America Before

America Before Plot Summary

Introduction

When Spanish conquistadors first encountered the great cities of the Americas, they marveled at structures that rivaled anything in Europe. Yet these magnificent civilizations were merely the latest chapter in a much longer, more mysterious story. Beneath the rainforests of the Amazon and the plains of North America lie the remnants of societies far older and potentially more sophisticated than conventional history acknowledges. For centuries, archaeologists insisted that the Americas were among the last places humans settled, with primitive hunter-gatherers crossing from Siberia no earlier than 13,000 years ago. This narrative is now crumbling under an avalanche of new evidence. From 130,000-year-old mastodon bones bearing signs of human processing in California to mysterious Australasian DNA in Amazonian populations, from astronomically aligned earthworks to evidence of a cosmic impact that reset civilization, a revolutionary new understanding of American prehistory is emerging. This exploration reveals not just forgotten chapters of human history but challenges our fundamental assumptions about the capabilities of ancient peoples and the true age of advanced human civilization.

Chapter 1: Challenging the Clovis First Paradigm: Archaeological Revolution (1930s-1990s)

For most of the 20th century, American archaeology was dominated by a single, seemingly unshakable theory: humans first arrived in the Americas around 13,000 years ago as the makers of distinctive fluted projectile points found near Clovis, New Mexico. This "Clovis First" paradigm, formalized by C. Vance Haynes in 1964, proposed that the first Americans crossed from Siberia via the Bering land bridge, waited until an ice-free corridor opened between massive ice sheets, and then rapidly spread throughout the Americas. The theory explained the absence of earlier evidence by simply asserting there wasn't any. The paradigm's dominance owed much to the intimidating authority of Aleš Hrdlička, who headed the Division of Physical Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution from 1903 until 1943. Under his influence, questions about early human presence in America became virtually taboo, and archaeologists seeking career advancement avoided suggesting any significant antiquity for Native Americans. This academic environment created what one researcher called "a climate of fear" where challenging Clovis First meant risking one's professional reputation. Despite this pressure, cracks in the paradigm began appearing as early as the 1970s when Tom Dillehay began excavations at Monte Verde in southern Chile. His findings suggested human occupation dating to 18,500 years ago—well before Clovis. For more than two decades, Dillehay faced sustained personal attacks and skepticism until a balanced panel of experts finally visited Monte Verde in the 1990s and confirmed his findings. This vindication opened the floodgates for other pre-Clovis sites to gain acceptance. Sites like Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania (16,000+ years old) and Bluefish Caves in the Yukon (24,000+ years old) could no longer be dismissed. The archaeological community was forced to acknowledge that the peopling of the Americas was far more complex and ancient than previously believed. This paradigm shift represented more than just a revision of dates—it fundamentally challenged how archaeology as a discipline handled evidence that contradicted established theories. By the early 21st century, the evidence for pre-Clovis occupation had become overwhelming. The question was no longer whether humans were in the Americas before Clovis, but how much earlier they had arrived and by what routes. This radical shift in understanding set the stage for even more dramatic discoveries that would push the human timeline in the Americas back not just thousands, but tens of thousands of years, fundamentally rewriting the story of human presence in the Western Hemisphere.

