UNDERGROUND Civilizations - We've Been Looking For Aliens In The Wrong Place

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for 50% off and three free gifts when you check out after you purchase it will ask you where you heard about them and please support our show and tell them our show sent you evening by his remorse buy a new car new car i'll be moving in let's get started sorry i think there's been a mistake i bought it from carvana you what yeah great price i even have seven days to love it or return it so there's no no no buyer's remorse more like buyers rejoice i guess i'll let myself out congratulations i mean it buyers rejoice buy your car today on carvana limitations and exclusions may apply see our seven-day return policy at carvana.com every town has a dark side we've always assumed we were the first that before us there was nothing but stone tools and firelight and small bands of people who hadn't figured out how to build anything yet that history itself is a straight line and we're the ones standing at the front of it looking back at everyone who came before we are the culmination of it all and are at the peak of what humans have ever been but every so often somebody digs into a hillside and finds something that shouldn't be there a temple older than farming itself an entire city carved 280 feet straight down into solid rock and symbols that show up on continents that supposedly never spoke to each other never even knew the other existed no matter how crazy the finding is the official answer is always the same well hunter-gatherers did it but here's another answer and it's a simple one well what if we weren't the first what if someone was here before us built something and instead of dying out they went down down out of our story completely and they kept going and what if they're still here today but we just haven't found them yet hey guys it's andrew and welcome to every town where today we're doing something a little different no missing girl and no cold case file today we're talking about the idea that we are not and have never been alone on this planet and that the proof isn't up in the sky where we've spent 70 years pointing our telescopes no it's underneath us it's been underneath us the whole time here's a number to keep in mind for this because it's important and it's a big one the fossil record puts anatomically modern humans so people who look just like you same skull same brain size same everything going back at least 300 000 years ago and we're talking about the first 10 000 years now some of the dating pushes that even further this is not cavemen grunting around a fire it's us fully modern now here's the part nobody really sits with the oldest cities we point to as the birth of civilization sumer irk the first writing the first laws the first wheel well those show up around five thousand to six thousand years ago i do the math and that's roughly 294 000 years of fully modern humans same everything you're using to listen to this right now before anybody anywhere decided to build a city now the standard answer is that it's not that we couldn't it's that we didn't need to small bands of people were always just moving always in survival mode agriculture permanent settlements all of that had to wait for something like reliable weather and even though there's been plenty of big chunks of solid weather that have spanned thousands of years conventionally they say it didn't really click into place until the end of the last ice age somewhere around eleven thousand seven hundred years ago that this is when the climate finally settled down enough to farm the same patch of ground year after year that's the textbook answer but it skips over a gap that's hard to ignore nearly three hundred thousand years of people exactly like us and in all that time as far as we've found there's nothing there's no cities no writing no monuments just campfires and stone tools generation after generation for longer than almost anything else in human history combined maybe that's exactly what happened or maybe something did happen in there somewhere in those 294 000 years and we just haven't found it yet and the reality is that the further you go back the harder it will be to ever find evidence of people at all the surface of the earth is constantly changing and things get buried under rubble debris sand and water many things erode and decay and disappear completely I mean if you put a car outside and left it to the element within a hundred years you might be left with some unidentified lump of an engine block but everything else had to be gone so when you're talking thousands of years well it gets tricky but one thing that doesn't erode so easily is stone up into the 1990s it was believed the oldest stone megalithic structure is dated back to around 3600 BCE the temples of gantesia on the island of gozo in Malta so there was something like five thousand six hundred years old massive dress limestone ceremonial architecture genuinely one of the most impressive things humans had managed with stone tools and bare hands they were older than the pyramids older than Stonehenge and for decades that was the ceiling as far back as anyone could prove this was what organized humans were capable of building at that scale then that ceiling didn't just move it shattered over in southeastern Turkey at a place called gobekli Tepe the name means pot belly Hill in Turkish which is about the least threatening name you could give to the most unsettling archaeological site on the planet and for decades it was just a hill farmers walked over it plows kept catching on odd bits of limestone poking up through the soil and nobody thought much of it then in the 1990s a German archaeologist named Klaus Schmidt got a look at it and his