Ice Age Civilizations_2of3_Submerged Megalithic Sites
Transcript
00:00:00Okay, I'm Robert Schock, and I'm a full-time faculty member at Boston University.
00:00:10I am in the Division of Natural Sciences in the College of General Studies, where I've
00:00:16been since 1984.
00:00:20And I am a geologist.
00:00:21My PhD is in geology and geophysicists.
00:00:24I'm known in some circles as a person who's responsible for developing scientific evidence
00:00:29for the re-dating of the Great Sphinx, that the traditional view before I started working
00:00:35on it was that the Sphinx, the Great Sphinx of Giza, just on the same plateau as the Great
00:00:41Pyramid, that the Great Sphinx dates to approximately 2500 BC.
00:00:49And my research that I've developed over the last 15-plus years indicates in my analysis
00:00:57that the core body of the Sphinx goes back much earlier.
00:01:01By my dating, I believe it goes back to approximately 5000 BC or earlier.
00:01:06I usually say 5,000 to 7,000 BC.
00:01:08The point is, that's just the core body, number one.
00:01:11Make a couple of points.
00:01:13The head has been recarved, it's been refurbished many times over the millennia, and was certainly
00:01:20used by the Old Kingdom Egyptians, but I believe not built by them from scratch, that they
00:01:25were reusing, refurbishing, recarving, in particular, recarving the head much later
00:01:32in time, about 2500 BC, but the core body goes back at least 2,000, 3,000 years earlier.
00:01:39I'm just saying the stage, I guess.
00:01:42My work on re-dating the Sphinx has had a mixed reaction, should I say.
00:01:50My work on re-dating the Sphinx has had a mixed reaction, depending on the audience.
00:01:58What I've found is that when I talk to my fellow geologists, for instance, at Geological
00:02:04Society of America meetings, no one has any problem with it, none of my fellow geologists
00:02:10disagree with me.
00:02:12In fact, I've had friends of mine who are PhD geologists, professionals, say it's all
00:02:18very clear-cut to them, all makes a lot of sense to them, I'm just applying standard
00:02:23geological techniques, but I happen to be applying them to a very famous structure,
00:02:29the Great Sphinx.
00:02:30The problem is that my conclusions are very radical, according to some archaeologists
00:02:37and Egyptologists, because I'm pushing the date of the Sphinx back into pre-dynastic
00:02:42times, which for them, and I agree with this.
00:02:47For them, it has all kinds of implications, if it's true that things were more civilized,
00:02:54more advanced at an earlier point in time than they believed up until now.
00:03:00So there are a lot of implications, and their initial reaction, I find, is to simply deny
00:03:05my evidence, deny my data, and deny my conclusions, and keep their tidy story.
00:03:12The geologists, my colleagues among the geological community, have accepted my work, and I've
00:03:20found no problems with them on the whole.
00:03:24Archaeologists and Egyptologists, on the other hand, have had a very adverse reaction to
00:03:29the point of just saying that I'm absolutely wrong, denying the evidence, denying the data.
00:03:35I would add that there is a small group of geoarchaeologists who really are in the, and
00:03:41I hate to use the term in science, but in the camp of the Egyptologists who follow the
00:03:46Egyptological line, and in fact, among themselves, have come up with all kinds of hypotheses
00:03:52and theories which are contradictory to one another.
00:03:56They don't even agree among themselves, but all kinds of hypotheses and theories to discount
00:04:01my evidence, my data, and try to explain it away, which I've analyzed, these other geologists
00:04:09have analyzed these counter-arguments, and they really just don't account for the data.
00:04:15I think we have come to a point where we have to simply accept, based on the evidence we
00:04:20now have, that the origins of the Great Sphinx go back into pre-dynastic times, go back at
00:04:29least, by my estimate, 2,000 plus years earlier than the traditional view.
00:04:37I've also received my work on the Great Sphinx in particular, I've also had lots of reactions
00:04:44from, shall we call it the public, and there's a group out there that reacts to my work on
00:04:54the Great Sphinx by saying that I'm not making it old enough.
00:04:58They look at my data, they want to interpret as saying the Sphinx is even older, so there's
00:05:03a large contingent of what we might call alternative researchers in Egyptology and
00:05:10ancient history who want to take my data, which I say suggests that the Sphinx is older,
00:05:15but only a few thousand years older, and they want to extrapolate from that and make it
00:05:2210,000 BC, some of them even as much as 30,000 plus BC, and really extend it into the distant
00:05:30past.
00:05:32I just don't see that their arguments make sense to me, that's not the way I would interpret
00:05:40my own data, so I sometimes feel that I am caught in the middle between the classical
00:05:45Egyptologists and archaeologists on the one hand, who say the Sphinx is 2,500 BC, end
00:05:51of story, and then this alternative camp, which wants to make it generally at least
00:05:5710,000 BC, or even much older, and here I am in the middle just trying to look at the
00:06:05evidence I have, interpret it to the best of my ability, and I'm coming up I sometimes
00:06:11feel with a date and a chronology that doesn't please anyone. I can't please the classical
00:06:20scholars and the traditional academics, and I can't please the quote alternative researchers.
00:06:27What I found is the core body of the Sphinx, the Sphinx enclosure in which it sits, has
00:06:33classic rain erosion, precipitation-induced erosion, call it what you like. We know that
00:06:41the Sahara Desert, and the Sphinx sits on the edge of the Sahara Desert, is a relatively
00:06:46recent desert geologically. It only goes back less than 5,000 years. The heavy, heavy rain-induced
00:06:54erosion, the rolling, undulating erosion that I've pointed out now in numerous papers and
00:07:02other contexts, clearly by my geological analysis, predates the modern Sahara. It predates about
00:07:133,000 BC, plus or minus. Not only does it predate, the level of erosion, the amount
00:07:21of erosion, plus the subsurface weathering that Thomas Debecky and I were able to measure
00:07:28seismically, all points to the conclusion, in my opinion, that the core body of the Sphinx
00:07:33is at least about 5,000 BC. Generally, when people ask me how old do I think it is, what's
00:07:40my best estimate, I give a range of about 7,000 to 5,000 BC.
00:07:51As the evidence indicates that the Nile rose to the base of the Geyser Complex, during
00:07:59that building, where do you think that the population of that time, which most have numbered
00:08:06at least the hundreds of thousands, lived and gathered their sustenance?
00:08:12We're talking now the building of the Great Pyramid. We're down in the Old Kingdom times.
00:08:21On the days of Lush.
