1 00:00:11,640 --> 00:00:13,080 - Happy? - Yep. 2 00:00:13,160 --> 00:00:15,240 - All right, here we go. - And take one. 3 00:00:15,320 --> 00:00:17,600 How would you describe yourself? 4 00:00:18,960 --> 00:00:20,640 How would I describe myself? 5 00:00:20,720 --> 00:00:23,640 You've been described as a pseudo-archaeologist. 6 00:00:23,720 --> 00:00:25,960 - I have. - Someone who cherry-picks your data. 7 00:00:26,040 --> 00:00:29,240 Your books are read by millions, but dismissed by academics. 8 00:00:30,480 --> 00:00:33,320 Did you know that you were picking a fight with academia? 9 00:00:33,400 --> 00:00:35,880 Because a lot of people don't want to hear this. 10 00:00:35,960 --> 00:00:39,760 You have been at the front of the line for decades 11 00:00:40,480 --> 00:00:45,040 and you exposed me to a lot of these controversial ideas 12 00:00:45,120 --> 00:00:46,880 that have now been substantiated. 13 00:00:48,280 --> 00:00:50,040 Well, I'm Graham Hancock. 14 00:00:51,520 --> 00:00:54,920 I don't claim to be an archaeologist or a scientist. 15 00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:56,720 I am a journalist, 16 00:00:56,800 --> 00:01:00,960 and the subject that I'm investigating is human prehistory. 17 00:01:15,040 --> 00:01:20,080 My suspicion is humans are a species with amnesia. 18 00:01:20,880 --> 00:01:25,720 We have forgotten something incredibly important in our own past. 19 00:01:26,400 --> 00:01:30,400 And I think that that incredibly important forgotten thing 20 00:01:30,480 --> 00:01:34,480 is a lost, advanced civilization of the Ice Age. 21 00:01:36,680 --> 00:01:40,840 I've spent decades searching for proof of this lost civilization 22 00:01:40,920 --> 00:01:42,600 at sites around the globe. 23 00:01:43,080 --> 00:01:44,080 Oh, wow. 24 00:01:44,520 --> 00:01:48,440 Now my aim is to piece together these clues... 25 00:01:48,520 --> 00:01:51,800 And that seems extremely strange. 26 00:01:52,800 --> 00:01:56,560 ...to show you evidence that challenges the traditional view of human history. 27 00:01:57,560 --> 00:02:00,440 It pushes back these dates, far, far back. 28 00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:05,480 Ancient structures built with surprising sophistication... 29 00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:09,480 It's the most amazing archeoastronomy site in North America. 30 00:02:10,160 --> 00:02:14,800 ...revealing the fingerprints of an advanced prehistoric civilization. 31 00:02:14,880 --> 00:02:16,800 This pillar is like our Rosetta Stone. 32 00:02:17,920 --> 00:02:21,440 The possibility of civilization emerging earlier than we think 33 00:02:21,520 --> 00:02:22,520 gets stronger. 34 00:02:23,560 --> 00:02:27,320 It's going to absolutely demand a rewrite of history as we know it. 35 00:02:27,400 --> 00:02:28,400 Yeah. 36 00:02:30,920 --> 00:02:35,120 Of course, this idea is upsetting to the so-called experts 37 00:02:35,200 --> 00:02:39,440 who insist that the only humans who existed during the Ice Age 38 00:02:39,520 --> 00:02:41,080 were simple hunter-gatherers. 39 00:02:42,280 --> 00:02:47,080 That automatically makes me enemy number one to archaeologists. 40 00:02:47,160 --> 00:02:49,840 Why not say, "We don't know. This is a spectacular mystery," 41 00:02:49,920 --> 00:02:50,840 and leave it at that. 42 00:02:50,920 --> 00:02:53,920 It's my job to offer an alternative point of view. 43 00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:57,400 Perhaps there's been a forgotten episode in human history. 44 00:02:57,480 --> 00:02:59,440 But perhaps the extremely defensive, 45 00:02:59,520 --> 00:03:02,280 arrogant and patronizing attitude of mainstream academia 46 00:03:02,360 --> 00:03:04,600 is stopping us from considering that possibility. 47 00:03:05,800 --> 00:03:09,000 I'm trying to overthrow... the paradigm of history. 48 00:03:31,520 --> 00:03:34,880 For 30 years, I've been looking for something 49 00:03:34,960 --> 00:03:37,560 I was told couldn't possibly exist. 50 00:03:39,400 --> 00:03:45,200 An advanced human civilization, much older than our own, lost to history. 51 00:03:47,080 --> 00:03:51,200 The mainstream version of history, says that after the end of the Ice Age... 52 00:03:53,040 --> 00:03:56,200 on their own initiative, our hunter-gatherer ancestors 53 00:03:56,280 --> 00:04:00,080 suddenly began farming and raising livestock, 54 00:04:00,160 --> 00:04:03,360 creating settlements and eventually cities, 55 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:08,720 until the first civilizations emerged around 6,000 years ago. 56 00:04:10,080 --> 00:04:14,040 But new discoveries keep on pushing that horizon back. 57 00:04:15,360 --> 00:04:19,160 One such discovery has been made here in Indonesia. 