Legends of the Lost with Megan Fox (2018–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - America's Lost Civilization - full transcript

All across the world,
our ancient ancestors

left behind towering mysteries
and enchanting myths.

That looks like a magic wand.

As an actress,
I've been lucky enough

to peek behind the curtain

at some of these ancient sites.

I've never been
in a crypt before.

And it's ignited
an insatiable curiosity in me

to know more about
these lost worlds...

It's amazing that under our feet
there's so much history.

...some of which are still
buried deep in our distant past.



That is amazing!

I'm from Tennessee,

so this is what it looks like
where I'm from.

It's overgrown.
I mean, it's woodsy.

This is how I grew up.

I'm deep in the backcountry
of southeastern Pennsylvania,

and although parts of these
never-ending forests

and freshwater streams
might feel untouched,

over 10,000 years ago,

they were home to some of
the first humans

to ever live in America.

So, when I was in school,

the theory that
I was being taught

was that people migrated
into the Americas



about 13,000 years ago from Asia

and across the Bering Strait
into Alaska,

and that's how
the first people came here.

In nearly every history book
taught in nearly every school

is the theory that humans
first came to North America

13,000 years ago

by crossing a land bridge
connecting Siberia and Alaska

and then settled
throughout the continent.

As a kid, I didn't question it,

but now the door has sort of
been pushed open

for people to start asking
that question again...

"When were people here
in America?"

In recent years, groundbreaking
new scientific discoveries

are challenging our concept
of early American man,

and our history books
might not just be wrong,

but really, really wrong.

I've come to an extraordinary
archaeological site

outside the small town
of Avella, Pennsylvania...

...and I'm here to meet leading
archaeologist Jim Adovasio.

His findings from this site
are challenging

the established history
of man's origin in America.

How are you?
Megan.

Jim.
Nice to meet you.

Same here.

What is in here?
I can see through.

It looks interesting.

Essentially, that's where
the main excavations occurred

or began in 1973.
Okay.

Jim has overseen archaeological
digs at this site

for over four decades,

but it's only recently
that his discoveries here

have set the archaeological
community ablaze.

It might look like a set from
an apocalyptic sci-fi movie,

but the truth is,
our origins are buried

deep within this rubble.

All of these tags that you see...
Yeah.

...are devices
for the excavators

to mark the layers of the site,

the various layers of sediment.

Some of these moments in time

are equivalent
to literal pages in a book.

The layers
are like chapters in a book,

and then all of these layers
together are the book... Yeah.

...of human utilization
of this location.

The freshwater
of the nearby Ohio River

and an ample supply of flint
for making tools

made this area an optimal spot
for prehistoric man to settle,

and evidence is everywhere.

This whole thing here
is one layer of the site,

but it consists of micro layers.

Some of them,
when you rehydrate them

with this sprayer,

come out quite dark,

and this is ash and charcoal
from the succession of fires.

One, two, three,
four different fires

were built there by people
in subsequent visits

4,000 or 5,000 years ago.

Up here... Is that also...

The red down there,
is that another?

Yes, that's another fire.

Yeah. There's a whole series
of even earlier ones.

This down here is about
8,000, 9,000 years ago.

Using the layers
of this sandstone,

each layer representing
nearly 200 years,

Jim and his team
have precisely mapped

when and how humans
were using this area.

Evidence of fires
prove humans were living here

9,000 years ago,

but what's buried even deeper

is the real key
to Jim's findings.

As we excavated deeper
and deeper and deeper,

going back further
and further in time,

we finally got
to this little step,

which is of Clovis Age.

The Clovis Age is
widely accepted

as the period of time
13,000 years ago

when humans first arrived
and settled in America.

There ought not to have been
anything deeper than this

that was associated with humans,

but as we continued to dig,

we continued to find indications
of a human presence.

There should not
have been people,

but there was stuff deeper,
and it was older.

Over here, we found material

that's about 16,000
radiocarbon years old.

Wow.

