Ancient Apocalypse (2022): Season 1, Episode 4 - Ghosts of a Drowned World - full transcript

[Graham] If you look me up on Wikipedia,

you'll find that I am described as a
pseudoarchaeologist or a pseudoscientist.

I find this frankly absurd.

I'm no more a pseudoscientist
than a dolphin is a pseudo-fish.

I'm an investigative reporter.

My job is to investigate
the official story.

What is there in the past

that the existing model
of prehistory doesn't explain?

Anomalies and paradoxes
are of great interest.

That's what's brought me here
to the Bahamas.

I'm fascinated by parts of the world
that haven't been looked at properly yet.



That's why I spend years
scuba diving on continental shelves

'cause there's
ten million square miles of land

that was above water during
the Ice Age that's underwater today.

Including here, in the Bahamas.

These are the Bimini Islands.

Just under 60 miles
off the coast of Miami,

Bimini is separated
from the mainland of America

by a deepwater channel
known as the Straits of Florida.

You might think this is an unlikely place

to search for clues
to a lost civilization,

but something incredible has been
discovered beneath the waves here.

Just half a mile off the shoreline,
not far from the Gulf Stream current,

is a massive structure
of carefully laid giant stones...

with every appearance of being
a megalithic roadway or paved terrace...



which is how it earned
its nickname, the "Bimini Road."

The formation was first discovered
in 1968 by a group of divers

who'd been looking for
the fabled lost city of Atlantis

beneath the waves of the Bahamas.

In their excitement,
they announced to the world

that they had found
the road to Atlantis itself.

This state of Atlantis is supposed
to have existed in 8000 BC,

and supposed to have attacked Athens.
Greeks didn't exist in 8000 BC.

This is all simply absurd.

I'm afraid there is no history
in this story whatsoever.

[Graham] Predictably, all this talk of
Atlantis caused archaeologists to discount

what seemed to be
an underwater megalithic structure

as no more than breathless hype.

To this day, archaeologists insist

that this underwater formation
is just a stretch of fractured beach rock

probably formed around 3,000 years ago
by natural processes.

Unwilling to risk their reputations,

few scholars have
seriously investigated it.

I have no such reservations.

Because whether or not

the Bimini structure
is part of some underwater city,

it would be reckless
to ignore it completely.

Which is why I've come here

with some state-of-the-art technology
and a team of experts

to reopen this cold case.

My dive buddy is Dr. Michael Haley...

[Dr. Haley] Hand me the mask.

[Graham] ...a marine biologist who's been
exploring the waters of the Caribbean

for over 40 years.

[Dr. Haley over comms]
Graham, let's swim over here.

[Graham] The so-called Bimini Road
lies just 18 feet,

five-and-a-half meters, below the surface.

An easy dive.

While Mike and I head
for the mysterious structure,

up above, another member
of our team, Kyle Dufault,

is preparing to scan the area
using his sonar array.

Kyle's a marine investigator

with years of experience
hunting the world's seabeds

for wrecks and anomalies.

[Kyle] Good to go.

[Graham] His sonar should reveal
the road like an X-ray,

giving us a much clearer view

of how these blocks
may originally have been laid out.

I'm hoping to show something
that has never been seen before.

If this is in fact a man-made object,
I'd like to see precise lines

because usually 90-degree angles
do not occur in nature.

It's very rare.

All right, what I would like to do
is just go right down the middle.

[Dr. Haley] Graham, look at this.

[Graham] Below, Mike and I close in
on the line of massive blocks

on the otherwise empty seabed.

Recent storms have
stirred up sediment, reducing visibility.

Even so, it's easy to spot
the well-organized rows of megaliths.

[over comms] They are laid out
perfectly symmetrically.

I can swim along the side of the row

and I can see
absolute level and precision.

It's a very impressive sight.

The slabs are remarkably
straight-edged and parallel.

These very large blocks
are really enormous.

They're about 15 feet on one dimension,

and about 12 feet on the other dimension.

This isn't the top
of any larger buried structure.

Most of the blocks
are laid out directly on the ocean floor.

What's so unusual

is that some of
the undisturbed sections of the structure

appear to be level,
despite the massive size of the megaliths.

And when Mike and I take a closer look,
we discover why.

There's something underneath them.

[Dr. Haley] Come over here, Graham.
Look at this.

[Graham] A series of smaller stones
are wedged beneath these huge slabs,

keeping them level above the sea floor.

[Dr. Haley] You can see
these foundation stones very clearly.

[Graham] There's no way those stones
could have gotten under these slabs,

some of which weigh up to ten tons,

unless they were put there intentionally.

There's no doubt about it, in my view.