58 00:04:22,240 --> 00:04:24,560 On the most populated island, Java, 59 00:04:26,160 --> 00:04:30,320 about four hours south of Jakarta, near the village of Karyamukti. 60 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:40,440 I've come here to investigate one of the most remarkable 61 00:04:40,520 --> 00:04:43,800 and controversial archaeological discoveries of our time. 62 00:04:45,040 --> 00:04:45,880 The initial evidence 63 00:04:45,960 --> 00:04:49,040 has utterly confounded mainstream archaeologists 64 00:04:49,120 --> 00:04:52,520 because it calls into question everything they've taught us 65 00:04:52,600 --> 00:04:54,280 about the prehistory of humanity. 66 00:04:56,280 --> 00:04:58,840 It's a site that raises a disturbing question. 67 00:04:59,840 --> 00:05:01,920 What if an advanced civilization 68 00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:04,640 flourished here in Indonesia during the Ice Age? 69 00:05:05,760 --> 00:05:07,880 A civilization that was lost to history 70 00:05:07,960 --> 00:05:08,960 until now. 71 00:05:12,440 --> 00:05:14,360 This is Gunung Padang. 72 00:05:19,040 --> 00:05:23,040 The name means "mountain of light" or "mountain of enlightenment" 73 00:05:23,120 --> 00:05:24,840 in the local Sundanese dialect. 74 00:05:27,440 --> 00:05:31,000 Local people speak with awe of its mysterious atmosphere... 75 00:05:34,440 --> 00:05:38,400 and pilgrims come from far and wide to honor the spirit of the mountain. 76 00:05:40,160 --> 00:05:43,320 They purify themselves at an ancient spring at the base... 77 00:05:45,920 --> 00:05:47,400 before heading up the hill... 78 00:05:49,440 --> 00:05:51,120 three hundred and sixty feet. 79 00:05:52,560 --> 00:05:55,400 The climb up it is steep and hard work. 80 00:05:57,400 --> 00:05:59,920 But worth it once you reach the top. 81 00:06:05,200 --> 00:06:09,160 Because Gunung Padang is like no place else on Earth. 82 00:06:17,280 --> 00:06:21,600 For a long while, archaeologists thought it was just another hill in the jungle. 83 00:06:23,240 --> 00:06:25,320 But there was a problem with that view. 84 00:06:26,600 --> 00:06:30,480 You get to the summit and you see these blocks scattered across the landscape. 85 00:06:37,920 --> 00:06:41,880 Oddly hexagonal stone slabs strewn about everywhere. 86 00:06:46,480 --> 00:06:47,720 Thousands of them. 87 00:06:48,680 --> 00:06:49,840 It's quite a spectacle. 88 00:06:51,600 --> 00:06:55,280 But not out of place in Indonesia's volcanic landscape 89 00:06:55,360 --> 00:06:58,120 where blocks like these are naturally formed. 90 00:07:00,120 --> 00:07:02,160 They're called columnar jointing 91 00:07:02,240 --> 00:07:05,880 and are created when volcanic rock, in this case, basalt, 92 00:07:05,960 --> 00:07:08,320 cools and cracks into distinctive shapes. 93 00:07:11,160 --> 00:07:14,040 At first sight, this open terrace could be mistaken 94 00:07:14,120 --> 00:07:16,680 for a natural formation of volcanic rock, 95 00:07:16,760 --> 00:07:20,040 which is why archaeologists were so slow to investigate it. 96 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:24,440 But take a closer look, and it becomes obvious 97 00:07:24,520 --> 00:07:28,600 that these rocks have been cut, repurposed as building materials 98 00:07:28,680 --> 00:07:30,440 and placed by human hands. 99 00:07:33,400 --> 00:07:35,920 Among the jumbled masses of fallen stone, 100 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:39,520 traces of structures show up all over this hill. 101 00:07:40,320 --> 00:07:47,120 Mounds, rectangular rooms, and long walls 102 00:07:48,200 --> 00:07:50,440 on carefully laid out terraces, 103 00:07:52,520 --> 00:07:54,280 all clearly man-made. 104 00:07:58,360 --> 00:08:02,920 When archaeologist Ali Akbar and his team began working here in 2012, 105 00:08:03,960 --> 00:08:06,200 they assumed that any structures on this hill 106 00:08:06,280 --> 00:08:09,440 would prove to be less than 2,500 years old. 107 00:08:10,800 --> 00:08:13,880 We don't know about the absolute dating in this site. 108 00:08:13,960 --> 00:08:18,600 This site was abandoned for so long and perhaps forgotten. 109 00:08:19,840 --> 00:08:24,120 The team also assumed that the ancient builders of Gunung Padang 110 00:08:24,200 --> 00:08:27,640 had found the blocks of columnar jointing naturally present at the site. 111 00:08:28,800 --> 00:08:31,240 But then they discovered something strange. 112 00:08:33,480 --> 00:08:37,960 The columnar joint is imported from another region, 113 00:08:38,039 --> 00:08:39,360 from another location. 114 00:08:40,320 --> 00:08:45,919 That means that every one of these blocks, up to 50,000 of them, 115 00:08:46,000 --> 00:08:50,000 and each weighing up to a third of a ton, were carried up this hill. 116 00:08:52,720 --> 00:08:55,200 When Dr. Akbar's team first surveyed the site, 117 00:08:55,840 --> 00:08:59,040 they quickly found evidence that humans had been present, 118 00:08:59,600 --> 00:09:03,640 in what's called a cultural layer, but not where they expected. 