00:08:27There's a couple of issues here. If we're talking about the building of the Great Pyramid
00:08:34and the building of the Sphinx, the Sphinx is not really built. It's carved from the
00:08:39bedrock limestone. But when they carved it, they cut out blocks around the body to cut
00:08:47out, to form the shape of the body. But they actually didn't just chip it away and shove
00:08:52out rubble. They actually cut out large limestone blocks, multi-ton blocks, and brought them
00:08:58forward to the front of the Sphinx, to the east of the Sphinx, and erected what's now
00:09:03known as the Sphinx Temple.
00:09:05The Sphinx Temple is clearly, in my analysis, the same age as the core body of the Sphinx,
00:09:12so that's pre-dynastic. How many people it would have taken to do that, I don't know.
00:09:19I've not tried to do analysis of that. We're not talking a huge amount. Probably hundreds,
00:09:27but not necessarily even a thousand, in my assessment. So I don't think it's a huge problem
00:09:33as to getting a large population.
00:09:37Later in the Old Kingdom times, when you're building the pyramids, the superstructure
00:09:42of the Great Pyramid, for instance, best estimates are you need incredible workforce.
00:09:48You would have to house them, you would have to feed them. And there have been found in
00:09:55recent years, around the edge, the periphery of the Giza Plateau, evidence of bakeries,
00:10:04evidence of encampments, that type of thing, for a fairly large settlement, a fairly large
00:10:12number of workers in Old Kingdom times. But I think we have to distinguish between what's
00:10:18happening in Old Kingdom times and what's happening at earlier times, what I sometimes
00:10:22informally call Sphinx Age times, that earlier pre-dynastic time. I don't know if I answered
00:10:29your question at all.
00:10:31Well, we were talking about hundreds of thousands, where did they gather their subjects?
00:10:39For what I'm looking at, with the early structures, the pre-dynastic, the Sphinx Age structures,
00:10:49I don't believe you need hundreds of thousands. I'm not even certain that you need thousands
00:10:54at any one time. I think you're potentially talking a smaller number, I would say in the
00:11:01hundreds, maybe around a thousand, just off the top of my head. When you start talking
00:11:07about huge numbers of people, I think what you had in Old Kingdom times was a very efficient
00:11:14bureaucracy that was bringing food in from other parts of Egypt. You've got the Nile
00:11:21right there near the Giza Plateau, easy to ship food and supplies. We know that in Old
00:11:29Kingdom times, for instance, and this ties right in with the Sphinx, the Sphinx Temple,
00:11:34which by my dating is much older than Old Kingdom times, was refurbished, I believe,
00:11:40in Old Kingdom times in part by covering the weathered ancient limestone temple with a
00:11:47fresh layer of granite. Where did that granite come from? It came from the Aswan area in
00:11:54Upper Egypt, so that's the far south of Egypt in modern terms, and they were apparently
00:12:02floating blocks of granite, multi, multi-ton blocks of granite down the Nile from the south
00:12:09to the north. The Nile, of course, flows from the south to the north, and so they were quite
00:12:13capable of transporting supplies and materials from all of Egypt, because the Nile basically
00:12:21runs right through the middle of Egypt, so they could supply the Giza Plateau with anything
00:12:29they needed from anywhere in Egypt, even though I think you have to distinguish a couple of
00:12:35things here. Back in pre-dynastic times, it was lusher and not as barren desert, so you
00:12:41could have more food and supplies maybe produced, I wouldn't say on site, but in more of the
00:12:48local area, but I don't think that's an issue one way or another, because even during dynastic
00:12:55times, in classical Egypt with the Nile flooding and the seasonal inundation, right in the
00:13:01Nile Valley was incredibly lush area for agriculture, that type of thing, and I think well into
00:13:09pre-dynastic times, my belief is that they were transporting things down the Nile, and
00:13:17even in pre-dynastic times, you could have supplies coming from effectively anywhere
00:13:22in Egypt that you needed.
00:13:24The ancient Egyptian city-state, Heraklion, is now submerged in the Mediterranean, five
00:13:33miles offshore, in about 30 feet of water, so do you think that it was submerged when
00:13:39sea level rose with the end of the Ice Age?
00:13:44Yeah, I'll mention something, I mean, what you have is that we know there were cities
00:13:53along the coastline, what's now the Mediterranean coastline, at the end of the Nile Delta, the
00:14:00Nile of course travels the length of Egypt from south to north, and then actually the
00:14:08apex of the Nile is where modern Cairo is basically, and then the Nile fans out and
00:14:15goes into the Mediterranean, and we know even from tablets and writing of the earliest dynastic
00:14:22and late pre-dynastic times that there were fortified cities, et cetera, in the Nile Delta,
00:14:29apparently at the very edge of it, what was then the Nile Delta, which is now underwater.
00:14:38This is well understood, that these were flooded, even much later sites, for instance Alexandria,
00:14:47modern Alexandria, which of course is a city that only goes back a little over 2,000 years,
00:14:51founded with the Greek invasion under Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies, but we know,
00:14:59for instance, very recent excavations of all kinds of materials and palace, whatever, from
00:15:08Cleopatra's time, just a little over 2,000 years ago, were flooded.
00:15:13And so yeah, that has something to do with maybe the rising levels at the end of the
00:15:21Ice Age, but we're really talking not even at the end end of the Ice Age, but a bit later
00:15:28than that, also you can have local subsidence. I mean, as a geologist, you really have to
00:15:35look into all kinds of possibilities. Overall rising sea levels, local subsidence, when
00:15:42you've got a very active delta, often areas in a delta will start to subside if they don't
00:15:50get enough sediment input. A living delta, a living river, is changing its course all
00:15:58the time, so it may starve one area for sediment versus another area at different times, and
00:16:03this is going to have a real effect on the land and whether it stays above water when
00:16:09you're talking about the edge of a delta.
00:16:12That was probably a very long-winded answer. But what was the question again, tying it
00:16:16to sea level?
00:16:17Do you think that it was, okay, the Heraklion, that city submerged in the Mediterranean five
00:16:24miles offshore, do you think that it was submerged when sea level rose with the end of the Ice
00:16:28Age? That was the question.
00:16:30What's your answer?
00:16:31I think I answered it, which is?
00:16:33Yes.
00:16:34Well, okay, let me try again. Yeah, yeah, it could have been, but there's a, we know
00:16:42that there were ancient cities on the edge of the Nile Delta, on the shores of the Mediterranean
00:16:51basically, and the placement of the delta, how far the delta extended at various points
00:16:56in ancient times was different than what it is today. Some of them are now underwater
00:17:03in the Mediterranean, some sites, some ancient cities, and that could be due to sea level
00:17:09rises that we've had since the end of the Ice Age. It could also be due to localized
00:17:14land subsidence in certain regions. It could be due to sediment starvation as the delta
00:17:22changes. And these are natural geological processes, the branches of the Nile change
00:17:28from one area to another. So there's a lot of factors that could be going on. And I don't,
00:17:34you can't just say, well, it's under so many feet of water, sea levels rose so much, extrapolate
00:17:41a simple rate of sea level rise and say, well, 30 feet of water equals so long ago. I mean,
00:17:48that is overly simplistic and naive.
