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Hugh Newman
So this is why I call it a super civilization. They had this obsession with studying the solstice and the movements of the sun. The most interesting site is Karahan Tepe. This is before excavation began in 2019. This is what it looks like now. We go in there, we see this head and there's a porthole stone. So the sun is coming through, illuminating that head. So over a 45 minute period, only on winter solstice morning, you get the whole alignment happening. We're like, what the hell is this? And we make a major discovery. These were supposed to be hunter gatherers, These were supposed to be cavemen. I've been digging into this. This shows us these were. This is a different world we're dealing with. I've always thought the Olmecs were quite a lot older than they're telling us. And there's even been dating done on the pyramids on the Giza Plateau.
Julian
I want to know how the goddamn stones got there.
Hugh Newman
I mean, you're bringing up 70 ton blocks of granite and then how do you lift them up?
Julian
You've done a lot of work on.
Hugh Newman
Giants, you were saying, but we found out.
Julian
Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, huge, huge help. Thank you. All right, we got a big PowerPoint sitting here in front of us. You look ready to roll, bro.
Hugh Newman
Got a lecture. Lecture mode.
Julian
That's what it's, it's great, it's, it's great to have you. I, I like someone who obviously is looking all over the map because I took a look through this PowerPoint right before we got on and there's basically nothing off limits today. So that's, that's gonna be a lot.
Hugh Newman
Of fun for sure.
Julian
Now, Hugh, for people who don't know you and have never seen your YouTube channel, you have megalithomania on YouTube. You've had that for a long time. But how, how long have you been looking into ancient history itself?
Hugh Newman
My God. Well, since I was a kid, I got to be honest with you. My, my mum was an avid traveler. I mean, she wasn't into like, kind of dull family holiday. She wanted to go to like Gnosis temple in Crete or to the megaliths of Brittany or something like that. So we always did something interesting. I mean, to. At that time, I was like zero interest in it. I just wanted to play football and go to the beach and things like that. But then she, she subscribed to this magazine that Stuck in my kind of consciousness called the Unexplained magazine. So this would have been in the 80s, you know, that old kind of thing. And so that was like paranormal. But it also had ancient sites, mysteries, you know, obscure explorations and things like that. And that really got me into stuff. You know, as a kid, I kind of became this kind of slightly obsessive kind of into the. Whatever mysteries there were at the time. So. And then, then I got into crop circles. Of all things in the crop circle. Yeah. So, you know, if people aren't aware of what they are, they're like these imprints you get in the fields in Britain. But yeah, they've been around.
Julian
Honey aliens, right?
Hugh Newman
Well, allegedly, but they've been around and recorded for hundreds of years. And like, and then they started appearing in Britain in the 80s and 90s and. And that kind of got me interested in sort of more unusual phenomena. But they were always near stone circles. And so they drew me into the world of like the megaliths and the area where these megaliths appear. And so that's then kind of something clicked inside me. I've got to study these big stones. What the hell are these? And so, yeah, so opened up a whole world, you know, just having all this kind of being bought up with all these different elements.
Julian
Yeah, we actually, it's funny because you're, you're referring to the homeland right there. We haven't talked a ton on the podcast.
Hugh Newman
We.
Julian
Different guests I've had on about some of the history in, in Great Britain and the things that are found there. Like, I don't think we've ever talked about Stonehenge on here at all. That's something that I'm completely like, not in. In the know about either. So this, this image we have right here, that's from your PowerPoint, right?
Hugh Newman
Yeah.
Julian
What are we looking at?
Hugh Newman
So this, this is basically the stone circle of Stonehenge. There's a bunch of us inside it, me flying my drone, obviously. Now this is one of a thousand stone circles in the.
Julian
A thousand.
Hugh Newman
There's at least a thousand are being recorded, but not like, not as good as Stonehenge. Stonehenge is kind of unique. Most of them are kind of rough hume, just simple circles or certain geometries. Whereas this is built shape stones. It's got different stones, some from, you know, 20 miles away. The big sarson stones, you see there, there's smaller ones, like 4 or 5 tons that come from Wales. These are the blue stones. They're a type of stone called Spotted$. Right. And then there's even this whole story that's come out in the last year or so of one of the stones, the altar stone, which is the big central stone that would lay flat in the middle. Came from Ory or northern Scotland.
Julian
How do we know that?
Hugh Newman
They've done all this analysis on the type of. Type of rock and. And this. It's quite an interesting circle. I mean, you've got all these different elements coming in from Wales, from locally, from Scotland, all in one circle. So this is really the national temple of Britain, in my opinion. I live next door to Stonehenge. That's my little. One of my claims to fam.
Julian
And this is, like, next door, like, right off camera here.
Hugh Newman
Just off camera. This is a bunch of my friends, or 30,000 of them. This is during the summer solstice a couple of years ago. Wow, what a shot. Yeah. So this is actually. I live literally to the right of that, just down the road, about half a mile away. I live at one number one, Stonehenge Cottages. That's where I live.
Julian
Oh, my God, that's so cool. On brand.
Hugh Newman
And the other thing is, I live closer to Stonehenge than Sting does. He lives just down the road from me.
Julian
But you ever, like, riff with him a little bit.
Hugh Newman
We bumped into him in a market once, but. But that was about it. Yeah. Yeah, but he's. I think he's moved now anyway.
Julian
You kind of got a Sting look to you.
Hugh Newman
Oh, God. Well, that's a compliment and a half, but, yeah. So this is like. So this still happens. You have this giant solstice event takes place. This one. I think that. I think 30,000 people turned up this year. This is how insane it is. I mean, it's not a huge stone circle, but. And so it just shows you that there's something still so powerful about these sites that people.
Julian
Magnificent.
Hugh Newman
That people want to kind of connect to. They want to kind of feel like their ancestors were involved in this kind of thing. And it's really. These are really the only remnants of anything that's that old, like 4 or 5,000 years old. And the other. The other thing about this is that there's a landscape here. It's not just one circle. There's avenues. These is hidden by the mist here, but there's earthen avenues. There's. There's even mesolithic stuff going on. It goes back 10,000 years.
Julian
Mesolithic. Can you explain that?
Hugh Newman
Yes, we can get into that a little bit. This is what's so interesting about this particular site. So Mesolithic is like anything. It's like the pre pottery Neolithic of Turkey. It's like the Mesolithic of Britain is. Or Europe is about roughly 10,000 or something like 8,000 to 12,000 years old. And there's a whole bunch of sites that are coming out of the ground all across Britain now that have this kind of extreme age associated with them. So we've got Stonehenge here. This just shows you some of the geometry and alignments here. But what is interesting, really interesting about this is that they found these post holes. If you look on the right, you got these. Yeah.
Julian
Looks like a driver's course.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. On the right you got blobs of paint in a car park. This was. This was several years ago. They've now removed the car park and this is what it would look like. So there's these giant pine posts, 30 foot tall, potentially.
Julian
Oh, that was that. That was there.
Hugh Newman
That was there before Stonehenge. We're talking 5,000 years before Stonehenge. So these giant pine posts could have been totem poles. They could have had carvings on them. They're not tall. They asked because of the width and the depth. They estimate they could have been up to 30ft tall. So pretty beastly. Yeah. And. But the thing is, they were placed there 5,000 years before any stones were built there, which is really odd. I mean, what is. So there was something going on here. And there's a site locally called Blick Mead, which is the other side of where I live, and it's like a natural spring. And they found evidence of continuous occupation going back at least 10,000 years up until the present day, virtually. And I was just with the late. The archaeologist, Dr. David Jux or Professor David Jacks. He spoke at our conference in England as well. And they found evidence now going back 12,000 years in the vicinity of Stonehenge. So this puts in the realm of what we're finding in southeast Turkey, you know.
Julian
Yeah. Which we're going to talk all about today. Yeah, he's done a lot of work there. But when, when you talk about the evidence that they found here, to be able to date that, how is that like carbon dating rock? Like, what are they doing to be able to get that number?
Hugh Newman
Well, at the bottom of these, these sort of three off or potentially five pits where these pine posts would be in, they found kind of burnt wood basically at the bottom of them, or, or calcified wood or something like this. And they managed to date them to roughly 10, 000 years or just.
Julian
That.
Hugh Newman
But then the other thing about this, which completely blows my mind, if we look at this next image here, there's quite a lot going on here. But. So you've got the, you've got the stone circle at the bottom there. And, and they found, within where the stone circle was later built, they found this mound in the position where it should be. And then just nearby, they found the post holes within 50 yards of this spot. And then you see the avenue going down there diagonally. That is the. That's the summer solstice sunrise alignment Avenue. That's. What.
Julian
What does that mean?
Hugh Newman
That's been carved out of the ground like the earth to mark the orientation. So the sun rises towards the end of the avenue and then it goes off in different directions. But they found these 10,000-year-old or older parallel ridges called periglacial strips or stripes along there, which are natural features. So it suggests, I mean, from this image, and we've worked this all out and the, you know, archaeologists now agree to this, that a solstice alignment here, not 5,000 years ago, the famous one summer solstice, but 10,000 years ago from the mound within where Stonehenge is now, along this, these natural hollows, these ridges, which naturally formed this weirdly perfect alignment to the summer solstice sunrise. Yeah, and the opposite direction. It's a winter solstice sun.
Julian
Be a hell of a coincidence.
Hugh Newman
It's insane. I mean, so they, they could probably found these ridges originally and thought, hang on a sec, these actually align to where the sun extreme points occur.
Julian
Okay, I have so many questions here, but let's start with the actual. What do you call it again? The columns? The.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, yeah, the giant, Giant wooden post.
Julian
Yeah, the posts. What kind of weight are we dealing with there? Oh, you said it's about 30ft tall.
Hugh Newman
If you imagine that, it's got to be a couple of tons, two or three tons at least. So maybe more, thinking about it. Yeah, I mean, so who could have.
Julian
Do we have any legitimate theories on how they got there and who put them there?
Hugh Newman
There's not much going on with that. I mean, it was, it was pretty much forested Britain back then. The whole, the whole place. I mean, I mean, this area in Wiltshire, you've got like a lot of chalk, so you get less trees back then, but yeah, I mean, they were moving stuff about back then. I mean, they were building mounds. They had a whole kind of network across Britain, even at this time. And blick me, which is Just down the road for me, where this spring is, which we've had a look at ourselves, nothing to see. There now really is where everyone would kind of live and hang out and do ceremonies and things like that. But then there was this area a mile or so away at the location of where Stonehenge is now, right next to these posts. So it's kind of strange. Why would they mark that spot? And then we realized, you know, a lot of people have kind of come to this conclusion is that there must have been something significant about this location. And it may have been these periglacial strips they may have noted, and then they may have built a mound, you know, and then marked its alignment of the sun. Where the sun's most extreme point is on the, you know, the southern point of the horizon. To the southeast you have the winter solstice. To the northeast you have the summer solstice, where that then ridges are. So it's kind of bizarre. So there's potentially a super ancient solstice alignment, a Stonehenge year thousands of years before the stones got put in place, which is pretty epic in my opinion.
Julian
It seems like we are finding all over the world now in all different environments. If you want to go all the way to South America, of course we'll talk about Egypt today as well. All your work you've done in Turkey is certainly relevant here. And now talking about Great Britain, it sounds like everything that we have at least assumed as truth about, you know, the nature of how far back our species goes on this Earth is now being consistently proven to not be the case.
Hugh Newman
That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Virtually. I mean, almost everywhere this is starting to happen.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
I think Beckley Tepe and Carahan Tepe, Southeast Turkey connection. I think that is changed everything. Yeah. Because that, that is carbon dated. You know, they were talking German archaeologists very, very seriously know what they're doing. They carbon dated those sites to 9,600 BC. Some of them are even older. Some go back into the Ice Age.
Julian
Yeah. Before Younger Dryas.
Hugh Newman
Before the Younger Dryas, yes. So you have sites like, you know, in the, in the area like Chakmaktepe and a few others we can get into in a little while that are older. So this, this whole thing there has now clicked this kind of brain stem in the whole of academia that everything potentially could be a little bit older than what people are thinking. Because carbon dating isn't an exact science. There are issues with it. It doesn't, it produces a range of dates. It doesn't produce the exact date.
Julian
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Hugh Newman
They can go thousands years or more or less depending how far back you go.
Julian
However, if you dated something for example carbon dated at. I'm just going to make a number up roughly 15,000 years and your margin of error is roughly a thousand. I mean something like that would definitively prove that you had some sort of civilization pre Younger Dryas for example.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, for sure. I mean they've. I think what they do is. I mean I'm not, I'm no archaeologist or anything, but I think what they do is they get as many samples as possible and they correlate them and then they kind of bring the kind of range down, keep it tight. And I think this is what they've done here also at Stonehenge. And now, I mean, brand new research. I mean, literally, it hasn't been published yet. From Professor David Jacks, who works at Blick me. He's also worked the Mesolithic area of Stonehenge, the earlier phase. They've now found a site near Blick Mead, near Stonehenge, near where I live, just literally down the road from where I live, that is now. And they found actual artifacts that at least 12,000 years old, this potentially could be older. They're thinking they might even be 14,000 years old. And so this is evidence of occupation at that time. So that was in the Ice Age. Yeah. I mean, in Britain it would have been much rougher than other parts of the world, but it was still, you know, there's still stuff going on there. People were surviving then, so you have to kind of consider that. And so that's now pushing the dates. But I mean, it could eat. This could. This could also change the date of the megaliths of Stonehenge. Eventually, people. There could be new dating techniques that come out. Really, that could actually. The stones and the placement of them could now be pushed back even further, which I think is highly likely to happen. I think it's going to happen in a few places.
Julian
So put. But they've all. Because obviously we've known about that for a long time now and they've been examined over and over again. But just because we found something new that could completely. Are you saying it could completely change the methodology with which they do carbon dating? Or am I missing the boat there?
Hugh Newman
I think it's just a case of reanalyzing partly what they found already previously having another look at it and checking it.
Julian
Okay.
Hugh Newman
And there's always. There's always stuff being discovered. I mean, just the fact that this new discovery is just happened like weeks ago, you know, in Right near Stonehenge, hasn't even been published. I don't even know if I'm supposed to mention it, but he announced it at our conference in November last year, this year. And also the paper is not going to come out for another year probably, you know, so it's not going to be announced then. So it's all up in the air.
Julian
Who's involved with the paper?
Hugh Newman
So this is. I think this is the University of Buckinghamshire. This is where Professor David Jacks work. So it's a proper academic.
Julian
Yeah, sounds smart.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. They know what they're doing. Yeah, yeah.
Julian
First class.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, yeah, first class. Yeah, first class archaeologist. And. And so. Yeah. So this is all happening. So they could. But this could open up the floodgates because new data could, you know. Sorry, old data, old artifacts. Oh. Could be reanalyzed and checked again. Because sometimes you find these anomalous dates as well. Like some states. Yeah. Like sometimes you might get. Like, for instance, when I was researching the sites in Mexico, like the Olmec sites. It's an example they found at San Lorenzo, which is the. The oldest Olmec site that goes back to 1600 BC or thereabouts. But they found some evidence that went back to 3000 or 3600 BC, but they put it aside as some kind of anomaly.
Julian
Don't worry about it.
Hugh Newman
It doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit in with what we're talking about.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
So they ignore it and it gets pushed aside. So that's one example that really kind of stuck in my mind, that one, because I've kind of. I've always thought the Olmecs are quite a lot older than they're telling us. And so the same principle, the same discoveries and the same reanalysis is going to be done. Hopefully some of these other places, even Stonehenge, even the stuff in Turkey, could be even older than. Yeah, what it is. And. And there's even been dating done on the pyramids on the Giza Plateau that are pushing the dates back at least a few hundred years earlier. But a lot of people believe they're much, much older as well.
Julian
Yeah, I want to talk about that later with the whole new finding and everything. Michael Button, I was telling you before we got on. On air, he was just here, and we didn't, like, get to that, I think, until the very end of that podcast. I really want to dig into that more because I'm behind on some of that stuff. But, you know. Yeah. The Olmec thing is one of those ones that. I can't believe how overlooked that continues to be. I know my buddy Luke Caverns has been looking at that for years, you know, and is obsessed with it. And it's. It's. I mean, those things are enormous, too, and they're so fascinating looking.
Hugh Newman
They are. They are. They are pretty.
Julian
There you go.
Hugh Newman
They are pretty much the best. It is such a fascinating culture. I mean. Yeah. Luke's into it. We've been. Myself and my partner, J.J. ainsworth, we've been into it for over a decade. Wow. I've been traveling there since 2003. Spent two years of my life in Mexico, you know, just mainly in Olmec land.
Julian
Make friends with the cartels.
Hugh Newman
Funnily enough, right?
Julian
Funnily, that's not a good answer.
Hugh Newman
No, funnily enough, we have bumped into the cartel on more than one occasion. And I've got a story I can tell you.
Julian
Please. That's why you're here.
Hugh Newman
So I've been watching like your pod. You have this amazing. You have this woman that comes on who talks about the cartels.
Julian
Katarina.
Hugh Newman
Yeah.
Julian
I've been.
Hugh Newman
I've been following all of her. I've listened to all of her.
Julian
She's unreal.
Hugh Newman
And it's kind of correlates with our experiences there as well, which is really interesting. So I'm fascinated. So, you know, that's what kind of drew me into your podcast more than anything was the cartel. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz we spent so much time in Mexico and we were there. We were there this February for a month because we wanted to go explore in old Mac land. And so check this out. So in February, it was all happening with Trump.
Julian
Yep.
Hugh Newman
Mr. Donald Trump, I'm sure you've heard.
Julian
That's the one.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. Yeah. And he was putting out this thing where he wants to kind of stop the border happen, let people through the button. It was all happening in, I think, February when we were there. So there was all this chatter. And now one of someone who JJ knows quite well is also a hacker who goes in the Dark Web and checks out what's going on, checks out where we're traveling to make sure we're safe on our behalf kind of thing. And there was all this chatter that American tourists, JJ's American, were going to be attacked and kidnapped, possibly murdered. If, you know, they went through with this Trump thing of like stopping people going through the border and things like this. And it was the retaliation set up by the cartel to kind of push Trump to change his, you know, whole philosophy of what he was doing with the border. So we heard about this through the Dark Web. It got back to us just as we were in Mexico going through in a whole of Veracruz and like Villa Hermosa, you know, Tabasco state, they can't tell territory big time now, especially Villa Hermosa. I'll tell you about that in a minute. We actually bumped into one of these bosses.
Julian
It's.
Hugh Newman
It's quite bizarre.
Julian
Oh, the bosses?
Hugh Newman
One of them, yeah. And. And then, so we were, you know, we get you stopped a few times in Mexico. There's cartel Stops, there's police stops. They're quite different, but they generally let you through. So we were hoping we wouldn't get stopped after we heard that. So we laid low for a bit when we were traveling through Mexico, and we've ended up getting into the area of Villahermosa. Then my friend sent me this article about what's been happening there with the cartel. They kind of moved into that area big time. Because it's a. It's a trade route, if you want to call it that.
Julian
Yeah, yeah, listen. They got a trade, too.
Hugh Newman
They got a trade. And. And then we heard again through the dark web, through one of JJ's friends, that there was a big cartel meeting in Villa Hermosa the day we were arriving there. So we were like, oh, great. So everyone's on high alert, and you don't go. You don't go out at night in Villa Hermosa anymore. They've. They. They've. There's been all these, you know, stringing people up on the way into town, very reassuring beheadings, all that kind of thing. So we were like, oh, Christ. Okay. All this just to go and look at some old mech heads. And we thought, okay, but we're gonna do it. So we turn up in Villa Hermosa. I booked this. We've been, you know, staying in the roughest places, middle of nowhere. So we found this one really nice hacienda style hotel. I thought, I'm just gonna stay there. I need a break. I need just to have a couple of nights, somewhere a little bit luxurious. So we turn up that happens to be where the. One of the meetings has taken place.
Julian
You're like, there for the Mexican Appalachian Conference.
