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00:00 It may feel as though today is really important, but actually, in the grand scheme of the timeline
00:05 of the Earth, what happens now is but a tiny, tiny fragment of a footnote in the infinite
00:10 records of this planet.
00:12 There is so much history stretching out before we got here, and really there's only a small
00:17 portion of it that we properly understand.
00:19 There are gaps that need filling then, and plenty of claims, theories, legends, myths,
00:25 and apparent pieces of incontestable evidence that do exactly that.
00:29 This is Unveiled, and today we're taking a closer look at the biggest questions surrounding
00:34 ancient civilizations on Earth.
00:37 Do you need the big questions answered?
00:39 Are you constantly curious?
00:41 Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one?
00:44 And ring the bell for more thought-provoking content!
00:51 When we think of ancient civilizations, we might picture Egypt as something of a starting
00:55 point for all to follow.
00:57 The Egyptians were so successful and ingenious that it can seem like they kind of wrote the
01:01 rulebook when it comes to organising humans into a functioning society.
01:05 But is that really how it was?
01:15 Ancient Egypt is not only one of the oldest civilizations in the world, it's also one
01:18 of the most impressive.
01:20 There are many, usually smaller, organised groups across history, but ultimately, Egyptian
01:25 culture has proven to be so rich and awe-inspiring that it's created for itself an entirely
01:30 separate branch of academic study, called Egyptology.
01:33 There's just so much to learn about the era and the people.
01:37 That's not to say we know all they knew, however.
01:40 Many of the building techniques used in ancient Egypt, for example, including the iconic pyramids,
01:45 remain something of a mystery, as we found out in a previous video.
01:49 Although there's some argument that this mystery may have been intentional, as Egyptians
01:54 seemingly left nothing by way of a clear record describing how they achieved many of their
01:59 most spectacular feats.
02:01 Which means that today, thousands of years later, we're still scratching our heads over
02:05 some of it.
02:06 Ancient Egypt first developed as a civilization around the year 3100 BCE, and it stood as
02:12 one of the world's leading examples of social cohesion for some thirty centuries after that,
02:17 for more than three thousand years.
02:19 However, despite Egypt's general image as an inspiration for all civilization, it's
02:24 not usually held to be the first recorded advanced society that humanity ever created.
02:30 Broadly, historians and anthropologists list a couple of key features required for a given
02:34 group to upgrade to the status of civilization.
02:38 They need to be to some degree settled, they need advanced social features like a government,
02:43 perhaps, and they need developing technology of some kind, with a system of writing often
02:48 held to be especially important.
02:50 In short, then, there were other civilizations around the same time and even before ancient
02:55 Egypt.
02:56 One was the Indus Valley Civilization, which formed in Asia around 3300 BCE, a couple of
03:03 hundred years before the rise of Egypt.
03:05 And while there can be some disagreement over precisely when various civilizations established
03:10 themselves, there's research to suggest that Indus Valley could be thousands of years older
03:16 than even that, putting it potentially even further back in time.
03:19 It existed across a massive area stretching from modern-day Afghanistan to Pakistan and
03:25 India, making it notably larger than most other ancient empires, including Egypt's.
03:30 In its prime, Indus Valley had at least one thousand towns and cities, which were home
03:35 to more than five million people.
03:37 It's credited with developing, amongst other things, early water and drainage systems,
03:42 brick houses, an ever-crucial writing system, and a standardization of weights and measures
03:47 to ensure that society ran smoothly.
03:50 As the Egyptians also did with the Nile, the people of the Indus Valley owed much of their
03:54 success to their strategy of building along a major river, the Indus River.
03:59 Even older than the Indus Valley, however, is Mesopotamia, a sprawling civilization made
04:04 up of multiple major groups, including the Sumerians and the Akkadians.
04:08 Mesopotamia arose on fertile land in the Middle East, across modern-day countries including
04:13 Iraq, Kuwait, Turkey, and Syria sometime around 3500 BCE.
04:18 As well as being potentially the oldest ever civilization, ancient Mesopotamia also developed
04:24 what's generally thought of as the first ever writing system, by using clay blocks
04:28 for dedicated record-keeping.
04:30 In addition to its apparent invention of writing, Mesopotamia is also credited with inventing
04:35 the wheel, the first maps, the first boats, as well as the first ever means by which to
04:40 measure time.
