Gobekli Tepe and Why it Matters transcript

[Applause] Thank you. Sorry if I'm a bit croaky this morning. I think I did a lot of talking yesterday. So, um I'm going to give a shortish talk now about Gobeclette and why it matters. And then I'm going to be joined on stage by Jimmy Cetti of Bright Insight and Mike Collins of Wandering Wolf. They've both just returned from Gobecé where they've seen outrageous things. Uh, and we're going to be talking about what's been happening there.

But I'm going to set that up with this initial presentation about why why I think Gobecé matters. And there it is before the before the modern before the recent roof covering uh which has completely destroyed the atmosphere of the site. You can see the beauty and the majesty of it. this extraordinary megalithic site which is 7,000 years older than Stonehenge and which appears virtually out of nowhere with no obvious background.

Whereas Stonehenge has a very long detailed background. And again, I showed this slide yesterday. I just want to pay tribute again to Claus Schmidt, the late great Claus Schmidt, the kind of archaeologist I wish there were more of them in the world. He was such a good man, so openhearted and so passionate about his subject. And it's shameful the way his successors are trying to undo every aspect of his work. Uh this is the Istanbul Chronicle and Clash Schmidt's wife is quoted in here because she's horrified by what's happening as well.

Uh the Estanbul Chronicle uh wants to be accessible to everyone, provide readers with news that's objective, clear, and unbiased. Um and and uh basically after Claus Schmidt's passing in 2014, excavation efforts at Gobecé stopped and then in 2016 project management was transferred to the Dogus Group, a prominent Turkish conglomerate. Uh and we'll go into the the implications of that. Um but a couple of remarks from Claus Schmidt's widow.

Uh she's also an archaeologist. She visits Gobeclete annually. She was shocked by the changes. She has described the situation as absurd and has shared unseen photos of the road construction on Instagram, sparking further conflict among the archaeological community. In the light of these developments, the site's official opening date for tourism has been announced. This announcement symbolizes how the government's intention with Gobecé is fully economic, meaning no archaeological development is intended for anytime soon, raising concerns in the archaeology community.

Um and then shortly after Claus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum made a statement declaring that the Gobbec excavation has been left for future generations. The most important archaeological site in the world is no longer going to be excavated. It's been left for future generations. Um and this statement has been interpretated interpreted by some including me as an admission of the sessation of ongoing archaeological work.

Um so critics question how the Gdogus group has been given such privileges in the in the light of the stopped excavations and the alleged damage to the site. Ultimately since 2016 all excavation work at Geekly a site of extreme historical significance has reportedly been stopped. We got the roof over the site. We have this whole problem with trees. And thank you to Jimmy Cetti for drawing attention to the issue of the trees. those olive trees parked you you know we know that there are hundreds more megalithic pillars under the ground and huge circles of them under the ground which have never been excavated and those trees were planted directly on top of precious archaeological sites with their roots going down into the archaeological sites and destroying them and that would have carried on if Jimmy Cetti had not drawn attention to this when he drew attention when when Jimmy when Jimmy drew attention to the to to to to the harm being done by these bloody trees.

He was initially attacked by the archaeological community who tried to calm our fears and say there's no problem with the trees uh they're not going to do any damage. But as the pressure continued and as the expos exposure of what's happening at Quebec continued suddenly one day they cut down all the trees. Yeah. It shows it shows that pressure works. It shows the pressure works. It shows we have to keep our eye on them.

We need to be watching them and what they're doing with our collective heritage. Um again I'm there with Clash Schmidt. Get a sense of the scale and the and the beauty of the site. This is the quarry. Um the the large megalith were not transported large immense distances. Majority were quarried within 100 meters or so of the mainstone circles. This is a pillar, very large, probably 50 ton T-shaped pillar, but they never continued uh quarrying it out because a fault was actually multiple faults were discovered in the rock.

Um, and and you can see these interesting carvings that we find all over the site. This is particularly intriguing. I find this this icon of human figure. This is an anthropomorphic figure. We don't see a fully developed head, but the T-shaped uh the T at the top represents the head of the individual. And then the individual has arms and the hands meet just above the belt uh around the navl. And that that posture is actually reflected in iconography all around the world.

It's a very it's a very curious thing. These so-called naval idols that that are found that are found everywhere. Um and and of course this is high relief. These you can see that to create those fingers that the the arms the belt they've had to cut away all the stone around it. This is very very very highly technical beautiful work of sculpture and now covered with this uh monstrosity um turned tamed. This is what what happens when archaeology gives way to tourism that the site the the site becomes tame.

It becomes a sort of Disneyland. It becomes an exhibit. It no longer becomes a thing in itself from which we can learn. Um, and and yeah, I mean, you know, you can see what Gobecé is. Uh, and you can do so without the rain pouring on you, I suppose. But but I I don't like this this covering at all. I think it's very ugly and very unhelpful. And I'm so glad I was able to see and get to know the site before that before that happened.

This shot because the moon is in the shot. And this reminds us that for the people of Gabe, the skies were very important. The skies were what it's all about. Everything was about astronomical solar and lunar alignments at Gobecé. So what this cover has done is it's disconnected Gobeclet from the universe. This is a site that was meant to be connected to the universe. Now that it's been opened up and it's been disconnected um and and yeah, I mean the this is um Julia Magi uh a great archo astronomer.

He's studied the alignments at Quebec. Um and and um he he's he's noting that the the alignment to Sirius and the changing positions of Sirius uh within the within the site is extremely extremely powerful and absolutely beyond dispute. Uh gobbi isn't alone. We first went there in 2013, Santa and I. 2014 we went to Karah. That's what Karah looked like in 2014. um t a few T-shaped pillars sticking out the side of the hill.

