Joe Rogan Experience #961 — Graham Hancock, Randall Carlson & Michael Shermer Transcript

Transcript

0:00 three two this is live ladies and gentlemen and this is a very unusual podcast we're going to and the end of the Ice Age, And this is actually from just a couple of weeks ago. imagery. There's quite a lot of imagery on those T-shaped pillars, particularly one Now, I can't say that I'm that familiar with that article. I think humans probably had a role, but only in the very final stages of the extinction event.

4:04 although the dating has a wide spread on it, and so one of the things that I think has been missing has been the trigger. Somewhere in there we have to fit that mass extinction event. These are called impact proxies. Nanodiamonds, melt glass, microspherules, It's the full assemblage of things And there's an interesting... We see meteorites, particularly at the end of October, early November.

7:52 stuff fell out of the meteor stream Yeah, let me pull back and give a bigger picture. Thank you. You're a great skeptic. There's hundreds of alternative archaeological theories. of Native Americans, the Kensington rune stones in Minnesota that the Vikings had come here, archaeology Olmec statues seem to have like african features on them so maybe africans went directly across to

11:08 It was widely covered in mainstream scientific journals and popular science magazines like Scientific American. these alternative things have any validity or not, So this is a field called archaeoastronomy. So just as one example I used in my book, Why People Believe We're Things, That doesn't make any sense. it's not like we voted on it and decided this is the truth. It's that independently, all these different scientists working in different fields, publishing in

14:22 In any field, there are residue of anomalies we can't explain. No one knows that one. If you scientists can't explain this particular rock right here or that particular petroglyph, Well, they do say, I mean, it depends what you mean by rapid. I mean, we're talking over the course of weeks or months or years. That is, I don't accept the mainstream explanation for the pyramids, the Sphinx, the Machu Picchu, whatever.

17:20 where are the metal tools? may be a very effective way I mean, there's a tradition from ancient Egypt right but but then what do you mean by advanced when you say there used to be a it was controversial in the sense that we thought hunter-gatherers could not do something like this What do you mean? Then along comes Gobekli Tepe, 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.

20:34 He's not even sure if they're ever going to excavate them. We love to put it into perspective. That's more than 2000 years older than what we now consider We just underestimated their abilities. that they had not discovered that but perhaps something bigger than this is involved. I don't say that they were dogmatically closed-minded about that. No, definitely. Again, that's a patternicity thing.

23:56 He was the head of the German Archaeological Institute DIG at Gobekli Tepe. And there are other alignments of the sun. But back to this, you know, they don't want to go. Sure they want to go there. They And then what happened? You've got to have a thick skin. Again, I cite Klaus Schmidt. on a scale of Stonehenge. What's under the no writing, no articles of clothing.

26:43 It's just stones and earth, buckets of it. In other words, proof that the mainstream Apparently, they can. Actually, nobody can know that. structure. How big was it? at the same time that Gobekli Tepe stretches credulity a bit. see anything particularly okay the stone work is spectacular but that that's not extremely complex. It's three-dimensional carving.

29:47 Hold on a second. We know from modern societies where, say, Australian Aborigines, People have been carving stones for thousands of years. Yes, not aliens. sign of some sort He wouldn't last an hour with his Papua New Guinean friends out there in the wild. There are. I visited one of them, Why write a book that says, I'm going to fill in all the gaps with this?

32:34 gigantic fucking mystery. That's not my project. But like your opening chapter with Schmidt, perfectly okay that's great i mean that's that's what science is all about is uncovering mysteries We know they made it. Right. Well, I would say that Gobekli Tepe is a gigantic stage well we don't okay they didn't live there so we we have to figure out well

34:31 They may have been partially settled. I don't know. Screw trash and tools. hunting and gathering, but it does certainly imply a lot of leisure time. we're dealing with an extremely demanding and Today. This is the Neanderthal diet, right? rapid changes to which We also know that biotas were shifting dramatically all over the planet. to function in that. Well, Randall random we don't even know the motives of

38:57 have structures and they didn't have agriculture. After Golbecki Tepe, they did. So the fact that Clearly they had abstract reasoning. that's ever been built on Earth. And as Picasso said when he came out of Lascaux, we have invented nothing. You think that the paintings are more impressive than Gobekli Tepe? It's not a construction project. By whoever.