00:17:53One thing that's been suggested by some people is that different levels of acidity in natural
00:18:01rainfall will affect how fast limestone is eroded by that rainfall. Okay, I want to skip
00:18:13it over. The core body of the Sphinx and the Sphinx enclosure, by my analysis, shows clear
00:18:21erosion by rainfalls. Limestones, rains being down on it, eroded the rock away, gives the
00:18:29form that we see because of rainfall, not because of desert conditions in the last approximately
00:18:365,000 years. Now, one thing to try to figure out is how long did it take to get the level
00:18:43of erosion that we see? And something that's sometimes suggested is, well, because of increased
00:18:48volcanic activity, other factors like that in very ancient times, pre-dynastic times,
00:18:56maybe average levels of acidity in the rainfall, basically natural acid rain, would have eroded
00:19:04the limestone faster. That means by looking at how much erosion you have, you have to
00:19:09sort of take a higher rate of erosion into account. That would make it a bit younger
00:19:13rather than older. So one has to look at all those types of factors. And in fact, I have
00:19:19tried to take that into account in my analysis, and I admit that my quantification is a very
00:19:26crude approximation. One thing I would point out, though, is that I'm not just looking
00:19:30at how much erosion we have on the surface and how deep that erosion is, but more importantly,
00:19:37in my analysis, and this tends to be overlooked by a lot of people, is that Tom DeBecke and
00:19:42I did seismic work, subsurface work, around the Sphinx. And there we were able to look
00:19:47at weathering, not erosion because the rock is still there, but mineralogical changes
00:19:53that increase with depth once the rock is exposed. So you expose the rock around the
00:20:00Sphinx when the body was carved out, you expose the rock around the Sphinx when the body was
00:20:06carved out, and then you start having mineralogical changes that work them way down over time.
00:20:13That is much less to basically not affect it by the acidity of the rain per se. So I
00:20:21think that's something that we can look at, take that into account. So really, I don't
00:20:29think that I have to do a significant revision of my analysis just because someone suggests
00:20:37that at certain times in the past there was more volcanic activity and the rain might
00:20:43have been a little bit more acidic. And what we actually find geologically in many cases
00:20:49is that a volcano goes off, sulfates, aerosols, different things get into the atmosphere,
00:20:57then the rain is much more acidic, but for a very short period of time. When you're looking
00:21:03at several feet of erosion of limestone, little incidences like that are not going
00:21:09to have a big effect on the overall picture. In fact, they'll be fairly trivial.
00:21:14I'm afraid these answers are too long, but you can cut them down.
00:21:23With the maintenance by heavy rainfall of the vast network of lakes and streams during
00:21:29the Ice Age in now parched Sahara, would not that heavy rainfall have also affected
00:21:49the early phases of the civilization?
00:21:57Let me think about it for a second. I know what you're saying, basically. Let me try
00:22:01this. Are you talking Ice Age or end of the Ice Age? Since what we have, the Sahara has
00:22:10not always been a Sahara. The Sahara was once, in very recent times, geologically speaking,
00:22:18was non-desert. You had a much more lush, savanna-type region.
00:22:26You had lakes, ephemeral lakes. You had rivers. We know this from a variety of data now, including
00:22:34imaging from satellites where you can pick up ancient riverbeds, etc. So you have times
00:22:40in the past when it was less desert-like. If you go back in time, you actually have
00:22:45sort of a, I won't call it a cycle per se, but you have periods of more aridity, less
00:22:52aridity, more rain, less rain, etc. You cycle, in a crude sense, back and forth, changing
00:22:59climatic conditions. I believe that it makes sense that when you had less aridity, more
00:23:09water, more vegetation, that may have helped promote ancient cultures. For instance, we
00:23:16have real examples, Naphtha Playa, down in southern Egypt, where it's essentially a playa,
00:23:22it's an ephemeral lake that dries up periodically. We know, or we can correlate, that when there
00:23:29was more water in that lake, there were more people living in the area, congregating. In
00:23:34fact, they were erecting megalithic structures, relatively crude by modern standards, or later
00:23:41on. But yeah, when you have water, you tend to be able to support more people, you tend
00:23:46to be able to support a culture.
00:23:49When I come up with about 5,000 plus years for the core body of the Sphinx, my dating
00:23:56of the Sphinx, I'm not using rainfall amounts or averages, or trying to figure out how much
00:24:02rainfall it would take per year to erode the limestone so much. What you have to remember
00:24:08in Egypt is that for the last several thousand years, in the height of classical Egypt, especially
00:24:16New Kingdom Egypt, you had incredibly low rainfall. But that didn't mean you didn't
00:24:21have water, because you have the Nile, as they say, Egypt is the gift of the Nile. And
00:24:27the Nile would go through its annual flooding cycle, and this has to do with rainfall patterns
00:24:35well south of what we now think of as Egypt, in the upper, upper, upper regions, the source
00:24:43of the Nile, as it's called. So really rainfall in Egypt is not the issue per se, but water
00:24:51and water flow through it.
00:24:54But getting back to the Sphinx, the Great Sphinx, my analysis and my crude estimate,
00:25:01and I admit it's a crude estimate, but it's the best I can do right now, and I'm not making
00:25:05any other claims for it, about 5,000 to 7,000 BC, I'm not basing that on figuring or estimating
00:25:13there were so many inches of rain per year, and that over so many thousands of years,
00:25:19what caused the Sphinx to erode so much. What I was really looking at is, when do we have
00:25:26a time period with the climatic conditions that would be conducive to that type of erosion,
00:25:34and then looking at the subsurface weathering data, the Becky and I were able to find that
00:25:42seismically with seismic techniques, and we could look at some areas that were dated to
00:25:48Old Kingdom times, how much subsurface weathering has there been since Old Kingdom times, about
00:25:562,500 BC, then for the older portions of the Sphinx, how much subsurface weathering do
00:26:01we have there, so we're using the known to calibrate and then find the unknown, and that's
00:26:08independent of rainfall amounts annually.