119 00:09:05,200 --> 00:09:09,680 We are very surprised that this site consists of two cultural layers. 120 00:09:11,480 --> 00:09:15,600 The first layer on the surface, it's from 500 BC. 121 00:09:17,400 --> 00:09:19,080 But at four meters depth, 122 00:09:19,160 --> 00:09:21,480 we found another cultural layer. 123 00:09:22,320 --> 00:09:25,360 It is from 5,200 BC. 124 00:09:29,280 --> 00:09:31,800 It is very surprising. We are very shocked. 125 00:09:32,920 --> 00:09:34,000 It is very old. 126 00:09:37,840 --> 00:09:39,720 Seven thousand years ago, 127 00:09:39,800 --> 00:09:42,520 far from being builders on such an epic scale, 128 00:09:43,200 --> 00:09:45,840 there's no evidence that the people of this region 129 00:09:45,920 --> 00:09:48,640 were anything other than simple hunter-gatherers. 130 00:09:51,080 --> 00:09:54,400 What could have motivated them to make the immense effort 131 00:09:54,480 --> 00:09:56,200 of bringing all these blocks here? 132 00:10:00,680 --> 00:10:03,800 I'm not really sure about the function of this site. 133 00:10:03,880 --> 00:10:09,640 However, we've still not found a skeleton or human bone, 134 00:10:09,720 --> 00:10:11,760 so this is not a burial site. 135 00:10:12,680 --> 00:10:15,840 Perhaps it is for ceremonies or rituals. 136 00:10:18,840 --> 00:10:22,560 We're dealing with truly a mystery here. A mystery that needs to be explained. 137 00:10:26,760 --> 00:10:31,280 It wasn't until another investigation looked even deeper into the site 138 00:10:31,360 --> 00:10:36,240 that an extraordinary new possibility began to force itself on the researchers. 139 00:10:38,000 --> 00:10:40,040 That they might be confronted 140 00:10:40,120 --> 00:10:43,360 by the work of a civilization lost to history. 141 00:10:46,960 --> 00:10:50,920 Dr. Danny Hilman Natawidjaja studied at Caltech, 142 00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:54,640 but now works for Indonesia's Geotechnology Research Center. 143 00:10:56,920 --> 00:11:00,960 As a geologist, Dr. Hilman knew there was something very strange 144 00:11:01,040 --> 00:11:02,240 about Gunung Padang. 145 00:11:05,680 --> 00:11:09,440 Exploring the site, he found that the columnar basalt blocks 146 00:11:09,520 --> 00:11:11,760 don't just blanket the top of the hill. 147 00:11:13,640 --> 00:11:16,080 They also wrap around its terraced slopes 148 00:11:17,800 --> 00:11:20,880 covering an area of at least 37 acres. 149 00:11:24,040 --> 00:11:27,080 This exposed section between two of the terraces 150 00:11:27,160 --> 00:11:29,520 appears to be some sort of retaining wall. 151 00:11:30,400 --> 00:11:34,240 There are some archaeologists who are convinced this is entirely natural. 152 00:11:34,320 --> 00:11:35,720 I know this is natural rock, 153 00:11:35,800 --> 00:11:38,800 but they're suggesting the whole layout of the thing is natural as well. 154 00:11:38,880 --> 00:11:42,880 They are natural, but the position now is not in the natural position. 155 00:11:42,960 --> 00:11:45,640 - And normally vertical. - Vertical, yes. 156 00:11:45,720 --> 00:11:47,520 - That's right. - Here it's laid on its side. 157 00:11:47,600 --> 00:11:49,720 - Also, it's not cut like this. - Yeah. 158 00:11:49,800 --> 00:11:51,920 Here, all is cut into one or one-and-a-half meters. 159 00:11:52,000 --> 00:11:53,000 Right. 160 00:11:54,400 --> 00:11:57,560 There's something else unusual that Dr. Hilman noticed 161 00:11:58,880 --> 00:12:00,360 between the blocks. 162 00:12:01,240 --> 00:12:04,720 The natural position, there is no ground mass in between. 163 00:12:05,280 --> 00:12:06,680 It will be very tight together. 164 00:12:08,640 --> 00:12:12,160 But here, in between these columnar rocks, there is a mortar 165 00:12:12,240 --> 00:12:15,960 - that holds them together, like cement. - Yeah. 166 00:12:16,040 --> 00:12:19,240 The thickness is, like, five centimeters, and it's very consistent. 167 00:12:19,320 --> 00:12:22,320 Right, so they're kind of leveling out the construction blocks 168 00:12:22,400 --> 00:12:26,120 with the mortar between them. Put there deliberately by human beings 169 00:12:26,200 --> 00:12:28,120 - as part of a construction process. - Yes. Yeah. 170 00:12:31,960 --> 00:12:33,480 So Danny began to investigate this, 171 00:12:33,560 --> 00:12:35,960 and this is where the surprises began to appear. 172 00:12:37,880 --> 00:12:42,360 What Dr. Hilman started to realize as he put together all his data, 173 00:12:43,000 --> 00:12:46,200 was that Gunung Padang is much more than just a hill. 174 00:12:50,760 --> 00:12:53,880 This is the ancient site of Gunung Padang. 