41:32 The animals were native to the region. skills at Gobekli Tepe, but it still looks to me like a transfer of technology unless you can show So the real question is, did they have structures? Did they have agriculture? Okay, that would be the scientific approach. There's a rather humorous thing And I was ridiculed for proposing that. And scientists do do this.

44:20 It's climate change. And these books come and go. Julian Jaynes? of cave art Shamanism involves altered states of consciousness. And even so, his book was like, eh, maybe. Yeah. Well, this is why I brought in my phone a friend, a geologist. me which are demonstrably false. 2017 edition There it is. waving. I admit I do wave my arms. Back in 2015, I mean, are my views not allowed to evolve with new evidence?

49:22 that he's got a way out theory about gravitation. He just presents me as buying what Jesus Gamara says. been constructed by a more advanced I'm saying that a group of people settled amongst hunter-gatherers and transferred some skills for them. Well, I'm being misrepresented by your author here. Here's a beautiful one. Quote, in the mythology You've just been talking

51:47 Okay, so he's taking issue with me because I suggest that the vulture a peer-reviewed journal where they make precisely that identification. in some cases as 1000 bc I don't think that study proves for that at Gobekli Tepe. But why would you put that in Fair enough. Fair enough. I see no evidence for that. I see Gobekli Tepe. civilization that advised them that you think happened.

54:41 I mean, I don't know. And I might have very strong reasons why I might not choose to transfer all of it. Weirdly, he wrote his book in the 1970s. and therefore I campaign to get that possibility considered, It's misrepresenting his perspective, his point of view. How does something get online if it's not supposed to? No, I'm not saying that. That's not what I'm saying.

57:25 correlation and why he says it's upside down. I can talk to you about that. of that paper. And that paper do mainstream archaeologists not accept the when John Anthony West and Robert Shock first not since Gobekli Tepe's been excavated. You see, the Sphinx itself has been subject to so much restoration over so many years Totally independently. or at least that civilization far, far earlier than was...

1:00:55 opposite view on this and of the great sphinx to the constellation of leo rising due east housing Correct. and then the pyramids are built, you know, 2500 BC, lasting for thousands of years within a religious system shouldn't be too absurd to us. didn't want to switch civilization on completely right there. Perhaps they waited, passed down the knowledge

1:03:22 Yes, but okay, so here's how I would think about that. And then you come on and say, okay, but there's this one anomaly of the rain thing that there was only rain at this time. at dawn on the spring equinox. It's an equinoctial But no, I don't think anybody, even Krupp, So logically, if you're creating an equinoctial marker, and the ancient. Well, it's the constellation of Taurus. So logically,

1:05:18 please do i'm going to refer back to several articles that were published in the 80s and 90s And those floods have been documented to have been 120 feet above the modern floodplain of the Nile. that occurred right there around 12,000 to 12,500 years. The dating could be adjusted no workforce and then over a period of two or three or four thousand years you

1:08:22 reducing the amount of oxygen brought down to the lower transporting blocks of stone, as they were at Gobekli Tepe during this time range, now we might have an explanation why there would be a gap, especially if these events caused a bottleneck in the population of the area. If you just say that rainwater erosion on the Sphinx is not an explanation for the age

1:10:47 It's all assumptions. that Egyptologists ascribe to the Sphinx. because there is no such inscription. Nothing. That's a transitional stage I mean, you're dealing with something orders of magnitude different in terms of what's required. I mean, I've climbed the Great Pyramid five times. You're dealing with something orders of of a single degree. I mean,

