The Groundbreaking Discoveries Historians Are Hiding From You
3 Things I Learned + Bonus Questions
Michael Button is one of the fastest-growing voices in ancient history on YouTube, and after appearing on Joe Rogan, it is easy to see why. In this episode, I sit down with Michael to explore the new evidence that is quietly rewriting everything we thought we knew about human prehistory:
A skull from China that pushes large-brained humans back to a million years ago
A wooden structure built 476,000 years before we thought humans could build anything
And the uncomfortable truth that the entirety of recorded human history represents just 0.2% of our story.
The other 99.8%?
Almost total darkness.
3 things I learned:
A skull found in China in the 1990s, when digitally reconstructed using CT scanning, suggests that large-brained humans were walking the Earth 1 million years ago. That pushes back our timeline so far that everything in recorded history amounts to just 0.2% of the human story.
A wooden structure was discovered dating to 476,000 years ago, over 100,000 years older than the oldest Homo sapiens fossil. Humans were cutting wood at right angles, joining pieces together and building structures nearly half a million years ago. This discovery has almost no mainstream coverage and a tiny Wikipedia page.
When the last ice age ended 12,000 years ago, sea levels rose by 120 metres. Since humans have always built their settlements on coastlines, the vast majority of prehistoric human sites are now underwater and almost certainly gone forever. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