Hugh Newman
You're like, yeah. So we turn up there and we just sort of notice all these quite large guys with kind of, you know, guns, basically, right? Just hanging around. And we're like, oh, Christ. So I end up staying there. JJ's Adora, her daughter, who was with us. No, they want to stay. They knew what was going on. They stayed somewhere else, just around, because I didn't want to, you know, any trouble.
Julian
You like the action.
Hugh Newman
And I'm like, I'm just. I need some luxury. I'm. I'm spending a couple of nights here, whatever happens. So next thing we know, we go to the. We go out, we come back, we pull up with our car, and in reception, people are coming out. This is clearly some boss dude, which JJ recognized as one of the Sinaloa cartel kind of people with all these entourage, and he's given tips like this thick to, like, the porters and the drivers and things like this. And we're like, whoa. You know, she's. She's about to get out and take a photo of him. And I said, don't do that, please. And. And then. Then we're parking the car underneath, and one of the guys kind of is walking up to me with his jacket wave, and I put this Uzi in his pocket or whatever it is. I don't know what it is. And he said, oh, how's it going? He spoke English, said, I'm fine. How are you? Yeah, and it was all okay in the end. But so this was. So this is what happens. I mean, it's Villa Hermosa, where it's one of the sort of central areas.
Julian
You're like, we're just here for the Olmecs.
Hugh Newman
We're here for the Olmecs and, like, our own heads. And so it turned out it's quite a drama. You got to be a little bit careful. But luckily, they didn't end up targeting tourists. Americans. So we got through the whole thing.
Julian
That would have gotten you some more subscriber stuff if you had been like, you're down there with the Olmecs, and you're like, yo, I got taken hostage by the cartel. I mean, you have have to live. But if you died, it'd be a great story, too.
Hugh Newman
Not gonna lie.
Julian
I'd be very sad.
Hugh Newman
But, you know, yeah, that would be a great story. Okay. And actually, this is one of the sites. This is actually one of the sites near there. This is the nearest site to Villa. This is a la Venta. I mean, Luke's spoken about this before. I'm sure you got these beautiful things, like the kind of Quetzalcoatl figure holding the bag.
Julian
And how big is that?
Hugh Newman
That's about. About four feet tall.
Julian
Okay.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. And. And there's some. You talk about Egypt. This is actually quite intriguing. There's. You have this. Wait, in Egypt.
Julian
Sorry, real fast, Hugh. That. That last one we were looking at, it's there again, but we catch a quadle.
Hugh Newman
Yeah.
Julian
So there's a serpent. There's no eagle in this one.
Hugh Newman
That one's got, like. It's like a plume serpent. So it's coming off the head like feathers, plumes. Abstract form surrounding this gentleman, who, whatever he's doing, holding this bag. He's got some kind of headgear on. Almost looks like a nose thing. He's wearing.
Julian
Right.
Hugh Newman
Oxygen. Some, you know, ancient astronaut theorists have said, but the symbolism here is something that JJ kind of focuses on. This is her speciality, actually. And she's actually found correlation. This is actually her graphic around the world with the same kind of symbolism. And especially the one in Egypt.
Julian
Wait, this is Egypt? Greece, South America, where else?
Hugh Newman
And then you've got one over there. Yeah, I think that's Greece. Yeah.
Julian
Wow.
Hugh Newman
And, yeah, so, yeah, it's bizarre. It's bizarre when you start looking at all this, to be honest.
Julian
I mean, it's almost like they knew each other.
Hugh Newman
They almost seems like they did. I mean, the connections with Olmec Land and other areas is. Is really interesting. I know other people have talked about that over the years, but I find that intriguing. You know, there's one. Well, there's one site I managed to get to, though, which. Oh, yeah, you've also got this as well. This is the strange new statue that was discovered.
Julian
Is that you next to it?
Hugh Newman
Yeah, it's just me next to it.
Julian
Like, you just mean mugging.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, yeah.
Julian
Is that how you looked at the cartels too? It's like, come and get it.
Hugh Newman
I smiled. That's right.
Julian
But this probably saw your ice and they're like, that's a nicer grill than we got, right?
Hugh Newman
Yeah.
Julian
Right.
Hugh Newman
They're probably a bit scared.
Julian
Like, don't. With this guy.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, absolutely.
Julian
He's probably the head of the whole goddamn thing.
Hugh Newman
The Stonehenge cartel. Yeah. So this is. This is this weird new, like, fertility statue. They found a fertility statue, which I think is interesting. This is. This has not been. Not many people know about this.
Julian
Oh, is that a labia right there?
Hugh Newman
Well, we think so, yeah. I mean, this is like. Like, you know, three feet wide, maybe four. Four and a half. Four feet, something like that. Yeah.
Julian
There's the clitorium.
Hugh Newman
It's odd. I mean, that is one weird ass statue. I've got to be honest with you. And. But this is unique. This was only found like a few months ago. So there's stuff being found now in Olmec Land.
Julian
How big is this?
Hugh Newman
About three feet wide.
Julian
Oh, we got to get stu finer in here. He's gonna have a field day.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, you can see the scale of it there with some other. Other stones in there.
Julian
Yeah. Wow.
Hugh Newman
But while I was out there, well, if we want to stay on the theme of Olmec Land, of course for a little while. We met up with Alfredo Delgado, this gentleman here, he's the head of Jalapa Museum, where many of the artifacts is at in, I think in Veracruz area. That's JJ and myself, and we. We met up with him and we kind of persuaded him to take us to the Olmec quarry, which no one I know has been to. And it's called Lana Jikaro. What's it called? Lano de Jicaro. Lano de Jicaro, maybe pronouncing that very badly, but this is. I've known about this for a long time. This is where the Tuxler Mountains, where all the basel comes from, in Olmec land. So we persuaded him, even though he doesn't speak English, we don't really speak that much Spanish. We worked it out and we met up with him in Akiu Kan, which is in between Veracruz and Villa Hermosa. It's where a lot of the sites are. And we went there and we couldn't quite believe it. He took us there. This is one of the statues just lying around. This, you can see this sort of carving, human figure going down the side. You've got what?
Julian
Wait, wait, where's the human? Sorry, I didn't see that.
Hugh Newman
If you look down the side, you can just about make out the legs.
Julian
Oh, is she laying?
Hugh Newman
Yeah, it's kind of like. I think it's laying down or something. Right. It's only half carved out, you see, because it's still being quarried. And I'm fascinated by quarries because to. To me, these are sacred areas.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
These are what are known as the birthplace of the temple. And a lot of. A lot of traditions around the world leave. Leave big stones in the quarry as a marker, like a kind of axis mundi of where the stones came from. You get that in Easter island, you have the giant moai half, you know, cut out of the quarry. You have that even at Gobekli Tepe, the stones left in the quarry, you get it in as one Egypt and so forth. And we have, you know, stones like this just lying around. These have got carvings all over them. But what really. The main reason I wanted to go there, because Alfredo let on that there was an Olmec head still in the.
Julian
Quarry that people don't know about.
Hugh Newman
We were like, what? And this is. And he put it out there a while ago, but no one's really that interested. And so we found it and he showed us it, but the problem is they haven't carved it out yet properly. So all he got is this. So this.
Julian
But he said, that's the head.
Hugh Newman
This is the beginning of an Olmec head. Half of it's still buried in the ground.
Julian
Alfredo I don't know about that one. That's the first one you're showing.
Hugh Newman
It's got ears going down the side.
Julian
Wait, where's the ears?
Hugh Newman
You could down the side. Actually. I did a scan of it so you can actually have a look.
Julian
So is he saying this is the.
Hugh Newman
Beginnings of an Olmec head?
Julian
So like not complete foundation but they didn't draw, you know.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, it was just the starting to shape it out. Some of it's still in the ground. It's like a couple of feet going into the ground.
Julian
What would they use to carve these?
Hugh Newman
Well, they weren't using metal, we know that. So they would have had to have used slightly harder stones. There may be some bass out. We know that they were using obsidian in this area for the finest stone work. But there's a big mystery because they were lugging, you know, 40 ton stones across the swamps, across rivers, across mountains.
Julian
Allegedly.
Hugh Newman
Alleged. And we don't know how they did it. I mean this is what's so bizarre.
Julian
This is where my head does. It just does. It goes to aliens and giants. It's like Luke Caverns and I have watched the. You've seen those AI videos that show how it all happened. Oh, with the big giants just like carrying stones, pyramids. It's like, I mean very believable.
Hugh Newman
I'm into giants. I mean big time.
Julian
Well, we'll talk about that.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, I've written a couple of books about them actually. But this is the biggest old mag head. Yeah. Look at how this is the biggest. This is. This is Laca batter. They say it's 40 tons. Yeah, yeah.
Julian
A couple, couple dudes moved out on a Tuesday.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. But that's the biggest one. It's actually on display in Santiago. Tuxler, you can actually go there, check it out and there's a little museum next door as well.
Julian
How much? So when they were carving this with, with the alleged tools that they did, how do we know how long that might have taken? Is there any way to know that?
Hugh Newman
I don't know. I mean they did some experiments, right, that there was this hilarious BBC documentary. Hilarious, yeah, because they failed. So miss they. They. It was all these academics, these archaeologists, these professors turned up in old Meg Land, said yeah, we can do what that. Any. We can do what they do. We can move the stones, we can carve the stones, no problem. We're, we're academics, we know exactly what we do. It was, I think it was called Horizon, the documentary. You can find it online on YouTube, I think. And so they went there, they actually did that. And they couldn't move one stone, which they only chose one, which is about 8 tons and they couldn't move it. They were using all these different techniques that they think they would have. They could move only about 50ft in the swamp. Then they had another guy who was an expert academic stone carver try to carve with the tools they had the bass out into a stone head or face. Couldn't do that either. And both of these people quit during the program because they couldn't do it. And that really, I thought that was hilarious because this, this Horizon program is. It was the science program of the BBC in Britain. They're the ones who tried to destroy Graham Hancock when he's in back in the 1990s when his documentary came out. And so it was the same program but. And it was so funny from for all us alternative researchers to see that because they just completely failed. They couldn't work out how the Olmecs did anything.
Julian
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Hugh Newman
Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I mean, this is, I mean this goes back again, like to the, to the 90s with Graham Hancock in his book Fingerprints of the Gods and this documentary, he did a whole documentary for Channel four.
Julian
Keep that mic close, by the way.
Hugh Newman
Oh, yeah, he had the whole documentary produced for Channel 4. And it was a big deal. It was like called Quest for the Lost Civilization. And he got completely destroyed by this, this British kind of science program on tv. They, they ridiculed him, put it out on the BBC. And then there were so many mistakes in it, in the, in the program, trying to debunk him. They had to, he took him to court, sued them and they had to do a formal apology on TV to say, no, we were wrong, actually. And so that was. Yeah, proper gangster. He's, he's a proper gangster. His Hancock. I tell you that he's. And, but that, that was then, this is now and it's still the same. We still have the same issues. You got the whole Flint Dibble Hancock debate. You got. I've been attacked personally, you know, by all these different skeptics in academics, and it's still happening today. There's all this kind of back and forth. I mean, this is one of the reasons we set up our Megalithomania conference was to create a stage, you know, where academics and alternative researchers could be on the same stage and share and have respect for one another. And we still, we stick to that. Now we have top archaeologists coming to our conference and real kind of out there alternative stuff as well.
Julian
Have you had trouble getting academic people to participate in that?
Hugh Newman
This is, this is interesting. Right. So the way we worked that is that we got, we got one, one or two of them involved and they will know each other in England and so they, they enjoy themselves so much. They weren't. Everyone respected them at a conference, even though we do it in Glastonbury, which is kind of hippie town of, you know, Britain. You know, he's been there. Yeah. And, and so maybe where we're going this afternoon. And so this is, you know, this is why we set this up really to kind of bridge that. But no, we get them coming in regularly now and there's a real nice vibe. You know, we kind of created that and we wanted that to kind of push forward. But it's got, it almost feels like it's got worse in the online world especially where people are battling with one another. But what I have learned, and this is from an archaeologist in training, someone who actually comes to our conference. She's like this young lady in her 20s. She's going, she's being taught archeology properly and she is actually being taught now. And she couldn't quite believe this. This is happening just now. It's just started that there's an acceptance of alternative views in the archaeological training.
Julian
Wow, that's new.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, this is. I was like, what? Really? And she said, yeah, this is, this is what I'm gratefully. I was at a class last week, you know, we were like hanging out, she chatting after our conference and it was like, this is really happening. But this is too late for like what's happening in Turkey. I could tell you all the hoo ha we get in Turkey, that is.
Julian
But I do want to point out that's a great thing to hear. I haven't heard something like that really at all. So the fact that it's having some sort of tangible effect where they're like, well, you know what, we've been presented with some data. We actually do have to look at it it. And they're teaching in an academic environment. Credit words do. That's great.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, this, I mean this is it. Because a lot of discoveries are being made by non academics. Yeah, this is what's happening. So this is people like me, people like Graham Hancock, he's a non academic technically, he's trained as a journalist. I've done journalism course as well at a university. So, you know, we're in the same kind of boat. But it's slowly changing, but it's going to take probably decades. Sure. Manifest in the real world.
Julian
Sure.
Hugh Newman
You know, and, and you can see what's happening just on the Twitter sphere. Everyone's attacking each other. It's. It's kind of sad to be honest with you, but it does happen.
Julian
Twitter is, and this goes for absolutely anything. It's just bad for people, you know, like, I, I'm on it, but I don't talk a lot on there because it's just like people get you. I watch people all the time go down these slippery slopes where they just get harder and harder and harder. Like from a hard O perspective, from behind the keyboard and it just divides, divides, divides. Like, I think it really sets us back, unfortunately, with how we have any discussions, be it political, be it archaeological, be. I mean, you insert it here, there's people fight on the NBA over there like it's World War 5, you know, it's crazy.
Hugh Newman
I know, it's crazy.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
I mean it's, it's happening in Turkey as well. There's. There's a Turkish Twitter. Well, this is, you could say that it's actually the Arch, you know, the top archaeologist, Lee Claire, who's.
Julian
He sounds Turkish.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, yeah, he's English, but he works, but he's a joke.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
Thank you. And, but Lee Claire, he works in Turkey. He speaks Turkish for the German Archaeological Institute and Istanbul University. He's the head kind of guy, Gobekli Tepe. And he absolutely hates me and he hates my colleague friend Andrew Collins and JJ as well a little bit. And because we keep going there, making little discoveries and writing books about it and he just, and he, he thinks we're complete pseudo science completely out there and we're actually quite sensible, you know, when it, when it comes. If you compare us to some other people.
Julian
Yeah. You seem like a straight shooter.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, yeah. Thanks. I think. Yeah, yeah. So even there, even there, there's issues and obviously you got the Zahi Hawass thing going on, you know. Yeah. Which is, which is even funnier. But you know, so that you have, you have to kind of deal with this as you go along. And to be honest with you, being a non academic is, is a real treat because we can do what we want. We can go anywhere we want. We can explore. We can kind of go to these sites, investigate them, make videos, write about them without any kind of bias. We don't have to kind of stick to a paradigm that is enclosed within the academic world.
Julian
Yes.
Hugh Newman
We can just go in there and, you know, speculate a little bit, but sensibly, I hope. Yes. About what's going on and interpret as well. I think this is a lot of the issues we're finding in the ancient world are the fact that interpretations are a little bit misguided when it comes to, especially in Turkey, in my opinion. But there's. Archaeologists aren't necessarily trained to interpret and analyze the data they're uncovering.
Julian
What do you mean?
Hugh Newman
It's more like they are focused on professionally getting the sights out of the ground, preserving them, dating them and things like this. When it comes to interpretation, that's when you need a multi disciplinary approach. You need multiple different people coming in to have a look. So this is, what's. This is an issue everywhere. It's not just Turkey. This is. It's been going on like this for a long time. So they put out their own interpretations, but they're limited and focused on what's being, what's coming out the ground. Rather than perhaps looking at the sky, looking at what the stars and the sun were doing in prehistory, looking at the shamanic elements of, of how these people lived. Stuff that isn't visible in the archaeological kind of findings, but is. If you know how to look, you can decode the symbolism and work out. This means stuff that was going on in the sky, this means they were shamans, this means they were into animism or things like this. And I think this is where one of the issues. I think Graham Hancock's brought this up as well. You need to get extra experts in from different skill sets to come and look at these sites, but the archaeologists don't necessarily allow that. And so hopefully that, as my friend who's being trained as an archaeologist, hopefully that might be changing by the sounds of it.
Julian
How does this, how does this process work, though? So if a news area is discovered in Turkey, because we're discovering stuff all the time there and it's discovered by someone who's not an archaeologist, obviously it's within the bounds of Turkey. So the Turkish government gets involved and then is it a situation as simple as they go, okay, you found something. Now we have to bring in archaeologists and archaeologists kind of create a caution tape around the area. And therefore all these other types of people that could come in and help them better do their job don't have the opportunity to.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, in some respects, one of the. I mean, I can give you an example, please. There's a site in. I can actually show you an image of it here if I can Find it. There's a site in Turkey, it's one of the test tabular sites which we'll get in, we can get into obviously shortly. It's called Ayan Lahoyek. Now we went there, we went there. Let me just find this image for you if I can actually got it somewhere. We went to this site. This is One of the 12 test tabular sites which is on the verge of being excavated. They've just literally started doing it recently and here finally found the image. So this is it here. Okay, so this is, I've only got a couple of images here, but this is really interesting. This is a huge site. If you look on the bottom right, there's the map. There's all these mounds which are each going to have multiple enclosures with on within them. Like we get at Gobekli Tepe. But this thing is spinning on the left there. This is a T shaped pillar lying on the ground in a field at the site. A T shaped, A T shaped pillar. You can see it better here. There's me.
Julian
Okay, got it.
Hugh Newman
There's me with the top of a broken and very badly damaged T shaped pillar. And this is just lying on the ground. We discovered this when we were looking around myself and JJ Ainsworth in 2022 and we thought, wow, this is major. So we put it out there, you know, we, we, we told several people. Hopefully we thought the authorities might, you know, a tour guy might get in touch with them. They know about it, they've seen our videos, they follow what we do, they keep an eye on us basically. And we've been going back there twice or three times a year since then and it's still sitting there in the field where it was until literally weeks ago when they started the excavation.
Julian
No.
Hugh Newman
Okay, so three, three years.
Julian
Wow.
Hugh Newman
So there's three years of that sitting around in a field, nothing going on.
Julian
Wait, what's. Is this China doing it?
Hugh Newman
There's a Japanese team.
Julian
Oh.
Hugh Newman
There'S a Japanese, I guess. Yeah, close but no cigar.
Julian
Yeah, sorry, it's a morning shoot. I'm gonna get so much.
Hugh Newman
Well, you left the to edit that a bit.
Julian
Yeah, no, no, we'll keep it in.
Hugh Newman
Mistakes but there is also, there is a ch. There are Chinese teams working in Testepola area now. But now this Japanese team have come in and actually opened it up as a proper excavation and hopefully they're going to preserve that T pillar and hopefully find many more. So that's one, that's one example that we were involved with. So imagine what else is going on.
Julian
In my defense, I thought that said China Tech. It says Chiba Tech.
Hugh Newman
Okay.
Julian
Over there or whatever. But it was right below the flag.
Hugh Newman
You know, you're defended okay. Perfectly. There you go. All right. No problem.
Julian
Oh my God. No one's gonna have a fit.
Hugh Newman
So these are all the sites in Southeast Turkey. So you can see Ayanla, the top left there, the one that isn't circled on the top left, that is Ayan Lahoyak. That's where that is found. So.
Julian
Got it.
Hugh Newman
It's one of the most western parts of. And that, that area there is probably like 40 miles wide.
Julian
Okay, that's what I was gonna ask.
Hugh Newman
Up to 50 maybe. But the whole area, this goes further east, further west is 125 miles wide.
Julian
How close is this to Lake Vaughan?