04:42 The Indus Valley and Mesopotamia civilizations are both thought to have emerged a few hundred
04:46 years earlier than the ancient Egyptians then, but were there any confirmed groups before
04:51 even them that we've yet to discover?
04:54 We certainly know of smaller groups that formed in earlier periods such as the Jiahu settlement
04:59 in China, which has been tentatively dated back to the year 7000 BCE.
05:04 Although the numbers of people involved there only reached into the hundreds, rather than
05:09 the multi-millions as seen in Egypt.
05:11 There are other structures and stories that more severely or more famously call the mainstream
05:16 narrative of human civilization into question, too.
05:19 The legend of Atlantis is perhaps the most well-known example of a tale of a bygone age.
05:24 If it were true, then the Atlanteans will have existed sometime around 10 to 12,000
05:29 years ago, around the year 10,000 BCE.
05:32 But of course, the Atlantis story is still widely held to be more allegory than a true
05:36 record of past events.
05:38 And in fact, some explanations for the story's origins trace it back to a myth told in Egypt,
05:44 which eventually found its way to the ears of the Greek philosopher and chief Atlantis
05:47 purveyor, Plato.
05:49 In terms of physical evidence for a later civilization, however, the mysterious megalith
05:54 site Gobleke Tepe lays down perhaps the strongest challenge to Egypt and Mesopotamia regarding
06:00 age.
06:01 Gobleke Tepe is a massive archaeological site in modern-day Turkey, and it's home
06:05 to the oldest known stone megaliths in existence, thought to date back as far as the year 9,500
06:11 BCE.
06:12 We're now thousands of years before even the beginnings of ancient Egypt, then.
06:17 The megaliths feature carved images, too, seeming to show things like clothed people,
06:21 animals roaming the land, and perhaps even religious practices of the time.
06:26 Researchers are still debating whether Gobleke Tepe can yet be classified as evidence of
06:30 another whole civilization, though.
06:32 So much about it remains unknown, and only a small percentage of the site has been excavated.
06:38 Stone tools have been found, and possible workshops close to the megaliths.
06:42 But this could still have been just one small and isolated community, rather than one part
06:47 of a wider civilization.
06:49 If Gobleke Tepe is ever confirmed to have been part of something bigger, though, that
06:53 something could emerge as the new oldest civilization in history.
06:57 We haven't yet mentioned the far more unconventional theories out there, however.
07:02 One such theory, or one such thought experiment at least, comes from the space scientists
07:07 Gavin Schmidt and Adam Frank.
07:09 They created the Solarian Hypothesis in an effort to stoke the debate on whether other,
07:14 non-human civilizations could have developed on Earth before ours did.
07:18 The general thinking is that if the Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, which it
07:22 is, and human civilization of any kind have only been around for just a few thousand years
07:27 of that time, well in the grand scheme of things, we've barely made an imprint.
07:32 The Solarian Hypothesis non-committedly asks us, then, to imagine a civilization that might've
07:37 hypothetically lived not thousands of years ago, but hundreds of millions of years ago.
07:43 In all likelihood, we would never be able to uncover any evidence of such a group today
07:47 in the here and now, with Earth's tectonic and geological activity burying and recycling
07:51 it over time.
07:53 The Solarian Hypothesis leads us to wonder, then, how can we be sure about a past that
07:57 might've been lost to us?
07:59 It's a line of thought that's also inspired ideas like the infamous Younger Dryas Impact
08:04 Hypothesis - which proposes that a comet struck Earth some 12,800 years ago, supposedly wiping
08:10 out an advanced civilization at the time, and serving as something of a reset button
08:15 for life on Earth.
08:16 The theory isn't widely supported by conventional scientists or historians, though.
08:21 What's clear is that our picture of the past, while it's thought of as reasonably
08:25 reliable, is subject to change.
08:28 History can't be rewritten, of course, but our understanding of it can be reshaped.
08:33 And so, it could yet be that we're missing something truly substantial.
08:37 Consider our current understanding of the dinosaurs.
08:40 It's improving all the time, but it remains patchy at best.
08:44 And that's despite the fact that the dinosaurs, these giant creatures, roamed Earth only 66
08:49 million years ago.