Chapter 2: Cerutti Mastodon: Evidence of 130,000-Year Human Presence

In April 2017, the prestigious journal Nature published findings that sent shockwaves through the archaeological world. A team led by Tom Deméré, curator of paleontology at the San Diego Natural History Museum, presented evidence suggesting humans had been present in Southern California approximately 130,000 years ago—roughly ten times older than even the revised pre-Clovis timeline. The site in question, named the Cerutti Mastodon Site after Richard Cerutti who discovered it during highway construction in 1992, contained mastodon bones that showed patterns of deliberate breakage inconsistent with natural processes. The evidence was meticulous and multifaceted. Many bones displayed spiral fractures characteristic of fresh bone breakage, not the jagged patterns caused by scavengers or geological processes. Several large stones appeared out of place in the fine-grained sediment, with wear patterns suggesting their use as hammers and anvils. Using advanced uranium-thorium dating methods, geologist Jim Paces of the US Geological Survey established that the bones were buried 130,000 years ago—during the last interglacial period before the most recent Ice Age. The implications were staggering. At this time, it was still believed that anatomically modern humans had not even left Africa. If the Cerutti findings were correct, they suggested either an unknown early migration of Homo sapiens or perhaps the presence of other human species like Neanderthals or Denisovans in the Americas. Either possibility would completely overturn established understanding of human prehistory. The archaeological establishment responded with immediate skepticism bordering on hostility. Critics dismissed the paper as "bad science" and accused Nature of "an editorial lapse in judgment" for publishing it. Some suggested the bone breakage patterns could be explained by construction equipment or natural processes. Deméré countered that his team had spent years ruling out alternative explanations and that the evidence could not be explained by any known natural process. What makes the Cerutti Mastodon Site particularly significant is not just its extreme antiquity but what it implies about the gaps in our knowledge. If humans were indeed in the Americas 130,000 years ago, there would have been ample time for complex societies to develop, flourish, and potentially collapse multiple times, leaving few traces for archaeologists to find. The vast majority of potential archaeological sites from this period would now be underwater due to rising sea levels since the last Ice Age, making the Cerutti site potentially just a tiny glimpse of a much larger, mostly inaccessible archaeological record.

Chapter 3: Genetic Puzzles: Australasian DNA in Amazonian Populations

The revolution in ancient DNA analysis has transformed our understanding of human prehistory, including the peopling of the Americas. While genetic studies initially confirmed that Native Americans descend primarily from ancient northeast Asian populations, they have also revealed unexpected complexities that challenge simple migration narratives. Perhaps none is more puzzling than the discovery of a distinct Australasian genetic signature in certain indigenous Amazonian populations. In 2015, Harvard geneticist David Reich and colleagues published evidence in Nature that some Amazonian Native Americans carry DNA closely related to indigenous Australians, New Guineans, and Andaman Islanders. This "Australasian signal" is not present to the same extent, or at all, in North and Central Americans, creating a geographical puzzle that defies conventional explanation. As Reich himself admitted, "We spent a really long time trying to make this result go away, but it just got stronger." The mystery deepened when this Australasian genetic signature was found in 10,400-year-old skeletal remains from Lagoa Santa, Brazil. Geneticist J. Victor Moreno-Mayar wondered openly, "How did it get there? We have no idea." David Meltzer expressed amazement at the signal "somehow leaping over all North America in a single bound." The most straightforward explanation based purely on the genetic data would be a direct transpacific migration from Australasia to South America, though most scientists consider this scenario implausible given the presumed technological limitations of Ice Age humans. This genetic anomaly joins other surprising discoveries about Native American ancestry. The 24,000-year-old remains of a boy found at Mal'ta near Lake Baikal in Siberia revealed that between 14-38% of Native American ancestry derives from an ancient Siberian population more closely related to western Eurasians than to East Asians. Additionally, both Native North and South Americans carry small amounts of Denisovan DNA, connecting them to a human species primarily known from a single cave in Siberia but whose genetic legacy is strongest in populations from Papua New Guinea and Australia. These genetic puzzles suggest that the traditional narrative of a single migration across Beringia followed by a simple north-to-south population expansion is woefully inadequate. The Americas appear to have been settled by multiple founding populations with diverse genetic backgrounds, arriving at different times and possibly by different routes. The full story of these ancient migrations remains to be unraveled, but it clearly involves connections spanning vast distances across both the Pacific and Atlantic worlds, challenging our assumptions about the capabilities and movements of ancient peoples.

