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The lifeblood of ancient civilizations and endless mysteries have baffled explorers for centuries. Delve into the secrets of the Nile's elusive source. The rise and fall of empires, the heartbeat of ancient Egypt - the Nile River and its connection with the gods of ancient Egypt, the global fascination with pyramids that are symbols of a shared human heritage that spans continents and millennia and the creators of the alphabet, whose influence spread across the Mediterranean. Take an epic journey through the annals of time, where the ancient past weaves a tapestry of life, mystery and legacy. This is not just history; it is the story of humanity itself.
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00:00:30The Nile River spans almost 4,175 miles, crosses nine countries throughout Africa, and is widely regarded as the longest river in the world.
00:00:41While all of this might be considered common knowledge, the winding waters of the famous river have many intriguing facts that you might not know.
00:01:00Here are 10 of the most fascinating facts about the Nile River.
00:01:06Without the Nile, the ancient Egyptian civilization may never have existed.
00:01:11The Nile River was considered the source of life by the ancient Egyptians and played a vital role in the country's history and rich culture.
00:01:20The river was also a very important factor in the socio-economic development and success of ancient Egypt.
00:01:27Without the river Nile, the great ancient civilization may never have existed, since rainfall was almost non-existent in Egypt, and the Nile River was the only source of moisture to sustain crops.
00:01:39The real source of the Nile River remains unknown.
00:01:43Some might tell you that Lake Victoria, Africa's main lake, is the source of the river Nile.
00:01:50Others say that the Kagera River and its tributary, the Ravubu, having its headwaters in Burundi, is the real source.
00:01:58The truth is, however, that the source of the river Nile remains a mystery to this day.
00:02:03The Nile Highway
00:02:04The Nile Highway was the highway that joined the country together and was essential for trade and transportation.
00:02:12Up until the 19th century, travel by land was virtually unknown in the region.
00:02:17Ships and boats were the main means of transporting people and goods around the country.
00:02:23Nile, the life-giver
00:02:24Other than providing water, the Nile offered an excellent soil for growing food, which is the main reason why so many Egyptians lived near it.
00:02:34Locals used spears and nets to catch fish and trap different birds that flew close to the surface of the water.
00:02:42Contributing to the production of papyrus
00:02:45So much of what we know about ancient Egypt comes from the plethora of written records left behind on papyrus.
00:02:52The Nile was responsible for providing this papyrus.
00:02:56It came from the reeds growing on the side of the river.
00:03:00The flooding of the Nile
00:03:01Melting snow and heavy summer rain within the Ethiopian mountains sent a torrent of water,
00:03:08causing the banks and the River Nile in Egypt to overflow in this flat desert land, causing massive floods every year.
00:03:15The reason why it doesn't flow now is because of the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s.
00:03:22Akhet, the inundation
00:03:25Until the Aswan High Dam was built, the early inundation of the Nile happened between June and September in a season the Egyptians called Akhet, the inundation.
00:03:36This was seen by Egyptians as a yearly coming of the deity Happy, bringing fertility to the land.
00:03:42The goddess of the flood was the goddess Mehetwaret, the Great Flood.
00:03:48Osiris, the Nile's most sacred god
00:03:50Despite Happy being the local deity in a way, the god most closely associated historically and culturally with the Nile was Osiris,
00:03:59who was killed by his brother Seth on the riverbank and then became the king of the underworld.
00:04:04For that reason, the Nile River was an important part of Egyptians' spiritual life as well.
00:04:10The Egyptians believed that this was the passageway between life and death.
00:04:14That's why all Egyptian tombs are built on the west side of the Nile.
00:04:19The west was considered the place of death since the sun god Ra set in the west each day.
00:04:25A popular ancient sport was played on the Nile's waters.
00:04:29Ancient Egyptians practiced a popular river sport, water jousting.
00:04:33Modern knowledge of this sport comes from studying ancient tomb reliefs, thus it is limited.
00:04:40These depictions show that vessels held a small group of men, each one wielding a long pole.
00:04:46While most of the crew used theirs to maneuver the boat, a few of them would stand upright,
00:04:51wielding their poles to knock opponents off their respective boats.
00:04:56Crocodiles have been living in the Nile waters for thousands of years,
00:04:59and they don't really like it when humans get too close to them.
00:05:02They are known to attack humans regularly, usually people washing clothes or fishing at the shore.
00:05:09It's estimated that there are 200 attacks a year from Nile crocodiles in Africa.
00:05:14After a long period of speculation, a team of Polish archaeologists has discovered the functions of almost 100 monumental structures across the Middle Nile,
00:05:24which were built between the 4th and 6th centuries AD and cross an area of approximately 500 km from today's south of Egypt to central Sudan.
00:05:35The defensive structures served as refuges for the local population who could gather inside behind the safety of the high walls during times of unrest.
00:05:44According to Pap, the project led by Bogdan Zurasky, head of new biology at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures,
00:05:54was subsidy granted by the Foundation for Polish Science to investigate the structures in the context of the formation of the Christian kingdoms in the Valley of the Middle Nine.
00:06:04He said,
00:06:34And a few meters high, and were made of mud brick or stones, or sometimes a combination of both.
00:06:40The blocks were bonded with mud mortar, and the walls covered an area of several hectares.
00:06:45In a few of the fortresses, the team of Egyptologists discovered traces of trebuchets, ballistic devices that tossed stones at distances up to 100 meters.
00:06:56But as well as their military functions, the researchers found evidence that the monuments also had a refugial function.
00:07:02The lack of homes around the monuments also points to this.
00:07:07Regarding the discovery, he said,
00:07:08The scale is unbelievable.
00:07:09After last research season, we are certain that the majority of the fortresses our team studied originally served as refuges,
00:07:18which means that in times of unrest, local people would find refuge behind the huge walls and wait out the danger.
00:07:25During the investigations, the middle interest of the researchers was a rectangular walled structure with a church and a well in the middle in Salib.
00:07:34For a long time, the function of this monument was unclear.
00:07:38The wall did not contain any corner towers and was quite thin compared to other walls.
00:07:43From this period, so, it didn't seem to have a defensive function.
00:07:48However, after a year of working there, researchers unearthed 16 bands of stone stairs leading to the top of the wall,
00:07:55which would have allowed quick access to the top of the wall to take defensive action, confirming that this monument was indeed used for defense.
00:08:03When we talk about pyramids, the best known and the first to come to mind are those of Giza and those of Mexico,
00:08:21but there are many other pyramids in Egypt, not to mention those in South America.
00:08:26There are also allegedly examples in Romania and Bosnia-Herzegovina, North America, China, Korea, and Italy,
00:08:35though the evidence for the latter group is thin to say the least.
00:08:39One of the latest pyramids discovered is the apparently colossal pyramid in Romania,
00:08:45which would have to be, according to some alternative historians and researchers, more than 15,000 years old.
00:08:53For archaeologists and most researchers, it is merely a natural hill.
00:08:58But for some, this confirms that in the remote past, there were several pre-Diluvian civilizations
00:09:05that were responsible for creating these pyramids all over the world.
00:09:09The fact that the various pyramids scattered all over the world vary massively in date,
00:09:15from prehistoric to medieval, does not seem to bother these researchers.
