We are the lost civilization of the future

The incredible revelations from our ancient past carry stories to guide the future of humanity. Will we listen?

In a recent conversation with my wife I confided that I'm having a challenging time staying tethered to this world. I often find myself apathetic to much of its weighty concerns. Not because I deem them unimportant, but because in the pit of my stomach there's something that continues to warn me of a far greater threat to humanity. This unrelenting concern grows by the day. And if I can be honest with you, it's an isolating way to live. Awakening people to the existential threats against the human race is a difficult task and over the years I've come to learn that people who produce such bold claims are often not taken seriously until times become serious. By then, it's too late. I believe this is why history often repeats. I also believe our ancient ancestors did their best to warn us so we would not repeat their failures, but the hubris of man is not only underestimated, it reigns undefeated.

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Can you see the gap?

Humanity is lost. I'm not sure I could say it more succinctly than that. God knows I've tried. However, no matter how or how often I say it I'm not convinced those words really penetrate the eyes, ears and hearts of those that hear me. I can understand why to an extent. The boldness and sheer massive size of such a claim is practically incomprehensible to most. It's easy to think everything is fine or will be because it always has been, but the truth is it hasn't always been fine. The story of the human race is not a linear story of progression nor are we at the apex of human civilization. This isn't a perspective that is easy to digest. Doing so essentially destabilizes many of our personal beliefs about the world and our role within it. So to many, the idea that the human race is lost is frankly inconceivable and borders on fear mongering. How do you cope with the idea that we've all been fed lies about the human race and the cosmos? Or at a minimum, the true story of our ancient history has been locked far away from us. For me it’s caused me to rethink everything.

As someone who grew up in and was always heavily involved with the Church —from street evangelism, open air preaching, apologetics and teaching— I find myself at odds with much of what I've learned over the years. It seems that in my pursuit of God, He has pressed me into an area of my life that I never expected to be in —starting from scratch. In my ignorance I assumed as time went on and as I pursued God, He would just pour from His fountain of knowledge onto the foundation that had already been laid in me. This would enable me to walk away being made much wiser as I continue down the path that was familiar. But, instead, He's chosen to lead me in a direction that appears to be quite different than I ever imagined. This new direction requires more faith than I ever thought necessary. Along the way I've learned that one can't fully trust and chase God if one is chained to the traditions of men. Loosing those chains, relying on gut instinct and being humble enough to listen to that still voice demands a level of discipline and courage I thought not possible. Whenever I share my new found direction with other Christians I can see them becoming awash with fear as if I'm teetering on the edge of apostasy, soon to make deals with the devil under the moonlight. The truth is my conviction has never been stronger, but this is only because I’ve allowed myself to see the whole of humanity through God’s eyes instead of through the eyes of men’s rigid religious structures. The bubble that I've operated in for most of my life has slowly begun to burst and for this journey I can't take anyone with me. It's a lonely affair and it's of God's doing.

But it isn't just the religious foundation or aspect of my life that has truly been disturbed. That alone isn't really daunting to me as I've grown accustomed to my views morphing and advancing over time. Instead, what I've been experiencing is a slow dismantling of my entire worldview over the years. All of my doubts and curiosities have given my analytical mind and spirit no escape. It all must be dealt with and now. My entire world has been reoriented. Out of the matrix I arise. For those that are still trapped in the bubble it's hard for them to believe that humanity is in fact, lost.

How do you convince someone who holds a compass that north is not true north? How do you convince a society who believes it's at the apex of human civilization that it isn't? How do you convince citizens of Earth that this isn't our first rodeo? How do you convince those you know that there's a very good chance that our entire civilization could be wiped out in an instance? How do you do this without sounding like Dr. Doom and Gloom or Chicken Little? Don't get me wrong. I'm not one for presenting problems without solutions, but I do believe it is important to always express their seriousness in order to fully understand what a solution may look like. However, I should first share with you the impetus for this newsletter edition so you can better follow my train of thought. I need to help you connect the dots.

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Ancient Apocalypse

Last week I spent some time watching Graham Hancock's Netflix documentary, Ancient Apocalypse. I've mentioned his name in my previous articles as I'm a fan of his work despite the attacks levied against him by pompous academics. Graham is in the same camp as myself recognizing that our current civilization is lost based on the evidence right in front of us. And it doesn't take being a PhD level academic to come to this realization. In fact Graham Hancock is merely an inquisitive journalist, free from the pressures to conform to mainstream academia and tow a narrative to the general public. While he may not be right about everything he believes, he utilizes good thinking —a lost art in our day. He's truly a rare gem and we need more people like him.