Chapter 4: Terra Preta: The Amazon's Engineered Agricultural Miracle

For most of the 20th century, the Amazon rainforest was viewed by archaeologists as a "counterfeit paradise"—a lush but hostile environment where only small, scattered bands of hunter-gatherers could survive. Betty Meggers of the Smithsonian Institution argued influentially that the poor tropical soils could never have supported large populations or complex societies. This view has been completely overturned by the rediscovery of terra preta de Índio—"Indian Black Earth"—a human-created soil of extraordinary fertility that still maintains its productivity after thousands of years. Terra preta is found throughout the Amazon basin, covering areas estimated between 6,000 and 640,000 square kilometers. This dark, carbon-rich soil contains pottery fragments, bone, charcoal, and organic matter, and hosts unique microbial communities that continuously regenerate its fertility. While some archaeologists initially suggested terra preta formed accidentally from accumulated waste, its sophisticated properties suggest deliberate creation through a controlled process of burning wet vegetation under oxygen-poor conditions to produce biochar, which was then mixed with organic materials to create a self-sustaining soil ecosystem. Carbon dating reveals that the oldest known patches of terra preta date back 8,700 years, with some researchers suggesting they may be even older. This "exemplary agronomy," as Professor David Wilkinson calls it, enabled large, dense populations to thrive in an environment previously thought incapable of supporting them. When European explorers first navigated the Amazon in the 16th century, they reported seeing continuous settlements stretching for kilometers along riverbanks, with "great cities" housing tens of thousands of people—accounts dismissed as exaggerations until the rediscovery of terra preta confirmed the region could indeed support such populations. The technological sophistication behind terra preta extends beyond soil creation. Recent discoveries have revealed hundreds of massive geometric earthworks in the southwestern Amazon, exposed by modern deforestation. These "geoglyphs"—perfect circles, squares, rectangles, and composite figures—are formed by ditches up to 11 meters wide and 3 meters deep, often connected by straight roads. Sites like Fazenda Atlantica feature precise squares measuring 250 meters on each side with adjoining circles 125 meters in diameter, while Severino Calazans presents a cardinally oriented square with the same 230-meter footprint as the Great Pyramid of Egypt. These discoveries have fundamentally changed our understanding of Amazonian prehistory. Far from being a pristine wilderness lightly touched by primitive peoples, the Amazon emerges as a largely human-created landscape shaped by sophisticated civilizations over thousands of years. Ecological studies show that of approximately 16,000 tree species in the Amazon, just 227 "hyperdominant" species make up nearly half of all trees—and these dominant species are five times more likely to be domesticated varieties, revealing that Amazonian peoples have been selectively cultivating useful trees for at least 8,000 years, effectively creating a forest garden on a continental scale.

Chapter 5: Sacred Geometry: Astronomical Knowledge Encoded in Ancient Earthworks

Across the Americas, ancient peoples created monumental structures that reveal a sophisticated understanding of astronomy, geometry, and mathematics. These earthworks weren't merely artistic expressions but precision instruments for tracking celestial movements and encoding complex cosmological knowledge. Their existence challenges conventional views about the technological and intellectual capabilities of prehistoric American cultures. In Adams County, Ohio, the remarkable Serpent Mound stretches 1,348 feet along a natural ridge overlooking Brush Creek. This effigy of an undulating serpent with gaping jaws is aligned with remarkable precision—the serpent's open mouth aligns exactly with the setting sun on the summer solstice, creating a dramatic tableau where the great reptile appears to swallow the sun as it descends below the horizon. What makes Serpent Mound particularly intriguing is its location within an ancient impact crater formed by a cosmic collision millions of years ago. The site exhibits strong magnetic anomalies that cause compasses to give wildly inaccurate readings, suggesting the builders deliberately chose this location for its unusual geomagnetic properties. Similar geometric precision and astronomical knowledge are evident in earthworks throughout the Americas. In the Ohio Valley, the Newark Earthworks complex includes a perfect circle connected to an octagon, with precise alignments to the 18.6-year lunar cycle. Modern surveys have confirmed that these structures incorporate sophisticated mathematical principles, including knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem centuries before Pythagoras. The octagon's walls align precisely with the northernmost and southernmost risings of the moon—a cycle that takes nearly two decades to complete, suggesting generations of careful observation. In the Amazon, hundreds of perfectly executed geometric geoglyphs have been discovered, many aligned to solstices and equinoxes. At Nazca in Peru, enormous ground drawings include not only geometric patterns but also depictions of animals native to the Amazon rainforest, suggesting cultural connections spanning vast distances. These structures often incorporate precise mathematical relationships—the ratio of circle circumference to square perimeter, for instance—that reveal a sophisticated understanding of geometric principles. The mathematical knowledge behind these monuments challenges conventional views of prehistoric American cultures. At sites like Poverty Point in Louisiana, dated to approximately 3,500 years ago, earthworks demonstrate precise geometric relationships and astronomical alignments that would have required advanced planning and measurement techniques. Studies of the Mundurukú people in the Amazon reveal that even isolated indigenous groups possess innate geometric knowledge, able to understand concepts of topology and Euclidean geometry without formal education. This widespread use of sacred geometry across the Americas suggests a shared cosmological understanding that transcends individual cultures. From Ohio to the Amazon, from Peru to Louisiana, ancient Americans created monuments that connected earth and sky through precise mathematical relationships. These structures served as calendars, observatories, and ceremonial centers that helped societies maintain harmony with cosmic cycles, revealing a sophisticated intellectual tradition that has been largely overlooked in conventional histories of human achievement.