00:09:19Apparently these ancient civilizations had the power and knowledge to travel between continents,
00:09:27and thus were able, for a reason we still don't know, to build pyramids that were very similar.
00:09:33Usually the pyramids share a similar structure, and were created as places of extreme importance
00:09:39to the daily life of the community, possibly ceremonial centers dedicated to the gods.
00:09:44Although we know of those pyramids that were built a few hundred, sometimes thousands of years ago,
00:09:51in recent years the evidence has been accumulating in regard to antediluvian civilizations,
00:09:57that is, civilizations that prospered before the last glaciation.
00:10:02This glaciation, and the subsequent deluge, occurred about 14,000 years ago.
00:10:08According to a few researchers, and apparently, these people lost in time, would have been pyramid builders.
00:10:16The existence of these forgotten ancestors resides in ancient documents, such as the List of the Sumerian Kings,
00:10:24and in the timeline of the Egyptian pharaohs that governed until the moment the gods descended to the earth.
00:10:30For some, the most recent evidence of antediluvian civilizations would be the Bosnian pyramids,
00:10:37discovered in 2005, by Sam Osmanagic. These constructions above the village of Visoko,
00:10:44have been dated by him to between 12,500 and 30,000 years.
00:10:51Osmanagic calls one the Pyramid of the Moon, and claims it is the world's largest and oldest steppe pyramid.
00:10:59At the opposite side of town is the so-called Pyramid of the Sun,
00:11:03which, at 720 feet, dwarfs the great pyramids of Egypt.
00:11:09A third pyramid, he says, is in the nearby hills.
00:11:12All of them, he says, are at least 12,000 years old,
00:11:16despite the fact that during that time, most of Europe was under a mile-thick sheet of ice,
00:11:22and most of humanity had yet to invent agriculture.
00:11:25As a group, Osmanagic says, these structures are part of the greatest pyramidal complex
00:11:32ever built on the face of the earth.
00:11:36But archaeologists remain unmoved.
00:11:39The landform Osmanagic is calling a pyramid is actually quite common, agrees Paul Heinrich,
00:11:45an archaeological geologist at Louisiana State University.
00:11:50They're called Flatirons in the United States, and you see a lot of them out west.
00:11:55He adds that there are hundreds around the world, including the Russian Twin Pyramids in Vladivostok.
00:12:01There is another interesting mound in the Carpathian Mountains,
00:12:061,000 metres above sea level, that has captured the imagination of some alternative history enthusiasts.
00:12:14This pyramid has a height of 300 metres.
00:12:17The Pyramid of Cheops in Giza is 150 metres high, and the Pyramid of Bosnia about 220 metres.
00:12:26So the pyramid discovered in Romania would be more similar to that of Cheops,
00:12:31and would be about 80 metres more than the Pyramid of Bosnia.
00:12:35Some researchers who climbed to the top of the mountain found remnants of ancient stone walls,
00:12:41consisting of three layers of overlapping stone, fixed together with clay,
00:12:47which is a material that provides extensive protection against rainwater, and is also an
00:12:53excellent material with which to join stones together.
00:12:58Probably the most fascinating aspect of the fortification was the thick reddish brown layer
00:13:04of material composed of mineral oxides that covered the outer wall of the pyramid.
00:13:10Based on the kind of plaster that covers up even the cracks between the stones,
00:13:15researchers were able to date the structure using a technique known as dowsing,
00:13:20which resulted in the stones apparently dating back to between 22,000 and 25,000 years old.
00:13:29Further proof of an advanced ancient culture in Romania that was able to construct huge pyramids,
00:13:35are the clay tablets that were unearthed in Tertoria, Transylvania, bearing inscriptions
00:13:41belonging to the Vinca culture, who possessed a writing system which, according to some,
00:13:46predates that of the Sumerians. The inscribed clay tablets were found in a Neolithic context
00:13:54at Tertoria in Romania in 1961. The signs on the tablets are comparable with those of the script
00:14:02of the late pre-dynastic period in Mesopotamia. It seems unlikely, however,
00:14:08that the tablets were drafted by a Sumerian hand or in the Sumerian language of early Mesopotamia.
00:14:15The shapes of the tablets and some of the signs are paralleled in the Minoan scripts of Crete,
00:14:21but the tablets do not seem to be Cretan. There are indications that a similar use of signs,
00:14:27if not actual writing, was practiced in the rest of the Aegean and in the western Anatolia before the
00:14:34end of the third millennium BC. A knowledge of writing or the use of signs derived from it
00:14:42may have spread to these regions and to the Balkans from Mesopotamia through Syria. This was perhaps one
00:14:48aspect of a common inheritance of religious or magical beliefs and practices. However, the authenticity of
00:14:56the engravings has been disputed from the beginning. A recent claim of forgery is based on the similarity
00:15:03between some of the symbols and reproductions of Sumerian symbols in popular Romanian literature
00:15:09available at the time of discovery. Some researchers have connected this strange Romanian text with what
00:15:17was allegedly found in the cave of the Teos, Ecuador. In 1976 a major expedition entered the cave in search of artificial tunnels,
00:15:27lost gold, strange sculptures and a metallic library supposedly left by a lost civilization aided by extraterrestrials.
00:15:38Among this group was the astronaut Neil Armstrong.
00:15:41The indigenous Shua people of Ecuador have been entering the vast cave system on the jungle covered
00:15:49eastern foothills of the Andes for centuries. They descend using ladders made of vines through one of
00:15:56three dangerous entrances, the largest of which is a 213 foot deep shaft that leads into a network of tunnels and
00:16:07chambers stretching for at least 2.85 miles. For the Shua these caves have always been a center for spiritual
00:16:16and ceremonial practices home to powerful spirits as well as tarantulas, scorpions, spiders and rainbow boas.
00:16:26As guardians of the cave system the Shua have been left in relative peace over the last century or two.
00:16:32However in 1971 Erich von Daniken's The Gold of the Gods was published and in it he told the obscure
00:16:42story of one Janos I Moritz, an explorer who claimed to have entered the caves in 1969.
00:16:50Inside the cave he said he had discovered a treasure trove of gold, strange artifacts and sculptures and a
00:16:57metallic library containing lost texts preserved on metal tablets. And the caves themselves were
00:17:05definitely man-made he claimed, created by some advanced intelligence now lost to history.
00:17:12Back to the pyramids. According to some researchers and authors some pyramids could be connected by
00:17:18underground tunnels that stretch for thousands of miles. This has apparently been proven by the use of
00:17:25probes which send electromagnetic impulses through the earth and have found extensive cavities that
00:17:32are hundreds of thousands of miles long. But the main problem with this theory of a single ancient
00:17:38global super-race building the pyramids is that it does a great disservice to our ancestors.
00:17:45Some supporters of the theory such as Erich von Daniken and Zechariah Sitchin claim that the ancient
00:17:51Egyptians were too backward to have constructed the pyramids without the help of extraterrestrials.
00:17:58However, it is undeniable that with so many ancient enigmas only now being brought to light
00:18:04it is should not surprising that future archaeological advances and discoveries will force us to rethink
00:18:12at least some aspects of what we know of the history of mankind.
00:18:16But it should be the study of real, not imagined ancient monuments like pyramids that will help us in these endeavours.
00:18:34A new study at Utrecht University in the Netherlands has shed new light on one of the Earth's biggest lost continents.
