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Speaker 1

00:02

Thanks to all of you for coming to this talk by Michael Cremo on forbidden archaeology here at Google. So when was the last time somebody questioned evolution? Do you know? In your experience, any numbers?

Speaker 1

00:18

I'm just trying to say how often it happens, somebody questioning such a major theory as evolution. Any guess? I mean, before the talk. Sorry?

Speaker 2

00:29

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2 That happens all the time in the US.

Speaker 1

00:30

OK, that's good. Yeah, that's good that people are aware of that debate. Some people don't even know that it's a theory and it's being debated, and they just take it for a fact as much as gravity.

Speaker 1

00:43

That's good to know that You are aware of that. And so we have Michael Cremo here. So he has a lot of extensive introduction about how we got into this topic. So I don't want to steal that as part of my introduction.

Speaker 1

00:57

And so I'll just go over the introduction of him as a person. I've known him for more than 10, 15 years. And he's a very thoughtful, methodical person with extreme intellectual honesty. And he expects that of others.

Speaker 1

01:11

So that's where his research was born into this book. So the scope of this talk is just questioning the current theory and based on the evidence that's available, but he's not going to present an alternate theory in this talk. You have to wait for a year for that to happen, if I have my job until then. So now the scope of this talk is questioning the current theory based on the available evidences from researched literature.

Speaker 1

01:40

And the next topic he usually presents is called human devolution, presenting an alternate theory. So there are books for that outside. So that's your only resource right now. So with that, let's welcome Michael Kermode to Google with a big hand.

Speaker 1

01:54

Thank you.

Speaker 2

02:00

Thank you for the nice introduction. And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for coming to hear a little something about the topic, Forbidden Archaeology, Evidence for Extreme Human Antiquity. So just to keep things honest, I'm a researcher in human origins for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

Speaker 2

02:26

And my research is inspired by my studies in the ancient Sanskrit writings in India, especially the Puranas, the historical writings. Now for many today, those 2 things would be complete disqualifications for me to say anything about a scientific topic in scientific circles. However, quite surprisingly to me, even, there are people within the scientific world who are interested in hearing what I have to say. And I've been invited to present my ideas at some of the leading scientific institutions in the world, such as the Royal Institution in London, the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow, Department of Anthropology, the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and many others around the world.

Speaker 2

03:21

So the question I am dealing with is, how old is the human species? Today, the most common answer to that question comes from the modern followers of Charles Darwin, who proposed that the first humans like us came into existence less than

Speaker 1

03:40

200, 000

Speaker 2

03:42

years ago. Before that, they would say there were no humans like us present on this planet, simply more primitive ape-like human ancestors. However, the Puranas, the historical writings of ancient India, give a different idea, namely that humans have been present for vast periods of time on this planet going back many millions of years.

Speaker 2

04:09

Now, of course, in scientific circles, I wouldn't expect anyone to take a statement from some ancient writings as evidence. So in the scientific circles where I'm invited to speak, I do something else. I make a prediction. Namely, if what the Puranas say about human antiquity is true, there should be reports of archaeological evidence for humans existing much further back in time than 200, 000 years ago, perhaps going back many millions of years.

Speaker 2

04:54

So my method for testing that prediction is to examine all archaeological reports from the time of Darwin to the present. And not just in English. I have a reading knowledge of most of the major European languages. So When I speak about examining reports from the scientific literature, I mean 2 kinds of scientific literature, the primary and the secondary scientific literature.

Speaker 2

05:27

By primary scientific literature, I mean original reports by archaeologists, geologists, paleontologists, and other earth scientists reported in the professional peer-reviewed scientific literature. By secondary literature, I mean things that are based on the primary literature, such as textbooks, for example. So I had 2 principal findings. The first finding is not so surprising.

Speaker 2

06:05

There are no reports of evidence for extreme human antiquity in the current secondary literature, textbooks, survey studies, and things of that sort. My second finding was a little more interesting. There are many reports of evidence for extreme human antiquity in the primary scientific literature of past and present. So I collected those reports in this book, Forbidden Archaeology, which was reviewed in most of the professional academic and scientific journals that deal with the question of human origins.