Chapter 6: Younger Dryas Impact: Cosmic Catastrophe and Cultural Reset

Around 12,800 years ago, as the last Ice Age was drawing to a close, Earth experienced a sudden and catastrophic climate reversal. Global temperatures plunged back to near-glacial conditions, initiating a cold period known as the Younger Dryas that lasted approximately 1,200 years. This abrupt climate change coincided with the disappearance of North America's megafauna—including mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, and giant ground sloths—and the mysterious vanishing of the Clovis culture from the archaeological record. A growing body of evidence supports the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, which proposes that Earth collided with fragments of a disintegrating comet around 12,800 years ago. Researchers from the Comet Research Group have identified a distinctive layer of sediments dating precisely to the Younger Dryas boundary at more than 50 sites across four continents. This layer contains unusual materials rarely found in Earth's geological record, including nanodiamonds, magnetic spherules, platinum, and iridium—elements typically associated with cosmic impacts. High-temperature melted minerals and evidence of widespread wildfires further support the impact scenario. The hypothesis suggests that multiple comet fragments struck the North American ice sheet and possibly other locations, triggering continental-scale wildfires that would have devastated landscapes and released enormous amounts of soot and dust into the atmosphere. This global atmospheric darkening would have blocked sunlight, causing temperatures to plummet and initiating the Younger Dryas cold period. The environmental consequences would have been catastrophic for both wildlife and human populations, potentially explaining the simultaneous extinction of 35 genera of large mammals in North America. Intriguingly, memories of this cataclysm may be preserved in the oral traditions of indigenous peoples across North America. More than 30 Native American tribes share remarkably similar stories of a time when fiery objects fell from the sky, the sun was darkened, a terrible cold descended, and many animals and people perished. These traditions describe not just the event itself but also the subsequent environmental changes, including rising sea levels and altered landscapes, suggesting they may represent actual historical memories preserved through oral transmission for nearly 13,000 years. The Younger Dryas impact may explain why so little evidence remains of pre-Clovis cultures in North America. Any advanced societies existing at that time would have faced unprecedented challenges to survival, with infrastructure destroyed, food sources eliminated, and populations decimated. The few survivors would have been forced to adapt rapidly to radically altered environments, potentially losing much of their cultural knowledge in the struggle to survive. This catastrophic event may have reset the cultural clock in North America, erasing much of what came before and forcing a new beginning—explaining why the archaeological record appears to show a relatively recent human presence in the Americas, despite growing evidence that people had been there for tens of thousands of years prior to the cataclysm.