According to Jim's findings,

humans were in this area
of Pennsylvania

as far back as 16,000 years ago.

That's 3,000 years earlier

than our history books
say is possible.

None of us could have
ever imagined

that sort of thing at the time.
Yeah.

We had no idea
it would be this old,

and it included
a series of pits like this one

along with the associated debris
of a camping event...

The stone tools,
bits and pieces of bone,

the charcoal, the ash
that would have been present

as campfire-related trash.

So 16,000 years ago, not 13,000,

humans were here,
35 miles outside of

modern-day Pittsburgh,

living, settling, and warming
themselves by campfires.

A 3,000-year discrepancy
might not sound like a lot,

but think about what life
was like for humans

just 3,000 years ago.

David was king of
the ancient Israelites,

India first started
using metal tools,

and in the Middle East,

the world's first alphabet
was just emerging.

We were very surprised
at this development.

Personally, I didn't believe
what I was seeing.

Were the dates we were getting
back from the laboratories

somehow an error,

or were there really people here

thousands of years

before they were
supposed to be here?

And so the excitement
didn't come until later,

until we'd exhausted
all the what-if scenarios,

and then suddenly,
there were no more what-ifs.

What's that like
to disprove yourself?

- To find out that you're wrong?
- Yeah.

We, of course, rushed into town

and sucked down as much beer

as humans can drink
in a 24-hour period.

Was there resistance
when you put this forward?

Oh, huge, huge.

The majority of the field

did not believe

that anyone had been here
before Clovis,

and so they resisted
even the implication

that that was possible.

That was so threatening

to what the received wisdom was,

but now as a result,

I look at the past
through a different lens.

There had to have been
people here earlier.

Our time line
of human history in America

is off by 3,000 years...

We're dead wrong about
the spread of humankind,

I mean, dead wrong.

...which begs the question,

what are we missing
in this massive blind spot

of human history?

My fifth-grade history book

told me that the first humans
came to America

13,000 years ago,

but what if
that widely accepted belief

is dead wrong?

New science suggests that
our time line of human history

may be off by 3,000 years,

and the first man arrived
in America 16,000 years ago,

so what could we be missing
in this massive blind spot

of human history?

- Nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you.

How are you?
Yeah.

Well, welcome
to Qualcomm Institute.

Attempting to shed light
on this blind spot

is Dominique Rissolo,

a veteran archaeologist

at the University of California,
San Diego.

Using state-of-the-art
technology

and the latest techniques,

he's searching the continent

for North America's
earliest human remains.

Is this your lab we're going to?

This is our lab
off to the right here.

Wow, that's cool.
Yeah, well, welcome.

It's like being in
a "Mission Impossible" movie.

Yeah.

You know, part of the reason
it's been so difficult for us

to really understand

the story of
the peopling of the Americas

is because we find it
so difficult

to locate those humans.

The human remains, they're rare.

For a variety of reasons,

these sites were
very difficult to find.

They didn't preserve very well,

and so what we're learning

is that one of the most
promising frontiers

for Paleo-American studies

are in the caves and cenotes

of the Yucatan Peninsula.

Due to thousands of years
of weather erosion

and human destruction,

most of the evidence
of early man in America

has been lost to time,

which led Dominique and his team

to look in an unlikely place...

Underwater,

where archaeological remains

are sheltered from
the destructive powers of time.

In 2007, divers were exploring
a massive underwater cave system

off the coast
of the Yucatan Peninsula

when they made
a shocking discovery.

We're working at a site
called Hoyo Negro

where divers came
upon a huge pit,

and they dive down
to the bottom,

and the first thing
that they noticed

were the bones of extinct
Ice Age animals

at the bottom of this pit,

and one of the lead divers

comes across
a set of human remains

of a young woman
who we call Naia.

Wow. And this is
all underwater?

All underwater.
But I was completely blown away,

and I knew immediately
that we were dealing with

a very early individual
and a very, very important find.

