Graham Hancock

Probably because i was brought up with the idea that the Amazon was 'virgin' land and had never really experienced much impact from human activity, it was fascinating to learn that within the last 600 years (but for at least the last 2000) there is strong evidence for an extremely large and organized civilization having lived there. This became particularly apparent in the deforested areas where geoglyphs can be seen all over the place, especially from the air, but there's even evidence, as Hancock mentions, in the unusual predominance of some trees (brazil nut and the ice cream bean - who can blame them :lol:).

Yes, Hancock also suggests that most of what we commonly think of as "pristine virgin natural lands, plants and forests and so on" in the Amazon were probably quite profoundly shaped and even created and cultivated by humans that lived there until pretty recently. Hancock also dives into the early accounts of Europeans that crossed that land in his book and how everything seems to have been gone just a couple of decades/centuries later and how most people to this day think that all that was just made up by those explorers, perhaps understandably so, given that it is hard to believe that something like this existed in the Amazon. As it turns out though, latest findings in the region including satellite imagery has substantiated many of the claims those early explorers made of what they saw there. In the book he also mentions quite some details from what the explorers said about the then existing civilization there, which indeed sounds pretty huge and sophisticated including pottery that was "the best they have seen anywhere".

All this kind of reminded me also of the many accounts that are for example brought up in the great book "A COLD WELCOME: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter with North America" by Sam White, discussed on the forum in some places, in which the early explorers of North America also told stories about great, mysteries things they saw or expected there and fertile lands and so on.

Usually there is also the idea and notion, which I think might play into all this, that early European colonizers of the continent, exaggerated what they saw greatly and even made up things out of thin air to either impress people back home and/or tempting them to also "colonize the great fertile lands" there, maybe encouraged by the imperial states at the time. As I was reading "Cold Welcome" though, I kept thinking about this abundance of curious mentionings of those early explorers and if we can really put all this material spanning decades and even centuries all just down to wishful thinking, exaggerations and plain lies, as seems to be suggested in "A Cold Welcome", given the many accounts of that sort? I mean, the extent of those "false statements" about "the lands and its inhabitants" was quite extensive and persistent spanning over many reports and decades/centuries. So I was thinking back then maybe some of it was not wishful thinking and fairy tales but actually based on what they saw there? And if so, what factors have made this all disappear quite mysteriously other than "diseases from the old world" and the colonization itself? Indeed, nature might have played a much bigger role than expected and maybe even other factors as well.

It was also surprising to learn that because of the climate and other conditions, Amazon soil isn't actually that fertile. It can support 2-3 growing seasons at most, and some of the current tribes get around this by simply moving on to fresh land and starting over again. However some tribes seem to have retained (or maybe relearned) the technique of how to cultivate 'terre preta' which, if i remember correctly, also has some special properties whereby it can even confer increased fertility, due to its unique make up, to any soil. In the documentary one tribe apparently still create their own (although his description sounded more like simple composting). Hancock talks about some special technique where the vegetation is burnt but isn't aflame and doesn't get very hot, instead it smoulders. Finding a way to make this stuff could be critical in our troubled times...

The mystery of how exactly 'terre preta' was created and the fact that to this day people can't quite replicate it and explain its contents is also explored in Hancocks new book. It is a established fact, that it is a human made soil, created thousands of years ago. This incredibly fertile soil might have been one of the means, as Hancock seems to suggest, that enabled/supported that civilization to thrive there with so many people and such large cities. I agree with Hancock that this is an interesting puzzle that needs further investigation.

Another idea he mentions is that the origin story of one tribe is that their ancestors were brought to the Amazon by a group of "supernaturals" for some settlement mission, gifted certain knowledge (like hallucinogens) and then they left. I thought this was interesting in how it correlated with some things the C's had said about races being placed in areas particularly suited to their make up. There's also the issue of there being some DNA connection with people from the Amazon and those in Papua New Guinea and others in the Amazon to Native Australians.

That is a pretty intriguing part of the book that raises a lot of questions. Even one of the leading researchers of that DNA found in the Amazon states quite clearly in the book, given the current dogma/model (that America was first visited by humans crossing the land bridge from Eurasia through the ice free corridor during the ice age, from top to bottom) that the most logical explanation of this "out of place DNA" is not this model but maybe a ship transfer of those people from the Australian region. An idea the scientist than dismiss "because it doesn't make any sense" since so far back in time no such thing as sophisticated sailings should have existed crossing countries according to Archeologists. Indeed, the peculiar features of this "out-of-place DNA" also made me think about the C's suggestion that some people where seeded here or there on the planet at some points.

Another intriguing fact (which Hancock brings up and doesn't seem to directly connect in that regard) is the DNA signature of the Denesovians, found in Siberia, which doesn't correlate with the people living there today but most closely with Melanesians, Aboriginal Australians and Papuans!