00:18:41The study, led by geologist Del van Hinsbergen, explores the mysteries of what is known as Greater Adria.
00:18:49In a paper published in September 2019 in the Gondwana Research Journal, Hinsbergen and his colleagues
00:18:56examined rocks beneath the Mediterranean Sea to reveal the full extent of the Greater Adria for the first time.
00:19:03It is enormous, about the size and rough shape of Greenland, Hinsbergen told the press.
00:19:10Greater Adria was completely buried around 140 million years ago, not beneath the ocean but beneath
00:19:18southern Europe. Its surrounding continents collided and Greater Adria got bulldozed and buried in the
00:19:24process, sinking beneath what is now Italy, Greece and the Baltics.
00:19:29But Greater Adria is not unique. Cutting-edge studies of Earth's mantle are now revealing more
00:19:35traces of lost continents. Analysis of ancient rocks suggests that much of all the Earth's earliest
00:19:42continents might have been lost to the ravages of time, and with them much of the history of life on
00:19:47planet Earth.
00:19:48Myths of lost kingdoms have persisted since the dawn of Western civilization. In the 4th century BC,
00:19:57Plato first introduced the concept of Atlantis, which he described as an island continent larger
00:20:03than northern Africa and Asia Minor combined, ruled by ten powerful kings who were the direct
00:20:09descendants of Atlas, son of the god Poseidon, and for whom Atlantis was named.
00:20:15The inhabitants of this faraway land were said to be blessed with untold riches that were paralleled
00:20:22only by their supreme knowledge, attained through their virtuous observance of the rules of the gods.
00:20:28But as generations passed, the Atlanteans grew greedy and materialistic, forsaking the spiritual
00:20:34laws of their founding fathers. They became bent on conquering the wider world. Eventually,
00:20:40the Atlanteans were defeated, and the gods punished them by destroying their land in its entirety,
00:20:46sinking it to the bottom of the sea in the lapse of a single day and night 9,200 years before
00:20:53Plato's birth. Opinions have differed over the centuries as to whether Plato invented Atlantis as
00:20:59an allegory for the ideal society, or if indeed such a lost continent really did exist and was lost to the
00:21:07ravages of time. Over the years, countless adventurers have attempted to pinpoint the location of Atlantis
00:21:14by trying to interpret Plato's meticulous descriptions of its geography, ceremonies, rituals, customs,
00:21:21and architecture. Atlantis has been traced to a long list of sites around the world, from the Atlas
00:21:27Mountains in North Africa to the Canary Islands, from the Azores in Portugal to Cadiz in Spain,
00:21:34all the way to the Bahamas and even the Antiplano. Over time, the population perception of Atlantis
00:21:42changed, from a mythic kingdom cursed by the wickedness of human nature as portrayed in the
00:21:47original texts of Plato, to the birth of civilization itself. In 1881, former American politician Ignatius
00:21:56Loyola Donnelli wrote the book, Atlantis, the Antediluvian World, in which he posited that all the
00:22:03civilizations of the ancient past shared one single origin. He supported his theory with evidence in
00:22:11the commonalities of language, architecture, and religions shared by seemingly independent cultures
00:22:17scattered all across the globe. Although criticized by skeptical academics, Donnelli's book sold
00:22:24thousands of copies and ignited the popular imagination for years to come. Atlantis isn't the only lost
00:22:31civilization to have captured the Western imagination. Charles Darwin's theories of evolution led some
00:22:37scientists to suggest that, since lemurs are abundant in the island of Madagascar and are also found in
00:22:44India and southern Africa, there had to have been a giant land bridge connecting these two areas long ago.
00:22:52English geologist Philip Skatler called this lost land Lemuria, which was posited by several scientists
00:22:59at the time to be the cradle of humanity. And even though modern geology long ago discarded the Lemuria
00:23:05hypothesis in favor of the theory of continental drift, 19th century occultist Helena Blavatsky
00:23:13appropriated Lemuria for her 1888 book The Secret Doctrine, which was said to be the real history of
00:23:20man revealed to her by ascended masters living in Tibet and the Far East. According to Blavatsky's
00:23:27spiritual sources, the Lemurians lived on a continent that occupied most of the southern hemisphere.
00:23:34They were hermaphrodite and able to communicate telepathically by way of their third eye.
00:23:40As Lemuria sank beneath the sea millions of years ago, their descendants, the Atlanteans,
00:23:45inhabited a portion of Lemuria in the northern Atlantic that also ended up sinking some 9,000 years ago.
00:23:52Blavatsky believed the descendants of that catastrophe escaped to Central Asia, where they
00:23:57evolved into modern Hindus and Indo-Iranians. Even today, belief in the Lemurians is alive and well
00:24:04in New Age communities surrounding Mount Shasta in Northern California. And also thanks to magazine
00:24:11editor Ray Palmer, in 1945, Palmer received the seemingly deranged text of a man named Richard Shaver,
00:24:18who claimed to have been trapped inside the underground dwellings of sinister beings called
00:24:23the Diros. After making major adjustments to the text, Palmer published the story in Amazing Stories,
00:24:30which boosted sales of the magazine to stratospheric levels.
00:24:35The New Age didn't forget Atlantis either thanks to Edgar Cayce, the famous sleeping prophet and medical
00:24:42clairvoyant who in the 1930s started to receive information about Plato's lost continent during his
00:24:48trance-like states. According to Cayce, the Atlanteans had developed a highly advanced civilization that
00:24:55was at least technologically on par, if not superior to the industrialized world of the 20th century.
00:25:02Cayce died in 1945, but not before predicting that by the late 1960s, the western region of Atlantis
00:25:10would begin to reappear near the Caribbean island of Bimini. In 1968, scuba divers happened to find in the
00:25:17waters just off Bimini what seemed to be a long roadway paved with regular blocks of stone. Subsequent
00:25:24radiocarbon dating of the monumental blocks indicated an age of some 12,000 years.
00:25:30But orthodox scientists have always been quick to dismiss and downplay such findings. Just like the
00:25:36provocative submarine formations of Yonaguni, founded in 1987 by a diver off the coast of Okinawa,
00:25:44the Bimini roadway was explained as natural formations that only have the appearance of being man-made.
00:25:50Amid this skeptical environment landed fingerprints of the gods, the seminal 1995 book by author Graham
00:25:58Hancock. Picking up from where Ignatius Laloila Donelli left off, Hancock has continued to make the
00:26:05argument in favour of a primordial civilization that influenced the construction of megalithic
00:26:11structures and archaeological landmarks by highlighting their geographical alignment to
00:26:16notable celestial features, which point to a catastrophic event having occurred around the
00:26:22edge of the Younger Dryas Ice Age some 12,000 years ago. Critics like Egyptologist Zahi Hawass have
00:26:30viciously attacked Hancock and accused him of being a pseudo-scientist. But unlike Donelli 140 years ago,
00:26:37it looks like this time Hancock might get the last laugh. The discovery of elevated concentrations of
00:26:43iridium and magnetic spheres coinciding with the Younger Dryas strongly suggest that one or more
00:26:49commentary impacts could have drastically and rapidly altered our planet's climate, reshaping the Earth's
00:26:55ironography and the ocean levels in ways which would have been devastating for any advanced civilization.