Naia is believed to be
13,000 years old,

making her the oldest skeleton
ever discovered in the Americas,

and although she was found
deep underwater,

that would not have been
the case thousands of years ago.

That used to be above
sea level at some point.

It did, so at one time,
elephant-like animals

were walking through here...

Saber-toothed cats, cave bears,

giant ground sloths, and people.

Where are the bones?
Are they here?

Are they somewhere else?
They're not here.

The bones we recovered in 2016,

and they're at the
National Museum of Anthropology

in Mexico City.

With Naia's bones
preserved in Mexico,

Dominique is using
3-D printing technology

to explore every aspect
of her anatomy

to try and figure out
who this mysterious woman was

and what she can tell us
about who was here before her.

There's so much information
in the skeleton... Yeah.

...that tells us
about who Naia was.

Was she small?

That seems small and delicate.

She was small,
and she stood at about 5 feet,

was maybe around
100 to 105 pounds,

and we also know
from her skeleton

that she had given birth. Mm.

We can tell that she was
about 15 to 16 years of age

when she died...
Oh, God.

...and led
a really hard life.

Using advanced point-based
image technology,

Dominique and his team have
created a visual representation

of what Naia
would have looked like.

Wow.
It's pretty crazy.

For us, it gives a face
to someone

who has been so important
to us as researchers.

Look at her, and you see her,

and that all of a sudden
becomes a very real person

because you gave someone a face.

Now there's a face to this...
Indeed.

...mystery that creates
instant empathy...

Mm-hmm... for whatever
she went through.

We don't often think
of what life was like

for these individuals.

Although there are still
many questions

swirling around
who early American man was,

the key to why
these early humans

would have been in America
16,000 years ago

could still be
buried underwater.

So, Dominique has
a powerful tool

to search for the answers
without leaving this building.

After you.

And welcome to the sun cave.

This lab is equipped
with one of the most advanced

and powerful virtual-reality
systems in the world.

Wow.

It's pretty crazy.
Yeah.

So, we are now in Hoyo Negro.

New archaeology suggests
that humans may have

arrived in the Americas
3,000 years earlier

than science previously thought,

so what lost people
could have existed

in that massive blind spot
in American history?

And we'll head downstairs,

and we can virtually enter
one of these caves.

After archaeologist
Dominique Rissolo and his team

discovered the oldest
human remains in North America,

a 15-year-old girl named Naia
buried in an underwater cave,

they've been using
state-of-the-art technology

to virtually recreate
this cave system

to search for more evidence
of early American humans.

It's pretty crazy.
Yeah.

So, we are now in Hoyo Negro.

Wow. It's amazing.

So, I wanted to introduce you...
Super cool.

...to Megan.
Hi. Oh, hi.

How are you? This is Vid
Petrovic, a colleague.

Vid's developed the point-based
visual analytics engine

that drives our research.

Vid Petrovic and his team
have spent thousands of hours

diving and capturing
high-resolution images

of every inch
of the Hoyo Negro cave system

where Naia was found.

Using advanced AI, they
pieced those images together

to create
a three-dimensional space

that scientists
can swim through.

Imagine the cave divers.

I mean, they are sort of
our astronauts

going off to these remote
and hostile environments,

collecting these data in
the form of images. Yeah.

So these data become the means
by which the scientists,

who may never dive
to the bottom of the pit,

can go there virtually.

When they're diving,
the guys that actually go down,

it's obviously
very dark down there,

so they're not seeing much.

They're not seeing this,

and so this is a totally
different version

of that world
they already explored.

We're inside the pit.

We're actually at
the bottom of the pit.

Is that the edge?

That's the edge
of the pit, yeah.

So, again, it would have been
completely dark for them,

so for us,
we can turn on the lights,

go inside, and kind of see
where Naia came to rest.

We see her skeleton
in two separate places,

so in other words,

when she was decomposing
and floating around,

she came apart about midsection,

so the lower portion of
her skeleton is in one area,

and the upper portion
is another.

