The episode features Graham Hancock, author of Fingerprints of the Gods and host of Netflix's Ancient Apocalypse, discussing archaeological controversies and lost civilizations with Joe Rogan.

Hancock addresses the intense criticism his Netflix series received from mainstream archaeology, including accusations of racism and pseudoscience, while defending his hypothesis of an advanced Ice Age civilization destroyed during the Younger Dryas period.

The conversation explores recent discoveries in the Amazon rainforest, including massive geoglyphs and terra preta soil, as well as new extended-state DMT research projects at UCSD and Neunautics that could map consciousness realms.

Rogan and Hancock discuss the resistance to alternative archaeological theories, the war on drugs, psychedelics as moral teachers, and the potential for artificial intelligence to decode ancient languages like Easter Island's rongorongo script.

Archaeological Establishment's Hostility to Lost Civilization Theory

"The reaction to my proposal that we've forgotten an episode in the human story has always been hostile since I published Fingerprints of the Gods in 1995, but with Ancient Apocalypse, the reaction was just hysterical" - Graham

The Society for American Archaeology claimed in an open letter to Netflix that "we know there was no lost civilization during the Ice Age," despite having surveyed relatively small areas of Earth

"Archaeology is so desperate to be seen as a science that it tries as hard as possible to distance itself from anything that might be seen as woo-woo, and then it takes the next step and really seeks to attack out on the edge ideas" - Graham

Critics accused the show of being racist, white supremacist, misogynist, and anti-Semitic by referencing indigenous traditions about bearded foreigners bringing knowledge after cataclysms, which Hancock reported from 1995

"It's racist of archaeology to imagine that the magic powers of the Spaniards could impose a myth upon indigenous peoples all over the Americas" - Graham, defending indigenous oral traditions

Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis and Global Cataclysm Evidence

The Younger Dryas period (12,800 to 11,600 years ago) involved a 1,200-year global cataclysm that archaeology acknowledges, though the cause remains debated

"Multiple fragments of a disintegrating comet hit the Earth 12,800 years ago - many exploded in the sky as airbursts around 100 meters in diameter, like Tunguska" - Graham

Abu Hurairah in Syria shows compelling evidence of a massive airburst 12,800 years ago with shocked quartz melted at temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees Celsius, plus platinum, iridium, and carbon microspherules

"The simultaneous extinction of large numbers of creatures happening very quickly suggests we're looking at a disaster, not hunter-gatherers wiping out megafauna through overkill" - Graham

In Alaska's Boneyard, gold miners found thousands of woolly mammoth bones and tusks with evidence of bones that were clearly sawed with sophisticated tools, plus a thick carbon layer indicating mass burn

Gobekli Tepe: 11,600-Year-Old Megalithic Mystery

Gobekli Tepe features 20-ton megaliths with three-dimensional relief carvings and precise astronomical alignments to stars like Sirius, dated firmly to 11,600 years ago

"You just don't start off making dry stone walls and then wake up one morning and create 20-ton megaliths in huge stone circles, perfectly astronomically aligned" - Graham

The site was deliberately buried after 1,000 years of use (11,600 to 10,600 years ago), filled with rubble and covered with a hill, preserving it perfectly for 10,000 years

"What Gobekli Tepe looks like to me is a transfer of technology - people who already knew how to work megalithic architecture came at a time of chaos and cataclysm to mobilize the local community" - Graham

During Gobekli Tepe's thousand-year functioning period, the local population transitioned from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists, suggesting intentional knowledge transfer

Pillar 43 in Enclosure D shows a vulture in the exact position of constellation Sagittarius with a disc over its wing suggesting the sun, plus a scorpion like Scorpio - indicating astronomical knowledge 11,600 years ago

Amazon Rainforest: Geoglyphs and Terra Preta Soil

The Amazon rainforest covers 6 million square kilometers with very little archaeology done until recently, when LIDAR revealed enormous structures under the canopy

"We're finding that there were potentially populations of millions living in the Amazon, that there were cities joined by roads hundreds of kilometers in length" - Graham

Terra preta (Amazonian dark earth) is deliberately man-made fertile soil containing broken ceramics, dung, and human refuse that constantly replenishes itself and never gets used up

The oldest terra preta examples are more than 8,000 years old in surveyed areas, though it likely goes back much earlier, and modern settlers actively seek it out for rich crops

Massive geoglyphs in Acre state, Brazil, feature enormous earthworks in geometrical forms - squares, circles, octagons - on a scale of hundreds of meters, discovered through forest clearances