entire career changed direction on the spot what Schmidt and his team eventually dug out of that hillside has been radiocarbon dated to somewhere around 9 600 to 8 200 BCE that puts it at roughly 11 to 12 000 years old more than twice as old as the oldest stone megalithic structure ever found that's older than the first cities in Mesopotamia which is the region we were taught in school gave birth to civilization itself we have a monumental architecture so early in the history of humankind so we didn't expect it to have it so early so we are nearly 7 000 years before the pyramids which are the first monumental building everyone knows and beyond its age here's why this is such a significant find gobekli Tepe was built before agriculture existed before pottery before the wheel at a time when every textbook says human beings were nomadic hunter-gatherers moving around and chasing food from place to place with nothing resembling permanent architecture that's the world gobekli Tepe was supposedly built in except what's sitting in that hillside is not the work of a scattered band of hunters It's a series of massive stone enclosures, ringed with T-shaped limestone pillars, some of them over 17 feet tall and weighing many tons apiece. Schmidt himself argued that raising these things would have taken hundreds of organized workers, people who had to be fed, housed, and coordinated toward a single purpose over a long stretch of time. Now that is simply not what hunter-gatherers do. That is what civilizations do. On top of it, these T-shaped pillars aren't just structural supports. They're abstract depictions of the human form. And some of them have arms carved down the sides, hands resting carefully on the stomach, even what looks like belts and clothing etched into the stone. But there are no faces, no individual features, just the shape of a person, standing there faceless, but somehow watching. And crawling down the stairs, crawling all over these pillars, are carvings of wild animals. Lions, foxes, gazelles, scorpions, birds with their wings spread. And moreover, these animals are not carved into the stone, but are popping out of it. Meaning that a whole lot more effort and tolling needed to be used to remove all that stone around it in order to accomplish that. So, pretty sophisticated stuff from a very long time ago. At some point, for reasons unknown, the people who built Gobekli Tepe didn't abandon it. But instead, they deliberately filled the enclosure in with rubble, packed it down tight, and buried the whole site on purpose. And why would they do that? Why take the one thing that proves you existed and put it in the ground where nobody would find it again for 11,000 years? As it turns out, once people started paying attention to Gobekli Tepe, they found out it isn't even alone out there. A few miles away sits Carry-On Tepe, part of a wider cluster of sites now being uncovered across the region that archaeologists have started calling the Tass-Tepler Network. They're the same style, same age, same eerie faceless figures. Which kills the idea that Gobekli Tepe was some kind of freak accident, a one-off. This wasn't a fluke. This whole thing was organized. It was an entire network. But where did the people who built it go? About 600 miles west from Gobekli Tepe is a region of central Turkey called Cappadocia. Famous today for its hot air balloons and its strange cone-shaped rock formations. But underneath all that postcard scenery is something else entirely. In 1963, a man there was doing some basic renovation work on his home. He knocked down a wall in his basement, expecting to find dirt or bedrock behind it. Instead, he found a passage. And behind that passage, once people started exploring, they realized they'd found an entire city underground. And nobody living there had known it existed, sitting directly beneath their feet the entire time. That city is called Derinkuyu, and the numbers on it are honestly hard to process the first time you hear them. It runs close to 280 feet straight down into the earth, across as many as 18 distinct levels. Estimates suggest it could shelter as many as 20,000 people at once, along with their livestock. Their grain stores and their water supply. It had wine presses, it had stables, it had chapels carved into the rock for worship. Ventilation shafts that still function today pulled fresh air down through more than 165 feet of solid stone. As to who built this and when, well, no one can agree, so we just don't know. But it certainly took a whole lot of work and planning and sophistication. It's also worth reiterating that this place and Gobekli Tepe were both found on accident by random people who just live by them. Which makes you wonder, what else is just beneath our feet? What we do know about Derinkuyu is that it was built to be sealed. Each level had its own massive circular stone door, carved to roll into place from the inside like something out of a bank vault. Closing that section off completely from anything trying to get in from above. Every floor could be sealed independently of the others. So, if something came down through the upper levels, whoever was below could shut themselves off entirely and keep going deeper. And Derinkuyu wasn't even unique either. Researchers believe a tunnel runs for miles between it and another underground city called Kemekli. And once researchers started properly surveying the region, they found that Cappadocia alone holds more than 30 separate underground cities. These are not caves or simple storage cellars. Entire cities, built downward instead of outward. Hidden beneath a landscape that from the surface looks like nothing more than rolling hills and strange rock spires. The mainstream explanation is that these were safe spaces. They were