazonian word, that's a Quechua word, it's an In- Inca word. The Incas were also using ayahuasca and they named it, and that name, th- th- they, they, there are many local names for it, but the, the Inca name stuck and everybody calls it ayahuasca now, which means the vine of souls or the vine of the dead. The vine itself, um, has almost no visionary properties. Uh, if you were to drink a tea made of th- v- brewing up smashed up portions of the vine and, and you could drink gallons of it and you wouldn't have any visions whatsoever. The other ingredient is a leaf from a bush, and that bush is botanically Psychotria viridis. Uh, in the Amazon, they call it chakruna. And those leaves contain substantial qualities, quantities of, of arguably the world's most powerful psychedelic, which is di- dimethyltryptamine, DMT, the type of DMT that's called N,N-DMT. And this where it gets complicated because, because DMT is not normally, uh, accessible orally to the brain. In other words, you could eat, munch several kilos of those leaves or cook them up in a tea and drink them, it wouldn't have any effect on you, um, and, and this is because of the, the m- an enzyme called monoamine oxidase that we have in our gut. Uh, it destroys DMT on contact, uh, that's why people who want to have the straight DMT experience today have to smoke it or vape it, smoke it in a pipe or, or, or, or vape it, and then it gets right through the blood-brain barrier and into the brain, but through the gut, you can't absorb it, uh, orally. Uh, so how do you conquer that problem? What you need, in scientific terms, is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, you need something that will shut down that enzyme in the gut, and that's precisely what the ayahuasca vine provides. It provides a monoamine oxidase inhibitor that shuts down the enzyme in the gut and allows the DMT in the leaves that are part of the brew, uh, to be active and then instead of having the usual 10 or 12 minute, or even less, trip to the other side of reality, which is what happens with, with smoked or vaped DMT, you have a four-hour journey to the other side of reality, um, and it's much slower paced and you have time to get to grips with what is happening and to investigate the visions that you're experiencing and, and, and the teachings that you're receiving. Sometimes you receive nothing, sometimes all you do is just vomit and have, have diarrhea, and that's, I mean, that is, that is one of the physical consequences of ayahuasca. I can say as, as a result of being working with ayahuasca for more than 20 years now, I can say that as a result of long term exposure to ayahuasca, the, the vomiting and diarrhea side of it have got less and less as time has, as time has gone on, um, but the, the visionary experiences, uh, continue to be extremely powerful. However, sometimes you don't get anything, and they, they, they call it the nada, uh, in, in, in Peru, where you have a nothing. But that, they, uh, the view of shamans in Peru is that nothing is the really most important one that you're downloading stuff subconsciously that you're not getting consciously, it's really, they celebrate these nadas, they're good things to have.

Chris Williamson 29:30 What's the implication of having the similar cave paintings from potential psychedelic cave paintings in the Amazon, in Europe, elsewhere in the world? What, what do you sort of-

Graham Hancock 29:41 Well, the implica- the, the-

Chris Williamson 29:42 ... the story you're drawing from them?

Graham Hancock 29:43 ... the implication is that psychedelics were involved in, in every case, different psychedelics, uh, but they, th- they were involved in every case. Just to finish on the case of ayahuasca, there, the, the other form of ayahuasca, um, um, is called yaje, which is spelled Y-A-J-E with an accent over the E, yaje, um, and, and a lot of people think that is ayahuasca, and indeed it does include the ayahuasca vine, that that is a common element to these two versions of the brew, um, however, the dimethyltryptamine element is not. It's provided actually from another vine, from the leaves that grow off that vine, and they contribute not only N,N-DMT but also 5-MeO-DMT. Both of them are in the brew, uh, with the monoamine oxidase.

Chris Williamson 30:26 Have you tried this yaje?

Graham Hancock 30:27 Yes, I have.

Chris Williamson 30:28 Okay. Can you compare the two for me?

Graham Hancock 30:29 Yeah. Uh, I would say it's significantly more powerful, uh, than, than ayahuasca on its own and, uh, really in- intense, overwhelming, uh, visions and, and the sense of contact with, with an intelligence. And I know that skeptical, uh, nuts and bolts scientists will say, "Of course you're not having contact with any intelligence, it's just, it's just your fantasies, it's just, just a hallucination," but I suggest they go and have a dozen sessions of ayahuasca first and see if that is still their view. There's something very mysterious about it and this is a result of-... literally Amazonian technology. Go figure, how they, how they choose, out of more hundred thousand different species of plants and trees, they find the bush with the leaves that contain DMT, and they find the vine, uh, whi- which contains the monoamine oxidase inhibitor, and they put them together.

Chris Williamson 31:22 What are you suggesting-

Graham Hancock 31:23 To do that by trial and error is no easy task.

Chris Williamson 31:25 Uh, it's no easy task, but also, given enough time and not much else to do, it seems-

Graham Hancock 31:30 It could be done. It could be done.

Chris Williamson 31:31 Yeah.

Graham Hancock 31:31 And when I observe shamans in the Amazon today, what I n- notice is that they are constantly sampling plants, that they're constantly sampling admixtures of plants. Um, Francisco, on, on th- this, this latest journey that I had, was dropping little bits of different flowers, uh, in- in- into the plant as well.

Chris Williamson 31:51 God knows what that's gonna do.

Graham Hancock 31:53 Yeah. Well, all I can say is that I did have an extraordinary night, um, and- and it was- and it was very, very interesting. And, you know, nobody in their right mind is going to drink ayahuasca for kicks. It's not some kinda ... it's not s- some kind of lighthearted high.

Chris Williamson 32:08 Recreation.

Graham Hancock 32:08 It's- I would say it's (laughs) definitely not recreational, uh, especially with the physical effects that it has.

Chris Williamson 32:15 (laughs)

Graham Hancock 32:15 But it's also (laughs) ... But it's also a powerful emotional journey, which will- which will reveal to you things that you may have suppressed from yourself, and the, you know, the point I- I often make on this is, it's very easy to be harsh and cruel with words to another human being, especially when you're pretty good at words, which- which I am. And I've often ... That's my only skill, actually. (laughs) I have no other skills. I can't even, you know, put a- a- a screwdriver into a screw thread without it breaking off. Um, but I can r- I- I- I have words, and I- and I've realized that I've- that I've said things in moments of anger that were very harsh and very cruel and really hurt other people, and- and- and ayahuasca's shown me that side of myself.

Chris Williamson 32:57 It's interesting on that point, uh, I often think about how people that are physically strong ... Th- there's a meme, uh, there is a culture around physically strong people protect physically weaker people.