So, if we look over here,
this is the lower portion

of Naia's body.

As we move in,
you can see the femura,

both the right and left femur.

And over here, you can see
her pelvis, the sacrum,

and they're sort of
tucked in over here.

And then as Vid sort of
takes us to the upper half

of her skeleton,

you can see her mandible here.

- Yeah.
- I mean, the fact that, I mean,

this is such detail
that you could actually see...

- Yeah.
- ...the crags in her teeth.

I mean, it's just remarkable.

So, there's a story here,
and there are, of course,

so much of these
submerged cave systems

that has yet to be explored,

and there are potentially
other skeletons

not unlike Naia that may reside

deep inside these cave systems.

Now that the technology is here,

archaeology is ultimately
headed underwater,

and there's so much to find

beneath of the surface
of the water at this point.

So, I'm heading out
on the open water

off the coast of California

to find answers that are
locked deep below the sea.

How long have you guys
been doing this?

Well, the project
that we're working on now,

it's in our fourth year.

I'm meeting with Amy Gusick
and Jillian Maloney,

scientists who are searching
the waters

off the Pacific Ocean
2,200 miles

from where Naia was discovered

to hopefully uncover hard,
physical evidence

of early humans.

All of the area that we're
interested in looking at is,

I mean, it's under us
right now on this boat.

So, we know that there is
a lot of landscape here

that's been submerged
that was available

when you had the earliest
occupation in the New World.

During the last ice age
about 20,000 years ago,

ocean water was being sucked up
to form the ice shelf,

which lowered the sea level

and exposed thousands
of square miles

of livable coast
along California.

This was the ideal place
for early man to live

because they could fish
and build shelters.

When the ice age ended,
the shelf melted,

submerging what was once
livable coastline,

making the search
for early man in this area

an underwater one.

So, this is our map
of the sea floor

off southern California.

During the last glacial period,

the coastline
would have been out

at the edge of
that wide, flat area,

and the area that
we're searching for

is sort of this red area
around the coastline

because that
would have been land,

and so people could have used
that whole area to inhabit.

People were living
along the coastline,

and that coastline has changed,

and a lot of it is underwater,

which now means that archaeology
has to go aquatic.

They have to go under
and start looking for things,

which is challenging,

but also, that's just
a whole new universe.

How do you go about
looking for the things

that you're looking for?

I'll take a long tube,

and we'll just plunge that
down into the sea floor,

and as it plunges down
into the sea floor,

the sediment fills up
in the tube,

and within there,
we're preserving

the different
layers of sediment.

So, ideally,
we're going to find evidence

that there were indeed people
in these submerged environments

that date back
at least 16,000, 17,000,

possibly even 18,000 years old.

And we have evidence of people

populating the Americas
13,000 years ago,

but let's say that she's right,

and it could go back
18,000 years ago.

Between 13,000 and 18,000,

that's a huge gap
which will rewrite history

if they find what they think
that they're going to find,

and that's mind-blowing.

How long do you think
it'll take?

Much more complex,
I think, than,

you know, people really realize.

There has got to be
burials somewhere.

There has to be!

Amy and Jillian's
search for answers

may take over a decade,

but could the key to
understanding our lost history

lie not in the future,

but rather in the ancient
traditions of our past?

Ugh.

I've uncovered new science

suggesting that humans may have
arrived in the Americas

nearly 5,000 years earlier
than previously thought,

but with much
of the key evidence

buried beneath rising waters,

I'm turning to legends
and oral histories

to try and piece together
this lost time.

This smells of sage, lavender.

I do smell something.

Chief Joseph Riverwind
is from the Arawak Tribe

and is an author and expert
on Native American oral history.

His wife, Laralyn,
is a doctor of natural medicine

from the Cherokee people.

We've been looking into
the whole idea of

when did people start
to populate the Americas.

When did that happen,
and who were those people?

