Original subtitles

The stuff just keeps on getting older.

Because it's not that long ago when the

view was that there were no anatomically

modern humans before 50,000 years ago.

And then new discoveries kept pushing

that back about 110,000 years ago with

the discovery in Ethiopia. And now more

than 300,000 years ago. So who knows how

far that timeline will go back.

>> More than 300,000 years ago humans were

living in parts of Africa that

scientists once believed were virtually

uninhabited. We know that because of a

discovery made by accident deep inside a

South African gold mine. Miners weren't

searching for ancient history. They were

digging for gold hundreds of feet below

the surface when archaeologists

uncovered something extraordinary.

Hundreds of expertly crafted [music]

stone tools buried in sediments so old

they predate our own species. The

discovery stunned researchers because

these weren't random rocks. They were

carefully shaped hand axes and cutting

tools made by ancient humans who

possessed far more skill, planning, and

adaptability than anyone expected for

the time. But here's where the mystery

deepens. Why were these people living

here hundreds of thousands of years

earlier than expected? Who exactly made

these tools? And how did an ancient

landscape disappear so completely

beneath one of the world's richest gold

mines? The answers are forcing

archaeologists to rethink where early

humans lived, how they spread across

Africa, and whether one forgotten site

has been quietly rewriting the story of

human history all along.

For decades the story of early humanity

had some widely accepted boundaries. The

biggest chapters of our evolution were

seemingly written in the river valleys

of East Africa or the caves of South

Africa. These were the cradles of

humanity. By comparison the Eastern

Sahara of Sudan was considered a much

less significant page [music] in this

early chapter of the human story. The

harsh arid region around the Atbara

River was seen as a challenging

landscape. It was a place our distant

relatives like Homo erectus might have

passed through, but not a place they

settled, innovated, and really thrived.

The general consensus was that this

region was simply too inhospitable for

long stretches of the Stone Age, and any

major human activity was thought to be

much more recent. [music]

The textbooks suggested a clear story.

The deepest history of [music] human

ingenuity was elsewhere, but it turns

out the emptiness wasn't in the desert,

but in our understanding of it.

In the Eastern desert of Sudan, about 70

km from the city of Atbara, miners have

been reopening old pits, digging through

layer after [music] layer of earth

searching for gold. They were looking

for geological treasure, not an

archaeological revolution, but they

found both. As their heavy machinery cut

into the desert floor, exposing ancient

layers of sediment, they started

noticing something unusual. Scattered in

the dirt were huge worked stones. These

clearly weren't random rocks. They were

unmistakably tools. Word of these finds

eventually reached a team of Polish

archaeologists. For years, the team had

been investigating the region,

suspecting [music] that the conventional

story was incomplete.

When they got to the site, they found a

scene that would upend their field. It

wasn't just a few scattered artifacts,

it was a hoard of them. Hundreds of

stone tools were lying there, barely

buried, unearthed by the miners. [music]

And these were not small, simple flakes.

Among the finds were massive

almond-shaped cleavers, some weighing

several kilograms. They were heavy-duty

tools with [music] expertly chipped

edges on both sides. This wasn't the

work of beginners, this was

sophisticated technology from the

Paleolithic [music] era. It immediately

became clear this wasn't just a pile of

discarded items. The sheer quantity,

along with the flakes and debris from

manufacturing told a different story.

This was a workshop, a place where our

ancient relatives gathered, perhaps for

generations, to create the tools they

needed. An ancient factory, hidden for

millennia, had just been accidentally

exposed by a quest for gold. Identifying

the tools was one thing, dating them was

another. This is where the true scale of

the discovery becomes clear. The team

used a powerful technique called

optically stimulated luminescence or

OSL. In simple terms, OSL dating can

tell you the last time a grain of sand

was exposed to sunlight. Once buried,

minerals like quartz start to build up

energy from background radiation in the

soil, like a tiny geological clock. By

measuring this energy, scientists can

calculate how long the grains have been

buried, and therefore the age of the

sediment layer. The team carefully took

samples from the sediment layers just

above where the tools were found. The

logic is simple. If you can date the

layer on top, you know that everything

underneath has to be older. When the

results came back, they were staggering.

The soil covering the artifacts was

390,000

years [music] old. Let that sink in.

This date provides a minimum age for the

site. [music] Nearly 400,000 years ago,

in a place previously overlooked, our

ancestors were running a sophisticated

tool-making [music] workshop. This

single date dramatically extended the

established timeline for this kind of

advanced activity in the Eastern Sahara.

But the story might go even deeper.

Based on the style of the tools, which

are similar to much older artifacts

found in other parts of Africa, they

speculate that the tools themselves

could be far older than the

390,000-year-old

layer that covered them. The

390,000-year

date is the scientifically proven floor.

The true age could be much greater,

though. What does all this mean? Why

does a tool workshop in a Sudanese gold

mine matter so much because it doesn't

just add a new detail to the map of

human history. It helps us redraw a

corner of the map which with much

greater clarity. First, it suggests that

our ancient relatives likely Homo

erectus were far more adaptable and

geographically widespread than we often

give them credit for.

They weren't just [music] sticking to

lush river valleys. They were moving

into and successfully exploiting

different environments. It's crucial to

remember that 400,000 years ago this now

dry region was more hospitable with

flowing rivers. This wasn't a barren

wasteland. It was a resource-rich home.

Second, this discovery shifts our

perception of their behavior. The site

wasn't just a temporary camp. It appears

to be a dedicated workshop. The hundreds

of finished tools alongside the waste

flakes from their production paint a

picture of an established location for

manufacturing. This implies planning,

foresight, and passing complex skills

from one generation to the next. The

massive cleavers were heavy-duty [music]

tools well suited for tasks like

butchering large animals suggesting

these hominids were capable of

processing significant prey. The

existence of a workshop like this points

to a level of social organization we

rarely get to see with so much clarity

in a species this ancient. The Sudanese

gold mine discovery is not a freak

event. It's a crucial piece of a much

larger puzzle that researchers are

assembling worldwide. This finding fits

into a global pattern of discoveries

that are pushing back timelines and

showing our ancestors were more advanced

and more widespread than the old

narrative allowed. What this wave of new

evidence shows is that the idea of a

simple step-by-step progression of human

evolution is an oversimplification.

Real story is one of multiple prominent

groups experimenting with technology and

adapting to diverse environments all

over the world.

Sudanese discovery isn't an anomaly.

It's a critical data point proving that

the Eastern Sahara was one of these

vital areas for ancient ingenuity. It's

also important to note this isn't some

fringe theory. The findings were

established in PLoS One, a highly

respected peer-reviewed scientific

journal by a professional team. This is

mainstream science radically updating

our history in real time. This gold mine

in the Sudanese desert doesn't just hold

precious metal. It held a key to our own

forgotten past. It held evidence that at

least 390,000 years ago our ancient

relatives were not just surviving, but

thriving, innovating, building a world

for themselves in a place we had long

written off.

>> It was the view, very firm view of

archaeologists, that there had been no

megalithic architecture.

And when I say megalithic, I mean

literally big stones, stone circles,

huge constructions, nothing like that

before 6,000 [music] years ago.

Central to my work was the notion of a

global cataclysm roughly 12,500-12,800

years ago.

They are not saying that it also wiped

out a lost advanced civilization of

prehistory. I'm saying that.

>> In the heart of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley

lies an ancient wonder that defies the

sands of time,

>> [music]

>> the Baalbek temple complex.

>> This is Baalbek in the Lebanon. Each of

these three blocks weighs 900 tons.

>> Home to some of the largest and most

mysterious stone blocks [music] ever

used in construction, these colossal

remnants of the Roman Empire's grandeur

weigh as much as 1,650

tons [music] each, more than an entire

fleet of blue whales. How these stones

were transported and precisely set into

place

>> [music]

>> remains one of history's most

captivating puzzles.

>> I don't know how they did it. All I know

is they did it. I don't think anybody

knows how they did it, how they lifted

[music] those stones, how they brought

them up to that level.

>> Join us as we delve into the enigmatic

world of Baalbek, where ancient

engineering meets modern curiosity,

challenging everything we thought we

knew about human ingenuity.

>> A Roman site for sure, but what about

this bizarre enclosure wall that

surrounds it?

>> Nuzzled in the fertile Bekaa Valley of

Lebanon, the ancient site of Baalbek is

a testament to architectural and

cultural grandeur spanning thousands of

years. Known as Heliopolis during the

Hellenistic period, Baalbek's journey

began as a modest Phoenician town named

Baalath, [music]

dedicated to the worship of Baal, a god

associated with the sun and storms,

[music]

pivotal to the agricultural rituals of

its people.

The transformation of Baalbek

accelerated following its conquest by

Alexander [music] the Great in 334 BC.

Under Alexander, the city absorbed Greek

cultural and architectural elements,

emblematic of his broader strategy to

fuse Greek and local traditions across

the regions he conquered.

This Hellenistic influence [music] set

the stage for Baalbek's later

architectural evolution under the

Romans, who saw the city's [music]

strategic and religious potential.

>> What archaeologists say, they found they

could move 900-ton blocks, but 1,000

tons was too much for them.

>> Roman [music] architects and engineers

embarked on an ambitious construction

agenda in the 1st century BC, which saw

Baalbek grow into a grand ceremonial

center.

The centerpiece was the Temple of

Jupiter, one of the largest temples in

the Roman Empire, featuring 54 massive

[music] granite columns, each standing

70 ft tall.

Today, only six of these majestic

columns remain, but they continue to

dominate the landscape, offering a

window into what was an architectural

marvel of the ancient world.

Nearby, the Temple of Bacchus stands as

a testament [music] to Roman decorative

art and architectural detail, with its

well-preserved carvings depicting

mythological scenes and festivities.

Not far from these, the Temple of Venus

showcases a unique circular design,

[music]

breaking from traditional Roman

architectural norms and highlighting a

syncretic blend of Roman and local

religious practices.

Baalbek's construction [music] feats,

especially the transportation and

placement of massive limestone blocks,

draw parallels with other ancient

marvels [music]

like the Egyptian pyramids and

Stonehenge, showcasing the Romans'

advanced engineering techniques.

>> Look at the famous King's [music]

Chamber. Its walls and its ceiling of

the King's Chamber are all made with

gigantic blocks.