00:27:02The discovery of Gobekli Tepe in southeastern Anatolia in the late 90s is further strong
00:27:08evidence of the high levels of cultural sophistication achieved around a time when
00:27:13orthodox archaeology assumed our ancestors were living as simpler hunter-gatherer nomads,
00:27:19instead of building astronomically aligned megalithic structures using rocks that weigh 8 to 10 metric tons each.
00:27:26The number of so-called natural formations found under the oceans is increasing. In 2014,
00:27:34a fisherman managed to detect what seemed like a huge underwater construction between islands in the
00:27:40Azores. The pyramidal structure was said to have a base of 8,000 square meters and was reported to the
00:27:47Portuguese Hydrographic Institute. Unfortunately, no further updates on this potentially groundbreaking
00:27:53discovery are available, and the only websites that carry the story are popular news outlets devoted
00:27:59to ancient mysteries. Reputable websites like National Geographic may squirm when dealing with
00:28:05unconfirmed news of sunken pyramids near the Azores or off the western coast of Cuba. But they have no
00:28:12problem writing about Doggerland, a landmass now submerged between the North Sea which used to connect
00:28:18mainland Europe and the eastern coast of Great Britain. Scientists know that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers
00:28:25used to inhabit this sunken land until they were forced to migrate onto higher ground around 6,000 years
00:28:31ago when the ice sheets that used to cover most of the northern hemisphere began to melt.
00:28:37Stop staring at your screen for a second and take a look at everything around you. The tables and chairs of
00:28:44the café you are sitting at, the bookcases and paintings in your living room, your video game console,
00:28:50and your TV in your bedroom, or the computers and file cabinets around your cubicle. We tend to forget
00:28:56just how fragile all of these gadgets really are, until we are brutally reminded of it by a natural disaster.
00:29:03And yet, the many volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and hurricanes we have watched on the news don't compare to the
00:29:10irreversible damage that one single cometary impact would inflict on our technically dependent
00:29:16civilization. How long would we last without electricity, running water, or gasoline? How much
00:29:23of our mighty civilization would endure after rising sea levels reshape the features of our planet once
00:29:29again? Graham Hancock's favorite saying goes, ours is a species with amnesia. Perhaps the myth of Atlantis
00:29:37has lingered in our minds for so long, it is because it represents the ultimate cautionary tale that,
00:29:43no matter how smart or powerful we think we are, no matter how proud of our achievements and discoveries
00:29:49we feel, and how far we think we have advanced in comparison to our primitive ancestors, it is nothing
00:29:55compared to the humbling might of Mother Nature. We are living in a pivotal time in the history for our
00:30:01species, and if we don't make the right choices, while there is still time, we risk becoming the new
00:30:07Atlantis of our future descendants.
00:30:13The Harapan or Indus Valley civilization, which flourished across what is now Pakistan and northwest
00:30:32India from about 3000 BC, but was abandoned in 1800 BC, according to some due to a terrible atomic war.
00:30:43The Indus Valley was thought to be the earliest civilization in the area, but over recent years,
00:30:51discoveries have been made which indicate the existence of a civilization on the Arabian
00:30:56Sea coast of India as far back as eight to ten thousand years ago. Some fringe researchers even
00:31:02believe that pre-ice age structures and artifacts from a lost civilization await discovery on the seabed in
00:31:09the area. The remains of one of the world's first great cities, Mahindra Daru, lie on the bank of the
00:31:17Indus River in the Sindh province of southern Pakistan. It was one of the major urban centers of the Indus
00:31:24Valley civilization, which originated about 3300 BC in the Indus and Gagahakura river valleys in what is now
00:31:32Pakistan and western India. Around a thousand towns and settlement sites of the Indus civilization have
00:31:39so far been discovered, with the main sites being the cities of Mohenjo-dara and Harappa, located 400
00:31:46miles north of Mohenjo-daro, and the coastal site of Lothal. Traces of the Indus civilization have been
00:31:54discovered as far north as the Himalayas and northern Afghanistan and as far south as Mumbai, Bombay.
00:32:02During its peak period between 2600 and 1900 BC, it has been estimated that the Indus civilization may
00:32:09have had a population of as much as five million. Located on the lower Indus, surrounded by a fertile
00:32:16floodplain, Mohenjo-daro must have been an extremely prosperous city, controlling the trade routes based on
00:32:23the river network. Signs of change at Mohenjo-daro began to appear in the material culture of the
00:32:29city after 1900 BC, and within a hundred years, Mohenjo-daro was abandoned as the Indus Valley
00:32:36civilization declined. Some bizarre claims have been made surrounding the supposed destruction of
00:32:43Mohenjo-daro. Without doubt, the most extreme theory is that it and other cities of the Indus
00:32:49civilization were destroyed by ancient atomic warfare. Cited as evidence for this are facts
00:32:56from the skeletons found at the ancient city were highly radioactive, comparable with those from
00:33:01Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and that many of these skeletons were sprawled in the street, some holding
00:33:07hands as if some instant horrible doom had taken place. The supposed discovery of a heavy layer of
00:33:14radioactive ash in Rajasthan, India, which covers a three square mile area, is also given in the
00:33:20support of the claims of ancient atomic warfare. In his 1970 book, Gods from Outer Space,
00:33:27Erik von Daniken says that the old Indian and Tibetan texts in particular team with science fiction weapons,
00:33:35I am thinking of the divine lightning and ray weapons, and of the texts that seem to be referring to
00:33:41bacteriological weapons. Another source which probably added to the myth is the Vamanika Shastra,
00:33:48science of aeronautics, which first appeared in English in 1973, translated by G. R. Joshier.
00:33:55This supposedly ancient Sanskrit text discusses the construction of Vimanas, mythical self-propelled
00:34:02aerial vehicles described in the Sanskrit epics. Recent research into this text has, however, shown that
00:34:09the manuscript was actually written sometime between 1918 and 1922. Though, this has not prevented it
00:34:17having a significant influence on proponents of the theory that Vimanas were real ancient flying machines,
00:34:23probably used for ancient aerial warfare. From here it is but a short step to ancient nuclear destruction.
00:34:30Many of the structures at Mohenjo-dero were constructed of fired bricks, and it is partly for this reason
00:34:43that the site is one of the best preserved ancient cities in the world. In fact, the walls of some of
00:34:48the structures still stand 10 feet or more high, pretty impressive after a nuclear destruction. For decades,
00:34:56archaeologists have argued about the origins of the Indus Valley civilization. In 2001, new findings by
00:35:03Indian scientists from the National Institute of Ocean Technology working in the Gulf of Cambay suggest
00:35:10that the Arapans were descended from an advanced mother culture that flourished at the end of the last
00:35:16ice age that was then submerged by rising sea levels before history began. In 2001, the remains of a huge
00:35:24lost city were located 118 feet underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India.