08:50 A blink of an eye compared to the full age of our planet.
08:54 They were also on Earth for some 165 million years before they died, which is far, far
09:00 longer than humans have been here for so far.
09:03 But we're still so limited on what we can learn, even about the dinosaurs.
09:07 Dissecting the route we've taken toward contemporary society and civilization is then
09:12 an extremely tricky task.
09:14 Perhaps it's no wonder that so many eye-catching theories have been thrown into the mix.
09:19 Even if we stay within the realms of just the most widely supported science, history,
09:23 and archaeology, we know that Ancient Egypt was never out on its own.
09:28 Certainly, it's one of the oldest civilizations we know about, and a forerunner for so much
09:32 of human progress.
09:34 But there were others alongside it, and most likely before it.
09:38 And research pending, there could yet be even older groups, too.
09:46 The world is constantly changing.
09:48 Cities rise and fall, empires crumble and monuments get abandoned.
09:53 Throughout history, humanity has gradually gained knowledge… but we've forgotten
09:57 a lot of what came before us, as well.
09:59 Many of the most famous and beautiful ruins from the ancient world weren't just lost
10:03 to time, though.
10:04 So, what happened to them?
10:09 First, it's important to distinguish between a culture and a civilization.
10:19 While the civilizations and cities themselves have been lost, the people who inhabited them
10:23 and their cultures often still exist today.
10:26 For example, probably the most famous collapsed civilization of all time, the Maya, still
10:30 has a population in the millions in Mexico and Central America.
10:34 The mystery, then, isn't where did the people go, but why did they go?
10:38 What convinced ancient citizens of lost civilizations that they'd be better off leaving their
10:42 own advanced and beautiful cities rather than remaining within their walls?
10:47 The classic Maya collapse wasn't the only Maya collapse in history.
10:50 There was another in the second century AD, but the one that's been confounding archaeologists
10:55 for years now happened between the eighth and ninth centuries.
10:59 Enormous Maya cities, characterized by distinct terraced pyramids like Copan, in modern-day
11:03 Honduras, and Tecal, in Guatemala, were abandoned before the year 1000.
11:09 Archaeologists can be confident of the dates because the Maya wrote the date onto the monuments
11:13 they built, and such records disappear around the ninth century when it seems monument construction
11:18 stopped and the cities fell into disrepair.
11:21 It's generally accepted that at this time, the Maya travelled further north to different
11:25 Maya centres - like Chichen Itza in what's now Mexico - but there are dozens of theories
11:30 on exactly why they left the southern lowlands to begin with.
11:34 Some of the most popular explanations suggest that the more southerly regions were, around
11:38 the time the Mayans moved, rendered uninhabitable by logging and a severe drought - a "mega-drought"
11:43 by some estimations.
11:45 Essentially, the Mayans had cut down too many trees.
11:47 So, when the drought rolled in, topsoil was eroded and their once-reliable cities were
11:52 no longer able to feed their growing population.
11:55 So, under threat of starvation, the Mayan people dispersed and found new places to live.
12:00 Another theory, though, is that it was an endemic disease, potentially a widespread
12:04 parasitic infection, which primarily destabilized the Maya and forced them to relocate.
12:09 Then, another suggests that regional conflicts might've been to blame.
12:13 Today, while we know they did move, we're still not certain on their reasons for doing
12:18 so.
12:19 But the Maya weren't the first or last civilization to collapse in the Americas.
12:23 Much earlier were the Olmecs, Mesoamerica's earliest recorded advanced civilization who
12:27 thrived around 1500 BC.
12:30 The Olmecs were known for building statues of enormous heads, now called "Olmec Colossal
12:34 Heads", many of which survive today.
12:37 Their largest city was San Lorenzo, also now in Mexico, which collapsed as far back as
12:42 900 BC - nearly 2,000 years before the end of the Maya.
12:46 It's theorized that the Olmecs had to move because of volcanic activity, that a big enough
12:51 eruption could have decimated their crops, forcing them to go elsewhere for food.
12:56 Much further north is the United States' first city, Cahokia, a Native American city
13:01 that, at its height, had a population between 10,000 and 20,000 in the 11th century AD - which
13:07 is roughly equivalent to the population of London, England in the same period.