It's now been excavated and this is this is an amazing enclosure at Karah. I'm particularly struck by that stone face. Um, Necmik Karu, who I interviewed in in Ancient Apocalypse and who seemed to be quite helpful, subsequently has been undoubtedly approached by Flint Dibble and others and and now um has nothing to say about me but negative things. Um, but nevertheless, he appeared on the show with me. We think that this is a snake- like head.

It it it snake form with a human head that's emerging from the rock there. Um anyway, uh Karahani is now about to have a roof covering also. Uh and work is already underway as as as Jimmy and Mike have observed to drill down into the site and destroy the site in order to make it a tourist attraction. Just a a map of the whole the whole region. We have to understand now is not alone. The Turkish archaeologists are right when they talk about the Tasplar civilization, the the stone hills civilization.

There's an emergence all around Gobeclet of sites that date back to that same horizon about 12,000 years ago. And not just Gobeclet, that same culture is found over on Cyprus. That means we're dealing with people who were navigators and seafarers. Cypress was always an island, even at the peak of the last ice ages, surrounded by great deeps. Uh and and down into the Jordan Valley, uh as as well. Um, and Abuherrera, as I showed you yesterday, is one of the sites that's been identified as as as a site of a massive air burst from from the disintegrating Yna comet.

Um, and and uh that's the report on Abuherrera and how close it is to go. Um, and and if we look at Gobeclete, we can see that it is situated between the headarters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. What does Mesopotamia mean? It means between the rivers. Golette is sitting right there up above where the supposed first earliest ever human civilization appeared. The civilization of Sumer. I cannot accept that the development of Sumerian civilization is disconnected from what happened at Gobeclet.

There is a connection. I'm sure of it, but it's deeply hidden and hard to see sometimes. There's the artist's impression of that air burst over Abu Herrera and Martin Swatman uh has published a book prehistory decoded where he believes that pillar 43 in enclosure D ate is a calendar which commemorates the date of the younger drius impact. This is a complicated issue. I'm going to get into this uh in more depth. um prominently involving the constellation that we know today as Sagittarius.

The alignment you can see Sagittarius there. Do you see that thing that looks a bit like a teapot spout of the teapot? That's that's Sagittarius. And we argue that the vulture on pillar 43 represents Sagittarius, the constellation we call Sagittarius. And that this is the sun poised over the wing or the arrow of Sagittarius. Uh the location of the sun when it's there over Sagittarius on a solstice, happens twice in 26,000 years. once on the summer solstice and once on the winter solstice.

And those two happenings are separated by 12 and a half thousand years, half a cycle of procession. So the alignment of the sun over the constellation we call Sagittarius with the center of the Milky Way galaxy that did occur at the summer solstice 12,800 years ago, but it also occurs at the winter solstice in our time today. the same alignment occurs 12 and a half thousand years later, half a processional cycle later.

Um, and so the one one occurrence was on the summer solstice around 12,800 years ago. And the most recent, still ongoing is the winter solstice in our present epoch. Uh, so I'm there with with Martin. That isn't Gobecé. That's a model of Gobeclet in one of the major museums at the nearby town of Shan Leopa. Uh and we're we're talking about the imagery on pillar 43. Uh the air burst over Abu Herrera so close to Quebec would have been a massive regional phenomenon remembered for centuries.

On the basis of this and much other evidence, Swatman concludes that the imagery of pillar 43 is an astronomical diagram featuring constellation figures with the summer solstice sun located just above the spout of the asterism figured by the astronomers of Gobeci as a vulture with outstretched wings and nominated by modern astronomers as the teapot of Sagittarius. As such, the pillar serves as a date stamp for the epoch of the younger Dryus impacts some 12,800 years ago.

But the story doesn't really begin with with Martin's um 2019 book. The story begins earlier. It begins in 2013 with an article that I accepted for publication on my website by a remarkably insightful individual called Paul Paul Burley. And actually Paul was the first to notice the curious nature of the figures on pillar 43 and to tie them up with the center of the galaxy and and Sagittarius. And from the very beginning, Paul in his work was looking at the winter solstice moment when the sun aligns through Sagittarius with the center of the galaxy.

In fact, what he argued was that that pillar uh at Gobeclet um had had had been had been carved to forewarn of a future time, the next time that there would be a a solstice alignment. Um, and and and again, these are some of Paul's Paul's arguments. The similarity of the bass relief to the crossing of the ecliptic and galactic equator at the center of the Milky Way is difficult to reject, supporting the possibility that humans recognized and documented the procession of the equinoxes thousands of years earlier than is generally accepted by scholars at this time.

And what's important here is that for some unknown reason, the builders of Gobeclete constructed a temple apparently highlighting a time 11,600 years in their future. Um, so this also ties up Paul's work arguing that what we're looking at is the winter solstice alignment occurring in our time. Weirdly, that's exactly the same argument about procession that John Major Jenkins made concerning the Mayan calendar. The Mayan calendar is keyed to that same moment, the winter solstice when the sun aligns through Sagittarius directly with the center of the galaxy.

That defines the date of 2012. And as I explained yesterday, it's not an instant, it's a window, several decades wide. Uh so what Paul Burley recognized in pillar 43 at Gobectly is exactly what John Major Jenkins recognized concerning the Mayan calendar. These two issues are not disconnected. They're closely connected and they're connected by the phenomenon of procession. It's the cosmic rebirth of the sun from the womb of the galaxy, the dark rift at the galactic center.

The former world age ends, the new world age begins. So here's the, as I said, it's complicated. Both Swedman and Burley accept the wellestablished radiocarbon date of 9,600 BC roughly 11,600 years ago for enclosure D and therefore for pillar 43 at Gobeclet. Uh in summary, Swatman argues that the pillar was carved to record and commemorate the air burst over Abuhurera that had occurred 1,200 years earlier than the creation of Quebec.