Graham Hancock 33:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 33:09 Or, at the very least, a big, hulking MMA fighter doesn't try and fight a granddad ...

Graham Hancock 33:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:15 ... for instance, because there's an imbalance, but we don't have the same sense, because outwardly it's not as obvious. We don't have the same sense for somebody lexically who is linguistically very capable.

Graham Hancock 33:26 No.

Chris Williamson 33:26 And you can use ... Ben Shapiro talked to me about this, about how he- he's a professional debater, very quick with his words, so on and so forth, and he can use that to win when arguing with his wife.

Graham Hancock 33:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:38 But he says, "Do you want to be right or do you want to be loved?"

Graham Hancock 33:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:41 And, uh ...

Graham Hancock 33:42 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 33:42 He has to temper ... It's like being the real strong guy up against the- the granddad.

Graham Hancock 33:47 Abs- absolutely. I- I- I would say the- the most important lessons I've had from- from my ayahuasca journeys has- has been that I do have a problem with anger and I need to deal with it, and I have been dealing with it. It's- it's one thing to get the revelation, it's another thing to actually integrate it into your life.

Chris Williamson 34:03 I mean-

Graham Hancock 34:04 That's where the hard work begins, but I- I'm- but I'm- I'm working on this, and I hope that I'm a kinder and more nurturing person than I was.

Chris Williamson 34:11 I wanna get it ... I wa- I wanna talk about because I'm- I'm particularly fascinated about the psychology of somebody that's had to deal with such consistent criticism for a long period of time, disposition for anger, but then also, evidently, this sort of transcendent desire to, uh-

Graham Hancock 34:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:24 ... uh, include and transcend, as- as, uh, Ken Wilber would say. Um, but-

Graham Hancock 34:29 It's partly to do with- with being 74 years old. I- I ... Y- y- you know, we're all mortal, um, and th- the thing is that w- when we're in our 30s and 40s, we don't really take that into account, but believe me, when you get to my age, the clock is ticking, and- and- and you know that whatever happens, it's not gonna be that long before your time is up, and- and, um, I'm completely r- resigned and accepting to the- the notion of death, and it can come at- at any time, but when it comes, uh, I- I would like it ... I would like to be able to look back on my life and say that it was a worthwhile life, and that I did more good than I did harm, at the very least.

Chris Williamson 35:06 Anger's a young man's game in that regard?

Graham Hancock 35:08 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 35:10 What's this r- uh, rumor, meme that I've heard about the Amazon being a manmade jungle?

Graham Hancock 35:17 Oh, it is. Uh, it is- it is a manmade jungle.

Chris Williamson 35:19 What does that mean?

Graham Hancock 35:20 Well, what it- what it means is that when you analyze the millions of trees in the Amazon, and you find that they boil down to about 16,000 different species, that species like the Brazil nut tree, which are incredibly helpful to human beings, which are food-producing trees, are hyperdominant in the Amazon, and they shouldn't be if it were just, uh, the result of natural selection in the Amazon. It's clear that human beings have been involved in turning the Amazon to their purpose and making it an environment that is useful to them, uh, that can feed them, that can nurture them, uh, and for that reason, just as the, uh ... Clearly, a brilliant kind of shamanic science went into the creation of ayahuasca. An equally brilliant kind of shamanic science went into the creation of curare, which involves 11 different plants. Uh, can ... You know what curare is?

Chris Williamson 36:15 No.

Graham Hancock 36:15 Curare is a nerve poison, um, which is used to tip arrows. Uh, if you're hunting a monkey and that monkey is 100 foot up a tree, uh, and you want it for dinner, um, what you don't want to do is for it to ... As it- as you shoot an arrow into it, its natural instinct will be to wrap its tail around the tree, and suddenly, the monkey that you want for dinner is hanging by its tail 100 feet above you in the tree. You don't want that. So you want something that paralyzes its muscles, and that's what curare is. Uh, that's why, you know, cu- curare was later used in- in anesthesia as well. They- they, uh, shoot the monkey with a curare-tipped arrow-... its muscles go limp and it falls from the tree, and dinner is, dinner is ready. But to create curare, you need 11 different ingredients all put together. And if you don't have even one of them, it won't work anymore. So that's a, that's a scientific project, again, from a people who have lived in their environment for thousands, I believe, tens of thousands of years, and are so familiar with it, and so comfortable with it, they know what to do with it. Um, but I, I would add to that one other Amazonian science, which again we go into in the, in, in season two, which is, which is called terra preta, which is patches of astonishingly fertile soil that are found dotted throughout the Amazon, and which are still sought out by modern settlers today, um, because the rest of the rainforest isn't particularly fertile. That's why it's also such a tragic waste to cut the rainforest down. It's doing much better things for the world by being left as a rainforest than it is being turned into a cattle ranch. Um, but terra preta has allowed bits of the Amazon to be incredibly fertile, and that also is an Amazonian invention. People in the Amazon are still making terra preta today. But the oldest examples so far found go back more than 8,000 years. And it's a, it's a- it's almost a- it's almost a miracle soil. Um, it regenerates its own fertility. It's full of bacteria. Uh, it's full of biochar. It's been deliberately created by human beings. They, they, they put a lot of, a lot of refuse in it as well, and it just works and multiplies, and it keeps on rejuvenating its own fertility. So patches that are 8,000 years old are still fertile today.

Chris Williamson 38:32 The thing that I keep coming back to is... I, I, I understand that there is, uh, the, the technology or the trial and error that's happened in order to make the Amazon, uh, very useful-

Graham Hancock 38:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:43 ... to humans in a way that other, uh, areas on the planet wouldn't have been. Also understand that you can, uh, curate the jungle, Brazil nut trees-

Graham Hancock 38:53 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:53 ... uh, becoming more prevalent, et cetera. It's still, to me, thinking about what were sort of anthropologically modern humans built for. Persistence hunting, open plains. It just seems so inhospitable.

Graham Hancock 39:08 Mm.

Chris Williamson 39:08 I wonder why, why would you decide to... I, I don't know what America was like 50-

Graham Hancock 39:14 Well, that's where you have- that's where you have to ask yourself, what was the Amazon that we're now looking at, what was it like during the Ice Age? What was it like 12, 13, 14-

Chris Williamson 39:23 Okay, tell me more.

Graham Hancock 39:23 ... thousand years ago? And what it was like was more like, uh, the savannas, uh, of East Africa, uh, than it looks today. Uh, it became a rainforest later, after human beings were in it. And I suspect human beings were... of course, climate change was involved as well, but I suspect the human beings were involved in the creation of the Amazon right from the beginning. Tran- transforming a savanna extending over millions of square kilometers into a giant rainforest. The rainforest isn't, itself is probably not much older than 14,000 years.