Nature just cannot explain
the regularity, the organization,

the planning
and the precision of this structure.

It's clear that we're looking
at a man-made structure.

Huge efforts were made to create

a leveled-off megalithic platform
on a sloping land form.

And in order to level that platform,

they used foundation blocks
underneath the large megaliths.

Up close, it was difficult to make out

what the overall intended shape
of the formation might have been.

But Kyle's sonar scans
should give us further perspective.

So, now you're starting to see the blocks
of the main section of the road.

- [Graham] Okay.
- And you can definitively see the cracks...

[Graham] Absolutely.

...and the uniform shape of the road.

[Graham] Definition is amazing.

- Most of the rocks are very uniform.
- [Graham] Yeah.

They're usually about
ten to twelve foot long,

by ten to twelve foot wide.

- [Graham] So, really substantial pieces.
- [Kyle] Absolutely.

Look at this straight edge here.

[Kyle] Right, absolutely.

Yeah, you can definitively
see the lines between the blocks

- like they were actually made...
- [Graham] Yeah.

- ...and then laid into a road pattern. It...
- Almost perfectly square.

Absolutely.

Like I said, you can
definitively see that they're blocks.

[Graham] Yes.

[Kyle] I've scanned both sides
on either side of the road

and there's nothing like that
anywhere around.

[Graham] If this formation was simply
the product of natural tidal forces,

as geologists insisted
when it was first discovered,

why would the shorter section of the road
lie at an angle to the main one?

Wouldn't they be parallel?

And why don't we see
other such formations nearby?

I mean, not only the weathering
or just the uniformity of them all,

- but nothing around it looking like this...
- Yeah.

- Somebody put it there.
- Yes.

So my personal opinion
is that it is man-made.

So, Mike, what do you make of it?

What have we been looking at?

Well, I've dived all over the world

and it's the only structure
I've ever seen like that.

Anyway, it's completely unique.

When I listen to the arguments of those
who think it is a natural structure,

they argue that it's beach rock.

Oftentimes a shelf of beach rock
will fracture into pieces

while still maintaining its overall shape.

But the blocks at Bimini
are clearly distinct from one another

and uniformly pillow-shaped.

It's very hard for me to see
how nature could have made it.

I've never seen beach rock
fracture in that way.

- Have you?
- Me neither.

And it speaks to me loudly
of human workmanship.

Looks like it very well could be
a man-made structure.

[Graham] If I'm right,
it must have been made at a time

when this part of the Bahamas
was above water.

And extrapolating
from all the available data,

we can get a good idea of what it might
originally have looked like

when it lay atop the coastline.

The hook-shaped formation
runs roughly northeast to southwest,

about 1,600 feet long.

Nearly four-and-a-half football fields.

The biggest blocks are anywhere
from ten to thirteen feet long

and seven to ten feet wide.

And on both terraces,
there appear to be intentional gaps.

But there's no way to know if there was
any wooden superstructure built on top.

All that remains are the blocks.

But the very existence
of such a massive man-made structure here

has extraordinary implications.

Because this part of the Bahamas has been
under water for thousands of years.

In fact, most of the islands making up
what we now call the Great Bahama Bank,

were connected during the Ice Age

in places rising
100 meters above sea level.

Part of a vast rectangular Bahama Island,

just off the mainland
of what today is Florida,

an island that existed here
for more than 100,000 years.

Sea levels rose 400 feet
at the end of the last Ice Age

and in the process,

swallowed up millions of square miles
of some of the best land on Earth.

And if we're trying to tell
the human story while not taking account

of those submerged continental shelves
and what was happening on them,

then we could be missing
a great deal of important information.

The new data we've gathered
on the Bimini Road

strongly suggest to me an ancient date
for this now underwater structure.

And yet, archaeologists have been slow
to take up the challenge

of looking for evidence of
older civilizations here in the Bahamas.

They refuse to consider the possibility.

If there was an advanced civilization
that lived, say, 30,000 years ago,

which is what Graham thinks, okay,

where is their trash? Where are the homes?

You know, where are
their stone tools or metal tools?

Where's their writing?

[Graham] There could be such evidence
of an advanced civilization of the Ice Age

waiting to be found
beneath the waves on land later flooded.

But you're not going to find it
if you don't bother to look.

[Dr. Haley] You're not talking about
a civilization on Bimini.

You're talking about civilization
on the entire bank, which is huge.

- The research has simply never been done.
- Yeah.

Because archaeology doesn't feel
there's any point in doing that research.

Because archaeology feels that

the timeline of human civilization
is already sorted out.

So, there's no reason to investigate that.