It thus serves as a date stamp for the onset of the younger drius epoch 12,800 years ago when the summer solstice sun stood on the wing of the vulture Sagittarius teapot in alignment with the galactic center. On the other hand, for Berley, the ancient astronomers of Goleepy 11,600 years ago focused not on the summer solstice sun, but on the winter solstice sun. on his analysis. Therefore, the imagery of Pillar 43, results from forward processional calculations, much like those of the ancient Mayer with their 2012 date of creation and depicts the sky of our own time.

What if both are right? What if that pillar actually does commemorate the 12,800 year ago event and does contain a message for the future? Um, what if pillar 43 not only records and commemorates the Abuherrera airbust at the onset of the younger Dryas, but also uses the universal astronomical language of procession to carry a message to the future, a forewarning. If you want to send a message to the future, for goodness sake, don't write it down in a script because 10,000 years from now, the chances are nobody's going to be able to read that script or ever have any hope of deciphering it.

As is presently the case with the Indis Valley script and the and the Easter Island script, if you want to send a message to the future, use a universal language. Use the language of astronomy and combine it with permanent megalithic architecture which is hard to destroy. And then you have a message that any culture in the future that is astronomically literate will be able to interpret. So maybe the message is when next you see the sun in direct alignment with the dark rift at a solstice beware.

Either way we're dealing with the handiwork of master astronomers at Gobeci. Again I talked about Mesopotamia the location of Gobecley and the Taste uh the Tacepar civilization and the connection with Mesopotamia. And it's intriguing that uh Mesopotamia, ancient Sumer has this tradition of a great flood destroyed the world, pushed humanity back to a rudimentary state. But there were some who survived the flood who had knowledge and they went around the world and they tried to restore the lost world.

They tried to bring the lost world back. And in ancient Mesopotamia, this was Owanis, a figure who supposedly emerged from the sea. uh and the seven sages and they brought wisdom to Sumer which formed the basis of the Sumerian civilization. It's interesting. I don't mean to be flippant. It's it's interesting how they carry these little handbags. Uh all of them. We've talked about this quite quite a lot before. It's it's a curious thing.

There are even physical models of them. Um they were remembered as teaching advanced astronomical and geodetic knowledge including all the skills necessary for planning and setting out a city. So there's a figure of Oannis on the left there with his handbag. And on the other side of the world in Mexico uh at Lventa uh we have this earliest representation of Quzal Katal, the feathered serpent. You can see his plumemed serpent on the top.

He was also a civilization bringer in the memory of ancient Mexico. And look what the figure is holding in his hand. He's holding another one of those handbags. I mean, I don't know if there's anything to it, but I can't help looking at this and thinking there's something going on behind the scenes that we're not properly understanding yet. And of course, the handbags are there on Gobecé as well. They're there at the top of pillar 43.

Um, and and they carry on through time and in different locations. It's an idea that keeps passing through time. I think this is one of the problems with archaeology. I I think we need an archaeology not just of things, not just of artifacts, not just of objects, but I think we need an archaeology of ideas as well. Uh ideas can be amongst the most enduring artifacts of human culture and can continue for thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of years.

Archaeology is neglecting the ideas of the ancients. So, did the idea that there should be a scorpion and a bird in this region of the heavens persist for thousands of years even while other figures changed their character and the notion of a centaur archer was introduced? Um, and and these are the depictions of Sagittarius. But notice he's got bird-like feet and a scorpion-like tail. So it's like this idea has kind of transmuted over time but we can still see the origins of the idea in the later depictions of Mesopotamian caduru stones from the Babylonian period second millennium BC.

Gbecite founded 9,600 BC. It's a mysterious megalithic site and it was despite the protestations of those who are trying to ruin Claus Schmidt's reputation. It was deliberately buried by its makers after a thousand years of use and was not seen again until excavations by the German Archaeological Institute got underway in the 1990s. I just want to make another couple of small points. The T-shaped megaliths of Gobeclete we're looking at there.

And then if we go to the island of Monorca, what do we see? We we see more T-shaped megaliths. None of the megaliths on Monorca have been properly dated. It's very hard to date megaliths. I'm wondering whether The dating of the Minora megaliths to about 4,000 years ago is wrong. I'm wondering whether the Manorca megaliths might be just as old as the Gobekly megaliths. The same kind of idea seems to be shared in both places.

And then this kind of circular feel of Gobeclet and I find myself looking at the temples of Malta supposedly dated to the oldest Gigantia about 6,000 years ago, the youngest about 4 and a half thousand years ago. But again, the dating of the Maltese temples is flimsy. It's based on almost nothing. There are no intact carbon dates from beneath megaliths in in in the the great megalithic temples. They've got some carbon dates at G J Gigantia, but they're from 40 m away from the main temple and they're underneath what was formerly a toilet block for tourists.

Uh they've now been excavated, but it's 40 m away from the temple. That can't tell us the date of the temple at all. I'm wondering if the Maltese temples are much older. I first made this point in season one of Ancient Apocalypse. I'm wondering if the Maltese temples have been significantly uh misdated. And then in the the Sicily Channel, you know, Sicily used to be joined to Malta by a landbridge when sea levels were lower during the ice age.

And in the Sicily Channel, they found this huge megalith at the bottom with with uh with holes drilled through it. It's clearly man-made. Underwater between Sicily and the Maltese archipelago. I think much more research needs to be done. I think there may be further examples of this kind of megalithic architecture down there. So again, we're we're looking at the castle civilization. The areas we can speak of it from the areas that have been extensively investigated.

As I say, Cyprus is very interesting. Then there's a lot in Israel, but that reflects actually the fact that there's a lot of archaeology being done in Israel. There's much less archaeology now being done up in Lebanon because um well because the area is so devastated and so insecure. Um but Balbeck in Lebanon is a most extraordinary site and I don't deny that large parts of it are Roman. This is definitely the temple of Jupiter behind me and behind that is the temple of Bakus, the god of wine.