Chris Williamson 39:57 Because how would you have been able to make thousands and thousands of circles inside of squares if every two feet there's another tree?

Graham Hancock 40:05 Exactly, exactly. That's, that's, that's right. Uh, and certainly, at the very least, you'd have to clear the area that you wanted to build your earthwork in. Uh, so it's, it's just one of those great unexamined areas, uh, whe- where the human story has not been followed through enough. And when we do follow it through, we find, we find intriguing hints of great sophistication in the past, and, and, and of finding a way of life. We shouldn't imagine that everything that we would call a "advanced civilization" has to look like us, uh, you know, with iPhones, and cars, and rocket ships, and things like that. It doesn't have to look like that. There are lots of other ways to be, to be being advanced, and I would say an advanced civilization actually should not be defined by its possessions, by, by its material wealth. It should be, it- it should be defined by its spiritual wealth and its ability to live in harmony with the environment in which it is surrounded. And our civilization, despite all its tech achievements, is not living in harmony with the environment at all, whereas Amazonian civilization, for thousands of years, was, and still, and still is.

Chris Williamson 41:10 I, I, I get what you mean there. I'm hesitant sometimes of sort of laying at the feet of modern humans this, uh, disregard for the world around us.

Graham Hancock 41:19 Mm.

Chris Williamson 41:19 I think it would be difficult if you were to give people of 13,000, 14,000 years ago the convenience, and the opportunity, and the availability of all of the things that everybody has in the modern world. I, I'm not, I'm not convinced by the idea that humans are being, uh, callous in their usage of most things in the modern world.

Graham Hancock 41:38 Oh, no.

Chris Williamson 41:39 I-

Graham Hancock 41:39 I don't think so either.

Chris Williamson 41:40 Had they have had the opportunity to, it would've been difficult in the past to have not become fat because of the beautiful cheesecake-

Graham Hancock 41:46 Sure.

Chris Williamson 41:46 ... and all of the chips, and-

Graham Hancock 41:47 No, I don't think, I don't think individual humans are being callous at all. Um, w- we operate at the scale of a hive mind, a very large-scale organism. That's what humanity is in, in the world. And, and, um, the plain fact is, we, we, we aren't looking after the world well enough. Uh, this is our, this is our home.

Chris Williamson 42:04 We're very detached from it.

Graham Hancock 42:05 And, and, and, yes, ver- very detached from it, and there, and there's no sense of spiritual value in it. Th- this is one of the problems with modern science, in its, in its desperate desire to separate itself off from superstition. Um, it's become, it's become, um, totally focused on weighing and measuring and counting, on, on, o- on a so-called rational approach to reality, whereas reality itself is not really very rational. Um, and, and, um, I think that, I think that this is what's missing in our society today, is, is the spiritual element, a sense of connection to this beautiful garden of a planet that the universe has gifted us with, and a connection to the, to the wider universe. And, and that's why things happen in the way they do. But it, it can change. I don't think any of the mainstream religions in the world today are helpful in this respect. Uh, I, I, I, I realize that, that some people do get profound spiritual experiences within the mainstream religions. But I, I think what's, what's happening today is people are beginning to seek spiritual directions in, in, in other ways. And perhaps that's one of the reasons why...... ayahuasca has, has become so well-known, uh, and so popular, uh, in, in the West because it does seem to open a doorway to other dimensions and other realms.

Chris Williamson 43:20 It's probably a more reliable route to a transcendent experience than going to the Vatican, for instance.

Graham Hancock 43:25 I would say so, yeah. Far, far more-

Chris Williamson 43:27 Well, the Vatican is pretty pretty awesome.

Graham Hancock 43:27 And a- and also- and also, the key difference is that it's direct experience. It's what you're- it's what you're experiencing, and what you're experiencing is not this world. It's-

Chris Williamson 43:37 It's under- undeniable in that way.

Graham Hancock 43:38 Whatever it is, it's not this. You're experiencing i- i- if our brains are concocting it all as some sort of- sort of elaborate novel, um, then it's, uh, astonishing in itself. That itself is a mystery, um, but many- many of us who've worked with ayahuasca and DMT, uh, can't rid ourselves of the sense that we're getting brief temporary access to some other level of reality. And fortunately, a number of scientists are now looking into this, uh, in- in a serious, organized, experimental way, and that is being done at Imperial College in London, uh, and it's being done at, um, the University of California in San Diego.

Chris Williamson 44:21 Where's that place that's found the way to do IV DMT?

Graham Hancock 44:26 That's i- that's Imperial College.

Chris Williamson 44:28 Yeah.

Graham Hancock 44:28 In London.

Chris Williamson 44:28 And so they can keep you at the state that you would have smoked-

Graham Hancock 44:31 They c- yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:31 ... but perpetual, no-

Graham Hancock 44:32 Yeah. The state- the- the peak state that you would be in five minutes after you've had the third puff on the pipe, the- the peak state that you would be in there, they can keep you there for an hour, or longer, if-

Chris Williamson 44:43 Which presumably feels like three and a half million years-

Graham Hancock 44:46 Well, th- th-

Chris Williamson 44:47 ... subjectively.

Graham Hancock 44:48 I've- I've tried to volunteer for this.

Chris Williamson 44:50 How's that go?

Graham Hancock 44:50 Um, but I- they won't let me because I have epilepsy, um, but one of the projects that's taking place in America may allow me to f- to volunteer. I- I don't believe it would have any neg-

Chris Williamson 45:00 You are a, uh, brave man in that regard.

Graham Hancock 45:02 I don't believe it'd have any negative interaction with my- with my epilepsy because I've had quite a lot of experience with DMT, and- and I've had no problems. Uh, on the contrary, I find it- I find it helpful. But I would like to- I would like to try that extended thing because th-

Chris Williamson 45:15 Have you done the pipe?

Graham Hancock 45:16 Uh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:17 Yep.

Graham Hancock 45:17 I've- I've- I've smoked DMT and I've vaped DMT. Both are- both are- both are-

Chris Williamson 45:22 And drank it through the-

Graham Hancock 45:23 And then drunk it through the- through the- through the ayahuasca brew. The- the- the nice thing about going straight to the DMT is you don't have the negative physical consequences, um, and that, you know, you can be in the middle of a- of an extraordinary vision where revelations are just piling in on you, and suddenly your stomach says, "No (laughs) . Get me- get me-"

Chris Williamson 45:43 Got something else to do.

Graham Hancock 45:43 "... get me out of here immediately."