13:11 Early European settlers purportedly didn't believe that Native Americans could be capable
13:16 of building such a city, and so wrongly attributed it to another group, like the Phoenicians,
13:21 from present-day Lebanon, or even the Vikings, instead.
13:24 Today, the ruins of Cahokia are found in the Midwest, close to St. Louis, Missouri.
13:29 The site bears evidence of at least two major floods in its past, prompting many to suggest
13:33 that it was the flooding which forced the population to disperse.
13:37 While they can't rival Cahokia for size or scope, there are many older Native American
13:41 sites across the continent, too - with some of the oldest belonging to the ancestral Puebloans,
13:46 who lived in the American Southwest.
13:48 Some of their remarkable dwellings, carved into cliff faces, survive today, such as the
13:52 Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado.
13:56 Far away from the Americas, civilizations in Europe and Mesopotamia had risen and fallen
14:01 as well.
14:02 The oldest advanced civilization in Europe was the ancient Minoans, who lived on the
14:06 island of Crete between the years 3000 and 1000 BC.
14:10 Unsurprisingly, Minoan ruins, like the Palace of Knossos, are now major historical sites
14:15 in modern Greece, but details on what happened to the Minoans remain elusive.
14:20 The leading theory blames their demise on the Thera Eruption, occurring on a nearby
14:24 island now known as Santorini, which is thought to have been one of the biggest volcanic eruptions
14:28 in human history.
14:30 It happened around 1600 BC, creating a tsunami that decimated Minoan settlements.
14:35 It's believed by some that the fate of the ancient Minoans is actually what inspired
14:39 Plato's world-famous Atlantis Allegory, depicting a powerful civilization destroyed
14:44 by the gods.
14:45 Interestingly, the Minoan civilization also has ties to another mainstream Greek myth
14:50 - that of Theseus and the Minotaur.
14:53 Some believe that Knossos itself is the real-world location of the legendary labyrinth.
14:58 But what about the oldest recorded civilization we know of?
15:01 Well, it also collapsed for various reasons.
15:04 Ancient Mesopotamia was the birthplace of the written word more than 3000 years BC.
15:09 Some of the oldest texts in the world are written in Sumerian, with Sumer (today Iraq)
15:14 being where the civilization emerged from.
15:17 Mesopotamia hosted a number of civilizations, including the Sumerians and Akkadians, across
15:21 an exceptionally wide region for thousands of years, lasting until the fall of Babylon
15:26 in the 6th century BC, before it was ultimately conquered by Alexander the Great two centuries
15:31 later.
15:32 Another civilization thriving around the same time, though, was that of the Indus Valley,
15:37 the remains of which can be found in Pakistan.
15:39 It's also called the Harappan civilization after one of its largest cities, Harappa.
15:43 In their prime, cities like Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were extraordinary.
15:48 Boasting the world's oldest sanitation systems, public baths, evidence of city planning and
15:53 potentially even of elected officials, they were significantly ahead of their time.
15:58 But archaeological evidence suggests that Indus Valley's success was short-lived,
16:02 and that by 1900 BC the cities were in chaos.
16:06 Dead animals and people lay unburied in the streets, disease was rife, conflicts were
16:10 common, and eventually, the centres of the Indus Valley civilization were abandoned.
16:15 Again, there are multiple theories as to why it all fell apart.
16:18 Some believe the changing course of the Indus River was chiefly to blame.
16:21 For others, it's a string of severe earthquakes and weak monsoons, leading to social instability
16:26 and water shortages.
16:28 Ultimately, many of the Indus Valley people moved southeast, into parts of modern India,
16:32 where their influence can now be seen in various other ancient sites.
16:36 There is one theory, however, which proposes a grander connection between the end of the
16:40 Indus Valley civilization and the end of Mesopotamia, and also with the demise of the Old Kingdom
16:45 of Ancient Egypt and the long-lost Liangzhu culture in ancient China, for example.
16:50 The 4.2-kiloyear event.
16:52 Speculated to have occurred around 2200 BC, the 4.2-kiloyear event is said to have been
16:58 a worldwide epidemic of severe droughts that crippled many powerful societies.
17:03 It didn't spell instant doom for all of them, with some surviving from this point
17:07 longer than others, but it's suggested that it did spark the beginning of the end for
17:10 most.