175 00:12:55,280 --> 00:12:57,880 The north side features a stairway 176 00:12:57,960 --> 00:12:59,720 climbing more than 300 feet, 177 00:12:59,800 --> 00:13:02,320 until it reaches the first of five terraces. 178 00:13:03,800 --> 00:13:09,280 Over an area about 490 feet long by 130 feet wide. 179 00:13:10,920 --> 00:13:15,840 The entire hill is ringed by retaining walls of columnar basalt. 180 00:13:17,280 --> 00:13:20,120 Using an estimated 50,000 blocks, 181 00:13:20,200 --> 00:13:22,840 it's a massive terraforming project 182 00:13:22,920 --> 00:13:24,880 that remodeled a volcanic hill 183 00:13:24,960 --> 00:13:28,600 into what can best be described as a step pyramid. 184 00:13:34,280 --> 00:13:36,560 So this is all man-made terraces here. 185 00:13:36,640 --> 00:13:37,920 Yeah. 186 00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:40,920 It's not the same shape of pyramids 187 00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:43,760 like Mayan or Giza pyramids. 188 00:13:43,840 --> 00:13:48,560 No. It's a similar idea that it rises in terraces to a pyramid-shape, yeah. 189 00:13:48,640 --> 00:13:50,680 - Yeah. But it has circular features. - Indeed. 190 00:13:52,160 --> 00:13:55,040 There's a question of definitions here. How do we define a pyramid? 191 00:13:55,120 --> 00:13:59,280 But if we define it as a structure that rises in a series of terraces to a summit, 192 00:13:59,360 --> 00:14:01,880 that's what we're looking at at Gunung Padang. 193 00:14:03,760 --> 00:14:07,960 And the fact that such an ancient pyramid exists here at all 194 00:14:08,040 --> 00:14:12,280 could radically alter what we know about the capabilities of our ancestors. 195 00:14:14,080 --> 00:14:18,440 Archaeologists currently believe the oldest pyramid in the world 196 00:14:18,520 --> 00:14:21,520 dates to around 4,700 years ago. 197 00:14:22,680 --> 00:14:25,160 And it's not in Egypt, but in Peru. 198 00:14:26,880 --> 00:14:30,800 But Dr. Hilman has found evidence that Gunung Padang could be even older. 199 00:14:33,200 --> 00:14:34,960 So how old is it really? 200 00:14:35,920 --> 00:14:38,920 Who built it? And why? 201 00:14:44,240 --> 00:14:46,080 Dr. Hilman and his team 202 00:14:46,160 --> 00:14:49,840 turn to technology usually deployed in geological surveys 203 00:14:49,920 --> 00:14:52,840 to look for answers deep inside the structure. 204 00:14:53,960 --> 00:14:56,400 So, we have three methods here. 205 00:14:56,480 --> 00:14:59,800 - The GPR. - Yeah, that's ground-penetrating radar. 206 00:14:59,880 --> 00:15:02,160 - Ground-penetrating radar, yes. - Yeah. 207 00:15:02,240 --> 00:15:05,000 - And resistivity tomography. - Yeah. 208 00:15:05,080 --> 00:15:07,400 And also the seismic tomography. 209 00:15:09,480 --> 00:15:13,840 Previously, archaeologists had dug down into the site only a few meters 210 00:15:13,920 --> 00:15:16,440 and in a few isolated trenches. 211 00:15:17,880 --> 00:15:20,760 This new technology covers much more ground... 212 00:15:21,280 --> 00:15:22,840 - Thirty meters, yeah. - Thirty meters. 213 00:15:23,400 --> 00:15:24,800 ...and goes far deeper. 214 00:15:25,640 --> 00:15:29,000 We're going to do the ground-penetration radar, 215 00:15:29,080 --> 00:15:30,400 the GPR surveys. 216 00:15:31,360 --> 00:15:33,200 Ground-penetrating radar 217 00:15:33,280 --> 00:15:36,000 emits pulses of radio waves into the ground. 218 00:15:36,680 --> 00:15:41,880 When they hit something, they bounce back, and that data is recorded and analyzed. 219 00:15:43,440 --> 00:15:49,160 We chose the frequency of 40 megahertz to penetrate down to 30 meters. 220 00:15:51,840 --> 00:15:54,120 Okay. Let's go. 221 00:16:06,440 --> 00:16:10,600 The more Dr. Hilman and his team learn from their scans of the interior, 222 00:16:10,680 --> 00:16:12,680 the more mysterious it's become. 223 00:16:14,280 --> 00:16:17,280 The nature of the structures underground became more and more complex. 224 00:16:17,360 --> 00:16:19,480 Although the columnar basalt is always there, 225 00:16:19,560 --> 00:16:21,200 always used as a construction material. 226 00:16:22,880 --> 00:16:27,880 Seismic tomography, in particular, has uncovered an intriguing spot 227 00:16:27,960 --> 00:16:29,400 deep inside the hill. 228 00:16:30,840 --> 00:16:34,640 It has a seismic velocity of about 200 meters per second. 229 00:16:34,720 --> 00:16:37,680 Right. Which in layman's terms means what exactly? 230 00:16:38,680 --> 00:16:39,720 That's a void. 231 00:16:41,480 --> 00:16:43,720 - A void. An empty space. - Empty. 232 00:16:43,800 --> 00:16:46,200 And you can get a sense of the shape of that empty space? 233 00:16:46,280 --> 00:16:48,440 Yes, as you see here, it's rectangular. 