built and expanded by later partners. Retreating from invading armies. They could hide under there until the danger passed overhead. That sort of makes sense, but when you consider the actual design of the place, that explanation starts to strain a bit. A refuge from what exactly? Required sealed stone doors on every single level. Ventilation systems engineered to sustain thousands of people for months at a time. And enough infrastructure to essentially operate as a fully self-sufficient city. With the sun never touching it. That's not a place you duck into for a few days until the raiders move on. That's a place you built to disappear into. Permanently, if you had to. And it's not just Turkey either. Go back further and you've got Herodotus, the Greek historian, writing about a structure in Egypt he simply called the labyrinth. This is from Herodotus's Histories in the 5th century BC and he says, "For this I saw myself and I found it greater than words can say. For if one should put together and reckon up all the buildings and all the great works produced by the Hellenes, the Greeks, they would prove to be inferior in labor and expense to this labyrinth." And this was a springboard. A sprawling complex near Lake Morris that, by his account, held 3,000 rooms, 1,500 above ground and 1,500 below, wrapped around 12 massive covered courts. And he walked through the upper level himself, and the lower level, the priests wouldn't show him. They told him it held the tombs of the kings who built the place and the graves of their sacred crocodiles. For most of modern history, that description got foul. They called it an ancient exaggeration, and by the time archaeologists actually got out to the site in the 1880s, there was nothing left above ground but rubble. This whole thing had been quarried for its stone over centuries. However in 2008, a joint Egyptian and Belgian survey team ran ground-penetrating radar across the site, and underneath the sand, roughly 25 to 30 feet down. The scans picked up something. It was a massive, regular, grid-like network of walls and chambers spread across several acres, sitting almost exactly where Herodotus said it would be. And nobody's dug it up. Egyptian authorities have never approved a full excavation, so what's really down there, we don't know. The point being, it's the same pattern showing up again and again. Megaliths in Gobekli Tepe. An underground city in Derinkuyu. And the labyrinths in Egypt. They're all ancient, all separated by thousands of miles, and all of them underground. And that's the thing. Most of this planet's interior is still genuinely completely unmapped. We know more about the surface of Mars than we do about what's sitting a few miles beneath our own feet. The deep ocean floor? It's the same story. Still mostly. It's nothing like space on a map. And so here's where we're at. Human beings in our modern form go back at least 300,000 years in the fossil record, and it's likely we're much older. Possibly double that, or more. And we now know that people were capable of building complex structures in the past. complex, coordinated, monumental structures long before anyone thought that was even possible. How far back they actually go, nobody knows for sure. But if we've genuinely been here that long, what if thousand years ago isn't when civilization started what if it's just when the survivors started over and what if we're not the first chapter of this story and we're the epilogue the people who came before us didn't fail to build anything they built something for sure and then they left and took the story with them which left us to stumble along just the edges of it one buried temple at a time i'll be straight with you even the authors of the most serious academic paper on this whole topic which we're about to get into admit flat out well they personally think the hidden civilization idea is probably false but probably false isn't the same as impossible if there's even a sliver of a chance it's true then that would be the biggest story in all of human history but at the very least it's interesting to think about i think what the ufo phenomenon is teaching us is that we don't understand time and space here are objects i think we have to call them objects that are physical that interact with the environment and yet are capable of appear to be capable of manipulating time and space in ways that go beyond what our physics understands today back in the 1970s researchers john keel and jack valet started pushing back hard against the popular idea that ufos and the strange beings people reported seeing were visitors from other planets their argument was that these beings had never been extraterrestrial in the first place but the label itself was wrong and they coined a different term for it ultra-terrestrial something that originates here on earth just operating on a level we haven't figured out how to perceive yet and then in 2010 a writer named mac tonys took that idea a step further with a book that coined the term crypto-terrestrial the crypto-terrestrial hypothesis basically sort of maintains that we are sharing the planet with a species that's possibly as far in advance i think one thing that this secret civilization among us uh has going for it is a very prolonged and maintained and very well-cultivated sense of stealth i think that they thrive on secrecy i think that's a big asset his theory was that there's a hidden sister race sharing this planet with us a group that survived by perfecting two things above all else incredibly advanced technology and the art of never being seen staying hidden as a survival strategy not as an accident there's a detail about tony's that adds an eerie texture to all this whether you take that theory seriously or not he died