00:35:31A year later, further acoustic imaging surveys were undertaken and evidence recorded for human
00:35:37settlement at the site, which included the foundations of huge structures, pottery, sections of walls, beads,
00:35:44pieces of sculpture, and human bone. One of the wooden finds from the city has given a radiocarbon date of
00:35:527500 BC, which would make the site 4000 earlier than the oldest known civilization in India. Research is
00:36:00ongoing at this fascinating site, which if the dates are proved correct, may one day radically alter our
00:36:07understanding of the world's first civilizations. Researcher Graham Hancock, author of the 2002 book,
00:36:14Underworld, Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age, believes such discoveries vindicate his long-held beliefs about the
00:36:21existence of highly advanced civilizations throughout the world in prehistoric times and their obliteration
00:36:28from the historical record by a huge catastrophe over 10,000 years ago. Hancock commented on how the
00:36:35discoveries in the Gulf of Cambay fitted in nicely with his theories. In India, new evidence from the
00:36:42bottom of the sea is showing substance to the myth. This in the Gulf of Cambay in northwest India,
00:36:48in late 2001, scientists conducting pollution studies made an astonishing accidental discovery.
00:36:55Twenty-five miles from shore, at a depth of 120 feet, they picked up traces of an ancient city
00:37:02covering a large area of the seabed. The discovery threatened to overturn everything that archaeologists
00:37:08believed about the origins of civilization. They found a city the size of Manhattan with massive walls and
00:37:15plazas. And man-made objects from the submerged cities have yielded carbon dates up to 9,500 years old.
00:37:22That's 5,000 years older than any city discovered by archaeologists anywhere. It means we are dealing
00:37:29with a civilization lost at the end of the Ice Age, perhaps even one of those that the flood myths speak
00:37:35of which flourished before history began. The conclusion drawn by the geologists who found the site,
00:37:41was that the remains constituted a prehistoric civilization that was the forerunner, a model
00:37:47to the subsequent advanced Harapan civilization known to history. They believed that the prehistoric
00:37:53metropolis of Cambay was in existence from about 13,000 BC to around 3000 BC, making it the most ancient
00:38:01and largest city civilization not only in Asia, but also the entire world. For them, it's at least 7,500 years
00:38:10older than the oldest Mesopotamian city civilization. A certain Dr. Badrinyaran, chief geologist of the
00:38:18team, also put forward the rather extreme unscientific theory that strong evidence supports the presence
00:38:24of humans from at least 31,000 BP, who were evolving and developing and formed a great hitherto unknown
00:38:32civilization that was submerged by the flood, giving credence to local and global flood myths.
00:38:39There has been considerable controversy over these discoveries and their dating. Critics noted that
00:38:44the team who found the ancient remains were geologists and not archaeologists, and therefore had no
00:38:50experience with investigating archaeological sites and dating archaeological material. The single early date
00:38:57of 7595 BC obtained from the remains comes from one single C14 dating. Normally, several C14 dates have to
00:39:08be obtained from objects from the same context to be certain of the date. Claims of the existence of
00:39:14these submerged city-like structures have also been disputed, with some archaeologists maintaining
00:39:20they are natural, not man-made. The same is true of the stone artifacts recovered from the site,
00:39:26which many researchers believe are merely natural stones or rocks. The pottery recovered, for example, is
00:39:33merely drenched up casts of tube-worm tunnels from the ocean floor. At the University of Pennsylvania in
00:39:40the US, archaeologist Gregory Potsel, who has excavated a number of Harapan sites in India,
00:39:47points out that there is no scientific reason to believe that the fossilized wood piece was dated back
00:39:53to 7500 BC and is linked to the ruins in the seabed. Taking into account the strong tidal movement in
00:40:00the area, it could easily have been swept from elsewhere. Other archaeologists don't think it
00:40:06possible that organic matter would have survived for thousands of years in the ocean, thus making it
00:40:12extremely unlikely that finds from the site would contain anything that could be carbon dated.
00:40:17Despite the claims of Hancock and the National Institute of Ocean Technology, nothing has been
00:40:24published from the site since its discovery in 2001. Neither have the artifacts from the site been
00:40:31made available to outside investigation. In fact, nothing at all has been heard of these supposedly
00:40:37amazing discoveries in the Gulf of Cambay for at least 10 years. Taking all of this into account,
00:40:44it does indeed seem that the story of a 9000-year-old sunken city is just another wild claim made by
00:40:50dubious researchers and completely rejected by the legitimate archaeological community.
00:41:03The term Anua or Anunnaki indicates a group of gods in the Mesopotamian pantheon dating back
00:41:10thousands of years. For some researchers, the Anunnaki were much more than myth. They were real pre-human
00:41:17beings who constructed many of the ancient sites in the world. A number of these ancient sites,
00:41:22such as Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, are thought by some to be gateways to other worlds and parallel
00:41:28universes which can only be accessed by those who know. The Anunnaki
00:41:33Summa was an ancient civilization located in the Mesopotamia region of the Fertile Crescent,
00:41:41situated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This region is known today as the Middle East.
00:41:47But in antiquity, Mesopotamia also included parts of southwest Asia and land around the eastern
00:41:53Mediterranean Sea. Summa was first settled by people from 4500 to 4000 BC, though it is possible and indeed
00:42:02likely that some settlers arrived much earlier. The Sumerian language is the oldest written
00:42:08language in existence and is first attested about 3100 BC in southern Mesopotamia.
00:42:16In ancient Sumerian texts, Anunna describes the highest gods in the Mesopotamian pantheon,
00:42:24but confusingly it can also be used to design the pantheon of a particular city or city-state,
00:42:30such as the Anua of Eridu, for example. One of the main duties of the Anunnaki was to decide the
00:42:37fates as can be seen in the Sumerian myth Enki and the world order. Enki, the king of the Abzu,
00:42:44justly praises himself in his majesty. My father, the king of heaven and earth,
00:42:49made me famous in heaven and earth. My elder brother, the king of all the lands, gathered up all
00:42:55their divine powers and placed them in my hand. I brought the arts and crafts from the Echor,
00:43:01the house of Enlil, to my Abzu in Eridu. I am the good seaman begotten by a wild bull.
00:43:08I am firstborn of Anne. I am a great storm rising over the great earth. I am the great lord of the
00:43:15land. I am the principal among all rulers, the father of all foreign lands. I am the big brother of the
00:43:22gods. I bring prosperity to perfection. I am the seal keeper of heaven and earth. I am the wisdom
00:43:29and understanding of all the foreign lands. With Anne the king on Anne's dais, I oversee justice.
00:43:37With Enlil looking out over the lands, I decree good destinies. He has placed in my hands the decreeing
00:43:44of fate in this place where the sun rises. I am cherished by Ninthud. I am named with a good name
00:43:51by Ninhusaija. I am the leader of the Anunna gods. I was firstborn, son of Holy Anne.
00:44:00Although they are usually attested in literary and mythological texts, the Anunnaki are sometimes
00:44:05invoked in curse formulas and also appear in incantations. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic
00:44:12poem from ancient Mesopotamia and the second oldest religious text after the pyramid texts,
00:44:18the phrase Judge of the Anunnaki is mentioned as the title of Gilgamesh. This could be referenced to
00:44:24Gilgamesh's function as a judge in the underworld. Zechariah Sitchin
00:44:30According to author Zechariah Sitchin, whose theories were compiled into his seven books known
00:44:35as the Earth Chronicles, there is a twelfth planet beyond Neptune known as Nibiru that reaches our inner
00:44:41solar system once every 3600 years. Sitchin believes that an advanced race of human-like
00:44:48extraterrestrials, which he calls the Anunnaki, live on Nibiru and are no less than the missing
00:44:54link in Homo sapiens evolution. The blurb for Sitchin's 2015 book, The Anunnaki Chronicles,
00:45:01a Zechariah Sitchin reader states,
00:45:04What if the tales from the Old Testament and other ancient writings such as those from Sumer,
00:45:10Babylon, Egypt and Greece, were not myths or allegory but accounts of actual historical events?