Fazenda Sipoal geoglyph is an enormous oval surrounding a square, while Severino Calazans has the same footprint as the Great Pyramid of Giza and aligns to true astronomical north

"Indigenous Apurina elders say the geoglyphs were used by shamans in the distant past for visionary journeys, perhaps using ayahuasca, with community gatherings within them" - Graham

Serra de la Lindosa in Colombian Amazon features an eight-kilometer rock wall covered in paintings dated more than 12,000 years old showing extinct megafauna and geometrical patterns characteristic of ayahuasca visions

Great Pyramid and Sphinx: Evidence of Advanced Ancient Knowledge

"The Great Pyramid incorporates pi, which is supposed to have been discovered by the Greeks, and the dimensions of the earth on a particular scale" - Graham

Scan Pyramids project using latest technology identified a second Grand Gallery above the existing one, plus new corridors and passageways not previously known

"The Great Pyramid is literally impossible - archaeologists say they could build it, but I defy them to do that" - Graham, questioning it as merely Khufu's tomb

The Sphinx head is way too small in relation to its 270-foot long, 70-foot high body, suggesting it was carved down from a much larger head, likely originally a complete lion with mane

Robert Schock's geological evidence shows the Sphinx bears witness to 1,000 years of heavy rainfall characteristic of the Younger Dryas period, while the head is much less weathered

"12,500 years ago, the Sphinx was gazing at dawn on the spring equinox at the constellation of Leo - this lion monument on the ground was looking at its own celestial counterpart in the sky" - Graham

The Edfu building texts in Upper Egypt tell of a "homeland of the primeval ones" destroyed in a great cataclysm and flooded by the sea, with survivors traveling to restart civilization

Extended-State DMT Research: Mapping Consciousness Realms

University of California San Diego launched extended-state DMT research with $1.5 million from philanthropist Eugene Jong, using intravenous infusion to keep volunteers in peak DMT state for 60+ minutes

"Rather than that 10-minute rush of overwhelming experience, extended release DMT offers the possibility to spend an hour in it and navigate and explore it much more carefully" - Graham

Dr. John Dean leads the UCSD project using fMRI to study the extended state, particularly focusing on entity encounters and telepathic communication reported by vast numbers of DMT users

The research aims to measure whether consciousness can extend past the physical body during trance states, with simultaneous DMT sessions in different countries to test out-of-body elements

Neunautics, deploying Andrew Gallimore's technology with government support, will begin extended-state DMT investigations in early 2024 studying the ontology of DMT space and developing methods to communicate with entities

"This is at least as valid as the exploration of outer space - we need to find out who and what we are, and DMT may be a chemical gateway to a realm we can't access without it" - Graham

Graham reported that after an ayahuasca session focused on his migraines, where a circle of serpents and bright light appeared on his forehead, he went from taking 15-20 pharmaceutical triptan doses to just one in three weeks

War on Drugs: Control, Consciousness, and Human Rights

"The Nixon administration defined the war on drugs in 1970 literally to stop the civil rights movement and to stop the anti-war movement" - Joe

"We as adults must have the sovereign right to make choices about our own consciousness, including taking drugs, even if those choices annoy others" - Graham

"All drugs are already available illegally - anybody can get access to them when they want to. The war on drugs has not worked" - Graham

22 U.S. states have legalized cannabis, and some have decriminalized psilocybin like Oregon, proving prognostications that legalization would lead to catastrophe were false

"Psychedelics challenge the status quo - people drinking beer aren't having anti-establishment thoughts, whereas psychedelics lead people to question existing power structures" - Graham

"Many people's lives have been ruined not by drugs, but by the punishments they've received for possessing and using drugs" - Graham

Pharmaceutical antidepressants like Seroxat and Prozac were horrible and made Graham worse during his 1990s depression, while exercise is 1.25 times more effective than SSRIs for depression

Psychedelics as Moral Teachers and Consciousness Tools

"Psychedelics are moral teachers - they show us our own behavior, hold up a mirror to ourselves, showing things we haven't even admitted that we said or did" - Graham

Ayahuasca showed Graham his problem with anger and how hurtful his words can be to others, leading to much better management of anger and awareness of impact on people

"If altered states of consciousness were really bad for us, and if there's anything to evolutionary theory, evolution would have got rid of them - the fact they've been preserved suggests they're useful" - Graham

Psilocybin research shows people in terminal cancer conditions who were terrified of death stop being afraid after treatment, feeling part of something wider and larger than this body and life

Amanda Fielding's Beckley Foundation is working on hospices offering psychedelic therapy as a free choice with experienced practitioners to help people transition through the death process