And I know if someone had
a oral tradition

that there was treasure buried
in the backyard

of a house that I built,

I would go dig up exactly
where the tradition says it is.

Like, why wouldn't I do that?
Right.

And I feel like there's,
you know,

there's so much there
to explore.

Native Americans populated
this area over 3,000 years ago

and have recently been proven
to have direct DNA connections

to some of the earliest humans
in America,

but the legends and stories
of Native Americans

might tell us more than
modern science ever can.

Well, the understanding

of how oral tradition
is passed down...

It isn't just telling
the story around a campfire,

which obviously would change
with each person

that hears the story.

The stories are learned
word for word,

so when we hear
a traditional story,

it's the same as we heard it
500 years ago

or 1,000 years ago
or 2,000 years ago.

There's an integrity
that's kept to it.

So, what is the truth
in your oral traditions?

When did people
come into the Americas?

So, in oral tradition,

our stories say that the land
was all one piece,

one solid land mass,
and we were all one tribe.

We were all one people.

But then our people
tried to build

what we called a sky tower
to the creator,

and Creator became angry
with the people.

And there's flood stories.

You find the Choctaw
talk about Creator

speaking to a man

and telling him
to build a great canoe

and put two of every animal in it...
Mm, mm-hmm.

...because he would be
flooding the Earth.

These various
Native American stories

all seem to line up
with what science tells us

about Earth's history.

There was an ice age
where the lands were connected.

This ice melted.

Sea levels rose,

and massive floods
spread across the world.

Although these oral traditions
credit the gods,

they're reporting on
the same events.

Well, you've got native tribes

who say we've been here
for thousands of years,

so I think that more and more
people are beginning to listen

and to hear what
our people have to say.

So, what does oral tradition
say about who those people were

that were here?

There's a heavy oral tradition

of "other" beings
within native storytelling,

and I don't even want to
call them a race.

It's a species because
they're not just human.

They're hybrid.

And these stories were found,
you know, the

Shawnee, the Iroquois,
the Cherokee,

the Navajo, the Lakota,

but you have
this whole race of giants

that populated the land,
and they were not good.

They were very sadistic.
They were very evil.

Muskogee called the giants
isti papa,

which means "man-eater"...
Mm.

...and they were notorious
for taking children and...

- Mm.
- ...making meals of them.

They would grab a warrior
and just bite his head off

and drink the blood.
Ugh.

I mean, these guys were,
like, 9 foot, 10 foot tall.

- Yeah.
- It was just...

- Sometimes bigger.
- Yeah, sometimes bigger.

And they're in almost
all of the Native stories.

You ask a Native person,
"Who built this big mound

or this Indian mound
over here?"

And it's always,
"The giants built them."

Mm-hmm.

According to the Riverwinds,

giants are all over
the oral histories

of dozens of Native tribes

from the Iroquois
in the northeast

to the Comanches
in the Great Plains

to the Navajo in the southwest.

These tribes were
hundreds of miles apart,

but all shared a common story

that early man
mingled with giants.

What happens when
you present these ideas

to other people who are
maybe more mainstream,

like, coming from
a scientific background?

I think there's some hesitancy
in the scientific community

of believing oral tradition.

We understand
how fantastic this sounds,

but in order to truly have
a scientific approach to it,

you have to look at everything.
I'm with you.

I don't understand why
it's so hard for people

to want to be open.

How can you say that
you're right and that's a fact,

and that's the end

if you left half
of the things unexamined?

It doesn't make any sense.

So, have we not only missed
thousands of years

of human history,

but also
a lost species of giants

that roamed these lands?

1899, an 8-foot-1-1/2-inch
giant skeleton...

1933, 7-foot-5 skeleton...

It's in the Smithsonian records.

It's in
the "New York Times."

There's over 1,500 accounts
in the historical record

talking about giant skeletons.

I've uncovered new science

suggesting that humans
arrived in the Americas

thousands of years earlier
than previously thought.

So, what lost people
could have existed

in that massive blind spot?