Certainly Roman. Um, but I wonder about the larger megaliths there and this outer enclosure wall at at Balbeg. Uh, these the giant giant megalith that we're looking at. These this this is the trilithon. Each of these stones weighs 900 tons. And they're positioned about 25 ft above the ground. Uh, I'm just sitting on top of one of them there. And you can see that that gap and these enormous 900 ton blocks looking up at them there.

Now there at my feet is the single piece of evidence that archaeologists point to to say no those huge blocks were also put in place by the Romans. That single piece of evidence is definitely part of a Roman column and it's down at the base of the wall. But let's think about this. This place was a This place was sometimes used as a fortress. This place was constantly attacked. Attackers undermine foundations to try and get underneath.

I think we're looking at a repair block here using using Roman material on much older site. And of course, the extraordinary megalithic blocks still left in the quarry. Supposedly, the Romans, although they could lift 900 ton blocks 30 feet in the air, uh they couldn't lift a thousand ton blocks. So, they just did all the work on this and then just left it there in the quarry. Uh, this one weighs the one I'm standing on weighs about 1,000 tons.

Um, this one across the road now used as a rubbish tip, weighs 1,200 tons. And the new one discovered just at the bottom there, I'm I'm standing on it. That one is 1,400 tons. And the the argument is that that you know the Romans did all this work to cut these out but then just abandoned it. And and I think that that's a very a very un Roman thing to do. If they truly couldn't move the thousand or 1,200 ton blocks, they wouldn't have left them like that.

They'd have sliced them up like loaves of bread and they'd have used the smaller blocks that they created. They would have had use for them. These were a it was a practical culture. They wouldn't have left them there. I think the whole quarry was completely covered by sediment during Roman times. I don't think the Romans even knew that this was there. Um, so Gobecé raises huge questions over the origins of megalithic architecture.

Uh, because we know for a fact that the initial inhabitants of Gobeclet were not agriculturalists. They were hunter foragers, hunter gatherers. And it's been the dogma of archaeology for for decades that hunter gatherers couldn't create megaliths. uh that you needed a fully formed agricultural society generating surpluses uh in order to engage in megalithic construction. Well, golette just blows that whole idea out of the water.

Uh it changes it changes everything. And it is and I say this with no intent of exaggeration. It is the single most important archaeological site in the world today. And it is shameful that this site is no longer going to be investigated. Kurahantepi. There I am again. And uh I just want to compare that rockh enclosure cut out of solid rock with the enclosure of the great sphinx. And when Mark Ler said, "Show me a potshured from a civilization 12,000 years ago," I would say golette and karah are that quote unquote potshured.

Now I'm going to ask uh Mike and Jimmy to join me in a second. But I just want to finish with with one other slide which is this. Um I have very rarely uh serve as a host and speaker on on tours. I haven't done for many years but I've been asked next year to host and lead and speak at a tour in Egypt. Uh, and I'm going to host and speak at tours in uh, Turkey and in South America, Peru, and Bolivia in 2027. So, Egypt 2026, Peru and Bolivia 2027.

Um, if anybody's interested, you Thank you. Thank you. If if if you're interested, just go to the the talks and events page of my website and the full details of the the company that are putting this together are are there. I'm not involved in the administration of it. I'm going to be speaking and be the host. Um but the I have worked with this company before and they're good. They're efficient. They're decent people.

I wouldn't be working with them otherwise. Okay, Mike and Jimmy, where are we? Graham, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. So, I think that I think that um neither Jimmy nor Mike need need an introduction. You all know who they are. Jimmy is Bright Insight and he's brought a a whole new approach to looking at the problems of the past. And and Mike Collins is just a a masterful videographer. his his channel Wandering Wolf uh records years of detailed intense study of megalithic sites all around the world.

Mike has really put in the leg work. He's seriously and deeply studied these sites. And I would urge everybody here, if you haven't subscribed to Jimmy's channel, please do. If you haven't subscribed to Mike's Wandering Wolf channel, please do. You'll not regret it. It's really worth It's really worth looking at the work that these two guys are putting out. Thank you, Grant. Thank you, Grant. Okay. So, I'll sit in the middle.

Right. So, how should we begin? Uh, you've both you've both just returned within a week or two from GoPah. You also went to Cyborg. Um, tell us about the trip. Tell us about why you made the trip and uh what the outcome was. Graham, my first happy Easter everybody. Uh, and I got to say that it is absolutely surreal to be here. About 10 years ago, I was watching Graham Hancock and Joe Rogan discuss Gobecley Teepe, which is how I first learned of the site.

And so to be here now on stage with them discussing it is unbelievable, and I couldn't be more grateful. Um, thank you. Unreal. Thank you. And as far as our trip to uh Turkey, uh it would not I would not have been able to be there if it wasn't for Mike Collins of Wandering Wolf as well as Nikki from the Nikki Jones podcast and her husband Waqen. Uh thank you guys so much. Uh and the timing of it I consider divine because for the fact that we were there when they were doing the last stages of tree removal.

I'm still I I can't wrap my head around just what are the odds of that of that day of all days when they're just finishing it up. I don't know. It just feels like poetry in some way. Yeah, absolutely. To see that them them removing the trees, the last of the trees there and really the fruit of Jimmy's work. Yeah. Those trees would still be there if you hadn't drawn attention to this. You know, this goes to show in in my first video on GoPe or I should say follow-up video uh June of last year, at the very end of the video, I said it will only be through the court of public opinion or a public opinion that any meaningful change is would be possible.