Hugh Newman
You're talking several hundred miles. Okay. To the. The northeast. Lake Vaughan is a very interesting place. I know you've happily had Matt Lacroix. Yeah, that. Yeah, we've been up there a lot actually as well. And there. But that's traditionally the Garden of Eden, that kind of area around Vaughan as well. So that is heavily linked with this area as well. Even though several hundred miles away. But yeah, but this is, this is what is known as Test Tepla. I call it the Test Table of Super Civilization. That's going to be the. Probably the title of a upcoming book with jj.
Julian
Oh, that's a hard title. I like that.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, it's pretty intense.
Julian
Templar Super Civilization.
Hugh Newman
And Testable means Stone Hills. That's. That's, that's the name of the project. Officially. This is the official project created by all the archaeologists. They now have something like. Like 200 people working on 12 different sites now. So it's happening. There's been this big debate about Quebec slowing down. You know, not enough archaeology being done there. Jimmy Corsetti and others have been focused on that. But we've been back there. We go back two or three times a year so we know what's going on. And they're kicking, they're kicking into it next year. But stuff's being excavated. This is pretty major. I mean the, the most interesting site to me because of a discovery I'm going to tell you all about we made there is Carahan Tepe. That's the one down in the. Is in the middle of the Tech Tech Mountains. And that is a. Let me just show you. I mean.
Julian
Yeah, let's go through that. Matt Lacroix talked about that in here as well.
Hugh Newman
So this is, this is What Carahan Tepe looked like before excavation began in 2019.
Julian
And this is your drone footage?
Hugh Newman
This is my drone footage. There's me.
Julian
And that's some good drone footage footage.
Hugh Newman
Yes. Well, I've been a professional drone, you know, what, years.
Julian
I can tell it's clean.
Hugh Newman
And. Yeah, that's one of the things I'm actually very focused on is kind of. I. I love it. It's like the best toy in the world.
Julian
Yeah. I got to give this to Danny, my editor. Should we use this as B roll?
Hugh Newman
Yes.
Julian
Great.
Hugh Newman
So this is what it looked like before. So this whole area in front of us to the left, completely unexcavated. Back then, there were just t pillars, tops of them sticking out the ground. This was filmed in 2018, but we. I've been going there since 2014, this site in particular. And only in 2019 did they begin excavation. Since then, I've got some brand new drone footage of the. This is what it looks like now. This is, like, filmed a couple of months ago.
Julian
Holy.
Hugh Newman
Actually, that's the same spot. That's the same spot. Yeah. So this is how quickly they're working.
Julian
You go back real fast.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, yeah. You want to compare it? Yeah, let's have a little comparison.
Julian
That was the first one. Yeah. I'm trying to even make out where those stones are in the second one. Okay.
Hugh Newman
It's basically we're. We're going this. We're going this way around on this one and the other way around on the other one.
Julian
That's where they excavate.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. And. And further down to the left there as well. Yeah, all around down there.
Julian
Can we flip back to the new one now? So this now turns out turns into that.
Hugh Newman
Whoa. Yeah. It's major and they haven't even started.
Julian
Major.
Hugh Newman
Yeah.
Julian
Oh, that's major.
Hugh Newman
That's major. And so they have. They barely started on. It's only like 5. 10 has been done already, so they got a huge amount to do.
Julian
Wait, how do they know the percentage?
Hugh Newman
They've done some scans, like some gpr ground penetrating radar, so they know what's going on. I mean, this has been known about since 1997, but not excavated.
Julian
Look at all the teeth.
Hugh Newman
Dude, it is. It is pretty incredible when you talk about it. Yeah.
Julian
Okay, so what are we looking at here?
Hugh Newman
So this goes back 9,400 BC. They're the dates they've got. We're talking 200 years or younger than Gobekli Tepe. This is an overhead view. This area here fascinates me. So let me just. I mean, if we can just go back here, we can maybe describe it. So you've got the giant enclosures, like the big circle there, like in the middle of the screen, and another one at the top of the hill. They're like 70ft wide. You know, these are big, 20, 23 meters, something like that. Giant T pillars.
Julian
Yeah. Look at the people there.
Hugh Newman
You can see. Yeah, you can see the scale. The whole kind of settlement appears to have been built up around it as well, which is one of the debates whether it was a domestic site or whether it was a ritual site. But this area over here. So you've got the main enclosure there, but you've also got these two little areas. One of them is called structure A B. The one on the sort of bottom left there with the little pillars, another one, structure aa. So you can see it better here. This is structure aa, or the pit shrine, we call it. And then notice the one above it. That is almost a serpent kind of carving going. A serpent shape with all these pillars carved out of the bedrock going into the main enclosure there.
Julian
This is nuts.
Hugh Newman
This is nuts. This is all carved. So there's so much of this on the right hand side.
Julian
Is that an atrium, they think right there? Like a. Like a. Like an amphitheater? Yeah, those stairs.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, the steps. Yeah, yeah, there's some of them. The ones on the right, they're carved out of bedrock going. And it's kind of going up the hill to the right there. The rest of them are free. Would have been giant freestanding megaliths, like T shaped pillars. And so there's a lot of work carvings directly into limestone bedrock, which is insane for this time.
Julian
They weren't 9,400 years ago.
Hugh Newman
I mean, they weren't even supposed to be doing anything like this till Sumeria or Egypt, like four, 5,000 years later. And so that. And this is just one small part of one of the sites. Now, they say there's 12 sites, but we believe there's 40, maybe some people.
Julian
Say a hundred in this same spot.
Hugh Newman
In this whole area. 125 mile in the 40.
Julian
125.
Hugh Newman
So there's like. So this is why I call it a super civilization, because this is clearly the first civilization in the planet. And we can get. I mean, one of the reasons we know of that. We know, yeah. I mean, more could be buried. And the only reason this survived is because this was all buried. This was all deliberately buried. This wasn't like if this would have been left out to the elements. There'd be nothing left of any of them, of this. And so you've got to, like, consider these kind of aspects here. But, yeah, I mean, one of the reasons I'm so fascinated by this, we, as myself and JJ there, this is like something that happened. This is a bit of a story as well. It's quite. You quite like this one. So this is like the winter solstice, 2021. This is when this occurred. We went to Turkey. We wanted Karahan Tepe just being excavated. It's the first time we could go there after Covid and all that stuff. Enough. And we turn up there. I turn up the day before the 20th, on the 19th. And being a drone pilot, I fly my drone, but with permission of the landowner's son. I won't put his name up here. He thought it was okay. I thought it was okay. He was with me. We filmed at the drone, but then the military guy that was there called Istanbul University and got us in trouble. And my friend who owned his son, the son of the owner of the land, in trouble as well.
Julian
Oh, no.
Hugh Newman
And. And it caused all this problem, you know, and we didn't know. We were just flying it, you know, thought it'd be fun, get some cool shots and then. But JJ didn't come with me that day. She had to go the next day. And then the next day we leave. So we had to go the next day. It was so important. So I go back home. Next thing I know, I get a call from my friend who, you know, the son of a landowner, and he says, oh, by the way, you can't come tomorrow because all the officials are now turning up and you're going to get in trouble. You might even get arrested. And we're like, what? You serious? I said. I said, what time are they coming? He said, oh, like 10 or 11am I said, okay, we'll come before that. And he said, no, no, they might come earlier. I said, we'll come even earlier. We'll come, you know, we'll come for sunrise. You know, we just have to get to the site. JJ has to see it. I need to see it properly. I need to have a look. So we are forced to turn up really early before the archaeologists and the officials and potentially the police get there. And we go in there and we make a major discovery by being forced to go in early. We see this head. This is the pillar shrine. This is structure A B. We see that head illuminated.
Julian
Oh.
Hugh Newman
And we're like, what the hell is this? And There's a porthole stone. You see the portal stone on the left there? The whole stone.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
This is all carved out of bedrock. Yeah. So the sun is coming through only on winter solstice morning illuminating that head.
Julian
They hadn't seen that head. How the hell do you miss that?
Hugh Newman
They seen the head but they hadn't seen the light hitting it. And so the light was coming through like that.
Julian
Oh wow.
Hugh Newman
That's how it's going.
Julian
It's like eyesight.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. This is like precision engineered bedrock carving 9400 BC. But check this out. So over a 45 minute period, the head gets illuminated like this. Like 45 minutes. The, the blade of light coming through that really thin porthole stone comes through and it moves around the head as it rises. It's, it's the. We couldn't believe. Look, you can see the time. I've got a time lapse here.
Julian
That's some straight up.
Hugh Newman
Watch the head here. But this is speeded up obviously. Otherwise we'll be here for 45 minutes. But this is speeded up. Look at the way the sun comes through that porthole. And like we check this all out. We work with, you know, archaeo astronomers and engineers. We, we put the sky back to 9000 or so BC and it would have been. And it worked even better. Yeah, slightly better. Even higher on the face. So we know. And it go. And the beard, right. It goes into the chin, that area.
Julian
Give him a little goatee.
Hugh Newman
But that area there is like, like a V shaped and it's got scales carved into it like it's some kind of serpent with a head on it kind of going into the bedrock. And that's what gets illuminated as well. So you have this serpent symbolism, the face and then that being illuminated. So this is, this is kind of what it looks like. This is how the sun would move. We've worked this all out. We've written papers and articles. It's numerous books now. But the archaeologists won't accept it at all. They say, they say pseudoscience.
Julian
When. Okay, when you say they won't accept it. Did they even read it?
Hugh Newman
I doubt.
Julian
It's so annoying. Like, I know it doesn't, it doesn't mean you're, I mean you look, look, looks like you got some pretty good evidence to me. But like it doesn't even mean you're right. But like how, how do you shut something like that down without at least, I mean that's, that's insane.
Hugh Newman
So this true. This, this is like. So what happens I mean, with the winter solstice, this is like the extreme point on the horizon, the most southerly point. So you've got the horizon there, you've got east there. Yeah. You got northeast, southeast. Southeast is where the most extreme point of the sun reaches on the winter solstice. Then around Christmas Day, it starts moving back, starts rising, then it comes back to the. And then you've got the summer solstice over there. So it only works. That only gets illuminated on those few days.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
In the winter solstice zone. You know, this is, this is very precise. They, it's designed, you know, it's a billion to one chance this is coincidence. There's no doubt about it. So we took this to another level and we actually worked with Kevin esslinger. He's a 3D graphic artist and he also. So we gave him all the data from the site and he has been rebuilding it with us. We're working on it now. Know we've only done the preliminary work.
Julian
This is his work.
Hugh Newman
This is his work here. And we're now analyze. We've put the night sky in from 9,000 BC, the 9,400 BC and we're working on it now. And we found that it works just as well. You know, even if you have all the pillars in place, there's nothing blocking it. And you can just go on and on with this. Really? Yeah. And we, this is what. We even put a roof on it. Because there's a big debate that there was roofs over these enclosures. So we've been in discussions with many people who claim, no, this alignment doesn't exist. This is what the archaeologists believe as well, because they had, they used to have roofs on them. And so they can't be any alignments.
Julian
Because it'll block it, likely get in.
Hugh Newman
But so we put a roof on it just to annoy them. And. And this is what happens. It perfectly allows the light in. And you see the head getting illuminated. That's where. That's with the roof frame. Okay. And then Kevin worked with these Native American Pawnee roof construction techniques. Specific Native American, the way they build roofs over their Kivas and structures.
Julian
Okay.
Hugh Newman
In the Southwest. And even with a thatch roof, and even if you just have one, you have to have windows in roofs.
Julian
Right.
Hugh Newman
But a natural window between the timber frames. If you just have one there, you get the whole alignment happening. Even with a big roof, trying to block it. So we know it's for real. We know this is a genuine alignment. It's kind of un it's kind of, you can't really disprove it. I've written this all up. This is all in a. This, this article here. People can check it out. And it's also, I, I did a whole voice thing on the YouTube.
Julian
Yeah, let's link that down below. Yeah. For people to refer to reconstructing Carahan Tepe's 11, 400 year old winter solstice alignment.
Hugh Newman
And so this kind of me, to me, this shows us several things. The most important thing being these were sophisticated people. You know, these were supposed to be hunter gatherers, These were supposed to be, you know, cavemen type people. But this is a different world we're dealing with now. And I've been digging into this, partly featuring this article, but it's also going to be a big feature with a new book, plus a new, a new article I've got up on Graham Hancock's website, which is going up at any day. Looking at the fact that if you look at the anthropological data of hunter gatherers even before the time of Carahan Tepe, they're now thinking they had this obsession with studying the solstice and the movements of the sun. This is the genuine thing that goes way, way back.
Julian
Did they believe it to be like a part of their gods?
Hugh Newman
Yeah, I believe so, yeah. Also, it was part of, of timing, of feasting, initiations, rites of passage. And also it would, you know, just a sort of profound effect. You know, you see something like that take place, it's going to kind of sure have an effect on your. How did, how could they do this? This is like magic.
Julian
They weren't so busy here being stuck on these things back then. They were actually looking up.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, this, this is it. I think that was, that was their screen. It was the night sky and they. So they became kind of obsessed with that, that. But there's, there's a lot of other theories about what these structures were used for. I mean, I quite like this one. This is. They were filled with water. Again, this is Kevin Esslinger experimenting with what it would have looked like if you actually put water in it. And you can do that with these 3D graphics reconstructions that we're working on. You can actually get the levels correct, alter the levels, because they look like pools, they look like they've got water.
Julian
They would have to fill it. You're saying, make it a spring.
Hugh Newman
I mean, I don't know, because this isn't.
Julian
This is on high ground.
Hugh Newman
This is high ground. There's no springs nearby. Officially. There could have been in ancient times. But probably rain water they were using to collect. Yeah, we think if they were doing this at all. This is, this is purely speculation, but there's. They look like they're sick, Paul. Yeah, I mean it looks like kind of fun as well. But so all these pillars here, these are carved out of bedrock. You have 10 of them, phallic shaped, they always are. Or mushroom shape, some people say, carved out of bedrock. And then there's a, there's a final one which is like freestanding which can be moved. So you have all this going on. And we know this particular area as with all the other sites in the region were buried. This is, this was from a paper by the head archaeologist at Carahan Tepe, Professor Nashmi Corral and structure AB he says was deliberately filled in in a series of sequential procedures. So when it comes to Karahan Tepe itself, the whole site was deliberately buried. We know that otherwise it would never have been preserved. But only this area where the winter solstice phenomenon takes place. Everything was preserved and then buried. It was like almost kept pristine then buried really carefully with these giant stones placed on top. The rest of the site, all the statues were pushed over, broken, damaged, you know, deliberately. We think then it was barrier. This area wasn't for the, so the winter solstice. So they could have realized that if people ever dig this up in the future we're going to show them what we're capable of.
Julian
Yeah, let's play that out because we're talking about 125 mile area that could have been multi, you know, you call it a super civilization, but it could have been multiple different tribes or groups of people. Maybe there was without even extrapolating and bringing in like weather events or things from the climate coming. Maybe if there were some sort of warring or disagreement, people from this particular area could, could have had some, I don't know, secrets or whatever that they wanted buried. And they could have said okay, we're going to purposely do that here. And then later the disagreement dragged into war and the other things were destroyed around there.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, that's possible. That's a theory. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a valid thing. Look at that.
Julian
We'll call that the Julian Doris and.
Hugh Newman
I mean they're not really sure why they were buried. I mean we know at Quebec Tepe there was a slope slide which filled in some of the main enclosures. Just natural kind of falling in of the debris and things like this. But then there was definitely a deliberate burial at the End of its use. And. But here we have definitely was deliberately buried. I mean, there's actually a debate about this in the whole alternative versus the academic world that they. What, none of it was deliberately buried, but clearly it was, you know, and the reason I think it's partly could have been exactly what you're saying. It could have been exactly that. People coming in, disruption taking place. They wanted to protect it. Others people have said perhaps it was part of their tradition of like decommissioning in sight when they were going to move on. So they would have to break certain things to like, decommission, like despiritualize the site, take away the power of the site and then bury it. That could have also been income as enemies doing stuff like that as well.
Julian
Sure.
Hugh Newman
And so there's this kind of thing, you know, taking place. But the thing people don't realize about all this is that as we. This moment we're in now, this moment of this era, this is a massive discovery time. Huge. I mean, this just what you saw.
Julian
This decade's been insane.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. Just the last few years. And every year more stuff's coming out. I mean, like these statues were found in late 2023.
Julian
Is this same site?
Hugh Newman
Same site. This is on the top of the hill. A new enclosure that got uncovered.
Julian
Wait, these are like complex.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. You've got what? You got the giant fella there, he's like seven and a half feet tall, seated in this massive enclosure. He's got a beard like a. Like one of those Egyptian, like sphinx type beards, which is weird. You could show in his ribs. He's got his part out, obviously, holding that like they all do.
Julian
Yeah. I was gonna ask you.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. He's also got quite a cool haircut. It's like, it's shaved down the sides so they had Mohicans and things like this.
Julian
Why did they have it where they're like holding down an erect deck all the time?
Hugh Newman
That's a good question. We think it's to do with fertility. Like, we believe these fertility sites. So this is based upon. We've written a whole article about this on Graham Hancock's website as well. Well, we believe that. Myself and JJ believe these are fertility sites. So this is like a ritualistic thing where they were in the. They were just beginning to start agriculture back then, you know, within 100 or so years of Carahan Tepe, agriculture kicked off, the Neolithic revolution happened within a few miles of there. Like within 50 miles of that exact place. So we believe that as these Were all growing these sites apparently out of nowhere. Suddenly they needed some kind of magic, like sympathetic magic, it's called, to like guarantee fertility in the landscape. We take it for granted. We can get food anywhere we want, we can get water anywhere we want. These people couldn't. They have to go and find it. They had to survive. So I think it's to do with that. It could also be they were just a bunch of perverts, you know, and like they were just having world orgies. We just don't know. I mean, we can, we can speculate, you know, we don't know Epstein island.
Julian
Before Epstein island, so.
Hugh Newman
But we do believe that there's a. There's a shamanic element to this because you find quite a lot of this symbolism. But you get animal symbolism, you get other symbolism as well.
Julian
Yeah, the one on the left, the toucan looking thing.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. We're supposedly a baby vulture.
Julian
A baby vulture?
Hugh Newman
Yeah. It's a big ass beak. Yeah, you can actually see. I did a little scan of it. It's in the museum now. And this is again, this has been broken in specific places. So they're all broken in specific places.
Julian
I mean, Andrew Collins broken in specific place.
Hugh Newman
It was broken at the neck and it was broken at the kind of just below the belly, groin area. And a lot of these statues are found like that. And then they have the sort of piece back together. So I'll just show you a couple of other. Might as well just show you a few newish discoveries over the last few months. This is, you know, statue there you can see popping out on the left there.
Julian
Oh yeah, the head kind of.
Hugh Newman
And some other giant broken tea pillars just in the middle there. Yeah, there's a few, Yeah, a few other pieces here. This one on, this one's interesting. This one's actually got a nub on it. Look at that, like a little kind of button thing on the front. That's what you find in Peru and Bolivia and Egypt and places like that. This area was discovered a few months ago. They call it the kitchen. This down at the bottom of the hill, all these beautiful stone plates. These are carved, like precisely carved. Beautiful creations carved out of bass out and granite and different stones. But the thing about this, they call it the kitchen because they think food was prepared here. But they found evidence of Anatolian viper skeletons in here.
Julian
Anatolian viper skeleton?
Hugh Newman
Yeah, snakes. So that this is like, like, if.
Julian
You fancy way of saying it, you.
Hugh Newman
Can actually extract the venom. I haven't tried it myself. From the Anatolia viper and use it as a psychedelic, it could kill you as well. You've got to be careful. But so there's potentially there's. That is evidence of them utilizing psychedelics and there's mushroom symbolism all over the place here as well, which you can find. And we know that they were, you know, I think that this was a shamanic culture. I think they were well into psychedelics. They were, were brewing beer. There's evidence at Gobekli Tepe in these giant vats, these sort of.