According to Native American
oral traditions,

the answer is shocking.

There's a heavy oral tradition

of giant people.

Could there really have been
a mysterious breed of giants

roaming the Americas?

Nice to meet you.
How are you?

Have a seat.

To explore this
controversial theory,

I'm meeting
with historian Jim Vieira,

who has spent over
two decades investigating

the evidence
of giants in America

and pioneering
the science of giantology.

So, what is giantology,
and is that a real thing?

It's funny. It's kind of,
like, tongue-in-cheek

because I'm an expert
in something

that's not supposed to exist.

But there were a lot
of researchers

that are looking into
the possibility

that giants existed in the past,

and they look into Biblical lore
and historical documents

and, you know, try to weave
the story with new science

and see if it was a reality.
Mm-hmm.

I don't want to try to
convert you

to the church
of giantology, but...

I'm already...
I'm a pre-convert.

Oh, nice.
That's cool.

So you don't have to convert me.

Well, I mean, it's in a lot
of ancient literature.

They reference giants.
It's everywhere.

It's ridiculous.

Ever since Sunday school
when I learned about Goliath

towering over the Israelites

or Nephilim,

an angel mixed with a human

to create giant offspring,

I've been obsessed
with the idea of other beings

roaming this Earth,

and it doesn't end at the Bible.

There are also legends of giants
in the "Epic of Gilgamesh"

and in the ancient writings
of Homer and Virgil.

But is there any hard evidence
to support these legends?

The reality is
there's over 1,500 accounts

in the historical record

in archaeological and
anthropological bulletins,

the Smithsonian
ethnology reports,

littered throughout newspapers,

buried obscurely
in town and county histories.

There's a lot here.
Yeah.

Check this out.

Right here is
a historical marker in Kansas,

and there were
seven-foot warriors here.

"Monster skulls and bones",
"New York Times".

It's talking about
a Georgia burial mound,

giant skeletons that
were found in the mounds.

Wow.
It's pretty crazy.

From a massive skeleton

allegedly found
on Catalina Island,

which was once owned
by the Wrigley family,

to Carnegie Museum
verifying giant remains,

there are hundreds
of these accounts

associated with some of the most
well-respected institutions

in America,

including the most
of respected of them all.

Colonel Norris
from the Smithsonian

unearthed a 7'6 skeleton.

It's in the Smithsonian records.

It's in
the "New York Times."

It's verified,
all of the measurements.

Okay. So, the ones
that we've come across so far

have all been seven feet.

The tallest one was eight feet.

To play devil's advocate,
there's a lot of NBA players

and athletes that are
in the seven-foot range,

and they don't have
the gigantism,

so are these really giants,

or are these just larger people

like the ones
we have walking around today?

The incidents of seven-foot
and taller people

that were found
in the burial mounds

is a much higher proportion

than the smaller slice
of seven-foot and taller people

you see today.
Yeah.

And a lot of them were described

as enormous with massive jaws,

massive skulls,
massive bone structure,

like almost some kind of,

like a hybrid
or a different kind of human.

- Yeah.
- We have stories like this.

Nine-foot skeleton...

Right, which is well out of,
you know, normal human range.

That's "Scientific American,"

and it was listed in several
other academic journals.

Is there any evidence of where
that skeleton went?

Did they put it back
where they got it?

In 1990, there was the Native
American Graves and Repatriation Act

to protect
Native American remains,

so a lot of these skeletons
went back in the ground.

A lot of them, frankly,
they just can't be found.

Many say a nine-foot skeleton
was found

in a Native American
burial mound

and removed without the
permission of the Shawnee Tribe

that the land belonged to.

With the passing
of a new law in 1990,

the remains were returned
to the tribe

and haven't been seen since.

So, if there were
all of these giants

that have been found in America,

where did they come from?

So, one theory is that
we have another player

in the human drama,

and they were found in this area
in the Altai region of Siberia,

and they're called
the Denisovans,

and these were particularly
large beings that were here

around 40 or 50,000 years ago,

and the only evidence
we have of the Denisovans

is two extremely large teeth.

