- 5 weeks ago
Across the ancient world, from Sumerian carvings to Egyptian reliefs and Mesoamerican monuments, the same strange “handbag” symbol keeps appearing again and again. For years, researchers dismissed it as decoration or ritual imagery — but its repeated presence in cultures separated by oceans has raised a bigger question. Was this mysterious symbol just a coincidence, or was it pointing to a forgotten meaning shared by the world’s oldest civilizations?
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00:03What if a mysterious object carved into ancient stone wasn't just symbolic, but something we still don't fully understand today?
00:12Across multiple ancient civilizations, separated by thousands of kilometers and thousands of years,
00:20archaeologists keep finding the same strange object.
00:24It looks like a small bag with a handle.
00:26And the most surprising part is how consistent the design is, no matter where it appears.
00:33The most well-known examples come from ancient Mesopotamia, especially from the Sumerian and later Assyrian civilizations, dating back over
00:433,000 years.
00:44In detailed stone reliefs, human-like figures and winged beings are shown holding a small bucket-shaped object with a
00:53clearly defined handle.
00:54These figures are often identified as Apkalu, mythological beings associated with wisdom and ritual practices.
01:03In many cases, they are shown next to sacred trees, performing what appear to be ceremonial actions.
01:10The object itself is almost always depicted the same way.
01:15It has a rigid structure, a flat base, and a curved handle that fits perfectly in one hand.
01:21This level of consistency is unusual for symbolic art, where shapes often vary depending on the artist or time period.
01:30Here, the proportions remain nearly identical across different carvings, suggesting that the object had a specific and recognizable form.
01:39In many scenes, the bag appears together with another object that looks like a pine cone.
01:46Researchers believe this combination may represent a ritual practice, possibly involving sprinkling water or oils.
01:54Based on ancient texts, the most widely accepted explanation is that these objects were ceremonial containers,
02:01sometimes described as ritual buckets used in purification ceremonies.
02:06But this explanation starts to break down when similar shapes appear outside Mesopotamia.
02:13At Gobekli Tepe, one of the oldest known archaeological sites in the world, dating back over 11,000 years,
02:22carvings include symbols that closely resemble the same bag-like form.
02:26This is thousands of years older than Sumerian civilization.
02:30Even more surprising, similar shapes have been identified in Mesoamerican cultures, including early Olmec carvings.
02:38These civilizations developed independently, with no confirmed contact between them.
02:45Yet the object looks strikingly similar.
02:47That raises a difficult question.
02:50Why would completely separate cultures depict nearly identical objects?
02:55One explanation is symbolic convergence, where different civilizations independently create similar symbols to represent the same idea.
03:05A container holding something important or sacred is a concept that could emerge in multiple places.
03:12But the precision of the design makes this harder to fully accept.
03:16The object does not just look symbolic.
03:19It looks functional.
03:21The handle is proportioned in a way that suggests it was meant to be carried.
03:25The base appears stable, as if it could be placed on a surface.
03:30The overall design resembles a real object more than an abstract symbol.
03:35This has led some researchers to question whether we are missing part of the picture.
03:39More speculative theories suggest the object could represent lost technology or tools that no longer exist.
03:47Others believe it may symbolize knowledge, power, or some kind of transfer between humans and the divine.
03:54However, there is no physical evidence to support these ideas.
03:59No actual object matching this exact design has ever been recovered.
04:05And that detail is important.
04:07If these were common tools, we would expect to find at least one surviving example.
04:13The fact that we only see them in carvings suggests they may have been ceremonial, rare, or even symbolic representations
04:21of something that was never meant to be preserved physically.
04:24Another key detail is who is holding them.
04:28In almost every example, the object is carried by important or mythological figures, not ordinary people.
04:35This suggests it had a specific meaning or role, possibly tied to status, ritual authority, or religious practice.
04:44Today, the most accepted explanation remains that these were ritual objects used in ceremonies.