Wikipedia said:
The nuclear genome from this specimen suggested that Denisovans shared a common origin with Neanderthals, that they ranged from Siberia to Southeast Asia, and that they lived among and interbred with the ancestors of some modern humans, with about 3% to 5% of the DNA of Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians and around 6% in Papuans deriving from Denisovans.

The question of what happened to this civilisation came up after watching the documentary. Apparently it is accepted by mainstream researchers that millions of people could have lived in the region, and that habitation could have spanned at least 1,500 years. This massive, interconnected and relatively sophisticated civilisation is supported by the records of a Portugese explorer who, being one of the first Europeans to explore the Amazon river in the 1540's, reported seeing great and thriving cities. However, later explorers found just forest. So what happened? Some archaeologists speculate small pox brought over from Europe wiped them out. But I wonder whether, since this time is coincident with the Little Ice Age, whether there weren't other contributing factors. After all, Europe has been wiped out by by weather shifts and plagues (added: corruption, and the subsequent societal breakdown) before, as have other civilisations in the America's that couldn't have been blamed on European contact, so perhaps something like that occurred here too? I don't know, but that was what came to mind.

Hancock explores this as well. I think the reason for this could be a mixture of several factors, including a very strong prevalence of natural factors, which Hancock misses. 1: The little ice age and other natural calamities, 2: diseases, 3: colonization/genocide, 4: rewriting of history by the imperial European forces (such as deliberately destroying historic and oral remnants of the civilization on a big scale, also in North America itself) probably strongly aided by 4D STS.

Hancock's idea, which I think is reasonable given the facts, is that all this new evidence again points to a lost civilization that existed before the cataclysms of the Younger Drias (probably a global one centered around North America), of which some if not many civilizations on the globe, including those in the Americas, where the descendants of, who had at least in small parts inherited some of the habits and knowledge of that lost civilizations.

He also makes the point, which I think is reasonable as well, that the cataclysm of around 12.800 years ago (set into motion by huge comet intrusions) was the first and most substantial factor that "wiped the slate clean" about what existed not only in the Americas before that point and that the European colonization of america destroyed even more of that knowledge about the past, that might have been preserved there, more or less, by those civilizations. In his opinion, the European intrusions where sort of the "second cataclysm" although on a much smaller scale, that erased most of what was then still left of the memory and remnants of this past civilization.

I also think that his idea that indigenous people not only in America but probably worldwide were the most likely candidates who could have survived the Drias Cataclysms, in stark contrast to most if not all the people of that "lost high civilization" itself, is a reasonable idea. I also think that the idea that some few survivors of that lost civilization might have then "aided" those indigenous people with knowledge and skill of that lost civilization to "recreate" parts of it, is reasonable too. It makes sense. It also makes perfect sense that indigenous people would have viewed people from that civilizations as "gods" and "supernaturals".

What I'm not so sure about though is his assumption/idea that this lost civilization saw what was coming (cataclysms) well ahead before it happened and then made a deliberate plan for what to do in case it will be very severe; namely, his idea that they then deliberately set out to live amongst indigenous people and learn from them, because they knew that they would be the best skilled and able to help them survive what was coming.

I would think that a more likely scenario would be that they didn't really see it coming (at least not in the way it turned out at the end) and didn't really have any such plan but instead some people of that civilization survived by chance and were forced by necessity to live with and amongst indigenous people, who perceived them as "gods", in contrast to a deliberate planning as Hancock suggests.

I think his comparison to our civilization today also might be not too far of the mark in some respects: even though today we live in a global highly connected "evolved" civilization there are still indigenous people and tribes living amongst us (in jungles and islands for example) at the same time who have no clue and are untouched by any of that.

This all reminds me of an idea I had a while back, which might be reasonable:

If we assume that the cataclysms at the end of the last ace age didn't wipe out all remnants of that probably global "high civilization" at once, which I think is reasonable, maybe some small pockets of that civilization survived at some places on the globe, at least for a while, pretty much unaffected? Let's then say, those small pockets still had much if not all the capabilities of that lost civilization at hand, decades or even centuries after much of the rest of the civilization was wiped out on the planet. How then would the survivors on the rest of the globe (most of which were probably indigenous people), even those from that civilization itself, who were directly effected by the cataclysms, view those pockets who probably still had "magical" skills like sailing and even more "high tech" methods we probably can't even imagine today, even just one or two generations after the cataclysm? As "gods" and "supernaturals"? I think that is likely scenario.