Speaker 2

06:49

So this constitutes a kind of peer review. Now, as you might expect, many of those reviews were negative, Some extremely so. However, quite surprisingly to me even, even some of my critics were able to point out some positive aspects of the work. For example, David Oldroyd, a noted historian of science, in a 28-page review article about the book asked the question, so has forbidden archaeology made any contribution to the literature on paleoanthropology?

Speaker 2

07:35

Our answer is a guarded yes for 2 reasons. First, he said, much of the historical material has not been scrutinized in such detail before. In other words, as a professional historian of science dealing with these particular questions, he had not encountered any work which had gone into history in such depth before. And second, he said the book raises, quote, a central problematic regarding the lack of certainty in scientific truth claims.

Speaker 2

08:10

Now, after the book was published and many of the reviews came out, I began speaking about the topic of the book 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, Pirhanic Time and the Archaeological Record.

Speaker 2

08:38

And that paper was selected for publication in a peer-reviewed conference proceedings volume called, Time and Archaeology, which came out from Rutledge, a major scientific publisher. And subsequently, I've presented papers on my work at many other meetings of the World Archeological 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 in the scientific disciplines that are related to human origins. Now, admittedly, it's not a popular voice.

Speaker 2

09:30

It's an extreme minority voice, limited maybe even to a minority of 1. But still, surprisingly enough to many people, it is a part of the discourse. So 1 of the questions I had about the kind of evidence I'm talking about is, why exactly is it missing from the current secondary literature if it's there in the primary literature. And I'm proposing it's because of a process of knowledge filtration that operates in the world of science.

Speaker 2

10:13

And here I'm not talking about a satanic conspiracy to suppress truth. I'm talking about something that philosophers of science and historians of science have understood for a long time, namely that theoretical preconceptions can influence how scientists may react to different categories of evidence that come to their attention. We can call the blue box the knowledge filter. What it represents is the dominant consensus in a scientific discipline at a particular point in time.

Speaker 2

10:48

And reports of evidence that conform to the dominant consensus will pass through the knowledge filter fairly easily, whereas reports of evidence that radically contradict a dominant consensus tend to be filtered out, ignored, forgotten, set aside, dismissed. And this was something that 1 of the reviewers of forbidden archaeology noted, the French archaeologist Marilynne Patumati noted in her review of forbidden archaeology and law anthropology, Cremo and Thompson have written a provocative work that raises the problem of the influence of the dominant ideas of a time period on scientific research. These ideas can compel the researchers to orient their analyses according to the conceptions that are permitted by the scientific community. So it was interesting to me that an archaeologist graphs correctly what the point we were trying to make in the book and wasn't just dismissing it as, Oh, these are conspiracy theorists.

Speaker 2

12:05

I'm now going to go over some of the kinds of reports that I'm talking about. This is Virginia Steen MacIntyre, an American geologist. She was involved in dating an archaeological site at Huayatlico in Mexico. There, archaeologists had discovered projectile points and other stone tools and weapons.

Speaker 2

12:27

And they were, of course, interested in how old these things were. This is the excavation at Huayat Leko. And the artifacts were photographed intact in the layers of rock in which they were found. Virginia Steen McIntyre and her colleagues used 4 different methods to date the site.

Speaker 2

12:50

Animal bones with butchering marks were found in the same layers with the stone tools. The geologists used the uranium series method to date those bones. They got an age of

Speaker 1

13:02

245, 000

Speaker 2

13:03

years. Above the layer with the stone tools was a layer of volcanic ash. The geologists used the Zircon fission track method to date that layer of ash. They got an age of

Speaker 1

13:16

270, 000

Speaker 2

13:17

years. Using all 4 methods that they employed, the geologists concluded the site must be at least 250, 000 years old. However, the archaeologists refused to accept the date. They said humans capable of making those artifacts didn't exist anywhere in the world 250, 000 years ago.

Speaker 2

13:40

They hadn't evolved yet what to speak of being present in North America. They considered the oldest human presence in North America to go back only about 20, 000 years. So they refused to publish the age for the site given by their own hand-picked team of geologists. So Virginia Steen-McIntyre and her colleagues were a little surprised by that, so they decided to independently publish The Age for the Site in a journal called Quaternary Research.

