They exaggerated it. It was a big deal for them, so they said it happened to the whole world. And I'm sick of archaeologists saying that. This is the memory banks of our species. This is the record the only record we have of aperiod before 6,000 years ago. And we shouldn't despise it and scorn it as primitive superstition. We should say
It was getting better. And that's when this project was was created. And the mystery is mystery for for archaeologists anyway is that it was hunter-gatherers. And archaeologists are now having to come to terms with that.You see, the idea was you had to have an agricultural community first in order to create projects like this
Christianity has played on how I relate archaeologists were people writing down ancient stories while in Exile from
failed or they they decline because Prosperity comes from these trade networks this is actually image of what archaeologists reconstructed of Aro which is the world's first city um so they were uh two three approximatelythree stories tall but tall stories and they were magnificent places with
Since the 1970s, when the magnificent tomb of Alexander the Great's father, Philip II, was excavated in Macedonia, archaeologists have wondered about the identity of the mysterious second person, another person's remains, buried in other golden casket next to Philip's.You see the two caskets here.
What happened was even the biggest bones were substantially dissolved. archaeologists because there are an awful lot of papers that have been published for decades interpreting collections of bones.
that of stories from around the world. Uh archaeologists pour scorn on Plato's story of Atlantis. Uh but Atlantis is another of those stories that remembers a global flood that wiped out a former era of existence leaving only a few survivors. And the archaeological
to the understory, and then, if we're lucky, to the ground surface. And archaeologists are interested in that final phase, in the last 3% to 5% which hit the ground. Because what it allows us to do is see the ground as it's formed.
And so this became part of the cost of research. And archaeologists were writing, even in their own publications, the green hell, beautiful as it might be, was still what was stopping us. So this is what all of us of a certain age who did this were dealing with.
many thousands of years. And archaeologists are constantly asking these questions, and that's why I think it does have so much relevance for us. What does it tell us about where we're going?
So why did you include these sci-fi and historical fictional passages in the book? So archaeologists , at our core, we're storytellers. And the joke in archaeology is one stone is a stone.
of battle scarred women buried with their weapons, and more being found every year. And archaeologists are now going back to previously discovered male warriors to see whether those might be women. The biggest concentration of warrior women's burials are in Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, southern Russia, the Caucasus, and Kazakhstan, the very places
And subsequently, I've presented papers on my work at many other meetings of the World Archaeological Congress, and also meetings of the European Association of Archaeologists . And the reason I'm mentioning this is just to show that the kinds of things I'm saying are part of the scientific discourse
This is Griffins Attacking a Fallen Doe, a fabulous, enormous sculpture, you can see that it still has traces of its original paint. The archaeologists in the crowd know that what we think of as these beautiful white marbles in their day were actually vividly painted with bright colors and so very little of that paint has survived antiquity.
And this notion of trying to get above the trees, or getting to see through the trees, was something that was appreciated a hundred years ago by the earliest Maya archaeologists . Back in the 1920s, in the Roaring Twenties, even Charles Lindbergh, after his famous jump across the Atlantic, tried to put his hand into this
It was this lovely mosaic Roman villa. What excited the archaeologists was that they were now able to date the Ark ages from the 4th century to the 5th century. But for me, what was exciting about this mosaic floor was the Solomon's knots in the pattern.
They never interviewed us. They interviewed archaeologists to explain how important this thing is and so on and so forth. But we put images from our papers.
And the question is, how to complete these holes? This is what archaeologists are doing. I said they invite an artist.
This may well be his blood brother. And then the archaeologists were arrested by Stalin and put in jail.
Or is it a large massive multi-period site with temples, and tombs, and pyramids? And most archaeologists will tell you, obviously that the big site with the temples and other features, that's a site. But how big does something have to be to be a site?
finding 50 new Nazca Lines in the Nazca region of Peru. So the idea that archaeologists who know best can take our information and then take it to the next level is very exciting for me. Can you tell us a little bit more about the crowdsourcing and how that's helpful?
This is not an archaeological dig. This is archaeologists digging out a car. I'm going to start in Jordan.
Chimps are terrible, terrible people. Both of these archaeologists lived.
They told me, if it exists, then maybe it's here. And maybe the Sicilian archaeologists did spirit it out of the country.
Sea in the immense territory the Greeks called Scythia. Historians and archaeologists still use that word. It's a blanket term, and I'll be using it today.