And sure enough, if you make a big stink online and something goes viral, you put the uh authorities in a position to where they have to respond. And it seems that the Turkish ministry is quite sensitive. Um, and you know, the fact that they had even allowed those trees to be planted in the first place. Let me first say that the planting the trees themselves may have not been a conspiracy. The land owners uh were looking to increase the value of the land uh as the Turkish government was going to take it over.

Um, but that was a full 10 years after excavations had began and so it should not have been acceptable. it should have been tolerated for them to plant a thousand olive trees on the site in the first place. They should have just compensated them. Um because sure enough, you fast forward 20 plus years later and they confirmed that the ruins or excuse me, the roots were damaging the ruins. Um and how this all started is, you know, my first video on my channel, Bright Insight, was talking about golete and at that time it was only 5% excavated.

So I'm like, okay, let me put this on the back burner for a little bit. Let me let them do more excavations and I'll circle back to this later. So last year I'm like, "Hey, I haven't talked about Quebec in a number of years. Let me just dive into it." And I was astonished to see that the percentage of excavations hadn't changed. They estimated it was somewhere between 5 and 10%. And I'm like, that's the same percentage that I heard Graham Hancock talk about it on Joe Rogan.

Yeah. You know, 8 n years earlier. So I'm like, what is going on here? And then I start looking at the various uh aerial photographs of the site itself. Gobecé consists of approximately 22 acres. And I'm looking at I'm like, well, the portions that they've excavated is no more than just a few acres. So, I'm looking at all these trees surrounding the entire site. And so, I asked and I I worded it exactly like this in the video.

Here is a very sincere question. Are any of these trees planted on top of ancient ruins? Well, that turned out to be true through a Dr. Dietrich who had physically excavated the site himself. And that showed two things. One, that there's no intention in the immediate future to actually excavate the site. And two, I thought that tree roots were notorious for damaging whatever lays below, the damaged foundations of houses, sewer lines, um, and everything else.

So, that's kind of what led me down this path. And, um, yeah, I mean, Mike, what are your thoughts? Let's hear your your your take on this, Mike. Yeah, the the you know, I've seen the damage that trees can do to sites around the world, and they can reduce uh an ancient structure to rubble within a generation or less. So, you know, this being done was hugely important uh for the site. I think the big takeaway when we went there was um it doesn't look like anything is the the focus is now on tourism and money.

Yeah. And and you get the sense of that as soon as you walk in. Yeah. Um and the roofing system that they've they've built is built directly into the site. So, not only did we go see the trees, but making that discovery of these massive pylon steel beams that are they're going directly into the site. Yeah. And so, we're we're talking about a major and you guys have shown this on both of your channels. We can we can see the damage very hard, but some of those steel beams are piercing just me feet from pillar 43.

It's drilled right into the heart of the site. It's appalling. So, we're talking about a major construction project there. So, you know, some of the flack that we got was for being too close to certain sites that we went to or this or that. We're talking about the that roofing system. We're talking about a major construction site with people in the middle of the site. So, let's just be clear. This is these are day laborers.

So, when they start building stuff like this, these aren't specialists or archaeologists or uh you know, they're construction crews and um and and doing a massive project. Yeah. Um, and so that's what we saw and then it was reinforced by going to Caroline and being able to document there, which Jimmy's shown so well online uh, and in his recent video, they're in the process of building that roofing system now and we were able to see the holes in the site there.

Yeah. Yeah. So, we're able to get an idea of what they did to go and tepee, which are like 20 foot deep holes piercing directly into these sides to establish the infrastructure for the roof. Um, they're now building, to anyone that's not familiar, you saw the roof as Graham Hancock uh highlighted. They're building the same thing over Kronepe. They're in the initial stages of it. They just dug out approximately a dozen holes, as Mike said, 20 ft deep.

And I kid you not, they drilled right into the heart of the unexavated portions of the archaeological site itself. Who who digs straight down 20 ft deep into unexavated ruins? As I showed in my photos, um, which you can't see here, but if you were to look at my videos, uh, there's the tops of unexavated tea just feet from these holes. And it's very clear that no archaeologists were involved in that. This is something that goes way above that.

This is, you know, something that was established uh for the purposes of tourism revenue from the higherups. And it couldn't be more clear that they have no intention of fully excavating Kaharepee or Gobecée. And I kid you not, go take look at the photos that we documented and it's going to look exactly the same next year and the year after that. They have it in writing that they have scaled back large-scale excavations that they were doing in the years prior.

And moving forward, they're going to focus on conservation and tourism. And then they've put that they've stated in writing that they intend to pass it down to quote future generations with a 150year estimate before it's completely excavated. Which means that nobody in here is going to be alive to see what's lying buried in Gobecé waiting to be discovered. Yeah. As Graham said, the most important site on Earth. The Gobecée purposely buried 11,600 years ago in the same time frame of the younger dest climate catastrophe.

It could be a time capsule of sorts. It could uh contain answers to whatever the cataclysm was there. Who knows what it is? But we're never going to know until we go dig it up. So, it is completely inexcusable to not do this within our lifetimes. We have the means, money, and the motive to do so. It has nothing to do with money. As Graham mentioned, the DOAS group is funding it. They're a billion-dollar conglomerate.

No one anyone within the managers of Goleep have said anything about funding. And I I point that out because that's the number one bit of push back that I get. It's like, well, hey, listen, this costs money. Are you going to pay for it yourself? I'm like, it's not about money. And yeah, we could crowdfund it if we had to. People People need to understand that most of these people digging out there are uh PhD students doing their field work.

They're doing it for probably free or next to nothing and they're getting their, you know, three squares a day in and housing and room and board in order to put this on their thesis. Um, so I don't know. I could go on and on. Well, what I'm interested in is you guys have brought attention to these disturbing matters. What has been the reaction of the archaeology community to you both? There has been some immediate reaction.