Speaker 2

14:11

But when they did that, they experienced an extreme negative backlash from their colleagues in the scientific world, because they had dared to publish something like this. Virginia Steen MacIntyre wrote to 1 of the editors of the journal, not being an anthropologist, I didn't realize how deeply woven into our thought the current theory of human evolution has become. Our work at Huyet Laco has been rejected by most archaeologists because it contradicts that theory, period. 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.

Speaker 2

14:59

Some of the cases are going to be closer to what the mainstream concepts allow. And some are going to be further and further distant from what current ideas would consider possible. This is 1 of the founders of modern archeology, Jacques Boucher de Perthes. In 1 of his excavations at Moulin-Quignon near Abbeville in northeastern France, he found an anatomically modern human jawbone.

Speaker 2

15:30

He found it in the bottom layers of his excavation with stone tools and weapons. According to modern geologists, that layer at Abbeville is about

Speaker 1

15:42

430, 000

Speaker 2

15:45

years old. It was quite a controversial discovery, even in the 19th century. Many scientists could not accept that humans existed at that distant point in time.

Speaker 2

16:01

So some of them proposed, well, Boucher de Perret must have been the victim of a hoax. Somehow or other, someone must have gone to some Roman cemetery, gotten a jawbone, 2, 000 or 3, 000 years old, and buried it in the excavation for him to find. And that's actually the explanation that we see in today's textbooks. However, what we do not see in today's textbooks is that after these hoax accusations came out, Richer de Perret made additional excavations at Moulin-Quignon.

Speaker 2

16:41

And in these additional excavations, in the same location, he found over 100 additional anatomically modern human bones and teeth in the same formation, which to me indicates a human presence going back over

Speaker 1

16:59

400, 000

Speaker 2

17:00

years. And I reported on this case in this paper, which was later published in a peer-reviewed conference proceedings volume. Recently, just last year, archaeologists reported the discovery of footprints at a place called Happisburg in the United Kingdom. They were found in a formation that is at least 780, 000 years old and is perhaps up to a million years old.

Speaker 2

17:33

The archaeologists who studied the footprints published results suggesting they are consistent with anatomically modern human footprints. For example, they studied the foot index, which is the width divided by the length times 100. The average for all of the Hattiesburg footprints was

Speaker 1

17:58

39.

Speaker 2

18:00

The average for living Native American Indians is, again, 39. The average for living Eskimos today, their foot index is

Speaker 1

18:10

38.26.

Speaker 2

18:13

And other features of the footprints were consistent with those of modern human beings. Now, of course, they did not believe that humans like us existed at that time. They don't think Homo sapiens existed over

Speaker 1

18:32

780, 000

Speaker 2

18:34

years ago. So they attributed the footprints to a species called Homo antecessor, an ape man that they believe inhabited Europe at that time. But from the evidence itself, they could just as well have been made by humans like us.

Speaker 2

18:52

And there is evidence that anatomically modern humans existed at that time. This is the Buenos Aires skull, which was discovered early in the 20th century in Argentina. Researchers were conducting digging, and they had gone down about 45 feet, and they encountered a solid layer of limestone rock, locally known as Tosca. And after they broke through that layer, they found a human skull cap of an anatomically modern human type in the Pre-Ensenaden Formation, which geologists consider to be 1 and 1 half million years old.

Speaker 2

19:38

This discovery was reported to the scientific world in the primary scientific literature by the South American scientist Florentino Ameghino. I reported on this case and some others in this paper presented at a meeting of the World Archaeological Congress in Cape Town, South Africa. Many people have heard of Ulduvai Gorge. Many important discoveries have been made there.

Speaker 2

20:07

Most people are not aware of the first discovery that was made at Ulduvai Gorge by the German scientist Hans Reck, who reported on it in 1913. He found a fairly complete anatomically modern human skeleton. That's the skull cap of it, buried in upper bed 2 of Valduvai Gorge. Upper bed 2 of Valduvai Gorge is between 1.15 and

Speaker 1

20:37

1.7

Speaker 2

20:38

million years ago. It was a very controversial discovery. There were decades of debate about it.

Speaker 2

20:46

Many people thought the debates were finally settled in the 1970s when a German scientist named Reiner Proch did a radiocarbon test on a fragment of bone that he said was from Rex's skeleton. And he got an age of less than 10, 000 years. However, I question the reliability of that, given that Reiner Proch was removed from his position at Frankfurt University after an academic committee there found him guilty of having forged dozens of radiocarbon dates during his long career there. Another report from the earlier history of archeology, the jaw, fossil human jaw, reported by Dr.