04:50But that does not fully explain their consistent design or their appearance across different cultures and time periods.
04:58The Sumerian bag remains one of those rare cases in archaeology where the object is clearly visible, widely documented, and
05:07still not fully understood.
05:09It is not hidden or obscure.
05:11It appears in some of the most studied sites in the world.
05:15And yet, there is still no single explanation that accounts for all the evidence.
05:21Sometimes the mystery is not in what we cannot see, but in what we see too often without fully understanding
05:27it.
05:30Have you heard of Gobekli Tepe?
05:32It's an ancient site in Turkey that literally made historians rewrite history books.
05:36Over 11,000 years ago, a group of prehistoric humans crafted an enigmatic masterpiece that's even older than Stonehenge.
05:49Before its discovery, archaeologists believed that people didn't know about iron and weren't good at making pottery.
05:56They were sure that settled life only emerged with the need for agriculture.
06:01But Gobekli Tepe changed this belief.
06:09The place has revealed that it was the temple that paved the way for a settled life, not agriculture.
06:16Until this discovery, researchers believed that farming was the catalyst for sedentary living.
06:22Meet Professor Schmidt, the guy whose findings changed this theory.
06:26He managed to prove that hunter-gatherer communities laid the very foundations of this way of life.
06:37Back in the 1960s, other archaeologists visited the area, but they totally missed the mark.
06:43While surveying the region, they stumbled upon a hill with scattered limestone slabs
06:48and concluded it was just an old burial ground from medieval times.
06:52Little did they know that there was so much more to uncover.
07:00In 1994, Schmidt embarked on his own survey of prehistoric sites in the area.
07:06Surprise!
07:07He instantly realized he had discovered something truly extraordinary.
07:11Unlike the nearby flat and barren plateaus, Gobekli Tepe had a gently rounded top,
07:17rising 50 feet above the surrounding landscape.
07:19Funny enough, the translation of this place's name is Potbelly Hill.
07:24Schmidt was sure only humans could have made something like this.
07:31Those broken limestone pieces that were mistaken for gravestones turned out to be way more exciting.
07:37It was like stumbling upon a hidden treasure.
07:40The pieces took on a whole new meaning, and Schmidt with his team was about to dive into the secrets
07:45waiting beneath the surface.
07:49To their surprise, they found no traces of a settlement, no hearths for cooking, no houses,
07:55and none of those adorable clay figurines commonly found in nearby sites of similar age.
08:00However, they uncovered that those ancient people used tools like stone hammers.
08:05So, Schmidt and his team put their heads together and took a wild guess at the age of Gobekli Tepe's
08:11stone structures.
08:12Their estimation got backed up by some limited carbon dating done right at the site.
08:17The ancient vibes of this place were finally starting to make sense.
08:21It was like a puzzle slowly coming together.
08:28You may think that back then, people didn't have special tools to create something as cool as Gobekli Tepe.
08:34Not true.
08:35Turns out, these prehistoric folks used flint tools instead of fancy metal chisels.
08:40They were also skilled at chipping away softer limestone and crafting pillars right on the spot.
08:46Afterward, they carried the pillars a short distance to the summit and placed them upright.
08:50Once the stone rings were complete, they covered them with layers of dirt.
08:54Over time, they added new rings, and voila!
08:57You've got a cool hill to impress people in the future.
09:05During their first year of excavation, the team went through 15,000 pieces of animal bones from wild creatures.
09:11These people didn't have pet animals or grow their own food.
09:15They hunted wild animals for their meals.
09:18But things were about to change, because the place had everything they needed to start farming.
09:23Scientists say they had wild sheep and wild grains that could be domesticated.
09:27And guess what?
09:29Just 20 miles away, geneticists found evidence of the world's oldest domesticated strains of wheat at a prehistoric village.
09:40These amazing findings have completely changed how we view civilization.
09:45In the past, experts believed that people needed to learn how to farm and settle in one place,
09:50before they could build temples and develop complex societies.