Which brings me to Hancock's idea which he for the first time expressed in this book on paper, which also relates to this:


It's notable that in the interview they discuss these hallucinogens, how they were a 'gift from the gods', as a way to achieve other states of consciousness. When asked whether there were other ways of doing so, he talks about fire gazing and drumming, and he does seem to acknowledge that perhaps some people don't need any of those things, although he skips over it quite quickly, which i think is rather telling. Perhaps he accepts that it is possible but, for him, he wants to do it anyway and doesn't want to wait till he can do it without them...

Anyway, while, as has been mentioned, Hancock has his blind spots and doesn't have the whole banana,[...]

He proposes that this lost civilization [which was maybe pretty "far ahead" compared to ours (my assumption based on what the C's said comparing us to Neanderthals compared to the "Atlantians")], was centered not around the kind of technology, ideas and thinking our civilization is based on at all but something completely different that we can't make sense of today and that this might explain partially why scientists still have such a hard time seeing anything "civilized", and god forbid, globally connected and "highly evolved, maybe even more than we are" in the structures and remnants we see today, because they assume that such a civilization must be similar to how a global civilization looks like today. In other words, they can't see or find anything that suggest to them anything like that because they expect to find plastic bags, pipes, electricity and the like, and other things characteristic of our civilization. Therefore, they (and we all for that matter) could be staring those remnants/facts right in the face and might not be able to see anything of that because it is not a part of their frame of mind. He gives examples of how we can't imagine and see things, that do in reality exists because it is not in our frame of mind, and we have never seen/experienced it.

Then he suggests that this inability to see the "hard proof" of this civilization today might point to the fact that this civilization indeed operated quite differently than ours. Which I think is a reasonable idea as well. He then suggests, by not only drawing on all the mysteries structures and megaliths all around the globe, but also on ancient traditions and Myths and on the handed down stories and tales of indigenous people (which all seem to have a common core in ideas about death and the life beyond it) that this civilization might have been centered around psychic abilities like Telepathy, Telekinesis, Remote Viewing, "other realms" and other "paranormal" stuff beyond the purely materialistic existence and approach to life.

Wow! He must have thought long and hard if he should put that idea in the book. Though interestingly, he might be onto something with this idea in my opinion. Then he makes the assumption that is IMO based on pretty flimsy evidence (like how indigenous people use medicine plants today) that part of that culture in that civilization was based on altered states of consciousness which we have forgotten about and/or don't operate on today, that were reached maybe partly by using hallucinogenic brews and plants. Although he states in the interview above that there are other methods "to reach those states" that don't involve drugs like this, he seems to assume that they primarily used those methods. We can't know that of course, but I think the idea in itself isn't such an unlikely one and might indeed a have played an important role.

But the crux of the matter seems to escape Hancock and other proponents of such "plant helper" ideas in the past; the fact that the civilizations was wiped of the planet by a cataclysm very thoroughly and violently. If we assume that there was a higher reason for the demise of that civilization, which might be partly explored in the book "Earthchanges and the Human Cosmic Connection" (namely that something was very rotten in the state of Denmark in that civilization) then that hypothetical fixation of this civilization on non material "powers" and "abilities" and interaction with death and "other realms" might have been the primary reason for its destruction?

What I'm getting at here is, what if this "global lost civilization" went to the other extreme? Instead of being totally fixated and obsessed by the materialistic/physical existence, like we are today, they went to the other extreme by embracing and obsessively focusing on "psychic" things, realms and abilities, which then attracted a devastating cataclysm?

I'm very much reminded about Don Juan stories in Carlos Castaneda's books about the mistakes of old Indian "seers" in America who essentially brought on their own destruction by fixating on "unknowable realms" and forgetting about very real dangerous like "petty tyrants" in this reality. Don Juan essentially said that you can't face or withstand anything in unknowable realms if you can't truly manage and face our reality. And to approach it the other way around, is fatal:

Don Juan has explained what he called a “three-phase progression.” This is the mode of approach to becoming a warrior who is free. This three-step program consists of:
1. Holding your own in facing petty tyrants.
2. Facing the unknown with courage.
3. Standing in the presence of the unknowable.

“The average man’s reaction is to think that the order … should be reversed,” he went on. “A seer who can hold his own in the face of the unknown can certainly face petty tyrants. But that’s not so. What destroyed the superb seers of ancient times was that assumption. We know better now. We know that nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable.”

Maybe the "old seers" Don Juan talked about were people of that lost civilization and/or their descendants who were fatally mistaken by delving into unknowable realms and neglecting the real world?

Which brings me back to Hancock who seems to see no connection whatsoever there and essentially now supports the idea to bring our civilization back to the other extreme of the spectrum mentioned above by using "psychedelics" which will "solve everything".
 
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I have mixed fillings about him however I'm going to see his lecture next week here in Montreal.
A friend of mine likes him a good deal and Hancock is going to discuss his latest book: America Before.
Don't know if you're interested in my subjective opinion after the event.