>> The site was not just an architectural

statement, but also a cultural hub,

attracting pilgrims and spectators from

across the empire to its religious

festivals and games, [music]

blending Roman and local traditions in

grand displays of public celebration.

In comparison to other monumental Roman

sites like the Pantheon in Rome, Baalbek

stands out for its scale and the

complexity involved in erecting such

gigantic [music] structures far from the

Roman heartland.

The Pantheon, with [music] its massive

dome and oculus, reflects similar

ambitions in Roman architectural

prowess, but in a vastly [music]

different urban setting.

Both sites, however, illustrate the

Roman Empire's architectural ambition

[music]

and its ability to mobilize resources

and technology across its vast

territories.

>> [music]

>> The stone blocks of Baalbek,

particularly within the Temple of

Jupiter complex, represent some of the

most [music] astonishing elements of

ancient architecture found anywhere in

the world.

These massive stones [music] serve as a

testament to the extraordinary

engineering prowess of their builders.

Their construction techniques and

capabilities continue to spark both

fascination [music]

and scholarly debate.

At the heart of the complex sits the

trilithon, a trio of [music] stone

blocks that form the podium of the

Temple of Jupiter.

Each stone measures roughly 64 [music]

ft in length, 13 ft in height, and 14 ft

in width, and weighs about 800 tons.

The precision with which these gigantic

stones are fitted together without any

mortar is [music] truly remarkable.

Such an engineering feat required not

only advanced planning and ample

resources, but also the ingenious use of

simple machines like levers and inclined

planes, [music] combined with

significant human and mechanical effort.

Just about 900 m from the main temple

complex in a nearby quarry lies the

stone of the pregnant woman.

>> The quarry contains a number of very

large blocks that were never

transported.

>> This monolith, approximately 69 ft long

and weighing around 1,000 tons, has

never been moved from where it was

originally cut. The stone's name comes

from a local legend suggesting that

touching the stone can ensure a safe and

easy delivery for pregnant women,

highlighting [music] the cultural and

superstitious significance these ancient

stones hold within local folklore.

In 2014, an even larger stone was

unearthed in the same quarry.

>> Why only recently excavated? Because the

whole site was covered in sedimentation.

>> At 64 ft in length [music] and estimated

to weigh about 1,650 tons, it stands as

the largest known [music] stone ever

carved by human hands. This discovery

significantly expanded our understanding

of the capabilities of ancient engineers

and their technological advancements.

Comparing these megalithic stones to

other ancient wonders provides further

context [music] to their impressive

nature.

For instance, while Stonehenge in

England is renowned for its circular

arrangement of standing stones, the

largest of these stones weighs merely

about 30 tons,

>> [music]

>> far less than the massive blocks of

Baalbek.

The construction of Stonehenge involved

transporting stones over a distances,

presenting a different type of

logistical challenge and ingenuity.

>> [music]

>> However, the sheer scale and weight of

the Baalbek stones showcase an

unparalleled architectural ambition in

[music] the ancient world.

Similarly, when we consider the Egyptian

pyramids, particularly the Great Pyramid

of Giza,

>> [music]

>> the limestone blocks typically weigh

between 2 to 15 tons, with the largest

granite stones in the King's Chamber

weighing between 25 to 80 tons.

>> Now, Egyptologists will tell you that

oh, they could move heavy blocks because

they put them on wet sand and they push

them along on wet sand.

Maybe if you're just at ground level,

that will do. But when you're 350 ft

above the ground as you are in the

King's Chamber, that won't do it all.

>> The stones of Baalbek far exceed these

in size, [music]

highlighting the unique challenges and

skills required for their transport and

placement.

Unlike the primarily tomb-like

structures [music] of the Giza pyramids,

Baalbek's temples served ceremonial and

religious functions, indicating diverse

uses of massive stones across ancient

[music] civilizations.

This comparison not only illustrates the

monumental scale of Baalbek's [music]

construction, but also underscores the

diverse architectural and cultural

expressions of ancient societies. The

Baalbek temple complex, with its

colossal stone blocks, stands as one of

the greatest engineering achievements

[music] of the ancient world.

The tasks involved in constructing this

monumental site weren't just about brute

[music] strength. They required

meticulous planning, advanced

organizational skills,

>> [music]

>> and a deep understanding of physics and

engineering principles.

These elements combined challenge our

modern perceptions of ancient technology

and showcase [music] the ingenuity of

our ancestors.

The architectural grandeur of Baalbek

was no accident. It reflected the Roman

Empire's immense ambition

>> [music]

>> and its desire to display power and

divine favor.

The sheer scale of the temples served

multiple purposes, both religious and

political, reinforcing the might of Rome

and the sanctity [music] of the

location.

This complex was designed to awe and

affirm the presence of Roman authority

in the region.

The transportation of the massive stones

is believed to have been primarily

conducted using rollers made from large

tree trunks with the stones themselves

placed on [music] sledges.

These sledges, acting as platforms,

helped distribute the weight of the

stones and prevented the rollers from

sinking into the ground.

Historical texts even mention the use of

olive oil as a lubricant on the paths, a

technique that significantly reduced

friction,

>> [music]

>> making it easier to move these enormous

weights over considerable distances.

The placement of these giant stones

remains a subject of debate among

historians.

Techniques such as the use of wooden

cranes, which were similar to those used

in medieval constructions,

>> [music]

>> likely played a role.

These cranes, utilizing ropes, pulleys,

and possibly treadmills, would have

amplified the force exerted by humans or

animals. [music]

Another plausible technique involved

constructing large earth ramps, which

would have provided a gradual incline to

drag the stones into their precise

positions.

Lever systems employing long wooden

beams [music] to lift and position

stones might have also been used

requiring less material than ramps, but

a greater understanding of leverage

mechanics.

Drawing parallels, the construction

techniques theorized for Baalbek closely

resemble those hypothesized for the

building of the Egyptian pyramids,

>> [music]

>> particularly the Pyramid of Giza.

Like Baalbek, the transportation of the

pyramid stones likely involved sledges

and possibly rollers with the use of

water as a lubricant depicted in ancient

Egyptian wall paintings. [music]

For lifting, the Egyptians are believed

to have utilized a combination of ramps

and lever systems.

Constructed over a millennium before

Baalbek, the pyramids highlight a

continuity in complex engineering

techniques that span cultures and ages,

>> [music]

>> underscoring a shared architectural

heritage in the ancient world. This

shared legacy speaks volumes about the

ingenuity embedded in ancient

construction practices, linking

disparate cultures through their

monumental achievements.

>> In the 1930s, miners working

pyrophyllite deposits near Ottosdal,

South Africa, began pulling something

out of the rock that should not have

been there.

Small metallic spheres.

Some barely half a centimeter across,

others the size of a cricket ball.

Many were almost perfectly round.

And many bore something that stopped the

miners cold.

Crisp parallel grooves running around

the equator of each sphere like the seam

on a manufactured ball.

The rock encasing these objects was 3

billion years old.

3 billion.

That is not a rounding error.

That is Precambrian rock formed before

multicellular life existed on this

planet.

Before oxygen filled the atmosphere.

Before the first organism [music] with a

nucleus appeared in the fossil record.

And embedded inside it were smooth,

grooved metallic spheres that looked for

all the world as though someone had made

them.

Here is the question.

If the rock is 3 billion years old and

the spheres are inside the rock,

then whatever put them there was present

on this planet

before anything we would recognize as

life had even begun.

The objects became known as the

Klerksdorp spheres,

named after the nearest town in what is

now the North West [music] province of

South Africa.

Pyrophyllite is a soft aluminum silicate

used in industrial ceramics.

It forms in sedimentary deposits over

immense geological time.

The miners were cutting through these

ancient formations when they began

countering the spheres in situ.

Not scattered on the surface, not

dropped into crevices, but fully encased

within the rock itself.

The spheres ranged from roughly half a

centimeter to 10 centimeters in

diameter.

Some were nearly perfect spheres.

Others were slightly compressed into

disc or oblate shapes.

Their surfaces varied.

Some smooth and metallic, others marked

by those striking equatorial grooves.

Parallel ridges so regular and evenly

spaced they appeared [music] incised

rather than formed by any natural

process.

The miners collected them, local museums

acquired them, and for decades the

spheres sat in display cases [music]

as geological curiosities.

Objects that generated more questions

[music] than answers. Geologists who

studied the spheres offered a detailed

natural explanation. The objects are

composed primarily of hematite, iron

oxide, sometimes mixed with wollastonite

or pyrite.

Their internal structure reveals radial

growth [music] patterns expanding

outward from a central point consistent

with mineral concretion.

A process where dissolved minerals

precipitate around a nucleus over

millions of years inside sedimentary

rock.

The equatorial grooves, according

[music] to this model, formed as layers

of fine sediment compressed around the

growing concretion during its formation

in an ancient lake bed.

Metamorphic foliation, pressure from

surrounding rock, creating planar

features in the mineral structure,

produced the parallel ridges as the

formation compacted over geological

time.

This is a documented geological

phenomenon.

Spherical concretions have been found in

Precambrian formations worldwide.

The Klerksdorp spheres are not unique in

their existence.

They are unique in their precision.

And for a significant number of

observers, the geological explanation,

however technically sound, does not

account for what they see with their own

eyes.

Not all the spheres show the expected

variation of natural concretion.

Some display a degree of sphericity and

surface [music] regularity that appears

to exceed what random geological

processes reliably produce.

The equatorial grooves on certain

specimens are [music] not rough,

irregular furrows consistent with uneven

compaction.

They are sharp, parallel, evenly spaced.

They look machined. Paul Heinrich,

a geologist who published a detailed

analysis of the Ottosdal objects,

examined the claim that these spheres

were perfectly balanced and demonstrated

that most are not true spheres.

They range from slightly [music] oblate

to markedly disk-shaped.

His explanation is geologically sound,

but his own photographs show specimens

where the grooves are remarkably

uniform.

And no amount of geological terminology

has been able to override what people

see when they hold one in their hands.

The gap between the scientific

explanation and what the spheres appear

to be is where the controversy lives,

and it has never closed.

At some point, a story began circulating

that someone brought one of the

Klarkstorp spheres to NASA for analysis.

[music]

According to this account,

NASA engineers declared the spheres

balanced too perfect to be naturally

formed, that it could only have been

manufactured in zero-gravity conditions,

that it was in effect an impossible

object.

This story has been repeated in [music]

documentaries, articles, and videos for

decades.