His documentary takes a look at several ancient sites around the world, all which support the idea that advanced, human civilizations existed well before the timeline you and I have been given by archaeologists. When you stop to think about how long humans have been on the planet —especially modern man— historical dates in relation to human production and technology seem off. It's as if something big is missing.

In one of my earlier articles I expressed this sentiment:

Which brings me to a conundrum that's plagued me for several years. If so called modern humans have been on the earth for roughly 200,000 years, or was it 300,00 years —the goal post keeps moving— then what were they doing with all of their time before the epoch of productivity including agriculture and farming just a few thousand years ago? I don't buy the argument that our fellow humans —with the same built-in ingenuity as you and I— were simply lounging around, gazing into each other's eyes every day only to become productive when it was time to hunt for sustenance. And you shouldn't buy it either.

The story of our current civilization goes like this; at the end of the last ice age —roughly 12,800 years ago— hunter gatherers developed communities and began farming. The impetus for this was due to the rapid decline of mega fauna that were dying off due to climate change. With meat becoming scarce farming and crop production grew. Around 5,000 years ago humans began to develop more complex technologies and skills which enabled them to build cities and megaliths around the world. Over time we've compounded these skills which have led us to where we are today with current humanity being at the apex of all civilizations. This is the narrative we've all been taught. And it's this narrative that has never sat right with me.

I've struggled to understand how humans could be on the planet for so long —with amazing ingenuity— only to become productive recently. But my inquisition doesn't end there. There are more properly basic questions that have boggled my mind for many years. For instance, I don't understand why we suddenly need certain fields of expertise for the betterment of human health. Supposedly, we've been on the earth for hundreds of thousands of years yet we don't know what foods are healthy for us to eat. We need academics to tell us. Shouldn't this knowledge be practically inherent by now? Why do we need nutritionists and dietitians? No other creature on earth has this problem. Why do we need Big Brother organizations to teach us to follow Food Pyramids. Why were Dietary Guidelines created in 1980? Why is there a recent global health crisis of people ripe with metabolic dysfunction? Why are we quickly losing our eyesight as a human race? Why do natives living in remote areas have all of their teeth despite not using toothpaste? I struggle to see how humanity could have survived for hundreds of thousands of years considering our current state of rapid declining health and dependencies on man-made maintenance concoctions. But these aren't even the biggest questions.

The bigger questions revolve around more meaningful acts or inventions taken up by ancient humanity. Why was there a global flood story passed down from every civilization across all continents dating back to antiquity? Why do these stories all include the same themes such as the reason the earth was flooded, wise sages or supernatural beings that educated humanity, or the existence of an evil serpent villain? Why did our ancient ancestors build incredible pyramids for the same sacred purposes across every continent on the globe despite not being connected to one another? How did they all have a shared idea concerning spiritual and religious narratives? We are clearly missing something.

Despite the amount of evidence left for modern day humanity to dig up, the extraordinary stories of the past are largely scoffed at and considered myths or legends created by ignorant hunter-gatherers. These are people that supposedly could do no more than spear an animal for food and build tiny huts with sticks as they nomadically roamed across lands. Yet, when you look at some of the incredible megaliths they constructed it literally boggles the mind as to how they built them by human hands. I'll share an example to illustrate my points.

The temple at Gunung Padang —situated on an archaeological site in Indonesia— was the topic of the first episode in the Netflix series, Ancient Apocalypse. A recent study of this site reveals it was most likely built around 27,000 years ago. Why is this important? Because this is well before the time typically believed that humans possessed the skill or capacity to build such complex structures.

Source: Netflix - Ancient Apocalypse

As expected, the findings from this latest study are not without controversy.

“I’m surprised [the paper]was published as is,” says Flint Dibble, an archaeologist at Cardiff University, UK. Although the paper presents “legitimate data”, he says, its conclusions about the site and its age are not justified. ¹

Such findings usually spark a territorial war amongst experts in their field. I believe this is due to the work becoming more about personal achievements and accolades instead of providing a beneficial public service to the whole of humanity. Despite obvious, large, man-made monuments existing the idea of an advanced civilization is dismissed because bones and teapots weren't found at the build site.