I think it would be interesting to hear your experiences attending his lecture. The mixed feelings are justified and understandable IMO giving his biases and tendencies mentioned in this thread. My take on him is similar to Laura's though:

My general take is that he is really good but he doesn't know enough about hyperdimensional realities and cointelpro to protect himself from disinformation or red herrings. But then, everybody doesn't have the C's to point out that there is other info or that something ought to be researched a bit deeper or wider.

I think Hancock is sincere and is a pretty diligent researchar as far as it goes. I agree with his perspective on many things. The problem is, he is NOT a Shaman or a Seer and you have to be one to be able to SEE - to have perspicacity regarding the matters of other worlds. Only Seers and Shamans know their own, and only they know who is on the path of light or darkness.

If one is aware of the pitfalls in his ideas, reasonings and assumptions I think his body of work has aided greatly to our understanding of the past in many ways over the decades. One has to give the guy credit for an impressive amount of pretty well researched works that have shed significant light on the past and encouraged many people to look at the past and what happened there more closely with a more open mind, including scientist. He was one of the main figures who constantly pushed and challenged Archeological and scientific dogmas on our past and was proven right more than once, after being smeared and attacked for his simple and impressive way of stating obvious facts that didn't accord to conventional thinking. He did hold many assumptions and dogmas from those zealots of history and archeology accountable by providing a big amount of evidence that challenged their notions and made them pretty angry because of it. He really derserves credit for all that, even though he seems to have gone overboard in certain areas like his Psychedelic stuff and the deification of past civilizations like the Egyptians and so on. So in certain areas he seems to be quite invested in his thinking, which needs to be pointed out and remembered, because it greatly effects his ideas around the bare facts.

It should also be pointed out that I got the feeling in this book, as in his last one, that some of the raw facts and ideas he brings up, like the impressive amount and extent of earthworks that existed all over northamerica with their incredible precise, mysteries and astronomical alignments and geometries, bares strong resembles to the actual work of Randall Carlson (mentioned above in the thread, in the video interview and in a separate thread here, but curiously only in passing in this book...) who already talked about some of this at least a decade ago, as I can attest to since I've followed the guy quite closely. In fact, I think some of it comes straight out of Randall's original work actually. Too much in the book reminds me about this, to be a coincidence IMO. One such example in Hancock's new book is the mentioning of the so called "Heinrich Event" which is something I first heard from Randall in a lecture that was recorded around a decade ago as well as numerous other things. See linked thread in the above paragraph, in which on the last post I also pointed out that Randall talked about some of his stuff being brought up in Hancock's books soon.

Again, I find this rather curious. They are friends as far as I know, but I get the impression that Hancock ideas around the facts that Randall has uncovered might be quite a twist on what Randall is thinking, or not. For example, in none what I've seen of Randall I've ever heard even one word that he encourages anything like "higher states of consciousness" not to mention any kind of drugs. Same with the overall impression of Randalls work and lectures, no sign of that thinking, not even slightly. A big difference right there. I think Hancock might be the one who puts twists like this around the bare facts.

I have a strong aversion to the whole psychedelic thing and find it hard to even pay enough attention to his research when ayahuasca means so much to him.

Well, separating the wheat from the chaff comes into play big time here, as with many other works out there IMO. I think it is rather likely that many pot heads and otherwise addicted drug users find a convenient reason in the work of Hancock, and people like Rogan and Co. to justify and rationalize what they are doing. No way around that, both explicitly encourage it even! So I would be rather careful when attending those lectures, to not get lured into any of that. My guess is that those lectures also attract a lot of pot heads and psychedelic people.
 
Well, separating the wheat from the chaff comes into play big time here, as with many other works out there IMO. I think it is rather likely that many pot heads and otherwise addicted drug users find a convenient reason in the work of Hancock, and people like Rogan and Co. to justify and rationalize what they are doing. No way around that, both explicitly encourage it even! So I would be rather careful when attending those lectures, to not get lured into any of that. My guess is that those lectures also attract a lot of pot heads and psychedelic people.
Yes my "fear" of going is what you just described. In fact I had a lengthy discussion with my friend about him and although I initially decided to cancel, I decided to actually go and hear him out and see who is going to attend; I'm very curious about who is going to be there.
Thanks Pashalis for the previous comments, I agree.
 
His lengthy tirade on altered consciousness, drugs, governments etc. seemed to have a completely different flavor than the rest of the interview, as if it came from another personality within him. Something like a 19 year old just discovering Terence Mckenna, fascinated with the wonders of the unknown. Of course with a healthy dose of "love is the answer" kind of talk as well.