No NASA report exists. No official

statement, no named researcher, no

documentation of any kind.

But the story persists because it gives

narrative form to a genuine problem.

The spheres look manufactured.

The natural explanation, while

scientifically supported, struggles to

satisfy the visual evidence that people

find so compelling.

The Klerksdorp Museum's own curator,

[music] Roelf Marx,

was quoted in multiple sources

describing them as objects that appeared

to have been made by hands

in formal comments never published.

But they reflect the persistent [music]

intuition that something about these

objects exceeds what geology alone can

comfortably explain.

The Klerksdorp spheres present a more

unsettling possibility than [music]

either the mainstream or alternative

accounts typically acknowledge.

If they are natural, and the geological

evidence strongly suggests they are,

then the process that formed them

produced objects of such apparent

precision

that trained geologists have had to

publish peer-reviewed papers explaining

why they are not manufactured.

That is a remarkable statement about the

natural world.

It means that over 3 billion years,

under conditions no human was present to

observe, geological processes generated

objects that fool the human eye into

perceiving intentional design.

But if even one of them is not natural,

if even one specimen exceeds the

tolerances that concretion and [music]

metamorphic foliation can produce,

then the implications are not simply

unusual. They are incompatible with the

entire established timeline of life and

intelligence on this planet.

The spheres do not need to be alien.

[music]

They do not need to be evidence of a

lost civilization.

They need only be what they appear to

be,

objects embedded in 3 billion-year-old

rock whose precision the current natural

explanation does not fully account for.

That single gap between what geology can

explain and what the spheres appear to

be

is enough.

The Klerksdorp spheres are not a hoax.

They are not a forgery.

They are real objects [music]

sitting in museum collections right now

available for anyone to examine. They

are still asking the same question they

asked the day the first miner cracked

open that pyrophyllite and found

something inside that looked like it had

been made by hands that did not yet

exist.

The answer may be geological, but the

question

is permanent. Subscribe because the

deeper you dig, the less [music] the

ground behaves like it should.

>> 7,000 years ago, long before the

pyramids of Egypt were built, an ancient

civilization pressed thousands of

symbols into wet clay tablets. [music]

Those tablets survived floods, wars, and

the collapse of entire empires. Today,

they're revealing one of history's

greatest [music]

mysteries. Hidden inside these ancient

Sumerian records are strange accounts of

powerful beings [music]

known as the Anunnaki. They're described

as rulers, judges, and gods [music]

who descended from the heavens to shape

the fate of humanity. But, what did the

Sumerians actually mean? Were these

simply religious myths, symbolic

stories, or [music] have modern

interpretations transformed them into

something far more mysterious? For

decades, these tablets have fueled

[music] endless debates. Some

researchers see them as extraordinary

evidence of ancient beliefs. [music]

Others claim they contain clues to

forgotten knowledge that challenges

everything we think we know about the

ancient world. So, what do these

7,000-year-old [music] tablets really

say? Why are people still arguing about

them thousands of years later?

Around 4,000 BCE, in the fertile land

between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,

the Sumerian civilization rose. These

people were true [music] pioneers. They

built some of the world's first cities,

developed sophisticated laws and

irrigation, [music] and basically turned

the desert green. They were also

incredible observers of [music] the

night sky. Their math, which used a base

60 system, is the reason we have a

60-second minute and a 360-degree circle

today. [music]

Their star charts laid the groundwork

for the Babylonians, who would later map

the cosmos with stunning precision. This

wasn't some primitive culture. It was a

It was a society that built the

foundation for so much that came after.

But, what makes the Sumerians so

endlessly mysterious are their detailed

stories [music] about the Anunnaki. The

name itself is a huge point of

contention, but one popular and very

controversial translation [music]

defines them as those though as those

who from heaven to earth came. And this

is where the story takes a pretty wild

turn. Thanks largely to an author

[music] named Zecharia Sitchin. He

popularized a theory that these tablets

aren't myths at all, but [music] a

history book. Sitchin proposed that

about 450,000

years ago, advanced [music] beings from

a planet called Nibiru showed up on

Earth. He claimed Nibiru has a massive

3,600-year orbit that swings it through

our solar [music] system every now and

then. So, what was their mission though?

To mine Earth's gold. To mine Earth's

[music] gold, which they desperately

needed to patch up their own planet's

atmosphere.

The story he tells goes like this. The

lower ranking Anunnaki called the Igigi

got stuck with all the backbreaking

labor. After thousands of years, they

revolted. To solve this labor crisis, a

lead [music] Anunnaki scientist named

Enki came up with a radical solution,

create a worker. The theory claims they

took an early hominid that already

existed on Earth and just upgraded and

just upgraded its DNA [music] with their

own. And the result was us, Homo

sapiens, a species created in this

[music] version of events to serve the

gods by mining their gold. So, what do

the experts who can actually read

ancient Sumerian have to say [music]

about all this? Well, they tell a very

different story, as you can imagine. The

overwhelming majority of linguists and

historians argue that Sitchin, who was

an author and not a trained scholar of

ancient languages, based [music] his

entire theory on mistranslations.

Scholars point out that the word

Anunnaki more likely means something

like princely [music]

offspring, referring to the children of

the chief sky god Anu. The word

>> [music]

>> Nibiru does appear in ancient texts, but

it's usually identified with the [music]

planet Jupiter or as a term for a

celestial crossing point. There's no

mention of a rogue with a 3,600 year

orbit. [music]

And yes, there's an ancient text called

the Atrahasis epic that does describe

humanity being created to take [music]

over the hard labor from a group of

lesser gods, but it describes this as a

symbolic [music] act, mixing clay with

the flesh and blood of a slain god.

Doesn't mention genetic engineering,

[music] the 450,000 year timeline, or a

mission to mine gold. Scholars say those

details were Sitchin's [music] own

additions. To the experts, these are

powerful creation myths, much like the

ones found [music] in cultures all over

the world that use that use metaphor to

explain our origins [music] and our

relationship with the divine. So, where

does that leave us? One side you have

this explosive [music] theory of alien

creators, a a narrative that seems to

eerily predict modern ideas about

genetics and atmospheric [music]

science. On the other you have the

overwhelming academic consensus. This

view argues that these are complex and

beautiful myths, a story about

humanity's [music] place in the cosmos

as our ancient ancestors saw it. From

this perspective, [music] the real

mystery isn't that aliens visited Earth,

the incredible ingenuity and imagination

of the Sumerian people themselves.

Were the Anunnaki literal gods [music]

from the sky whose history was recorded

with perfect accuracy or were they the

powerful symbolic heart of a

sophisticated religion representing the

[music] forces of nature at the dawn of

civilization? The tablets told their

story. [music] What we choose to believe

is up to us.

>> The Anunnaki

uh they are these beings that came from

off-world.

>> So, these are aliens?

>> These are aliens.

Anunnaki is a general term. It doesn't

mean one race. It is a term to say those

who came from heaven to Earth. That's

it.

In ancient Sumeria, the people there

were advanced beyond belief.

So, these people were extremely

intelligent, but they were influenced by

these Anunnaki Atlantean people.

>> Hidden within the ancient tablets of the

Epic of Gilgamesh, are secret messages

left by the Anunnaki king for modern

civilization, offering timeless wisdom

and cautionary tales.

>> We keep slapping our ancient ancestors

in the face, doubting their wisdom and

doubting their understanding of what

really happened.

>> This legendary narrative, [music]

chronicling the adventures of Gilgamesh

and his companion and

reveals profound insights into

humanity's quest for immortality, the

value of friendship, and the

consequences of hubris.

>> For example, the Epic of Gilgamesh is

giving you the full story of Noah's Ark.

The generalization of the story is

coming directly from these ancient

tablets.

>> As scholars uncover more fragments and

interpretations of this ancient epic, we

piece together a tapestry of mythology,

history, [music] and philosophy.

In the mid-19th century, a renewed

interest in archaeology and history

sparked the rediscovery of ancient

civilizations.

>> The homegrown archaeologists that aren't

afraid to talk say that these fortresses

were built in a day and a night by the

beings that came from heaven.

>> During this pivotal period, the story of

Gilgamesh, a legendary figure from

Sumerian lore, began to surface through

a series of archaeological excavations

in the ancient Near East.

These efforts uncovered remnants of a

long-forgotten civilization buried under

the sands of time.

Mesopotamia, often referred to as the

cradle of civilization, was located in

the fertile region between the Tigris

and Euphrates rivers, corresponding to

modern-day Iraq.

This region was home to some of the

earliest known cities, such as Uruk, Ur,

and Babylon.

The rich soil and abundant water supply

supported the development of complex

societies, advanced agriculture, and

early writing systems, laying the

foundations for human civilization.

>> They actually in the tablets talk about

clearing out the Euphrates and the

Tigris to make it better for irrigation.

>> In 1849, British archaeologist Austen

Henry Layard made a groundbreaking

discovery while excavating the ancient

city of Nineveh, one of the oldest and

most significant cities of the Assyrian

Empire.

Nineveh, located near the modern city of

Mosul in northern Iraq, had been a major

center of trade, politics, and culture

in ancient Mesopotamia.

Among Layard's most remarkable findings

was the library of Ashurbanipal, the

last great king of the Neo-Assyrian

Empire. This vast collection of clay

tablets, inscribed [music] with

cuneiform script, contained a wealth of

information about the Assyrian Empire,

its history, [music]

religion, literature, and science. The

library, dating back to the 7th century

BCE, was a treasure trove of knowledge

that provided an unprecedented glimpse

into the ancient world. Interestingly,

the discovery of Ashurbanipal's library

was serendipitous. Layard initially set

out to find artifacts and treasures, but

he stumbled upon a more valuable find,

the written records of a civilization.

>> These people were were describing

specifically what they were told to

write by their god or their lord or

their master.

>> The sheer volume of tablets, estimated

to be around 30,000, suggested a highly

literate society that valued the

preservation of knowledge.

The decipherment of cuneiform was a

monumental achievement that unlocked the

secrets of ancient Mesopotamian

civilization.

>> These translations are ancient, in my

opinion, because we're talking about 17

and 1800s. These the the tablets were

already translated.

>> Cuneiform, one of the earliest systems

of writing, was characterized by its

wedge-shaped marks made on clay tablets

with a reed stylus. This script was used

by several ancient cultures, including

the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians,

and Assyrians.

