Ancient Apocalypse (2022) s01e03 Episode Script

1
[Graham] One of the problems I have
with the mainstream view
of the development of civilization
is the notion that
our own civilization in the 21st century
is the apex and the pinnacle
of human achievement.
This makes us very conceited,
it makes us very big-headed.
We look back on the past, as though
our ancestors were always simpler than us,
had less knowledge than us,
had less ability than us.
It hasn't just been
a straight-line evolutionary progress
from primitive cavemen
to anatomically modern humans.
It just hasn't been like that.
In the story of civilizations,
maybe there are ups and downs,
civilization rises and falls again,
and it is possible
to lose entire civilizations.
It's happened before,
here in the Mediterranean in Malta.
Malta, this stunning
Mediterranean archipelago,
has long fascinated me.
Because I suspect almost everything
archaeologists have told us about its past
is wrong.
And because the truth,
if it's allowed to come out,
could offer crucial evidence in my search
for a lost civilization of prehistory.
Malta's two main islands
are barely a speck in the Mediterranean.
Strategically located between
Europe, Africa, and the Middle East,
for centuries, it's had an outsized impact
on the story of civilization.
According to Malta's official timeline,
the first people settled here
around 7,900 years ago.
They were simple Stone Age farmers
who crossed the sea
from Italy in wooden rafts.
[Katya Stroud] They came
probably from Sicily,
and they brought with them
the first domesticated animals,
the first domesticated plants.
And as people settled here,
they developed their own culture.
[Graham] According to the official
timeline, around 5,600 years ago,
they then woke up one morning
and built this.
It's called Ġgantija
and it certainly is
a giant of a megalithic structure.
For decades, it was thought to be
the oldest freestanding
monumental structure on Earth.
As I walk around Ġgantija,
I feel cut down to size,
a dwarf in the presence
of the work of giants.
The construction of these walls
required the lifting
of hundreds of massive megaliths.
Some weighing up to 50 tons.
And what we see today
is only roughly half
of the temple's original height.
[thunder rumbling]
In its prime, Ġgantija was truly gigantic.
As tall as a three-story house.
The outer walls were constructed
from huge stones stacked atop one another.
Two connected temples
with oval-shaped chambers,
their walls painted red.
And a series of altars,
where charred remains
of animal bones were found,
suggesting ritual sacrifices or feasting.
There are no written sources
telling us when Ġgantija was built,
and no reliable carbon dates.
So how old is this giant temple, really?
And does it provide evidence
for the lost civilization
that I'm convinced flourished
long before any kind of civilization
is supposed to have begun?
The sole reason that archaeologists claim
Ġgantija was built around 5,600 years ago
is that some artifacts found in the area
match those of other much simpler sites
dated to that period,
but that doesn't mean
that the structure itself is the same age.
The artifacts may have
simply been left there at a later date.
The truth is that
none of the prehistory of Malta stacks up.
Think about it.
Could those farmers,
who archaeologists tell us
never built anything bigger than a shack,
really have achieved all this?
When you look
at a structure like Ġgantija,
you would expect to see
evidence of the build-up of skills
necessary to create that structure.
A culture doesn't just
know how to move 20 or 30 ton megaliths.
It has to learn how to do it.
I see no evidence
of the development of those techniques.
And here's the thing,
Ġgantija isn't
Malta's only megalithic temple.
Across Malta's two main islands,
archaeologists have uncovered
19 such ancient structures,
all on a land mass
half the size of Chicago,
with the oldest, so we are told,
being Ġgantija itself.
For such tiny islands,
that's a lot of temples
requiring a lot of man power.
Too much.
Which forces me to question
who really built Ġgantija and when?
Does it make sense that those people
with a very simple material culture
could have been responsible for creating
the largest, most magnificent,
most complex structure on Malta?
I think the truth is more complicated
and far more explosive.
We've already seen in Indonesia
and Mexico that ancient myths and legends
have something important to teach us.
These stories,
passed down through generations,
shouldn't be overlooked by archaeologists.
And if we turn
to the ancient lore of Malta,
it has a story to tell
about who was responsible
for building Ġgantija.
There's an intriguing ancient legend here
concerning a giantess called Sansuna.
It's said that the giantess
had intercourse
with one of the men of this land
and gave birth to a hybrid child.
Afterwards, to commemorate the event,
she built this massive temple
in a single day and night,
carrying the child on her shoulder.
I'm fascinated by this legend,
of course, it could just be a legend.
I certainly don't believe
literal giants ever roamed the Earth.
But what if she's a human being
who has enormous
and incredible capacities and skills
that could lead her
to build a temple such as this?