I was surprised actually to listen to a good portion of the interview in wonder and complete agreement, amazed that this was all being said on Joe Rogan's podcast to so many viewers (what used to be such a niche topic). Even talking about cometary stuff and including the Tunguska event. His discussion of the archaeology is well reasoned and based in evidence. His description of the church of science in Archeology is a perfect fractal of the Church of Science in everything else, so that fits too. You know he's onto something big. But then comes the poison in the red pill: Just get everyone to eat some shrooms and we'll soon be building pyramids with our mind powerz!

I couldn't help thinking, just cut that crap out man. You have done excellent research and advanced the cause of truth significantly, don't blow it by going full hippie.

Over all ancient archaeology is a tantalizing subject and I could listen to him talk about it for hours. But as far as its practical applications, as Pashalis points out, it would be better to combine this evidence within the wider picture of cosmic catastrophe and the why of ancient cataclysms, and what it means for us.
 
Yes, Hancock also suggests that most of what we commonly think of as "pristine virgin natural lands, plants and forests and so on" in the Amazon were probably quite profoundly shaped and even created and cultivated by humans that lived there until pretty recently. Hancock also dives into the early accounts of Europeans that crossed that land in his book and how everything seems to have been gone just a couple of decades/centuries later and how most people to this day think that all that was just made up by those explorers, perhaps understandably so, given that it is hard to believe that something like this existed in the Amazon. As it turns out though, latest findings in the region including satellite imagery has substantiated many of the claims those early explorers made of what they saw there. In the book he also mentions quite some details from what the explorers said about the then existing civilization there, which indeed sounds pretty huge and sophisticated including pottery that was "the best they have seen anywhere".

All this kind of reminded me also of the many accounts that are for example brought up in the great book "A COLD WELCOME: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter with North America" by Sam White, discussed on the forum in some places, in which the early explorers of North America also told stories about great, mysteries things they saw or expected there and fertile lands and so on.

Usually there is also the idea and notion, which I think might play into all this, that early European colonizers of the continent, exaggerated what they saw greatly and even made up things out of thin air to either impress people back home and/or tempting them to also "colonize the great fertile lands" there, maybe encouraged by the imperial states at the time. As I was reading "Cold Welcome" though, I kept thinking about this abundance of curious mentionings of those early explorers and if we can really put all this material spanning decades and even centuries all just down to wishful thinking, exaggerations and plain lies, as seems to be suggested in "A Cold Welcome", given the many accounts of that sort? I mean, the extent of those "false statements" about "the lands and its inhabitants" was quite extensive and persistent spanning over many reports and decades/centuries. So I was thinking back then maybe some of it was not wishful thinking and fairy tales but actually based on what they saw there? And if so, what factors have made this all disappear quite mysteriously other than "diseases from the old world" and the colonization itself? Indeed, nature might have played a much bigger role than expected and maybe even other factors as well.



The mystery of how exactly 'terre preta' was created and the fact that to this day people can't quite replicate it and explain its contents is also explored in Hancocks new book. It is a established fact, that it is a human made soil, created thousands of years ago. This incredibly fertile soil might have been one of the means, as Hancock seems to suggest, that enabled/supported that civilization to thrive there with so many people and such large cities. I agree with Hancock that this is an interesting puzzle that needs further investigation.



That is a pretty intriguing part of the book that raises a lot of questions. Even one of the leading researchers of that DNA found in the Amazon states quite clearly in the book, given the current dogma/model (that America was first visited by humans crossing the land bridge from Eurasia through the ice free corridor during the ice age, from top to bottom) that the most logical explanation of this "out of place DNA" is not this model but maybe a ship transfer of those people from the Australian region. An idea the scientist than dismiss "because it doesn't make any sense" since so far back in time no such thing as sophisticated sailings should have existed crossing countries according to Archeologists. Indeed, the peculiar features of this "out-of-place DNA" also made me think about the C's suggestion that some people where seeded here or there on the planet at some points.

Another intriguing fact (which Hancock brings up and doesn't seem to directly connect in that regard) is the DNA signature of the Denesovians, found in Siberia, which doesn't correlate with the people living there today but most closely with Melanesians, Aboriginal Australians and Papuans!





Hancock explores this as well. I think the reason for this could be a mixture of several factors, including a very strong prevalence of natural factors, which Hancock misses. 1: The little ice age and other natural calamities, 2: diseases, 3: colonization/genocide, 4: rewriting of history by the imperial European forces (such as deliberately destroying historic and oral remnants of the civilization on a big scale, also in North America itself) probably strongly aided by 4D STS.

Hancock's idea, which I think is reasonable given the facts, is that all this new evidence again points to a lost civilization that existed before the cataclysms of the Younger Drias (probably a global one centered around North America), of which some if not many civilizations on the globe, including those in the Americas, where the descendants of, who had at least in small parts inherited some of the habits and knowledge of that lost civilizations.