suddenly in 2009 at just 34 years old in his sleep of cardiac arrhythmia his book on crypto-terrestrial hypothesis came out the following year in 2010 and he never got to see the idea take off he never got to see it become one of the most discussed fringe theories in the entire uap research community or watch it eventually walk its way into an academic paper with harvard names attached now he just planted it and then he was gone and for a long time his idea stayed on the fringe talked about by people interested in the subject but never touched by anyone with actual institutional credibility that all changed in 2023 though around the same time congress was holding those hearings on unidentified aerial phenomena and all the videos and clips were coming out showing actual ufos congressman mike gallagher went on the pat mcafee show and he floated one possible explanation for what people were seeing i'm paraphrasing here but it was that it might be an ancient civilization that's simply been hiding here this whole time and is only now starting to show itself a sitting congressman actually said that i'm a big show that reaches millions then in 2024 it went even further a formal academic paper was published in the journal philosophy and cosmology it was written by three researchers tim lomas and brendan case both out of harvard's human flourishing program along with biological anthropologist michael masters in it they seriously examined the crypto-terrestrial hypothesis as a legitimate potential explanation for unidentified anomalous phenomena so a once-fringed theory had officially stepped up into the mainstream and this is where it stops being about buried temples and hidden cities and it gets a lot bigger because that paper it doesn't just entertain the idea in a vague way it actually breaks the hypothesis down into four distinct possibilities one a surviving ancient human civilization something like the builders of gobekli tepe never actually went extinct and instead went underground two is that a completely separate intelligent species had evolved here on earth in parallel with us and had simply gone its own way and stayed hidden the entire time i.e underground hidden inside mountains or even under the ocean and three these uaps were former extraterrestrial or time travelers who arrived long ago and established long-term bases here effectively becoming residents rather than visitors and four what the paper calls magical crypto-terrestrials basically the fairies the elves the little people of centuries of folklore reinterpreted as a real hidden population rather than pure superstition but it's that third one and it's overlap with something else in the paper that may just be the strongest in this whole theory one of the paper's three authors michael masters has spent years developing his own separate idea and one of the papers three authors michael masters has spent years developing his own separate idea one of the papers three authors michael masters has spent years developing his own separate idea when he calls the michael masters has spent years developing his own separate idea when he calls the extra-tempestual hypothesis when he calls the extra-tempestual hypothesis when he calls the extra-tempestual hypothesis his argument is that a meaningful percentage extra-tempestual hypothesis his argument is that a meaningful percentage of uap his argument is that a meaningful percentage of uap sightings might not be alien visitors from of uap sightings might not be alien visitors from another planet at all another planet at all another planet at all and they might be us just not us right and they might be us just not us right and they might be us just not us right now now now personally i've written three books about personally i've written three books about personally i've written three books about whether they could be future human time whether they could be future human time whether they could be future human time travelers coming back to visit their own travelers coming back to visit their own travelers coming back to visit their own past and in the same way i would as a past and in the same way i would as a past and in the same way i would as a biological anthropologist if i had access biological anthropologist if i had access biological anthropologist if i had access to that technology and that is one of to that technology and that is one of to that technology and that is one of the possibilities we include in this paper the possibilities we include in this paper the possibilities we include in this paper as well the 2024 paper itself points out that the 2024 paper itself points out that the 2024 paper itself points out that the time traveling future human idea and the time traveling future human idea and the time traveling future human idea and the crypto-terrestrial idea aren't the crypto-terrestrial idea aren't the crypto-terrestrial idea aren't necessarily two competing theories necessarily two competing theories necessarily two competing theories and they might be describing the same and they might be describing the same and they might be describing the same phenomenon just viewed from two phenomenon just viewed from two phenomenon just viewed from two different angles different angles different angles a hidden population that started out a hidden population that started out a hidden population that started out human kept evolving in isolation human kept evolving in isolation human kept evolving in isolation whether that isolation was underground whether that isolation was underground whether that isolation was underground in another dimension or simply further in another dimension or simply further in another dimension or simply further down our own timeline than we can down our own timeline than we can down our