00:26:13Okay, what, something that we have in civilization in general, in my opinion, is we have periods
00:26:21of, should we say, rise and declines of civilization, rise and decline of civilization, and we see
00:26:27this throughout the world, whatever civilizations we're looking at, and I actually think that
00:26:33there's a correlation between different civilizations around the world, and I talk about that in
00:26:38my book, Voyages of the Pyramid Builders. So, for instance, in Egypt, we have various
00:26:45periods in ancient Egyptian history when essentially, in hindsight, we can talk about heights being
00:26:51reached and then declines after that. So, for instance, we have one height, if we could
00:26:56use that term, reached in Old Kingdom times in about 2,500 BC, and then we have a decline
00:27:04over the next 500 years as, and these are terms that are applied by moderns as the Old
00:27:11Kingdom declines and comes to an end, and of course, the Old Kingdom Egyptians didn't
00:27:15think of themselves as Old Kingdom Egyptians. They didn't even think in terms of the dynasties
00:27:19that we use, so this is something in hindsight, but you definitely see the rise and fall,
00:27:23then later, for instance, you have another rise and you have another height reached in
00:27:28New Kingdom times and then New Kingdom times ending. If we talk about Old Kingdom height
00:27:36and decline, I think that might correlate to a certain extent with climate changes and
00:27:41certainly there's an increasing aridity throughout Old Kingdom times and it becomes very dry
00:27:48toward the end of what we consider Old Kingdom times. Not that it wasn't dry all along because
00:27:53even in early Old Kingdom times, you do have the Sahara developed and really setting in,
00:27:58but it dries out further toward the end. But something that I think is working in conjunction
00:28:04with this, may even be one of the driving factors, is that toward the end of Old Kingdom
00:28:11times, about 2345, 2350 BC, I think there's a lot of evidence for some kind of commentary
00:28:20effect, some kind of comets in the sky. In fact, there's even evidence that they may
00:28:26have had fragments hitting on the surface of the earth. We have craters known in Iraq.
00:28:34This would have affected climate also by putting aerosols and particles into the atmosphere
00:28:43and had many effects. In fact, at that time, we see not just in Egypt, but worldwide, declines
00:28:51in civilization. I think one of the theses I've developed in Voyages of the Pyramid
00:28:57Builders, for instance, is that civilizations are very much affected by external factors,
00:29:06natural factors, things like climate change, things like comets entering the atmosphere
00:29:15and causing changes. Humans are very much tied in ancient times to the natural environment,
00:29:21very dependent upon the natural environment, especially for things like agriculture, crops,
00:29:28etc. To this day, we're very much tied to the natural environment. Even in the modern
00:29:33times when there's a major earthquake causing a tsunami, we feel it. When there's a major
00:29:38storm like Hurricane Katrina, we feel that very much. The same was true in ancient times.
00:29:45The same was true in ancient times. All these factors, I think, are working together to
00:29:50affect the rise and fall of cultures and civilizations.
00:29:54Before you get started on that, let me also ask you, while we're on this climate subject,
00:30:02let me make this statement in case it's useful to you. Climate and extraterrestrial influence
00:30:20is something that I'm very interested in when I say extraterrestrial influence. It's not
00:30:23aliens coming down spaceships, but things like comets entering the atmosphere, meteors,
00:30:31stars.
00:30:32Remind me to give you my show, a copy of my show, Comets and Asteroids.
00:30:36Oh, okay. Does it confirm or deny, or is it just interest?
00:30:39Well, there are several...
00:30:42Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:30:43...changing events.
00:30:44Yeah, but I think what I think we see, and I think there's very clear signatures in tree
00:30:52rings, in ice layers that we have from the Arctic regions, ice cores, et cetera. Signatures
00:31:03at certain times, there seems to have been an extraterrestrial influence, in particular
00:31:08comets.
00:31:09When I say comets, I use that term loosely to include comets, meteorites, that may be
00:31:15fragments coming off of comets, et cetera. But entering the Earth's atmosphere, in some
00:31:20cases, actually hitting the surface and even forming craters or exploding just above the
00:31:26surface, but affecting things globally, affecting climate. Of course, if something hits very
00:31:33close to or on the center of a civilization, that's going to have incredible effect. But
00:31:38even if it's a quarter way or halfway around the world, it can have major changes on climate.
00:31:45Climatory factors, in some cases, I think may even be driven by extraterrestrial factors.
00:31:51And there's a lot of evidence that in the 24th century BC, say around 2350 BC, there
00:31:58was something going on that was affecting environments, affecting climates worldwide.
00:32:06And this is reflected in the civilizations and cultures and declines that we see.
00:32:12Something that a lot of people talk about is the end of the Ice Age. And when did the
00:32:16end of the Ice Age occur? And some people in the popular literature talk about the Ice
00:32:22Age ending at a certain time. All of a sudden, it seems the glaciers all melt, the sea level
00:32:27rises, as if this all happened overnight. And as a geologist, what I see is that things
00:32:35happen not necessarily uniformly, but in spurts in some cases, but it's also not necessarily
00:32:42happening all at one time. And to talk about the end of the Ice Age, you can talk about
00:32:46it in different ways. If you just want to define a point as the end of the Ice Age,
00:32:53technically you can do that. And as we used to say in stratigraphy and geology, you drive
00:32:58in a golden spike. So before a certain date, it's Ice Age. After a certain date, it's not
00:33:04Ice Age. But if you do that, that's totally arbitrary. That's not looking at nature. And
00:33:10what we have in nature is that the end of the Ice Age, in a sense, is spread over a
00:33:15time period. It didn't just end one day. And arguably, we're still in the Ice Age. In fact,
00:33:23if you look at past geologic history, glaciations occurred, the glaciers got bigger, they receded
00:33:30again, they got smaller, they got bigger again. And we still have continental glaciers
00:33:35to this day in the Antarctic and Greenland. There's no reason to believe that we're actually
00:33:40out of the Ice Age. They're a bit smaller than they were 10,000 years ago, but they
00:33:48could get larger again. If you're talking about nature and what's really occurring around
00:33:54the world, and not just drawing an arbitrary line for definitional purposes, if you're
00:34:00really talking about what happened on Earth, I don't think you can draw that arbitrary
00:34:05line. The Ice Age actually ended, if you would, in different places at different times. Not
00:34:12all the ice melted simultaneously everywhere. We know that there's a discrepancy between
00:34:18the maximum extent of the glaciers in Europe versus North America, for instance. In fact,
00:34:24arguably, we're still in the Ice Age. The glaciers have simply retreated to a much smaller
00:34:32scale than they were 10,000, 15,000 years ago. But I have no doubt as a geologist that
00:34:40they could well advance again, and we could go back into what everyone would call an Ice
00:34:46Age. We're probably, in my opinion, just interglacial, just between periods of major