Please both of you talk to me about this. Tell me tell me what you've experienced as when you brought this to public attention. What happened? I'm less used than to than some of getting, you know, on online. And so, thank God for guys like Jimmy and Dan and Sam. There you are. Who punch back. Yeah. Because it's brutal. And uh most of my videos up to this point have just been about trying to inspire people to go out and see this for themselves.

So, the the the push back has been pretty intense. And they're right now actively trying to rewrite the narrative around this. They refuse to answer the questions that we raise um about important issues like building directly into the heart of the site. Um they're trying to rewrite the narrative around the trees and push the date backs on those and and say that there were already plans for this to happen. And Jimy's been tackling that head on.

Yeah. They're saying that there's site management plans have been in existence for years that articulated they're going to remove the trees. Uh that's not true. The only thing these site management plans state is that if the trees are ever an issue, they could be removed. There's nothing in there of any kind involving any type of date to remove the trees. And the reality is that I made my video on it in June of last year.

And then the following month, Neci Kuru, who Graham mentioned, uh, who by the way had threatened to sanction me. And I'm like, sanctioned? What does that mean? Like you're going to find me or you talking about travel bans here? Because travel bans is typically what a sanction would most commonly involve. Um, and so I'm like, "Hey, you know, when you get the most flak when you're over the target, uh, as they say, you know, so, uh, I'm losing my train of thought.

What was I where was I going with that?" Oh, the the push back. So, basically what I'm seeing is that, um, Jimmy Corsetti said, "And so it's false. Jimmy Corsetti is not an archaeologist, so it's false." And I'm like, I'm sorry. I don't need a PhD in archaeology to understand that planting trees on top of precious ancient ruins is ridiculous. My girlfriend Brandy understands this. She's like, "Don't doesn't that destroy foundations of houses if you plant a tree too close?" Because like her dad removed a tree, you know, like this is not rocket science and you don't need a degree to understand it.

Uh I don't need a PhD to understand that um excavating ancient ruins is what archaeologists are supposed to be doing for a living. I'm trying to give them a job here and they're complaining about it. Um the reality is this. You won't find one single archaeologist that said anything about those trees planted over ruins at Gobeclete. And not only that, the whole lineup of them, Flint Dibble, I have several tweets from him supporting and praising the trees stating that it's going to preserve the soil and thus preserve the ruins.

And I'm like, these ruins have been buried for 11,600 years and have been just fine. What are we talking about? like all those trees did was highlight that they had no plan to excavate those ruins within the foreseeable future, but now they removed them. And so basically they're trying to say that they were going to remove them anyways. That's not true. Uh and the reality is that they got an incredible amount of push back.

It turns out that there's a lot of people within Turkey that have been unsatisfi or dissatisfied with the lack of excavations there. I was unaware of this until I started scanning Google uh through uh Turkish headlines. Um and so they were very sensit sensitive to it already. Um, and so we basically lit a fire under their asses to realize that like, hey, people are watching. And so now I'm going to put them on blast further.

They have no business digging 20 20 foot deep holes in the middle of unexavated ruins. It's very likely that they damaged some in the process. I believe that we witnessed that firsthand. U, they're already trying to deny it. Um, in fact, there's a Dr. Hugh Thomas. I shouldn't even mention him. Bum. Uh, this guy is literally going on Twitter last night saying that these are nothing more than excavation trenches. I'm like, "No, they're not." I was there and the security from the Turkish ministry told us point blank that these holes are for the structure that's going to support the new roof.

And not only that, it's prohibited to take photos or videos of those holes. He told us this directly. We had already taken the photos. He didn't realize it, but he Why would they go to the extent to create some kind of rule to prevent people from taking pictures of that? It's because they have something to hide. Yeah, definitely. They they they they definitely it's it's mob tactics and it's personal. So when they attack they don't address any of these issues.

That's right. Or they skirt around it and everything becomes personal. If you get caught up into that Yeah. All of a sudden you become a target as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um you know and so it's just it's it's an ugly scenario. It feels like kind of having just got pulled sucked into all this within the last six months or so. Yeah, it it you know it feels like there there's something else here. It it it has nothing to do with archaeology.

It's more about protecting ego, pride. Yeah. Um a sense of importance. Yeah. And it genuinely feels like certain characters like Devil are are chasing fame. Oh yes. Rather than truth. Absolutely. It's a parasitic chase for fame. Right. uh you find you find people who've already got some recognition and you attack them and that way you get a bit of fame. Yeah, that's that's the way it works. Um Mike, tell me about yourself and about the origins of your channel.

When did it when did it begin? What's your intentions with the channel and how far have you got in fulfilling those intentions? I worked a job that I hated in sales and uh I was going to take a year off. Yeah. I I just decided I you know I I hate doing this. Yeah. And I'd been into ancient history for so long. So I started traveling. The first place I went to was Sak Sewan. And uh as soon as I went there I was just like this is I don't know what I'm going to do but this I got to do this.

Yeah. I don't know how I'm going to do it. So, I just started recording stuff and that was I think I was 35 so that was like 11 years ago, right? And um so I've just been learning as I go. Tell us about some of the sites you visited around the world. I don't know. Give us give us a few. Hey, Mike has been to more sites than anyone besides Graham Hancock in this realm. Don't be bashful. He's probably been to a hundred agent sites around the world.

I can't find anybody that's been to more sites than you other than Graham Hancock. Yeah. Se several hundred, I think. And you're doing this work with, I have to say, with great humility. You're not you're not projecting any ego into this. You're just bringing information to the to to to the audience. You know, when I when I I was really inspired visiting these sites um at what people are capable of and I and I think it really inspired me to imagine what I might be capable of doing.