234 00:16:48,520 --> 00:16:50,000 - It's a rectangle. - Yes. 235 00:16:50,080 --> 00:16:51,920 - And the spot is just right... - Yeah. 236 00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:54,160 - ...because in the center of this site... - Right. 237 00:16:55,320 --> 00:16:57,960 ...beneath the Terrace One, there is also a chamber... 238 00:17:00,200 --> 00:17:02,280 - Yes. - ...connecting to this chamber 239 00:17:02,360 --> 00:17:04,160 beneath the second terrace. 240 00:17:07,360 --> 00:17:09,960 What Dr. Hilman and his team have discovered 241 00:17:10,720 --> 00:17:14,040 are at least three large rectangular chambers. 242 00:17:14,720 --> 00:17:17,200 One around ten meters down, 243 00:17:17,280 --> 00:17:19,720 perhaps an entrance hall of some kind, 244 00:17:19,800 --> 00:17:23,680 it seems to have an access tunnel leading to a larger main chamber. 245 00:17:24,960 --> 00:17:28,440 And another passage connecting to a third chamber, 246 00:17:28,520 --> 00:17:30,520 between 20 to 30 meters deep. 247 00:17:31,319 --> 00:17:35,040 All three located right along the central axis of the site. 248 00:17:37,400 --> 00:17:40,440 I'm very intrigued by all these chambers. 249 00:17:40,520 --> 00:17:43,200 I so much wish you could get the archaeologists 250 00:17:43,280 --> 00:17:44,840 to actually excavate this site. 251 00:17:44,920 --> 00:17:47,640 When we see these chambers... 252 00:17:47,720 --> 00:17:48,880 - Yeah. - ...three chambers, 253 00:17:49,600 --> 00:17:51,600 it's just like, we were amazed. 254 00:17:55,000 --> 00:17:57,480 You know you've found something significant at that point. 255 00:17:57,560 --> 00:17:59,640 - Sure. - Yeah, it's unmistakable. 256 00:17:59,720 --> 00:18:00,720 Yeah. 257 00:18:04,840 --> 00:18:09,240 But to historians and the archaeologists who first excavated this site, 258 00:18:09,320 --> 00:18:12,560 Dr. Hilman's discovery just doesn't make sense. 259 00:18:15,760 --> 00:18:18,560 The accepted timeline of human history 260 00:18:18,640 --> 00:18:20,760 tells us that the tribe of hunter-gatherers 261 00:18:20,840 --> 00:18:23,600 living atop the hill around 7,000 years ago 262 00:18:25,240 --> 00:18:28,080 wouldn't have been capable of building a structure 263 00:18:28,160 --> 00:18:30,440 of this colossal size and complexity. 264 00:18:31,680 --> 00:18:33,600 And yet, here it is. 265 00:18:36,400 --> 00:18:38,800 A mystery crying out for investigation. 266 00:18:42,840 --> 00:18:46,000 To put a date on this hill that's not a hill, 267 00:18:46,680 --> 00:18:50,080 Dr. Hilman and his team turned to another geological tool, 268 00:18:51,400 --> 00:18:52,400 core drilling. 269 00:18:56,400 --> 00:19:01,640 As expected, samples of the top two layers dated from 3,000 years ago... 270 00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:06,120 back to around 8,000 years ago. 271 00:19:07,760 --> 00:19:12,040 But when they drilled to 15 meters, around 50 feet or so, 272 00:19:12,120 --> 00:19:14,520 they found something completely unexpected. 273 00:19:17,080 --> 00:19:22,080 Those sections had been laid out around 11,600 years ago... 274 00:19:24,120 --> 00:19:28,320 pushing the origins of this site back to the end of the last Ice Age. 275 00:19:31,680 --> 00:19:34,880 And Dr. Hilman's discoveries didn't stop there. 276 00:19:35,720 --> 00:19:41,560 Going further down, around 100 feet or so, he hit the earliest layer of construction. 277 00:19:41,640 --> 00:19:44,000 Let's try and put dates on when this was shaped. 278 00:19:44,080 --> 00:19:47,040 Okay. Layer four could be before 20,000. 279 00:19:47,120 --> 00:19:49,120 - Could be before 20,000. - Very old. 280 00:19:49,720 --> 00:19:52,800 Those drill cores were pulling up datable materials 281 00:19:52,880 --> 00:19:56,000 that dated way back as far as 24,000 years ago. 282 00:19:59,440 --> 00:20:03,840 Organic materials clearly associated with structural elements now deeply buried. 283 00:20:05,480 --> 00:20:08,520 And this convinced Danny, and I must say it convinces me, 284 00:20:08,600 --> 00:20:11,960 that Gunung Padang goes back to a remotely ancient origin. 285 00:20:16,200 --> 00:20:20,000 Danny's findings are utterly extraordinary and bewildering. 286 00:20:21,200 --> 00:20:24,880 Hitherto, archaeologists had regarded it as a long established fact 287 00:20:24,960 --> 00:20:28,720 that no large-scale structures were built anywhere in Southeast Asia 288 00:20:28,800 --> 00:20:30,840 until around 4,000 years ago. 289 00:20:36,160 --> 00:20:39,320 Your datings of this structure put it right back to the Ice Age. 290 00:20:39,400 --> 00:20:42,080 So for me, this raises a sense of enormous excitement. 291 00:20:42,160 --> 00:20:43,600 - Yeah. - I can't help wondering 292 00:20:43,680 --> 00:20:47,040 whether those chambers contain some evidence or information 293 00:20:47,120 --> 00:20:49,000 that might have a bearing... 