00:34:53glaciation, but we still have continental glaciers. So I think it really does a disservice
00:35:00to simply try to draw a line and say, this is when the Ice Age ended, and this is when
00:35:07all the sea levels rose. It was spurts of sea level rise, but more gradual than many
00:35:15popular writers would make it out to be. In fact, between about 3,000 and 5,000 B.C.,
00:35:24there was sea level rise, which is much later than many popular writers would want to make
00:35:30it out to be. And during that period, there's evidence that the sea level may have even
00:35:34gotten higher than it is now, and since then, it's lowered a bit again. Also, sea levels
00:35:43do not rise just because you add water. Water expands and contracts depending on the temperature,
00:35:50so when you raise the temperature, and there's evidence this is happening in the present-day
00:35:54world due to what some people call global warming or global climate change, the temperature
00:36:00is increasing, all the evidence indicates, in my opinion, in this century and over the
00:36:06last century. But just because the water is heating up, even a very small amount in the
00:36:11huge ocean basins, it expands, and so it starts to lap up, and from a human perspective,
00:36:17sea levels rise. So there's a lot of complex factors here, and you can't just say, well,
00:36:23there was a huge rise in sea level 10,000 or 15,000 years ago. You really have to look
00:36:30at the evidence and when this was happening, and some of the major rises were as late as
00:36:37the last 5,000 to 7,000 years ago, maybe by my dating, maybe in the 3,000 to 5,000
00:36:44B.C. range. As I talk about voyages of the pyramid builders, there were various times
00:36:52when sea levels were lower, sea levels were higher. This correlates in part with climatic
00:36:58conditions, certainly, as you capture water and ice and build up the ice caps. So, for
00:37:05instance, about 18,000 B.C., we have a very cold period, and a lot of water is captured
00:37:15and stored as ice, huge continental glaciers. So accordingly, sea level was much lower,
00:37:21and you expose a lot of land. But that doesn't mean that everything that's underwater goes
00:37:28back to 18,000 B.C., as in fact, sea levels have risen since then, but it's not that all
00:37:37of a sudden all the ice melted. In fact, there's still ice today, and sea levels just rose
00:37:44tremendously over a few centuries. There was a gradual increase in temperature, fluctuations
00:37:50in temperature, ice melting, sea levels rising. In fact, it got very warm, even warmer potentially
00:38:00than today, around 3,000 B.C., when we had higher sea levels even than now. And since
00:38:07then, there's evidence to indicate sea levels have gone down a little bit. So we're really
00:38:13talking a huge expanse of time by human standards, 15,000 years from, say, 3,000 B.C. to 18,000
00:38:23B.C., when you had overall trend of increasing seas, sea level, overall increasing sea level.
00:38:33But this is occurring in spurts, and a good chunk of it that would have affected human
00:38:39civilizations occurred at the very end of that time period. So you could have, for instance,
00:38:45a city or a culture that's now underwater, totally submerged, but it may date back to
00:38:534,000, 5,000 B.C. You don't need to postulate that it goes all the way back to 10,000 or
00:38:5915,000 or 20,000 B.C., as some popular writers have suggested.
00:39:04As I discussed in Pyramid Quest, based on what's encoded, apparently, in the Great
00:39:13Pyramid, the ancient Egyptians had an incredible knowledge of the size and shape of the entire
00:39:22globe, incredibly sophisticated geographic knowledge. So, for instance, and I didn't
00:39:28believe this when I first started researching the Great Pyramid, but it turns out to be
00:39:33correct. The length of the perimeter of the base of the Great Pyramid encodes the dimensions.
00:39:42It, in fact, is equal to one-half of a minute of latitude at the equator. And based on what's
00:39:52encoded into the Great Pyramid, the ancient Egyptians knew within 30 millimeters, or just
00:39:59over an inch, the length of one degree of latitude at the equator. Did I get that right?
00:40:09Yes, perfect.
00:40:11Okay. And I said half a minute of degree of latitude is the perimeter, and then it's within
00:40:1630 millimeters for the degree. Okay, let me continue now. Not only did they know within
00:40:26about 30 millimeters, or just over an inch, the degree of... Not only did the ancient
00:40:36Egyptians know within 30 millimeters, or just over an inch, the length of one degree of
00:40:43latitude at the equator, but they also knew the polar radius of the Earth. And that's encoded
00:40:51in the Great Pyramid because, in fact, the Great Pyramid, if you look at it, if you think of
00:40:58the height of the Great Pyramid as a radius of a circle, the perimeter of the base is the
00:41:06circumference of the circle. So translate that into geographic terms, the perimeter of the base
00:41:11of the Great Pyramid represents the latitude, or the equator of the Earth, and the height
00:41:20represents the radius of the Earth through the poles.
00:41:26Right.
00:41:27Did I get that right?
00:41:28Yeah, you did.
00:41:29Okay, okay.
00:41:31What is the common response of conventional Egyptologists to the notion that the dimensions
00:41:42of the Great Pyramid were derived from precession measurements and the resultant knowledge of
00:41:49the Earth's diameter and circumference lengths?
00:41:52There you're going back to precession again.
00:41:54Yeah, that has nothing to do with precession.
00:41:57Okay, so forget the precession.
00:41:59Okay, and I think I may have just answered, or maybe I didn't say what Egyptologists…
00:42:05Okay, wait, wait, but before we get to that, I need to say two other things about the Great
00:42:09Pyramid, which tie right in here.
00:42:11Okay.
00:42:15Up until the Great Pyramid not only encodes sophisticated geographic knowledge as to the
00:42:24dimensions of the Earth, but it's also aligned with incredible accuracy to the true North
00:42:33Pole of the Earth, not just a magnetic pole, not just approximately the North Pole, but
00:42:39incredible accuracy to the true North Pole.
00:42:42In fact, it's the most accurately aligned building ever constructed before the 19th
00:42:49century, and it's much better aligned to this day than many modern buildings that are
00:42:57ostensibly aligned to a north-south, east-west set of axes.
00:43:02The Great Pyramid is off from true North Bay about one twentieth of a degree, which is
00:43:10an incredibly small amount for such a huge structure.
00:43:15It's an incredibly small amount for any structure.
00:43:18And one might even suggest that maybe it wasn't even off by one twentieth of a degree when
00:43:23it was initially built.
00:43:25Maybe the North Pole or the position of the North Pole has actually changed a little bit
00:43:32relative to the site of the Great Pyramid and when it was built.
00:43:36So maybe they got dead on, but even if they didn't get dead on, to be within one twentieth
00:43:43of a degree, I mean, that shows a level of sophistication and engineering that's just
00:43:52mind-boggling.
00:43:54I don't know if that was...
00:43:57What about this whole thing that you were mentioning, like Pi was in the Great Pyramid?
00:44:04Yeah, actually I just said that, but I didn't use the term Pi.
00:44:08Okay, but you did.
00:44:10Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:44:11Okay, about...
00:44:12Let me say it with Pi so you have it.
00:44:13But what I just said, did that...
00:44:15I don't know.
00:44:16Let me try a short version of that.
00:44:18Okay, wait, let me just get some things and you can use what you want.
00:44:24Okay.
00:44:32The Great Pyramid.