Yeah. And I hope that by sharing stuff with people of just what I'm seeing and experiencing that I might inspire other people to Yeah. do a trip. Yeah. Go see a place. Yeah. Um share it with people and connect. And uh it's been a been a fun ride. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and your your site is an incredible resource for people who are interested in this. Um, if I look at all the channels out there on the internet and I look at your channel, I believe your channel deserves 10 times the level of subscriptions it's got right now today.

Uh, instantly and a thousand times more. It's an incredibly valuable channel. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. And and the same the same goes for for you, Jimmy. you've you've you've been been very good at at at managing the extraordinary weird environment of the internet and you've and and and and you've somehow you've somehow mastered how to how to deal with it. But at the same time, you're taking a lot of slings and arrows and and they hurt.

You know, I'll admit I can be sensitive sometimes to some of the criticism. Like I've been called a Nazi. I've been called anti-semitic. I've been called a white supremacist. And I'm like, join the club. And I'm like, this isn't something you say to people. Um, unless it was true, and this is nothing more than character assassination. But for me, I just have a little bit thicker skin. I'm just naturally a fighter. It's not that I'm a tough guy.

It's just that if you push me, I'm going to punch you. And these people, they can't out troll me. And like, you know, I was a I was a soldier. I did combat missions in Iraq. And like, so when I look at some of these people making fun of me online, I'm like, these people don't scare me. I'm like, I've done something that was far more scary than anything they can lob at me. So, I kind of laugh about it. I don't take it quite as seriously as some and moments that there's some moments that I do.

Some people can strike a nerve sometimes because some people will try to really go out of their way uh to try to um upset you. But it to be honest with you, I'm one of these weirdos where the more push back I get, it just emboldens me. I it some of my best creativity and my line items of uh evidence that I'll present came from those moments when I was getting the most heat. For some reason, it just my brain starts firing with ideas and so they pick the wrong one and I'm never going to stop.

Like I don't what are they going to do, you And and by the way, these people Flint Dibble is trying to accuse Mike and I of breaking the law in Turkey for visiting the site of Cyborg, which is a sister site of Gobec Leepe. Um they're trying to say that we trespassed. In fact, Flint Dibble went on a live stream just three days ago stating that I had jumped a fence and trespassed there. And there is no fence. There is no sign.

There is no barrier. It's on the side of the road in the middle of a neighborhood uh full of trash. There's little there's dirty diapers in the site. Uh kids and farm animals roam in and out of it. I did not trespass. And even if I did, I don't care. I don't care. I I tiptoed I tiptoed through that site. Nikki, Wen, Mike, you guys are witnesses. I was ex exceptionally careful. And so to accuse me of trespassing and and and Mike, you should mention that you were planning on running a tour there with Nikki uh this November and you had to cancel it because they're trying to they they're literally tagging the Turkish ministry to try to like lob accusations of illicit activity.

Yeah, they I I had to cancel my tour to Turkey um for November because they've put it on blast so much and threatened me so much online. Jesus. So, we lost we lost about $6,000 on that. Um, due to the pressure. I just couldn't, you know, we couldn't take the chance to risk it. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to go to Turkish prison, guys. Not as American. I don't think that is not going to go well. Um, so it's very real this um protection of this narrative or, you know, I don't even know what it is anymore.

I don't because I don't it it doesn't even feel like a narrative. The narrative is whatever you, Jimmy, or anybody else says, they're just on the opposite side of that. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's more of um you know, you can't there's you can't even reason and there's no polite conversation and it just gets downright nasty. So, um they're willing to attack you personally. They're willing to attack your um means of living.

Yeah. Um uh your life, your work. Yeah. There's no there's no limits. There's no limits. No. And and and um I think we're dealing with with people who so passionately and deeply believe that they're correct. They they they believe they have the monopoly on the truth and they've earned that monopoly on the truth. Uh and and I think they do believe it's true. Uh and because they believe it's true, they're prepared to use any methods. uh to destroy those who disagree with them.

Any methods at all. Doesn't matter if they if if if if those methods are deeply underhand, if they're malicious, if they it doesn't matter. Whatever works to get rid of the person who's saying something different from what they say. And it's weird. Why should it be like that? There seems to be a joy in it. Yeah. Like a Yeah. The laughing and like the constant mockery. Yes. Yes. Yeah. you you you get a sense that this is enjoyable and fun for that love.

They're getting a dopamine rush off of it, these trolls on the internet. Like, why else are they doing it? For a period of time, after Graham Hancock's uh Ancient Apocalypse season 1 came out, I observed that Flint Dibble was on Twitter for approximately 18 hours a day. I'm not kidding. Yeah. And I'm wondering like what's I guys I love this ancient history stuff but 18 hours a day of getting angry on the internet arguing about someone else's show.

I want to be like, "Hey Flint, if you have all the answers or you think that you can communicate uh ancient history better than Graham, go make your own documentary." Yeah. Forgive me if there's any kids in the uh Sorry for the swearing. What's that? I realize that you're describing a religion religion on Easter Sunday and those on the other side of it see those the skeptics it almost feels like they're in a cult to be honest with you.

Um and when you criticize it they get uh you know visceral and toxic and nasty. But the reality is that um the court of public opinion is on our side. And I would say that with the emergence of this alleged recent discovery underneath the Great Pyramid with those scans that came out, whether that's true or not, that situation went ultra viral. That thing went so viral like nothing else I have seen in any recent times.

And you know what that shows you is that the interest in lost ancient history as at an all-time high and is continuing to grow. Graham Hancock is proof of this. How many how many countries has your books sold in? like Fingerprints of the Gods. Do you have I think it's 33 now. Wow. 33 languages. Um Yeah. And and and it's it's it's encouraging that fing Fingerprints was published in 1995. We're now in 2025. So we're talking 30 are we talking 30 years?