The Bimini Road does overlook
the deepwater channel

that once ran between the
Ice Age Bahama Island and North America.

A channel through which
the Gulf Stream flows,

making it a hugely important landmark
for any ships heading northward

out of the Gulf of Mexico
toward the Atlantic.

Like the legendary boat
with no paddles of Quetzalcoatl.

The stone slabs could have been part of
some larger monument or place marker.

A legacy of a seafaring culture

that witnessed the rising waters
at the end of the last Ice Age.

A culture that may actually
have mapped this important spot.

I've asked Mike to join me on shore

to look over replicas of
some of the oldest surviving world maps.

He may be a seasoned navigator,

but I'm betting
he's never used maps like these.

The story of these maps
is quite complicated.

These maps were typically drawn

in the 14th, 15th
and 16th centuries of our era.

But the mapmakers admitted freely that
they were copying from older source maps

and compiling it together with
new information from the Age of Discovery.

Let's start with this one,
which is a very famous map.

This is the Piri Reis map
drawn by a Turkish admiral...

- Right.
- ...in 1513.

He tells us
in his own handwriting on the map

that he based it on 20 older source maps.

In addition to those ancient sources,

Piri Reis also referred to charts
from recent voyages to the Americas

by Christopher Columbus and others.

The end result was a world map,

but today,
only the western third of it survives.

This is really interesting, Graham,
because you got this coastline

showing the rivers
in South America quite accurately.

[Graham] Yeah. Very good, really,

representation of the coast
of South America.

But what stands out for me
as a huge anomaly,

is this very large island

shown off the southeast coast
of North America.

Parked off the coast
of a truncated Florida,

is a large, vertically-oriented,
rectangular island.

It doesn't look like anything
Columbus should have encountered or drawn.

Efforts have been made to explain it
as a badly drawn map of Cuba.

And that just doesn't fly for me
because you can't get it wrong.

Well, it's long and thin
and oriented on a different axis.

And oriented east-west.
Whereas this is oriented north-south.

There is no such island
and it didn't exist in 1513 either.

But an island
of exactly that size and shape

did exist during the last Ice Age.

The large part of the Grand Bahama Banks
that were above water.

And if you take a closer look at what
Piri Reis drew along the island's spine,

it's a series of blocks lined up in a row.

Remind you of something?

This row looks to me

very much like the rows of megaliths
on the Bimini Road.

That would not be uncharacteristic
of maps of this period

because they took what they saw
as a characteristic feature of that area.

Like we see this elephant in West Africa,

curious animals here in South America.

And this feature here,
which is not mountains.

It's not how Piri Reis shows mountains.
It's something else.

I think it's the Bimini Road.

I don't care whether the Bimini Road
is natural or man-made.

My claim about the Bimini Road

is it's really fucking weird
that it appears on a map above water.

[Joe] Yes.

A map that was drawn in 1513
based on older source maps.

This strange appearance
of an Ice Age island

isn't the only unusual feature
on Piri Reis' extraordinary map.

As you move to the south,
you've got this large landmass here.

[Graham] Yeah.

And that seems extremely strange.

[Graham] You're putting your finger on

one of the most controversial aspects
of the Piri Reis map.

It's a coastline
extending out from South America

along the southern edge of the Atlantic.

No one should have known about it in 1513.

Take a look at this other world map.

The Pinkerton map, published in 1812.

It's impressively accurate
except for one thing.

No Antarctica.

Because our civilization
didn't discover Antarctica until 1820.

This is why historians
refuse to acknowledge the possibility

that it might appear
on a map drawn in 1513.

The area of the map
which people say might be Antarctica,

well, it just isn't Antarctica.

It's South America.

All that happened is that
Piri Reis was drawing the coastline,

the paper ran out,
so he changed the direction.

[Peter Barber] He just did a doodle.

And I think we've been
taken in by the doodle

into thinking it's something more.

[Graham] That might make sense,
if the Piri Reis map was the only example.

But Antarctica shows up in other
16th century maps, as well.

Here it's clearly detailed
and even labeled

on the Orontius Finaeus map
drawn in 1531.

Once again, based on ancient sources,

before any modern explorer
had ever laid eyes on it.

But if that is Antarctica
on the Piri Reis map,

why is it so oddly oriented
and connected to South America?

Have a look at Antarctica's coastline,
not as it is today,

but as geologists think it was
when sea levels were lower

and the southern ice cap extended north
during the last Ice Age.

If you trace out
Antarctica's Ice Age coastline,

it looks a lot like
the one on the Piri Reis map.

Antarctica, its appearance
rather accurately,

and much as it looked
during the Ice Age on ancient maps,

is a real paradox and a problem
which needs to be explained.