17:11 However, many scientists don't agree with this idea, arguing that no one single event
17:16 can be blamed for the collapse of multiple societies across a considerable time span.
17:21 Nevertheless, all indicators are that severe droughts were a major reason that many of
17:25 the world's most powerful civilizations fell, and if not droughts, then other weather
17:29 events and natural disasters.
17:32 Connected or not, similarities can be drawn.
17:34 That said, sometimes human and political reasons are to blame, when empires get too big to
17:39 be properly and effectively managed.
17:41 Once the largest empire in the world, for example, the Mongol Empire, splintered in
17:46 the 13th century AD into four separate empires with different rulers.
17:50 This move meant the Mongol Empire could eventually be taken over and dissolved by the Ming Dynasty
17:55 to the east and the Russians to the north.
17:58 And sometimes wars really do bring down vast, seemingly impenetrable empires, too, with
18:03 one of the leading causes for the fall of Rome in the 5th century AD being that the
18:07 Romans suffered too many consecutive military defeats.
18:10 There's less by way of mystery in these cases, because the outcomes are more linked
18:14 to human choice and activity, but we have seen civilizations effectively dismantled
18:18 in this way, too.
18:20 In every case, there are myriad, complex reasons behind people abandoning their cities and
18:25 starting afresh elsewhere.
18:26 And societal collapses don't happen overnight.
18:29 Often, the decline and desertion of a civilization takes hundreds of years, as it did with the
18:34 Maya, the Harappans, and the Romans in particular.
18:37 But natural disasters like flooding at Cahokia or the eruption of Thera can accelerate the
18:42 process.
18:47 While the iconic terms of "UFO" and "Unidentified Flying Object" date back only as far as
18:51 the early 1950s, some level of human interaction with some form of inexplicable airborne vehicle
18:58 seemingly dates back not just centuries, but thousands of years.
19:02 There's no doubt that modern humans have an interest, perhaps obsession, with finding
19:06 UFOs, but these things also captivated ancient civilizations, too.
19:11 And while many of the oldest recorded sightings have since been attributed to various meteorological
19:16 or astronomical phenomena, there are still some events that have made their way into
19:21 the annals of history and continue to elude explanation even today.
19:33 We'll start with what's often referred to as one of the first recorded mentions of a
19:37 potential UFO sighting, although its validity is firmly up for debate.
19:41 The details are allegedly found in the Thule Papyrus, a document that it's claimed dates
19:47 back to the Egyptian Empire.
19:49 According to a translation of the papyrus by one Boris Terekavits, an Italian-Russian
19:54 Egyptologist, an unusual event unfolded during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III, which was
20:00 between 1479 and 1425 BCE, almost 3,500 years ago.
20:07 It's said that a circle of fire descended from the sky and that its mouth had a foul
20:12 odor, although it didn't have a head.
20:15 This bizarre object was described as about 15 feet across and, after several days, was
20:21 purportedly joined by more just like it.
20:24 An apparent fleet of unexplained entities, appearing as though out of nowhere and stretching
20:30 across the sky, until one evening the objects rose in unison and moved south over the horizon,
20:37 never to be seen again.
20:38 The Pharaoh supposedly then ordered these strange events to be recorded immediately,
20:43 and the story eventually made its way onto the Thule Papyrus, where it apparently waited
20:48 for more than three millennia until it was finally unearthed.
20:52 Importantly, the authenticity of the papyrus itself remains very questionable, and so the
20:57 UFO claim it reveals is met by many with skepticism too.
21:01 The translation is actually of a secondary record of the papyrus itself, and the original
21:06 source has long been lost.
21:08 Nevertheless, the story has triggered ongoing discussion within the UFO community.
21:13 While in some ways the description of the initial object in particular does perhaps
21:17 appear reminiscent of a passing comet, it's also thought that the ancient Egyptians were
21:23 very knowledgeable when it comes to astronomy, and so perhaps they wouldn't have confused
21:27 a comet for something else.
21:29 What's more, that incongruous, extraordinary detail that the object's mouth had a foul
21:34 odor, despite it not having a head, is speculated by some to be the result of an ancient culture
21:40 attempting to describe emission fumes, something they of course wouldn't recognize, but an
21:46 advanced alien race may well have produced out of their extraterrestrial alien spaceships.