Yes. Yeah. The book is 30 years old. So, I'm I'm encouraged and strengthened by the fact that the book is is still in print and and is still being read by by people. And my policy with with books, obviously, my ideas develop as time goes by. And I may change my mind on certain points of view, but when I've written a book, I never go back and interfere with the original text of that book. I leave it exactly as it was written without a single change.

If I'm going to uh bring out a new edition, what I may do is add an introduction and an epilogue, an after word to the book, but I will never change the initial words. So, um yes, I think I did make some mistakes in Fingerprints of the Gods. Uh but I've tried to rectify those mistakes in future books to keep to keep keep developing and and and and learning and and I'm I'm I'm doing so uh because of my passion for the subject and because I I believe it really matters.

So, so to to to hear myself constantly referred to as a fraud, as a hoaxer, as a liar, when I've devoted my life to this, uh, is is it's discouraging. It's it's it's deeply discouraging. And you and and you know, I I think what what they're trying to do is with if there's enough if there enough of these words are projected at the individuals that they don't like, they hope that some of them will stick and that they can eventually get rid of those of those people.

And my concern is that that that that that illusion that they're creating, this straw men that they're creating and they then attack, that's what's going to go down in the historical record, not what really happened. Um, and and and that is discouraging. But I'm I'm enormously encouraged by the fact that we have many open-minded people, many of whom are sitting in this room today. Open, you know, open open-minded people, open-minded people who think for themselves, who are who are willing to take information from many different sources and come to their own conclusions about it.

One of the things I I detest about the the the the archaeological regime at the moment is that they are is that they are really saying you the general public, you don't need to think. We'll do your thinking for you. Just just listen to us. That's all you need to do. And if anybody else says anything different, uh that person is a liar and a hoaxer and a fraud. Trust the experts. Trust the experts. Yeah. And my god, we live in a time when we we need to not trust the experts. the the experts themselves often don't know what they're doing.

We we got to be we got to be our own we got to be our own leaders. We've got to stop being the lead. We got to be we've got to be our own leaders and and and uh make our own decisions and not allow other people to to decide for us. Yes. Gather information from many different sources. Always make up your own mind. Don't let anybody else think for you. And it's all the more reason why you need outside eyes to come in to see something new.

There was this story I had heard when I was uh doing an internship that uh back in like late 2000 like 2008 2010 Walmart was looking to greatly increase their online sales to compete with Amazon. And what they did was they hired an executive from PepsiCola which is far more than a uh soda company. They're a distributor more than anything else. And the story goes that on day one, literal day one, this executive came in and saw some sort of opportunity for improvement that drastically changed the operations for Walmart that greatly increased their revenues and the online presence.

So when I look at someone like Graham, because they'll say, "Oh, he's not an archaeologist. Jimmy Corsetti are not an archaeologist." And it's like, "Where were the archaeologists to ask questions about the trees at Gobeclete?" It took an outsider like I I studied business and communications and sociology and I have a minor in religious studies, but it proved that I don't need an uh a degree in archaeology to understand that planting trees on top of 12,000-y old ruins is uh weird and bizarre and makes no sense.

Um, and that's why, you know, having outside eyes. You can come in and see something because these people go into when they get their degrees, they get narrow-minded because they're, let's be real, they're required to memorize various textbooks. And so it can narrow your focus and distract you from the big picture. Um, and so now more than ever, it just needs this field needs open-minded people. Yeah. Guys, what's the way what's the way forward from from here? and and and and how can everybody in this room who who who would like to do so, how can how can we all help?

What's what's the way forward? Jimmy posted something wonderful the other day about doing about an archaeological audit. Yeah. So, if you're at a place, take pictures, take video, share it online. I think speaking out more and more. Yeah. There there's, you know, tourism in itself isn't inherently bad. Yeah. But there there used to be an overlap and there's not anymore. archaeology goes up to a certain point and then it stops and it's all profit focused after that and we're losing our history uh for the pursuit of money.

Yeah. And and and so I and I don't know if you can go backwards because the the sides are too entrenched now so it almost feels like something needs to be torn down to the studs and rebuilt and rebuilt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. The idea I had was doing archaeological audits. Every site you go to, take as many photos and and videos as possible and post it online and let everyone go through it. Um, and again, the court of public opinion.

Um, blasting things out. I mean, the proof is in the pudding. If it wasn't for the massive negative attention that they got involving those trees there, there's no doubt that those trees would still be there. The reality is that they just weren't monitoring the ruin or the roots. they weren't. It's out of sight, out of mind, so to speak. They're focusing on everything else. Um, but through the court of public opinion, that's the chance for any meaningful change.

And it's been proven that it can be done and will be done again. And so, the one thing I would say is that anytime you're having a conversation with anybody about Gobeclete, you need to emphasize the point, which is that they have no intention to excavate it within any of our lifetimes. I'm going to keep saying it over and over and over and over again because people need to understand that that is completely unacceptable.

It makes no sense. This is 2025. Is this the world that we're choosing to live in? We're just not going to dig up the most important ancient sites. You know, they've even said that they're waiting for future technologies to develop before they continue to uh excavate it. I'm like, what type of magical shovel or paintbrush are we to or pressure hose are we talking about? We absolutely have the technological ability to unear buried stones.

That's gaslighting. It is. Golette is part of the memory banks of mankind. And and I I I use this phrase often, a species with amnesia. Um it's a subtitle in Fingerprints of the Gods. Uh the original notion of what came from Emanuel Velikoski, mankind in amnesia. Um no wonder we're a species with amnesia with this kind of stuff going on with this the way things go. We're we're we're literally closing down our memory banks.

We don't want to remember that. We don't want to know about that. We just want to go this way. It's really re really wrong. Much that once was is lost for none now live who remember it. History became legend. Legend became myth and some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. You know what I'm quoting, right? Lord of the Rings, opening monologue of Fellowship of the Ring. And it's true. Yeah. Absolutely true.