Chris Williamson 45:45 Something else to do.

Graham Hancock 45:45 You know, and- and that often involves, in the jungle, squatting behind a- behind a tree and confronting whatever creatures are living in that tree.

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Chris Williamson 46:56 What did you learn about the Mayans?

Graham Hancock 46:59 Well, this is another extraordinary civilization of the ancient world, which, um, I think has much more ancient origins than are given to it. We have to trace the origins of Mayan civilization back through the people who were called the Olmecs, uh, and then we have to look at the incredible sophistication and complication of Mayan mathematics and Mayan astronomy, and the enormous numbers that they used and how they were recording dates on stele that go back 30 million years into the past.

Chris Williamson 47:31 Where are they? Modern- uh, on a modern map, where do you point to where the Mayans were?

Graham Hancock 47:36 The Yucatan Peninsula, primarily, but then going on into Guatemala as- as- as well. Th- that's- that's- that's the Mayan area, and, um, for- for season two of Ancient Apocalypse, we filmed specifically in Palenque, which is down at the bottom of the Yucatan. The- the nearest large- large town is, uh, Villa Hermosa. Uh, Palenque is a- a magnificent Mayan site dating back to the eighth or ninth century AD, um, and, uh, it's got a- a series of pyramids built around a beautiful plaza with what appears to be an astronomical observation tower in the middle of a structure that is probably lo- wrongly referred to as the palace. Uh, and, um, uh, I was able to discuss the site at length with an- with an archeologist. Not all archeologists hate me. Uh, quite- quite a number of archeologists are- are- are interested in what I do and are- are willing to work with me. Don't necessarily agree with me, um, but are willing at least to have a civil conversation with me, and- and I was so lucky to have Ed Barnhart as- as- as a guest when we were in Palenque.

Chris Williamson 48:41 He seems cool. I watched him on Lex's show.

Graham Hancock 48:42 He's a brilliant guy, and he- and he's fun, and he's- he's- he's just so enjoyable to be around (laughs) , and, uh, just a mine of information about the Mayan calendar and about, uh, Mayan astronomy and about Mayan mathematics.

Chris Williamson 48:54 So he can read Mayan?

Graham Hancock 48:55 He can, yes. He can read the Mayan glyphs, and he- he- he did a bit of that for us. He's- he's- he's just really good at it, but also, you know, interpreting what- what Mayan culture was- was all about, and- and one of the things we touched on, uh, was the- the fact that there's a very-... specific idea about what happens to the soul after death, and that idea is found all around the world. It's found very powerfully in the Americas; South America, Mexico, Central America, and North America. Uh, but it's also found in Egypt, and it's found in Mesopotamia, and it's found in ancient India. And the idea is that upon death, the soul makes a, a leap to the heavens, and where it specifically leaps to is the Milky Way. And this is referred to in many cultures as the path of souls, and it's... The deceased individual then... or the soul of the deceased individual then makes a journey along the path of souls, and there will be confronted with all the errors and mistakes, and also all the good that that person's done.

Chris Williamson 50:00 Like a judgment day.

Graham Hancock 50:01 It's like a judgment scene. And, and, and that judgment is represented by, by monstrous beings and locked gates that you have to be able to confront. And, and this idea is just found all around the world, and it's one of the reasons, one of the reasons that I find very persuasive to the notion that we've lost an episode of the human story. I don't think this is a coincidence that this i-... I think we're looking at the remnant of a very ancient spiritual system which was passed down in many different parts of the globe and, and subsequently reinterpreted and developed by the people it was passed-

Chris Williamson 50:33 You're saying that because it sounds like there's echoes of that in some modern religions, that you don't think they've independently arisen separately. You think that it's a single lineage.

Graham Hancock 50:42 I, I think it's a s- a single lineage, yeah. I think w- when we come to specific ideas like that, uh, plus the, um, a- a- availability and the focus upon and the sacred nature of specific numbers, uh, in many different cultures around the world, uh, is-

Chris Williamson 50:58 What, like?

Graham Hancock 50:58 Well, um, there's a p- there's a phenomenon which has been very important in my work over the last 30 years called the, the precession of the equinoxes. Um, and, uh, it, it, it's, it's not a phenomenon that e- that everybody knows about, so I'll, I'll, I'll try to explain it. It's actually an observable effect, but it's hardly observable within a human lifetime. Um, if you... The best way to observe it, if you could extend your life by a few hundred years and just stay, just be at the same spot every spring equinox when the sun rises perfectly due east, and you be there before dawn, a good hour before dawn, a constellation of the zodiac is gonna be lying on the horizon in the place where the sun rises. And that constellation was seen by ancient cultures as, as housing the sun, uh, on the equinox, and it defined the character of an age. Um, but if you could be there for several hundred years, you would notice that it's gradually shifting along the horizon, and eventually another constellation will slip into place behind the sun on that same key day.

Chris Williamson 52:02 And what's happening there from an, uh, uh, astronomical perspective?

Graham Hancock 52:04 Well, what's happen- what's happening is the earth is our viewing platform from which we observe the stars, and not only is it rotating on its own axis, as we know, but it's also wobbling. And that w- and that wobble, uh, one of the most noticeable effects over long periods of time is it changes the pole star. So because the... What is the pole star except the star that the extended north pole of the earth points most directly at? Uh, and at the moment, it's Polaris, but it's been Thuban. It's been Draco. It's been many other stars in the, in, in, in... Thuban is in the constellation of Draco in the past.

Chris Williamson 52:36 (clears throat) What's the cycle? How long does it take for you to get back?

Graham Hancock 52:39 25,920 years. Um-

Chris Williamson 52:42 (laughs) I'm glad that you know it.

Graham Hancock 52:44 25,920 years, and, uh, the process unfolds at the rate of one degree every 72 years. Uh, so that is-

Chris Williamson 52:53 It's gonna be tough to track in the space of a 72-year lifetime.

Graham Hancock 52:56 It is. It is. So you need, you need long-term observation, you need record keeping, and you need the information being passed on from, from generation to generation. But sooner or later, you're going to notice. If you're an avid watcher of the heavens and if these things matter to you as they did to ancient cultures, you're gonna notice that this is shifting along the horizon. Whether you've gotta figure out exactly why that observable is happening, that's another matter which I can't give you a definite answer on. But that the o- that the, the observable was observed going back a very long way into the past is, is clear. And, and, uh, I can't touch on this subject without paying tribute to the work of Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Deschend. Uh, Giorgio was the professor of the history of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology back in the 1960s at a time when I think people were more open-minded than they are today. And Hertha was a professor of the history of science at Frankfurt University, and they published this, um, astonishing, groundbreaking book called Hamlet's Mill. Um, and Hamlet's Mill, uh, is about the ancient recognition of precession. They completely dis- th- these are leading academic figures. They completely dismiss the notion that the Greeks discovered precession just 2,000 or 2,300 years ago. They're confident that it goes back thousands of years before that, and they trace it back to what they call some almost unbelievable ancestor civilization. Uh, the fact that this is found all around the world in many, many different cultures.