Speaker 2

21:40

Robert Collier. This anatomically modern human jaw was found 16 feet deep in the Red Crag Formation in England at a place called Fox Hall. The Red Crag Formation, according to modern geological studies, is between 2 and 3 million years old. In

Speaker 1

22:06

1979,

Speaker 2

22:08

Mary Leakey announced the discovery of footprints at a place called Laetoli in the country of Tanzania in East Africa. According to her report, the footprints were indistinguishable from modern human footprints. Other scientists also agreed.

Speaker 2

22:26

Paleontologist Tim White wrote, make no mistake about it. They are like modern human footprints. Now, neither Mary Leakey nor Tim White believe those footprints were made by humans like us. They propose they were made by some type of ape man who lived at that time, who just happened to have feet exactly like those of modern human beings.

Speaker 2

22:53

Actually, we have the skeletons of the ape-men that existed at that time in eastern Africa. They're called Australopithecus. And foot bones of Australopithecus have been discovered. And their foot is not exactly like that of a modern human being.

Speaker 2

23:11

They have very long toes, sort of like short human fingers. In other words, their feet were somewhat ape-like. Actually, the only creature known to science today from skeletal evidence that has a foot exactly like that of a modern human being is, in fact, modern human beings like ourselves. So what did Mary Leakey find?

Speaker 2

23:34

I think we have to remain open to the possibility. She found evidence that humans like us were present almost

Speaker 1

23:44

4

Speaker 2

23:45

million years ago. The footprints were found in layers of solidified volcanic ash that were dated using the potassium argon method as being

Speaker 1

23:54

3, 700, 000

Speaker 2

23:56

years old. I presented evidence on this case at a meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists that was held in England. Now, some people might say, OK, footprints are perhaps a little bit ambiguous.

Speaker 2

24:17

It would be better if there were human skeletal evidence almost 4 million years old. Such things have been reported in the primary scientific literature. For example, the Italian geologist Ragazzoni reported finding human skeletal remains at a place called Castanetolo in northern Italy. They were found in layers of rock that modern geologists consider to be about 4 million years old.

Speaker 2

24:47

I went to the village of Castaneda, where I met this gentleman there. And he gave me a copy of a very rare geological report dealing with this discovery. And from the information in the report, we were able to locate the place where the discoveries were made. Now, the current explanation of these discoveries is, well, it's not really possible that you could have anatomically modern human skeletons and layers of rock 4 million years old.

Speaker 2

25:21

So the proposal is that maybe about 4, 000 years ago, somebody died on the surface. His friends dug a grave and put the skeleton down in that ancient layer of rock. And that's why you think you have a human skeleton 4 million years old. Things like this can happen.

Speaker 2

25:46

Technically, it's called intrusive burial. However, if you look at Ragassoni's original reports in the Italian language, which I did, he says, because even at the time, he was a professional geologist. He was aware of the possibility of intrusive burial. He said if it had been an intrusive burial, the layers of rock above the skeleton would have been undisturbed.

Speaker 2

26:12

However, he found that The layers of rock above the skeleton were all intact and undisturbed. Actually, he said each layer had its own microstratigraphy that was undisturbed. So I take this as evidence for a human presence going back over 4 million years. This is Carlos Ribeiro, who was the chief government geologist of Portugal.

Speaker 2

26:40

He found hundreds of human artifacts in his country of Portugal. He found them in layers of rock that date back to the early Miocene period, which means they would be about 20 million years old, according to today's understanding. He, As a professional geologist, he said they cannot have come into those layers from any higher level through any fissure or crack or all the usual kinds of counter explanations. He displayed the artifacts in the Museum of Geology in Lisbon.

Speaker 2

27:17

But if you go there today, you won't see them on display anymore. They're kept in the cabinets behind me. But I was able to get permission from the directors of the museum to study and photograph some of these human artifacts from the early Miocene period. I also carefully studied Ribeiro's original maps, and field notes, and correspondence in the museum archives.