In 2010,
a team of archaeologists

digging in a remote cave
in Russia

discovered two teeth belonging
to what DNA testing confirmed

was a newly discovered species

that shared a common origin
with Neanderthals.

That is a very close
approximation to the size...

Yeah.
...of the tooth.

It's significantly larger.
There's no question.

They were so large
that they thought

it was a tooth of a cave bear,

and they took it to
the Max Planck Institute,

and they realized
it's a human cousin.

One of the interesting things
is that we found

that there was a small
percentage of Denisovan DNA

in Native populations
in the United States.

So, according to this theory,

50,000 years ago,

a large human-like species
called Denisovans

populated the Asian landscape.

These ancient giants migrated
into the Americans

and interbred with humans,

creating giant hybrids,

and in fact,
traces of Denisovans' DNA

have been found
in Native Americans.

So it's just this amazing find,

and it might answer
all of these questions

you're looking into,
this time gap.

There is a story here
of human origins

that is vastly different
from what we think,

and Denisovans
might play a key role

in what's going on here.

Evidence of a half-giant,
half-man hybrid race

walking these ancient lands

is a new twist in human history
in the Americas,

and new evidence is being
discovered every day

that is rewriting
that history...

These are fossils of
Ice Age mammoths.

...including one find
that could prove our time line

isn't off by 3,000 years...

When I see this,
it affects me for some reason.

It's crazy.

...but by over 100,000.

What he discovered is amazing,
and if it's accurate, I mean,

it blows everything
we thought we knew away.

New evidence suggests
that humans

may have arrived in the Americas

thousands of years earlier
than previously thought

and were sharing the land

with a lost species
of half-man, half-giant.

There's over 1,500 accounts

in the historical record

of enormous, hybrid-like people.

How can we have our time line
of human existence

in America so wrong,

and what else
could we be missing?

How are you?
Hi, Megan. I'm Tom.

Nice to meet you.
How are you doing?

- Welcome to the museum.
- Thank you.

So, we have some fossils upstairs...
Great.

...and some other things
that I'd like to show you.

Okay. I want to see other things.
So, let's go upstairs.

I'm meeting with Dr. Tom Deméré,
a world-renowned paleontologist.

His groundbreaking studies
of ancient mammals

could provide a looking glass
into early man.

Whoa...

those are not small bones.

No. These are fossils
of Ice Age mammals...

Oh.
...mostly mammoths.

For instance,
this is a femur, a leg bone...

Oh, my God.
...of a mammoth.

I don't know why
I'm so taken by bones.

When I see this,
it affects me for some reason.

It's crazy.
Well, look how big that is.

- That's an ancient femur bone.
- Right.

Tom's laboratory is filled
with thousands of ancient bones

from saber-toothed cats,
mammoths,

and other Ice Age mammals
that roamed the Americas

hundreds of thousands
of years ago,

but these findings
all pale in comparison

to a skeleton he just
recently pulled from the ground.

Let me show you a few more
treasures from the past.

While a team of
construction workers

in San Diego, California,
were building a highway,

they stumbled upon pieces
of a massive skeleton.

Tom and his team were called in,
and after 5 months of digging,

they unearthed
hundreds of broken

and scattered bones
from a mastodon,

an extinct and distant relative
of the elephant.

This is a map of the excavation.

We see ribs here and there.

We see vertebrae
from the upper back here.

We see a toe bone over here,

so it was scattered
in no sense of order

to the skeleton.

Did you guys end up

getting a date
for this mastodon?

Yes, we did.

So, we eventually came up
with a very accurate date

of 130,000 plus or minus 9,000.

130,000 years ago...

Oh, my God.
It's so ancient.

130,000 years ago,

it's believed that humans
were extremely primitive

and lived only in Africa,

parts of Europe,
and southern Asia,

but these ancient bones
aren't just extremely old.