1:12:34 go to Teti at Saqqara. unless there's a legacy of knowledge being attached to it? because somebody's got to counter this. over the last two centuries and so on, All of those things get attacked, you know, because mainstream. But in other words, some young graduate student working in that area You haven't answered my point. look, we don't believe everything

1:15:05 There was no mainstream that he was against. Somebody has to. You know where you were talking about things taking a long time, When Alvarez proposed the impact hypothesis for the demise of the dinosaurs So again, where's your crater? Other craters have been and will be looked at by the team in the coming months, not the lost civilizations and the demise of humans,

1:17:52 All right, so, and then the impact hypothesis is proposed. the largest is now being questioned. or four species of mammoths on four continents, were wiped out by paleo-Indian hunters, There's global versus local. It does. smaller animals. We know that they were foraging. We know that they were eating seafood and fishing Well, that's controversial also.

1:21:52 Well, we know that the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago didn't kill everything. antelope pronghorn antelope uh dan flores is a wildlife historian uh wrote an amazing book uh um on it and we when wiped out. the dominant model for a very long for thousands of years before that, possibly tens of thousands of years before that. of the bluefish caves in the Yukon.

1:24:08 He wasn't able to do his work. that has absolutely been overthrown. For thousands and thousands of years. Go figure. And the tools, but they're not. Well, you're quibbling it. It's massively accepted. 15 plus. Now, if it turns out that that nature paper is right and that's confirmed, then that does Smithsonian, slide number five. No, look at the...

1:27:06 It says it right there, and you are mainstream archaeologists accept Well, now that you have seen it... This is very disappointing that you're arguing this Something that sank Mars once likened this is accepted. You need to get They always, the dating turned out to be incorrect. that's showing that human beings butchered horses 24,000 years ago. I feel you were arguing against it and saying that it's not the case and quibbling it.

1:30:07 So like where I live in Santa Barbara, there are sites on the Channel Islands that go back 11,000, 12,000 years ago. No. Okay. Was it anatomically modern humans 130,000 years ago? It's about how the bones were shattered. No one had excavated. We will see how that plays out. It is a radical proposal, but it's strong enough to justify publication in Nature.

1:33:00 Maybe it was. I don't know. The work hasn't been done yet. But the other work, to ask you, actually, I have no idea. But part of the risk is that you're going to find something I don't happen to know about. But it does happen. It's like the 5,000-year gap with the Egyptian complex. They had the ability to build boats and find their way across the ocean.

1:35:31 You can go in and... So there's sort of two factors that go on here. Let's speak in specifics, because you don't have anything that you're pointing to. That's the problem. You're not If it holds up and there's other sites that are dated that way and so on and so forth, that went on for 30 or I mean, that's good archaeology, but it was utterly dismissed

1:38:29 I know Michael, yeah. about michael cremo that's not why i'm sitting at this table i understand but my point is that It's mostly negative evidence that I don't accept the data this. Right. considerable body of support from other geologists not from egyptologists but from geologists who do recognize the effects of severe water erosion on limestone. which would make it very rough.

1:41:52 Well, he doesn't say he, of course, he doesn't say he has no evidence. Well, they do. That's the point. You're not listening. I mean, this matter has been in the public domain since 1992. He is a professor of geology at the University of Boston. You and your colleagues are absolutely at liberty to disagree, and you do. But we weren't even humans a million years ago, correct?

1:43:54 and each of them thinks that they're right. What a patronizing, arrogant, deeply unpleasant, and personal approach. When you're faced with a bunch of different alternative theories that are coming in, and it's not, take physics. What do you do with that? That there is this mainstream that has arrived at this consensus and that there are no alternative

1:45:52 it or discredit it who are now basically on board. it has evolved and new mysteries have been opened up That was in 2011. refutations, I very rarely see that referred to or commented upon at all. Again, your colleague have Malcolm LeCompte come on as well because Malcolm LeCompte is actually one of those Now maybe Mark, this is his area, he could come on and Skype here.