00:45:17Drawing both widespread interest and criticism, Sitchin's Earth Chronicles series of books,
00:45:22beginning with the Twelfth Planet, detailed how humanity arose after the arrival of the Anunnaki,
00:45:29those who from Heaven to Earth came, alien gods who created modern man in their own image,
00:45:34and imparted gifts of civilizing knowledge. If his theories are true, as Sitchin wholeheartedly
00:45:41believed, then this collection presents some of the most important knowledge we have of our origins and
00:45:47future. Other researchers, such as Michael Cremo and Erich von Daniken, have argued along with Sitchin that
00:45:54the Anunnaki were aliens posing as gods who genetically engineered the human race, a slave species.
00:46:01What the evidence is for this extreme theory, however, has never been put forward.
00:46:06Gobekli Tepe
00:46:08Located six miles from the ancient city of Erva in the south-eastern Anatolia region of Turkey,
00:46:14Gobekli Tepe is considered to be one of the most important archaeological sites in the world.
00:46:20The discovery of this stunning 10,000-year-old site in the 1990s sent shockwaves through the
00:46:26archaeological world and beyond, with some researchers even claiming it as the site of the
00:46:31biblical Garden of Eden. The many examples of sculptures of megalithic architecture that make
00:46:37up what is the world's earliest temple at the site predate pottery, metrology, the invention of writing,
00:46:44and the wheel, and the beginning of agriculture. That hunter-gatherer peoples could organize the
00:46:49construction of such a complex site as far back as 10 or 11,000 years ago, not only revolutionizes
00:46:56our understanding of hunter-gatherer culture, but also poses serious challenges to the orthodox view
00:47:03of the rise of civilization. There have been one or two alternative suggestions which question the
00:47:08conventional timeline of Gobekli Tepe, however. A summary of British author Andrew Collins' 2014 book
00:47:15Gobekli Tepe, Genesis of the Gods, The Temple of the Watchers, and The Discovery of Eden,
00:47:21on the publisher's website, makes some astonishing claims.
00:47:25Collins explores how Gobekli Tepe was built as a reaction to a global cataclysm, the Great Flood in
00:47:32the Bible, and explains how it served as a gateway and map to the sky world, the place of first
00:47:38creation, reached via a bright star in the constellation of Cygnus. He reveals those behind
00:47:44its construction as the Watchers of the Book of Enoch and the Anunnaki gods of Sumerian tradition.
00:47:50Unveiling Gobekli Tepe's foundational role in the rise of civilization, Collins shows how it's connected
00:47:56to humanity's creation of the Garden of Eden and secrets Adam passed to his son Seth, the founder
00:48:03of an angelic race called the Sethites. In his search for Adam's legendary cave of treasures,
00:48:09the author discovers the Garden of Eden and the remains of the Tree of Life, in the same sacred
00:48:15region where Gobekli Tepe is being uncovered today. Ancient sites as gateways to other worlds
00:48:21But Collins is not alone in claiming that ancient sites like Gobekli Tepe acted as gateways to other
00:48:28dimensions. The Hell or Hades of the ancient classical world was supposedly located at the Cape Matapan
00:48:35caves on the southernmost tip of the Greek mainland. Cape Matapan, also known as Cape Teneron or Tenero,
00:48:44was the place where Orpheus traveled down to Hades to rescue Eurydice, and where Hercules made his own
00:48:50descent to the underworld and brought Cerberus, the multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the
00:48:56underworld to the surface. A mysterious chasm known as Lacus Curtius, located in the heart of the
00:49:03ancient Roman Forum, was also believed to be a gateway to Hell. The name indicates that it was a
00:49:09lake, and archaeologists believe that in ancient times there was a lake on the site of the later Roman
00:49:14Forum. There are various stories of ritual sacrifice and offerings surrounding the site.
00:49:20It was once believed that at the beginning of a new reign, a chasm would suddenly open in the
00:49:24middle of the Forum Valley, which could be closed, according to priests, by human sacrifice.
00:49:31Pluto's Gate, or Plutonian in Greek, is located at the World Heritage site of Hierapolis in southwestern
00:49:38Turkey, which was discovered as recently as 2013 when archaeologists followed the route of a thermal
00:49:44spring. The remains, which the archaeologists recovered, matched closely with ancient descriptions
00:49:51of the temple to the underworld on the site that disappeared mysteriously in the 6th century AD.
00:49:57The Greek geographer, philosopher, and traveler Strabo, who lived from 64 BC to 24 AD, described the
00:50:05site when he visited. This space is full of vapor so misty and dense that one can scarcely see the ground.
00:50:12Any animals that pass inside meets an instant death. I threw in sparrows, and they immediately
00:50:18braved their last and fell. Among other artifacts at the site, the archaeologists discovered an
00:50:25inscription with a dedication to the deities of the underworld, Pluto and Kor. They also found the
00:50:31remains of a temple, a pool, and a series of steps built above the cave, all fitting the descriptions
00:50:37of the site in ancient sources. There are numerous other myths describing such entrance places to the
00:50:44underworld all over the world. Could these ancient sites have somehow retained in myth form
00:50:50their function as gateways to other realms?
00:50:53The 13th century BC witnessed the zenith of many Aegean and eastern Mediterranean civilizations,
00:51:07such as the Mycenaeans in Greece and the Hittites of what is now Turkey and Syria. However,
00:51:13these civilizations declined and disappeared at the end of the Bronze Age around 3000 years ago. For many,
00:51:19this collapse was caused by the mysterious Sea Peoples. The only contemporary source for these Sea
00:51:25Peoples are inscriptions describing two Egyptian military campaigns. The first of these campaigns
00:51:32was by the Mernatar, who ruled from 1213 to 1203 BC against the Libyans, who with the help of
00:51:39northerners coming from all lands, also referred to as Peoples of the Countries of the Sea, were attempting
00:51:45to move into the western delta. Three or four decades later, Pharaoh Ramesses III, who reigned from around
00:51:521186 to 1155 BC, fought against another wave of these invaders moving south from Syria. Ramesses
00:52:00commemorated the campaign on his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu on the west bank of the Nile opposite
00:52:07Luxor, where he referred to his antagonists as invaders from the foreign countries. The inscriptions at
00:52:14Medinet Habu date to the year of Ramesses III's reign at about 1190 BC. The texts are extremely significant
00:52:23as they provide an account of Egypt's campaign against these invaders from an Egyptian point of view,
00:52:28and the artistic depictions of the Sea Peoples give important information about the appearance of
00:52:34weapons of the various groups. One inscription from the site states,
00:52:39Now the northern countries, which were in their isles, were quivering in their bodies. They penetrated
00:52:45the channels of the Nile's mouths. Their nostrils have ceased to function so that their desire to breathe
00:52:51the breath. His majesty has gone forth like a whirlwind against them, fighting on the battlefield like
00:52:58a runner. The dread of him and the terror of him have entered into their bodies. They are capsized
00:53:04and overwhelmed in their places. Their hearts are taken away, their soul is flown away, their weapons
00:53:10are scattered by the sea. The Phoenicians are known today for their development of the alphabet,
00:53:16their cedar-built ships, fine purple cloth, and their trading cities in Lebanon, Carthage, and Tyre.