They're like nothing else
Tom has ever seen.

So, what's interesting is
we have parts of femurs,

but they're broken,
sharply broken,

so that's just a piece of one
of these 3-foot-long leg bones.

Yeah. And that's all we found.

Found pieces of it, and even
the pieces that we did find

could not be put back together
to form a complete femur,

so that was a real puzzle,

and that was the real indication

that this site
was really unique.

Usually when mastodons
are found underground,

the skeletons
are partially intact

and all in
the same general area,

but this mastodon was broken
into over 300 pieces

and spread across 400 feet.

Even more unusual was the fact
that the ribs were intact,

but the legs and femurs were
broken into dozens of pieces.

So, we posed in our minds
several different hypotheses

to explain what caused this...

Fast-flowing streams
carrying sediment and rocks

and perhaps the carcass
and burying the carcass.

If this is all due to
just fast-flowing water,

we wouldn't find ribs intact
and leg bones broken.

We'd find legs intact
and ribs broken.

- 'Cause ribs are more fragile.
- Right.

So, a purely
geological explanation

in terms of
just water flowing didn't fit,

and so we thought
of other scenarios,

one of which is trampling,

but we didn't see
any marks on the bones

that suggest trampling.

We kept coming back to this idea

that, well, humans perhaps
were responsible for this

because not only did we find
bones and teeth and tusks,

but we also found
five large cobbles...

Rocks about 30 pounds...

And the rocks
really stand out as an anomaly

and part of the story
that's really quite intriguing.

These five large cobbles
were found here

in this cluster
of broken leg bones.

This suggests that the breakage

was occurring at this location,

telltale signs that would
indicate human activity.

That's really amazing.

The five large rocks found
by the mastodon skeleton

are not naturally occurring
within the sediment layer

where the bones were found,

so Tom and his team believe
that early humans

used these as tools
to break apart

the large femurs
of the mastodon,

explaining
the strange bone patterns.

130,000 is...
Mm-hmm.

...much older than humans
were thought to have been

in the New World.
Much, much older.

Much, much older, by an
order of magnitude. Yeah.

And that's where
it became pretty exciting.

This is astounding.

If Tom is right,

our history books weren't off
by 3,000 years.

They were off by more than
100,000 years.

This completely shatters all
other archaeological theories

on when humans
first arrived in America.

How has it been received?

Well, it's had mixed reviews.

Most of the reaction
has been very negative

because it goes against
the existing paradigm,

and one of our suggestions is

that paleontologists
discovered this

'cause they're
working in deposits

that are 130,000 years old,

but archaeologists
don't look in sediments

that are 130,000 years old.

So the challenge is,
well, let's start

looking in older deposits

'cause if you don't look,
you're not gonna find evidence.

- Yeah.
- What if we're right?

I mean, that's pretty exciting,

and it doesn't
change everything.

It just adds a new
chapter to this... Yeah.

...peopling
of the Americas.

What he discovered is amazing,
and if it's accurate,

that's pretty crazy
to think about

because it's so
drastically different

from what we were taught.

They can't say
if it's modern human

or if it was Neanderthal.

Maybe they were giants.

They don't know.

No one has been digging
deep enough

to even look for people
130,000 years ago,

so it's likely that
the evidence is there.

It just hasn't been sought out.

The more they find,
the more questions there are,

and the mystery just keeps
getting bigger and deeper,

and that's really exciting
because it's ever-expanding.

It's like a lifelong adventure.

There may be more than
100,000 years of missing pages

from the history of America,

pages that could
include anything,

even giant ancestors
from a mysterious species.

A lot of them were
described as enormous,

like a hybrid
or a different kind of human.

There is still
so much more to uncover

about who we are
and where we come from.

We had no idea
it would be this old.

The answers to our past
remain waiting to be discovered.

It's all out there...

They're on the precipice
of a lot of new discoveries

which will rewrite history.

...and now it's just a matter

of when we find it.