The challenge of deciphering cuneiform

fell to scholars like Sir Henry

Rawlinson, a British army officer and

linguist.

Rawlinson's breakthrough came with the

Behistun Inscription, a multilingual

inscription carved into a cliff in what

is now Iran.

The inscription, commissioned by King

Darius [music] the Great of Persia, was

written in three languages: Old Persian,

Elamite, and Babylonian. [music]

By comparing the known language of Old

Persian with the cuneiform script,

Rawlinson and other scholars were able

to crack the code of cuneiform. By the

1850s, significant [music] progress had

been made in understanding cuneiform,

allowing scholars to begin translating

the vast collection of texts from

Ashurbanipal's library.

Among these texts was a particular set

of 12 tablets that revealed a coherent

and enthralling narrative, the story of

Gilgamesh.

>> All the different people that have

researched them have a very similar

story.

>> The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest

known works of literature, is a rich

tapestry of mythology, history, and

philosophy. The narrative follows

Gilgamesh, the semi-divine king of Uruk,

and his adventures with his companion

Enkidu.

>> [music]

>> Their journey takes them through various

trials, including the confrontation with

the monster Humbaba, the rejection of

the goddess Ishtar, and the quest for

immortality following Enkidu's passing.

The epic begins with Gilgamesh, the king

of Uruk, who is described as 2/3 divine

and 1/3 human.

His extraordinary strength and wisdom

make him a formidable ruler, but his

arrogance and oppressive rule cause his

people to cry out to the gods for

relief. In response to their pleas, the

gods create Enkidu, a wild man who lives

among the animals.

Enkidu's initial innocence and harmony

with nature contrast sharply with

Gilgamesh's urban civilization. A temple

servant named Shamhat is sent to tame

Enkidu, introducing him to human culture

and society.

This transformation from wild man to

civilized companion sets the stage for

his friendship with [music] Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu become fast

friends, their bond solidified by their

shared adventures. They undertake a

perilous journey to the Cedar Forest to

confront Humbaba, the fearsome guardian

appointed by the god [music] Enlil.

Despite Humbaba's terrifying presence,

they manage to defeat him, showcasing

their bravery and strength.

This victory, however, sows the seeds of

their eventual downfall by angering the

gods.

The gods decree that Enkidu must be

expunged as punishment for their

defiance.

>> [music]

>> Enkidu's passing is a pivotal moment in

the epic, profoundly affecting

Gilgamesh. His grief and despair drive

him to seek the secret of immortality,

fearing his own mortality and the

futility of human endeavors.

This quest takes him on a journey beyond

the known world, into the realms of the

gods and the unknown.

Gilgamesh's search for eternal life

leads him to Utnapishtim, the only

mortal granted immortality by the gods

after surviving a great flood.

Utnapishtim recounts the story of the

flood, which closely parallels the

biblical account of Noah's ark. Despite

Gilgamesh's efforts, he ultimately fails

to obtain immortality. Utnapishtim

reveals that the secret of eternal life

lies in accepting one's mortality and

finding meaning in the transient human

experience.

An interesting comparison can be made

between the Epic of Gilgamesh and

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

Both epics explore themes of heroism,

the human condition, and the quest for

immortality.

However, while Homer's epics are rooted

in Greek mythology and focus on the

exploits of mortal heroes,

>> [music]

>> the Gilgamesh epic delves deeper into

existential questions and the limits of

human ambition, reflecting the values

and beliefs of ancient Mesopotamian

society.

One of the most fascinating aspects of

the Epic of Gilgamesh

>> [music]

>> is the story of the great flood

recounted by Utnapishtim, the immortal

survivor.

In this narrative, Utnapishtim tells

Gilgamesh how the gods decided to send a

flood to destroy humanity, but advised

him to build the boat to save his family

and the seed of all living things.

This story bears a striking resemblance

to the biblical account of Noah's ark in

the Book of Genesis. Scholars have

theorized that the flood myth in the

Epic [music] of Gilgamesh may have

influenced the biblical narrative,

suggesting a shared cultural memory of a

catastrophic flood in the ancient Near

[music] East.

This theory is supported by the fact

that flood myths are prevalent in many

ancient cultures, pointing to a possible

historical event or a collective human

response to natural disasters.

An intriguing theory posits that

Gilgamesh [music] may have been a

historical figure who reigned over the

city-state of Uruk around 2700 BCE.

Evidence supporting this theory includes

the Sumerian King List, which mentions a

king named Gilgamesh who [music] ruled

Uruk for 126 years.

While the epic embellishes his life with

mythical elements, it is possible that

the stories were inspired by a real king

whose deeds and legacy were magnified

over time. This theory highlights the

fluid boundary between history and myth

in ancient storytelling.

Over the years, additional fragments of

the Gilgamesh epic have been discovered

at various archaeological sites across

Mesopotamia, such as the ancient cities

of Ur and Babylon. These fragments have

allowed [music] scholars to fill in gaps

and clarify ambiguities in the

narrative, enhancing our understanding

of the text.

Each new discovery has helped refine the

[music] epic, revealing variations in

the story that reflect different

cultural contexts and periods. [music]

For instance, some versions emphasize

Gilgamesh's divinity more than others,

while certain passages highlight

different [music] moral and

philosophical themes.

>> Somewhere off India's coasts, beneath

layers of salt and centuries, lie cities

[music]

that once bustled with life, now

drowned, shattered, and forgotten.

For millennia, they lived only in

whispered legends, tales of golden

kingdoms swallowed by the sea, of

temples that vanished beneath waves, of

a great flood that reshaped the world.

But what if these weren't just stories?

What if the ocean has been keeping a

secret, and we've only just begun to

listen? Across India's ancient texts,

there are vivid accounts of a

cataclysmic flood, a deluge that

submerged vast lands and ended entire

civilizations.

For centuries, [music] these stories

were treated as mythology, allegories.

But modern science is shifting that

view.

Around the end of the last ice age,

between 15,000 and 6,000 years ago, sea

levels rose by nearly 120 m.

Entire coastlines vanished. Any ancient

city near the sea would have stood no

chance.

And some we're beginning to find.

Let's start with a legend.

A city of unimaginable wealth, ruled by

a divine king. Dwarka, the kingdom of

Lord Krishna.

Said to be a marvel of architecture and

prosperity, Dwarka's story ends in

tragedy, swallowed by the Arabian Sea

after Krishna's death.

For generations, scholars dismissed

[music] it. Too poetic, too perfect. But

then, in the late 20th century, sonar

scans off the coast of Gujarat revealed

something that stunned archaeologists.

Submerged geometric structures arranged

in grids, stone walls, pillars, steps,

[music] an entire city beneath the

waves. Divers recovered pottery,

anchors, and [music] temple fragments.

Some of the material dated back over

5,000 years.

Others believed it could be 10,000 years

old, placing it well before the rise of

known Indian civilizations.

Could Dwarka be more than myth?

The evidence was impossible to ignore.

Then came something even more

astonishing.

In the early 2000s, researchers from

India's National Institute of Ocean

Technology were conducting routine

seabed scans [music] in the Gulf of

Cambay when

they stumbled upon what looked like the

outline of a massive settlement.

Not a village, a metropolis.

Spanning over 5 mi in length and nearly

2 mi wide, it featured grid patterns,

large rectangular foundations, and

possible [music] roads. When divers

descended, they found pottery shards,

carved stones, tools, and even human

bones and teeth.

Radiocarbon dating suggested some items

were over 9,000 years old.

That would mean this city predated the

Egyptian pyramids. It would make it one

of the oldest known urban settlements on

Earth.

The implications were staggering.

>> [music]

>> India's earliest known civilization, the

Indus Valley, was believed to begin

around 2500 BCE.

But this find, it pushed human

settlement in India back by several

millennia.

>> [music]

>> Some called it the lost cradle of Indian

civilization. Others were more cautious,

urging further verification.

But no one denied [music] it. Something

extraordinary had been discovered

beneath the waves, and the sea wasn't

done speaking.

Travel southeast to the shores of Tamil

Nadu.

There, in the coastal town of

Mahabalipuram,

locals have long told tales of the seven

pagodas, six magnificent temples said to

have been swallowed by the ocean with

only one left standing on land.

For centuries, this was dismissed as

folklore.

But then came the Indian Ocean tsunami

of 2004.

As the water pulled back from the shore

in those [music] terrible moments before

the wave struck, fishermen and onlookers

witnessed something incredible. Rows of

submerged stone structures, pillars,

carvings, statues briefly exposed

[music]

on the ocean floor.

They saw lions, elephants, and deities

etched into granite [music] blocks.

The sea had unveiled the ruins of the

lost temples just long enough for them

to be photographed before it crashed

back and covered them once again.

In the years that followed,

archaeologists, backed by the Indian

Navy, [music] explored the submerged

site.

They found walls, steps, platforms, and

temple-like structures about 8 m

underwater.

The style matched the Pallava Dynasty

from around 1,300 years ago, suggesting

that the story of the seven pagodas

wasn't just symbolic. It was historical

memory passed down across generations.

And yet, the oldest and most mysterious

site of all may lie farther south, off

the coast of Poompuhar.

Poompuhar,

once a thriving port city mentioned in

ancient Tamil literature, was believed

to have been lost to the sea in a great

flood.

Early dives revealed scattered ruins

close to shore.

But in recent years, sonar scans from

Indian universities and oceanographic

institutes made a startling revelation.

Submerged structures nearly 100 m deep

and 40 km offshore.

That depth aligns with sea levels from

over 12 to 15,000 years ago, the tail

end of the last ice age.

If confirmed, that would make Poompuhar

one of the oldest known human

settlements on Earth.

Researchers believe they may have found

harbor walls, foundations of homes, and

even a lighthouse base.

Though no organic material has yet been

recovered [music] for direct dating, the

geography and layout suggest a complex

urban design [music]

built long before history books say

cities even existed. The Great Flood

wasn't just one event. It was a global

phenomenon. Glaciers melted, oceans

rose, and shorelines [music]

changed forever.

These cities, once alive with rituals

and marketplaces, were drowned.

Their stories, distorted by time,

survived as myths

until now.

But perhaps the most startling

revelation is not just that ancient

cities were lost,

it's that some people may never have

left the sea at all.

Because while the waters claimed cities

and temples, what if a few communities

learned to adapt instead of retreat?

In our next [music] episode, we uncover

the incredible story of an underwater

tribe that still exists today.