00:44:37The Great Pyramid is this incredible structure and it is aligned with incredible accuracy.
00:44:46It is aligned to north-south, east-west axis.
00:44:50And the degree of accuracy is that by modern measurements, it's off only by approximately
00:44:57one twentieth of a degree to perfect alignment with the North Pole.
00:45:04And then we have to ask, maybe it wasn't even off by one twentieth of a degree when it was built.
00:45:10Maybe something has changed.
00:45:12Maybe the pole has changed slightly or the tectonic plate has changed slightly that the Great Pyramid is on.
00:45:20It doesn't matter.
00:45:22Even if it was off by a twentieth degree when it was first built, that's more accurate than anyone could align
00:45:29an architectural structure until the nineteenth century.
00:45:34They were doing something that no one could replicate for thousands of years.
00:45:42I don't know if that...
00:45:43You were going to mention something about Pi.
00:45:45That's separate. I'm going to do that.
00:45:48Also, the Great Pyramid, and maybe this is coincidence, maybe it's not, is very, very close to thirty degrees north latitude.
00:45:59And many people suggested that, in fact, they were aiming to build it at thirty degrees north latitude.
00:46:06And it's off by a very small amount.
00:46:11And that may have simply been due to the way they cited and figured out where thirty degrees is.
00:46:19Things like atmospheric refraction that would have thrown them just very, very slightly.
00:46:25Or simply that exactly at thirty degrees north latitude, the rock, the subsurface, is not appropriate for building a Great Pyramid.
00:46:35So maybe they got as close as they could to it.
00:46:38But this is another piece of evidence that they knew what they were doing.
00:46:42They understood geography.
00:46:44They had a good concept of geographic knowledge.
00:46:50Pi. Pi is definitely encoded within the Great Pyramid.
00:46:54And what we see is that if you take the height of the Great Pyramid from the center of the base to the apex, consider that r, radius of a circle.
00:47:06Take the perimeter of the base of the Great Pyramid, consider that c.
00:47:14Everyone knows the formula from grade school.
00:47:17Two pi r equals circumference.
00:47:21The base of the Great Pyramid is the circumference.
00:47:24The height of the Great Pyramid is r.
00:47:28Two times the height times pi equals the perimeter of the base.
00:47:35Clearly, pi is included within the Great Pyramid.
00:47:40Okay.
00:47:42I got that right, right?
00:47:44I think that's great.
00:47:48Oh, and then did you want to include while you're on the dimensions and the lineup, how the thing was actually lined up to the ancient Pyramidion?
00:48:00No, because I mean that's...
00:48:03People argue about that and I mean...
00:48:06No, because what is the Pyramidion?
00:48:08Was it Greenwich? Was it this? Was it that?
00:48:10Well, okay.
00:48:11Let me make one quick comment along those lines.
00:48:14Yeah, bring it up about Greenwich.
00:48:16Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:48:18Okay.
00:48:20Let me, let me, let me...
00:48:24Because what is the Pyramidion?
00:48:26Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:48:27I mean it's an arbitrary thing.
00:48:29Okay, okay.
00:48:30Wait, wait.
00:48:31Let me make a quick comment.
00:48:34Okay, the Great Pyramid is at very...
00:48:40The Great Pyramid is located at a point on the surface of the Earth that many people have suggested is quite significant, highly significant.
00:48:51It's at approximately 30 degrees north latitude and there is textual evidence from ancient times that in some ways the longitude of the Great Pyramid was used as an equivalent of a prime meridian in modern days.
00:49:09Everyone knows that the prime meridian today is designated as going through Greenwich, England.
00:49:15So that's zero degrees longitude and then we measure longitude east and west of that.
00:49:21And longitude, unlike latitude, is...
00:49:24There's no natural starting point for longitude.
00:49:27Latitude, you have the equator that's naturally defined and then you have north latitude, south latitude from the equator, zero.
00:49:36But you have to have an arbitrary place to start longitude.
00:49:39Modern times, Greenwich, there is evidence that in ancient times the longitude of the Great Pyramid might have been used, at least in some systems, as the starting point.
00:49:51One of the themes I developed in my book, Voyages of the Pyramid Builders, is that there is a lot of evidence for intercontinental connections in ancient times.
00:50:04That there was transportation across the oceans, that people were navigating the oceans in ancient times.
00:50:13And in a word, they were getting around the globe and there was contact, there were voyages.
00:50:19Some of this may have been sporadic, some of it may have been more willful, sporadic.
00:50:26What I mean by that is that people may have simply been blown off, of course, and ended up in new places where they hadn't intended to go.
00:50:34Other cases, willfully traveling now to new areas, but they were clearly traversing the Pacific Ocean, they were clearly traversing the Atlantic Ocean.
00:50:45And even though this has not quite made it into the popular realm, or the general accepted, if I could use that term, academic realm, there's a lot of evidence for connections and travel and seafaring in ancient times.
00:51:03And this is being more and more accepted by academia and classical archaeology.
00:51:12And if they were doing this, I have no doubt that they were recording, they were remembering where they were traveling, they were developing a more and more detailed knowledge of the geographic base of the Earth.
00:51:29And we know by analogy with modern peoples, quote, primitive peoples that are not so primitive, for instance, like the Micronesians, that they know where islands are, they can traverse the open oceans, they have incredible geographic knowledge of their area, which covers, of course, thousands of square miles of ocean.
00:51:52And they can navigate it with what seemed to us like very, very primitive tools, or essentially no tools at all, observing the skies, observing the stars, observing the ocean currents.
00:52:05And I think this is a tradition, in many cases unwritten, not well recorded tradition that goes back to very ancient times.
00:52:17And I would make the point that not well recorded in some cases, because certain people that may have been traveling around the globe, they didn't want to record that, they didn't want to publicize that, it essentially was trade secrets, if you would.
00:52:31You know, if they were involved in commerce, and we see this in later ancient times, that you don't necessarily want people to have that knowledge, because that knowledge of detailed geography could be incredibly useful for purposes of economics, for purposes of war, of safety.
00:52:53So there's a lot of things going on here.
00:52:55Something that's very interesting, and has come to the popular forefront recently, when I say recently, the last 10 to 15 years, is people looking at megalithic sites, well not just any megalithic sites, but in particular, megalithic sites that are now found underwater.
00:53:15And what we know is that, of course, since the end of the last ice age, sea levels have risen, they've risen dramatically over that time period, over many thousands of years, they rose 300 to 400 feet, depending on where you are in the world.
00:53:32And quite logically, ancient peoples, many ancient peoples lived near the coastline, and when you have that much water rising, in some cases, their cities, their habitations, were totally inundated, and are now found underwater, if they're found at all.
00:53:56So a very exciting development is the search for these ancient megalithic ruins, ancient sites, underwater.
