The True History Of America - Graham Hancock

Yesterday was the anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America.

Oh.

How fitting.

(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-

(laughs)

... 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.

(laughs) Is the Americas often overlooked when it comes to the history of human civilization?

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.