A people who've mastered life beneath

the surface, not in myth, but in

astonishing reality.

Stay with us. This is a discovery you'll

never forget.

>> A fascination that many ancient history

enthusiasts have is the possible

existence of ruined cities under the

sea.

After all, surely it's possible

considering the rise of sea levels over

time and of natural disasters hitting

the coasts.

Not only is that possible, we know it to

be true as [music] there have been

several ancient cities found underwater.

And the results of this work have

revealed astounding discoveries over the

years.

>> [music]

>> Scientists have recently discovered an

underwater tribe that still exists

[music] today, captivating the world

with their remarkable survival skills

and deep connection to the sea.

>> [music]

>> The Moken, Haida, Sami, and Chumash are

indigenous groups known for their

sophisticated fishing and underwater

hunting abilities. Their fascinating

lifestyles reveal a wealth of knowledge

about living and ancient traditions that

continue to thrive against the [music]

odds.

>> Well, we have a duty to conserve this

for the rest of humanity. That's what

That is what it means. It has

outstanding universal value, and it's

our duty [music] now to protect it.

>> In 2016,

a team of scientists broke through a

wall of sand [music] and stepped into a

room that hadn't seen a single human

being in 40,000 years.

The air inside was [music] ancient,

completely untouched,

a relic of the last Ice Age itself.

And what they found [music] in that

chamber

completely rewrote everything we thought

we knew about the most misunderstood

[music] humans who ever walked this

earth.

But, that was only the first piece of

the puzzle.

Because hiding on a beach hundreds of

miles away,

scientists had just [music] uncovered

something even older,

something that stopped the entire

archaeological world dead in its tracks.

[music]

Footprints,

nearly 300,000 years old. And together,

[music]

these two discoveries don't just tell us

a story. They prove that for a quarter

of a million years, [music] an ancient

human species dominated the coast of

Spain,

and we barely [music] knew they existed.

Let's start with what you think you know

about Neanderthals.

You probably picture them as hunched

over cavemen,

grunting, barely smarter than the

animals [music] they hunted. Here's the

question.

What if every single part of that image

is completely, embarrassingly wrong?

Tucked inside the Rock of Gibraltar,

>> [music]

>> a colossal limestone monolith rising

straight out of the Mediterranean Sea,

lies one [music] of the most important

archaeological sites on the entire

planet,

the Gorham's Cave Complex, a UNESCO

World [music] Heritage Site.

And for the last several decades,

scientists digging here have been

systematically dismantling the dumb

caveman myth, one discovery [music] at a

time.

These Neanderthals weren't just

surviving,

they were thriving.

We have hard physical evidence [music]

that they hunted seals and dolphins, not

exactly easy prey.

They decorated themselves [music] with

feathers from specific, carefully

selected birds.

They crafted weapons using a prehistoric

[music] superglue,

a tar compound they produced through

controlled burning. That's chemistry.

That's forward planning. That's

sophisticated [music]

intelligence.

And nobody has ever explained why we

spent so long dismissing them.

But Professor Clive Finlayson believed

there was still more waiting [music]

deeper inside these caves, and he was

about to prove it in the most dramatic

way possible.

For years, Finlayson's team [music]

obsessively targeted one specific

location deep inside Vanguard Cave. They

were convinced [music] that ancient

passages had been swallowed whole,

buried by thousands of years of

wind-blown [music] sand. So, they dug,

and they dug, and they kept digging.

Until one day,

they hit a solid wall of compacted

[music] sand that simply stopped dead.

They dated the material,

and what came back [music] made their

jaws drop.

The wall of sand had sealed the room

behind it for 40,000 years. [music]

40,000

years.

That's before [music] the pyramids,

before agriculture, before any

civilization we have a name for, before

modern humans [music]

had even fully colonized Europe.

With surgical precision, they broke

through.

Behind it was a 13-m long chamber.

[music]

The air itself hadn't circulated in

millennia.

The floor was an untouched blanket of

ice age dust, so perfectly preserved it

looked like a photograph of a world that

ceased to exist before [music] recorded

history began.

And here's where it gets truly

astonishing.

The first things [music] they

encountered weren't human at all.

Bones of a lynx,

the skeletal remains of a [music]

spotted hyena, a complete skeleton of a

giant griffon vulture, and carved deep

[music] into the cave walls,

massive claw marks left by animals that

have been extinct for thousands of

years.

It was a perfect frozen snapshot [music]

of an ecosystem sealed in time

since before any human being alive today

can possibly imagine.

But the Neanderthals themselves [music]

were nowhere to be found. This is the

most maddening thing about archaeology.

You find tools, you find charred bones,

you find fire [music] pits, and all of

that tells you that someone was there,

but it doesn't tell you how they lived,

what their world felt like,

who they actually were.

What every scientist dreams of finding

is something more intimate,

a fossilized moment [music] of real

life. And then,

buried in the middle of those ancient

animal bones, a researcher spotted it,

something so small,

so easy to miss, it almost wasn't found

at all. A single shell

from a large [music] sea snail.

Here's the thing.

A snail cannot climb 20 m up a sheer

cliff and crawl itself deep into a pitch

black cave.

Someone carried it there.

A Neanderthal had stood in this [music]

exact spot, held this exact shell

40,000 years ago. One shell, one bread

crumb, absolute proof [music] of a human

presence, and nobody has ever explained

why that single tiny object is more

powerful evidence of humanity than a

thousand stone tools. But, here's where

this story takes a turn that will

genuinely [music] break your brain.

The cave in Gibraltar gave us the end of

the Neanderthal story,

the last survivors [music]

clinging to the southern tip of Europe

while the world changed around them.

But, what about [music] the beginning?

Hundreds of miles up the Spanish

coastline, a separate team of scientists

found something on a beach,

something pressed into ancient rock,

and it would answer that question in the

most visceral, [music]

most intimate way imaginable.

Footprints.

At first, researchers dated them to

[music] roughly 100,000 years old, which

is already almost impossible to wrap

[music] your head around. But, they

weren't done.

Using newer, more precise [music] dating

techniques, they ran the numbers again.

300,000 years old.

And when scientists analyzed the tracks

in detail,

something extraordinary emerged.

These weren't random [music] lone

wanderers. There were multiple sets of

prints, several adults, and one child,

no more than six [music] or eight years

old, walking right alongside them. This

was a family moving together, searching

for food [music] or water along the edge

of an ancient wetland.

The species responsible was almost

certainly Homo heidelbergensis,

the direct ancestor of the Neanderthals.

So, here's what we're actually looking

at. Two discoveries, both in Spain, both

near the coast, both connected to the

same ancient lineage. On one end of the

timeline,

>> [music]

>> the sealed cave, 40,000 years old,

the last Neanderthals living in

Gibraltar, hunting dolphins, creating

[music] chemistry with tar,

decorating themselves with feathers,

intelligent, creative, fully human in

every way that matters.

On the other end, those footprints,

300,000 years old, not Neanderthals

[music] yet,

but their direct ancestors, a family,

walking together on a beach that no

longer looks anything like [music] it

did.

Moving through a world we can barely

picture.

The gap between these two discoveries

[music]

is 260,000

years.

Here's the question.

Modern humans, [music] Homo sapiens,

have only existed for roughly 300,000

years,

which means [music] that at the very

moment our species was just getting

started,

this lineage was already walking Spanish

beaches, already forming family [music]

groups, already carrying objects,

already living.

For virtually [music] the entire history

of modern humanity, they were here, too,

right alongside us,

and nobody has ever fully explained what

finally [music] happened to them.

>> This Antarctica map shows Antarctica

without ice, and it's 500 years old. A

map created more than 500 years ago may

contain one of history's most

controversial mysteries. And that's

because some researchers believe it

shows part of Antarctica more than 300

[music] years before the continent was

officially discovered. If that's true,

it would raise an extraordinary amount

of questions. How could anyone have

mapped a land mass that, according to

controversial history, wasn't supposed

to be known? The map was drawn in 1513

by Ottoman admiral and cartographer

named Piri Reis. [music] For centuries

it remained largely forgotten, hidden

away in Istanbul's Topkapi Palace,

[music] then in 1929 scholars cataloging

the palace archives rediscovered a

remarkable fragment [music]

and it was drawn on gazelle skin, signed

and dated by Piri Reis himself. [music]

The map was created just 21 years after

Christopher Columbus first reached the

Americas. Only part of the original

survives today, but what remains is

impressive. It depicts the western

coasts of Europe and Africa along with

the eastern [music] coastlines of the

newly explored Americas. For a map

created in the early 1500s, its level of

detail is remarkable. Even more

intriguing, Piri Reis explained exactly

how he created [music] it. Written

directly on a map are notes stating that

are compiled information from roughly 20

different source charts. Some are Arabic

maps, others come from Portuguese

explorers, and according to Piri Reis

himself, one [music] source was even a

map drawn by Christopher Columbus, a

document that has been lost [music] to

history. For centuries historians viewed

the Piri Reis map as an impressive

example of early cartography. Then

researchers began focusing on one

particular section. Near the southern

edge of the map, a coastline extends

beyond what happens to be South America

and continues [music] off the surviving

fragment. And that's where the mystery

begins. Today most historians believe

that the landmass is simply a distorted

representation of South America's

southern coastline, but others disagree

with this. They believe it may depict

Antarctica. Well, the problem is that

Antarctica wasn't officially discovered

until 1820, when a Russian expedition

became the first to [music] confirm the

existence of the Antarctic mainland.

That puts more than three centuries

between the creation of the map and the

accepted discovery of the continent. At

first, this may not sound quite as

shocking as it seems. For thousands of

[music] years, scholars speculated that

a massive southern landmass must exist

[music] somewhere on Earth. Well,

ancient Greek thinkers and many early

mapmakers included an imagery southern

continent on their maps

>> [music]

>> to balance the land believed to exist in

the northern hemisphere. So, simply

showing a southern landmass wasn't

unusual. What made Piri Reis' map

different, well, [music] according to

supporters of the theory, was the

apparent detail of the coastline itself.

They argued [music] it looked less like

a guess and more like an actual

geographic feature. Then the mystery

took an even stranger turn.

>> [music]

>> In the 1950s, a professor named Charles

Hapgood became fascinated with the map.

He wasn't just interested in the

possibility that it showed Antarctica.