09:53But guess what?
09:55Schmidt's research flips that idea on its head.
09:58He claims that the incredible effort put into constructing these astonishing structures
10:03actually set the stage for the development of advanced societies.
10:07It means that societal and cultural changes happened before agriculture.
10:15Schmidt has this fascinating hypothesis about Gobekli Tepe.
10:19He thinks it could have been a special burial site where people left their loved ones.
10:23And here's the twist.
10:26The burial site was adorned with fancy statues and symbols representing deities from the spiritual realm.
10:35The idea that Gobekli Tepe could have served as a sacred place adds another layer of complexity to the whole
10:42story.
10:43While the site's true purpose may remain elusive,
10:46Schmidt's insights invite us to consider the profound interplay between life and the afterlife
10:50and the deep reverence ancient hunter-gatherer societies may have had for their departed ancestors.
11:00Now let's talk about the stars of the show.
11:02The mesmerizing T-shaped columns that dominate Gobekli Tepe.
11:06These mysterious structures range from 10 to 20 feet tall
11:09and most likely represent stylized human figures.
11:12But one figure stands out from the rest.
11:14The three-dimensional lion relief.
11:16This depiction really fires up our imagination.
11:19Why?
11:20Because it hints at the possibility that lions roamed Anatolia during the Neolithic period.
11:30These standing stones are arranged in circles and placed in rectangular pits.
11:35Each circle has a similar setup.
11:37Two big T-shaped pillars in the center, surrounded by slightly smaller ones facing inward.
11:43Talk about a stylish arrangement.
11:45These towering pillars reach a whopping 16 feet and weigh between 7 and 10 tons.
11:50Some pillars are plain and simple, while others are like works of art with intricate carvings.
11:56Foxes, scorpions, and vultures come to life, crawling and twisting on the pillars' sides.
12:01But it's not just animals depicted on these stones.
12:04Some pillars have abstract shapes representing humans and even small carvings of clothing items.
12:10Some of them even have belts.
12:16Now, there's one pillar that stands out from the rest like a rock star.
12:20This super-old stone pillar suggests that a comet crashed into Earth.
12:25It happened during a chilly period that lasted about a thousand years.
12:29Previous studies examining Greenland ice cores hinted at this comet theory.
12:32But now the carvings at Gobekli Tepe prove it right.
12:40The carvings on the pillars are like a historical comic strip.
12:43They even show a headless human figure.
12:46Researchers fed the images into a computer and discovered their connections to constellations,
12:51indicating that this temple might have been an ancient observatory.
12:54It's like our ancestors were trying to document this cataclysmic event in their own unique way.
13:04Archaeologists have been excavating and researching Gobekli Tepe since the mid-1990s,
13:09peeling back layers of history and providing us with a deeper understanding of the intricate relationship between various elements.
13:16They have no plans to stop the whole process for another 150 years.
13:21Who knows what else they'll find?
13:25You see, Gobekli Tepe has been labeled purely as a ritual site with no signs of domestic activities.
13:31We were led to believe that the absence of water meant it couldn't support semi-sedentary communities.
13:37But scientists believe it's time to shake things up and approach Gobekli Tepe with fresh eyes.
13:42It's time to question what we believed before and use new evidence and different ways of thinking.
13:47Like, there might have been a group of people living in the area who didn't stay in one place all
13:52the time.
13:52They moved around a bit but still had their own civilization, living in the area semi-sedentarily.
14:00Gobekli Tepe is not just home to a single temple, but an astounding collection of over 20 ancient structures.
14:06As archaeologists delve into the depths of this wonder, they are unraveling its unique layout,
14:12featuring two prominent focal points at the heart of each establishment, complemented by smaller structures and dividing walls.
14:20What's even crazier is that in this area, there are over 200 obelisks, which are narrow, tapering monuments.