294 00:20:49,080 --> 00:20:51,480 - Yeah. - ...on my search for a lost civilization. 295 00:20:51,560 --> 00:20:55,440 - I think we know little about our history. - Right. 296 00:20:55,520 --> 00:20:57,720 I think we miss a big thing here. 297 00:21:00,840 --> 00:21:04,840 This is an idea mainstream archaeology finds very hard to accept. 298 00:21:04,920 --> 00:21:07,760 The notion that it's a man-made structure 299 00:21:07,840 --> 00:21:10,240 is no longer seriously disputed by anybody. 300 00:21:10,840 --> 00:21:14,360 But what archaeology finds very hard to swallow and very hard to accept 301 00:21:14,440 --> 00:21:18,120 is that the origins of this structure could date back as much as 24,000 years. 302 00:21:20,360 --> 00:21:22,120 To the depths of the last Ice Age. 303 00:21:32,920 --> 00:21:35,840 What the scholars seem reluctant to get to grips with 304 00:21:35,920 --> 00:21:38,760 is that the Ice Age was a very special time 305 00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:42,320 when the world was very different. 306 00:21:45,760 --> 00:21:50,760 You see, back then, 20,000 years ago, Earth didn't look the same as it does now. 307 00:21:50,840 --> 00:21:53,480 The island of Java wasn't an island. 308 00:21:54,880 --> 00:21:59,600 It was the southernmost part of a vast Southeast Asian continent. 309 00:21:59,680 --> 00:22:02,800 A continent that geologists call Sundaland. 310 00:22:05,840 --> 00:22:07,800 During the last Ice Age, 311 00:22:07,880 --> 00:22:13,480 sea levels were about 120 meters, 400 feet, lower than they are today. 312 00:22:14,840 --> 00:22:19,640 So what is now the Java Sea was actually an enormous landmass 313 00:22:19,720 --> 00:22:22,080 extending out from the mainland of Asia. 314 00:22:22,920 --> 00:22:28,240 Sundaland covered an area around 695,000 square miles, 315 00:22:29,080 --> 00:22:32,280 about the size of the western United States. 316 00:22:32,360 --> 00:22:34,800 It was an entire subcontinent. 317 00:22:38,560 --> 00:22:43,600 We know that tribes of hunter-gatherers thrived on Sundaland's abundant wildlife, 318 00:22:43,680 --> 00:22:48,760 as far back as 45,000 years ago, and probably much further back than that. 319 00:22:50,600 --> 00:22:54,360 Why shouldn't another more technologically advanced culture 320 00:22:54,440 --> 00:22:56,040 have been present here as well? 321 00:22:57,880 --> 00:23:02,440 In a cold and forbidding world, this huge Southeast Asian landmass 322 00:23:02,520 --> 00:23:05,640 would have been amongst several warm and inviting locations 323 00:23:05,720 --> 00:23:08,320 where early humans might have had a real stab 324 00:23:08,400 --> 00:23:11,280 at developing an advanced and sophisticated civilization. 325 00:23:13,160 --> 00:23:15,640 I think that whoever built Gunung Padang 326 00:23:15,720 --> 00:23:17,880 shared our planet with the hunter-gatherers, 327 00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:20,520 who we know were also widely present at that time. 328 00:23:25,600 --> 00:23:27,560 It's not such a wild idea. 329 00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:32,360 Even today, the technologically advanced nations of the world 330 00:23:32,440 --> 00:23:36,360 coexist with hunter-gatherer societies, like the San in Namibia, 331 00:23:37,080 --> 00:23:38,840 or the Lacandón in Mexico, 332 00:23:40,120 --> 00:23:42,480 or the Kazakhs in western Mongolia. 333 00:23:43,880 --> 00:23:47,040 Different cultures at different levels of development, 334 00:23:47,600 --> 00:23:49,720 have always lived alongside one another. 335 00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:52,680 Gunung Padang suggests 336 00:23:52,760 --> 00:23:57,560 that some culture was around in the area of the Sunda Shelf, 337 00:23:57,640 --> 00:24:01,760 which was capable of creating a gigantic megalithic structure. 338 00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:09,080 One that specialized in building with blocks of columnar basalt. 339 00:24:11,240 --> 00:24:14,800 It's a style of construction I've seen before in this part of the world 340 00:24:16,480 --> 00:24:21,800 on the tiny Pacific island of Pohnpei, at a site known as Nan Madol. 341 00:24:23,600 --> 00:24:27,160 It too was constructed using volcanic basalt blocks 342 00:24:27,240 --> 00:24:30,640 laid out one atop the other, just as at Gunung Padang. 343 00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:34,880 Archaeologists believe most of the construction 344 00:24:34,960 --> 00:24:39,240 visible at Nan Madol today dates to around 900 years ago, 345 00:24:39,320 --> 00:24:42,040 when the blocks were quarried at a neighboring island. 