And to me, the obvious answer
to that problem isn't coincidence,

it isn't fantasy
on the part of the mapmakers.

It's those source maps
they were drawing from.

I think these maps suggest

a major forgotten episode
in human history.

In Indonesia, in Mexico, and on Malta,

we've seen advanced megalithic structures
associated with civilizing heroes

who arrived by boat, teaching the locals
about agriculture, laws and engineering.

Now, these maps suggest that
long before Magellan's famous expedition,

an advanced culture
did circumnavigate that Ice Age world.

This is all evidence
that we shouldn't dismiss the possibility

that our ancestors
had achieved a level of technology

where they could explore
and map the world's oceans.

Shouldn't be dismissed.

Is there anything else compelling
in the immediate area

that seems to indicate there was
a man-made structure?

[Graham] There is another unexplained
man-made wonder here.

Hidden deep inside
Bimini's dense mangrove forest,

an area accessible only by boat.

Rising ten feet out of the swamp
is a series of mounds

set off by empty stretches of sand,
creating a curious 500-foot long shape.

Like the famed Nazca Lines in Peru,

it's a phenomenon
best viewed from the air.

The unmistakable shape of one of
Bimini's most famous ancient residents.

This effigy of a shark,
carved into the mangrove swamp,

has been here as long as anyone remembers.

Though, archaeologists
have never seriously studied it

since they cannot confirm its origins.

And yet it's a predator
that any ancient seafaring culture,

including the lost civilization
I've been looking for,

would certainly have feared and respected.

So, who were these ancient navigators?

Well, at the risk of yet again incurring
the wrath of those in mainstream academia...

Let's talk about Atlantis.

I don't believe
Bimini is the site of Atlantis,

or that Atlantis lies
anywhere near the Bahamas.

But the legend
of the drowned city is intriguing,

precisely because it offers us
the most detailed description of something

I believe really existed.

A lost advanced civilization
of the Ice Age.

The Greek philosopher Plato

is the oldest surviving source
for the story of Atlantis.

Which he describes quite vividly.

Atlantis was a precocious civilization.

Boasting beautiful architecture,
advanced technology,

and city planning on a monumental scale.

It also commanded a vast fleet
capable of navigating the world,

projecting its power
near and far across oceans.

Until the city was struck by a series
of massive earthquakes and floods,

a truly cataclysmic event,

and sank beneath the waves.

Plato tells us that the story of Atlantis
reached him through his ancestor, Solon.

That Solon visited Egypt.

And we know the date of that visit.
It was 600 BC.

And during that visit, he visited a temple

and the priests
spoke of a lost advanced civilization

which they called Atlantis,

which was destroyed in a flood

9,000 years before
the time of Solon's visit.

So we have a date
for the destruction of Atlantis, 9600 BC.

That's exactly the same time
as an episode of global cataclysm

and catastrophic sea level rise

that occurred at the end of the Ice Age.

Coincidence? Maybe.

But for the tale of Atlantis
to accord so precisely

with the latest scientific evidence
on the end of the Ice Age,

should give even the harshest of skeptics
pause for thought.

Isn't it much more likely
it is just some sort of allegory?

I might think that if it wasn't
for the fact that the Plato story

is echoed all around the world
by people who had no contact with Plato.

And what I suspect is that they are
all drawing on a common source,

a common memory of a real event.

When Plato tells us the story of Atlantis,
he also tells us why Atlantis went down.

It wasn't just because of a cataclysm.

It was because of the arrogance,
the hubris, the pride

that had grown up within Atlantis.

This is why Atlantis was destroyed.

Because it had
fallen out of harmony with the universe.

And I think that our civilization today
is in a very similar predicament.

We have fallen out of harmony
with the universe.

Our conceit at our own achievements,

our willingness to impose
our power around the world

on other less powerful peoples.

All of these things in mythological terms

would suggest that our civilization
is in very great danger.

[explosion]

When I published
Fingerprints of the Gods in 1995,

I thought that there was
nothing more for me to say

about the possibility
of a lost civilization.

I became aware of an enormous
and really quite astonishing

newly-discovered
megalithic site in Turkey.

One that proved that our Ice Age ancestors

were capable of far more
than historians ever dreamed.

To me, it very strongly
speaks of a lost civilization

that archaeology hasn't got to grips with.

It's a site now thought to be
the oldest surviving

megalithic structure in the world.

One that also may have left us
a warning encoded in stone,

that the ancient apocalypse
of the last Ice Age

that nearly destroyed humanity...

[thunder rumbling]

could return.

So, Turkey is where I'm heading next.