He believed it showed something even

more extraordinary. According to the

Hapgood, the coastline wasn't depicting

Antarctica's modern icy shoreline.

Instead, he argued it showed the actual

landmass between

Instead, he argued it showed the actual

landmass beneath the ice. Well, today

scientists use technologies such as

ice-penetrating radar to map the terrain

beneath Antarctica's massive ice sheets.

Those ice sheets have covered the

continent for millions [music] of years.

If Hapgood was correct, it would mean

that the source material used by Piri

Reis had access to information that

should have been impossible for any

civilization to possess. Suddenly, the

question wasn't simply how [music] Piri

Reis knew about Antarctica. The question

actually became how anyone could have

known that Antarctica looked like

beneath the ice. To explain [music]

this, Hapgood proposed a dramatic

theory. In the 1966 book, Maps of the

Ancient Sea Kings, he argued that Piri

Reis' map preserved fragments of

knowledge from a highly advanced

prehistoric civilization. Well,

according to Hapgood, this forgotten

culture had explored and mapped large

portions [music] of the globe thousands

of years before recorded history.

Piri Reis, in this view, wasn't the

original source of the information. He

was merely copying fragments of a much

older maps that had survived through the

centuries. Hapgood also proposed a

geological concept called Earth Crustal

Displacement. The theory suggests that

the Earth's outer crust could shift

dramatically over time, moving

continents into entirely different

climate zones. Under this scenario,

Antarctica may once have existed in a

warmer location, allowing it to be

mapped before becoming buried beneath

[music] ice after a massive crustal

shift.

The theory attracted attention partly

because Albert Einstein wrote a brief

forward for Hapgood's work. While

Einstein expressed interest in the idea,

he did not endorse [music] it was a

proven fact. Well, today modern geol-

Today, modern geology rejects scientific

evidence supports plate tectonics, and

no evidence has ever been found for the

type of global crustal movements Hapgood

has proposed. But despite all of that,

the mystery refused to disappear.

Supporters of the Antarctica theory

often pointed to the 1960 letter from

the US Air Force officer Harold Z.

Ohlhaff meyer. After reviewing claims

about the map, Ohlhaff meyer stated that

the idea it represented Antarctica's

subglacial coastline appeared [music]

reasonable. To believers, this seemed

like officially confirmed. Yet, critics

note that this is as simple as an

opinion of one individual at a time when

understanding of Antarctica's hidden

geography was still developing. And that

brings us to what most historians and

cartographies believe today. The

overwhelming consensus [music] is that

the mysterious southern landmass is not

Antarctica at all. Instead, scholars

argue that it is a distorted depiction

of [music] Patagonia and Tierra del

Fuego at the southern tip of South

America.

In the early 1500s, European knowledge

of the region was incomplete.

Cartographers often stretched, bent, or

rotated coastlines to fit available

space on the map. It was drawn on an

irregular piece of animal skin. Well,

some researchers believe the coastline

was simply adjusted to, you know, just

fit onto the parchment. When modern

geographers attempted to compare the

disputed coastline with Antarctica's

actual subglacial terrain, the match is

generally poor. Similarities tend to

disappear when examined closely. Well,

critics also point out that the rest of

the map contains many of the

inaccuracies common to the 16th

century's cartography. Some coastlines

are distorted. Certain islands are

simply misplaced. Other features reflect

incomplete geographic knowledge. If the

map was truly contained information from

a lost, you know, advanced civilization,

skeptics then ask, "Well, why is the

rest of it filled in with the ordinary

errors?" For them, the mystery isn't

evidence of the forgotten knowledge. And

yet, the debate continues. Because at

the center of the mystery sits a simple

fact. Piri [music] Reis openly admitted

he was working from older source maps,

some of which no longer exist. We know

fragments of geographical knowledge have

been lost throughout history, and we

know ancient sailors traveled further

than many once believed.

And we know that there are still gaps in

our understanding of the ancient world.

Well, does the Piri Reis map prove the

existence of the forgotten civilization?

Most experts would say, "No." But,

doesn't remain one of the most

intriguing maps ever discovered? [music]

Absolutely. More than five centuries

after it was drawn

More than five centuries after it was

drawn, people are still arguing about

what it really shows. And perhaps that's

[music] the map's greatest mystery of

all.

>> Edfu, Egypt. The name, a whisper carried

on the desert wind, hints at forgotten

gods and ancient kings. Here, on the

Nile's quiet west bank, halfway between

the legendary realms of Luxor and Aswan,

stands a sentinel, a mirage solidified

from the sun-baked sands, the Temple of

Edfu. More than just old stones, it's a

doorway beckoning you across its

threshold and back in time to an age so

ancient it feels woven from myth itself.

This isn't just another temple. It's a

giant storybook etched in towering

stone, a testament to [music] a faith so

strong it seems to have commanded the

very stones to rise. Prepare to be swept

away by the spirit of this place, to

lose yourself in the mysteries of

ancient Egypt, secrets whispered for

millennia under the watchful gaze of the

falcon god Horus himself. It's a place

that makes you wonder, that fills you

with a sense of awe for the beliefs that

shaped a civilization lost to time.

>> The temple we see today, imposing and

remarkably preserved, is primarily a

product of the Ptolemaic dynasty, a

period of Greek rule in Egypt following

the conquests of Alexander the Great.

Construction began in 237 BC under

Ptolemy III Euergetes and continued for

nearly [music] two centuries, finally

completed in 57 BC under Ptolemy XII

Auletes, the father of the famous

Cleopatra VII.

As recorded on the temple's enclosure

wall, the sacred edifice was founded in

year 10, day one of the third month of

the season Shemu of the reign of his

majesty, the king of upper and lower

Egypt, Ptolemy, the avenger of his

father.

Yet the site's sacred significance

stretches back far beyond the Ptolemies,

into the depths of the Old Kingdom, and

potentially even earlier.

Edfu, [music] known as Djeba or Behdet

in ancient times, was the capital of the

second nome of Upper Egypt. It was the

cult center of Horus of Behdet, the

falcon-headed god of the sky, kingship,

and protection, often depicted as a

winged solar disc.

This particular form of Horus is

distinct from Horus the child or Horus

the elder, and held particular

significance in the region.

The temple was strategically important,

controlling trade routes to the south

and the eastern desert.

The temple also served as a sanctuary, a

place of healing, and a center of

astronomical observation.

The Temple of Edfu is one of the largest

temples in Egypt, second only to Karnak

in sheer scale.

Its architectural design follows the

traditional layout of New Kingdom

temples, a testament to the Ptolemies'

conscious effort to legitimize their

rule by associating themselves with the

pharaonic past.

As you approach, you are confronted by a

massive pylon, 36 m high and 79 m wide,

a monumental gateway adorned with

colossal reliefs of Ptolemy the [music]

12th smiting his enemies before Horus of

Behdet.

These scenes are a powerful statement of

royal authority and divine favor.

Passing through the pylon, you enter the

vast forecourt, a peristyle hall

surrounded by 32 towering columns, each

[music] intricately carved with scenes

of offerings and rituals.

This court was used for public

ceremonies and festivals, where the

populace could gather and witness the

divine power of the pharaoh and the

gods.

Here, in the forecourt, the annual

[music] festival of the beautiful

reunion took place, where the statue of

Hathor from Dendera was brought by boat

[music] to Edfu to be ritually united

with Horus.

This event is celebrated in numerous

reliefs and texts within the temple.

Beyond the forecourt lies the hypostyle

hall, a forest of 18 massive columns

supporting a roof originally [music]

painted with astronomical scenes.

Further within is the second hypostyle

hall, smaller but no less impressive,

leading to the sanctuary, the most

sacred part of the temple.

Here, in the holy of holies, stood a

shrine of polished black granite where

the cult statue of Horus resided,

believed to be imbued with the god's

divine essence.

It was said that the god himself took

the form of a falcon that resided in the

temple.

But it is the walls themselves, every

inch of them, that truly hold the key to

Edfu's deepest secrets. These are the

Edfu texts, a vast, interconnected

narrative, a cosmogonic tapestry woven

in stone.

As Egyptologist Jan Assmann explains in

his work, The Search for God in Ancient

Egypt, these texts represent a

theological discourse of unprecedented

detail and complexity.

They are not merely decorative, they are

the very essence of the temple, defining

its purpose and animating its sacred

space.

The Edfu texts, [music] as we have

touched upon, primarily concern

themselves with the creation of the

world, not the historical [music] world

as chronicled by later dynasties, but a

mythical primordial age, a time before

time.

This was the Zep Tepi, the first time,

when gods walked the earth and the very

[music] fabric of reality was woven into

being.

Central to this creation myth is the

concept of the island of the egg or the

island of trampling, a sacred primordial

mound that emerged from the infinite

watery abyss known as Nun.

One passage translated by E.A.E. Reymond

describes it thus,

"In the midst of the waters, there arose

an island,

>> [music]

>> the island of the egg, upon which the

primeval ones came into being."

Another from the work of Nadine Guilhou

reads,

"There existed an island in the middle

of the primordial waters and upon it the

first reed where the creator god first

rested and where the divine ennead

assembled."

This island, the Ed Fu texts claim, was

the first dry land, the genesis point of

all creation. It was fashioned by two

unnamed creator deities who, according

to the texts, established it in the

midst of the womb of Nun, the eternal

formless lake representing pre-creation

chaos.

The word Nun, linguistically and

conceptually, is linked to the ideas of

depth, the [music] abyss, and the

primordial waters from which all life

emerged.

The inhabitants of this newly formed

world were a diverse and enigmatic

group. The texts categorize them broadly

as the sages, often associated with

Thoth, the ibis-headed god of wisdom,

writing, and magic, the builders, linked

to Ptah, the [music] Memphite creator

god and patron of craftsmen, and the

mysterious Shebtiu.

The Shebtiu remained the most elusive.

>> [music]

>> Their name, meaning those who emerge or

those who come forth, suggests an

amphibious nature, beings connected to

the water from which they arose.

The texts describe them as emerging from

the lake of the Shebtiu, a hidden,

possibly otherworldly location.

Their depictions, though rare, often

show them with unusual features, further

emphasizing their otherworldly nature.

As we mentioned earlier, it is

intriguing to note that these figures

resemble beings from other ancient

cultures.

The text then detailed the arrival of a

succession of divine rulers, gods who

shaped, ordered, and populated the newly

formed world.

