Believing is Seeing
The battle for truth about our distant past
Where do we come from? How did we get here? The uncanny answer is that we don’t know. There are theories, but they are full of holes, and they are in flux.
Isn’t this on some level outrageous? Why aren’t more people shocked by this? I think it’s a scandal. It should be our birthright to know. It should be self-evident.
Sometimes it seems as if science has a better grip on the origins of the universe than on the origins of ourselves. That is arguably an illusion, since cosmology is also a moving target, to say the least. But the Big Bang is generally portrayed as a fact, and even religious people nod.
The textbook version of how homo sapiens emerged doesn’t stand a chance of being anywhere near what actually happened, because it cannot even keep up with the mainstream anthropogenic version of what happened. The mainstream version is constantly changing.
If it were clear to us exactly how we, and no other hominid, ended up as this self-reflecting and mentally advanced species, and if we knew what happened to us along the way, over tens or hundreds of thousands of years of hazy history, we would contemplate our role and purpose on this planet in a very different light.
What I have seen makes it very hard for me to buy the textbook story
This is why I am fascinated by the growing number of independent researchers who develop alternative hypotheses about our ancient past. Those who follow my Youtube channel and podcast Mind the Shift know this. I have had at least a dozen conversations about a possible lost civilization, plus a number of vlogs and video stories.
I have been to several megalithic sites in my life. In my younger years, I wasn’t as aware as I am now of the significance of what I was looking at. Since that awareness took hold, I have visited sites in Mexico, Peru and Bolivia. What I have seen makes it very hard for me to buy the textbook story that these structures were erected by bronze age people with copper and bronze chisels who lacked deep mathematical or technological knowledge.
For some reason I haven’t elaborated on this topic here at Medium before. So it’s about time.
What triggered me to write was a long-advertised debate in the Joe Rogan podcast between independent researcher Graham Hancock, a former journalist, and Flint Dibble, a mainstream archaeologist. Dibble has criticized Hancock’s and other archaeology mavericks’ work harshly, especially the Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse, hosted by Hancock.
It does happen that mainstream researchers — archaeologists, geologists or pundits from other disciplines — collaborate with independent researchers. There are a few scientists with tenure at universities who propose theories in line with some independent ideas. But by and large, there is something of a conflict going on between the two categories.
The gist of the conflict is the contentious issue of a lost civilization that collapsed in one or several cataclysms. The small but growing independent crowd claims there is evidence for this, and the mainstream behemoth vehemently retorts that, no, there certainly isn’t.
The Netflix series upset many archaeologists and their friends in the mainstream media, who found it preposterous that a fringe idea like this could get this amount of publicity.
The debate, or meeting of minds, if you will, between Hancock and Dibble lasted an exhausting four and a half hours, which is impressive even by Joe Rogan standards. I sympathize with the authenticity of these unedited exchanges (I edit very little myself), but it was not exactly four and a half hours of enlightening conversation. It did contain a few golden nuggets, however.
My main takeaway was this: It is obvious that you see what you are looking for, and that may actually be exactly the right thing. Carefully decide what to look for, and why. In this case, I am fairly comfortably seated on Hancock’s side.
And so is, arguably, the bulk of Joe Rogan’s audience. That is why Hancock should have toned down his pride a notch. He wouldn’t stop talking about the ways he has been ridiculed and mocked (which he has). I do understand that the outrageously unfair labels his detractors have put on him — racist, white supremacist etc — have harmed his work life. But he may have portrayed himself as mainstream archaeology’s public enemy number one one time too many. In this particular context, he is the hero.
The two debaters often talked past each other, which is common in these kinds of exchanges but frustrating nevertheless. They emphasized different aspects of something. In particular, they engaged in a form of whataboutism when they repeatedly pointed out opposing assessments of the limited but still decent amount of archaeological searches.
Dibble’s assessment: We have searched thousands of sites and found no evidence of a lost advanced civilization, so it’s “not warranted to have a hypothesis about it”.
Hancock’s assessment: But the vast majority of areas have still not been searched, so “it’s dishonest to dismiss the hypothesis”.
How will you then ever see anything truly new?
Dibble was sometimes annoyingly focused on details. In this and other ways he disclosed the often narrow mindset of formal science. He said — admitted, one might say — several times that archaeologists always build on previous findings. I suppose this was meant as a scientific quality stamp. But my question would be: How can you then change your viewpoint? How will you ever see anything truly new?
Rogan and Hancock asked Dibble if he didn’t think a certain object that was being displayed on the computer screen looked compellingly manmade.
“That’s not how we identify tools or architecture”, the archaeologist answered.
Well, maybe that’s the problem.
Hancock showed a few well-known underwater structures on the screen, like the Bimini Road in the Bahamas and Yonaguni in Japan. Some of these look very manmade. Parts also look very much like enigmatic carved-out bedrock structures around Cusco in Peru (I have firsthand knowledge about that). But Dibble was not impressed: “Cool stuff, but I see no evidence.” He went on:
“I’ve seen a lot of crazy natural stuff, and I see nothing here that, to me, reminds me of human architecture, and I’ve seen human architecture all over the world. I’ve never really seen architecture like this.”
Again, perhaps a conclusion like “nothing here reminds me of human architecture” is the problem. Why only look for structures that look precisely like you were taught human architecture must look like?