14:2640,000 years ago, someone scratched a few tiny lines and dots onto a piece of bone,
14:32and that little mark might be the oldest hard drive humanity ever created.
14:37Scientists now believe those Ice Age people weren't just doodling, but recording real information.
14:42Structured, organized, repeatable data.
14:44And this discovery completely shifts the timeline of human intelligence.
14:49For decades, archaeologists kept finding strange symbols carved into Stone Age tools and sculptures.
14:55Those were simple shapes like crosses, dots, short lines, and tiny notches cut into bone or ivory.
15:02Explorers kept finding them in caves across Europe, including Germany, France, and Spain.
15:07They showed up on carved animal figurines, tools, and ornaments.
15:11Archaeologists dated them to be about 34,000 to 45,000 years old.
15:16That means people created these symbols during the Ice Age, when glaciers covered huge chunks of the planet,
15:22and mammoths still wandered the plains.
15:25For a long time, researchers believed these signs meant nothing in particular.
15:30Maybe decorations. Maybe tribal art.
15:33But a new computational study led by a linguist and an archaeologist showed it was more about data than decoration.
15:40The team analyzed more than 3,000 individual symbols carved into around 260 artifacts.
15:47They studied every mark and fed them into statistical models,
15:51the same type of mathematics researchers used to study language patterns or train artificial intelligence.
15:57The goal wasn't to translate the signs yet. Nobody knows exactly what they mean.
16:02Instead, the scientists looked at something called information density,
16:06which means how much meaningful data you can store in a sequence of symbols.
16:11When the researchers ran the numbers, they saw that the symbol sequences had almost the same information density as proto
16:17-cuneiform.
16:18That's the earliest writing system known from ancient Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE.
16:23It was roughly 40,000 years later.
16:27So, some signs in these Ice Age carvings repeat again and again in predictable ways,
16:33cross, cross, cross, line, line, dot.
16:36That repetition resembles early data encoding,
16:38where patterns repeat because they store structured information.
16:43The researchers also analyzed the entropy of the coded messages.
16:47Entropy measures how unpredictable a sequence is.
16:50High entropy means lots of possible combinations, like a complex password.
16:56Low entropy means predictable repetition.
16:59And it looks like the Ice Age symbol systems have entropy levels very close to early proto-cuneiform tablets.
17:06That means the amount of information those carvings could store roughly matches the earliest writing records from the first cities.
17:13It proves that humans didn't just suddenly invent writing out of nowhere 5,000 years ago.
17:19Instead, humans spent tens of thousands of years experimenting with symbolic encoding systems
17:25and gradually increased their complexity until true writing was finally invented.
17:31One of the most interesting examples of such a coded message comes from a cave in southwestern Germany.
17:38Archaeologists discovered a tiny mammoth figurine carved from mammoth tusk ivory, small enough to fit in your palm.
17:45There's a neat row of engraved crosses and dots running along its surface.
17:50Another object, called the Adorant, is a thin ivory plate.
17:55Found in a different German cave, has a strange mythical creature that looks part human, part lion on it.
18:01The figure stretches upward like it's worshipping something.
18:05And across its body, someone carved rows of tiny dots and notches with careful spacing.
18:09Then there's the famous lion-human sculpture.
18:13If you look at the arm closely, you can see evenly spaced cuts along the limb.
18:18These marks seem intentional, deliberate, almost rhythmic.
18:22They look less like decoration and more like entries in a ledger.
18:26It makes those artifacts something like USB drives made of ivory.
18:31And because these ancient USB drives appear in different regions of Germany and in other parts of Europe,
18:37it could mean that Ice Age humans may have shared such symbolic messages across huge distances.
18:43Those hunter-gatherers living thousands of miles apart probably recognize the same patterns scratched into bone tools.
18:50Of course, scientists still don't know the exact meaning of these symbols.
18:55They could represent seasonal calendars, migration cycles, clan markers, or some concepts tied to rituals.