Speaker 2

27:45

And then I went into the countryside of Portugal, and I relocated some of the sites where he made his discoveries. This is the quarry at Morgana Eira. And he found human artifacts there in lower Miocene formations. This is 1 of them.

Speaker 2

28:04

It's a Flint artifact. It's interesting what happened. When Ribera was alive, the artifacts were displayed in the museum with labels showing a lower Miocene age for them, about 20 million years. After he died, his colleagues in the museum did something interesting.

Speaker 2

28:26

They left the artifacts on display, but they wrote new labels for all of them. This is the new label they wrote for the artifact I just showed you. Second line gives the age, Paleolithico-Superior, Upper Paleolithic period. According to geologists today, that period in Europe goes back about 20, 000 years.

Speaker 2

28:49

So it's interesting. Ribero's colleagues thought 20 million years, that's clearly impossible. 20, 000 years, that sounds about right for discoveries like this. So they just wrote new labels for all of the artifacts.

Speaker 2

29:05

Now, the next generation of officials in the museum just put the entire collection away. And I'm the first researcher to see these things in over

Speaker 1

29:15

50

Speaker 2

29:16

years. I presented a paper on this case at a meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists that was held in Lisbon, Portugal in the year 2000. That paper was later published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal from Europe, the Journal of Iberian Archaeology. A case that's always fascinated me has been the California gold mine discoveries.

Speaker 2

29:45

Gold was discovered in California, and miners went to places like Table Mountain in Tuolumne County, near Sonora, actually not too far from here. And deep inside the tunnels, the miners found human bones and human artifacts. For example, they found many of these stone mortars and pestles. What makes them so interesting to me is they were found in layers of solid rock that date to the early part of the geological period called the Eocene, which means they would be about

Speaker 1

30:19

50

Speaker 2

30:21

million years old. Some of the details about the dating of the discoveries, it was done in modern times using the potassium argon method and analyzing the plant and animal fossils found in those layers of rock. These discoveries were originally reported to the scientific world by Dr.

Speaker 2

30:43

J.D. Whitney, who was the chief government geologist of California. His report was published by Harvard University in the year 1880. But we don't hear very much about these discoveries today because of the process of knowledge filtration that I mentioned.

Speaker 2

31:04

This is the anthropologist William Holmes, who worked with the Smithsonian Institution. And he wrote in his report, if Dr. Whitney had understood the theory of human evolution, he would not have published those discoveries. In other words, he would have known that humans could not possibly have existed at that time.

Speaker 2

31:30

A few years ago, I was a consultant for a television documentary called The Mysterious Origins of Man that aired on NBC. And the producer of this documentary had read my book, Forbidden Archaeology, and wanted to include some cases in the documentary. I told him he should go to the Museum of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley because artifacts from the California gold mines are still in that collection. And the museum officials refused to allow him to see the artifacts.

Speaker 2

32:09

Anyways, we were able to get some photographs of the artifacts that Dr. Whitney had taken in the 19th century. It was interesting what happened when this documentary aired. Actually, many scientists were outraged, and they wanted the FCC to investigate NBC, censure NBC, fine NBC millions of dollars for having aired this documentary.

Speaker 2

32:37

Now, I'm happy to say the FCC didn't do any of those things. But it was interesting that such attempts were made. Later, I went back to the museum myself, and I personally was given access to the discoveries, and they are still there. I also went out to Table Mountain near Sonora, And we were able to relocate some of the old 19th century gold mining tunnels where these discoveries were originally made.

Speaker 2

33:09

I reported on this case at this meeting of the World Archaeological Congress that was held in Washington, DC in

Speaker 1

33:16

2003.

Speaker 2

33:19

So how far back in time can we go with evidence like this? In 1862, a scientific journal called The Geologist published an interesting report. An anatomically modern human skeleton was found 90 feet below the surface of the ground in Macoupin County in the state of Illinois near St.

Speaker 2

33:42

Louis. According to the report, above the skeleton was a thick layer of slate rock that was unbroken. That's an important detail, because it kind of rules out the intrusive burial hypothesis. This report from Scientific American tells of a beautiful metallic.

Speaker 2

34:03

Oops, I want 1 more detail. According to modern geologists, the layer where the skeleton was found is about 300 million years old. This report from Scientific American tells of a beautiful metallic base that was found 15 feet deep in solid rock in Dorchester, which is in the Boston area. According to modern geological reports, the age of the formation at that location and depth is about 600 million years from the Cambrian period.