Chris Williamson 54:24 Mm-hmm.

Graham Hancock 54:24 Classic example, the, uh, bridge between... The, the bridge over the, the moat leading to Angkor Thom in the Angkor complex has 54 statues on either side, and each of those is pulling on the, uh, the body of a serpent. Uh, and, and if you add 54 to 54, you get 108. Uh, 108 is 72 plus 36, half of 72. 72 is the heartbeat of the precessional cycle. Uh, and then there's precessional imagery. What they're doing by pulling on that serpent is they're churning the milky ocean, uh-There's also reliefs in Angkor Wat which show the same scene, but in, on Angkor Thom, it's actually in three dimensions. They're churning the milky ocean, uh, and- and as a result, they're producing the Amrita, the elixir of immortality. But that churning motion, that's why the book is called Hamlet's Mill, um, Lody's Mill. That same idea of something whirling and turning and changing is locked symbolically into this number system, uh, all around the world.

Chris Williamson 55:27 What are some of the other numbers? You mentioned 108.

Graham Hancock 55:29 The- they're all multiples of 72 or additions to 72, which are related to the number 72, like 72 plus 36, being 108, is a processional number. It's a very widely respected number found in sacred traditions all around the world. Uh, 43- 43,200, uh, is another processional number. Th- that's 72 times 600. Um, and- and, uh, that is a number that's found everywhere. There are 432,000 syllables in the Rigveda. Uh, it's the same number again and again, the same, based on the same system of ideas that- that keeps on coming up.

Chris Williamson 56:07 What were the numbers that the Mayans were obsessed by?

Graham Hancock 56:12 The Mayans were very much involved in the equinoxes and in processional numbers, but they were also going far beyond that. They were plumbing the depths of time. They were- the- the- the- I can't think of any other ancient culture which- which had a focus on periods that were millions of years.

Chris Williamson 56:28 The five million year.

Graham Hancock 56:29 It's a- it's a really quite remarkable thing. And- and- and they could tell you- they could tell you- (laughs) they could tell you what the phase of the moon was on a particular day five or ten million years ago.

Chris Williamson 56:41 Why do you think they were so preoccupied with deep history, long numbers, numerology? Not numerology.

Graham Hancock 56:48 Well, uh, numerology is a fair- a fair- fair word for it in the sense that nu- numbers are- are thought to have a sacred or a magical quality. It-

Chris Williamson 56:55 Why do you think that the Mayans, what is it that's...

Graham Hancock 56:58 Well, I've always seen this as a... And again, of course, I'm going to be criticized by archaeologists for this as- as though I'm taking something away from the Mayans. Um, but I see the Mayan calendar and the mathematics associated with it as an out-of-place artifact. I see it as- I see it as something which is the need for it is hard to explain, uh, within the general circumstances of Mayan culture to have that precise mathematical calculation and this ability to think back millions of years into the past and into the future. Um, it's hard to see the need for it. It feels like- it feels like something that would have been needed in a- in a much bigger culture, a much bigger civilization, which had, you know, were able to put huge numbers of specialists to work on it. I do regard it as an inheritance. I think- I think the Maya inherited this system from an earlier lost civilization. That's my view. And then they did their own work on it and- and developed it, and- and- and it's a very extraordinary thing.

Chris Williamson 57:59 If that was the case, if the Mayans inherited it, it was passed down somehow from a previous more advanced civilization, why would they have needed it?

Graham Hancock 58:09 Uh, well, um, I think that, look at our so-called civilization today. I mean, we have no problem with big numbers. They're- they're quite useful to us. We have no problem with- with complex sophisticated mathematics. We are quite capable of peering back millions of years in the past. I mean, our- our present, uh, creation story is that, uh, that the Earth formed 4,500 million years ago, 4.5 billion years ago. Um, and well, the evidence seems to suggest that- that- that it did. But, you know, that can also be viewed as a creation myth in a way, a scientific creation myth.

Chris Williamson 58:45 That's right.

Graham Hancock 58:45 The big ban- Big Bang, that's another... It's- it's- it's a theory, it's a speculation, but did it- did it happen? Was it- was it that way? Um, there's evidence suggesting that it was, but I- the point I'm making is that, uh, creation myths, foundation myths, myths about the nature of the universe are not limited to, uh, hunter-forager peoples in the ancient world. They're also found in the scientific world today.

Chris Williamson 59:09 How much do you think of this focus on astronomy and numbers is from a functional perspective, something logistically operationally useful? And how much do you think is, uh, symbolic, uh, and sort of sacred?

Graham Hancock 59:25 I think it's- I- I don't think it's primarily functional. Most archaeologists will tell you that. They- they- they say, "Of course, the ancients wanted to know when spring began, uh, when..."

Chris Williamson 59:36 How to navigate.

Graham Hancock 59:37 Yeah. But- but not only that, for planting crops, you know, for- for- for agriculture, you want to know the season to plant, the season to- to- to reap. Uh, so you want to be aware of the spring equinox. You want to know the longest day of the year, the shortest day of the year, the solstices. Uh, these are- these are useful in an agricultural calendar, and that's the- the argument that's given by- by archaeologists. But in my opinion, um, any self-respecting farmer anywhere in the world is really well aware of when he should plant or she should plant, and- and- and when they should sow. They don't need, um, devices that tell them when the equinox is there. There is such a device, uh, in, uh, really magical one, uh, at Chichen Itza, uh, in the Yucatan. And, uh, this is on the- the pyramid of, uh, Kukulcan, which is another name for Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent. Uh, this pyramid at Chichen Itza, its northern stairway, the bottom of the stairway, in fact, the bottom of all its stairways is, um, on each side, there's the head of an enormous serpent. Uh, but the balustrade up the side of the stairway is just completely plain. Uh, but on the spring equinox......towards sunset between about 5:00 in the evening and 5:45 in the evening, this magical effect occurs. And the shadows of the corner of the pyramid are cast on the balustrade of that stairway, and they create the shadow form of a serpent, of an undulating serpent, which joins with that serpent head. And that only happens on the equinox and not at any other time, so they pinpointed it precisely. They oriented their pyramid precisely so that one part could cast a shadow on another on that, on that special day. I think that's going over the top if your interest is only agriculture.