1:49:09 Randall, please give me your, because you're the expert at this. errors and inconsistencies in it. for Younger Dryas boundary on slides. There we go. There we go. A cosmic impact event at 12,800 calibrated years before present formed the Younger Dryas boundary layer containing peak abundances in multiple high temperature Due to its rarity and distinctive characteristics, the Younger Dryas boundary layer is proposed

1:51:51 The suggestion is that 12,800 years ago, that broke up into multiple fragments that orbits in the torrid meteor stream, in Belgium and indeed as far east as Abu Hurairah in Syria. It's a global event, 50 million square that this may have been caused by a comet impact in an ocean. Well, Kluge and Napier and others, Duncan Steele and other astronomers,

1:54:38 It also came from the direction of the sun. stream and came to believe that it was much much more active in in the past than it is now. That it's an old diffuse meteor and that we should be paying attention to it, and constantly predicting the end of the world and this and that, Well, lots. 11,600. and this global temperature slump is surely cataclysmic by any standards. And you have

1:58:08 which I would have thought would cause you way of delivering a message That is a date. All right, so, but my point is that some of them may have historical origins. Some of them may be that coincides with the geologically significant with advanced And lo and behold, he puts a geologically If we found a site, that would be a big plus. say a west uh but if you look there there is a sunken landmass that sank at the end of the last

2:01:58 might actually be a nice place to develop at least a maritime culture, something along the place with the rising of the sea level all of that's lost and there's nothing really fringed Even the idea that a more advanced sophisticated quasi-technological culture He's Indonesia's leading expert in megathrust earthquakes, as a matter of fact. that was most massively flooded at the end of the Ice Age.

2:04:49 There's a whole range of issues regarding sea level rise in that very area, This is the thesis of that book I mentioned, Noah's Flood, Well, why don't we get into more discussion about the actual impact hypothesis See, this slide here, he is showing these are each independent carbon-14 dates of these different instant floods in North America appreciate you coming on here. It's my pleasure. So you've had a chance to listen to these

2:07:20 extremely selective in what you present Okay, I'm sorry. You didn't misrepresent me. I do say he may be right, but I don't say he's right. It's due to the mass and the inverse of... Well, why don't you quote me these words from my text? Where I feel he is solidly persuasive is in his observations of the anomalous character of the monuments of the Andes.

2:10:21 Therefore, I suggest you misrepresent me. No, Mr. Hancock, what I brought up him for was simply to state that you didn't understand, that I'm interested in. I'm interested in the Hold on a second. Let these guys talk it out. We did misrepresent him. But I don't understand what you're talking about, Scott. You're a complete waste of time here. Okay, Grant, the way the article is...

2:11:14 We're going to change that. I know there was something else that you objected to. What Marc de Fant does not tell his readers to the main meat of this for god's sake okay just Please call me Graham. Please call me Graham. This is duping people. Let me come to your point, which is you're saying that I proposed one mechanism for cataclysm in Fingerprints of the Gods,

2:14:35 I don't know if you have bought the latest edition of my book, the paperback edition So naturally, it's of great interest to me when a large group of scientists, more than 60 of them, I would also point out that in fingerprints, you had people believing that the end of the world was coming in 2012. Sagittarius and Scorpio on the winter solstice. That window is 80 years wide. So the story of the Mayan

2:16:55 No, that's what Victor Klub and Bill Napier and Emilio Spedicato say. You can't cop out on it. and who specifically indicate that we may run into a filament of the torrid meteor stream in the next 30 years that is going to be very bad for our civilization and now you're saying, uh-oh, that civilization was so smart for a procession. Michael for bringing up other people that are saying strange things and comparing it to you and say, oh, no, you can't say that because it's not about me.