own timeline than we can currently perceive currently perceive currently perceive so the aliens they're us just further so the aliens they're us just further so the aliens they're us just further down the line down the line down the line and so where does all this actually and so where does all this actually and so where does all this actually leave us leave us leave us a species with 300 000 years on the a species with 300 000 years on the a species with 300 000 years on the clock for sure and only 6 000 of them clock for sure and only 6 000 of them clock for sure and only 6 000 of them spent building anything we'd called spent building anything we'd called spent building anything we'd called civilization civilization civilization a temple in turkey older than farming a temple in turkey older than farming a temple in turkey older than farming built by people organized enough to move built by people organized enough to move built by people organized enough to move stone pillars that weigh tons stone pillars that weigh tons stone pillars that weigh tons who then bury their own greatest who then bury their own greatest who then bury their own greatest achievement rather than let it stand in achievement rather than let it stand in achievement rather than let it stand in the light the light the light a city underneath cappadocia big enough a city underneath cappadocia big enough a city underneath cappadocia big enough for 20 000 people sealed from the inside for 20 000 people sealed from the inside for 20 000 people sealed from the inside one of more than 30 just like it in that one of more than 30 just like it in that one of more than 30 just like it in that region alone region alone region alone and a gigantic labyrinth in egypt yet and a gigantic labyrinth in egypt yet and a gigantic labyrinth in egypt yet to be looked at in modern times and to be looked at in modern times and to be looked at in modern times and potentially countless other structures potentially countless other structures potentially countless other structures underground that have yet to be underground that have yet to be underground that have yet to be discovered at all discovered at all discovered at all what is all that really and where did what is all that really and where did what is all that really and where did the builders go you know we keep building bigger you know we keep building bigger you know we keep building bigger telescopes launching more satellites and telescopes launching more satellites and telescopes launching more satellites and pointing all of it further out into the pointing all of it further out into the pointing all of it further out into the dark hoping to finally catch something dark hoping to finally catch something dark hoping to finally catch something coming toward us from somewhere else coming toward us from somewhere else coming toward us from somewhere else but we never do but we never do but we never do maybe that's because the idea is totally maybe that's because the idea is totally maybe that's because the idea is totally backwards we've all seen the videos the photos the we've all seen the videos the photos the we've all seen the videos the photos the pilot encounters the radar footage pilot encounters the radar footage pilot encounters the radar footage the reports that keep piling up the reports that keep piling up the reports that keep piling up maybe some of you have even looked up maybe some of you have even looked up maybe some of you have even looked up and seen something yourselves that you and seen something yourselves that you and seen something yourselves that you something we simply cannot identify something we simply cannot identify something we simply cannot identify and when you think about it in the and when you think about it in the and when you think about it in the vastness of space vastness of space vastness of space earth isn't even the size of a grain of earth isn't even the size of a grain of earth isn't even the size of a grain of sand somewhere in the pacific ocean and so ask yourself what actually makes and so ask yourself what actually makes and so ask yourself what actually makes more sense more sense more sense that something out there across that that something out there across that that something out there across that kind of distance kind of distance kind of distance found this one specific grain of sand found this one specific grain of sand found this one specific grain of sand and decided to drop in on us on what is and decided to drop in on us on what is and decided to drop in on us on what is apparently a fairly regular basis apparently a fairly regular basis apparently a fairly regular basis or that whatever we've been seeing or that whatever we've been seeing or that whatever we've been seeing never left here in the first place never left here in the first place never left here in the first place maybe the oldest evidence we've maybe the oldest evidence we've maybe the oldest evidence we've actually got keeps pointing away from actually got keeps pointing away from actually got keeps pointing away from the skies entirely and in the other the skies entirely and in the other the skies entirely and in the other direction direction direction down into the rock into the hillsides we've been farming and building on top of for thousands of years, without us ever once asking what might already be underneath there. So that's going to do it for today's episode of Everytown. Hope you enjoyed it. And if you did, we'll go on and check out another episode because we got a ton more for you to investigate alongside me. And remember to come back here next week for another episode filled with scary, strange, and mysterious stories. Because you never know, maybe Your Town will be next.