He also makes the point, which I think is reasonable as well, that the cataclysm of around 12.800 years ago (set into motion by huge comet intrusions) was the first and most substantial factor that "wiped the slate clean" about what existed not only in the Americas before that point and that the European colonization of america destroyed even more of that knowledge about the past, that might have been preserved there, more or less, by those civilizations. In his opinion, the European intrusions where sort of the "second cataclysm" although on a much smaller scale, that erased most of what was then still left of the memory and remnants of this past civilization.

I also think that his idea that indigenous people not only in America but probably worldwide were the most likely candidates who could have survived the Drias Cataclysms, in stark contrast to most if not all the people of that "lost high civilization" itself, is a reasonable idea. I also think that the idea that some few survivors of that lost civilization might have then "aided" those indigenous people with knowledge and skill of that lost civilization to "recreate" parts of it, is reasonable too. It makes sense. It also makes perfect sense that indigenous people would have viewed people from that civilizations as "gods" and "supernaturals".

What I'm not so sure about though is his assumption/idea that this lost civilization saw what was coming (cataclysms) well ahead before it happened and then made a deliberate plan for what to do in case it will be very severe; namely, his idea that they then deliberately set out to live amongst indigenous people and learn from them, because they knew that they would be the best skilled and able to help them survive what was coming.

I would think that a more likely scenario would be that they didn't really see it coming (at least not in the way it turned out at the end) and didn't really have any such plan but instead some people of that civilization survived by chance and were forced by necessity to live with and amongst indigenous people, who perceived them as "gods", in contrast to a deliberate planning as Hancock suggests.

I think his comparison to our civilization today also might be not too far of the mark in some respects: even though today we live in a global highly connected "evolved" civilization there are still indigenous people and tribes living amongst us (in jungles and islands for example) at the same time who have no clue and are untouched by any of that.

This all reminds me of an idea I had a while back, which might be reasonable:

If we assume that the cataclysms at the end of the last ace age didn't wipe out all remnants of that probably global "high civilization" at once, which I think is reasonable, maybe some small pockets of that civilization survived at some places on the globe, at least for a while, pretty much unaffected? Let's then say, those small pockets still had much if not all the capabilities of that lost civilization at hand, decades or even centuries after much of the rest of the civilization was wiped out on the planet. How then would the survivors on the rest of the globe (most of which were probably indigenous people), even those from that civilization itself, who were directly effected by the cataclysms, view those pockets who probably still had "magical" skills like sailing and even more "high tech" methods we probably can't even imagine today, even just one or two generations after the cataclysm? As "gods" and "supernaturals"? I think that is likely scenario.

Which brings me to Hancock's idea which he for the first time expressed in this book on paper, which also relates to this:




He proposes that this lost civilization [which was maybe pretty "far ahead" compared to ours (my assumption based on what the C's said comparing us to Neanderthals compared to the "Atlantians")], was centered not around the kind of technology, ideas and thinking our civilization is based on at all but something completely different that we can't make sense of today and that this might explain partially why scientists still have such a hard time seeing anything "civilized", and god forbid, globally connected and "highly evolved, maybe even more than we are" in the structures and remnants we see today, because they assume that such a civilization must be similar to how a global civilization looks like today. In other words, they can't see or find anything that suggest to them anything like that because they expect to find plastic bags, pipes, electricity and the like, and other things characteristic of our civilization. Therefore, they (and we all for that matter) could be staring those remnants/facts right in the face and might not be able to see anything of that because it is not a part of their frame of mind. He gives examples of how we can't imagine and see things, that do in reality exists because it is not in our frame of mind, and we have never seen/experienced it.

Then he suggests that this inability to see the "hard proof" of this civilization today might point to the fact that this civilization indeed operated quite differently than ours. Which I think is a reasonable idea as well. He then suggests, by not only drawing on all the mysteries structures and megaliths all around the globe, but also on ancient traditions and Myths and on the handed down stories and tales of indigenous people (which all seem to have a common core in ideas about death and the life beyond it) that this civilization might have been centered around psychic abilities like Telepathy, Telekinesis, Remote Viewing, "other realms" and other "paranormal" stuff beyond the purely materialistic existence and approach to life.

Wow! He must have thought long and hard if he should put that idea in the book. Though interestingly, he might be onto something with this idea in my opinion. Then he makes the assumption that is IMO based on pretty flimsy evidence (like how indigenous people use medicine plants today) that part of that culture in that civilization was based on altered states of consciousness which we have forgotten about and/or don't operate on today, that were reached maybe partly by using hallucinogenic brews and plants. Although he states in the interview above that there are other methods "to reach those states" that don't involve drugs like this, he seems to assume that they primarily used those methods. We can't know that of course, but I think the idea in itself isn't such an unlikely one and might indeed a have played an important role.