2:19:28 So you think that this comet wiping out all the Ice Age megafauna theory They're getting people to review the material. I have to say that the comet guys are getting hit pretty hard. I read it. Let's bring Malcolm. It's hard to understand what he's trying to say. That's okay. He found tons of bones of animals. How can you possibly say things like that?

2:23:05 Magicians of the Gods? they were the Magicians who worked there for 20 years, If you went to Easter Island, do that? Hold on a second. I did record my interviews with him, with his agreement. What do you mean by suddenly? If you don't mind me interrupting here for a second, island? Have you been to Easter Island? I have. I think that you've got Schmidt right.

2:26:41 megalithic site on earth, 000 years older than stonehenge is So I think, Graham, we're in good agreement on this. I hope that it's a useful contribution to the debate. what i am left with this is quoting you mark is that hancock has a real knack for conning a Why would you say that you're just putting that online Proven incorrect? Right. So the core is, is the impact hypothesis likely to be true or not?

2:29:42 Which map? And by the way, to protect Michael here, I submitted this. Yeah, I don't get that. How come you don't have any problem with that, but you do have a problem with it as it stands being released to the general public? I bet, and very intricate, detailed mapping. there were there have been at least 17 specific floods dated there probably as do you have that michael the one with uh we're going to bring that up but uh let's let randall

2:33:01 South Dakota, North Dakota, Eastern Montana. Scoured, exactly, right. The glaciers came forward and topped the terminal moraine I've looked at drumlins in New York State, Before you do that, because I'm not disagreeing with you. I've hiked on them. It's massive, as if it was dumped in there over a very short period of time. Laurentide Glacier. Wally Broecker suggested in the 90s that water potentially was changed

2:37:27 The moraines have been carefully mapped. I mean, as the ice receded, the glacial Lake Agassiz expanded. expanded and at some point it finally breached right there at by big stone and deposited huge amounts of delta material that New Orleans is built on now. and somehow this relates to a destruction of Atlantis and some lost civilization. We know there was a Laurentide ice sheet. We know there was a Laurentide ice sheet.

2:39:44 I've been going back to the scablands. I've been going back From the bottom of the canyon to the top of the canyon is not what it was when the water first started flowing in that area. But the floor of Camas Prairie is thick layers of very coarse gravel, boulders, Are you saying? In fact, when you showed me your pictures, I could see the flow changes in that.

2:42:33 That's the product of 40 separate floods. Whose graph? Which graph is this, Mark? Look at those. am not i i'm still i still think there were multiple floods i think you're trying to argue against that idea. No, I am not. I still think there were multiple floods. I think we have to look at two distinct regimes of floods, though. But there, you know, the problem is here, and I do, I think,'s a misinterpretation to think that I only think that there was one flood. But the problem is here, and I do think we're colleagues,

2:45:16 And I have done some serious thinking about this over many years. You know, there is studies on the Valley Heads Mooring that are at the south end of the Finger Lakes that have, Randall, I couldn't have said that better. We would not expect these comets to break the North American ice sheet, 49,000 years ago, we should see it. But unfortunately, Mark, we can't have two people on the phone at the same time.

2:49:01 But I think what we can all agree on is that what we're dealing with is an unbelievable point in history, in the history of this planet, Well, I have a website. this is a fascinating podcast though and And your friend who's waiting is? Malcolm LeCompte. as to why it makes sense that it was a comet that hit would. I will. Actually, I was very interested to hear Mark's initial statement.

2:52:22 I don't think we've proven, I don't think we know what kind of an impact it was. that the comet impact hypothesis has been debunked. although there'd have to be a mechanism or a model for that, If you look at the nanodiamonds, which may be the most controversial of the bunch of the evidence lines, that's been replicated by four different groups, independent, five

2:54:48 They're subjected to high temperatures and then those temperatures are rapidly reduced, Okay, that is the microspherules and the nanodiamonds. And iridium is indicative of an impact of extraterrestrial origin, correct? Now, Randall Carlson just, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but Randall Carlson just had us pull up some images that we're looking at. Yeah, you see these, they look like leaf-like structures

2:57:40 Those are essentially But those spherules are typically what we call orthogenic, or very much like the, what we call It's a mysterious event in that sense. So I would say that because typically what we see is that hasn't been the case. So we have figure from supplementary information six, the light photomicrographs of magnetic and glassy spherules from Melrose, Pennsylvania.