Chris Williamson 1:01:29 (laughs) So d-

Graham Hancock 1:01:30 I think, I think that's, I think that's, that's paying homage to remembering, giving credit to this memory of the feathered serpent, of Kukulcan, of Quetzalcoatl.

Chris Williamson 1:01:42 I was gonna

Chris Williamson 1:01:43 say, so let's just linger on that for a second because, you know, I- I've heard you on Joe's show and talking about this for a long time.

Graham Hancock 1:01:49 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:50 And I always think about, uh, you kn- that's magical. Like, it sounds to me... Like, it's, it's so cool.

Graham Hancock 1:01:57 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:57 That's so beautiful. I- it's evidently something sacred. It's taken this sort of lovely blend of art-

Graham Hancock 1:02:05 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:05 ... and astronomy and archeology and, uh, architecture and all, all of this together. But can you just think for a second about what the psychology of those humans was like? Like, what, what's their relationship to this thing?

Graham Hancock 1:02:20 As above, so below. Uh, it's as simple as that. The, the, um... There was an ancient system in the old world, uh, developed out of ancient Egypt called the, the, the Hermetic tradition. The, the god, the Greek figure Hermes is a Greek version of the ancient Egyptian god of wisdom Thoth. Uh, and in the Hermetica texts attributed to Hermes-Thoth, uh, there is this phrase, "As above, so below." And that, what that phrase is saying is that it is our burden and our responsibility to replicate upon the earth the perfection and beauty and magnificence of the heavens, uh, that if we fall out of harmony with the heavens, if we disconnect from the heavens, uh, we fall to pieces. Uh, and, and, and we must constantly maintain and reinforce and honor and respect our connection to the wider universe. That's what "As above, so below" is about. That's why I a- and the brilliant genius discoverer of the Orion correlation theory, Robert Bauval, um, are, uh, reject completely the, uh, skeptical attitude of Egyptologists. What Robert Bauval discovered was that the three great pyramids on the ground at Giza replicate the three stars of the belt of a constellation of Orion, uh, in the sky, um, but th- they don't do so precisely in 2,500 BC when the pyramids are supposed to have been built. The perfect match is, uh, in 10,500 because-

Chris Williamson 1:03:54 Because of wobble?

Graham Hancock 1:03:54 ... because of the precessional wobble, exactly. That's right. They're, they're building precession, and they're using precession, they're using the language of astronomy and massive architecture to memorialize a particular date. Does that mean that the whole Giza complex was built 12 and a half thousand years ago? No. Uh, but it does mean that it's memorializing a date as 12 and a half thousand years, just like any Western cathedral, uh, may be memorializing events that took place in the time of Abraham, you know?

Chris Williamson 1:04:20 Mm-hmm.

Graham Hancock 1:04:20 It, it doesn't mean that they were built in the time of Abraham. D- I do think the, the, the Great Sphinx, uh, does date back 12 and a half thousand years. I think we're, we're looking at a, a complex that's been developed and, uh, uh, increasingly refined over very, very long period of time.

Chris Williamson 1:04:37 Why that site in Egypt?

Graham Hancock 1:04:40 Uh, well, it, there, there are multiple sites around the world that are referred to as navels of the earth, and, and, uh, Giza is one of them. Uh, I would suggest that it was the ancient prime meridian. Just as the prime meridian in our time for just reasons of the British Empire passes through Greenwich, uh, I think in ancient times, it passed, it passed through Giza. Now, um, other benefits of the Giza Plateau, uh, it is, uh, situated at, uh, 30 degrees north latitude, give or take a tiny fraction. And 30 degrees north latitude is one-third of the way between the equator and the North Pole, uh, so it's not a random location. And furthermore, if you go into the, um, into the, uh, broad expanse of Giza in, in its place on the earth as a whole, uh, you find that it's dead center of the largest area of exposed land, uh, on, on earth. Uh, so, so it's, it's, it's interesting for that respect. And then, and then you build upon it an enormous pyramid weighing six million tons with, uh, precise orientation to true astronomical north, true astronomical south, true astronomical east, and true astronomical west. Um, that, uh, that is saying whatever this thing is, it is speaking to the earth. The earth, the earth's its focus, uh, it is locked into the cardinal directions of our planet. And then we find... And again, of course, my opponents in archeology scoff at this, they accept that it's the case. Even Flint Dibble, who I debated with on the Joe Rogan Experience in April 2024, even he accepted this, but he mocked it and thought that it was just a coincidence. But it is a fact that if you take the height of the Great Pyramid and multiply it by, guess what, 43,200, it's one of those precessional numbers, it's not a random number. If it was, you know, 64 thou- 1 to 64,000, I wouldn't think much of it, but it's 1 to 43,200. If you take the height of the Great Pyramid, the original height, it's lost about 30 feet from its top, if you take the height and multiply it by 43,200, you get the polar radius of the earth. And if you measure the base perimeter of the Great Pyramid and multiply it by 43,200, you get the equatorial circumference of the earth. So, uh, here we have a monument that is speaking to the earth, that is locked into the earth's astronomical cardinal directions, and then models the earth on a scale defined by a motion of the earth itself.You know, that is a- as above, so below. That and- and that is what I think governs these, uh, arrangements all around the world, uh, a- a- a- a wish and a desire to lock humanity into the cosmos and- and to make us realize that- that, uh, we're part of something much larger than ourselves.

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Graham Hancock 1:08:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:47 Uh, South Florida obviously recently had some pretty intense weather, but being British, we... it's just gray.

Graham Hancock 1:08:54 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:54 You know, I'm used to, I'm used to fierce gray-

Graham Hancock 1:08:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:56 ... uh, a very mild sort of damp, uh, climate. And, uh, just driving back, it's one of those storms where the moon is full and is rising and these lightning storms... and it's off over on the, uh, on the coast, on the ocean. And I remember thinking, imagine that you were a pre-historic human tribe-

Graham Hancock 1:09:20 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:21 ... individual, whatever, looking out. It... you would be so certain that the gods were mad at you, that you had done something.

Graham Hancock 1:09:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:30 You're like, "I knew I shouldn't have touched myself last night when I went to bed. I knew that I shouldn't have told that lie."

Graham Hancock 1:09:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:35 "I knew that I shouldn't have stolen that fig."

Graham Hancock 1:09:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:38 Whatever it is that you, you know, oh, oh m- m- maybe something a- awful is gonna h- whatever it might be.