They were nomads. As nomads, The Scythians left no written histories, so we have to rely on their neighbors, and their descendants, and on archaeology. Long before modern archaeologists began excavating the graves of real warrior women, the Greek writers had already identified Amazons as Scythians. These warlike tribes have no cities, no fixed abodes, wrote one ancient Greek historian,
Now when she asked Robin Symes, "Where did this thing come from?" She was very curious because it had never been studied before. Art historians and archaeologists and scholars of classical art are very passionate and very diligent researchers and anything of this size or proportion even it had been in a private collection would have been known and documented if it had known to exist.
I would I would hope that people will come to understand that I'm not the person that a very small minority of archaeologists have mobilized social media to present me as. I'm not a grifter. I'm not a hoaxer. I'm not a con man. I'm deeply committed to this. I've devoted my my to it for more than for
until 1750, 1760s there about with Harrison's chronometer. So, finding good longitudes on very ancient maps is another puzzle that I don't think archaeologists solved. So, you think there could have been a civilization 20,000 years ago which was before this Younger Dryas moment where um I mean, I've got this photo here
graduate students, usually in their 20s and 30s-- sent off to go find sites beyond the main core. And these were two very famous archaeologists at Tikal basically taking a break. It looks very similar today, maybe, except the smoking.
We have been working with two groups of archaeologists . The first of which the archaeologists from the University of Haifa and the Hebrew University who are investigating Dor. And the second one, this is a group of archaeologists that is investigating Salamis in Cyprus, mostly in the British Museum and the Cyprus
Here's another example where you see the same thing. We said in the beginning that the archaeologists invite an artist.
I'll use anything that I can get my hands on ideally if it's free. That's a great price for archaeologists . We're very lucky that NASA, they've released all their imagery to the world for free.
And it turns out Jordan is a wonderful place but the roads don't always work. So we have really some quite prominent archaeologists directing some less prominent archaeologists as to how to dig a jeep out of a wadi and me taking photos, because I'm helpful like that.
Chimps are terrible, terrible people. And this is another thing that bio-archaeologists can look at.
Chimps are terrible, terrible people. So syphilis is something bio-archaeologists like, because we can diagnose it.
knows what this is chimus or there's a plural here chimi Latin Scholars amongst you or archaeologists bands no no no yeah Earth Mound Earth Mound uh it's from the Latin t to swell so it's a mound in the flesh
And there was a fabulous golden quiver, you see the golden quiver on the lower left, along with arrows, and parts of a bow. Those weapons posed a puzzle to the archaeologists , because those weapons are not Greek weapons, they're not Macedonian weapons. Those are typical Scythian weapons like those used by the Amazons in Greek art.
That dramatic transformation has kind of mystified archaeologists and anthropologists for a long time.
of the channel, we can see this black stripe running through. And that is precisely the Younger Dryas boundary. And the current hypothesis is from a lot of archaeologists is there wasn't a human civilization before this point, 12,000 years ago. But you believe there's strong evidence that there could have been.
But before I describe what we did, let me say a few words about the collaborations that we had. We have been working with two groups of archaeologists . The first of which the archaeologists from the University of Haifa and the Hebrew University who are investigating Dor.
They did not realize that if you put a fire in something without a chimney, it is not a very good reconstruction, so they did nearly kill quite a few archaeologists . This would later rectified.
Chimps are terrible, terrible people. And one of the things that still baffles archaeologists is a story that begins with the Siege of Naples.
This really amazing group of people of scholars and archaeologists who have taken care that this site not only is open for people
What happened was even the biggest bones were substantially dissolved. And an awful lot of the explanation that the archaeologists came up with had to do with because there are only these bones left
at scientific conferences. The first time I did that was in 1984 at a meeting of the World Archaeological Congress. It's the world's largest international organization of archaeologists . I presented a paper there called "Puranic Time and The Archaeological Record." And that paper was selected for publication
She was involved in dating an archaeological site at Hueyatlaco in Mexico. There, archaeologists had discovered projectile points and other stone tools and weapons. And they were, of course, interested in how all these things were.
Using all four methods that they employed, the geologists concluded the site must be at least 250,000 years old. However, the archaeologists refused to accept it. They said humans capable of making those artifacts didn't exist anywhere in the world 250,000 years ago.
the current theory of human evolution has become. Our work at Hueyatlaco has been rejected by most archaeologists because it contradicts that theory." So some of the cases I'm going to be talking about are from the more recent history of archaeology, some from the more distant history of archaeology.
In the case of shipwrecks we've worked with archaeologists .