Were Advanced Civilizations Here Before Us?

Unveiled

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00:00Graham Hancock is a controversial pseudo-archaeologist. He claims that there was a

00:06mother culture on Earth long before our oldest recorded civilizations. His theories suggest

00:12that aliens came before humans, that the pyramids are built to mirror star constellations,

00:19and that no matter how intelligent we think we are, we aren't. But what do you think?

00:26Clearly, we already know of various examples of advanced civilizations prior to ours,

00:31comparatively speaking. But today, we're not talking about the likes of Ancient Greece,

00:35Egypt, Mesopotamia, or the Minoans, all of which gave massive contributions to the history of the

00:40world. Instead, our question requires us to think hypothetically, and to accept that before all of

00:45everything we know from even the most ancient histories, there was some sort of catastrophic

00:49or even purposeful event which wiped out everything we know of the world.

00:54Picture a race of animals or humanoids with the same sort of modern amenities we currently enjoy.

00:58A society that somehow disappeared, it might have even been more technologically advanced

01:03than we are now. If it was, then what does that make us? We could also be destined for a similar

01:09sort of mysterious or disastrous end, as we are now. But, what if we were destined for a

01:15more advanced civilization? What if we were destined for a more advanced civilization?

01:19We could also be destined for a similar sort of mysterious or disastrous end,

01:23as we also exist only to sow the seeds for another civilization to follow. It sure sounds

01:29ominous, but let's not panic about the end times just yet. Instead, we'll dial it back to a basic

01:34question. What actually constitutes an advanced civilization? It's definitely a subjective term,

01:40but broadly speaking, it's any group that forms and flourishes as one, based on the making of

01:45connections. Here, in our lives as we know them, successful past civilizations had developed

01:50various avenues of trade or social structure which grew and improved with knowledge of the outside

01:55world. Their inhabitants understood how their behavior affected neighboring peoples,

02:00and their shared goals generally amounted to social progress. Historians and scientists give

02:05theories behind apparent large-scale extinction events resulting in the disappearance of many

02:09famous advanced civilizations. The ancestral Puebloan people in North America, for example,

02:14seemingly created elaborate buildings and cave carvings until cannibalism and infighting

02:19decimated their numbers. The Cahokia settlement from present-day Missouri are thought to have

02:24suffered a similar fate in pre-Columbus times, when their population fell due to flooding and

02:29overuse of their natural resources. If there's one single disaster capable of totally wiping out

02:34an entire group, then it's an asteroid strike. And there's a sometimes controversial British

02:39author who believes that this could well have been the case. Graham Hancock's work often references

02:44ancient structures such as the Cahokia's Woodhenge, England's Stonehenge, or the Easter

02:48Island Statues. But Hancock goes further back to explain them, by building on the Mother Culture

02:54Theory. This is when the effects of an extinct culture continue to be felt long after that

02:58civilization is gone, leaving behind lessons which are followed by future societies, knowingly or not

03:04so. More specifically, Hancock has worked with another writer, Belgium's Robert Bauval, on the

03:10Orion Correlation Theory. This theory states that the layout of the Pyramids of Giza purposefully

03:15mirrors the stars in Orion's belt. For Hancock, it supports the suggestion that there was a long-lost

03:20Mother Culture before ancient Egypt. In terms of Hancock's theory, it means that the Egyptians

03:25were influenced by a greater, but to us unknown, power before them, from which they inherited the

03:30astronomical, mathematical, and practical knowledge needed to build and align the Great

03:35Pyramids with the stars in the sky. There's been a lot of pushback to Hancock's ideas, though,

03:40with astronomers from South Africa and Los Angeles arguing that there isn't even an exact star-to-

03:45pyramid match in the first place. For those not on board, there's also the idea that the absence

03:50of X doesn't mean that Y is true. In other words, we can't assume that impressive structures such as

03:55the Pyramids have mysterious origins just because we believe that society at a time couldn't possibly

04:00have built them. Hancock's isn't the only explanation offered for some sort of extinct

04:05civilization, though. There's also the Silurian Hypothesis, proposed in 2018 by astrophysicist

04:10Adam Frank and NASA's Gavin Schmidt. Yes, the title is a direct reference to an advanced reptilian

04:16race from the BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who, but the purpose of Frank and Schmidt's paper wasn't so

04:21much to present a literal presentation of ancient astro-lizards, but rather to use the hypothesis

04:26to look into our own behaviour as a species. If there were past civilizations, would we even be

04:31able to detect them? Would they have left recognisable marks on the Earth? These were

04:35the questions Frank and Schmidt set out to answer, but they wound up turning their focus to the

04:40people alive right now. The pair freely admit that pre-existing lizard people as a genuine idea is

04:46doubtful at best, highlighting that there are no fossilised remains, uncovered relics, or any

04:50environmental clues to offer up as physical proof. Even considering the incredible amount of still

04:56unrecovered fossils from the age of the dinosaurs, there simply aren't the required radiation levels

05:00in the Earth's geological makeup to support the idea that anything, intelligent lizards or

05:05otherwise, lived here before us. But that doesn't make the Silurian Hypothesis just a pointless

05:10thought exercise, because it's a line of thinking that does have ramifications for how we live our

05:15lives today. Generations after us might one day view what we've left behind as proof that we

05:20were the early advanced civilization. In the grand scheme of history, grouping everyone alive today

05:25as though from the same era as the ancient Egyptians, for example. As it is, the majority

05:30of scientists generally agree that complex industrialisation before humans just isn't

05:34plausible. For most, we really are the first to be living the way that we do. The universe is over

05:3913 billion years old, but complex life has only existed for about 400 million of those years,

05:45and modern humans have only been significantly industrialising the planet for about 300 years.

05:51Historical human impact can already be seen and traced in things like the soil and air,

05:56by scientists studying the development of the Anthropocene, the name given to the geological

06:00age of our influence on the planet. And the carbon footprint we leave upon the Earth could

06:04well be studied long after we're extinct. However, advocates for a previous civilization still ask,

06:10but what about before that? Couldn't another race of creatures simply have had their own Anthropocene,

06:15lived it until extinction and allowed the Earth to start over? It's a thought not that far

06:19removed from our human fascination with the stars and space. Just as we continually question whether

06:24or not we're alone in the universe, we can also wonder whether we're really an evolutionary one-off

06:29in the history of the Earth. For some, the idea that there was something significant before us,

06:33and that we're just part of an ongoing cycle, is comforting. And the same way as imagining an

06:37alien world with intelligent life also is. The Fermi Paradox attempts to rationalise the

06:42probability of space travel and extraterrestrials. At its core, the paradox argues that, given the

06:48vastness of the universe, there must be multiple Earth-like planets capable of sustaining life.

06:53The paradox part is that, if this is true, why haven't we been visited yet? Are these alien

06:58worlds as advanced as ours but not yet advanced enough for space travel? Are they actually capable

07:03of reaching Earth but choose not to? It's a theory which relies on giant leaps of faith, but

07:08could the Fermi Paradox also be applied to some extent to the Earth itself? For all the apparent

07:13proof that there wasn't an unknown global civilisation before ours, might it actually have

07:17been advanced enough to knowingly erase evidence of its geological footprint? And, if it's clever

07:22enough for that, could it also be clever enough to have hopped off this planet to watch from afar as

07:26all of human life replays itself, unaware of what had gone before it? Probably not,

07:31but our own civilisation still has time to examine how we're remembered.

07:47And how we want our legacy to be viewed by the historians of the future.

07:52What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other

07:55clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.

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