Author and researcher Graham Hancock joins to discuss his book Underworld, examining underwater ruins found off the coasts of Japan, Cuba, Malta, and the Bahamas. Hancock describes the massive stone structures at Yonaguni, Japan, including megalithic constructions and a stone circle with 12-foot uprights at 110 feet depth, which he argues were built by the ancient Jomon culture before rising sea levels submerged them at the end of the last ice age.
Hancock argues that mainstream science has been reluctant to investigate these sites because confirming a lost civilization would undermine established models of human history. He draws parallels between flood myths found worldwide and the documented 400-foot sea level rise that swallowed over ten million square miles of habitable land between 17,000 and 7,000 years ago.
Key Moments
Cuban underwater city and the 1,800-foot problem: Hancock outlines the Paulina Zalitsky discovery off Cuba: end-of-Ice-Age sea-level rise can only account for about 400 feet of submersion, leaving 1,800 feet to be explained by an underwater landslide, tectonic event, or a far older lost civilization.
Why a real lost civilization terrifies us: Hancock argues that confirming a forgotten civilization would shake the bedrock of modern reality, comparable in cultural impact to the Brookings Report's warnings on extraterrestrial contact, and that we are not yet 'big enough' to face that.
Ten million square miles drowned: Working with a top sea-level-rise geologist, Hancock found that the regions where flood myths are thickest map onto the regions most extensively flooded between roughly 17,000 and 7,000 years ago - more than ten million square miles of prime land lost.
Jomon: rice and pottery 8,000 years too early: Hancock points to the Jomon of Japan inventing pottery 16,000 years ago and growing rice 12,000 years ago - millennia before any other known culture - and argues the underwater Yonaguni structures belong to that same lineage.
Two-mile-thick ice caps as the great eraser: Hancock describes how Ice Age glaciers up to two miles thick pressed continents down 2,000 feet, then released 600-foot-high meltwater waves traveling 1,000 mph that carved the Finger Lakes and would have erased any prior civilization in their path.