346 00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:46,880 But during my explorations on previous visits, 347 00:24:46,960 --> 00:24:52,320 I found several of its megalithic pillars extending out below the water line, 348 00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:56,800 suggesting that earlier versions may have been constructed 349 00:24:56,880 --> 00:25:00,400 when sea levels were lower, during the last Ice Age. 350 00:25:03,920 --> 00:25:05,560 Could Gunung Padang's architects 351 00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:08,880 have made it across the South Pacific to Micronesia? 352 00:25:10,840 --> 00:25:13,240 And if so, what happened to them? 353 00:25:17,360 --> 00:25:20,360 Well, I believe it has something to do with what happened 354 00:25:20,920 --> 00:25:23,080 around 12,800 years ago, 355 00:25:23,640 --> 00:25:28,440 when the Ice Age suddenly and quite dramatically shifted gears. 356 00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:34,480 Things had gradually been getting warmer for quite a long period of time. 357 00:25:35,440 --> 00:25:38,160 And then suddenly, two things happen at once. 358 00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:40,640 First, global temperatures plunge 359 00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:43,440 to the level that they were at the peak of the Ice Age, 360 00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:46,320 and they do so almost literally overnight. 361 00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:51,560 And secondly, there's a sudden and inexplicable rise in sea level. 362 00:25:52,960 --> 00:25:58,560 Now, normally, in an Ice Age, when you enter an episode of freezing, 363 00:25:58,640 --> 00:26:02,080 you do not expect to see a large amount of water dumped in the world ocean 364 00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:04,320 because that water has been turned into ice. 365 00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:09,240 What happened was a literal great flood. 366 00:26:09,960 --> 00:26:16,720 Between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago, the oceans of the world rose dramatically 367 00:26:17,320 --> 00:26:21,560 in a series of immense deluges one after another. 368 00:26:21,640 --> 00:26:24,760 Eventually, the great continent of Sundaland 369 00:26:24,840 --> 00:26:27,920 was engulfed by the sea, a lost world. 370 00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:32,240 It prompts the obvious question. 371 00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:37,440 Could there be more temples and structures out there in the Java Sea 372 00:26:37,520 --> 00:26:39,080 still waiting to be discovered? 373 00:26:42,120 --> 00:26:45,720 Goodness knows what was lost to the rising sea levels. 374 00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:02,640 This epoch of immense floods would have traumatized all of humanity. 375 00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:06,760 And indeed there's testimony that it did. 376 00:27:09,120 --> 00:27:12,600 Nearly every ancient culture preserved traditions of a great flood 377 00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:14,120 that swallowed up the Earth. 378 00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:16,080 Here in Indonesia, 379 00:27:16,160 --> 00:27:19,760 the Batak people have their own version of this global flood myth. 380 00:27:24,920 --> 00:27:28,680 Once, long ago, the Earth grew old and dirty. 381 00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:32,920 So the creator god, Debata, sent a great flood 382 00:27:33,000 --> 00:27:35,240 to cleanse the Earth of every living thing. 383 00:27:36,800 --> 00:27:40,160 The last human pair had taken refuge on the highest mountain. 384 00:27:40,920 --> 00:27:43,560 But just as the waters were about to drown them, 385 00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:46,000 the god repented from ending humankind. 386 00:27:47,240 --> 00:27:49,200 He conjured a clod of earth into being, 387 00:27:49,800 --> 00:27:53,120 laid it on the rising flood forming the islands of Indonesia, 388 00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:55,760 and thus the pair were saved. 389 00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:01,240 And the pair had children together to repopulate the Earth, 390 00:28:01,320 --> 00:28:03,760 becoming the ancestors of the Batak people. 391 00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:11,080 It's a story of an ancient apocalypse that one finds again and again 392 00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:16,360 in traditions from all over the world, passed down for thousands of years. 393 00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:19,640 Of course, there's the account of Noah in the Bible. 