This legend is eerily similar to the story
of the so-called giants who built
the Great Pyramid of Cholula in Mexico,
a story connected
to a great flood in prehistory.
Could these legends of giant builders
encode memories of some other
more advanced and more ancient culture?
What if the timeline
of Malta's prehistory is wrong?
When those farmers
arrived by raft from Sicily,
what if Ġgantija
and the other megalithic temples
were already here?
What if these extraordinary structures
had been built by someone else?
A far more advanced society
that arrived on Malta long before.
It's not only possible
but likely.
And I don't think they sailed here.
I think they walked here.
You see, Malta wasn't always an island.
At the height of the last Ice Age,
the level of the world's oceans
was about 120 meters,
400 feet, lower than it is today.
And The Maltese islands
used to be hilltops,
part of a single continuous landmass
that connected Malta
all the way to present-day Sicily
and from there to the southern end
of Italy and the European mainland.
Back then,
Europe wasn't a great place to live.
Cold, dry, and inhospitable.
We know Ice Age animals
migrated across that ancient land bridge
to the warmer, more abundant lands
of Malta and flourished here.
Wouldn't humans have followed them?
Archaeologists have found traces of
early humans on Sicily from back then.
So why would their migration southwards
have stopped there?
To me, the mystery of
the sudden appearance out of nowhere
of the Maltese temples
5,000 or 6,000 years ago,
goes away when we accept
that actually,
there was a time long before that,
during the Ice Age,
12,000, 14,000 years ago,
when Malta was part of the mainland.
The problem is archaeologists claim
there's simply no evidence
of any species of humans on Malta
from that long ago.
But that isn't entirely true.
And the proof is in this cave.
This is Ghar Dalam,
near the southeast coast
of the main island of Malta.
A geological time machine
that offers a glimpse back
into Malta's prehistory.
Here, a series of floods
left behind animal bones and fossils
dating back thousands of years.
Dr. Anton Mifsud,
president of
the Prehistoric Society of Malta,
has studied this site for decades.
It's really large.
[Graham] His independent findings here
have caused great controversy.
Ghar Dalam cave
is a kind of record in stone
of the prehistory of Malta,
and I understand that this stalagmite
is particularly important in your work.
[Dr. Mifsud] Well, starting, well,
from where the light brown
- That's called the cultural layer.
- Right.
That actually people lived here.
- [Graham] Yeah. The last 8,000 years.
- The last 8,000 years. Correct.
And there, at the bottom of it,
is something called a Pleistocene sheet.
- Once we get below that sheet
- Yes.
- we're into an area that is Ice Age
- There was
it contains the remains
of Ice Age animals
- Yes.
- but they don't call it a cultural layer
because they're convinced
there were no human beings here.
Exactly, yes.
[Graham] Anything found at this depth
is at least 11,600 years old.
If the official account
of Malta's history is correct,
no human remains should have
been discovered once they dug into it.
But over a century ago,
archaeologists did find something.
Something no one expected.
In 1917, two Maltese excavators
discovered two special teeth.
Right.
They had a fossilized color,
they had no roots.
The roots were absorbed
into the body of the tooth.
Yeah. And so these
are classic Neanderthal teeth?
- Yes.
- And where were these two teeth found?
They were found there,
at the bottom of the stalagmites, here.
- Right at the bottom.
- [Dr. Mifsud] Exactly.
[Graham] Experts involved in the dig
were convinced they'd found evidence
that would rewrite the story
of humans on Malta.
Here was proof that Neanderthals
did walk across that Ice Age land bridge.
But sometimes archaeologists dig up things
that other people want to bury.
In 1952, there were
relative dating tests carried out.
Yeah. What results
were produced from those tests?
Well, the results were not published.
For some reason,
the results were not divulged.
[Graham] What we do know
is that in the years that followed,
the authenticity of the teeth
was officially downplayed.
And to this day,
the history books continue to insist
that no human species ever reached Malta
until around 7,900 years ago.
Why is archaeology so opposed
to the notion of earlier humans?
Changing a paradigm is no easy business.
When a particular mindset
has become the preoccupation of
a group of scholars in a particular field,
they are so reluctant to let go of it,
they become existentially attached to it,
and an attack on the paradigm
becomes an attack on them,
and they vigorously defend it.
Curious to mount his own investigation,
in 2016, Dr. Mifsud paid for his own
state-of-the-art analysis of the teeth.
They've been examined by three top-notch
- physical anthropologists for me
- Yeah.
and they confirmed
they were Neanderthal teeth.
