CRASH! BANG! RUMBLE! Do you hear those sounds? Faintly? In the distance? Just audible over outraged yells and howls of protest? Those are the sounds of the house of history collapsing and the furious yells and howls are from the archaeological establishment trying to drown out the truth with their noise.

The latest hint that archaeologists have completely misled us about the origins of civilization – and that their ‘house of history’ is built on foundations of sand — comes from a team of marine scientists and geologists diving in the Sicily Channel in the Mediterranean. You can read the full report, and get a clearer view of the sea-floor scans and photographic record, here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X15300535

Embarrassingly, the scientific team’s report has been published in a mainstream, peer-reviewed archaeological journal, but predictably archaeologists are already up in arms describing and seeking to dismiss the discovery as ‘whimsical and void of scientific meaning’. I’m not surprised that the establishment that has misled us for so long is doing its utmost to shout-down this extraordinary discovery which, in brief, includes the remnant of a giant megalithic site at a depth of 40 meters, including one 12 meter long menhir (now broken into two parts – see photographs), that is conservatively estimated to weigh 15 tons and to have been submerged by rising sea levels more than 9,000 years ago. How many thousands of years it was standing on the spot before the seas rose has not yet been established but the possibility must be seriously contemplated that it is the work of the same mysterious culture that created the giant stone circles of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey more than 11,600 years ago. It also raises increasingly disturbing questions about the age of other known megalithic sites around the Mediterranean – the oldest of which, such as Gigantija in Malta – have long been believed not to exceed 6,000 years in age. Yet all the known sites have been exposed to the presence and intrusions of later cultures that left their organic materials on-site and thus skewed the radio-carbon record to give falsely young dates. Where we have intact, undisturbed sites with no wriggle room for archaeologists to rest their case on carbon-dating of falsely-young, intrusive organic materials, then the picture of our past suddenly becomes very different and much, MUCH, older. Thus we can be sure of Gobekli Tepe’s age because it was deliberately buried by its makers more than 10,000 years ago and then left undiscovered and untouched until excavations began in the 1990’s. Likewise this newly discovered megalithic site off Sicily has been under water for more than 9,000 years and is therefore, undisputably at least that old.

I suggest that these discoveries, and parallel work at Gunung Padang in far-off Indonesia (that I have reported on extensively here over the past couple of years) require us to look again at the so-called “established” ages of megalithic sites everywhere. More than that, these discoveries require us to consider seriously the possibility attested to by myths and traditions from all around the world that we are indeed — as I have been saying for 20 years — a species with amnesia and that a lost civilization of the last Ice Age lies hidden in our collective past. This is the possibility that I explore in the greatest depth in my forthcoming book “Magicians of the Gods” that will be published in the UK on 10 September and in the US on 10 November. Further information about the book, and links through which you may pre-order your copy, can be found here: http://grahamhancock.com/magicians/

I will be on tour in the UK in September/October, and in the US in November/December giving presentations about Magicians of the Gods. The schedule of US events is still being worked out, but you can find details of most of the UK events here: http://grahamhancock.com/events/