00:53:23The Phoenician culture emerged around 1550 BC in a narrow coastal strip of land which is now Lebanon,
00:53:30Syria, and parts of Israel, and became the great maritime traders of the ancient world. By 700 BC,
00:53:37they had expanded to dominate the Mediterranean area, establishing emporiums and colonies from Cyprus
00:53:43in the east to the Aegean Sea, Italy, the coast of north of Africa, and the Atlantic coast of Spain
00:53:50in the west. However, invasions of their homeland by the Persians in 539 BC and Alexander the Great 200
00:53:58years later sent their civilization into decline. The Phoenician civilization was organized in city-states,
00:54:05which generally occupied strategically important sites along the Mediterranean coast, and soon
00:54:10became important trading centers establishing trade networks with Egypt, the Hittite Empire,
00:54:16and Babylonia. Many of these cities, Byblos, Tyre, and Sidon, had been Canaanite settlements,
00:54:23and there is no reason to believe there was any cultural break between the Canaanites and Phoenicians
00:54:28in the area. However, around 1200 BC, an unknown event occurred in the region which caused a general
00:54:35collapse. This is historically connected with an invasion from the north by a group known as the
00:54:40Sea Peoples. Mycenaean Greece, circa 1600 BC to 1100 BC, consisted of a series of independent city-states,
00:54:51centred on palaces, and the most importance of which was Mycenae in the northeastern Peloponnese,
00:54:57the home of the semi-legendary Agamemnon, one of the leaders of the Greek army which defeated
00:55:03Troy. Each Mycenaean city was autonomous, ruled by a king, and protected by considerable fortifications.
00:55:11At their height, the Mycenaeans controlled all of Greece and the Aegean from the separate
00:55:16city-states. The Sea Peoples are believed by some to have caused the downfall of the Mycenaean
00:55:22civilizations at the end of the Bronze Age, during which all Mycenaean palaces, except
00:55:28those on the Acropolis of Athens, were destroyed. Although human agency was certainly involved,
00:55:34as many of the palaces were burnt to the ground, whether the Sea Peoples were responsible for all of
00:55:39this, or just part of a more widespread unrest, is not clear. Some researchers have suggested that
00:55:45the Mycenaeans later formed all or part of the Sea Peoples, perhaps together with groups of Phoenicians
00:55:52becoming essentially pirates roaming the eastern Mediterranean. Whoever these people were,
00:55:58and whatever happened around 1200 BC, the power of the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Mycenaean Greeks,
00:56:04and other civilizations in the area was considerably weakened, and the whole of the
00:56:09the Mediterranean world ended a period of economic and political instability which will still last
00:56:14for hundreds of years. It is during this volatile period that many Phoenician cities began to develop
00:56:21into significant maritime powers, perhaps due to the power vacuum led by the decline of the major
00:56:28Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures of the time. The ethnic makeup of the Sea Peoples has long been a
00:56:34matter for heated debate. Over the years, it has been believed by various researchers to have included
00:56:40Etruscans, Trojans, Sardinians, Philistines, Minoans from Crete, and of course, Atlanteans.
00:56:48In his 2008 book, Bronze Age Atlantis, the International Nautical Empire of the Sea Peoples,
00:56:54author Walter Bakum posits a link between the Sea Peoples of the eastern Mediterranean at the lost
00:57:00civilization of Atlantis. An advertisement for his book sums up his theory, stating,
00:57:06Walt Bakum merits the Empire of Atlantis as having initiated the Bronze Age. He also sees Atlantis as
00:57:12being a cultural and trading bridge between the American continents and Europe. He identifies the Sea
00:57:18Peoples who attacked Egypt in the 1200 BCE as offshoots from the inhabitants of Atlantis. Although the title
00:57:26would seem to imply romantic fantasy, the book is a serious work about the confederation of two major
00:57:32peoples and their search for the metals that gave them almost complete control of the Bronze Age for
00:57:37a thousand years. It rethinks the sensationalized and romanticized version of Plato's Atlantis,
00:57:44with proof after proof of the identities and commercial enterprises of those ancient master mariners.
00:57:50It clearly shows that the story as told by the Egyptian priest to Solon, who brought it back to Greece,
00:57:56was derived from original records contained in ancient Egyptian temple inscriptions and papyrus
00:58:02texts. The book further identifies the most reasonable location of the capital city of Atlantis,
00:58:08the correct time and extent of its oceanic empire, and the reason for its collapse in 1200 BCE.
00:58:15Scholars of Eastern Mediterranean prehistory have been waiting with barely concealed excitement for 13 years
00:58:22for Bakun's solid evidence for his extreme theories. He has yet to provide any. Although some researchers
00:58:29believe that the Sea Peoples were a real confederacy of seafaring raiders, many think that rather than
00:58:35being interpreted as one cultural group, the term is best understood as referring to a number of
00:58:40population movements by various groups around 1200 BCE. In other words, they were a symptom of the collapse,
00:58:48not the cause. The origins and identity of these roving groups, however, is still obscure.
00:58:54However, a recent DNA study of ancient human remains from the city of Ashkelon on the coastal plain 12
00:59:00miles or so north of Gaza, in what is now Israel, has provided some fascinating significant results
00:59:07in terms of the identity of the Sea Peoples. The abstract of the article, which appeared in the
00:59:12journal Science Advances in July 2019, makes interesting reading. It says, the ancient Mediterranean
00:59:19port city of Ashkelon, identified as Philistine during the Iron Age, underwent a marked cultural
00:59:26change between the Late Bronze and the Early Iron Age. It has long been debated whether this change was
00:59:32driven by a substantial movement of people, possibly linked to a larger migration of the so-called Sea Peoples.
00:59:39Here we report genome-wide data of 10 Bronze and Iron Age individuals from Ashkelon. We find that the
00:59:46Early Iron Age population was genetically distinct due to a European-related admixture. This genetic
00:59:54signal is no longer detectable in the Later Iron Age population. Our results support that a migration
01:00:00event occurred during the Bronze to Iron Age transition in Ashkelon, but it did not leave a long-lasting
01:00:07genetic signature. Hopefully, this is just the first of many DNA studies of the ancient populations of
01:00:13the Eastern Mediterranean, which will soon shed some much-needed light on the mysterious Sea Peoples.
01:00:25The largest collection of four millennia of Egyptian culture is located in Turin, Italy,
01:00:30and the single most valuable document is the Turin King List or Turin Royal Canon. It is a damaged papyrus
01:00:39that provides an overview of all the rulers of Egypt. Only Cairo, London and Turin have major museums totally
01:00:47dedicated to ancient Egypt. For the grand collection in Turin, the credit belongs to diplomat and collector
01:00:54Bernadino Droveti who had been appointed by Napoleon as a French consul in Egypt in 1802 and as consul general
01:01:05in 1821. For years, Droveti strove to create his collection in Egypt in the 1820s, later to offer it
01:01:14to potential European buyers in an auction. The largest collection was purchased by the French government in
01:01:201823 and the collection ended up in Turin, then a part of France. With several further purchases of
01:01:27valuable Egyptian artifacts, Turin became a center for the remains of Egyptian culture, which were housed
01:01:34at the impressive Jesuit architectural complex downtown. Pyramid researcher Dr. Sam Osmanigic visited
01:01:41the Egyptian Museum in Turin a couple of times, 20 and 12 years ago. The focus of his visits had been on
01:01:49the largest collection of mummies in the world. However, his third visit was focused on the Turin king list.