Speaker 2

34:39

Now, I could actually keep you here for days and days and days, because there are hundreds of reports like this in the primary scientific literature. I'm not going to do that, but I'll make some concluding remarks. The significance of this evidence would be that it would contradict the now dominant ideas about human origins. And this was actually recognized by 1 of the architects of the current paradigm, Dr.

Speaker 2

35:14

William Howells of Harvard, who wrote to me after he read Forbidden Archaeology. And he said a few things about it. He said, Forbidden Archaeology represents much careful effort in critically assembling published materials. I thought It was nice that he recognized that.

Speaker 2

35:32

And then he said, most of us, mistakingly or not, see human evolution with man emerging rather late. And that's the actual fact. Most scientists actually do see things that way. And he went on to say, to have modern human beings appearing a great deal earlier would be devastating to the whole theory of evolution.

Speaker 2

35:57

So that's what he saw as the impact of this kind of evidence, if it were to be taken as genuine. Now, not everybody is willing to do that, admittedly. Now, another interesting statement about forbidden archaeology was made by archaeologist Tim Murray in his review published in British Journal for History of Science. Now Murray is 1 of my critics.

Speaker 2

36:33

And still, even though he's not really prepared to accept my conclusions, he has some interesting things to say that I think are worth repeating. He said, forbidden archaeology, quote, provides the historian of archaeology with a useful compendium of case studies in the history and sociology of scientific knowledge, which can be used to foster debate within archaeology about how to describe the epistemology of one's discipline. And that's actually what I was trying to do in putting that book together, to foster debate within archaeology about the epistemology of the discipline. And to see this acknowledged in the professional literature was kind of interesting.

Speaker 2

37:24

Now, he went on to say, forbidden archaeology is designed to demolish the case for biological and cultural evolution and to advance the cause of a Vedic alternative. Now, I plead guilty to that indictment. And it's at this point that many in the world of science today are really going to have strong objections to the kinds of things that I do. This mention of Vedic alternative, in other words, some alternative that has its roots in some religious or spiritual idea.

Speaker 2

38:01

According to many in the world of science today, this is completely fair bulletin. That's why I called the book Forbidden Archaeology. But it's interesting what Tim Murray had to say about that. He said, the dominant paradigm has changed and is changing, and practitioners openly debate issues which go right to the conceptual core of the discipline.

Speaker 2

38:30

Whether the Vedas have a role to play in this is up to the individual scientist's concern. And I think that's an enlightened attitude that I can support. No ban, But it's just up to each individual to make up their mind whether or not they're going to try to do something like I'm doing, or agree with it. Gets you into a whole discussion about religion and science.

Speaker 2

39:06

Now I'm going to close with some of my experiences in presenting this kind of thing at university audiences around the world. I've spoken at hundreds of universities around the world. My books are now in about 25 different languages. 1 of them is Russian.

Speaker 2

39:24

So I've lectured at a lot of universities in Russia, from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg. And usually the Lectures go fine. However, at this particular university, the Tumin State University, there was a little bit of a problem.

Speaker 2

39:38

Some professors there had invited me to speak. And a lecture was scheduled. But when other faculty members found out that I was being invited to speak, they approached the administration of the university and said, we can't have this. We shouldn't allow this person to speak at our university.

Speaker 2

40:01

First of all, he's contradicting a dominant theory. And second, and even more damningly, he's doing it from some Vedic spiritual kind of perspective. So the president of the university canceled the lecture. The professors who invited me and wanted to hear me speak went to the president and tried to get him to change his mind.

Speaker 2

40:27

But the pressure from the other side was just too big, so the lecture was canceled. So then the professors who invited me went to the local branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and they spoke to the director there. He said, OK, if they won't let him speak at the university, he can speak here at the Russian Academy of Science building. So they had buses bring students and professors from the university to the Russian Academy of Science building.

Speaker 2

40:57

And the professors who invited me said more people came than would have come if the lecture had been held at the university. And then the next year, something interesting happened. I went back to the same university, And I was able to speak at the biology department there, no problem. I guess they just thought, better let him talk and let people just make up their minds about what he's saying.