19:02So the most important discovery for now isn't the translation, but the structure of the signs that behave like a
19:09system.
19:10This coding system isn't the only proof that ancient minds invented complex systems long before modern technology arrived.
19:17There's a thick oval slab of limestone in a museum in the Netherlands.
19:22Archaeologists dug it up in the late 1800s and assumed it was some kind of Roman game board.
19:27The problem was that nobody could figure out the rules.
19:30The carved lines didn't match any known ancient game.
19:34Only in 2026, researchers finally solved the mystery with help from artificial intelligence.
19:40If you look at the stone closely, you can see that certain grooves on it are slightly deeper than others.
19:45It means that people slid pieces across those lines repeatedly, and the stone wore down over time.
19:52Conservation experts created extremely detailed 3D scans of the limestone surface to analyze those wear patterns.
20:00Those scans showed differences in depth smaller than a human hair.
20:04Every tiny groove became a clue about how players once moved their pieces.
20:08Then, the team brought in a special AI game simulation system designed to understand board games.
20:16They fed the system rules from about 100 historical games and asked it to test possibilities onto a digital copy
20:23of the Roman board.
20:24The AI played thousands of simulated matches against itself and tried different rule combinations each time.
20:31For every rule set, it tracked where the pieces moved and compared those paths to the wear patterns on the
20:37real stone.
20:38It repeated this process around 1000 times per rule set until finally certain patterns started lining up perfectly.
20:46The system narrowed all the possibilities to a small group of related blocking games.
20:51In this type of strategy game, two players move pieces along fixed paths, trying to trap the opponent's pieces in
20:58corners or dead ends.
21:00If you've ever played tic-tac-toe or checkers, you already understand the basic idea.
21:05To control space, predict the opponent's next move and close the trap.
21:10The simulations showed that the Romans most likely played this game with small tokens made of glass, bone, or pottery
21:17sliding along those carved grooves.
21:19And that discovery matters more than you might think.
21:23Historians used to believe blocking games appeared in early medieval Europe, centuries after the Roman Empire collapsed.
21:30But this limestone board showed them that such games existed nearly 1000 years earlier.
21:37So, Roman players had strategy games that helped them develop forward planning, recognizing patterns, and thinking of different combinations and
21:45possibilities.
21:46Now, let's travel even further back in time, long before Roman cities, and writing of any kind.
21:52Our destination, Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania, one of the oldest important archaeological sites on Earth.
22:00In 2025, researchers studying the area found something unexpected in ancient sediments.
22:05It was a set of tools made from the limb bones of elephants and hippos.
22:10And these tools date back about 1.5 million years.
22:14Scientists found 27 bone tools, some nearly 15 inches long, shaped into sharp blades.
22:21Early humans most likely used them on animal carcasses or to process tough materials.
22:27At first glance, they seem simple, but it actually looks like the tool makers shaped these bones using napping.
22:33The same process used to chip stone tools.
22:37Napping means striking a material carefully so that small flakes break away, gradually forming a sharp edge.
22:44Bone behaves very differently from stone.
22:47It contains collagen, which makes it slightly flexible and elastic.
22:51Hit the bone too hard and it shatters unpredictably.
22:54Hit it too softly and nothing happens.
22:57That means whoever made these tools understood how the material worked.
23:01They adapted their technique to shape bone without destroying it.
23:05Archaeologists believe Homo erectus, an early human species with body proportions similar to ours, created these implements.
23:13It also looks like the tool makers preferred thick limb bones, which are the strongest parts of animal skeleton.
23:20To make that choice, you need to understand anatomy and material strength.
23:24Engineers today still use that same logic when choosing materials for machines.
23:29When we put all these discoveries together, we see that our ancestors designed systems, invented technologies, stored information, and played
23:38complex games long before modern civilization appeared.
23:42So we didn't just suddenly become intelligent.
23:45We've been building knowledge for tens of thousands of years.
23:49Now, history isn't just carved in stone.