01:01:56Droveti obtained this papyrus, 1.7 meters long and 0.41 meters wide. In 1818 in Luxor, most likely
01:02:06from one of the tombs, packaged it and mailed it to Turin in 1820. During the transport, the papyrus was
01:02:14damaged and unfortunately 50% of the text was lost. The chronology of Egyptian rulers intrigued
01:02:21researchers throughout the world. There are several historical documents which allowed the compilation
01:02:27of this sequence. Nine documents stand out. Den Sil, a pharaoh of the first dynasty listing all first
01:02:35dynasty pharaohs from Nama to himself. Palermo stone, of the fifth dynasty listing the former pharaohs of
01:02:43the five dynasties. However, the stone had been broken, so the list is incomplete. Giza king list,
01:02:50created during the sixth dynasty, selective. Karnak king list, 18th century, highly selective.
01:02:59Abydos king list, 19th century, missing the pharaohs of the first immediate period.
01:03:05Sakwara king list, missing the pharaohs of the first dynasty. Manenthos list, Greek period,
01:03:12the original had been lost, translations have inaccurate additions. All of these lists are, however,
01:03:19deemed complementary relative to the most comprehensive and systematic Turin royal list,
01:03:25compiled at the age of pharaoh Ramones II in the 19th dynasty, i.e. in the 13th century BC.
01:03:33Only this list in Turin contains the names of pharaohs and the years, often even months and days,
01:03:39when they reigned. Other lists may have been used for comparison and verification. For instance,
01:03:45some lists excluded and hated foreign rulers, Nubian, Libyan, Mesopotamian. Some others excluded the
01:03:52rulers of different religious persuasions and so on. In this regard, the Turin list is objective and
01:03:58neutral. Presumably, when it had been undamaged, it included the names of 300 rulers. Sadly, both the
01:04:06beginning and the end of the list has been lost, and some names have been gravely damaged.
01:04:11The papyrus was divided into 11 columns. The first column lists the gods of ancient Egypt,
01:04:17the second, the demigods and mythical kings of ancient Egypt. The third column contains the
01:04:23sons of gods, dynasties 1 and 2. The fourth and subsequent ones list the sons of gods,
01:04:30dynasties 2 through to 5, i.e. mortal rulers. Now we come to the cause of Dr. Sam's interest in this
01:04:37document. The list of pharaohs had been compiled, so the rulers could demonstrate and prove that they
01:04:43were direct descendants of gods and that their bloodline reached all the way back to Horus.
01:04:48Therefore, sons of gods or pharaohs were reincarnations of Horus on earth, and after
01:04:54death they were identified with Osiris. This list reaches back to the time when Egypt had been ruled
01:05:00by gods who came from the sky. At the end of the list, in its last two lines, as a summary of the
01:05:06entire document, it reads, Honorable Shemsihor, year 13,420. The reign before Shemsihor, 23,200 years.
01:05:18That's a total of 36,320 years. Although the bulk of the first and second column is missing,
01:05:26it's clear that it had contained a record of the first rulers of Egypt, who reigned considerably
01:05:31longer than mortal humans. We could make a comparison with the Sumerian king list. In an
01:05:37age more than 30,000 years ago, Sumerian kings ruled on average for a thousand years each.
01:05:43That had been, without a doubt, the case in Egypt as well. Certainly, in those times,
01:05:49Egypt looked different. Instead of the present-day desert, northern Africa had been green, with fertile
01:05:55soil and a pleasant climate. That was why the gods rightly selected Egypt as their home.
01:06:01Criticisms of some historians that the age of the gods ought to be discounted,
01:06:05and the reign of Egypt's rulers should be counted only from the pharaoh, the first mortal,
01:06:10son of gods, pharaoh's menace, are biased and unscientific. If we accept at all mortal rulers,
01:06:17why would we reject immortal ones? Why have such selectivity in science? To take what suits us and
01:06:23what fits our view of the world, and to cast aside what clashes with our own ideas?
01:06:29The Turing king list clearly demonstrated that there had been nine dynasties that correspond to
01:06:34the pre-dynastic period of the pharaohs. These include the rulers of Memphis, rulers of the north,
01:06:41and lastly Shemsu-hor, Horus followers, who reigned over Egypt until Menes, the first mortal pharaoh of
01:06:48Egypt. According to Roman historian Uzbius of Caesarea, the dynasty of the gods reigned in
01:06:55Egypt for 13,900 years. The first god, Vulcan, who brought fire to humans, then Sosus, Isis,
01:07:04and Osiris, followed by Osiris' brother, Typhon, and ultimately Horus, son of Isis and Osiris.
01:07:12They had been succeeded by demigods who reigned for 11,025 years. This adds up to 24,925 years,
01:07:21around 3,000 years BC. The first human pharaohs took over as the rulers of Egypt.
01:07:27Manetho also mentioned the age of gods and demigods. He identified four dynasties that
01:07:33preceded Menes, two dynasties of gods, one of demigods, as well as one transitional dynasty.
01:07:39The first two dynasties included several crucial gods, Petar, Ra, Shu, Geb, Osiris,
01:07:47Seth, and Horus, and they reigned over Egypt for a period of 12,300 years. They were succeeded by a
01:07:54third dynasty led by Toth, which numbered twelve divine pharaohs. They reigned for more than 1,500
01:08:01years. These had to be supplanted by 30 demigods of the fourth dynasty, who had often been referred
01:08:07to as the followers of Horus. The hawk was their emblem, and they reigned for 6,000 years.
01:08:14After the reign of these otherworldly beings, chaos broke out in Egypt. Finally,
01:08:19Pharaoh Menes brought the order and united the lands of ancient Egypt.
01:08:24On the Turim Papyrus, the first column lists the gods of an ancient land on the Nile River.
01:08:30The second column, in lines 1-10, lists demigods, or spirits, and mythical kings, as described by some.
01:08:38It is to this section of the papyrus that Dr. Sam's eyes were drawn the most.
01:08:42These two columns had also been most gravely damaged. A couple of years ago, the museum announced
01:08:48that the damaged sections of the papyrus had been found and that their identification was underway.
01:08:54Let us hope that we'll get new confirmations about these most ancient times.
01:08:59Focus Meditation by Dr. Sam on Turing King's List
01:09:02A lower priest had written on this papyrus following the instruction of the supreme priest.
01:09:09They based it on all other documents. The gods actually existed. It had been a different age.
01:09:14They had flying craft. Gods reigned over humans.
01:09:18Museum visitors brought Dr. Sam back to reality. Due to the sheer volume of artifacts on the museum's
01:09:25several levels, few set aside much time to focus on the Turing King List. Contemporary, unbiased
01:09:31researchers will come back to this list and forever shake Egyptologists' dogmas in the future.
01:09:37Egyptian history didn't start 5,000 years ago, but more than 36,000 years before the present.
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01:10:11Transcription by CastingWords
01:10:41Transcription by CastingWords
01:11:11Transcription by CastingWords
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