394 00:28:20,440 --> 00:28:24,160 But Indian folklore also tells of a fisherman, Manu, 395 00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:27,560 who survived a great flood after being warned by a god. 396 00:28:28,360 --> 00:28:34,760 From the Sumerians to the Babylonians, the ancient Greeks to the Chinese, 397 00:28:35,440 --> 00:28:38,080 all have similar versions of the same tale. 398 00:28:38,680 --> 00:28:41,160 The notion that all of this is just a coincidence, 399 00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:44,880 just invented independently by individual cultures doesn't make sense. 400 00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:51,320 All these things are probably tales of stories 401 00:28:51,400 --> 00:28:53,720 that people passed down from generation to generation 402 00:28:53,800 --> 00:28:55,360 that survived this time. 403 00:28:55,440 --> 00:28:57,280 Yeah. Truly global cataclysmic events 404 00:28:57,360 --> 00:28:59,920 - involving rapid rises in sea level... - Yeah. 405 00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:03,960 ...did occur, and suddenly, the worldwide tradition of a global flood 406 00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:07,040 stops being just a myth and starts being a memory. 407 00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:08,640 - Yeah. - An account of real events. 408 00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:14,640 I'm fascinated by Indonesia's ancient history, 409 00:29:15,560 --> 00:29:18,960 and the secrets it's beginning to reveal to us at Gunung Padang. 410 00:29:19,880 --> 00:29:21,880 But the way archaeology works, 411 00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:25,600 there is going to continue to be huge resistance to new evidence, 412 00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:27,080 and that's really problematic 413 00:29:27,160 --> 00:29:29,360 because science should be open to new evidence 414 00:29:29,440 --> 00:29:31,480 and it should be willing to change its mind 415 00:29:31,560 --> 00:29:34,600 when new evidence suggests that a change of mind is needed. 416 00:29:35,560 --> 00:29:38,720 What sort of reaction have you had from the archaeological profession? 417 00:29:38,800 --> 00:29:41,440 - They are still not accepting it. - Right. 418 00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:43,760 I regret because archaeologists, 419 00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:47,040 or any other researchers, just stop researching. 420 00:29:47,600 --> 00:29:51,240 That's very sad, because at the very least there's an intriguing mystery here, 421 00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:53,600 which archaeology should be paying attention to. 422 00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:56,800 If we could prove clearly, 423 00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:01,880 and accept there is advanced human cultures before 11,000 BC, 424 00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:03,200 that will be a big step. 425 00:30:06,240 --> 00:30:07,360 I've been arguing 426 00:30:07,440 --> 00:30:11,200 that there was a massive global cataclysm about 12,500 years ago 427 00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:14,720 that wiped out almost all traces. 428 00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:19,160 We're left with these haunting memories... 429 00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:25,680 which we try to dismiss and say, "No, they're not memories. 430 00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:29,080 "They're just folklore. They're just a myth, just tradition." 431 00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:31,200 I think they're memories. 432 00:30:31,280 --> 00:30:33,720 I think they're real memories of something terrible 433 00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:37,120 that happened to our ancestors at the end of the last Ice Age. 434 00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:41,520 Preserved in legends, in art and in stone. 435 00:30:42,360 --> 00:30:44,600 And they don't just talk of a great flood. 436 00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:48,800 They also reference survivors of the cataclysm, 437 00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:53,000 wise travelers who sowed the seeds of humanity's rebirth. 438 00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:57,040 It's a tradition that's particularly strong 439 00:30:57,120 --> 00:30:58,680 in the same ancient culture 440 00:30:59,440 --> 00:31:02,880 that created the largest man-made pyramid on Earth. 441 00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:05,600 It's where I'm headed next, 442 00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:08,560 and it's not Egypt.