21:52 While the Thule Papyrus has yet to be officially validated, however, today's second ancient
21:57 UFO sighting comes from a far more reputable source.
22:01 Titus Livius, more commonly known as Livy, is considered one of the leading historians
22:06 of ancient times, and while his histories do involve some mythological influences, his
22:11 greatest work, The History of Rome, is considered one of the primary sources for understanding
22:17 ancient Roman culture.
22:19 In his work, Livy covers the great civilization's story from its legendary founding around 753
22:25 BCE all the way up to the year 9 BCE.
22:28 And while it's also true that Livy's work features some anomalies, nothing is quite
22:33 so peculiar as his recounting of the events of the Second Punic War.
22:37 It was a crucial 17-year conflict, but what it's perhaps best remembered for is Livy's
22:43 various descriptions of phantom ships that appeared during it in the skies above the
22:49 battle.
22:50 The first instance allegedly occurred in the first year of the war in 218 BCE, when Livy
22:55 wrote that phantom ships had been seen gleaming in the sky over Rome.
23:01 Then he continued with an event the following year, describing that "round shields" were
23:06 again seen in the sky, this time over the ancient city of Arpi.
23:10 Livy finally records yet another UFO sighting decades after the war, in 173 BCE, as a great
23:18 fleet in the sky close to another ancient city, Linuvium.
23:23 But what exactly were those objects?
23:25 Many have recognized the seeming similarities between Livy's shield-shaped somethings and
23:30 our modern archetypal depictions of a flying saucer.
23:34 And while Livy himself lived some 150 years after the events that he describes, his positions
23:40 as a trusted historian means that his records are generally regarded as accurate.
23:45 There's certainly skepticism when it comes to the phantom ships, but so much of the rest
23:49 of Livy's work is thought to be reliable, based as it was upon the records from the
23:54 Annals Maximi, a thoroughly fact-checked and verified archive set up during the Roman Republic.
24:01 For today's third ancient sighting though, we switch to the work of the noted Greek-turned-Roman
24:06 historian Plutarch, and to another separate event, this time shortly before a planned
24:12 battle was set to take place.
24:14 According to Plutarch, in 74 BCE, the army of the Roman Empire was marching on the army
24:20 of the king of Pontus, Mithridates VI, in the region of Phrygia, which is in modern-day Turkey.
24:27 However, the two armies never met.
24:30 Just as tensions were about to peak, a large body of flame is said to have descended from
24:36 the sky between the two sides.
24:38 Taking it as an omen from the gods, the two armies are then said to have separated, saving
24:43 them from a bloody conflict.
24:46 According to Plutarch, writing about an event which was allegedly witnessed by thousands
24:50 more people, the fiery object was shaped like a jug of wine and was of a molten silver color.
24:57 Again, there are numerous contemporary claims that this incident may have simply been caused
25:01 by a falling meteorite, but not everyone agrees.
25:05 The NASA scientist Richard Stuthers, for example, reasoned why it may not have been a meteorite
25:11 as part of a 2007 study into UFOs from classical antiquity.
25:16 For Stuthers, that molten silver color, while not wholly out of place, doesn't quite match
25:22 with what scientists would expect to see during a meteorite event.
25:26 But also, we should again more seriously take into account the astronomical knowledge of
25:31 those present during the sighting.
25:33 As with the Egyptians and the Tuli papyrus, it's thought that the ancient Romans had an
25:38 advanced understanding of astronomical phenomena, shaped by a long history of recording meteorite
25:44 impacts.
25:45 If this was a meteorite then, they perhaps would have known and understood it.
25:50 But according to Plutarch, they didn't.
25:53 So, the jug-shaped fireball may have been something else.
25:58 Perhaps the foremost reason to doubt Plutarch's account surrounds the historian's personal
26:03 reputation.
26:04 While known for his general reliability, he's also noted for often emphasizing the moral
26:09 lessons of history, and perhaps at the expense of accuracy.
26:14 One theory, then, is that Plutarch's recordings of this unusual event were intentionally allegorical,
26:21 to relay a warning message about war, and not designed to be taken literally.
26:26 But still, the fact that this phenomenon was reportedly witnessed by thousands of soldiers
26:31 means that it remains one of the most intriguing ancient UFO sightings out there.