00:54:06But there's a lot of potential problems and mishaps also.
00:54:13One is identifying genuine ancient sites versus natural features that can be misinterpreted as ancient sites.
00:54:24So in some cases, in my opinion, there are sites underwater that have been claimed to be ancient sites, ancient pyramids underwater, buildings, cities underwater, that I think, until we have more evidence, can be explained simply as interesting geological structures, but natural geological structures.
00:54:50So distinguishing the real human-built sites that have now been flooded underwater from natural sites that superficially look like ancient human sites is one problem.
00:55:06A second problem with trying to study these ancient megalithic sites that are now submerged is, in some cases, so-called experts or popular authors have assumed that if you've got a structure underwater, you can just look at how deep the water is, somehow correlate depth of water with how fast waters have risen.
00:55:34And in some cases I've seen people assume if it's under so much water, it must date back, say, 10,000 years or more.
00:55:44And that's not a good assumption.
00:55:47So in some cases I believe people have interpreted natural sites as artificial sites, and then they've further gone and said, not only is it an artificial site, which I don't think is true, but because it's underwater, it must go back, say, 10,000 years or more.
00:56:06And they all of a sudden have, in my opinion, fabricated from an incredibly interesting natural structure that happens to be underwater, they've turned it into an ancient lost city that must go back to some incredibly remote period of time.
00:56:25And from that they then conclude that ancient people were incredibly advanced at that incredibly remote time.
00:56:36This must be a lost civilization.
00:56:38In some cases they claim, well, this must be evidence of Atlantis.
00:56:43And they just spin these tales and these stories that ultimately, in my opinion, when you look at their very foundation, what they're really based on, they just don't hold up at all.
00:56:56Let's look at a couple of examples of submerged cities or submerged structures.
00:57:01Off of Malta there are megalithic ruins.
00:57:05In this case, although I admit I've not explored the site firsthand, but from the documentation I've seen, the photographs and other analysis, it looks to me like this is a genuine ancient site.
00:57:19Megalithic structures built from quarried blocks that were assembled.
00:57:25Clearly they weren't doing this underwater originally.
00:57:29And with subsequent sea level rises, this site was inundated.
00:57:36So I think in that case, from the evidence I've seen, we've got a genuine ancient site.
00:57:42On the other hand, off of the little Japanese island of Yanaguni is a structure that many people have claimed as an ancient step pyramid or some kind of ancient platform, some kind of ancient structure.
00:57:59I've had the opportunity to dive that site myself several times.
00:58:05Made a number of dives there.
00:58:07I went there hoping against hope that it would in fact be an ancient structure submerged underwater from a very early time period.
00:58:20My conclusion as a geologist is that it can be explained by natural processes.
00:58:26What you have there is not quarried blocks that have been assembled into buildings or other structures, but you've got natural bedrock that fractures and cleaves along very regular plains.
00:58:43And there's incredibly strong erosive wind and wave action, typhoons, very strong currents.
00:58:52In that locality, you've got many natural features coming together between the nature of the rocks and nature of the currents and nature of the weathering patterns to create a situation where the rock is naturally spalling out, being pulled out, and is forming what superficially look like very regular step type structures.
00:59:18But even when I look at it, and I've dived it numerous times, look at it closely, you don't get the regularity at the ground level or underwater level when you look at the rocks right up close that you do in dressed, surfaced, quarried rock in known artificial sites.
00:59:45So it's not like looking at a quarry.
00:59:48Very deceptive in the case of Yonaguni because the structure is totally covered with biological material, sponges and that type of thing that cover the surface.
01:00:00So it's very hard to see the actual rock versus the biological component that's growing on it.
01:00:07What have been claimed as perfect right angles in some cases, when you measure them, they're not so perfect.
01:00:14They look superficially perfect from a distance.
01:00:18So that's one site that some popular writers I think have just egregiously misinterpreted.
01:00:26And I might even think that in some cases people are willing, maybe it's unconscious on their part, they're willing to misinterpret or give the benefit of a doubt to a site like that to say it's artificial, to say it's underwater.
01:00:45Therefore it must be incredibly ancient because it fits their bigger scheme, their paradigm that they're developing, even if it's an alternative paradigm.
01:00:56I feel very strongly, and I'm of the camp, some people would say, of pushing civilization back earlier.
01:01:04My work has been cited by many people as suggesting that civilization goes back much earlier in time than traditionally viewed.
01:01:17My work on the Great Sphinx in particular.
01:01:19So I'm open to that, but I also think that we have to look at the evidence very carefully, very critically, and we can't just use wishful thinking.
01:01:28I went to Yonaguni hoping that it would be what some people call the smoking gun, that this would be evidence of high civilization at a very remote time.
01:01:43I was disappointed at many levels that I had to conclude it's primarily a natural feature.
01:01:51When I say primarily, yes, there's evidence of ancient habitation on Yonaguni Island.
01:01:58Yes, there's evidence that the people may have, I'll put it this way, been admiring the natural features.
01:02:05They may have even carved some of their tombs, which are clearly artificial, in imitation, if you would, of the natural features.
01:02:13But the main structure is, in my opinion, explained primarily to totally by the workings of nature.
01:02:26It's not an artificial structure.
01:02:29And that's not what, on one hand, I want to find, but I'm not going to manipulate the data or make excuses and try to turn it into something it's not,
01:02:38just to fit a nice theory that I think would be interesting.
01:02:47Okay, can you mention anything about India?
01:02:50I don't know if that word, was that somewhat usable?
01:02:54Because you talked about Malta.
01:02:56Okay, India, there's a sites off of India.
01:03:04I don't know, did you get usable stuff off of it?
01:03:06Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:03:12A number of ancient cities, actually several sites off of the coast of India, in different parts of India, have been claimed as underwater cities, underwater ancient structures.
01:03:25I have not visited those sites firsthand.
01:03:28I've seen very little on them.
01:03:31What I've seen, in my mind so far, is not definitive.
01:03:37Especially after my experience with Yonaguni, where I went to Yonaguni, having seen underwater photographs of what looked like very regular features, step-like structures, etc.,
01:03:51that sure looked superficially like they could have been man-made.
01:03:55Then to go there, to have the ability to dive it, to study it closely, and find that here was nature essentially fooling us.
01:04:03I have to be very skeptical about some of the claims for ancient cities that are now submerged off of the coast of modern India.
01:04:15I'm not saying that they aren't ancient cities.
01:04:18I'm not saying there aren't ancient structures underwater, because it's very logical that there could be.
01:04:24But logical that there could be, versus that they absolutely are, are two different things.
01:04:29Until I see really good evidence, artifacts being brought up, clear definitive photographs, versus just hearsay that other people saw it.