Chapter 7: Spiritual Continuity: Death Journey Concepts Across Ancient America

Ancient cultures across the Americas shared remarkably similar spiritual concepts, particularly regarding the soul's journey after death. These parallels extend beyond coincidence, suggesting either common origins or profound insights into universal human experiences of consciousness and mortality. From the Mississippi Valley to the Amazon basin, indigenous traditions described the afterlife journey in strikingly similar astronomical terms. Central to many Native American spiritual traditions was the concept of the "Path of Souls"—a celestial road that the deceased must travel to reach the afterlife. This path was physically identified with the Milky Way, visible as a great river of stars across the night sky. The journey required specific astronomical conditions, with many traditions holding that souls could only depart during winter, when the Milky Way formed a complete bridge from the northern to southern horizon during night hours. Key constellations marked critical junctures along this celestial path, with Orion serving as a guardian or gatekeeper and the Pleiades representing the final destination—a paradise where souls would dwell eternally. These spiritual concepts directly influenced monumental architecture throughout the Americas. From Ohio's Serpent Mound to Cahokia's Monks Mound, structures were designed as physical representations of cosmic geography, orienting the living toward the celestial pathways their souls would eventually travel. These monuments served as portals between worlds, places where the boundary between physical and spiritual realms grew thin. Many were deliberately aligned to track the movements of Orion, the Pleiades, and other constellations associated with the afterlife journey. What makes these spiritual traditions particularly intriguing is their striking similarity to ancient Egyptian beliefs documented in texts like the Book of the Dead and the Pyramid Texts. Both traditions described a celestial river that souls must cross, guardians who tested the deceased, and the need for specific knowledge to navigate obstacles. Both identified the Milky Way as this pathway and associated Orion with the journey's critical threshold. These parallels extend to the concept of the soul itself, with many Native American traditions recognizing multiple soul components similar to the Egyptian concept of the ba and ka. Shamanic practices across the Americas involved techniques for accessing altered states of consciousness to communicate with the spirit world. These practices often employed plant medicines containing DMT (dimethyltryptamine), a compound that produces experiences remarkably similar to near-death states. Through these experiences, shamans claimed to gain knowledge of the afterlife journey, which they then encoded in art, architecture, and oral traditions. This experiential approach to spiritual knowledge may explain the remarkable similarities in afterlife concepts across cultures that had no known contact. The preservation of these spiritual traditions across millennia, despite catastrophic disruptions like the Younger Dryas impact, suggests their profound importance to ancient American cultures. They represent not just religious beliefs but comprehensive cosmological systems that integrated astronomy, mathematics, architecture, and spiritual experience into a coherent worldview. This spiritual continuity across vast distances and time periods offers a window into the sophisticated intellectual achievements of ancient American civilizations and their profound understanding of humanity's place in the cosmos.

Summary

The rediscovery of America's ancient civilizations reveals a history far more complex and sophisticated than conventional narratives suggest. From the astronomical precision of earthworks created thousands of years ago to the ecological brilliance of Amazonian terra preta, these societies demonstrated advanced knowledge systems that challenge our understanding of prehistoric human capabilities. The evidence increasingly points to multiple waves of human settlement reaching back tens of thousands of years, potentially including transoceanic contacts that left genetic and cultural signatures across the continent. Most significantly, the catastrophic Younger Dryas impact emerges as a critical turning point—a cosmic reset button that may have destroyed advanced societies and forced survivors to rebuild from fragments of ancient knowledge. These discoveries offer profound implications for our understanding of human potential and resilience. The terra preta system demonstrates sustainable agricultural practices that sequestered carbon while enhancing soil fertility—techniques we desperately need in an era of climate change. The astronomical knowledge embedded in ancient structures reminds us that sophisticated science can develop within spiritual frameworks, challenging our modern separation of these domains. Perhaps most importantly, the spiritual concepts surrounding death and consciousness suggest approaches to human experience that transcend cultural boundaries, pointing toward universal aspects of our humanity. By recognizing the depth and sophistication of these forgotten civilizations, we gain not only a more accurate understanding of our past but also valuable wisdom for navigating our future.

About Author

Loading...

Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock is a British writer and journalist. His books include Lords of Poverty, The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, Keeper of Genesis (released in the US as Message of the Sphinx), The Mars Mystery, Heaven's Mirror (with wife Santha Faiia), Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization, Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith (with co-author Robert Bauval), Supernatural: Meeting with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind and Magicians of the Gods. He also wrote and presented the Channel 4 documentaries Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age and Quest for the Lost Civilisation. His first novel, Entangled, was published in 2010.

Read more