26:36 Finally, to another celebrated historian, setting the scene for yet another war in history,
26:42 and describing another unexplained event in the sky.
26:46 Like Livy and Plutarch, Titus Flavius Josephus is another prominent historian of the ancient
26:52 world.
26:53 Working in the first century AD, he primarily covered Jewish history and the Jewish-Roman
26:59 wars.
27:00 But while he was again praised for his accuracy, he seemingly couldn't make sense of everything,
27:05 and famously wrote of an apparently inexplicable airborne event within his vast work, "The
27:11 Wars of the Jews, or the History of the Destruction of Jerusalem."
27:15 According to Josephus' account, near the beginning of the First Jewish-Roman War in
27:20 66 AD, groups of apparent soldiers and what appeared to be charging chariots were witnessed
27:27 running in the clouds above the setting sun.
27:31 There was allegedly then an entire but incomprehensible scene playing out in front of many baffled
27:37 onlookers watching the skies, an apocalyptic vision perhaps.
27:42 Referring to his own role in recording the event, Josephus himself foretold that what
27:47 he had written may well go on to be understood as only myth or fable, but he insisted that
27:53 this was no made-up story.
27:56 Initially then, the phenomenon was deemed by some to be a sign from God, but in more
28:01 recent times, there's suggestion that Josephus' work may actually be a recording of an early
28:07 sighting of an alien UFO.
28:09 The soldiers were perhaps the aliens, the chariots were perhaps the spaceships.
28:14 As with all potential UFO events mentioned today, however, there is of course plenty
28:19 of skepticism, and no one can claim to know for sure.
28:23 But what's your verdict?
28:25 All four of these events are isolated incidents, occurring across various major civilizations,
28:31 at different locations and at different points in history.
28:34 Were they natural space or weather phenomena?
28:38 Allegorical fabrications?
28:40 Or could the commonalities and peculiarities of these events really be the result of age-old
28:45 extraterrestrial visitations?
28:51 The idea that advanced extraterrestrials have at one time visited Earth, or that they continue
28:56 to visit Earth, has long been a popular line for alien enthusiasts.
29:00 State-sponsored initiatives ranging from Project Blue Book in the 1950s and 60s to the Advanced
29:05 Aerospace Threat Identification Program in the 21st century have now clocked up thousands
29:10 of UFO and alien reports.
29:12 The idea, though, is almost always that these unconfirmed, otherworldly creatures could
29:16 be invading our planet.
29:18 But what if the opposite was actually true?
29:28 For decades there has been serious speculation - some credible, some not-so-credible - that
29:33 humans may not have been the first intelligent life to evolve on our planet.
29:37 Earth is more than 4.5 billion years old, and while we can chart various structural
29:42 and sociological changes with a surprising degree of accuracy - particularly by analysing
29:47 layers of rock - the suggestion that Earth might've hosted other advanced species billions
29:51 of years before human beings has never truly gone away.
29:55 It's a favourite theme for science fiction writers, too, with Doctor Who being one of
29:59 the first fictional works to feature it, with the introduction of the Silurians in 1970
30:03 - a race of humanoid beings with advanced intelligence which, crucially, predate man.
30:08 But is it really possible that creatures as intelligent or more intelligent than humans
30:13 could've existed on Earth before us, before fleeing the planet for some reason?
30:17 One way to investigate evidence of previous civilizations is to consider their energy
30:21 usage.
30:22 Generally speaking, advanced beings need more energy as their population grows, and
30:26 arguably one of the simplest ways to get that energy - that we know of - is to burn fossil
30:31 fuels.
30:32 When we use fossil fuels, we're releasing carbon dioxide back out into the atmosphere,
30:36 and scientists have various techniques to measure how much CO2 was or wasn't present
30:41 at any particular period in history.
30:43 We can, therefore, chart carbon spikes in history and debate what caused them.
30:47 In recent times, it's thought that, as a result of human activity, our carbon levels
30:52 have risen faster than ever before.
30:53 So, were a future civilization ever to look back to now, there'd be compelling evidence
30:58 that intelligent life did exist in our time period.
31:01 The Silurian Hypothesis prompts us to ask whether we've seen something similar before,
31:06 though… such as the beginning of the Eocene Epoch about 55 million years ago.