Julian
How do we know it's beer?
Hugh Newman
Well, they found calcium oxalate in it, remnants of it at the bottom of these giant stone troughs. And if you ferment barley, which grew, grew at the time or grew later in the phase of Gobekli Tepe, when the agricultural revolution was beginning, if you just leave that in water and let it ferment, it produces beer basically. It's like a really weak, disgusting beer gruel. It's like a kind of porridge, if you like, and rich beer if you let that go moldy. The mold that grows on it is called ergot. Ergot is what LSD was synthesized from by Albert Hoffman in the 1950s. So they could, I mean, technically you can synthesize the ergot into LSD type substance using very simple procedures. They could have done it back then. I mean, it's just water soluble.
Julian
So you just what a civilization just getting hammered and taking mushrooms?
Hugh Newman
Well, they were drinking and, and smoking and whatever. There's probably marijuana growing in this region as well because this is like not too far from the whole.
Julian
They're just hitting everything.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, Asian steps and everything. But so I believe that this was a psychedelic culture. I mean, and I think this is possibly evidence. Leaning towards that.
Julian
What do the archaeologists say?
Hugh Newman
They, they're leaning towards that. I mean, even Lee Claire as mentioned that in a lecture or an interview. He did? I kind of. Oh, that's surprising. I didn't expect you to say that. But he's suggesting that because you look at the, the spaces as well, you know, the enclosures or stone circles, they're big enough to have big dances and ceremonies and events. They're not, they're not small spaces. It feels like they're designed for this kind of activity, whatever that activity might be. Then you've got, you know, stuff like this has been found ritualistic artifacts made of solid stone.
Julian
How big is that? Is that like an actual bowl?
Hugh Newman
That bowl is probably about this big.
Julian
Oh, a little bigger. Oh yeah, it's pretty big.
Hugh Newman
And Then it's on. It's actually on top of another plate, another stone plate.
Julian
Okay.
Hugh Newman
With these scepters. You can't quite see them there, but they are there. And all these animals were placed within.
Julian
The donuts like a rhino and a vulture.
Hugh Newman
I think, I think it's supposed to be a vulture and no, not. I think it's supposed to be a leopard. Actually.
Julian
I'm not sure that's a leopard. Yeah, it's a fat ass leopard. Yeah. All right.
Hugh Newman
And then some other weird creature on the bottom that's there and then that.
Julian
Looks like a anteater sloth or something.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, it's kind of bizarre. So I mean this was just found recently. This is Nishmi Corel. This is the head archaeologist and he's just next to one of the T shaped pillars.
Julian
Statue looks like him.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. Just need to get over there with a. Draw a little mustache on the pillar and you'll be well away. I might just do that immediately after this in AI and send it it to you.
Julian
Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm not very politically correct in case you can't.
Hugh Newman
That's cool. Nor am I, but. So this is like all these, there's these hundreds, thousands of T pillars in this. All the, the whole, all of these sites have these T shaped pillars which we're going to look at as the biggest ones. They're gigantic, but they're all anthropomorphic. So they've all got arms on them going down the side like a diagonal. And then the heads have usually have nothing on them. They're just blank heads where they got. They've got belts, they've got pelts hanging down, all carved over them. But all the heads are always blank until this one was discovered literally a few months ago. It's the first T shaped pillar in the whole region. That's actually got a face which actually looks like a T. Yes. T shaped pillar.
Julian
Simple.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. On it as well. I mean this is probably one of the later ones. I did a whole kind of update on that a few months ago if people want to check that out.
Julian
This is amazing. I'm like blown away by all this.
Hugh Newman
But this has just been discovered. This is at Carahan Tepe.
Julian
Is that another like. Yeah, amphitheater kind of.
Hugh Newman
This is a. This is a rectangular enclosure. It's in between the two big enclosures we kind of looked at. And this is. To me, this is like something out of Egypt or Sumeria.
Julian
Yeah, man. How long did this take to dig out this?
Hugh Newman
Well, they've Literally done that this summer. This is.
Julian
They did that in a summer?
Hugh Newman
I think so, yeah. I think the top part was they took off.
Julian
What?
Hugh Newman
And then they continued and got all the way down to dig to this, like, few. I think they finished it a few weeks ago, a few months ago, but that's good.
Julian
So that's crazy to me because it's not like they're using like a caterpillar tank or anything like that. I mean, these are just people, like, digging. They dig it that perfectly without damaging stuff. That's.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. These are like proper professional level archaeologists working here. I mean, I've got a lot of respect for everything they do. They get a lot of flack.
Julian
Good for them. That's amazing.
Hugh Newman
But they do also, you know, ignore discoveries that me and JJ make, which is a bit annoying.
Julian
Like, that's annoying. But that's good.
Hugh Newman
That is good work. And a lot of that is carved out of bedrock. So those. Some of those steps are carved from the bedrock. It's all kind of bedrock created. And so I find that really interesting. And it's almost got steps going down like it was a pool.
Julian
Yes, that's. I was thinking Turkish bath.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, the first Turkish bar.
Julian
Right.
Hugh Newman
There you go.
Julian
Yeah, you got like the little hot tub area up there on the left.
Hugh Newman
Yeah.
Julian
And then it goes down into the infinity pool.
Hugh Newman
So this is brand new. This literally came out a week ago. Okay. Well, whenever you know this. This came out in late November, basically.
Julian
Right. Where this is our last recording in 2025. I think this is going to come out in January. So.
Hugh Newman
Okay.
Julian
Everything's about a month after.
Hugh Newman
So this is late November. This was all announced. And there's some more. I mean, this. You got this, but you also got this interesting statue.
Julian
That's a woman. Right.
Hugh Newman
Well, they thought it was. If you look carefully at its. Where his hands are pointed, pointing to maybe not.
Julian
Well, it looks like she's kind of going like, this is.
Hugh Newman
But she's also got a little phallus there as well.
Julian
Oh, really? That's what that is.
Hugh Newman
So. So we heard about this.
Julian
Wait, where's the phallus?
Hugh Newman
It's just sort of dangling in. Out of her hands, allegedly.
Julian
Oh, yeah, They're. Well, maybe.
Hugh Newman
So this is like. So when they first discovered this, we heard about this six months ago. And, like, we kept hearing these rumors about it, but they wouldn't announce it until, like, late November. And they. We thought. And we were told it was a woman. I think they thought it was a woman until they. Look carefully.
Julian
Yeah, look at the, like the shaping is. What does it like? Yeah, looks like kind of female breastplate. See that?
Hugh Newman
Yeah, yeah.
Julian
And like the shoulders down a little bit more of what looks like it could be an hourglass figure down there. Yeah, I mean, I see what you're. I see what you're talking about there.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. I mean, and this is how, this is how it was found. This is like it was just lying down in the kind of topping in the enclosure there. So, yeah, it has got a kind of feminine look to it. Unless it's. Unless it's androgynous. Unless it's.
Julian
I was going to say maybe it's trans.
Hugh Newman
Maybe it's. Yeah, maybe it's male and female, you know, and often you get that representation at these sites as well. So you actually, you do have that. I mean, my, my good friend and previous co author Jim Vieira is writing, written about that a lot. He's found all these evidence of androgynous gods and depictions around the world, which we kind of. Which is quite interesting, I guess, if you're into that kind of thing. This is another one as well. Another little statue again with that sort of beard, like this almost like a fake. Like a fake Egyptian type beard. Similar to the big statue that was found in 2023.
Julian
This one's very small though, looking. Yeah. With the guy behind it.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. It's probably about less than a foot tall, that one.
Julian
Okay.
Hugh Newman
But the head, it's got an Easter island look to it as well. It does quite a bizarre look. And then we've got this. I can't work out what this is. This, I think was part of a giant porthole stone. Like often you find massive ones, absolutely huge ones. And that's like a section of it.
Julian
I'm not saying this to be funny. That looks phallic there though, on the right side.
Hugh Newman
It does, yeah. No, no, I think you're right. It could well be. I mean, I need to get. Because you've got reflections of the glass case, so you can't see it properly.
Julian
But there's something about humanity that never changes with that. I remember Tina Fey had a line when she would talk about like the, like the New York City skyline. We can see right here. It was just a bunch of dicks built to the sky.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. I mean, literally, that's camera handsepe.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
You've got to be honest.
Julian
I guess we just never evolved with that.
Hugh Newman
We're just like, yeah, yeah, maybe it's a sign of high civilization.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
That we would need to have of our parts, I guess so, pointing to the sky. A few other pieces here. This, I mean, actually, this is. For me, this is interesting. The bottom ones here, you got the phallic thing on the left, but on the two on the right you've got like a goddess figurine, like a Venus figurine. This was found at a site called Gertrude. This is the last. Around 8000 BC, 8200 BC. Last site in that region before the whole place just sort of disappeared. It's very similar to what you get in Malta. This is what interested me. These are the same.
Julian
This is Malta, right?
Hugh Newman
Yeah, this is a Malta. And so this is. And now there's good evidence that some of the sites in Malta are possibly as old as the sites in Turkey. This is the work of Lenny Ridic. She. She appeared on the Netflix Graham Hancock show Ancient Apocalypse talking about this. We, we know her well. She's spoken at a conference years ago. Her book is brilliant. Serious star of the Maltese temples. I do recommend it. And she is now, because of the movements of Sirius, you know, through the sky and everything else. She believes that, you know, Malta is possibly as old as Testepola. The site's there, so it's pretty intriguing when you start looking into it. So there's, there's a whole. I mean, there's a lot more. I mean, I've got this, this is the one that was discovered at Gobekli Tepe. That's found in the.
Julian
Another one with the face.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, there's a lot of these. I could just whip through some of the, the new discoveries. I think this is.
Julian
Yeah, let's do that. These are all fascinating.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. This is a cycle. Sephir Tepe. This is near Carahan Tepe. Just north of there. They found this giant slab with these two faces carved in 3D relief. So these are, these are part of the same, you know, block. This is what they look like close up. It's a bit, bit weird, but. But look at that. That's pretty.
Julian
It's unreal.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, it's pretty epic. This has just been announced as well. Again, that's the close ups there. And then this was found at Carahan Tepe, just in the wall of the, the enclosure, I think, at the top of the hill. You also got this.
Julian
Can you go back to that real quick?
Hugh Newman
Yeah.
Julian
So that's a face there in the middle.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. On the right. Yeah.
Julian
Just carved right into the.
Hugh Newman
Carved from the bedrock and then it's shoved into a wall there. Yeah.
Julian
What. Why do you think they would have done that there. Well this is, this is like carbon into a brick.
Hugh Newman
They've done. They do this a lot. A lot of the statues that are found at the site, especially the heads, torsos are sometimes in the walls themselves. So it's almost like the sunken pit at Tiwanaku. We have all the heads around it kind of edge reminds me of that. There's a lot of that going on here. And so whether they're. It's part of the burial of the site or whether it's part of their tradition or they're just reusing old stones is a whole other story. We just don't really know. But this is, this one here is also from Sepia Tepe as well. This is like, this is two sided. This is about the size of you. You can hold it in your hand. This is made of green, sorry black serpentine, which is a very hard type of rock. One with a wide open.
Julian
What's going on with the whole. Is there, does that hole go the other side? Is that like a ring kind of?
Hugh Newman
No, I don't think it does. No, it just goes, it's just into it a certain way but you turn it around and it's got that face on the other side. It's got like two faces on it. And one of the other sites we should have a look at, say Birch.
Julian
Say Birch.
Hugh Newman
This one here.
Julian
Now where is this in relation to Carahan Tepe?
Hugh Newman
This is, this is much further to the west. It's near Ian Lahoyek. So it's in the western side of the whole region. Okay, this is a quite a big site. But the one thing I like about is the name. The name doesn't sound like much say Birch, but you look at what it means, sign of the zodiac, counting, say and sign the zodiac birch. So we're talking, wow, this is like astronomically, you know, chosen and even like they, you know, in Kurdish the Burke means watchtower. And so interestingly back in the 1950s at this site in this village they had to knock down half this village to excavate this site by the way. They found there was a watch, an ancient tower there like you get in Jericho, in you know, Palestine, Israel area. And so that is intriguing. And this is kind of what the new enclosure looks like that they've now excavated. And he got another guy holding his part back there which we'll look at more closely in a moment. But this is all car from bedrock. That's what's so mind blowing about this.
Julian
Do we have any sort of educational Guess hypothesis on how long something like that would have. Would have taken. Just what we saw right there.
Hugh Newman
It's gonna take a little while for sure. Yeah. I mean, you carve it. You're carving down into, like, flat bedrock.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
And you're Lee and you're creating. This is artwork. Look at the art along the side here. This is remarkable.
Julian
It's. It. This is like breathtaking, everything you're showing me. Yeah, this is when it was.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, this. This is what, 30ft wide? Yeah, 35ft wide, something like that. This is a whole panel carving. You've got a guy there, he's got a V neck on again, he's holding his part still there. This was buried literally under a house, you know, for a long, long time. You can. Like, on the left there, you see.
Julian
Like there were houses right here.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, those house. See that house? See that little circle on the. That is where the house was. It's been knocked down. We used to go there when the house was there. And the thing is, the family knew about this. This was under their house. The house has been completely removed. They knew about this since the 1940s.
Julian
They didn't tell anybody and.
Hugh Newman
But they. But no, they. They preserved it.
Julian
Oh, they. That's nice.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. They didn't damage it at all.
Julian
Oh, maybe they were like, hiding it from the Nazis.
Hugh Newman
They're like.
Julian
They don't get a hold of this.
Hugh Newman
Well, and. And, yeah, awesome. You talk about the Nazis. Right. But also the Romans a bit before that were here as well. If you actually look at the area. See the area? That's the enclosure. We're looking at the area on the left there where it's cut into the bedrock. They think that is a Roman quarry, like 2,000 years ago. Right. So this is. This is 11, 000 years ago, the main site, but 2,000 years ago, there's a Roman quarry, there's a Roman settlement. There's another quarry on another hill we've looked at all Roman. The thing is, the Romans got that close to it and they didn't touch that. They must have seen it. They must have known it was there. If they. If they're digging into the bedrock just there, they. They may have discovered Tas Tepla. The Romans. That's. That's the revelation.
Julian
Untapped.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. But honestly. Yeah, because. Right. The reason I say that is because if you look here, this is. Is apparently the Roman quarry. This might not be Roman, so this could all change. But just there they went right up to where that orange circle is and they left this there and this is an ancient testepola carving in the bedrock. But they didn't touch it. They went right up to it. Look. See how close they got? Whoa. So there's a. I've got this thing. We're going to put this in the book, actually, that we think the Romans discovered the testepola culture, which. We're going to start looking through all the old records, see if there's any mentions of pillars or something like that.
Julian
Now, why do you think if they. So they have their quarry there. They're on this land that at the time is maybe 9,000 years old or whatever, and they see that this other stuff is there.
Hugh Newman
Yeah.
Julian
Why do you think they leave it completely untapped?
Hugh Newman
That's a good question. That is one of. That's. That's what we're going to be looking into, because they did. The fact is they did leave it untapped. And there's several other sites. I mean, even Carahan Tepe, the hill next to that, which is called Ketchley Tepe, which is the old name of Carahan Tepe. There's Roman graves there. So they were. They were like getting close and I'm absolutely convinced they might have found stuff but didn't know what it was. They may have got worn or worn, warned away by the locals. They may have felt like they just shouldn't be doing this. They're interfering with something they don't understand. But whatever happens, they seem to have left it.
Julian
I wonder if they could have thought, depending on who found it, within the nature of the Romans. I wonder if they could have thought that such history like that, if made available to the public, there would be some sort of. I. I don't really know how to say this, but, like, ancient existential threat to their hold on the land, meaning, like maybe it creates some sort of new religious paradigm or something like that that supersedes, like, their mortal involvement with. Yeah. Owning this area.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, I think it could be Right. I mean, I've got a feeling they. They sense something.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
That they shouldn't mess with. They may have found burials.
Julian
Burial.
Hugh Newman
Well, they had. There are burials at Saber and this is actually one of them here.
Julian
How do we know this is a. Did we recover bones?
Hugh Newman
Yeah, there's quite a few. In fact, they found sort of little caches of skeletons inside the walls. This one actually is multiple. It's got multiple skeletons, all disarticulated, though. So the heads are removed, arms are removed, thigh bones.
Julian
But we can. That's incredible data for for dating and also trying to study like what the people were like there.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, they're working on it. It's not. I don't think it's been published yet. Hopefully. Hopefully next year. So there's, there's this kind of thing being discovered and we have this on the bottom right. Really fascinated me, this giant U shaped stone. There's me standing above it.
Julian
I don't think I've ever been this glued to the screen during a podcast.
Hugh Newman
Sorry, this is like.
Julian
No, this is amazing. Like.
Hugh Newman
Well, it's very visual.
Julian
Yes.
Hugh Newman
You know, there's going to be obviously audio version versions of this and I'm trying to describe it whilst we're chatting as well.
Julian
No, you're doing a great job.
Hugh Newman
But you need to see it as well. You know, it's so mind blowing. And this is all brand new. This is. I cannot quite believe what's going on here, to be honest with you.
Julian
What's the one on the top? Right, if you go back there for one second. So that's another T shaped pillar. Does that go all the way down below where I can't see?
Hugh Newman
Yeah, for sure. So this is, this shows you the ground level now. Now obviously, but how much they've got to clear away, they found like dozens.
Julian
Oh, so that's still not fully excavated. Okay, got it.
Hugh Newman
I mean, I think a lot of it has been now. I mean it happens so quickly. We're just trying to keep up with it. There's other pieces here. The one on the right is actually from gobekli tepe, pillar 43. But similar things have been now being found at Saber and the symbolism here again, something JJ specializes. This is going to be writing about. Obviously you've got the phallic stuff's been found there as well everywhere. But the most recent discovery from Saber's, which is blowing my mind, which we knew about months ago. We were shown, shown this photo and video four months ago.
Julian
Oh, you're holding it too. Wow.
Hugh Newman
Well, it's not. No, that's not me holding it, that's the archaeologist. But we, we heard about this and we weren't allowed to publish it and we got given the video and photo.
Julian
This is a different looking face too. It's more elongated, bigger lips.
Hugh Newman
And then in late November it got announced to the world and put on display temporarily at Carahan Tepe. It's now going to be going into the chandelier for Archaeology Museum. So this is brand new discovery. Yeah, I mean we knew about it. I mean we get the problem is this is why the archaeologists think we're spies. Because we keep hearing about stuff long before it gets published.
Julian
Oh, they think you're spies?
Hugh Newman
They think.
Julian
Andrews, you work for MI6?
Hugh Newman
No, I don't.
Julian
But that was not a convincing. Can we get a replay on that? His face was like. No, no, no.
Hugh Newman
Well, if. I'm sure they pay me a lot more than I get now if I was.
Julian
But yeah, don't leave any. Don't leave any bugs in here. I got enough of you spooky people coming through here. Jesus Christ.
Hugh Newman
But this is like fascinating to me. There's a couple of things here. You got like the, the mouth, like it's got. I have a really dry lips. That's actually a sewn up mouth.
Julian
Sewn up?
Hugh Newman
Yeah. What a symbol of it. Yeah. And then the eyes are like mollusk shells.
Julian
Right.
Hugh Newman
So you get this here. You can see the close ups here. This is from the Levant. You get. You get burials like this. We have these mollusk shells placed on the.
Julian
Yeah, that's an actual skeleton there.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, that one on the left is. That's not from Saber. It's. That's from the Levant. Right, right, right. It's from.
Julian
So you're saying this is like a recreation of that?
Hugh Newman
Yeah, it's similar. It just looks very similar. It's a representation of death. And. And I think a lot of these representations are about death, regeneration, rebirth. And this will relates again to the winter solstice. This is a tradition relating to the winter solstice. We also got this discovered where a T pillar at, say birch, but at the very base of it, carved out of the bedrock that the T pillars slotted into. They kind of create these little slots and put the T pillars in is a head, a shape, a face just carved out the. Never seen anything like that before either.