Speaker 2

41:30

They're intelligent. They'll be able to figure out if they can agree or not agree. It's not going to be the end of the world if he talks. These are some of my works, the Forbidden Archaeologist, Forbidden Archaeology, Hidden History of the Human Race, Human Devolution, My science, my religion, some contact information.

Speaker 2

41:55

And if you do like the kinds of things you've heard today and are interested in hearing more, you may want to come on this cruise where I'm a speaker in June 2015. Go up and see the glaciers and hear some weird stuff. So I've ended 5 minutes before I intended to.

Speaker 1

42:25

Yeah. Oh.

Speaker 2

42:31

I did want to leave some time for questions.

Speaker 1

42:33

Thank you. Let's start from here.

Speaker 3

42:37

So I was also hoping to get your point of view from Vedic or Purana on how old is humanity and what did you find there. Because I think in the talk, somebody replied that you would also come to know about religious books like Ramayana or Mahabharata, how Much of that is true based on the archeology, I believe.

Speaker 2

43:06

Well, it depends upon what kind of circles I'm speaking in. For example, if I go to Hrishikesh or Hardwar in the Himalayan mountains and sit around with a bunch of Vedic scholars who accept statements from Vedic literature as evidence, then, well, I can say, in the Bhagavata Purana, there are statements that humans were existing during the Swayambhuva-Manvantara period, which is in the first part of the Kalpa or the day. And they'll understand what I'm saying.

Speaker 2

43:51

And they'll accept that as evidence. If I'm at a meeting of the World Archaeological Congress or speaking at Google headquarters, my audience is not necessarily going to accept a statement from the Bhagavata Purana or the Mahabharata as evidence. So it's like if you go to a baseball game, you have to play by the baseball game rules. And 1 of the rules is that you can't use a statement from a spiritual text as evidence.

Speaker 2

44:44

Now, you can. So for the people who do, I get questions like yours from many people. They want to say, OK, you've given all this archaeological evidence that you say is consistent with Vedic texts, which talk, according to you, in a general way about extreme human antiquity. But what do they actually say, the Vedic literature themselves?

Speaker 2

45:11

So for such people, I'm writing a book in which I will collect all those Vedic statements, and then they can see. But that's not the audience that I'm presenting to today. It's not the audience that I get at universities. It's not the audience that I get at universities.

Speaker 2

45:33

It's not the audience that I get at meetings of the World Archaeological Congress or European Association of Archaeologists. A good question. And I'm writing a book to answer it.

Speaker 4

45:43

Could you say more about the actual contradiction between the extreme antiquity of humans and evolution? Because in my mind, it would just seem, well, the evolution theory could just be, oh, you just have to push it back a few million years, and it could still hold up. It's just that it happened a lot earlier than people thought.

Speaker 4

46:05

That seems like a simplistic resolution. But is there something else that's constraining the timeline which makes it really inconsistent?

Speaker 2

46:15

Well, it's a good question. I'll refer you back to the statement of William Howells, who said, if the kind of evidence that I'm talking about is consistent, It's inconsistent with the general theory of evolution, because he said, I didn't quote everything he wrote to me in his letter. He said, but you're putting evidence for an anatomically modern human presence before the known presence of even the most simple apes and monkeys, which would be our prospective ancestors.

Speaker 2

46:54

So you could conceivably come up with another version of the evolutionary theory, but it would be quite different from anything that's being proposed today. So that would be 1 possible response to do something like that. And if you feel inspired to do it, then write on.

Speaker 5

47:27

So you talked a lot regarding your critics, throwing out the archaeological evidence based on it just being out of their paradigm, filtering it away, and so on. But some of the critics who've truly engaged your work, has it been just that? Or do they have valid scientific reasons why they're refuting your evidence?

Speaker 2

47:49

Normally, I mean, everybody's going to have to make up their own minds about these things. What I tried to do in forbidden archaeology was provide, in each case, all of the different opinions, all sides of the question, leave it up to the reader to make up their own mind whether they think it's valid or not. Typically, the reactions are to suggest, first of all, it's old evidence.