23:52But these drawings on 11,000-year-old rocks might be warning us about a freaky future.
23:57Both the Mayans and the people at Gobekli Tepe made big predictions about humanity's future.
24:04What's eerie is that despite being hundreds of miles and years apart, they used similar symbols.
24:11Now, let's get one thing straight.
24:12Ancient civilizations often depicted their deities as humanoids.
24:16You'll find humanoid representations of celestial beings in ancient Egypt, but also in pre-Columbian societies from the Americas.
24:24For example, Aztecs had an important deity they called Quetzalcoatl.
24:29He was related to the wind, Venus, and the sun.
24:33In some ancient Aztec art, he's depicted carrying a tiny handbag.
24:37The shocker is that a very similar winged figure was represented by the Assyrians.
24:43Now, it's already odd that they chose similar forms to represent their gods, even though these civilizations didn't have any
24:50contact with each other.
24:51But to draw an almost identical handbag?
24:54That seems like a bit of a stretch.
24:57Of course, now, when we say handbags, we mean carvings depicting things that look like modern handbags.
25:03Not quite Coach or Prada, but you get the idea.
25:06Some theories suggest this mysterious handbag could be related to time travel.
25:11We've seen that Gobekli Tepe tells of a great flood that destroyed an ancient civilization.
25:17But during that civilization's time, they raised cattle and grew food.
25:21They knew how to handle seeds and grow crops.
25:25According to one theory, this stylish accessory could have been used for carrying seeds.
25:29Since Gobekli Tepe is believed to be near where Noah's Ark might have been found, the people of the area
25:36could have gathered seeds to plant in the New World after the Great Flood.
25:41Strange?
25:42Definitely.
25:43But so is everything we've been talking about.
25:45So let's roll with it.
25:47Another theory on the meaning of the handbag has a much more straightforward approach.
25:52In multiple ancient cultures, the circle was used to represent spirituality and non-materiality.
25:58But the square was often associated with concepts of the Earth and materiality.
26:04So, what we modern humans understand as a handbag might be an image that symbolizes the reunification of the Earth
26:11and sky, of the material and non-material elements of existence.
26:15Not a bad theory, I would say.
26:17But then, who am I?
26:19Some researchers, like Graham Hancock, are not convinced with these previous explanations.
26:25For him, Gobekli Tepe is all about little gray people and their contacts with ancient Earthling civilizations.
26:32You see, right in the middle of this ancient site, there's a special pillar called Pillar 43, or Enclosure D.
26:40At first glance, it looks like an astronomical calendar.
26:43You see the scorpion?
26:44That's the scorpion constellation.
26:46And that ball in the center?
26:48It's all about the sun's alignment.
26:51We know ancient societies like the Maya or Incas were stellar astronomers.
26:55So, what's the big deal here?
26:57Turns out, the folks at Gobekli Tepe were talking about a massive natural disaster that wiped out all forms of
27:04life before their time.
27:05When astronomers recreated the angles and positions from Pillar 43, it showed an astrological setup from over 13,000 years
27:15ago.
27:15The stone also depicted a tragic event.
27:18A mix of a flood and a meteor shower.
27:21The headless man?
27:22That's humanity's tragic end.
27:24And the snake from the ground?
27:26Giant waves washing over the Earth.
27:28And it's not just one stone telling the tale.
27:31Pillar 56 shows more of the Younger Dryas event, or as it's called, the terror from the sky.
27:38You see animals fleeing and waves crashing as the meteor shower hits.
27:43But wait!
27:44While Pillar 43 gives us the exact date of the last disaster, Pillar 18 in Enclosure D gives us the
27:51date of the next possible wipeout.
27:53The art depicted in this pillar zooms in on the constellation of Aquarius.
27:58Now, you might have seen the movie The Age of Aquarius, or heard some woo-woo theories about how we're
28:03entering this phase right now.
28:05You see what I'm driving at?
