#2 💫🌎🕵🏻♂️
Lost civilizations, holiday cheers, a show, a book and a trailer
Happy Holidays! 🎄🕎
Yesterday was my last official work day of 2019. It’s been a really busy end of year at Abstract, with lots of 2020 planning. I’m looking forward to relaxing with Carole & George, cleaning our apartment, doing some hiking, and enjoying the quiet.
Our only confirmed plan over the break is a quick trip to South Lake Tahoe tomorrow for one night to get some time in the snow with George. There’s a snow storm expected to hit Tahoe Sunday so as long as there’s not too much traffic on the roads, we should be all set with our AWD rental. Will share pics of George in the snow next time 😜
We celebrate both Hannukah and Christmas so I’m wishing you all happy holidays, merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah and whatever other combination of words that resonates with you this time of year.
Happy new year and see you in 2020!
This time I chose to share a fascinating theory about history, a new show recommendation, a favorite book recommendation, and a new trailer that looks 🔥
Why write about a theory? To be honest, I’ve always enjoyed a good debate.
I never understood why people got so defensive when you made a point that opposed their point. After all, we’re both interested in finding the truth, right?
Well, as I’ve gotten older I’ve discovered a lot of people are not interested in the truth. They’re interested in whatever makes them feel safe and familiar.
This theory is not something that makes the majority of the academic establishment feel safe and it’s definitely not familiar. After all, how would you feel if your whole career was spent teaching a timeline that ended up being wrong?
But I think there’s some truth in this theory, which makes it worth exploring. So that’s why I’m shining some light on it and sharing with you. Maybe it’ll speak to something deeper in you like it did within me.
🕵🏻♂️
Back in 2012 I became aware of a theory that says our timeline of human civilization is incomplete and should go further back in history. I found out about this through a podcast appearance Graham Hancock made on the Joe Rogan Experience:
Graham Hancock is a British journalist/author who has visited many ancient megalithic architecture sites and pieced together threads for a holistic theory that puts into context ancient architecture and the evolution of our technological development.
This interview opened my mind to some questions about civilization I’d never thought of, including:
Why do many mythologies in regions that never interacted mention a flood? E.g. Noah’s ark and the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Why do Egypt’s oldest structures have a higher level of craftsmanship and quality than the newer ones? Shouldn’t technology get better over time?
Why does the temple of the Sphinx show signs of water erosion that can only be caused by thousands of years of rainfall?
Why have psychedelics been demonized in our society?
What role did psychedelics play in the evolution of our species?
I became fascinated.
I read Graham Hancock’s famous book from 1995 Fingerprints of the Gods (no, it’s not about ancient aliens) and learned about so much evidence that simply wasn’t discovered in time for me to learn about it in school.
20 years after he published Fingerprints, Hancock published the sequel Magicians of the Gods (still no ancient aliens) in 2015, which adds tons of new evidence and pushes further the theory about our past. I read it and was surprised how much more evidence was discovered.
Later that year, Hancock and “master builder and architectural designer, teacher, geometrician, geomythologist, geological explorer and renegade scholar” Randall Carlson made an appearance together on Joe Rogan to tell the full story from both of their perspectives. It’s compelling.
Here’s my understanding of the theory.
The Impact 🌠
Roughly 12,500 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, the earth was hit by large fragments of a comet that crosses our planet’s orbit twice a year (!). It is believed that the primary impact took place on the North American ice cap, which would explain the lack of a major crater where the impact took place.
While we’re missing a crater, there is evidence for such an impact (footage, charts and data) that Randall Carlson presents in the video above which points to a cataclysm on earth right at the end of the last ice age. There’s also archeological evidence in Gobekli Tepe (Turkey), Gunung Padang (Indonesia) and many other sites that date further back than 10,000 BC. According to our mainstream timeline, humans were supposed to be scavenging hunter-gatherers in 10,000 BC. By definition, hunter-gatherers wouldn’t be capable of executing this scale of megalithic architecture.
Not only does Gobekli Tepe appear to be 6,000 years older than Stonehenge, but there seems to be a level of consistency in the dating of organic matter across vertical layers (you can’t date stone, you can only date organic material found on the stone). This finding indicates the site was deliberately buried within a short timeframe. As a result, it’s preserved in pristine condition like a time capsule. Excavation began in 1996 and only 5% of the site has been excavated.
The lost civilization theory 🗾
An impact like this would instantaneously melt incredible amounts of ice, causing a dramatic increase in ocean levels. It’s believed that ocean levels rose 400 ft when the ice caps melted at the end of the last ice age. In other words, the coast lines from 12,000 years ago are now deeply submerged under water.
The theory posits that during the last ice age we had an advanced civilization of sea-faring humans with trading outposts all around the world. Their capital was somewhere in Indonesia (Indonesia today is made of a bunch of islands but in the past it was an above-water supercontinent). They were master navigators who used the stars as their maps.
Their trading outposts would be along coast lines (similarly to civilization today) and there would be people living near trading outposts in the mountains. The mountain people would be less advanced and more remote.
When the comet fragments hit the North American ice cap, the rise in ocean levels was catastrophic to any coastal civilization. Over a very short timeframe, the ocean levels will have risen hundreds of feet. By the time navigators came back to their city, it would have completely disappeared and been submerged under the ocean.
At that point, the survivors of the cataclysm would need to decide on their next steps. As the theory goes, they decided to carry out the task of re-starting civilization by traveling to various outposts and essentially training the mountain people on agriculture, architecture, stone cutting, and astronomy. They took it as their mission to preserve civilization.
This accounts for how we see agriculture and megalithic architecture with similar styles (e.g. pyramids) appear in multiple parts of the planet around roughly the same timeframe.
The theory also posits that this lost city was the legendary Atlantis, a lost civilization swallowed by the sea. It brings mythology into fact.
I’m not saying I believe the theory is definitely true. I am, however, saying it’s very intriguing and worth looking at the evidence and making up your own mind 😀
After all, what’s life without a good mystery?
Netflix 📺
Carole & I have been watching a new Brazilian show on Netflix called 3% (shout out to our friend Mari for the rec). It’s about a dystopian future where at the age of 20, people get a chance to compete for the right to go live in the luxurious Offshore. It has elements of Hunger Games, The Island, Lost, and The Leftovers. It’s bingeworthy if you don’t mind subtitles. IMDB .
Book 📚
I read a book last year called Island by Aldous Huxley. I still think about it a lot. There aren’t too many great utopian novels and there are lots of dystopian ones. This is a really fascinating utopian novel about an isolated island that has its own unique approach to psychedelics, sexual education, rites of passage, and other pillars of culture. I recently watched this clip by Aubrey Marcus (also an interesting person to follow) where he reads a passage from the novel about a psychedelic experience had by the main character. It’s a good taste for the richness you can expect in this classic.
New Trailer 🎞
Christopher Nolan (director of Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar to name a few) just dropped a super cool trailer for his newest movie, Tenet. It’ll air in 2020. I’m a big fan of his movies and with a $225 million budget, believe this will be a super fun ride.
Fun fact: the lead role is played by the son of Denzel Washington.
That’s it for this post, thanks for reading!