They established the first settlements,

instituted laws, and most importantly,

built the first temples upon the sacred

island.

The Edfu texts declare, in a passage

translated by Raymond,

"Here were built the first temples, the

primeval ones, the prototypes of all

temples." These primordial structures,

according to the texts, served as the

divine blueprint for every temple

subsequently constructed throughout

Egypt. Each temple was seen as a

reflection, a microcosm, of that

original sacred space, the island of the

egg. One can easily see the parallels to

Göbekli Tepe, another ancient site, said

to be the blueprint for all the temples

that came after it.

But this golden age, this time of gods

and mythical beings, was not to last.

The Edfu texts speak of a cataclysm, a

devastating event that shattered the

primeval world, and brought the first

time to a close.

The accounts of this catastrophe are

fragmented, symbolic, and open to

interpretation. They describe a war in

the heavens, a conflict between Horus,

who in this context seems to represent

[music] order and divine authority, and

a serpentine entity known as the enemy

snake, a creature of chaos and

destruction.

This celestial serpent, also referred to

as the great leaping one, brought with

it darkness and devastating floods.

The great leaping one is a particularly

intriguing figure.

Could this be a metaphorical

representation of a comet or asteroid

impact? A celestial event that triggered

massive flooding, earthquakes, and a

period of darkness caused by dust and

debris thrown into the atmosphere.

The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis,

>> [music]

>> a scientific theory that remains a

subject of ongoing debate, proposes such

an event around 12,800 years ago.

This period coincides with a rapid

climate shift known as the Younger Dryas

and the extinction of many megafaunal

species worldwide.

The temple itself was said to have been

built on an artificial mound, a common

practice in ancient Egypt that was to

protect the temple from the annual

flooding of the Nile.

The mound may also have served as a

symbolic representation of the primeval

mound that emerged [music] from the

waters of chaos at the beginning of time

as described in the Edfu texts. [music]

The Temple of Edfu then is more than

just a magnificent ruin. It is a portal

to a lost world, a testament to the

enduring power of myth and the human

desire to understand our place in the

cosmos.

The questions raised by the Edfu texts

linger, tantalizing and unresolved.

Was the destruction of the island of the

[music] egg a purely mythical event?

Or does it preserve a distorted memory

of a real cataclysm?

Were the beings described in the texts,

the sages, the builders, the Shebtiu,

merely products of the ancient Egyptian

imagination?

Or do they hint at a forgotten chapter

in human history? A chapter involving

advanced civilizations and perhaps even

extraterrestrial contact?

The answers, if they exist, may lie

buried beneath the sands of time waiting

to be unearthed.

But the Temple of Edfu, with its

enigmatic texts and its awe-inspiring

architecture, stands as a powerful

reminder that [music] our understanding

of the past is far from complete.

It invites us to question, to explore,

and to marvel at the enduring mysteries

of the ancient world.

The Temple's library, though now empty,

once held a vast collection of papyrus

scrolls,

>> [music]

>> as mentioned earlier.

These scrolls likely contained detailed

information about the temple's rituals,

ceremonies, and astronomical

observations.

The loss of these scrolls is a tragedy

for our understanding of ancient

Egyptian knowledge and practices.

If you like this adventure, then you are

going to love our next one. Forget what

you learned in history class. The truth

about how the ancient Egyptians built

their megalithic structures is far more

complex and mysterious.

This video dives deep into the evidence

that mainstream Egyptology ignores. From

720-ton statues moved hundreds of miles

to the 1,000-ton Ramessuem enigma, we'll

examine the diary of Mira, Herodotus'

accounts, and explore whether lost

technology or a forgotten civilization

could be the answer.

>> And on the pedestal

these words appear.

My name is Ozymandias,

king of kings.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and

despair.

Nothing beside remains.

Round the decay of that colossal wreck,

boundless and bare,

the lone and level sands

stretch far away.

>> We see them in textbooks, these [music]

iconic images: sand, ramps, legions of

workers straining under the desert sun.

We're told they built the pyramids,

stone by colossal stone, with nothing

but muscle, rope, and wood. But what if

that story,

the one we've accepted for centuries, is

wrong?

What if it's not just improbable,

but physically,

demonstrably,

impossible?

We're not talking about moving small

stones here. We're talking about blocks

weighing as much as a thousand tons,

transported hundreds of miles, hoisted

hundreds of feet into the air. The

Colossi of Memnon.

720 and 20 tons each

from a quarry [music] near Cairo.

Think about that.

That's the weight of a modern building.

How were they moved over 400 miles? Or

this, the shattered remains of a statue

that once weighed over 1,000 tons.

A single piece [music] of granite. It

would take the largest truck, an

engineering marvel of today, [music]

to even think about moving it. The

official story crumbles under its own

weight. They say sleds, but wood would

pulverize under that pressure. They say

boats,

but no ancient vessel could handle that

load even if they could sail against the

current. [music]

So, what are we left with? Lost

technology? A forgotten cataclysm? A

civilization far more advanced than we

ever imagined, predating even the

pharaohs?

The stones themselves whisper a

different story.

>> [music]

>> Saw marks, drill holes that defy

explanation, evidence of a precision

that shouldn't exist. We think we know

our history,

but the truth is etched in these silent

giants, a mystery that challenges

everything we believe.

They stand as a testament, not [music]

just to human ingenuity, but perhaps to

something far more profound.

They are a challenge, asking us one very

important question.

What do we really [music] know?

>> Before history was written down,

before the pyramids,

before the first known empires. [music]

People were building things that still

don't fully make sense.

Massive stone [music] temples,

underground cities, megaliths cut with

shocking precision.

Structures so old, some were buried for

thousands of [music] years before modern

humans even realized they existed.

And here's the part that makes this so

strange. [music]

Almost every ancient culture has a flood

story.

Mesopotamia, [music]

India, Greece, the Maya,

the Bible.

Different civilizations, same terrifying

idea.

That the world was once wiped clean.

So, what if [music] some ancient

structures were already standing before

that disaster?

Today,

we're counting down [music] the top 10

ancient structures that may have been

built before the great flood.

Real places, real archaeology, and

mysteries that still haven't been fully

explained.

Kicking off our list at number 10 is

something that looks like [music] it was

ripped straight out of a fantasy movie.

The Bimini Road.

It's a string of giant limestone blocks

sitting under 18 ft of [music] water in

the Bahamas.

When it was found in 1968,

people went crazy thinking it was a road

to the lost city of Atlantis.

>> [music]

>> It seriously looks like a giant stone

pavement. But, here's the plot twist.

The official scientific consensus says

it's completely natural.

Geologists have studied it and found

[music] it's a type of beach rock that

just happens to fracture in these super

straight blocky patterns.

So, while it fires up the imagination,

the evidence points away from it being

man-made. It's a crazy example of nature

fooling our eyes.

At number nine, we're heading to Japan

to see a mystery that's been [music]

debated for decades, the Yonaguni

Monument.

A diver found this thing by accident,

[music] and it's mind-blowing.

It's a massive underwater rock formation

with what looks like giant flat

terraces, [music]

perfect 90° angles, and huge steps.

It honestly looks like a sunken pyramid.

Because of its shape, some people

speculate that it's a man-made [music]

city.

Maybe over 10,000 years old from a time

when sea levels were way lower.

The main scientific view, however,

>> [music]

>> is that it's another trick of nature.

The sandstone in this area is known to

break along incredibly [music] straight

lines because of seismic activity.

Still,

you look at the pictures, and it's hard

not to wonder.

For number eight, we're going to a

remote island in Micronesia to see the

incredible city of Nan Madol.

People call this [music] the Venice of

the Pacific,

and it's a ruined city built on almost

100 artificial islands.

The whole thing is made from gigantic

basalt columns, and some of these stones

[music] weigh tens of tons.

Archaeologists say it was built by the

Saudeleur Dynasty around 1200 [music] to

1600 AD.

The big mystery isn't who built it, but

how.

Local legends say [music] sorcerers used

magic to make the giant stones fly.

While that's probably not [music] what

happened, the engineering is still

impressive.

Archaeologists have solid [music]

theories involving rafts, rollers, and

clever ramps, proving you don't need

magic to do the impossible. Coming in at

number seven is an underground mystery

in Egypt. Deep beneath the desert at

Saqqara, [music]

there's a network of tunnels holding 25

colossal granite boxes.

Each box weighs between 60 and 80 tons

[music]

and is carved from a single piece of

stone that was brought from quarries

hundreds [music] of miles away.

Officially, they were built to bury

sacred bulls during the later dynasties.

But, the craftsmanship [music]

is what gets people talking.

The inside surfaces are incredibly

smooth with sharp internal corners.

This has led [music] to a speculative

theory that maybe the dynastic Egyptians

didn't build the boxes, but actually

found them [music] and reused them.

There's no solid archaeological proof

for this reuse theory, but the sheer

skill involved [music] keeps the debate

alive.

Number six takes us to Baalbek, Lebanon,

home to some of the biggest worked

stones on Earth.

The Romans built a massive [music]

temple here, but what's underneath it is

even crazier. The foundation platform

contains three limestone blocks [music]

known as the trilithon.

Each one weighs an estimated 800 tons.

That's like 400 [music] cars.

Mainstream archaeology says the Romans

[music] moved these stones for their

temple foundation.

The big question is how.

While it seems impossible, engineering

studies have shown it could have been

done with massive teams of workers using

[music] rollers, ramps, and complex

pulley systems.

A nearby quarry even has a stone that

was never moved, weighing a mind-blowing

1,000 tons.

This has fueled the alternate theory

that [music] the Romans built on top of

a much older platform. But, for now, the

evidence [music] points to it all being

a show of Roman power.

At number five, we're back in Egypt at a

temple that [music] just feels

different.

It's called the Osireion, and it's right

behind the famous temple of Pharaoh Seti

I.

>> [music]

>> But, its style is completely different.

It's built from massive granite blocks,

some weighing up to 100 [music]

tons, and fitted together with amazing

precision.

The whole structure is also sunk so low

that it's often flooded, giving it a

super ancient vibe.

Egyptologists attribute the structure to

Seti the First around 1290 [music]

BC as a symbolic tomb for the god

Osiris.

The debate comes from its architecture,

which looks more like the temples at

Giza, which are much older.

This has led some to question [music]

the timeline, suggesting Seti the First

might have discovered it instead of

building it.