Julian
How tall is that?
Hugh Newman
That's probably 8ft, something like that. Some of them are up to 18ft tall. At Gobekli Tepe.
Julian
This is this right here?
Hugh Newman
Yeah. Same face? Yeah, same face. And so there's a lot of crazy stuff going on. I mean I put. I put it all into. I did this little. When I was on. I was actually on Easter island recently when this all came out, so I made a little.
Julian
Is there anywhere you don't go?
Hugh Newman
There's a few places I want to go, I'll tell you that. But I made a video about this. I did a little lecture and filmed it from our group and then put it out on YouTube so people can see all the discoveries in one go.
Julian
Yeah, we Should. We should probably. Actually, to make it helpful for the audience out there, we should probably collab this as well on YouTube. So, people, you can literally hit right below where this video is. It'll show my channel and Hugh's channel, and you can hit Hugh's channel and all these videos will be right there.
Hugh Newman
Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. And so again, once again, we've got, like the whole region. All these sites are coming out from near the Haram Plain. Haram Plain is the. The sort of lush area in ancient times that would. The water would all come from. Also, you also get water in Santa Lerfer as well.
Julian
Just for my bearings, because you already said earlier, Lake Vaughn's 200 miles from here. But where. So that plane. What's the nearest body of water?
Hugh Newman
If you go much further south, southwest, you go into Syria, and then you sort of hit the coast.
Julian
Oh, wow.
Hugh Newman
Okay, towards the west. Towards the west, yeah.
Julian
Okay.
Hugh Newman
But you have lots of lakes. There are kind of rivers. Yeah, just. Just through. You can't really see it on here, but just through. On the left there, you have the Euphrates River. Ah, yeah, yeah. So this is one of. One of the ancient rivers of.
Julian
Yep.
Hugh Newman
By biblical stuff. And then on further to the right, you know, just. You can't really see it. It's much further to the right, maybe 100, less than 100 miles, where you have the Tigris river as well. You have a whole load of sites up there as well, which date back to before Gobekli Tepe.
Julian
Wait, how far. How long ago did we find those?
Hugh Newman
Well, okay, test Tepla is up to 9,600 BC. Yeah. Some of the ones on the Tigris river go back to a thousand years older.
Julian
When did we find those, though?
Hugh Newman
They've been known about for a little while. As old as, you know, the last 20 years. Some of them. Okay, some of them are brand new. Some of them are just brand new being discovered, but they don't have any major megalithic elements like you get all these sites.
Julian
So we basically, if I'm probably oversimplifying here, so correct me if I'm wrong, basically, it doesn't have all the. The hoopla that these areas have because of the incredible megaliths and artwork that we found. We haven't discovered that yet at the Tigris by the Tigris and those civilizations, but there's something there that shows people lived here. And we gotta dig more.
Hugh Newman
There are settlements there. There are megaliths, but not huge. They're, you know, medium Lifts, if you like. And there are, there are beautiful carvings. They were, they were making beads. There's a site called Bon Choclutala where the million tens of thousands of beads were found. All the different types of rock and they found beautiful carved stone bowls and plates and scepters and things like this. So there's a lot of artistic elements that came out from the Tigris sites. Cortex Tepe is one of them as well. Very interesting site. There's Bon Choclutada, there's Grief Filler Hoyak as well. These are kind of unusual names but many of them are kind of just in the process of being partly excavated and partly turned into tourist places as well. But we, we've been up to most of them and we've seen most of them ourselves. But really the ones down this area are really the mind blowing ones which are kind of going to change history. I mean, do you want to look at Gobekli Tepe? Please have a quick look. Yeah, I think we should talk.
Julian
We don't need to make it quick either.
Hugh Newman
Is wild, Quebec. Tepe is wild. This is an old aerial photo of the main enclosures. Each of these is 60 or so feet wide.
Julian
Each of those enclosures.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. And then. And that's, that's what's been excavated. I mean this is, this is quite old, this photo, I've got to be honest with you. But so now, you know, they think there's 21 enclosures and half of them have, most of them have been excavated, as you can see here. So this is the GPR scan of the whole site compared to what's been excavated and what hasn't.
Julian
Oh, that's literally where. Okay, yeah.
Hugh Newman
So there's a lot more going on and they've just now cleared away the olive trees. This was, for some reason hundreds of olive trees were all over the site and people like Jimmy Corsetti and Michael Collins, they've been pushing, campaigning against that and they've actually now moved them all and now they're going to start digging where the olive trees were. And this is where this main area here, the sort of central part of.
Julian
The site, they were campaigning again, corsetting them, were campaigning against them, digging where the olives were.
Hugh Newman
They were just getting rid of the olive trees.
Julian
Oh, okay.
Hugh Newman
Because. Yeah, because they're damaging the roots are going in and damaging the materials and Right. Archaeology underneath. So I first went there, I was really lucky I went there in 2013. I went with Graham Hancock and Andrew Collins, both brilliant authors and researchers. I'M not sure what I'm doing with my face there. I'm like a gopher or something.
Julian
But yeah, you, you developed over time. Now you got the hard look like in all your picks, like you're on a rap album. Great.
Hugh Newman
So this is a, this is like scan I got of enclosure D. This is one of the main enclosures, these 18 foot tall, these pillars.
Julian
Wait, this is a scan?
Hugh Newman
Yeah, I did a quick scan when I was there when.
Julian
So when you say scan, is this, this is a reconstruction of it or.
Hugh Newman
No, it's just with my.
Julian
Wait, this is, this is actually it.
Hugh Newman
This is with my magical device phone. I was able to go around and just capture as much as I could that you could turn.
Julian
Yeah, I'm just. There's something about that image that looked like slightly uncanny valley almost. That was crazy. Okay.
Hugh Newman
Oops, there's my face again.
Julian
This is really cool.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, so this is kind of what it looks like actually. They've actually cleared more away since I did this like a few months ago. You've got pillar 43 on the left there. But this would have all been pristine. And you know, I think these were, you know, absolutely, absolutely stunning when you actually look at it. And these are anthropomorphic as well. But look, I think this is all aligned. This is, this is the whole kind of astronomy side of it. Yeah, this is actually my little book. I've given you this, this right here, this, this covers some of the astronomy the worker Google and Magli and also Andrew Collins and J.J. ainsworth. Well, there's a whole orientation to the, just off north and just off south following the whole path of the Golden Gate of the ecliptic. Again, this is JJ's research, but this fits in because this was done before we discovered our winter solstice alignment at Carahan Tepe. So this backs it up.
Julian
Oh wow.
Hugh Newman
This is already there. People know about this. So we've got the northern orientations on the left. So most of the sites, the, the big enclosures with the big T pillars, they're like stone circles basically. They're all aligned to the north and variations off the north. And Andrew believes that's linked with the movement of Cygnus changing position, Deneb Insignus changing position over a few hundred year periods. They reorient each enclosure according to that.
Julian
I have a quick question if you don't mind, just because like this is a great map you have down here. Why do we think that they, these civilizations decided to settle way in land up here as opposed to near the coast. What was the logic there?
Hugh Newman
You got the rivers, you got the rivers. You've got the big Euphrates river, which is mainly in the Test Tepola region. It feeds into channel earth as well. And Haram Plain to the, to the east, you've got the Tigris River. These are, these are massive rivers. I mean, we're talking like most lakes flowing through, through the whole country. So these were, these created huge abundance like the Nile did in Egypt.
Julian
But if again, I'm thinking of that 125 mile area across.
Hugh Newman
Right, so the rivers, that's basically between the two rivers.
Julian
Between the two rivers. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, but you have civilizations, I'm just using round numbers here to keep it simple. That are therefore 60 miles from the river.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, right.
Julian
So it's like, you know, that's, that's a trek to get to the river.
Hugh Newman
That is a trick. But I think they, I think they created places that had, they were near springs in a lot of places. But I think they deliberately created. And you can see this because Quebec Le Tepe, right, and Karen Tabe are not next to any water sources directly. It's half a day's walk to the nearest water source from Quebec Tepe, which is Chandler, for town or city where there used to be giant rivers and natural springs there. But when it comes to, you know, these sites, I think they were created to be away from all that, that these were sacred sites. These were, to me, they were sanctuaries that then later became settlements because people were attracted to go and hang out with them. So what they did was they created water channels. They created giant kind of domed shaped earthen kind of chambers where they would collect water in from the rain water. And there's evidence of channels being carved out and going through the sites, suggesting they were harvesting rainwater, you know, and using that when they were at the site, which I don't think was all year round, I think towards the autumn or winter you get more rain and so that's when they would predominantly be at the sites. The archaeologists claim they were at the sites all year round, but I don't, we don't really buy that. We think there was a kind of seasonal movement between one site and another site and another. And it was part of a kind of ritual movement, like almost like the aboriginal song lines. You kind of move around from one location to the other. You, you do your rituals there, you do your teachings. Because I believe these were teaching plays, were universities, you know, schools, they were universities I think these were teaching places. Yeah. You start looking at all the carvings, the symbolism, the astronomy, and you realize that this was like a memory space.
Julian
How many people do we think were there at a given time?
Hugh Newman
At the very beginning? Very few, because there's no evidence of anything except the main enclosure starting to be built. Then later, within maybe 500 years or a bit less, maybe smaller structures started to be built. Square, rectangular, not quite as profound as the large circular stone circle structures. And people appear to be staying there and kind of working at the site, possibly serving, you know, the ritual, the ceremonies that might have been taking place. And then it slowly became really popular. And you could see lots of buildings being built up, but they all. Even the small buildings, even the square buildings that were later had T pillars in them, which is strange. I mean, if you're building a place to live, a domestic place, why would you put a T pillar in? I mean, T pillars were sacred objects. They were like, almost worshiped. They were like the gods. And so why would you put that? So to me, they're like small shrines where people would come. They would come at certain times of year. They would stay in these places. They got somewhere to stay. But also they could still do their kind of spiritual work, whatever they're doing. And then they would build all these other sites around the whole region with a similar style, almost exactly the same style. I mean, we're talking since day one, when Gobekli Tepe was built. Every one of the other sites has exactly the same style. 1500 years at least. So this was. This wasn't like a random people. This was a. This was a culture, this was a civilization.
Julian
So I thought that they're going place to place, too.
Hugh Newman
I think they were. I mean, because there's so many of these sites, and they seem to be just in random, apparent places. They are just everywhere in. And I think they were just developing a kind of landscape kind of understanding to a high degree.
Julian
How do you. Would they. Do we have any evidence on how they might have traveled from place to place? Like, you know, are they just walking and schlepping it? Are they packing carts to move, like, resources in between places or.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, there, there's. There's. There's. There's definitely routes between them. There's even sight lines between them as well. So you could stand at the peak of one hill, and you can virtually see the peak of the other hill because often they're built on high ground. And I think that. I think there were sight lines between them, and there were Just walking routes, basically. I mean, there's like, everything's like a day's walk or half a day's walk to get from one, you know, maybe a couple of days in some occasions. So it's not. Not like they're too far apart, but far enough apart to grow and expand. And I think as the people expanded, as the civilization grew with all the fertility rituals taking place, it went ballistic. And I think this is when it became a civilization. They had to build all these extra structures all over these sites. This is why the archaeologists think they're all domestic sites, they're not sanctuaries, which I believe is a bit of both. You know, I think there's kind of. They became domestic sites, they became villages after the main sacred enclosures were constructed. I think that's where you got. You've got to look at it from that perspective, in my opinion.
Julian
Over what period of time might that have. Of that shift have taken place? Are we talking.
Hugh Newman
I think we're talking just a few hundred years.
Julian
Yeah, it was.
Hugh Newman
Because that's still a lot. Well, you imagine. Right. Okay, you're going into Bekli Tepe. Okay, I've just lost all my slides here. Let's have a look. So you're going into Gobekli Tepe and you're seeing these gigantic T pillars. Like, this is a reconstruction in the museum with JJ there on the left. You're seeing these gigantic cathedral like megalithic stone circle enclosures, beautifully carved stones carved out, pristine. There's evidence. Now, this is just from this boar statue they found that they were painted. So there's red, white and black pigments have been found at the site. So the whole place could have been painted. So you imagine you're a hunter gatherer. You just been. All you've ever seen is the landscape and the sky for your whole life. You turn up to this and you. You would just completely blow your mind. I just cannot comprehend. I mean, this is. This is one of the reconstructions done by National Geographic actually years ago, which I think is a bit faulty. I don't think these walls were here originally. But you're talking like, you know, this would elaborate. This would blow your mind.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
You know, if you're a hunter gatherer and you go and see something like this, I mean, seriously, it would just. You wouldn't know what. You wouldn't be able to comprehend it. But, you know, just talking while we're in enclosure D, we actually found another winter solstice alignment here as well.
Julian
Again, Again.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, this is. And we're actually going to be checking that out more detail very soon.
Julian
All right, what am I looking at here? What's the. The sideward V right there.
Hugh Newman
Well, let's go back a bit. So you see this stone here on the left? This was. This was discovered in 2023. This stone here, a very specific place. This H symbol, these two other things on the site, it's all about the symbolism and the placement of where it was found. That is part of a large circular stone. That is a small section of a very large circular stone. Like. Like you get a camera hand, Tepe. The light comes through, illuminates the head that is there. The exact position of that is. And if you look on the left, the far left, you've got the little inverted V shape. I think that is a marker showing the difference in the solstices. So the top left. Sorry, the top right there, P30, that's the summer solstice sunrise alignment in 9500 BC. The bottom right, number seven, that's where that stone was found. That's exactly on the winter solstice sunrise point.
Julian
Wow.
Hugh Newman
Exactly. And like. And I think that. And if you stand in the middle, you can see both. And if you go in there, this is. A friend of mine, took this photo. That's the view of the horizon. You've got a clear horizon as well. And the H symbol found. Hundreds of these are found especially in this enclosure carved all over the stones. You can see a few of them here. These H is everywhere. The eight symbol, if you look, the two big pillars and the horizon is an H. So the H symbol is most likely marking astronomical viewpoints. So I think there's a lot more going. Actually been working on a reconstruction of Quebec Lee Tepe.
Julian
It almost, by the way, on that H thing, it almost reminds you of like a street sign in a way, like with the arrows. You know what I mean?
Hugh Newman
Yes, yes. Telling. It's telling you something. It's telling you something that's remarkable. And I think this is what it's all about.
Julian
It looks modern in a way too. It almost looks like.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, a lot of it does.
Julian
A graphic designer would have done it. You know what I mean?
Hugh Newman
It is. I mean, it's. It's very odd. I mean, it's the abs. The abstract nature of all this is why I think they were on psychedelics, because it's too abstract. You don't just come up with this when you're sitting around doing a bit of hunting, doing a bit of gathering.
Julian
That's right.
Hugh Newman
Something has stimulated you in your mind. You know, this is like, this is why, you know, from that you have to consider that perspective. You know, this is. And I think this is why they were so obsessed with the sky and the stars. They just, it all came alive to them. So inside Bekli Tepe, that's. This is the reconstruction we're working on. That's the sunrise. And this is just below that on the winter solstice. Just below that is exactly where that stone is. So I think that was a porthole stone there, like you see here, the top one there perhaps, and the sun would come through and it would, it was, it would just illuminate. But what it would illuminate, we worked out, got a little video, is this stone here. And this stone here is very rough. We're still working on it. All in good time, is pillar 43. And the front edge of it has all these carvings on it which JJ Ainsworth says relates to the winter solstice. And so this would have actually been illuminated. So there's all these little.
Julian
Why is she saying it relates to the winter solstice?
Hugh Newman
She's done a whole analysis of this and it's like something to do with the hand coming down and is to do with, you know, reaching down into the underworld and because the winter solstice related to death and rebirth and things like this. Now she is writing this up at the moment, but the fact is this is the one that appears to get illuminated. Now we have to double check this. We're waiting to get the full reconstruction done. We're going to hopefully get access inside at this time of year in due course. So we're working on that.
Julian
How do you get access to that?
Hugh Newman
Very difficult, very difficult. Especially as the archaeologists don't particularly like me or my colleagues I'm working with. But what's also interesting about pillar 43, that's the famous one on the left, that's one everyone knows about, is that not only do we think it gets illuminated on the winter solstice, it's been decoded by Martin Sweatman, a professor at Edinburgh University, as a calendar itself. And so as a calendar, a lunar, solar calendar.
Julian
Yeah. All right, so you have the, you have the breakdown right here of basically.
Hugh Newman
It'S just he's worked out the amount of them v shapes, like 29 or 30 of them to do with the lunar months. Then you have, you add another 11 squares, that makes it to 354 days, yet another 10V's upside down and above. And, and the Other way up.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
Makes 364. And then he thinks the summer solstice. I believe it's the winter solstice. That's the one mistake. It should be. The winter solstice is where it all connects.
Julian
Why do you think it's winter, not summer?
Hugh Newman
Because it's getting illuminated on the winter solstice sunrise morning. And I think the same thing. The Carahan Tepe proves that as well. But that's just. Again, we can't prove this really. Even if we go in there at that time of year at. We still can't prove this is what it was used.
Julian
That's some interesting coincidental math then right there.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. I mean Martin Sweatman, he's like a statistician, like work amongst other things, he works with chemicals and other things at Edinburgh University. But he's brilliant. He's written this book called Prehistory Decoded. He's spoken at a conference and we're. I keep trying to, you know, blend his work with ours. It seems to fit. So I'm quite excited about all this really. I think this is all kind of, of changing everything. But the problem is is that not many people, especially the archaeologists want to get involved in anything to do with astronomy at these sites. They just don't want it. And I think that's, that's, that's where the real problem lies.
Julian
If that's half the story of the site, how can you decide not to get involved? I know, I mean, I understand you don't want like a basic 17 year old girl walking up there trying to give horoscopes on these places. I get it. But like that has nothing to do with this. You're seeing like the math.
Hugh Newman
Yeah.
Julian
That, that you're, that you're identifying at these sites is absolutely unbelievable. Like how they would line it up down to the angle at the perfect time with the light to come in.
Hugh Newman
They would.
Julian
Bet you gave the one example an hour ago where they literally had a face getting covered by it at the. I mean it's, it's incredible.
Hugh Newman
It is when you start looking into it. Yeah. I mean. And it's heavily overlooked. I mean one of the. This was a paper. This is JJ with Lee Claire, actually the head archaeologist. He wrote this paper. It's very good, superb piece of work he's put together and he believes that there's a whole perspective of, you know, he's interpreted Gobekli Tepe basically based on the discoveries. He believes there's ritual adepts, storytellers and hunters involved in the hierarchy of the societies. Ritual adepts, which means basically shameless, basically shaman, religious leader.
Julian
And what were the other two?
Hugh Newman
Storyteller and the hunter.
Julian
In that order?
Hugh Newman
Yeah, they're the three main roles the top people had at the site.
Julian
Okay.
Hugh Newman
But he wrote this whole paper and what really. It's excellent piece of work. But what really bugs me is the fact that there's no mention of the astronomy in there, especially with all the discoveries that are now being made. And also the fact that a lot of my research I've gone into hunter gatherers, I've gone into like Paleolithic caves and other such things. And I've found evidence that potentially in very ancient times, you have caves in France that go 40000 years old, some of them. Or Lascau 20, 40 000, some of them. Let me just, I'll show you a couple of images here. This is really, really intriguing. So you've got the whole caves of France. I went there recently with my family, it was supposed to be a holiday, but I turned it into a full on exploration, much to their disdain.
Julian
Where is this in France?
Hugh Newman
In France, this is all the Doyen Valley, down in the southwest.
Julian
Is this like.
Hugh Newman
Okay, all over. All over that part of France down on the, on the left side there? Yeah.
Julian
40,000-Year-Old tunnels, some of them.
Hugh Newman
So they're basically natural cave systems. And what we have, you know, we have sites like Lascau, the most famous one, this goes back to 17000 years ago. It could go back to 21000 years. And many of the symbols here are astronomical. And these. This goes back.