Right.
This is evidence of human activity
during the Ice Age.
[Graham] What does this do
to the whole story of Malta?
It pushes back these dates, way back.
- Far, far back.
- Yeah.
Another chapter has to be reintroduced.
Yeah.
If our cousins,
the Neanderthals, reached Malta,
it proves that the land bridge
was used by ancient humans
and it's possible
that another Ice Age culture
could have left their mark here too.
In my view, the evidence for a far older
civilization here on Malta is compelling
and it doesn't just
hinge on a couple of teeth.
I want to show you something
that I saw quarter of a century ago
when I first visited Malta,
etched into the bedrock
of the island itself.
It's a phenomenon found
all over these islands.
Parallel grooved channels
carved deep into the ancient limestone.
There are nearly
35 kilometers of these ruts,
often crossing one another
like train tracks.
Mainstream archaeologists
presume them to be
not much more than about 2,600 years old,
but they've never been seriously studied.
They don't show
signs of obvious tool marks
and they also aren't the result
of any known natural process.
They're definitely man-made.
Though it's not entirely certain
what function they serve.
They're usually presumed to be
some kind of ancient transportation route.
Hence, their popular name "cart ruts."
But here's what intrigues me.
These ruts don't just appear on land.
Some of them carry right on into the sea.
Here's a pair of them
hidden beneath the modern road,
but disappearing on my right
beneath the waters of the harbor.
Clearly made before
rising sea levels covered them.
Over the years, I have found and followed
more of these man-made grooves underwater,
filming them up to a kilometer offshore
and at depths of up to 25 meters.
Whoever created them must have done so
when that part of the sea floor
was above water,
more than 12,000 years ago,
during the last Ice Age.
It makes me wonder
how much more of Maltese prehistory
lies hidden beneath the waves?
How many other man-made structures,
maybe even megalithic temples,
still await discovery?
The reason I believe
that a deeper ancient intelligence
lies behind these temples on Malta
is that they're far more complex
than they first appear.
Beneath a canopy
that protects it from the elements,
lies one of Malta's
most spectacular temples, Mnajdra.
Its futuristic, modern covering
cuts it off from the sky,
which is a shame,
because whoever built Mnajdra
had an extraordinarily
advanced understanding of the cosmos,
a fact that Malta's archaeologists
don't dispute.
We know that they observed
the rising of the sun,
and the position of certain stars.
And they have incorporated
some of those observations
within the architecture.
[Graham] Mnajdra's builders devised
an ingenious way of tracking the heavens.
On the spring and fall equinoxes,
respectively 21st March
and 21st September,
the rays of the rising sun
exactly bisect the temple entrance,
flooding the deepest recesses
of the inner shrine with light.
On these occasions,
the interior of the temple
would have glowed
and sprung magically to life.
And that's not all.
At sunrise on the summer
and winter solstices,
the longest and shortest days of the year,
a different distinctive
projection of light
precisely illuminates
the edges of the megaliths
to the left and right of the doorway.
This phenomenon is far from unique
in ancient constructions.
In fact, the Great Pyramid of Cholula
and the pyramids beneath it,
all directly face the setting sun
on the summer solstice.
And other megalithic sites
around the world boast similar alignments.
Like Stonehenge,
or Egypt's Temple of Karnak.
Here at Mnajdra, the ancients
created these enormous structures
to celebrate the marriage
of Heaven and Earth.
In fact, Mnajdra and the other temples
may be part of a much larger
ancient astronomical project.
One that, if proven to be true,
would rewrite the accepted timeline
of Malta's prehistory.
Dutch researcher
and author, Lenie Reedijk,
has explored every one
of Malta's megalithic temples
and made a close study
of their alignments.
To her great surprise,
none of Malta's other temples
line up with any equinoxes or solstices.
But they also don't face any particular
geographical feature in their area.
In fact, none of them
even face the same direction.
No two orientations are the same.
- That's quite extraordinary in itself.
- That is very, very curious.
You would expect temple culture,
like the church or a mosque,
to have a preference.
[Graham] Why would Mnajdra be
the only temple oriented to the solstices?
Were Malta's other temples also built
to aim towards something in the heavens?
If so, what?
You have to look for a principle.
So you need to know
- a little bit of archeoastronomy.
- Mmm-hmm.
That means the astronomy of the ancients.
There is a fascinating
and little-known movement in the sky
which has a name, and that is precession.
[Graham] Contrary to what
most of us think,
the Earth isn't a perfect sphere.
It's actually bulging slightly
at the equator.
The result?
