Advanced Societies Existed On Earth 12,000 years ago

Filling in for George, Art Bell welcomed researcher and author Graham Hancock, who discussed lost ancient civilizations and the importance of exploring our own consciousness.

Hancock reiterated his premise that technologically advanced societies existed on Earth as far back as 12,000+ years ago — the end of the last ice age. He said these civilizations were lost when a gigantic comet collided with the planet, causing the ice sheets to melt and raising sea levels by more than 400 feet. As evidence, Hancock pointed out that large stone monuments, some as big as Stone Henge, can be found 120 feet below the surface of the ocean off the coast of Japan.

According to Hancock, the Mayan calendar may provide an ancient warning of yet another cataclysmic event — this one set to occur within a 40-year window surrounding December 21, 2012. Hancock believes the consequences of this future catastrophe could be less damaging or averted entirely if we can learn to transform our consciousness.

Hancock also strongly advocated a person’s right to explore his own consciousness by using substances found in certain ‘sacred plants.’ He detailed his life-transforming experiences taking an ayahuasca brew made from plants containing a naturally occurring hallucinogenic known as dimethyltryptamine (DMT), as well as talked about Dr.
Rick Strassman’s work with the substance. Almost everyone who uses DMT encounters the same beings and receives the same kind of messages, Hancock reported. He believes these commonalities show that the drug helps people journey into a real spiritual realm, and proves that our consciousness survives death.

Biography:

Graham Hancock is the author of the major international bestsellers The Sign and The Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods and Heaven’s Mirror. His books have sold more than five million copies worldwide and have been translated into 27 languages. His public lectures and TV appearances, including the three-hour series Quest For The Lost Civilisation, have put his ideas before audiences of tens of millions. He has become recognised
as an unconventional thinker who raises legitimate questions about humanity’s history and prehistory and offers an increasingly popular challenge to the entrenched views of orthodox scholars.

He graduated from Durham University with First Class Honours in Sociology. He then went on to pursue a career in quality journalism, writing for many of Britain’s leading newspapers.

Wikipedia
Various existential risks have the potential to destroy, or drastically restrict, human civilization; could cause human extinction; or even cause the end of Earth.[1] Severe events could cause the extinction of all life on the planet Earth, the destruction of the planet Earth, the annihilation of the solar system, to the annihilation of our galaxy or even the entire universe. Existential risks are distinguished from other forms of risk both by their scope, affecting all of humanity, and severity; destroying or irreversibly crippling the target.

Natural disasters, such as supervolcanoes and asteroids, may pose existential risks if sufficiently powerful, though man-made events could also threaten the survival of intelligent life on Earth, like catastrophic global warming, nuclear war, or bioterrorism.

Despite the importance of existential risks, it is a difficult subject to study directly since humankind has never been destroyed before; while this does not mean that it will not be in the future, it does make modelling existential risks difficult, due in part to survivorship bias.

While individual threats, such as those posed by nuclear war or climate change, have been intensively studied on their own, the systematic study of existential risks did not begin until 2002.

Future scenarios

Many scenarios have been suggested. Some that will almost certainly end life on Earth are certain to occur, but on a very long timescale. Others are likely to happen on a shorter timescale, but will probably not completely destroy civilization. Still others are extremely unlikely, and may even be impossible. For example, Nick Bostrom writes: Some foreseen hazards (hence not members of the current category) which have been excluded from the list on grounds that they seem too unlikely to cause a global terminal disaster are: solar flares, supernovae, black hole explosions or mergers, gamma-ray bursts, galactic center outbursts, buildup of air pollution, gradual loss of human fertility, and various religious doomsday scenarios.