3:01:45 Good. Okay. Yeah, it shows some paper? Do you know the image? Good. very interesting comparison because, and you've And then finally E and F, we have an iron calcium silica spherule from Meteor Crater the under driest boundary at the sites that I've been looking at. Malcolm, what evidence, if any, are you aware of about what is that nuclear glass material called?

3:04:29 And one of the things I've been trying to do is work my way closer and closer to Canada And is this trinitite, this material, only produced in this manner? unless there was some sort of global lightning storm. Yeah, A is from Meteor Crater, and B is from the Trinity nuclear test, The scoria-like objects, Yeah, calcium oxide-rich scoria-like object created by the melting of carbonate and silica-rich precursor rocks.

3:08:00 produce milk glass that's what I'm seeing. Yeah. Those two types of particulates. Well that you've got a specific date for it So this is difficult. You've got a lot of flooding, repetitive flooding. research and spend the time to investigate it. But if you could summarize for us, what's your But we're seeing stuff that goes very far into South America, and we're seeing things in Syria.

3:10:13 Yeah. some controversial material it's uh it's it's fairly new in terms of the public consciousness the association of the impact with the megafauna extinction I just don't see how you realistically go up against a bull elephant. that's going to be published in about a month or two. They've been hunting elephants with bows and arrows for a long time.

3:14:12 So that was one but it also could have been that end And then you've got a population of hunters in addition to that, It's really a remarkable landscape. Thank you so much. Time for your nap, Malcolm. that had been literally knocked over by an impact with broken legs and that died on the this describe it to us randall well here we're well this is textbook scab land right here let's see what

3:17:57 Going down there, that's Palouse Falls, some awesome video clips um and i'm sorry geocosmic wrecks r-e-x wrecks okay and i thought you were Yeah, this whole scab land is has literally fascinated me since 1970 and um There should be another one that actually. Oh, the actual area? of Wenatchee, Wisconsin, Washington. So basically what we had here was plucking, quarrying as the water poured over this ridge. This is the Babcock Ridge and behind us is the Quincy Basin which

3:21:23 cloning some of those flash frozen animalsrozen animals up there, maybe we could... Well, that's one of the big concerns about climate change, right? than Randall Carlson? I mean, Jesus deposits of bones which have been buried in the permafrost. And it seems like there's interestingly two peaks of dates, that one right around 13,000 and the other one around 36,000, that the fossilized remains are dating to.

3:23:20 There is a cliff? They would run so many of them off cliffs that... So it was likely covered in an event. contents of the food in its stomach undigested, The wolves ate the flesh off the skull. Well, like Itzy, the Iceman, that's what what happened to him that's exactly what happened to him yes interesting And he had defensive wounds on his hands and arms, so he'd gotten in a fight.

3:27:20 You know, your book, you have this really great sentence that I quote. my role is a reporter and i'm trying to be a reporter for the alternative sides of things Harlan Bretz is a good example of that. Sure. Put it in the memory focus there. When it gets up there and it goes on to say, the skeleton proved to be badly disturbed and the bones crushed and broken.

3:30:33 And this is all the same time period as the other Macedon? being here is a mastodon that got smashed into the ground. Wow. flow 85 is an interesting slide because what it shows is the london ivory docks which over a period of And this went on year after year after year after year for roughly two centuries. dug out of the permafrost. That's the question I want to raise.

3:33:43 Can I do a quick shout-out? wonderful woman behind me. Michael Surma, who do you want to thank? Oh, thank my wife whether it's Japan, or whether it's Britain, We'll see you guys soon. Thank you. Bye.