While archaeological evidence strongly

links it to Seti the First, the unique

style is what lands it on [music] our

list of mysteries.

You knew this one was coming.

At number four, it's the Great Pyramid

of Giza.

Officially, it was built for the pharaoh

Khufu around [music] 2550 BC,

and it is an absolute engineering

masterpiece. It's aligned to true north

with unbelievable accuracy, [music]

and the scale is just staggering.

For centuries, people have tried to

figure out all its secrets.

There are fringe theories, like the

Orion Correlation Theory, that [music]

try to date the pyramids to 10,500

BC based on star alignments, though this

idea is not accepted [music] by

historians.

What is exciting is that new discoveries

are still being made.

Recently, scans found [music] a hidden

corridor over 90 ft long near the main

entrance. What's inside?

>> [music]

>> We don't know yet, but every new

discovery just adds to the pyramid's

legend.

At number three, we're diving [music]

deep under the Black Sea.

In the late '90s, the famous explorer

Dr. Robert Ballard found evidence of an

ancient shoreline over 300 ft below the

surface. [music]

This discovery gives some support to the

Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis, a theory

that the Black Sea was once [music] a

freshwater lake that was flooded by the

Mediterranean thousands of years ago.

But, they found more than just a

shoreline.

Off the coast of [music] Turkey, they

spotted what looked like a rectangular

structure and preserved pieces of wood

>> [music]

>> hinting at an ancient settlement that

got flooded.

The findings are still preliminary and

debated, but the very idea of [music]

finding a preserved settlement at the

bottom of the sea linked to a massive

ancient flood is absolutely [music]

wild.

Coming in at number two is a site that

is rewriting history [music] books as we

speak, Karahantepe in Turkey.

This place is dated to as far back as

11,000 years ago, pushing the timeline

for massive [music]

organized construction way back into the

Stone Age.

Just like its famous sister site,

Karahantepe has huge T-shaped pillars

and strange [music] buildings carved

right out of the bedrock.

Archaeologists are unearthing incredible

things like life-sized human statues

with super realistic faces. [music]

These people were complex

hunter-gatherers,

and while they hadn't [music] started

large-scale farming in the way we think

of it,

they were definitely experimenting

[music] with wild plants.

Karahantepe proves that a sophisticated

culture existed thousands [music] of

years earlier than we ever thought

possible.

And at number one, the place that

changed everything,

Göbekli Tepe.

This site in Turkey [music] is arguably

the most important archaeological

discovery of our lifetime.

Dated to around 11,600 [music] years

ago, it is one of the world's oldest

known large-scale ritual sites.

It's thousands [music] of years older

than Stonehenge and the pyramids.

This entire complex of massive stone

circles and carved pillars was built by

people who were still technically

hunter-gatherers.

They didn't have metal [music] tools or

pottery.

Göbekli Tepe proves that huge groups of

people were organizing, engineering,

[music] and sharing deep spiritual

beliefs long before the first cities

were ever built. Then, for reasons we

still don't understand, [music]

they deliberately buried the entire site

around 8,000 BC,

preserving it like a time capsule.

It's a real window into a lost world.

So, from underwater mysteries to buried

[music] stone temples, these 10 sites

are absolutely mind-bending.

While science has provided [music] some

incredible explanations, the sheer age

and scale of these places continue to

fuel our imagination.

They show us that the story [music] of

our past is way more complex and amazing

than we were taught.

Whether they are clues to a forgotten

[music] age or just proof that early

humans were absolute geniuses, one thing

is clear. There are still so [music]

many secrets waiting to be discovered.

>> A lot of people say, "Well, it's not an

island, so it couldn't possibly be

Atlantis." But what they leave out is

the fact that the ancient Greek word for

island was nesos [music] and neson,

which had five meanings, one of which

was island. The fact that it's in the

Sahara Desert and that the Egyptians are

the ones that came up with the tale of

Atlantis. That's where it originates

[music] from, which surprises a lot of

people. Well, Egypt's in the Sahara, and

so is the Reshat Structure, and at the

time of Atlantis, the Sahara was green,

it had one of the largest networks of

rivers [music] ever known to exist, as

well as the largest freshwater lake. If

the Egyptians were colonists of a

destroyed civilization, it's not

unreasonable to say that it was in the

Sahara. If Atlantis was described as

being busy all day and all night [music]

and was a trading post, does it make

sense to be in the middle of the

Atlantic Ocean, or is it far more

feasible that it would be in the Sahara

Desert, which wasn't a desert at the

time?

>> What I'm about to show you will

completely change how you see the

Sahara. New satellite images have just

uncovered a massive network of ancient

cities buried right under the sand. This

isn't a theory. This is hard evidence of

an advanced civilization we knew almost

nothing about. Buried under endless sand

are gigantic ancient rivers, lost

landscapes, and evidence that one of the

harshest places on Earth was once home

to a thriving human population.

And they found it all from space.

Satellite scans are revealing features

so enormous they're invisible from the

ground, including waterways that once

stretched for hundreds of miles across

the region. And it's now considered

almost uninhabitable.

It turns out that the Sahara isn't a

void. It's a graveyard of civilizations.

And our eyes in the sky are the key to

unlocking it. We are literally at a

point in history where a researcher can

discover an entire [music] network of

ancient cities without ever leaving

their desk. And it's forcing us to

rethink everything. Deep in what is now

southwestern Libya, roughly a thousand

kilometers south of Tripoli, satellite

started spotting something that looked

impossible. It's [music] the faint

outlines of buildings. Not just a few,

but around a hundred fortified farms,

villages, many [music] with massive

walls, some of which, you know, still

stand up to 4 m high. This is no mirage.

When teams went to check on the ground,

they confirmed it. These are the lost

cities of a people called Garamantes.

These settlements, which thrived from

around the first to the fifth [music]

century AD, which completely shattered

the image of a desert nomads. The

Garamantes, in which the Roman

historians dismissed as the troublesome

raiders.

They had advanced metal working,

produced high-quality textiles, and used

the Libyco-Berber script. Part of the

writing system shared across North

Africa, discovering all the sites was,

as one archaeologist puts it, like

someone showing up in England and

finding all of the medieval castles for

the very first time.

These weren't just camps, they [music]

were permanent fortified centers built

on a high ground for defense. It wasn't

just surviving in the desert, it was

mastering it. But if they weren't simple

nomads, how in the world did they build

cities in a place with almost no rain?

The answer to how the Garamantes thrived

lies in one of the most incredible

engineering feats of the ancient world,

hidden right beneath the desert floor.

They didn't wait for the rain, they

mined for water. The Garamantes were

masters of a brilliant irrigation system

known as the foggaras. Imagine a massive

network of underground tunnels

stretching for hundreds of kilometers.

They were dug into the deep rock to tap

into the fossil water, water trapped in

aquifers from [music] a time thousands

of years earlier when the Sahara was

green. The channels were built on a

slight incline, allowing water to flow

for miles using only gravity.

From the underground source straight to

the cities in Fazzan, it [music] was

genius and it allowed them to grow crops

like wheat, barley and grapes right in

the middle of the desert. The sheer

scale of this is hard to wrap your head

around. Well, researchers estimated it

at that it took about 77,000 man-years

of labor just to build these tunnels.

This doesn't even count digging the

wells or the constant upkeep. This

wasn't a side project, it was the

lifeblood of the entire society.

Barbarians don't build complex water

systems, advanced civilizations do. But

their story is just the beginning. The

fossil water the Garamantes were tapping

into was a clue to an even bigger

secret.

>> [music]

>> For a long time, scientists theorized

about a green Sahara. And in the 1980s,

they got their proof. Radar equipment on

board the space shuttle missions were

able to peer right through the desert

sand. The image it sent back was

stunning. They clearly show the pattern

of ancient riverbeds, some nearly as

wide as the Nile Valley, and the

outlines of huge dried-up lakes. This

was the blueprint of a wet, vibrant

world that existed during what's called

the African Humid Period, which began to

end around 5,000 years ago. Suddenly,

everything changed. People didn't just

survive on the edges of the desert. For

thousands of years, they lived in a lush

savanna. And we know people were there

because they left behind thousands of

stunning pieces of rock art showing

giraffes, elephants, crocodiles, and

even people swimming.

These weren't just migration routes. The

Green Sahara was a place people called

home. And the discoveries just kept

going further back in time. [music] In

the remote deserts of Sudan, satellite

scans had uncovered hundreds of huge

burial sites. [music] Using remote

sensing, archaeologists have mapped over

250 of these enclosed burials. They were

previously unknown. These are enormous

circular monuments. Some are wide as 80

m across, with some dating as far back

[music] as 4,000 BCE. This means they

were being built before the Great

Pyramids of Giza even existed. It's an

archaeologist found people buried in

with livestock, [music]

a sign of a complex society of herders

who had rich cultural traditions.

Finding these structures scattered

across nearly a thousand kilometers of

desert, well, it suggests a common

culture once dominated this entire

landscape. These weren't isolated

tribes, but a widespread people who

shared beliefs and building traditions,

all flourishing before the famous

kingdoms rose on the Nile. You can't

talk about the Sahara's [music] mystery

without mentioning the one feature that

has fascinated astronauts for decades,

the Richat Structure, better known as

the Eye of the Sahara. It's a massive,

perfectly circular formation, almost 40

km wide, and it's so distinct that space

crews use it as a landmark. For years,

nobody knew what it was. An asteroid

impact? Maybe a giant volcano? It's

strange. Concentric rings even made some

people speculate it was the lost city of

Atlantis. Today, geologists are pretty

sure it's a natural wonder, a geological

dome that has been pushed up and slowly

eroded over millions of years, exposing

layers of rocks like an onion. And while

it may not be a lost city,

archaeologists have found countless

Stone Age tools around it. This suggests

that early humans, likely including

ancestors like Homo erectus, were using

quartzite from its layers to make tools.

From the incredible cities of the

Garamantes to tombs older than the

pyramids and the ghost rivers of a

forgotten green world, the [music]

Sahara is finally giving up its secrets.

The technology that lets us look down

from the space and see through the sand

has completely destroyed the myth of an

empty wasteland. [music] It has been

replaced by a story of human

inventiveness and culture stretching

back for thousands of years. And this

story is far from over. What other

civilizations are still buried out

there? What other secrets are hiding,

just waiting for us to find them? What

do you guys think is the biggest secret

that the Sahara is still hiding? Let us

know in the comments below.