Julian
It is again.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, this goes back. And so what's also interesting is that in some of these caves, back in 1972, a researcher called Alexander Marshak wrote a book called the Roots of Civilization. And he found in these caves hundreds of these bone of plaques which show indications of counting and notation, all related to the moon and the solar year going back some of them 40, 45000 related to counting.
Julian
40.
Hugh Newman
These ones, these ones here, you can. They've actually worked it all out. So they were counting and analyzing very accurately over a long, long period of time. And so this is what's also interesting about this, is that Martin Sweatman again, he pointed this out to me, that Lascaux, if you go, if you go to the original Lascaux Cave, it's close to the public now, they've actually built a full concrete reconstruction which is actually amazing. Lascaux Cave itself, the entrance, they Chose that cave because it orients to the summer solstice sunset again. Yeah. And this is, this is it. This is how the sun comes through. And it would illuminate cave paintings on the summer solstice sunset time. So they chose a specific cave painted when they knew the sun at that specific moment in of the year would happen over a few days when the sun comes to a standstill and then moves back. And it would illuminate these cases and. But it's not one cave, though they analyzed. This is actually what it looks like. This is actually a part of this cave getting illuminated.
Julian
How big did you say this cave system was again?
Hugh Newman
This is huge. This is like goes off for a nearly a mile, I guess three quarters of a mile. So this is, this is the bit that gets illuminated, but this is at 1k. Right. So these Paleolithic caves, this is, this is like the precursor to Carahan Tepe and Quebec, in my opinion. This is.
Julian
I've actually written about this already 30, 000 years before.
Hugh Newman
Long before. Yeah. And, and so what they did, these French researchers analyzed 130 caves in the whole Dordogne region, southwest France, some in Spain as well. I found that 122 of them were chosen with entrances that aligned to the winter solstice, the summer solstice, and sometimes the equinox, mostly the winter solstice sunrise, though, like we find a Carahan Tepe and at Gobekli Tepe, potentially. And so that blew my mind because we're talking about hunter gatherers going back much further back than people realizing, observing the solstices accurately. I mean, we're not talking. They were choosing very specific caves at certain entrances, alignments that would then come in and illuminate certain paintings. It's pretty epic when you get into it.
Julian
In some cases here we're attracted. I'm trying to keep it all straight, but we're talking about on either side of the Younger Dryas too.
Hugh Newman
Are we talking well into the Ice Age? Yeah.
Julian
Right. So these are separate, obviously separate civilizations.
Hugh Newman
Yes.
Julian
And we're talking about a span of, you know, give or take, round number 30, 000 years between them, and yet they're doing similar things. Do you think that there. That the explanation is that there's just something inherent in mankind that looks above and tries to relate so below? Or do you think that there's some sort of way that traditions or findings, whatever you want to call it, were somehow, through all the climate changes, preserved and passed on across civilizations that also existed in. Totally in this Case. Separate parts of the world.
Hugh Newman
World. Yeah, there's. There's. I mean, I think that. I think there's a lineage of information and knowledge that get. That gets passed on generation to generation. Definitely. I mean, I don't know. There's. I think there are direct connections. I really do. I really think there are direct connections between the Paleolithic people and Carahan Tepe. The reason being is because you have the same observations taking place, you even have the same symbolism. If you look at some of these caves, you not only got all these alignments and everything, but some of the carvings are very similar, 3D relief carvings in stone. You know, you have to quit. You have to look at this. You can't deny this isn't similar.
Julian
What's. What's crazy, though, Hugh, is that I've talked about this before with several different guests on the podcast. But the way that, you know, the average human today views time is so strange, exponentially. And what I mean by that is something that was 30 years ago seems like a while ago. And then the difference between 30 years and 100 years ago is a similar warp in our head to what we do 30 years ago. And then the difference between 100 years ago and 200 years ago is also like a similar time period, even though these are much longer time periods of getting bigger to the point that we may look at something not even nearly as old as this. We may talk about in the ancient Roman Empire, we may talk about something that happened in 50 A.D. and then simultaneously talk about something that happened in 225 A.D. and in our heads, treat it like, oh, that's like the same time period. It's 175 years apart. The civil war in our country was less than 175 years ago. Like, think about how long ago that was. So there's something about when we start to extrapolate further and further down the timescale of time, no pun intended, we start to assume things can be so similar. But to say that things were passed down 30,000 years across civilizations.
Hugh Newman
That'S 30,000 years.
Julian
I can't even conceive that.
Hugh Newman
I know. It's almost impossible to conceive, isn't it? I mean, you think about another. Your perspective is very interesting because you look at stuff, right? Stonehenge. One example. Example you go back to. Stonehenge is built 5,000 years ago. When Stonehenge was being built, Carahan Tepe and Gobekli Tepe had been in use for 1500 years and had also been buried for another 4, 000 years. And so, you know, it's like, hang on a sec. But they're really. There's lots of similarities and clearly I think there's migrations of people. I mean I personally think that that Carahan Tepe Goli Tepe culture, the test table, a super civilization that I call it, they, that was almost like an end point of the Paleolithic knowledge that was built up through these hunter gatherer shaman groups for thousands and thousands of years. And they had to put it all down because they knew they were stopping. They knew there was changes. They knew that Younger Dryas had come to an end. They thought right, let's put it all down, let's carve it all in there, everything we've learned, you know, and then we're going to bury it, you know, for future civilization. So it doesn't, it doesn't get forgotten. It might get lost, but it'll be refound for sure. And so, so people think like the test tabular culture came out of nowhere. I think it's the other way around. I think they came down. All this knowledge was somehow kept, somehow encoded in myths, somehow recorded on these plaques that were then passed on and these certain numbers and certain symbolism, certain things in the sky that were pointed out and read out around this around the fire every night. So people would learn it and pass it on. The oral tradition.
Julian
Yeah. The profound gets weird though because I mean you and I both know the, the. What's it. The, the. The whisper down. It's not called this but like the whisper down the lane game. We could sit here with 20 people in a circle and whisper first story. And it's only 95 by the time we get to. To the end of that, you know, to the, to the 20th person.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, I agree.
Julian
So you're talking about 30, 000 years where they're just talking at fireplaces or you know, around fires and stuff. That changes.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, but there's, there's. There, there were these traditions. You can look at this through the Native American traditions as well. Very specifically actually. And also the Druid traditions of England where if you, if you start looking into it, you can find that the, the messages and the, the myths and the stories that were passed down were. It was had to be taught and had to be learned and memorized. Exactly. That was very strict. It was incredibly strict. You had to learn every word, every nuance exactly as it's been taught to you. And you can't change it and you'll be tested constantly. And this was the oral tradition. This is very much of the Druid tradition, you know, that I'm aware of because it's in my homeland and everything. And so this was one of the things and so. And the other thing is these stories, they're not just stories, they're each. They can, it can just be the same words in the same way, but a different level of person who has a different level of understanding, who's been initiated into certain things, will read different things into the same story. And they could hear the story throughout their life, have gone through five initiations and understand five different aspects of it that the first level won't understand, the second, third and fourth. And so there's that side of it.
Julian
Sounds very freemasony.
Hugh Newman
It probably is. It probably is. It's probably where they all you. That's probably where that all came from.
Julian
Don't do that to me.
Hugh Newman
That's where that all came from, trust me. I mean, this is, this is what, you know, these traditions. And so. And I think the Native Americans were the same. I think the Aborigines were the same because they had something called song lines. And there's, there's brilliant research about memory spaces and about how memory and oral traditions. You can train yourself to get memory levels of the Druids. You know, this is like a well known thing. They had superb memory. You can train yourself to get to that level. You can do techniques. But memory spaces, I think is also what Gobekli Tepe and Carahan Tepe are. They're places where you've recorded everything you know in stone. And then different levels of initiative will then understand it. It doesn't have to be initiated. It could just be like rites of passage and age, kind of, you know, rituals and things like that as you get older, which a lot of traditional societies still use, indigenous societies still have. And so I think that these were memory spaces and then you'd be taught as well. They become teaching spaces. So, you know, different levels or different ages of people would be taught something from that stone. And the same stone could be getting. You could learn something from, from a different level, from a different age, and you could pick up other things from it as well. So there's multiple, multiple stories within the same story depending on your level of understanding and where you're at. So I think you've got, you got to understand that the oral tradition would have lasted thousands of years and been strictly adhered to. I think this is one of the, the missing aspects of the way we look at the past.
Julian
Even that But. But it's. So this is where I get a little bit skeptical of that. Just because it's so many years that, like, they're still human. Right. So it might be strictly adhered to, but if it changes 0.01% over a hundred years, and then it changes 0.01 over another hundred, I mean, this, this compounds over time. I mean, people, the. The stuff we argue about is, you know, being so confusing now of 2,000 years ago, let alone 200 years ago. Yeah, it's crazy. So I see what you're saying. And I mean, I guess it's possible, but it's. That's. That's just wild to me. Like, is there any way we talk all the time about the issues of, like, paper, papyrus, and things that people would write records on that are easily destroyed in any type of climactic event? I don't think that's a word, but you know what I mean? Climatic event, whatever it is, you know, is there any other way besides the oral tradition or like carving in tablets that are purposely buried hundreds of feet below the ground that some of these things could have been passed down that I'm not thinking of.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, I mean, there could be stuff that's still. I mean, there's. Look how little has been dug up in the whole testable region. There could be tons more things. I mean, they found evidence of hemp and flax clothing.
Julian
Okay.
Hugh Newman
So they know some things like that can survive depending on the climate. But also the bone. The bone carvings. There's a lot of bone carvings.
Julian
Bone carvings, yeah.
Hugh Newman
Like. Like we saw, like you get at some of the places in the Paleolithic world. World as well. A lot of those. You do get a few things like that in test Tepla. Like this. This one here actually, this is actually a stone, but on the bottom right there, you've got Sephirothe. They've actually found stone discs that have symbolism and numbers on them and things like that. And then you have this, this etching at the top of Carahan Tepe as well up on the hill, which seems to be numerical.
Julian
Wait, is that. Am I up here? Is that before they did the excavation, or is this the other side?
Hugh Newman
This is still on the top. This is further up the hill, even further up. So I don't know. I mean, I don't know if I don't think I'm 100 correct. I don't think everything is passed down perfectly. Don't get me wrong.
Julian
No, you got to give some sort of theory.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, there are Correlations that seem to keep coming up. So when it comes to astronomy and the solstices, you can. Everyone's going to be observing that right. At any time and they're going to notice only rise, only reaches that point on the horizon. Only reaches that point on the horizon and then it come, it moves back into the equinox or orientation. So they know they're all going to pick that up. But I think there seems to be just a kind of consciousness like linked to that and the, the information being passed down somehow.
Julian
Real quick, you can I just hit the bathroom and then we'll come back and continue this?
Hugh Newman
Sure.
Julian
All right, we'll be right back. All right, we're back. So what am I looking at right here?
Hugh Newman
This is, this is actually camera hand Tepe. This is just one of the illustrations that was originally a pen and ink illustration by my friend Dan Lish.
Julian
Okay.
Hugh Newman
Who does some superb artwork for well known rap artists as well. But I, I put it, I just put it through AI and it colored it and it became out like an oil painting. So I was quite pleased. Beautiful. But notice this, the style of carving things you see in here, like you see all over Taz Tepola. Yeah. This is what's so interesting to me. We were talking about the caves. You get these in the paleolithic caves, you know, going all the way back. One of the interesting ones here is from Labry de Poisson. This is basically the shelter of the fish in the library.
Julian
De Poisson.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. The shelter. Yeah. Abride the poisson. So it's a shelter of the fish. I'm not very good at French or anything. This was again, this goes back to. Back to 25, 000 years old. You get relief carving like you get in Testepola. But what's interesting is that this is just one example. We won't, I won't do many more or anything. But this one's interesting because the jaw, they say of the salmon which is depicted there's about three feet wide, is pulled back. And this only happens in the winter towards the solstice. Yeah. When the male is in mating season, he has this, this thing happens to his jaw and, and I thought that's strange. Then I looked at it and then this cave is aligned to the winter solstice sunrise. So the light would come in at that time of year and illuminate the cave. So, so, so they're depicting time relevant natural phenomena inside caves that are aligned to that time of year.
Julian
Unbelievable.
Hugh Newman
So, so that is unusual. I mean to Come up with that. If you're a Paleolithic hunter gatherer type, you know, it's like where did that come from? Where did these ideas come from? And so it just gets weirder and weirder the more you look into it.
Julian
Do we have theories going back to Karahantepe? Do we have theories about, you know, like you were discussing that these seem to be places of university and ritual worship and they would move from place to place. But do we have any theories yet about how these people would fill their days and what their lifestyle was like, what kind of the food they were eating at the time? Obviously before they found all these sites they just thought it was, you know, more basic hunter gatherer people live there. But now it seems to be more advanced. So do we know what, what it looked like on a day to day for them?
Hugh Newman
There's evidence of what are called hunting traps around all these different sites. I mean this is one thing, they're like giant V shaped areas that walls going into these rough V shapes, different shapes that you just, just trap these, you know, migrating or moving animals into. You trap them. So they couldn't get over the walls and kill them basically. So they were definitely still doing the hunting. They were still doing the gathering. When all these sites were being built, they weren't. Agriculture only developed 200 years or so later, like 9,400 BC, 600 BC maybe. And that was just north of this area, a place called Karakadam Mountain. This is like the giant volcano where all the, all the bass out in the area came from. From. And that is on those slopes is where the first ever Einkorn wheat was grown. Which that was it. That was when everything changed. Everything became settled down and expanded out from there. And the whole agricultural revolution, which we still almost live in today because we're, we're sedentary people and we grow food. We don't walk about. Yeah, spears, you know, hunting gazelle, you know, we, we have something.
Julian
That's what Dave was doing.
Hugh Newman
Well, apart from him. Apart from him, yeah. And so there's this whole change that took place at this time and I think as the expansion of the civilizations grew, they kind of had to, they didn't have any choice. They had to do something about it otherwise they're going to starve. So you have all these images, you saw some of the statues earlier of like ribs showing like, you know, it could. Starving could represent emaciation. Yeah, it could rep. We don't know because it could also be a shamanic symbol which is part of the. The shamanic leaders, the kind of ritual adepts would starve themselves to go into altered states to receive information they share with their kind of groups. And so you don't know. It could be a bit one or the other or both. So there's a lot. They had a lot of fun. They were like building massive hunting traps. They were gathering berries, which is fun as well. I'm sure. I'm sure they were finding mushrooms.
Julian
That's what I'm saying. My head was gone. Those berries are eating them until they feel something.
Hugh Newman
Well, I think they also had time for that as well. They had time to experiment with consciousness.
Julian
Yeah, they're just. They're looking at the stars, they're hunting, and they're finding other food to eat. Like, what else is going on? You know what I mean?
Hugh Newman
All sorts of stuff. Yeah. I mean, what we've got here. Yeah. Also there's. I think not just with the psychedelics we have, you're gonna like. You're gonna quite like this. I think they. At Beckley Tepe, they found.
Julian
Come on, this is.
Hugh Newman
This is to do with consciousness as well. Okay. They found. Some researchers back in the early 2000s from Trieste University, they were doing archaeo acoustic analysis of enclosure D, and they found this really powerful spiral magnetic field in the center of enclosure D. The one we looked at with the big pillars.
Julian
A magnetic field.
Hugh Newman
A spiraling magnetic field moving. And so this is really interesting to me because, I mean, that's just. I stumbled across this in this obscure paper.
Julian
Yeah, you gotta explain this. Yeah, this is. This isn't clocking yet.
Hugh Newman
Because they were basically analyzing that. These are the guys here. They were analyzing the acoustics. They wanted to see if there's any specific acoustics associated with the site. And they then found the middle is actually Stonehenge. They found. They found magnetism there as well. But the two on. The two on the side there are actually from the site. And they found not only acoustic properties infrasound, which they couldn't understand where it was even coming from, which affects consciousness and affects your brain chemistry. They found this magnetic energy there, and they realized this is natural. This is a natural feature of the landscape.
Julian
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Hugh Newman
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Julian
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Hugh Newman
SpecialOffer Gobekli Tepe was chosen potentially because it had this magnetic quality. And people could feel that when they went up this hill. And then they measured it, and they measured it and recorded it. And then, unfortunately, Klaus Schmidt, the head archaeologist at the time, died, and they couldn't continue their research. The new archaeologists wouldn't let them in. So this is really interesting. And we've got a kind of depiction of that.
Julian
Wait, the new archaeologists wouldn't let them look at this more?
Hugh Newman
No. And now. But now it would be better. Well, I mean, at the time, there was no archaeologists, and for a few years. So I think that might have been why. So we've created this depiction here. This is by Dan Lish. I want to give him credit. He did a lot of the artwork in the little book and the little wooden book. And we think that not only so you have this magnetic energy, you have acoustics there as well, like you get in Malta and Stonehenge and other things. Things. And combined with, you know, potentially psychedelics, man, these people were having a good time. And also they were. You could see the abstract nature of the artwork. You get it. You start to get it. Because they were experimenting with altering consciousness. And I think this is so overlooked, even though Lee Claire actually mentioned it in one of his interviews. And so I think you've got to, you know, approach this from a different perspective now. There's this whole shamanic perspective when it comes to understanding these people. And I think it was their culture. I think they had. They had like a religion, but not the way we see it. It was like. Like animism.
Julian
We're still. We're so stuck in, you know, the. Some of the 20th and 21st century. Just like homogenizing of that entire space is, oh, drugs and rock and roll or whatever. And yet these things are natural substances, substances that are found in the plant life around us here on Earth that have been that ancient tribes, whether it be this one. Less ancient than this, more ancient than this. It was always a common denominator that they had access to. And you don't think they would have been experimenting with this to try to get, as you say, some higher level of consciousness. Of course they would have. But we're like. There's like this ivory tower around that somehow still to this day, even with all that we know, like in the modern day, for uses of this stuff, stuff and how it can help people. But, you know, they're like, we don't want to look at that. We don't want to do that.
Hugh Newman
That's true. I mean, this is some. These are some. Some of the artwork from the book. These. All of these images could be mushroom symbols. Yes, all of them. You got the top left there. Let's say birch. You got the middle one we looked at previously. That's Carahan Tepe. On the right, you've got the birthing goddess from Gobekli Tepe. Looks like she's got a mushroom head. Even at Karahan Tepe on the bottom there, structure a. A. It looks like a serpent with a mushroom head.
Julian
Right. The line between the phallic and the mushroom is dangerously thin.
Hugh Newman
They're often connected. Yeah. In ancient cultures. And also there's. There's other. There's other elements here as well. I mean, one of these you're gonna like. This next one is the fact that Christmas is associated with the mushroom. You probably know about this.
Julian
This podcast is brought to you by Amentara. If you've listened to my ads, you know all. St. Nick was tripping.
Hugh Newman
And I've actually written a kind of slightly fun article about this. This is published on ancient origins.net and. But there's a whole thing relating to the winter solstice rituals at Carahan Tepe and other places around the world and how the Christmas mythos became what it is. One of these is to do with mushrooms. Well, you have the animated mascara mushroom, the red and the white. You know this. Yeah, yeah.
Julian
You know it well.
Hugh Newman
Santa Claus and everything else, the red and the white flying through the sky. It's one of the effects of this type of mushroom. There's also this connection with animals, the reindeer. And in the Sammy tradition of, you know, this. This part of the world, we have. They drink reindeer, we. Or pee, because they're the ones who ingest the mushrooms. The reindeers turn it into the correct kind of formula for the psychedelic. Then they drink the reindeer pee and they get high. Effectively.
Julian
Reindeer tastes like the wind.
Hugh Newman
Just like. Tastes like bad wine or something, you.