Graham Hancock 1:09:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:43 Um, and you begin to personify and you create these stories-

Graham Hancock 1:09:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:45 ... and narratives 'cause that's the way that, you know, without stats and- and books, that's the way that you pass down information. But I just remember thinking, like, the... all of your relationship as a human, prehistoric human to everything is done through that kind of a story, that that is a- a god or goddess having a war. It looked like a battle. It looked like, you know, two gods off in the distance throwing-

Graham Hancock 1:10:08 Sure.

Chris Williamson 1:10:08 ... throwing lightning at each other. And then most recently with the hurricanes that have come through Florida-

Graham Hancock 1:10:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:15 ... that's I think about one in 1000 year event in terms of the, uh, rainfall and some-

Graham Hancock 1:10:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:19 ... of the speed of the winds. So it's rare, but not unheard of.

Graham Hancock 1:10:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:23 Uh, and maybe 10 times since perhaps the Americas were settled-

Graham Hancock 1:10:27 Hm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:27 ... something like that would have happened.

Graham Hancock 1:10:28 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:28 Can you imagine what a tribe that saw that occur-

Graham Hancock 1:10:33 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:34 ... would think?

Graham Hancock 1:10:35 Yeah, but- but- but supposing they saw something even much bigger than that. Uh, supposing they saw something that, uh, affected the whole world, their whole world, however f- however far they could go, uh, it was devastated, it was destroyed. They themselves might have been destroyed by it. Can you imagine, uh, how that would be recorded? And could that be why we have 200 myths of a global flood that destroyed a prehistoric civilization found all around the world? Uh, a global cataclysm. These myths mix up a number of different effects. They- they- they- they mix up, um, bolts of fire from the sky. They- they- they- they mix up volcanoes suddenly erupting. They- they- they include earthquakes and they include flood, global flood, a flood that floods everything that is capable of submerging lands. And, uh, this is why I'm very interested in the epoch called the Younger Dryas, which unfolded between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago. It's why we call our series Ancient Apocalypse.

Chris Williamson 1:11:44 I was gonna say, what's

Chris Williamson 1:11:45 the apocalypse bit?

Graham Hancock 1:11:46 Well, the apocalypse bit is that the Younger Dryas, it's a, it's a cli- tha- that's a name given by climatologists to an episode of really weird climate that took place at the end of the last Ice Age. They call it the Younger Dryas after a species of alpine flower that flourishes in extremely cold weather. Uh, what happened, to cut a long story short, is that down to about 12,800 years ago, give or take a- a century, the... because you can't be that precise with these definitions, the, uh, the earth was definitely emerging from the Ice Age. It was, it was getting warm, um, and- and, uh, things were looking good. Uh, it was... uh, uh, it felt like that 100,000 years of frozen world was coming to an end. And then suddenly, it flipped completely, uh, and- and, uh, you have sudden sea level rise, you have a plunge in global temperature, so that suddenly, almost overnight, it is as cold as it was as the absolute peak of the last Ice Age. This happens suddenly, and it happens right around the world. Worse, of course, in northern and deep southern latitudes and much less vicious in its effects in tropical and equatorial zones, but- but a- a- a massive, massive event. This is the time, precisely that window, when all the big mega fauna of the Ice Age go extinct. The saber-toothed tigers, mastodons, mammoths. When we were at White Sands, by the way, it was just amazing to see these mammoth footprints still in the sand there.

Chris Williamson 1:13:16 Are they big?

Graham Hancock 1:13:17 They're very big. These things have got a huge stride.

Chris Williamson 1:13:19 Have you been following the work of Ben Lamott, Colossal? Have you seen this?

Graham Hancock 1:13:22 No, I haven't.

Chris Williamson 1:13:23 Okay, so they are bringing back woolly mammoths.... uh-

Graham Hancock 1:13:26 I've seen that. Yes, I have. I have.

Chris Williamson 1:13:28 Yeah. So Ben was o- Ben was on the show, and maybe talking about actually being involved with the project a little bit. Um, just to tangent off before you tell us more about Younger Dryas, the reason... Do you know w- one of the reasons that they're looking at bringing them back? That they can... They think that by putting them in the higher latitudes, these animals will be able to compact down the snow and reflect back more sun.

Graham Hancock 1:13:51 Interesting.

Chris Williamson 1:13:52 So they'll be able to use a extinct species to help combat modern global warming.

Graham Hancock 1:13:59 (laughs) That's a very fancy idea.

Chris Williamson 1:14:01 It's ama- I mean, it's... The, the, they're farmers, they're farm animals-

Graham Hancock 1:14:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:14:04 ... in a way that they will eat seeds from here and poop them over there, which will help to-

Graham Hancock 1:14:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:14:08 ... spread things around. So the other two, I asked him, "What else are you working on?" So he's got this... Uh, the way they're doing it, it's the Asian elephant. So they've taken, um, all of these frozen samples of, uh, genetic material.

Graham Hancock 1:14:20 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:14:21 They're then using AI to splice in the gaps.

Graham Hancock 1:14:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:14:24 So there will be... At some point, there will be an Asian elephant that gives birth to a woolly mammoth-

Graham Hancock 1:14:29 Oh.

Chris Williamson 1:14:29 ... when they're ready-

Graham Hancock 1:14:30 Amazing.

Chris Williamson 1:14:30 ... because it's the closest genetic relative-

Graham Hancock 1:14:32 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:14:32 ... that they can get. But the other one, and this is so cool, I, I, I really loved this idea from Ben, he said that... I was like, "Wha- what, what else do you wanna bring back?" Like, you know, saber-toothed tiger, that's pretty cool.

Graham Hancock 1:14:42 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:14:42 Uh, and he said, "Dodo bird." I'm like, "I mean, it's a meme. Why would you bring back the d-"

Graham Hancock 1:14:47 Yeah, the-

Chris Williamson 1:14:47 It's useless.

Graham Hancock 1:14:48 Yeah, it is the dodo, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:14:49 Precisely. Why would you do that?

Graham Hancock 1:14:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:14:50 And he said, well, it was because it was... The reason that it was dead was because of environmental destruction.

Graham Hancock 1:14:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:14:55 So he's using the... All of the effort, being very public about the effort that they have to go to in order to bring this bird back, to say, "See how much we had to do, see the labor that we had to jump through-"

Graham Hancock 1:15:07 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:15:08 "... in order to be able to bring back this thing that we could have just avoided destroying its habitat in the first place."

Graham Hancock 1:15:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:15:13 So it's like a PR bird. So it may-

Graham Hancock 1:15:15 Get it.