But the crux of the matter seems to escape Hancock and other proponents of such "plant helper" ideas in the past; the fact that the civilizations was wiped of the planet by a cataclysm very thoroughly and violently. If we assume that there was a higher reason for the demise of that civilization, which might be partly explored in the book "Earthchanges and the Human Cosmic Connection" (namely that something was very rotten in the state of Denmark in that civilization) then that hypothetical fixation of this civilization on non material "powers" and "abilities" and interaction with death and "other realms" might have been the primary reason for its destruction?

What I'm getting at here is, what if this "global lost civilization" went to the other extreme? Instead of being totally fixated and obsessed by the materialistic/physical existence, like we are today, they went to the other extreme by embracing and obsessively focusing on "psychic" things, realms and abilities, which then attracted a devastating cataclysm?

I'm very much reminded about Don Juan stories in Carlos Castaneda's books about the mistakes of old Indian "seers" in America who essentially brought on their own destruction by fixating on "unknowable realms" and forgetting about very real dangerous like "petty tyrants" in this reality. Don Juan essentially said that you can't face or withstand anything in unknowable realms if you can't truly manage and face our reality. And to approach it the other way around, is fatal:



Maybe the "old seers" Don Juan talked about were people of that lost civilization and/or their descendants who were fatally mistaken by delving into unknowable realms and neglecting the real world?

Which brings me back to Hancock who seems to see no connection whatsoever there and essentially now supports the idea to bring our civilization back to the other extreme of the spectrum mentioned above by using "psychedelics" which will "solve everything".
Hancock is obsessed with finding the geographic 'source' of Atlantis. The C's said that Atlantis was a global civilization. What would be the source of our current global government and civilization? Could it have been a meeting in a dark, smokey room with world leaders and perhaps representatives of 4D STS, the location of which is not really important? Anyway, Hancock has a way of inspiring people and I cannot fault his drive and hard work. Edit: typo.
 
Hancock is obsessed with finding the geographic 'source' of Atlantis.... and I cannot fault his drive and hard work. Edit: typo.

I used to feel the same way, until I bought his book about Ayahuasca. He did several interviews in which he said there were discrete, familiar entities to be encountered while under the influence of DMT. He suggested that we could all connect with these entities. Hancock called one of them "Mother" and he claimed she was available for everyone to experience under the influence. So I bought his $30 book, and I manufactured a few grains of DMT for myself, and there wasn't a single mention of "Mother" in the whole 400 pages! It turns out his interviews were really marketing efforts to stir up interest in the book, and I was the victim of the old bait-and-switch technique. I was so disappointed that I never even took the trip.
 
Don Juan essentially said that you can't face or withstand anything in unknowable realms if you can't truly manage and face our reality. And to approach it the other way around, is fatal:
Maybe the "old seers" Don Juan talked about were people ...fatally mistaken by delving into unknowable realms and neglecting the real world?

This is such a hearty post, it was hard to pick which bit to respond to, but the distinction between fantasy and reality stands out as most significant. Personally, I think Don Juan has a different idea of being 'lost' than we do, since he talked about our equivalent of souls in a very enduring way. I suspect the 'old ones' supernatural capacity may have been diminished by their undesirable practices in life, and I believe the 'petty tyrant' is simply the human ego aka Kubrick's monolith, aka the capitol letter eye. I mean I. I think. Or should we say "it thinks"? Mine thinks perhaps we should, because it is something more than our hands and our hearts and minds - it is a fiction by every definition of the word.

I believe humanity's foray into fiction began with the breakdown of the bicameral mind, and the insertion of meaningless symbols in between the subject and the seer. In short, back when people used pictographic alphabets, we were limited to discussing things we could actually see in the real world. The invention of phonemic alphabets like this one, which are comprised not of representative pictures but of meaningless letters, provides the opportunity to invent an endless stream of non-sense, the greatest of these being spelled with just a single capital letter.
 
So here is my subjective view after attending Graham Hancock's lecture.

I was well aware of the content beforehand and there were no surprises.
He is in his 70's and he speaks really well and knows his presentation by heart. He made a single mistake in 2 whole hours; he is a great speaker no doubt.

He didn't present himself in any detail other then saying that he is considered a pseudo scientist on mainstream sites.
He spoke briefly about his missfortunate heart issues in 2017 and again in 2019.

Having glimpsed at his book, America Before, I would venture and say the lecture does not cover much in 2 hours.
So, unfortunately he quickly presents some key facts and passes quickly to others, in a manner I had truble connection the dots.
Not to say it wasn't interesting but somewhat the context of the presentation was not clear, and you find yourself just listening to research in high speed mode.

