The Hidden Secrets Of America’s Ancient Apocalypse - Graham Hancock - #854

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Graham Hancock. He's a journalist and an author known for his work on ancient civilizations. The Americas hold a profound secret. While human history is often traced back to other parts of the globe, Graham believes that evidence points to the Americas being inhabited far earlier than previously believed. So what is the true history of the Americas, and how does it reshape our understanding of human civilization? Expect to learn how Graham thinks that the first inhabitants of the Americas got there. What is so fascinating about the Amazon? Why Graham has done ayahuasca more than 70 times. Everything he's discovered about the Mayans, ancient Egyptians, Easter Island, and other ancient societies. His reflections on his debate with Flint Dibble, and much more. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Graham Hancock.
Yesterday was the anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America. How fitting.

**Graham Hancock** (1:20)
I guess it is, but of course he didn't discover it.
In fact, the Americas may have been discovered as early as 130,000 years ago, which makes 1492 AD pale in significance. Of course, this is a matter that's disputed by archaeologists. Nevertheless, there's a highly professional team from the San Diego Natural History Museum who've excavated what is called the Cerruti Mastodon site just south of San Diego. And I've been there to the museum and talked to the leading expert, Tom Demere. 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. 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 marrow. Now, of course, this is regarded as some kind of terrible heresy by archaeologists who've been wedded to the idea of a very recent settlement of the Americas for a very, very, very long time. But gradually, reluctantly kicking and screaming, spitting nails as they go along, archaeologists have begun to accept that the peopling of the Americas happened a lot earlier than they had thought. And presently, the kind of date that is being considered, accepted, in fact, by the majority of archaeologists is around 23,000, 24,000 years ago. That's White Sands, New Mexico, and the human footprints there, which we feature in episode one of season two of Ancient Apocalypse. But 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. 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** (3:46)
Is the Americas often overlooked when it comes to the history of human civilization?

**Graham Hancock** (3:50)
Yes, because there's been this prejudice that the Americas could have had nothing to do with the origins of civilization, because human beings supposedly weren't in America until... It was called the Clovis First Model. It was held until really about 10 years ago, that no humans had been in the Americas before 13,000 years ago. So you can see that the Cerruti Mastodon site multiplies that by 10 to 130,000 years ago. But there's gradually been an acceptance of an earlier settlement than that. And they're still fighting over the Cerruti Mastodon site, whether to accept that or not. There's been a back and forth of papers in Nature. A reasonably respectful discussion going on between archaeologists who disagree over this. But yes, 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 50,000 years ago.
We have anatomically modern humans in Australia between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago as well. And of course, anatomically modern humans were in Africa going back 300,000 years. The earliest known anatomically modern human remains are from Jebel Ehud in Morocco, and they date to 310,000 years ago. And they're identical, pretty much identical, to modern humans today. And we can assume that their brains were 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 the view was, I mean, back in the 90s, when the view was that 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. But the general view has been, we will not look for the origins of civilization in the Americas because they were recently settled. And these new discoveries have to change that picture. Archaeology is very slow to change its paradigms, 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.