Chris Williamson 1:15:15 ... end up being-

Graham Hancock 1:15:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:15:16 ... actually way more useful-

Graham Hancock 1:15:18 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:15:18 ... uh, than you ever thought, but kind of, uh, only as a public relations tool.

Graham Hancock 1:15:22 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:15:22 Uh, but I thought that was, uh, that was really cool.

Graham Hancock 1:15:24 It is very cool. Um, um-

Chris Williamson 1:15:25 Yeah, Colossus. Colossus is awesome. Peesh- people should go and check them out.

Graham Hancock 1:15:27 It would, it would be nice to see how it all ends up. Is it... It's a real thing? It's gonna happen, is it?

Chris Williamson 1:15:32 It's happening. I mean, the, the, uh, Asian elephant thing, they're ready to pull the pin on it. I think it'll happen within the next few years.

Graham Hancock 1:15:38 Fascinating.

Chris Williamson 1:15:38 It's awesome. Uh, so Younger Dryas?

Graham Hancock 1:15:41 Yeah. So the, the Younger, the Younger Dryas, within almost the living memory of the human species... You know, w- we know that there have been huge cataclysms on the Earth before. We w- w- b- the best-known example is the Chicxulub crater in, in... deeply buried at, off the Gulf of Mexico, the, the, the so-called K-T 10,000 year-

Chris Williamson 1:16:02 Dinosaur killer.

Graham Hancock 1:16:02 Made the dinosaurs extinct 65 or 66 million years ago. There've been a number of events like that caused by cosmic impacts from, by objects from, from-

Chris Williamson 1:16:10 Um, I'm sure that you've looked at this as well, but the, uh... I, I really loved learning about the fact that that, uh, asteroid, had it have hit in a slightly different area of the Earth, it wasn't to do with even the impact, it was to do with the toxic dust-

Graham Hancock 1:16:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:16:25 ... that was kicked up-

Graham Hancock 1:16:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16:26 ... from some particular type of rock that's very deep down underneath there.

Graham Hancock 1:16:30 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:16:30 And you're talking about seconds later-

Graham Hancock 1:16:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16:34 ... that the entire future of the Earth... Maybe 10 seconds-

Graham Hancock 1:16:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16:39 ... later.

Graham Hancock 1:16:39 'Cause these things are traveling at tens of thousands of miles an hour.

Chris Williamson 1:16:41 And we're spinning pretty quick as well.

Graham Hancock 1:16:42 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16:43 And it would have been completely d- It was about as bad of a place for the dinosaurs, pretty good for us, uh, that it could have hit. And I, I always, I always think about that when-

Graham Hancock 1:16:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16:54 ... you think about contingency and convergence and-

Graham Hancock 1:16:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16:56 ... and thin chance.

Graham Hancock 1:16:57 Interesting, interesting. Maybe the dinosaurs annoyed the universe.

Chris Williamson 1:17:01 Perhap- they weren't-

Graham Hancock 1:17:02 That's how-

Chris Williamson 1:17:03 They weren't tracking their precession sufficiently well.

Graham Hancock 1:17:05 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:17:05 They didn't know their wobble.

Graham Hancock 1:17:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:17:06 Uh, anyway, sorry-

Graham Hancock 1:17:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:17:07 ... Younger Dryas, I keep distracting you.

Graham Hancock 1:17:08 Yeah, it, it's, it's not a distraction. It's, it's, it's, it's, it, it's relevant. The point is that, that there have been a number of extinction-level events, uh, on our planet. Uh, and what is not being properly taken into account is that although it was very recent in geological terms, just 12,800 years ago, the Younger Dryas was also an extinction-level event, and it led to the extinction, as I said, of all the great megafauna, uh, of the Ice Age, and it ushered in the Holocene, the, the, the modern age that we, that we live in today. Um, the team who are working on what is called the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis deserve to be taken seriously. Their opponents in science try to paint them as some sort of lunatic fringe. But actually, we're dealing with a number, more than 60 highly credentialed scientists who are just following the evidence where it leads them. And what the evidence leads them to, uh, and I've, I've given all the data on this in, in my books, particularly in Magicians of the Gods that was published in 2015, what the evidence leads to is the conclusion that the Earth, 12,800 years ago, passed through the debris stream of a disintegrating comet. All comets disintegrate sooner or later. Um, and, uh, for those who would wish to see an example of this, it's Jupiter. Uh, and it, it's the, it, it's, it's the Shoemaker-Levy 9 hitting, hitting Jupiter, uh, and breaking up into 21 fragments before it did so. Um, comets break up into multiple fragments. Every single meteor shower that we see, and we pass through dozens of them every year, every single one of those is the debris stream of a disintegrated comet. That's what they all are. Every single shooting star is a bit of a comet that we're, that we're looking at, but, but sometimes-

Chris Williamson 1:19:00 Little golf ball or sometimes bigger.

Graham Hancock 1:19:02 Yeah, sometimes those bits are really large. Uh, sometimes they can be kilometers in diameter. And, uh, what is called the Taurid meteor stream because it appears to emanate, in our time, from the constellation of Taurus. Of course, it's not coming from the constellation of Taurus, it's a visual effect, that bit of the sky that the constellation of Taurus is in. The Taurid, the Taurid meteor stream, um, is full of large and dangerous objects. Uh, and it's also full of smaller objects. When I say smaller, they might be 100 or 200 meters in diameter instead of-... two or three kilometers in diameter. Um, the view of the, of the Comet Research Group who are behind the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis is that 12,800 years ago, the Earth entered a swarm of cometary debris. That swarm did include some large objects, and they reckon that's why the North American ice cap went into a sudden meltdown 12,800 years ago, unleashing floods on an enormous scale and raising sea levels very oddly at a time when global temperatures were sinking. Normally, you get sea level rise when global temperatures are rising, but they, they plunged during the Younger Dryas, and yet you have sea level rise. They-

Chris Williamson 1:20:14 Hmm. Hmm.

Graham Hancock 1:20:14 They think that, that some large objects hit the North American ice cap and some hit the northern European ice cap.

Chris Williamson 1:20:19 Multiple, not single large impact.

Graham Hancock 1:20:21 No, no. But, but they do think that there were some large objects that hit the ice caps, but they think primarily what it was was air bursts of objects that were about 100 to 200 meters in diameter. Um, uh, air, air bursts like the Tunguska event in 1908, June the 30th, 1908. Nobody disputes that that was a bit of a comet. It almost certainly was a comet that fell out of the torrid meteor stream because that is the peak of what's called the Beta Torids, uh, in, in precisely 30th of June. Um, and, and, um, it didn't leave any crater because it blew up in the sky. The Earth's atmosphere destroyed it in the sky, but that