Speaker 2

48:29

In other words, But this is very selective. It's the idea that, kind of like a milk carton, scientific evidence got an expiration date. That any science conducted before midnight January

Speaker 1

48:45

1, 1900

Speaker 2

48:47

somehow has expired. But I noticed that those who make that type of criticism are applying it very selectively, because the standard textbooks of archaeology are full of discoveries that were made in the 19th century, early 20th century. So it can't just be that Just because something is from the earlier history of archaeology, it has to be wrong.

Speaker 2

49:22

Another category of objection has to do with lists of ways in which something could be wrong. It's possible there was a hoax. It's possible it could have slipped in through a fissure. It's possible that the original investigator made a mistake.

Speaker 2

49:45

It's possible that. My general response to that category of criticism is everything is certainly possible, but if you're going to proceed in a scientific way, you should be able to show that in this particular location, there was a fissure. There were artifacts on the surface that resemble those that were found at that level. And there definitely was a way they could have got down there.

Speaker 2

50:13

So That's another category of objection. And of course, I'm willing to engage on that level. And it's 1 of the things I hope to accomplish with the book is to have a second look at some of these things. And if there are objections, raise them.

Speaker 6

50:41

My question is, you mentioned about a guy that in 19th century found a jawbone in a layer that was 400, 000 years old. How did they knew in 19th century that this particular layer was that old without any dating methods?

Speaker 2

51:00

RICHARD THALER GROVER OK, that's a good question. What I said, if you listened carefully, was that according to modern geologists, the lair is a certain number of years old. At that time, they characterized things in another way, not using necessarily years, but characterizing things as early Pleistocene, early middle Pleistocene, and things of that sort.

Speaker 2

51:35

So if you translate those terms to the modern dates that are attached to those terms, it works out. So they would have said that jawbone was found in an early Pleistocene layer, which would mean it would have to be several hundred thousand years old at least. That's why I went by the modern. To give an age and years, I went by the modern geological dating of those layers at Abbeville.

Speaker 2

52:23

For example, Ribero, he would have said, these stone tools are early Miocene. Now, in the 19th century, the conception of the Miocene was there, but it wouldn't be exactly the number of years that we now attach to it. But still, it was considered to be very old in terms of the succession of geological layers. But just for current reference, I give the estimates in years that modern geologists have determined for these layers.

Speaker 2

53:02

Same with Dr. Whitney's report. He would have said, these layers are from the Pliocene period, which is an old geological period. Now the layers that he considered Pliocene are considered to be Eocene.

Speaker 2

53:21

And the age for them is between 30 and 50 million years. So in the 19th century, They wouldn't be using the same number of years that we do. But they had a concept still that, in terms of the system they were using, it was older. They expected human beings like us to appear only in the very latest, very recent Pleistocene period.

Speaker 2

53:55

So if it was from the middle or the early Pleistocene, that would be anomalous for them. Is that helping?

Speaker 6

54:07

Let's say it's 19th century. We dig a hole in the ground, and we find a few layers. And they somehow decided, oh, this layer is younger, this is older, based on the depth.

Speaker 6

54:19

But then they put some dates to it. And I think it's almost the same as right now. We also have layers, and they have dates attached to them. And my concern is that maybe we just attach the dates badly.

Speaker 6

54:34

How do you know exactly? Just like they might be wrong about the dates in 19th century, we might be wrong about the dates right now.

Speaker 2

54:41

I'm prepared to accept that. If we want to say We don't know how old anything is, really, and all the dating methods are unreliable. We could certainly do that.

Speaker 2

54:53

That's 1 approach to take. The approach, however, that I've taken is you have to have some kind of framework for discussing things. And I'm addressing an audience of geologists, archaeologists, paleontologists. And my way of creating a frame of reference for the discussion is to say, according to methods that you consider reliable, radiocarbon dating, potassium-argon dating, uranium series dating, zircon fission track dating, these layers belong to this geological period, which you consider to be millions of years old.

Speaker 2

55:37

Now, if you wanted to take the approach that, well, nothing is reliable, and we don't know anything about the real age of anything, that's certainly an approach that could be taken in some out in the world. Say, if you're a young Earth Christian creationist who believes that the Earth is no older than 10, 000 years, you're going to be very critical of all the different dating methods. And that may be the way that such a person would approach this. The Vedic timescales are more or less consistent with the modern scientific timescales for the universe and the Earth and things like that.