"Psychedelics make you very aware of the frailty of human consciousness and this bizarre connection we have with each other that we oftentimes want to ignore" - Joe

Kundalini yoga practitioners report achieving very DMT-like states endogenously through practice, though they're instructed not to try to achieve those states or dwell on them

Unexplored Regions and Archaeological Blind Spots

"27 million square kilometers of the best real estate on Earth that were above water during the Ice Age are underwater now - not enough marine archaeology has been done to rule out a lost civilization" - Graham

The Sahara Desert covers 9 million square kilometers with little archaeology done, yet during the Ice Age it was incredibly fertile with huge river systems and lakes - a nurturing environment for civilization

"Northern Europe and North America were absolutely inhospitable frozen wildernesses during the Ice Age - not places to look for lost civilization. You have to go toward the equator and tropics" - Graham

Most archaeology in industrialized countries results from dams or roads being built with archaeologists called in, not targeted searches - it's kind of random discovery

The Indus Valley civilization in Pakistan wasn't known about until the 1920s when it was found by accident, proving every turn of the archaeologist's spade can reveal new information

Ancient Scripts, Languages, and AI Decoding Potential

Easter Island's rongorongo script is a fully developed writing system that nobody can read because Peruvian slave raids in the 19th century removed almost the entire population, leaving only 111 survivors with no knowledge keepers

"The Rosetta Stone gave us the key to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs - without that one stone found during the Ptolemaic dynasty with text in three languages, Egypt would be dark to us" - Graham

The Indus Valley script from 5,000 years ago remains completely undeciphered despite cities like Mohenjo-daro and Harappa showing very advanced civilization

AI is now being deployed to translate ancient languages, though so far getting more results from languages already translated - potential exists for decoding Easter Island and Indus Valley scripts

Sumerian clay tablets appear to show the solar system with the sun in the center surrounded by planets in relatively correct sizes, suggesting much greater knowledge of the universe than supposed

Olmec Civilization and Costa Rican Stone Spheres

Olmec sculptures at La Venta show multi-ethnic people including faces that appear African or Polynesian, plus other distinct ethnic groups like The Walker with beard and elaborate hat

"The famous Mayan calendar was an Olmec calendar - the Maya inherited it, derived it from the Olmecs" - Graham, identifying Olmecs as predecessor culture to Maya

The oldest representation of the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl is found among Olmec sculptures at La Venta in the Yucatan region

Costa Rica's stone spheres are pretty much perfect spheres cut in hard stone, weighing up to 15 tons, with no known origin or quarry source

"These Olmec heads are spherical but carved with human features - I've often felt there's a similarity between the stone spheres of Costa Rica and the Olmec heads" - Graham

Wikipedia dates Costa Rican spheres to 500-1500 CE, but Graham questions this since it's impossible to date stone itself - organic material found around them may not give accurate dates

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity

"I think artificial intelligence is a life form - we're making a life form, and we've been doing it for a long time" - Joe

Materialism fuels innovation by making people want the newest technology, which seems to be leading toward the emergence of an artificial being

"If artificial intelligence were really intelligent and it were a being, the next thing it would do would be get rid of us" - Graham. "I don't think it would get rid of us, I think it would acquire us" - Joe

Research in Austin converts silent speech into written words using fMRI - experiment participant thinking "I don't have my driver's license yet" was translated as "she has not even started to learn to drive yet"

"The only hope that we have to survive is to become one with artificial intelligence - the crudeness of our biological model is so difficult to escape" - Joe

A new universal language adopted through AI enhancement could help humanity, though "we'll find things to disagree about - language is really key to understanding another culture" - Graham

Debate with Flint Dibble and Archaeological Dialogue

Archaeologist Flint Dibble from University of Cardiff accepted Joe's debate challenge but was diagnosed with cancer requiring heavyweight chemotherapy, making the October 2023 debate impossible

"Flint has been hateful to me, but I don't want to hate him back - I know he's coming from a place of sincerity and genuinely believes I'm wrong" - Graham

The debate is provisionally rescheduled for April 2024 when Flint hopes to be over the worst of chemotherapy, with both parties hoping for reasonable exchange rather than hatred

Fenbendazole, a low-cost anti-parasitic drug, shows at least 12 proven anti-cancer mechanisms in vitro and in vivo, with similar drug mebendazole already FDA-approved and in clinical trials

"I don't hate archaeologists - I have huge respect for them. I myself could not do the work I do were it not for the work archaeologists have done in the field" - Graham