When new findings match previous discoveries, they are readily accepted and celebrated. When they don’t fit the paradigm, they are at best ignored, at worst dismissed.
On a textbook level, one might say that Dibble had a compelling argument when he pointed out that archaeologists have never found the advanced stuff they ought to find if there ever was a lost civilization. But are they actively looking for that, or is their attention focused on digging up artifacts from hunter-gatherers?
And, by the way, why dwell on what is being found today, when the evidence has been staring us in the face for centuries, to paraphrase Brien Foerster.
There are hundreds of mysteriously advanced structures out there that Hancock and Dibble hardly talked about, structures that the mainstream attribute to recent cultures but that evidently, if you scratch the surface, have to be much older.
There are pyramids, walls, temples, chambers in granite bedrock and other enigmatically-shaped constructions. There are gigantic statues, granite boxes and stone vases made with computer-level precision. There is no lack of evidence, or at least strong indications, if you only use your eyes and your ability to reflect properly. With that in mind, the statement “we still haven’t found anything” seems odd.
Just to mention a few mind blowing sites and artifacts:
- The Giza pyramids, Egypt
- The Ramses statues, Egypt
- The stone boxes in Serapeum, Sakkara, Egypt
- The stone vases found underneath the Step pyramid, Egypt
- Sacsayhuamán, Peru
- Ollantaytambo, Peru
- Central Cusco, Peru
- The elongated skulls (proven not to be deformed normal skulls) in Paracas, Peru
- The strange and eerily ancient-looking structures, in some cases appearing to have been turned by some enormous force, at Qenqo and other places in the Sacred valley, Peru
- Puma Punku, Bolivia
- The moai on Easter island, Chile
- The Barabar caves, India (I suspect these unfathomably laser precise chambers inside a granite ridge will be the next big thing in the lost civilization community. They are like gigantic versions of the stone boxes at Serapeum but even more impressive. I have seen wall surfaces in hard stone with similarly sharp precision on a much smaller scale at Ñaupa Huaca in Peru. But those chambers, man … .)
Then there are the many traces of engineering. At sites in Egypt and South America you can find a large number of tool marks in hard stone blocks, like straight saw cuts and deep, exact drill holes, that basically would be impossible to accomplish by using only copper or bronze tools, or pounding stones. The famous drill core number seven, collected by egyptologist Flinders Petrie in the 19th century, has now been shown to be lined with a fine spiral groove, which indicates it was extracted by using some form of high-powered machine.
Flint Dibble only briefly commented on the tool marks. He still seemed unimpressed and said they must have been achieved by using — you guessed it — copper tools plus sand. The debaters should have lingered much longer on this topic.
They also didn’t touch on the many intriguing similarities and recurring features among structures worldwide. On the contrary, Dibble stressed the heterogeneity of archaeological findings.
Our arrival on the scene seems sudden
Then there are the many ancient texts, legends and myths that agree on a primordial epoch which came to an end through a cataclysm, especially the hundreds of flood myths worldwide. It’s certainly not just Plato’s Atlantis account (which in itself is well worth taking seriously, in my view). By the way, Atlantis is mentioned also by other sources in the old world.
Then there is the timing of the appearance on the scene of anatomically modern humans, which keeps being moved back. This species has had exactly the same brain and nervous system that we have today for at least 200,000 years, and probably much longer (the earliest homo sapiens remains, found in Morocco, have been dated to 320,000 years ago). And we know that we are not descendants of neither Neanderthals nor Denisovans. Our arrival seems sudden. Maybe it wasn’t, but which lineage is the proper one, then? And why were we living as hunter-gatherers, over-endowed with brain capacity, for 310,000 years before we developed civilizations?
I often write about the ongoing battle about the nature of consciousness. The stubborn physicalist resistance to the idea that consciousness is nonphysical, not something the brain produces, reminds me of mainstream archaeology’s stubborn resistance to the idea that civilization could be tens of thousands of years older than we have assumed.
- The outright dismissal of thousands of accounts of people who have had near death experiences corresponds to the outright dismissal of the hundreds of ancient texts describing a world that was lost.
- The refusal to see dozens of veridical evidence of out-of-body experiences as anything other than anecdotes (which is totally unfair to the research) corresponds to the refusal to admit that many of the advanced megalithic structures would be impossible to achieve with bronze age technology.
The evidence is staring them in the face, but the mainstream skeptics in these fields don’t see it, because they don’t even consider the possibility of a nonphysical reality or a lost civilization. They never even look there.
No one thinks they are susceptible to such blatant deception. But we all are.
The saying “seeing is believing” is actually backwards. “Believing is seeing” is more accurate. You will never see something you have dismissed beforehand. It may sound like evasion from reason, but this is how it actually works.
Consider the plethora of fascinating optical tricks. You don’t see the number hidden in the pattern if you don’t look for it, you don’t see the vase if you see the faces and vice versa, and you don’t even see the gorilla walking through the team of basketball players if you only focus on the ball.
Misdirected attention is a powerful tool for people who want to control others. A skilled thief can distract you enough that they can steal your wallet or even remove your wrist watch without you noticing it. Before it happens, no one thinks they are susceptible to such blatant deception. But we all are.
I personally also believe we discover what we need to discover when we are ready. One day most of us will see what has been there all along.
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