Julian
Know, I wouldn't want to know.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. And then you have. You have this thing, like the holy mushroom as well. Again, this. There's. There's different things have been found at Carahan Temple, like these stone plates. Okay. I think they were carrying certain things on them. And when they excavated the site, they found these plates positioned on the benches really carefully. So they weren't just for food, they weren't for Bringing out your sandwiches on or anything like that. This was for sacraments. And I think this is what we're finding here for sacraments. Well, like mushrooms, like. Yeah, different things. And also there's a type of grass that grows abundantly, normal grass, not marijuana in the whole area. And that has a small percentage of natural DMT within it. And so some people have suggested, Andrew Collins talked about this as well, that if you light a lot of this grass and put it on fire in an enclosed space, which some of these may have been with roofs on, in some cases, you're going to get the effects of DMT getting into your system as well. And so also many of these structures, potentially the smaller structure, I don't think the big structures had roots, but the smaller structures did. And you climb through these holes. So you would have this smoky room with a fire going. You would have the shaman climbing down through the whole stone, coming down through the chimney into it and then giving out the gifts, the sacraments. All very Christmassy, don't you think?
Julian
Very Christmassy.
Hugh Newman
And so there's all these different elements you can bring into this where we take Christmas for granted and all the symbolism, we just take it for granted. You see on Christmas cards you see that the presents wrapped under the tree, they used to always be in red and white under the tree. And anometer, mascara grows under fur trees naturally. The presence so connecting. And so all these little things kind of come together in my opinion and suggest that these old rituals that were developed in places like the Testepola region into other cultures came across now as we pretty much see, see Christmas. Yeah. And so it gets. There's a few other elements there we can link down to my article about it as well.
Julian
Yeah, let's include.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, yeah.
Julian
And give that afterwards to us so we can put it down in the description for sure.
Hugh Newman
And then you even have like the, you know, I just go on a bit. The three wise men. Yeah, Gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Julian
Look at that.
Hugh Newman
So go frankincense and myrrh elves. They're both, they're both psychotropic gold is valuable, but it could be monatomic gold, which is mind altering. Like the kind of white powder gold.
Julian
Wait, monatomic gold. I don't know anything about this. It's mind altering.
Hugh Newman
Yes.
Julian
You get rich and high at the same time.
Hugh Newman
Oh, this is. Yeah, this is very powerful stuff. Wow. I've experimented with it before, actually. It's legal. Yeah, it's legal. Yeah. Just want to put that on camera.
Julian
Yeah, that's all right. We can get you out of the country real fast.
Hugh Newman
And so that, so that is a mind altering substance and that was known about in ancient times. I was found at this Hathor temple for instance in the Sinai of Egypt where they found sort of these crucibles alchemically produced produce gold, turns into this white powder, actually creates an anti gravitational field when you alchemically produce it and also when you ingest it, it bonds your DNA. So it can actually have this profound effect on your consciousness. It makes your DNA become like a conductor for light and energy. And so it's super healing as well. You should look into it. It's really, really very interesting.
Julian
Yeah, I think Deep's already buying it on the dark web over here.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, well he, I think you can, but you can, you can buy it on the normal web, I'm sure. But so you have these three substances which could be psychotropic and they're bringing, right, they're bringing this to the Christ child. Yeah, they're following a star. Right. The star is probably Venus. Right. So. Right. This is what happens at Carahan Tepe every eight years. We can go back in time and check. We checked all this out. Every eight years Venus will rise on the winter solstice in the same position as the sun but an hour before the sun on the horizon. And so it's a winter solstice marker as well every eight years. And so there's this longer cycle along with the solar cycle as well. And so at Carahan Tepe that could, could be bright enough before sunrise to illuminate the stone, head through the porthole stone so that you get, you get that going on. But, but the thing is Venus is very much often associated with the winter solstice because it's also. They found it in Newgrange in Ireland as well, another winter solstice site. Potentially it would be bright enough before sunrise to illuminate the chamber there as well. That goes back 5,100 years. And so we have all these different weird little elements kind of forming. I mean it could be bizarre coincidences.
Julian
It's a lot of coincidence.
Hugh Newman
A lot. Yeah. And so I think this, this is quite an interesting, you know, side to it when you start looking into it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Julian
Now you mentioned earlier you were talking about how some of the structures we found, I can't remember if it was Carahan Tepe, Go Beckley Tepe or all the above had some sphinx like features as well.
Hugh Newman
That's mainly the beard. Yeah, it's Mainly the beard thing.
Julian
How do we explain that? Or that.
Hugh Newman
That. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, it could be actual beards. You know, they could just had beards.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
At the time. I mean, the other thing is. But they've suddenly just started finding these, you know, at the sites where they seem to have specific. They almost look like the false beards which, you know, the Sphinx used to have one. Some of the statues in Egypt have them as well, various pharaohs and other such things. And also, I mean, the Sphinx itself, I think, you know, me and JJ think that could be a leopard. The reason we think that is because a Carahan Tepe, the leopard symbol, is one of the most prominent symbols there all over the site. Other sites as well, but mainly Carahan Tepe. There's also an alignment, we believe, to the east, like the. The Sphinx is facing to the east as well. And. And at that time in the east, on the horizon during the equinox, mornings like March 21, September 21, as the sun rises, it would rise in Leo. So Leo may have been not. Not a, you know, lion, could have been a leopard. So we find that there. But also, if you go back to Sphinx, Graham Hancock and Robert Bal believe that that's 10, 500 or so BC because it's looking east. And on the equinox, Leo rises with the sun at that time of year as well. And so there are. There could be connections between these two great cultures. The Sphinx could be that old. And even Robert Shock himself, the geologist, has stated it could be much older than people realize. So they could. There are more and more connections turning up between Egypt and southeast Turkey. I mean, you can see that just in some of the symbolism. You see that even on the middle pyramid on the Giza Plateau, much of that is carved. You know, the whole. Whole section of that pyramid is bedrock. People don't realize that one corner of the middle pyramid, Cafre's pyramid, is bedrock carved from bedrock. And then they shaped the bedrock and then built blocks above it because you can see behind it they've got like all these. These caves that kind of go under the pyramids, which we can talk.
Julian
Yeah. Didn't you, like break into one of these caves or something? Were you telling me that before camera me?
Hugh Newman
Yeah, Maybe.
Julian
Maybe illegal break in.
Hugh Newman
Now. This was. Okay. This was in. This was a while. It's sort of, you know, about a year ago, we might pull this video up deep. I was with Andrew Collins. He. He is the discoverer of what's Known as Geezer's Cave Underworld. These are a series of natural caves under the Giza Plateau. But the entrance is called the Tomb of the Birds. And this is all carved out, it's like a chamber. And then at the back there's a. You can walk through into this area and you can walk through deep into under the Giza Plateau and go and take a look. And he. This was a sensation 2008, when he discovered it, and he hadn't been back there since then because he got banned from going in there or got locked up. But we found out, thanks to Trevor Grassy, who's another researcher on Egypt, that the gate was open or wasn't locked. So we thought, oh, we'll just go and have a look. Yeah, just go take a look.
Julian
All right.
Hugh Newman
It's okay. Yeah, you know, if we get told off or in prison, so what, you know, it'll be fine. So luckily we just went to have a look, we thought, we're not going to touch anything, we'll just go in. We went in, had a look and we went through the whole cave system and it completely blew my mind. I'd never been in there. And Andrew was delighted because he hadn't been in there since 2008 and that he was like, whoa. And like. And then a few months later, this big story came out. The whole SAR scan technology with Armando Mayor, Filippo Bionde, where they did this whole analysis using their satellite technology under the Geezer player were all these underground features and chambers. But weirdly, the Tomb of the Birds and the cave system, they orient directly to Cafre's pyramid. If you kept walking, if you could get through it further, you'd virtually. It would join up with whatever's under Cafre's pyramid. And so I think there's a connection there. And even if you look around Cafrey's pyramid itself, this is the big middle pyramid around the back, you can see all these entrances going in, like sloping down into the just. And then they're all blocked up with rubble. And so I think that there's something going on. I mean, not only from Andrew's discovery in 2008, but also from all this new analysis which has been put forward by this Italian team.
Julian
Yeah. And there. Now there's this whole latest what's underneath the pyramids Argument going on. I know Ben van Kirkwick's been talking about it a bunch. Michael. This is what I was referring to earlier. Michael Button and I got together, get to it for like a few minutes. But for people out there who aren't familiar with what the alleged new findings are. I think my friend Jesse Michaels also just did a video on this. What, what is it that was discovered and what are the hypotheses that are being put forward?
Hugh Newman
Well, the. I haven't watched the latest data. I've been traveling for the last month. But in general sense, just to put it, you know, if people aren't aware of. Yeah, this is. This was first put out in March last. This year. March. This year. 20. Well, March 2025. And there's a big press conference in Italy and everything else. And Filippo Bionde, he's a scientist from Italy. Amanda Mazer, Egyptian, sorry, an Egyptologist based in Italy, He's Italian. And they kind of created this team because Filippo was doing some brilliant work in before this pro. He was interested in anything ancient. He was able to use this satellite scan technology basically mixed with some kind of other elements to do with acoustics and able to penetrate further into the ground than he could before. And he was able to analyze bridges that have fallen down. He was able to analyze things that were really useful to people. He could help construction where they know where cavities are and where they aren't, things like this. And he got approached by Armando and then they kind of put this team together. So let's have a look at the Giza Plateau. Because there's all these stories of stuff under the Giza Plateau. Let's take a look. So they did that and they got these remarkable results. And initially it was this huge area beneath Cafre's pyramid, the central pyramid, one one we've been talking about, and then expanded over the next few months. They. Because it uses up so much computer power, it takes time to analyze areas really carefully. And they kept repeating the process to double, triple check, you know, as best they could. And they kept finding all these things and. But some of them correlated what was known to be there. So there's good evidence that it works. You know, my. In my opinion, I think it does. Now they claiming stuff goes a kilometer beneath the pyramids. I mean, that is two thirds of a mile or whatever. And that is hard to take when you think about it, because you go. You're going deep into the water level to start with, and you're almost reaching a point where it's going to be pretty hot.
Julian
What are they basing the kilometer take on?
Hugh Newman
This is based upon their data, basically that they're basically penetrating into the ground with this SA technology, but using acoustics to kind of vibrate it downwards. I think I Think that's a simple way of explaining.
Julian
Okay.
Hugh Newman
And then they can kind of read the data and analyze it and create images from that. And they've, they've now been analyzing many of the shafts that have been investigated by people like Trevor Grassy. I think they're going to be. We've asked them to look at the Tomb of the Birds and the geezer's cave underworld, because if they can get that and get it accurately, it'll back it. You'll back them up.
Julian
Are they getting a lot of resistance from the regular crew in Egypt, I take it?
Hugh Newman
Yeah, yeah, I think that is the word. Yeah, definitely. And. But I think it has to be taken care. You have to take this kind of carefully because number one, you've got. It's all done from satellites. So basically they don't need permission to do anything bizarre demanded. They should have had permission, this, that and the other, but they don't need to have that. But what needs to be done now, as far as I'm concerned, is they need to now go out on the Giza Plateau with gpr. You can get these kind of rollers, you know, just roll them about and just do that, that just, just see if it matches what they found. Then you can verify what they've got or what they haven't got. I mean, obviously you can't go down a kilometer with that, but you can go down a certain amount and check some of their data, see if it matches up. I think that's, that's what they got to do. But they also got to get into some of these tunnels, I mean, because some of them are accessible. I mean, we know this.
Julian
The fact that some of them are like blocked off and they're like, no, just don't look at it. That's crazy.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, some of them. But there's a lot of. I mean, if you look, go to the Giza place, there's just rubble everywhere. Get chunked, chucked in any hole they can find. You know, it soon gets filled up with sand, so it's hard to excavate. And so. But these new technologies that are now available, why not take a look? You know, why not just get some pinhole cameras going down there? Let's see what's going on. I mean, because they're finding stuff in the pyramid still. I mean, for God's sake, these have been known about for hundreds of years. They're still finding stuff inside pyramids because it's like solid block of stone, virtually, you know, obviously made up a smaller box, but it's like a mountain of stone. So they're still being able. They can still find stuff in there. Why can't they just go underground a little bit and see what else is being found? But I think the new research, I'm not 100 aware of it, I haven't had a chance to follow up on it, but I think they're just now just taking it and getting more detailed analysis of what they've already put forward. And I'm very interested to see where this all goes, to be honest with you.
Julian
With you, the new research notwithstanding, because that's still developing prior to what we're hearing now. What, what were your thoughts, what have your thoughts been on whether or not it was possible for the pyramids to be created as their. As they've said, and what the timeline you thought it was of when they were actually created versus when we're told.
Hugh Newman
So we're told they're roughly 2600 BC onwards. Woods this is like the kind of fourth dynasty. The first dynasty was really 3100 BC. This was the Scorpion King or Nama Menes. And the first pyramids really were built towards the end of the second, early third Dynasty at Saqqara and places like this. So that's probably going back to 2800 BC, but there's some dating, some. Some luminescence type dating was done on the Giza platter of some of the granite on Mankura's pyramid, the third pyramid. And they found that to be. This was by Robert Temple and also another team. He funded this, this project. This research is brilliant research. He spoke at our conference recently and he believes that he's got dates officially that at least four to 500 years older, at least. So we're talking first dynasty or before. Now, that's. That's conservative data. I mean, there's, there's elements to this, because when you're dealing with. I mean, you look at the chambers under the pyramid, there are chambers there, there are tunnels, there are entire complexes like the Osiris shaft, which is multiple levels going down with, you know, descending passages. They could have been on any time because you can't date the bedrock. This is the problem. And this is why getting down to the bedrock, where they take their samples from in Turkey, they can actually date it. But I don't think they've got samples that far down. It's all flooded with water. And so I think there's a potential of it all being much, much older. I think that. I think that has to be considered especially now with Gobekli Tepe and Carahan Tepe dating, because there are direct connections between these cultures. Something that Andrew Collins has looked at, JJ's been looking at it. You find like there's a myth from Haran for instance, which is in the Haran playing Nigga Bekli Tepe, where the Sabians would have traditions of coming down to specifically Cafre's pyramid and, and underneath there would be some of the sacred rooms of their religion and things like this, you know, linked with Enoch and other such things. And so it's very bizarre, you know, you find these connections, you find the same kind of arrowheads that go back to the pre pottery neolithic in a place called Helwan. There's something that Klaus Schmidt and Andrew looked at. You get them also in Chandler, there's a site actually in Chandler for where one of the statues Earth of Man was found. And they're the same types of heads going back to the same era. So how are they in these two places at once, you know, so you get all these correlations.
Julian
I want to know how the goddamn stones got there.
Hugh Newman
Oh my man. I mean, I mean just the granite. I mean you're bringing up 70 ton blocks of granite. It what, 600 kilometers, like 4 or 500 miles from Aswan. Yeah. And then you're lifting it up above the king's chamber with all these layers of these granite blocks. Firstly, how'd you get it to the Giza plateau and then how did you lift them up?
Julian
Some strong ass slaves.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, Something giants. Yeah. Yes. Gotta be giants.
Julian
Yeah, yeah. Actually that, on that note, you've done a lot of work on giants, you were saying?
Hugh Newman
Myself, You're a believer. Well, myself and Jim Vieira. Yeah. We've, we've written two books on the subject. I mean, because I mean I'm, I don't, you know, I don't believe in giants or anything like that, but I do believe all the accounts I found in the academic record. Okay. That, that, that's what fascinates me.
Julian
How do you say those two things at the same time? I don't believe in giants, but I believe all the accounts. Well, I mean, I'm not gay, but I'm kind of gay.
Hugh Newman
But, but how would you like like account for a thousand reports of giant skeletons in North America, for instance?
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
Written by academics, even in the Smithsonian's own journals, by doctors and people who've dug them up. Are they all lying or is there some reality to it? And I think that's where the problem is, because we're dismissed as like Giantologists, stupid. You know, you're making it all up. But we're not. We found all the accounts and we're like, what the hell? We need to put into it. There's something to this. We need to just, at least we don't, you know, we don't necessarily. We haven't seen any real skeletons. I've seen sort of the odd fragment here and there. But you have to kind of consider there's something weird going on in the past, especially with all the myths of giants everywhere as well. I mean, even Stonehenge. The original name of Stonehenge was the Giants Dance.
Julian
You know, that was the Giants Dance.
Hugh Newman
That was the first name of Stonehenge before it became Stonehenge. It was only. That's a Saxon name that was added much, much later.
Julian
They're like, we gotta clean this up academically. What, what books did you write? With which giants did you focus on?
Hugh Newman
First book we did in 2015 was called Giants on Record. And that was focused on North America entirely. A little bit of Mexico, a little bit of Canada. Our other book came out in 2021 called the Giants of Stonehenge in Ancient Britain. That was very focused on all of Britain, not just Stonehenge, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. And we found 250 reported accounts there as well.
Julian
What did the reported accounts look like?
Hugh Newman
Like something, same kind of thing. It's like academic journals. You've got, There was, there were certain ones on display in certain places. You've got obscure ones which you can't really verify because it's one account in one report newspaper from the 1824, you know, from Wales. You know, you can't, you can't, you can't verify these things. But we, we just, we're quite open minded, but we're also relatively sensible. So we just thought we'd put them all together. But all the accounts we could get together, analyze them. We did. We, we made a big thing about these ones are clearly hoaxes, pointed out which ones are clearly hoaxes. And these are the ones we can't really prove were hoaxes. What do you think? And left it, we kind of left it open for people to look at because we don't want to kind of, of come across as completely mad men, you know, and the same thing with Britain as well. But we look more into the myths in Britain because all the myths of Britain, all the founding myths, all the myths associated with megalithic sites, all linked with giants. Every, virtually everyone is very weird. The more you get into it. And we found accounts of, I dare to say it, over 14 foot tall skeletons being found near me, near Stonehenge, and reported by academics in the early 1500s. What'd you do with that?
Julian
You have like, there's no record. They didn't keep them. We don't have them anywhere. Just reported.
Hugh Newman
A lot of them turn to dust, apparently. Or they get taken away. They get taken away by kind of the reptiles, the rich people, maybe. Yeah, maybe the same thing.
Julian
But that's that guy's name, David Ike somewhere. He's like, yeah, that's it.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, maybe, maybe, but. But there's. So there's an interesting story there that. But we leave it open. We're not trying to kind of convince anybody that giants ruled the earth or anything like that, but we found it just a compelling narrative, a compelling story to put it together in these two countries. And it was, it was a great project. We really enjoyed working on it and we stand by what we put out. We're not like, you know, we're very clear. We don't really, you know, we're not believers. We're not like.
Julian
I understand that.
Hugh Newman
You know what I mean? You know, but we found it compelling that there was so many accounts.
Julian
There's something that happened. Even if it's, even if that's not the explanation, there's some sort of pattern to these accounts that says something different could have been going on. Yeah.
Hugh Newman
I mean, even here, like New York, all this area, we have hundred, over 100 accounts of giants. Yeah. Going back to them.
Julian
I mean, they play five miles away.
Hugh Newman
There you go. See? They've even stolen the name of the old giants. Yeah, but you have like going slightly further west from here, you have like a whole bunch of mounds. I forget exactly where. Going into Pennsylvania, basically. Yeah.
Julian
Okay.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. There's a whole. There's a whole series of mounds that were found. I can't remember. This is like we wrote a book 10 years ago, but you know, there was. There looked like there was some kind of battle as well. And they found all these skeletons they reported and dug up and they all disappeared. But everything in America has been taken away by nagpra.
Julian
Nagpra?
Hugh Newman
Yeah. Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation act act in 1990 that got enforced. So all the burials, all the skeletons that some were on display in like universities and museums, all got taken away and re buried in a sacred manner.
Julian
Oh, right.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. And. And so, so there's that. So there's not much evidence left, but there's There's a lot of data, and it's. It's very weird. You start looking, you start reading all the accounts and all the discoveries from, like, just from New York, for instance. It just blows your mind. Yeah.
Julian
The fact that that could have been, like, right here.
Hugh Newman
Yeah.
Julian
We don't think of anything that way in America, but this was here for a long time, obviously.