Because of the gravitational pull
of the Sun and the Moon,
the Earth wobbles just slightly
as it spins on its axis.
This precession alters our view
of the night sky over the years,
making distant constellations appear
to shift position in a systematic way.
The whole sky makes this movement,
which is very slight.
It is only one degree difference
in the rising or setting position
of any given star in 72 years.
[Graham] So if you were
building these temples
to point at a single specific star,
over the centuries,
the alignments of those temples
would shift, just as we see on Malta.
But there's a problem.
The official timeline claims
that all Malta's temples
were built between around
5,600 and 4,500 years ago.
And in looking at the positions
of the brightest stars
visible in the sky during that time frame,
none were a likely possibility.
[Lenie] There was a sort of
a strong dislike
to consider anything
outside conventional theory.
To go back before the temples
- are supposed to have been built.
- Exactly.
[Graham] But using
state-of-the-art software
that tracks the movement of stars
over thousands of years,
Lenie was able
to rewind the night sky like a clock,
looking for a single visible star
that aligned with all the temples.
And not just during the time frame
when they were supposedly built,
but from any point in the past.
[Lenie] I have been working
to check and check,
and then all of a sudden, it appeared.
The temples were orientated to one star.
[Graham] That one star was Sirius,
often called the Dog Star.
[Lenie] It passes all the entrances
at some point in time.
All the temples fit it. Every single one.
And Sirius, of course,
is a particularly magnificent star.
If I'm correct,
it's the brightest star in the sky.
The brightest, by far. It is two times
as bright as the next brightest.
[Graham] Lenie's theory would also explain
why these early astronomers
built so many temples.
As Sirius shifted position over time,
it fell out of
each temple's line of sight,
forcing the architects to build a new one
with a slightly different orientation.
Because of precession, Sirius hadn't been
visible from Malta for thousands of years,
until the Earth's wobble
brought it spectacularly back into view,
around 11,000 years ago.
And the temple lined up
with that spectacular appearance
after a long absence
is a simple one called Hagar Qim North.
It is also one of the smallest temples.
They started very small,
- and as the millennia passed
- Yeah.
they ended up
with the largest of all the temples.
You could say, the cathedral,
which is Ġgantija.
[Graham] But if Lenie is right,
it means that Malta's megalithic project
began thousands of years
before those Stone Age farmers from Sicily
arrived on the island
and must have been the work of a culture
with advanced knowledge of astronomy,
and advanced architectural skills.
As for why they chose
to honor Sirius this way
it might be simply because
it was the brightest star
in the night sky at the time.
But there might be more to it.
The star, Sirius,
also plays a prominent role
in the legends
of another great culture of antiquity,
ancient Egypt,
where it was associated with the annual
flooding of the Nile and the new year
and was a symbol
of their great goddess, Isis.
And this is not
the only curious connection
between ancient Egypt and ancient Malta.
Maltese fishing boats are traditionally
decorated with a prominent symbol
borrowed from Egyptian mythology
The Eye of Horus.
The fishermen believe it provides them
with good health, prosperity
and above all, protection.
The exact same symbol
played the exact same role
in ancient Egypt.
Intriguingly, this tradition connects
Malta to Egypt's most famous myth,
the story of the parents
of that god, Horus
Osiris and Isis.
In ancient times,
the wise God Osiris descended to Egypt
to rule alongside his sister Isis,
but the people
were uncivilized and lawless.
So Osiris brought them culture,
established the rule of law,
and taught them agriculture.
Then he left Isis to rule Egypt
while he traveled the Earth,
teaching people
of other nations the same skills.
This myth of a traveling, civilizing hero
is something I recognize
from my own travels.
The story of Osiris is similar to that
of Quetzalcoatl in Mexico,
and other civilizing heroes
from ancient lore.
Wise teachers who arrive
after an immense cataclysm,
sharing the gifts of civilization,
showing humanity how to build
great works in stone,
bringing them agriculture
and a knowledge of the stars.
Is it possible that such myths
so similar in so many different cultures
might even be traced back
to a single source?
If these bearded robed figures
from the near East,
to the Americas, to the Mediterranean,
originate from the same ancient culture,
it means that while
our hunter-gatherer ancestors
were busy surviving the Ice Age,
someone else
was circumnavigating the globe,
passing on
their advanced skills to others.
And I believe there's proof of that
on another island,
that, like Malta, was nearly drowned
at the end of the last Ice Age,
a world away
in the blue waters of the Caribbean.
If an advanced civilization was
swallowed up by the sea 11,600 years ago,
then perhaps evidence for its existence
can still be found underwater.
Let's talk about Atlantis.