01:04:41That with recent tsunamis, the water was pulled out temporarily and people saw it, and then the water came back and submerged it again.
01:04:52If someone got really good photographs that were definitive, I haven't seen them yet.
01:04:57So I'm going to, at this point, remain skeptical, open to the possibility, but I can't say definitively.
01:05:07And the photographs I have seen I don't think are definitive in my opinion.
01:05:14During the last Ice Age, there was definitely snow, there was definitely ice, there was definitely cold temperatures.
01:05:22It's called the Ice Age, so that's what you expect.
01:05:24Problem is, in some people's minds, that's what they expect, that's what they think there is, and they think that's all there was.
01:05:32In fact, during the last Ice Age, what geologists refer to as the Pleistocene, from about, very crudely, about maybe 2 million years ago to, depending on how you want to date it, 10,000, 12,000 years ago.
01:05:47That time period, what you had were glaciations and what we call interglacials, so the ice from the North Pole coming down to lower latitudes, then receding again, coming back, receding.
01:06:04But it was not a case where the whole Earth was covered with ice.
01:06:08Some people have that misconception that everything was cold and dreary.
01:06:13In fact, during the Ice Age, you simply had change of where the climatic zones were from a modern perspective.
01:06:23You still had temperate regions, you still had an equatorial region that was quite warm.
01:06:30In fact, what you get in some cases is instead of change in temperature so much, you have changes in precipitation, for instance.
01:06:37But it's certainly an incorrect notion, although some people have it, an incorrect notion that the entire world was somehow covered with ice or under winter conditions during the last Ice Age.
01:06:53Even at the height of the most extreme glaciation, there were temperate regions, there were even what we would call equatorial regions.
01:07:01And there were very good places for humans to live.
01:07:06In fact, we know humans made it through numerous glacial periods.
01:07:12Some humans were clearly living on the edges of the glaciers and knew how to cope in that environment.
01:07:22We think of the Neanderthals, a species that seems to have developed a culture that was well adapted to glacial times.
01:07:34But there were other people living in Africa, for instance, that weren't experiencing what we would call a glacial climate by any means.
01:07:45They were living in what we might call lush, temperate environment.
01:07:51Something that I discuss in my book, Voyages of the Pyramid Builders, is that I believe, and the reason I call the book Voyages of the Pyramid Builders is
01:08:02that I use the theme of pyramids, and we see pyramids around the globe in ancient times and pre-Columbian times in the New World.
01:08:15And I believe that pyramids are the indicator, in that sense, of a broader picture.
01:08:23And that picture is what is sometimes referred to as diffusionism.
01:08:28And among academics, there are a couple of schools of thought on ancient cultures and their interconnections around the globe.
01:08:39The classical, traditional view is that ancient cultures were essentially isolated from each other, at least the Old World versus the New World.
01:08:48And I remember when I was studying as an undergraduate, the assumption, sometimes explicit, sometimes not so explicit, was that the cultures in the New World,
01:09:03the high civilizations of the New World, for instance, the Mayans, the Inca, the Aztec, etc., the Olmecs,
01:09:11they arose separately and independently, in terms of civilization, from the civilizations of the Old World.
01:09:21So you have Mayan and Olmec pyramids, remarkably similar to pyramids that you find in the Old World, but that was just coincidence.
01:09:32That was independent invention in the New World versus the Old World.
01:09:38And this was the dogma. And this makes logical sense if your assumption is that oceans are barriers.
01:09:48That to ancient peoples, oceans were absolute barriers. You couldn't cross the oceans.
01:09:55And you've got a tradition of archaeologists working for 100, 200 years, and those archaeologists tend to be working on land.
01:10:07They're not sailors. Very few sailors would then turn to archaeology. They don't know the oceans.
01:10:13They have, I believe, a built-in bias that oceans are barriers.
01:10:19And archaeologists traditionally, working within a continent, working within a geographic area,
01:10:27if they saw a number of similarities between two cultures, their immediate conclusion would be,
01:10:33well, there must be trade between the cultures. There must have been contact between their cultures.
01:10:38There must have been cross-fertilization between the cultures.
01:10:41And that was all fine and dandy if the cultures were linked by land in the same continent, in the same geographic region.
01:10:48But when they saw just as many similarities between cultures on different sides of an ocean,
01:10:56be it the Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic Ocean, then they would invoke independent invention.
01:11:01It must be that they arose independently. They just hit upon the same things.
01:11:07You even got concepts of, I'll use the term collective consciousness, or archetypes in the human psyche,
01:11:15that humans, no matter where they are, they'll come up with some of the same mythologies, with some of the same rituals,
01:11:24because it's somehow almost ingrained, or literally ingrained into our human nature.
01:11:30Any explanation other than that, those cultures might have actually had contact.
01:11:36And I think the more we look at, we see remarkable similarities among cultures, even if they're separated by oceans.
01:11:47And I think the logical conclusion is, well, don't try to hypothesize all these other complex explanations.
01:11:55They simply had contact with each other.
01:11:58Furthermore, you start looking at ancient cultures, and they could navigate large water bodies.
01:12:06They could navigate the oceans.
01:12:09In fact, we know from late ancient times, Greco-Roman times, Venetian times, they were navigating the Mediterranean.
01:12:16They were crossing from one end of the Mediterranean to the other.
01:12:19A lot of people don't realize it, but it isn't that much more distant to go from Europe to the closest part of the New World.
01:12:29Or from Africa, I should say, from the Old World to the New World.
01:12:33But if you actually measure the distance, it's not much different than going from one end of the Mediterranean to another.
01:12:43And we know that there were major traditions of shipbuilding.
01:12:49You had reed boats.
01:12:53Hyredal, for instance, the great explorer, he demonstrated by doing it that a reed boat can cross the Atlantic.
01:13:07He demonstrated that in the Pacific you have a tradition of raft building, not little rickety rafts, but huge, we call them rafts.
01:13:16But they were really huge boats, huge ships even, but not built on the European tradition, using a very different tradition.
01:13:25Those were absolutely seaworthy.
01:13:28You can cross, he demonstrated, you can cross an ocean, you can cross the Pacific with those.
01:13:33So we know they had the technology.
01:13:37We know they, we can experimentally show that this technology could be used.
01:13:43We have evidence of interconnections and remarkable similarities.
01:13:49And more and more people are, I believe, coming to the conclusion, although it's still a minority, that there was major cultural contact around the globe in ancient times.
01:14:00So getting back to the pyramids, I don't think it's coincidence that you see remarkable similarities between Old World pyramids and New World pyramids.
01:14:09And I think there was actually cross-fertilization.
01:14:14So the Mayan pyramids, I think, have a direct connection to Old World pyramids.
01:14:20Olmec pyramids have a direct connection to Old World pyramids in the sense of one culture influencing the other.