28:07Gobekli Tepe might be giving us the date of the next disaster so that we have time to prep for
28:13it.
28:13These images could be a survival guide for humanity.
28:16Or not.
28:17Now, this would be bananas if it weren't for one piece of evidence.
28:21Let's check the facts.
28:22The Enki comet, discovered in 1786, used to be part of a megacomet, a hundred miles wide, made of ice,
28:32metal, and rock.
28:32It broke up and formed a debris field.
28:35Now, instead of one huge comet, we've got millions of smaller ones.
28:39When the Earth passed through that debris, the folks at Gobekli Tepe saw a firestorm of comets,
28:45all coming from the Aquarius constellation, just like on Pillar 43.
28:49Now, here's the supposed scary part.
28:52We pass through that same debris field every year.
28:56If you're watching this in September, October, or November, we're flying through it right now.
29:01It could happen that these debris fall onto the surface of the Earth all over again, repeating history.
29:06But so far, that's just a theory.
29:11The mind-boggling question is, how did the people at Gobekli Tepe know about an event that happened before they
29:18were all born?
29:18In 2019, excavations kicked off at Karan Tepe, about 40 miles from Gobekli Tepe.
29:25But research suggests it might have been settled even earlier.
29:29Gobekli Tepe seems to have been a place of worship or an observatory.
29:33But Karan Tepe shows signs of a structured society.
29:37Excavations at Karan Tepe reveal artifacts like intricate carvings, tools, and even possible remnants of buildings.
29:46This suggests that these people were not just hunters and gatherers, but had a structured society with spiritual or ceremonial
29:53practices.
29:54In 2020, researchers started unearthing several other settlements in the area, indicating that Gobekli Tepe was part of a huge
30:03metropolis.
30:04The whole site is known collectively as Taas Tepler.
30:08The thing is, the math around all this has scientists baffled.
30:12Around that time, Earth was just leaving its last ice age.
30:15And scientists used to think Stone Age civilizations were primitive.
30:19But evidence keeps showing up, proving that wasn't the case.
30:24For Gobekli Tepe to have existed with that level of tech 12,000 years ago, there must have been an
30:31even earlier civilization.
30:33That kind of tech doesn't just pop up out of nowhere.
30:36And hey, we've got plenty of other proof of advanced societies.
30:39Take the Mayans, for example.
30:42Recent discoveries have shown they were even more advanced than we previously thought.
30:46They built massive cities with roads up to 130 feet wide, painted white to guide travelers at night, a feat
30:53you'd expect in places like Portugal or England.
30:56These roads, sometimes elevated over swampy ground, formed a network of over 964 settlements, like a giant spiderweb.
31:06A bunch of scientists turned their eyes on this theory, but it could be the connecting point of everything we've
31:11been speculating about in this video.
31:14After all, the people from the sky could have come down and told the people from Gobekli Tepe about the
31:20destruction of a more ancient civilization than theirs.
31:23Or not.
31:24Remember, don't give up your critical thinking just because you see something on the internet.
31:28Anyway, Gobekli Tepe raises suspicions just as Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Egypt.
31:35When we mix little green aliens into the equation, it explains one way that surreal engineering feats were possible in
31:42these sites.
31:43But it also underestimates our human ancestors and their thinking abilities.
31:49One of the main characteristics of Gobekli Tepe's architecture are the T-shaped pillars.
31:54The heaviest of them weigh 20 tons and are around 20 feet.
31:58These pillars were erected perfectly, without so much as a dent in them.
32:02Sure, that's pretty hard to do without modern machines.
32:05But hey, maybe they figured it out and built it after much effort.
32:10Now, in case you don't know what I'm talking about, this old pal is supposed to have cracked the secret
32:15of the pyramid builders in modern-day America.
32:18He used it to build his own castle and other mesmerizing structures.
32:22So, hey, I guess we'll have to keep digging to find out the actual facts about it all, huh?
32:30Amen.