31:11 At that time, it appears as though a period of abrupt global warming also occurred - today
31:15 called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum - which, perhaps, would've created similar
31:20 conditions to what we're experiencing - or are on the verge of experiencing - today.
31:24 It's by no means proof that an advanced race existed at that time, more an indicator
31:28 that something - natural or otherwise - was causing the Earth to change.
31:33 In the hypothetical event that ancient, unknown civilizations did once live here, however,
31:37 a spike in global warming might well have been reason enough for them to leave.
31:41 We only need to look at humanity's various plans and efforts to spread out into the solar
31:45 system right now to imagine the thinking behind such a move.
31:49 In the twenty-first century, we're eyeing up Mars in particular, but also other nearby
31:53 planets and their moons - including Jupiter's Europa and Saturn's Titan.
31:58 For some ancient society living on an earlier Earth and in an earlier solar system, though,
32:02 the destination of choice might've been different as well.
32:05 Some other, often fairly far-fetched, proposals in favour of pre-human civilizations also
32:10 include that they may have been advanced enough to cover their tracks; that, in their latter
32:14 stages, they deliberately chose to remove all traces of themselves, perhaps even anticipating
32:19 that another civilization would develop on Earth after them.
32:23 Either that, or in an earlier effort to tame their own climate change, they successfully
32:27 developed carbon-negative technologies - the like of which we're trying to build today
32:31 - thereby erasing their historical imprint, before switching planets just because they
32:35 could.
32:36 Importantly, though, while those motivations might seem valid enough, there's still nothing
32:40 by way of direct evidence that such a forward-thinking society actually did ever exist.
32:46 For now, all we really have to go on is that we can say with confidence that Earth has
32:49 undergone climate change before… but we're not certain what prompted past global warming
32:54 spikes.
32:55 We're increasingly sure that today's climate change is accelerated by humans, but that
32:59 doesn't automatically mean that previous temperature rises must have also been triggered
33:03 by advanced civilizations.
33:05 For now, that's a leap for science fiction more than science fact.
33:09 In the meantime, it's not as though humans should expect to be remembered forever.
33:12 Yes, humanity's impact on Earth has been considerable.
33:15 We've built skyscrapers to the clouds and spaceships to get us to the moon, but it could
33:19 all be quite temporary in the grand scheme of history.
33:22 For Adam Frank, the chances are that after a couple million years, "any physical reminder
33:27 of our civilization will have vanished".
33:29 Long-term, direct evidence of our existence seemingly lies in the cities we've built,
33:34 the roads we've laid and the monuments we've constructed.
33:37 But were humans to, for whatever reason, disappear, then they'd all quickly start to crumble
33:41 before the vines, weeds, rivers and oceans gradually reclaim and eventually disintegrate
33:46 them.
33:47 When you consider, too, that despite it seeming as though we've conquered much of the Earth,
33:50 only about one percent of the planet's surface is actually considered to be urbanized, it
33:55 might not even take that long.
33:57 Regardless of any desire we might have to leave a legacy, Earth could be quickly wiped
34:01 clean of humanity's accomplishments, leaving it primed for another, far-future intelligent
34:05 species to emerge and to analyze rock samples wondering whether anything came before them.
34:11 Perhaps then, the same thing really did happen to some other advanced species; they forged
34:15 a life on Earth, ran into problems and either died off without a trace or relocated beyond
34:20 our reach.
34:21 Their achievements now reduced to just a few layers of rock or ice, waiting for today's
34:26 scientists to truly decipher their meaning.
34:28 In this way, it's a hypothetical reality which conveys a real-world warning; that the
34:32 Earth might not always be so hospitable to us.
34:35 But in truth, it is still a hypothetical reality first and foremost.
34:39 We cannot say with any certainty that an advanced civilization was here before us, or that they
34:44 became advanced enough to move away.
34:49 So what's your verdict?
34:50 How do you view the ancient past?
34:52 In this video we've covered pre-Egyptian societies, potentially pre-human groups;
34:58 alleged UFOs from long-lost periods of history; the real-world reasons why past civilizations
35:03 have collapsed; and an incredible theory that ancient life might have even moved away from
35:08 Earth before we even got here.
35:31 The really exciting thing, though?
35:33 There's still so much more to learn and discover.
35:37 What do you think?
35:38 Is there anything we missed?
35:39 Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you
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