Hugh Newman
But the mound culture people especially, you know, the who. The mound culture. So that mainly. Mainly Ohio, going down, all the way down into, like, Louisiana, down the Mississippi kind of area. You got a lot of skeletons were unearthed in the mounds right up until the mid-1900s that were like 7, 8ft tall.
Julian
And if they. If. If they hypothetically did exist and they were giants, are these humans that were just way bigger or are they something entirely different?
Hugh Newman
No, I think they were just. Very. Well, I think they were. It appears that they were breeding. The elites of these different tribes and cultures were breeding between themselves. They weren't breeding with the kind of common people they were.
Julian
Right.
Hugh Newman
Yeah.
Julian
Optimizing the height, size.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. It was very much a royal kind of vibe. Yeah. Keeping it within certain groups. It's bizarre when you start looking into it. I tell you, it's a weird one. And I. I find I'm still compelled by it, you know, because more accounts keep. As more newspapers get digitized and more old reports get digitized, you can't help but go, what the hell?
Julian
Something is every. There, there.
Hugh Newman
So, you know, how could everybody be making up these stories for hundreds of 200 years in America? It just doesn't compute.
Julian
And that's the thing. It's like it could. Could have a different explanation. It could be something different. But there's a. There, there.
Hugh Newman
Like.
Julian
Like. Like there's something that was different that allowed maybe something like this to happen, like Stonehenge or whatever. That is some sort of explanation that we have not figured out yet. But the. The pieces of people who thought maybe they figured it out.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's. I mean, that. Yeah. And there's. You start looking into the Native American traditions as well. Well, with very strong, as we mentioned earlier, very strong oral traditions.
Julian
Yes.
Hugh Newman
And they talk about giants as a matter of fact, as part of their history.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
It's just. That's it. And can you dismiss that? They just. And they. They see it as a factual thing. And. And there's a very interesting academic or so Native American campaign or an elder who died around 10, 12 years ago called Vine Deloria Jr. Vine Delorio Jr. Vine Deloria Jr.
Julian
Okay.
Hugh Newman
You should look him up. He's really cool. Hero. A book called Red Earth, White Lies. He wrote a book, How We Used to Live. I've just been reading that actually. And he doesn't just.
Julian
He.
Hugh Newman
He was one of the first people to put a lot of these giant accounts together. And he was like, wow, this is like, what the hell? And then he. I love his book, How We Used to Live or How We Used to Be that talks about the shamanic element of these cultures and the magic they could do in front of people. And it was recorded by many white settlers coming in, witnessed these outrageous feats of magic like that, almost impossible to comprehend. And he recorded them all in this book as well. And so these, these people. And that shows me this could have been what the Testepola people were like. They high level shamans and they developed these skills over, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of years. And so I think, you know, looking back at, you know, cultures relatively recently, like here, you're going to find clues as to what was going on in other places around the world in much, much earlier times. And this is where the anthropological data comes in really handy. The stuff that the. Based upon the hunter gatherer groups, a lot of them are from North America actually, and they've managed to sort of relocate that thousands of years ago and apply that to the same. You know, people were doing the same thing back then. And that's where a lot of. In my. And this is why the solstice was again being multiply used by all these different cultures going back thousands of years. So it's fascinating when you start, you start digging, you know, and I got to be honest with you, a lot of this isn't on the Internet. It. So we have to dig into old journals, we have to dig into like go through paywalls on academic sites.
Julian
God, you take that for granted. You would think that it's all like out there at this point.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, I mean, a lot. I mean, honestly, I did a podcast similar to this like a year ago or something and they didn't want to attach my computer or anything and show some images. And as I kept talking and I kept trying to find all the things I was talking about and they're just not there.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
You know, so. So it's really, you know, myself and jj, we really dig into the records. And Jim Vieira, when I was working with him on the giant books, we would go to libraries, go through old kind of microfilm, you know, spend hours, you know, trying to find something and I think that's what doesn't really happen so much anymore.
Julian
That's cool that you're doing that.
Hugh Newman
Digging into old books. Yeah, we have to translate a lot of things as well from, you know, what languages? Well, all the Paleolithic stuff. A lot of that's from French and Italian. We have to translate a lot from. Sometimes you have to translate stuff from Latin, you know, if you want to get the, you know, Roman stuff and things like that, which we're going to have to do. We're going to prove the idea that the Romans discovered Testabola, which is a whole other.
Julian
I think you're onto something there. Yeah, it's interesting.
Hugh Newman
That is odd. Yeah. It gets weirder the more you start looking and I think, you know, a lot of it is behind paywall. So we have to reach out to academics to send them, send us the articles and we have to pay for it. You know, you have to pay quite a lot as well for these academic. Just to get one article sometimes.
Julian
Maybe we can make Benz that.
Hugh Newman
That. Yeah, maybe.
Julian
I think that'll work. Yeah. Yeah. Mike Benz has this trick to get around.
Hugh Newman
Oh, really?
Julian
Pay walls on a lot of stuff. I don't know if it works for like introducing academic papers.
Hugh Newman
I need that.
Julian
But yeah, defect. You can't see it because we have your HDMI plugged in. But defuses this sometimes. Like when we got to pull up New York Times stuff and things like that. It's. It's there.
Hugh Newman
Oh, that's good to know. Well, give me a, give me a link.
Julian
All right. Yeah, we'll see if we can do that. What are you looking at when, when we're looking to Turkey, whether it be Gobekli Tepe or Carahan Tepe or all these different sites across that 125mile plane that, that we've been looking at. What are outside of having some of the astrological data and solstice data that, that you've been able to put together actually looked at and, and continue to be reviewed Outside of that, what are the next parts of the excavation or discovery process that, that you're most keyed in on or you're most looking forward to that they need to do there?
Hugh Newman
Yeah, well, I just want them to keep digging. That's my primary. And they, they do appear to be doing that. They just, they've just started at Ayan Lahoyak. They're. They're starting hopefully at Yogan Birch, another site they're working at a site called Harbetzu Van to Pesi There's a few other sites which they're now gonna. And I think this is the key you got. You gotta keep digging. I mean this is one of the, the problems. The Gobekli Tepe, they're turning it into like a tourist site. They got w. They got. They're kind of protected by UNESCO. They even have WEF funding, which is weird.
Julian
Oh, that's interesting.
Hugh Newman
What I'm doing and which is like, you know, steps outside of the archaeology is working with Kevin Eslinger on this. So we're gonna, what we're gonna do is now we've got most of the data. I've got access to new drone footage, I've got scans. We're adding to. To our plan here. We're going to reconstruct Carahan Tepe 100 to what we believe it looked like in ancient times.
Julian
Wow.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, that's up. That's what we're working on now. We're going to illustrate. We're going to paint, you know, 3D reliefs on each of the stones as we think they would have been. And we're going to put, we've already put the night sky in to kind of get the exact alignments down as well. So we're using computer programs for astronomy. Put in the night sky end of 9,400 B.C. then we're going to put all the pillars up where we think they all were and we can see all the shadows and the light, how it all moves as the sun rises and the stars go over everything. So then you step out. You don't need, you know, I mean, as long as they keep digging and we can get the new data to add to the scans, add to our project, we can reconstruct it ourselves. We don't need the archaeologist to do that. And so we're working on that. That's a. This is so cool. That's a long term project. It's only just we. We're waiting to get more data. We've actually got some brand new stuff I got last week which we're going to add to it. So we should be able to put this together pretty quickly now. And then we're going to do it at Gok Tepe as well. We started on that and so when.
Julian
Are you going back next to Turkey?
Hugh Newman
We're going back really soon. Really soon.
Julian
Okay.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. I mean I'm not sure when this is coming out, but we're going.
Julian
January.
Hugh Newman
Can you bring it out earlier?
Julian
We probably. I just filmed a million podcasts so this is probably gonna be January Because I have ones that are like pressing current event type stuff. So it's probably going to come out like mid January.
Hugh Newman
Okay. Well, we are going back before that again for the winter solstice. You know, I know this is coming out of January, but we're going to be doing all that and we're going back there in May and in September we run tours there as well for groups. Yeah. And because we so blown away by this, we have. Amazing. Yeah. And, but, but one of the things. This is the next step really, because if we can reconstruct it as to what it would have looked like, we can work out all the astronomy without having to go there, you know. So because they're planning now, this is what's really depressing is they're actually building a new roof over the site.
Julian
Wait, a route like their own.
Hugh Newman
Let me just show you an image of this because it's quite annoying. So this is what they've started doing already. They've actually started building these. This was taken back in March when our friend Michael Collins was there from Wandering Wolf.
Julian
So that people can't.
Hugh Newman
So they're building like this. These pits are where they're going to put the new roof. This is what the roof's going to look like.
Julian
Oh, I get it now. Yeah, I was confused.
Hugh Newman
Yeah. So that concerns us because that could block the winter solstice alignment and they could block all the other alignments we wanted.
Julian
Maybe that's the plan.
Hugh Newman
Maybe. And this is what.
Julian
Maybe that's the grand plan.
Hugh Newman
But look at it. If you look at it there, the plan there, the. What they've got here, the first images of what it may look like. They're keeping the sides open, which is essential because all the astronomy we're looking at is based on virtually on the horizon and not far off it. So it might be okay. But there's a lot of. There's a lot of this going on. There's a lot of. Yeah, sorry. There's a lot of construction going on now. But luckily they're not doing it just yet. They were supposed to start this year, but they've been delayed because of all the new discoveries. So we're gonna make sure we kind of get there and have a look at it carefully before they put it up.
Julian
Well, there's a lot to still be discovered around this very clearly. But it is so cool. And I'm here for all of it. I'd love to keep you here for a while, but we, we do have a flight to catch this afternoon.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, me too, actually. Yeah.
Julian
All right, good. So we're on the same page, but I'm gonna have to bring you back, obviously. You said you're going back in January and May. Maybe after. Maybe day we could bring you in again.
Hugh Newman
Yeah.
Julian
When we get a chance to go through some of the stuff you're finding.
Hugh Newman
I mean, this. There's so many updates. I mean.
Julian
Yeah.
Hugh Newman
Just to say, you know, there's so much more going on. I mean, just let me just show you this one slide, which is another aspect of the work which we'll get into another time, is the geometry and the metrology, because we're finding remarkable correlations. We're finding measurement systems, we're finding accurate geometrical principles that didn't even exist at this time, apparently, and they must have known the size and shape of the Earth, because some of the metrology is absolutely insane. So I've actually measured it all up and found these ancient measurement systems throughout the whole site.
Julian
Oh, my God.
Hugh Newman
And that's all the sites I've been looking at. So what. What we're finding is. And we will get into this another time, but I just want to mention this because this is how important is the. The first ever use of advanced geometry and measurement systems were taking place here. This means that they must have measured the Earth before this. I mean, when did they do that?
Julian
It wasn't flat, but you know about.
Hugh Newman
Maps of the ancient sea kings, the old maps Graham Hancock talks about. There's something in there. There's something in there, I tell you. And so.
Julian
That's wild.
Hugh Newman
Yeah, it is wild. The more. The more you, you know, the more I look, the more it blows my mind. But, yes, too much to take in in one go.
Julian
All right, well, we're. We're good. We're gonna leave this one for next time as well. But, Hugh, this was awesome, man. Thank you so much for doing this. Great job with hdmi, too. That was very helpful going through this. We would have been in hell trying to figure out which slide was which. But awesome stuff we'll have. Again, we'll collab this so people can subscribe to Megalith Mania UK down right below where this video is. It's right there. Highly recommend. The content's great. And until next time, sir, thank you so much.
Hugh Newman
I appreciate it.
Julian
Of course, everyone else, you know what it is. Give it a thought, get back to me.
Hugh Newman
Peace.
Julian
Thank you guys for watching the episode. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button and smash that, like, button on the video. They're both a huge, huge help and if you would like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below.
Julian Dorey Podcast – Episode #374
"Breathtaking!" - Ancient Giants, Egypt Pyramid Scans & Gobekli Tepe Rituals
Guest: Hugh Newman | Date: Jan 16, 2026
In this wide-ranging and visually immersive episode, Julian Dorey is joined by researcher and Megalithomania founder Hugh Newman to explore some of history’s greatest ancient mysteries. From extraordinary recent discoveries in Turkey and Britain, to hidden chambers beneath the Giza pyramids, the conversation covers the rapidly-evolving field of alternative archaeology, the current evidence of advanced “super-civilizations,” enigmatic giant skeletons, ritual use of psychedelics, solstice-focused architectural alignments, and more. Hugh shares personal stories, fresh insights from his global research, and breathtaking visuals—delivering a compelling case that our true history is much older and more complex than mainstream academia admits.
Karahan Tepe Solstice Discovery: Hugh describes experiencing a sunrise alignment where only on winter solstice, a carved head inside a pillar shrine is dramatically illuminated by sunlight, suggesting intentional advanced astronomical design by a so-called “super-civilization.” (00:00)
"Over a 45 minute period, only on winter solstice morning, you get the whole alignment happening. We're like, what the hell is this?" – Hugh Newman (00:18)
Ancient Britain’s Prehistoric Sites: Hugh recounts growing up visiting ancient sites with his adventurous mother, leading to his passion for megaliths. He reveals Stonehenge isn’t unique: “There’s at least a thousand stone circles in the UK,” and some of Stonehenge’s stones came from as far as Scotland and Wales, speaking to ancient trade and monumental engineering. (04:00)
Continuous Ancient Occupation: Stonehenge's location shows evidence of ritual structures 5,000 years older than the stone circle itself, and local springs show human presence at least 12,000 years ago—putting Britain in the same league as ancient Turkish sites for antiquity. (07:29)
Gobekli Tepe & Carahan Tepe: Revealed as paradigm-shifting sites with carbon dates going back to 9,600 BC and even earlier, proving advanced civilization existed well before the traditionally accepted emergence of agriculture and writing. (12:58)
Carbon Dating Limitations: Hugh explains how carbon dating provides ranges, not precise years, and how new finds (even from weeks prior to the episode) could push British megalithic dates even older, challenging the academic status quo. (15:59)
Suppression of Anomalies: He notes that when anomalous dates don’t fit the mainstream narrative, they’re often dismissed. Example: early Olmec site datings in Mexico. (19:18)
Olmec Civilization: Hugh shares his and his partner JJ's decade-plus experience exploring Olmec sites, including new finds of “unfinished” giant basalt heads left in ancient quarries, reinforcing the ritual importance of the stone's birthplace. (29:51)
Cartel Encounters: A gripping story about running into cartel bosses while researching in Mexico, highlighting real personal risks involved in field archaeology:
"In reception, people are coming out. This is clearly some boss dude, which JJ recognized as one of the Sinaloa cartel… He’s giving tips like this thick to the porters…” – Hugh Newman (24:35)
Academic Pushback: Hugh details ongoing skepticism and targeted personal attacks by mainstream archaeologists, especially regarding alternative interpretations and the acceptance of roles for "non-academics" (including journalists like himself and Graham Hancock). (41:24)
Signs of Change: Encouraging news that a new generation of archaeologists-in-training are being encouraged to consider alternative (non-mainstream) theories—though progress remains slow and the online climate is still divisive. (39:17)
Need for Interdisciplinary Approach: Hugh observes mainstream archaeologists often lack training in symbolic, astronomical, and shamanic analysis, leading to misinterpretation or under-interpretation of ancient archaeological data. (43:07)
Visual Transformation of Sites: Using drone footage, Hugh reveals the dramatic expansion of excavated areas at Karahan Tepe since 2018—now showing vast, architecturally complex ritual spaces. (50:50)
Winter Solstice Alignment: A personal discovery at Karahan Tepe’s "structure AB" where, on the winter solstice, the sun shines perfectly through a porthole to light up a sculpted head—confirmed by astronomical modeling. (56:28)
"This is precision engineered bedrock carving, 9400 BC." – Hugh Newman (56:52) "A billion to one chance this is coincidence... There's no doubt about it." (59:07)
Ritual Fertility & Sexual Imagery: Recent statues, including bearded humanoids with exaggerated phallic features, point to fertility magic—possibly linked to agriculture’s dawn in the region. (67:24, 68:36)
Psychedelic Ceremonies: Evidence of viper skeletons, mushrooms, and beer-fermentation linked to psychedelic/shamanic rituals; direct links drawn to altered states of consciousness and abstract artwork. (70:23)
“I believe that this was a psychedelic culture....well into psychedelics. They were, were brewing beer… There’s evidence at Gobekli Tepe in these giant vats.” – Hugh Newman (72:08)
Astronomical Alignments: Multiple sites, including caves in France (as old as 40,000 years), and Malta, show deliberate orientation to solstices—implying a lineage of astronomical knowledge spanning millennia and continents. (115:21)
“They found in these caves hundreds of these bone plaques… all related to the moon and the solar year going back… 40,000 years.” – Hugh Newman (116:19)
H Symbol and Carved Faces: Recurring motifs (like the H) may indicate astronomical markers or ritual signposts. (109:08)
Direct Stone Record: Hugh and JJ propose these ritual sites are “memory spaces”—literal records in stone, designed to transmit encoded knowledge across ages. The oral tradition, ritual storytelling, and multi-level symbolic understanding may have preserved key concepts for thousands of years. (125:02)
Giza’s Cave Underworld: Anecdotes about clandestine exploration of natural/ritual caves beneath the Giza plateau—possibly connected to hidden chambers detected by new Italian SAR scan technologies. (148:22)
Recent SAR Scan News: Latest satellite/acoustic scans suggest vast, unknown voids kilometers under the pyramids. Hugh calls for ground-truthing these findings with traditional methods. Anticipation is high for verification and implications for ancient technological capabilities. (151:13, 153:20)
“Why not take a look... just get some pinhole cameras going down there, let’s see what’s going on." (155:01)
Original Timeline Debates: New granite dating at Giza pushes pyramid dates back 400–500 years at least, possibly older, with direct links seen between Anatolian (Gobekli Tepe) and Egyptian symbolism and tool traditions. (156:23)
"I want to know how the goddamn stones got there." – Julian (159:05)
Giant Skeleton Reports: Hugh and his coauthor Jim Vieira cataloged hundreds of credible 19th–20th century reports of giant skeletons in the UK, US, Mexico—often described by respected academics, many now lost or reburied. Books: Giants on Record (North America) & Giants of Stonehenge & Ancient Britain. (161:09)
“How would you account for a thousand reports of giant skeletons in North America, written by academics?” – Hugh (160:11)
Oral Tradition in America: Native American stories, mound-building cultures, and even local major league sports teams hint at a long cultural memory of the giants. (164:33)
Geometrics & Metrology: New computer-assisted reconstructions at Karahan Tepe and Gobekli Tepe—measuring sites, testing alignments, and finding advanced geometry/metrology pre-dating written math. Suggests knowledge of earth’s shape and measurement systematics existed at the very dawn of civilization. (176:03)
Current Challenges: Protective roofing being added to sites might block sunlight, potentially compromising future astronomical studies, causing concern among researchers. (174:45)
Hope for the Future: Continued rapid discovery, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the growing use of advanced visualization technologies will accelerate the rewriting of ancient history in the coming years.
“This is a different world we’re dealing with now. These were supposed to be hunter-gatherers, cavemen-type people…” – Hugh Newman (61:23)
“We took this to another level … we gave all the data to a 3D artist and… the alignment still works: even with a thatch roof, the light [of the solstice] comes in, illuminating the head.” – Hugh (60:14)
“All the founding myths, all the myths associated with megalithic sites, all linked with giants. Every, virtually everyone is—very weird.” – Hugh (161:34)
“The first ever use of advanced geometry and measurement systems were taking place here… That means they must have measured the Earth before this. When did they do that?” – Hugh (176:39)
This episode offers a deep, sometimes playful, and always candid journey through the very latest in alternative ancient archaeology—challenging mainstream narratives and inviting listeners to look beyond accepted paradigms. Whether you’re curious about lost civilizations, psychedelic rituals, precision engineering in the deep past, or the mysteries beneath the Giza plateau, this episode guarantees both new questions and awe-inspiring discoveries.