But Bill Farley, an archaeologist at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, says the paper has not provided evidence that an advanced civilization existed during the last ice age. The 27,000-year-old soil samples from Gunung Padang, although accurately dated, do not carry hallmarks of human activity, such as charcoal or bone fragments, he says. ²

This is frankly absurd. I'm often amazed that such "experts" have such a difficult time with good thinking. But then again, modern education doesn't teach people how to think, just what to think. It is entirely possible such items were prohibited from being buried at the location simply due to purpose. Meaning, if it was used for sacred purposes —which ancient temple mounts often were— you wouldn't expect dead bodies and scraps of pottery to be littered on the mountain of the gods. Temple mounts weren't used as trash heaps. But if you don't study ancient history from a cultic perspective you'd never be able to draw that conclusion. According to the experts, a massive temple mount was constructed by human hands —properly dated to 27,000 years ago— but apparently this doesn't prove humans lived around this time.

Source: Netflix - Ancient Apocalypse

There is a significant problem to the way archaeologists conduct their work. It is often not through the cultural lens of ancient societies but through the lens of modern day society. They then attempt to retrofit his or her modern day context into history. There is a religious context that must be accounted for. Ancient civilizations understood the world as an intermingling between the natural and supernatural. It was all one. To strip these civilizations of their religious culture in an attempt to understand them does all of ancient humanity a disservice.

Source: Netflix - Ancient Apocalypse

The issue of dating adds another layer of complexity. I'll be the first to admit that I have my doubts concerning how ancient materials are dated. The more we continue to dig and the more we continue to advance our own technology, dating methods are becoming more refined. However, I wasn't around 10,000 years ago or well before that when the earth was created. So while I absolutely respect and appreciate the human ingenuity behind our current dating methods, I will always reserve some skepticism around the supposed accuracy of pegging what a neanderthal had for breakfast 400,000 years ago by dating a rock and a skull. Chiefly because there's an agenda afoot that attempts to pedal a story that removes the spiritual narrative from our ancient past. And anyone that deviates from this narrative is ostracized by academia. All this to say, I believe dating should be used as merely a guide or a method of wayfinding that is subject to correction.

A good example of how "science" gets this kind of stuff wrong is when we take a look at the topic of the human life span. The length of life for those in the ancient past is derived by looking for specific signs of aging in joints and teeth. Signs such as arthritis, damaged joints or atherosclerosis assume a certain age of the deceased. However, we know now that metabolic dysfunction can cause these very same issues in young people. Diets high in carbohydrates —like the diet of the ancient Egyptians— would create such problems in people of all ages. This means we can't date an entire civilization's life span simply by looking at a few fossilized joints or teeth. It is entirely possible to live well into your 90s and have healthy joints on a species appropriate diet —devoid of metabolic syndrome— which would have been mainly meat tens of thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, such people would be assumed to have died young by the way scientists approach dating the age of the deceased. From this, they extrapolate the idea that humans today live longer than those in antiquity which is simply false.

Graham does an excellent job revealing some of ancient humanity's mysteries and I'd highly encourage you to watch the series. I'm not going to spoil it for you. However, there is one idea from the series that really resonated with me and I'd like to leave it with you.

Throughout the series Graham posits the idea that within all of the ancient megaliths and inscriptions found are warnings to future humanity. The stories encapsulated in stone comprised of supernatural beings, global floods and more, aren't just bedtime stories of an ancient civilization. They were historic events that were catalogued —just as we do today— for a future humanity, for a specific reason.

This makes a lot of sense especially when you consider the very popular global flood story. When you read the biblical account of the flood, you'll notice there is a moral component which serves as a catalyst for the event. Other ancient cultures also note this moral element. The basic idea is that as humanity declines and becomes corrupted —along with all of creation— cosmic balance must be reinstated. This introduces a cleaning, or resetting of Earth. Perhaps I'll expound on this in another edition as there is a lot to unpack. Let me know if you'd like that.

The series wraps up with Graham stating that he believes our current civilization is the lost civilization of the future —a theme that is consistent in my work. It is our civilization that has been attempting to understand the ancient past, slowly piecing the puzzle together through copious amounts of hubris. It is our civilization that doesn't quite understand those that came before us and all of their wild, so called mythical stories. It is our civilization that is still dumbfounded by the sheer feats of incredible architectural ingenuity by people who only had their bare hands to build with. It is our civilization that is declining in health and are searching for answers to longevity despite our "advanced technologies". I also believe it is our civilization that is the lost civilization of the future. And if we don't become serious about our ancient history and what it means to essentially be human, I believe we will also become a lost civilization of the past —just like those that came before us. History repeats.

Feel free to leave comments as I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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1. A 27,000-year-old pyramid? Controversy hits an extraordinary archaeological claim; Nature.com

2. A 27,000-year-old pyramid? Controversy hits an extraordinary archaeological claim; Nature.com