He briefly talked about his ayahuasca and DMT experiences but did not insist at all.
He has had 70 ayahuasca sessions and 15 DMT experiences. Nothing more was said and I'm glad that was the case.

The audience received him quite well, and to my suprise half of the people were not young.

As for my own opinion..I was expecting more.
One thing I was really disappointed is that he did not insist much, if at all, on the big points like the Ice age and cometary bombardments. I mean, if people are going to drive home with someting, that should of been it. But instead it just presented a few facts and off he went speaking about Atlantis witch was rather inappropriate with zero details other the Plato said it and he was right on the money.

My impression is that he is not addressing himself to people that are new to this body of knowladge, and as such he does not bring his points across in a way that will challenge anyone.
I would of liked to see a differnt, more sincere, more connected speech, and not just an enumeration of facts witch had little to do with America. After all the book is called America before.
Other then saying that the Americas has a much older origin, nothing else of good interest was said.

My final thought, I'm really, really disappointed and somehow I think it doesn't do much to stress the importance of it all. It was more of a late night talk with a glass of wine..type of thing.

Anyone should take this with a grain of salt, but I am not investing in reading his books. His colleague, Randall is way more sophisticated and in fact much of Hancock's work is based on Randall's research.
 
So here is my subjective view after attending Graham Hancock's lecture.
[...]

As for my own opinion..I was expecting more.
One thing I was really disappointed is that he did not insist much, if at all, on the big points like the Ice age and cometary bombardments. I mean, if people are going to drive home with someting, that should of been it. But instead it just presented a few facts and off he went speaking about Atlantis witch was rather inappropriate with zero details other the Plato said it and he was right on the money.

[...]

I just started reading Prehistory Decoded (mentioned in this thread) and i thought it was interesting that the author, Martin Sweatman, credits both Hancock and (someone else who's name i can't remember right now) with identifying 2 aspects of (i think) the Vulture stone at Gobekli Tepe, how the animal imagery depicts constellations. This was something Sweatman hadn't considered himself, and this led him to decode what has been unearthed at GT, as well as other prehistoric monuments and artefacts and how they possibly encode a message about cyclical catastrophes. According to Sweatman, this is where those two researchers stopped and didn't take it any further. I just thought it was interesting that Hancock stopped there. But then maybe he was just busy with other things.

Anyway, thanks for your review of his lecture Andi.
 
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I just thought it was interesting that Hancock stopped there. But then maybe he was just busy with other things.
I mean yes time was short and everything was said and presented as fast as it could have been.
But the hole point of making people aware is to not only present facts but jump into the WOW details on specific big points and make one feel the urgency of the situation.
That was the let down.

He was king to say at the end that he will stay and talk to each and everyone no matter how long it will take. Imo that is the most important part of the whole show.
 
In my disappointed I have missed to say at least the one big positive point that drove the whole talk. That is: civilisations have come and gone, have been wiped by cataclysms from the skys and mainstream science just wants to ignore that completely as a possibility that we too are on the verge of it. He realises the absolute obsession and fear of the ancients of comets and cataclysms and points several times how we think this is not going to happen to us any time soon.
But you have to be imaginative and inquairing to realise that in reality this is not just a possibility but someting we might see in our lifes. He does not stress this urgency at ALL. Maybe he himself doesn't consider it as such.
 
He has had 70 ayahuasca sessions and 15 DMT experiences.

I've heard him say that as well somewhere. I think that goes practically against his own statements he made on a number of occasions to the effect that "Ayahuasca isn't something you would want to do regularly as other mind altering substances, because the experience can be and often is overwhelming both in the physical sense (vomiting and the like) and the "spiritual sense" and it isn't something you really look forward to do as other stuff".

I mean, 70 sessions of that stuff (let alone one for that matter!) are a sure way to get at least one nasty attachment, or worse, be likely to be directed and manipulated by those "spirits" in what you do and say.

Frankly, 70 sessions sound more like a serious addiction to "spiritual revelations" to me as anything else, or as Don Juan put it, paraphrasing; "thinking that getting into contact with the unknowable first, and assuming this will help you or anyone in anything let alone facing petty tyrants in the real world, is a grave mistake that couldn't be farther from the truth".
 
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Yes Pashalis, 70 is a copious amount of times for something that potent. One may think I might have misunderstood seventy instead of seventeen, but it was loud and clear.
I even doubt any so called "shaman" would even advise anything near that. Surely he opened the doors to some possession.
The contradiction in him as a man of integrity and his drug use is just immense.

Alex Jones gets it pretty well this time in an interview with Crowder saying DMT most likely leads to "demonic" possession.
 
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