America Before

The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization

By: Graham Hancock

Narrated by: Graham Hancock

Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

This program is read by the author.

Was an advanced civilization lost to history in the global cataclysm that ended the last Ice Age? Graham Hancock, the internationally best-selling author, has made it his life's work to find out - and in America Before, he draws on the latest archaeological and DNA evidence to bring his quest to a stunning conclusion. 

We’ve been taught that North and South America were empty of humans until around 13,000 years ago - among the last great landmasses on earth to have been settled by our ancestors. But new discoveries have radically reshaped this long-established picture, and we know now that the Americas were first peopled more than 130,000 years ago - many tens of thousands of years before human settlements became established elsewhere. 

Hancock's research takes us on a series of journeys and encounters with the scientists responsible for the recent extraordinary breakthroughs. In the process, from the Mississippi Valley to the Amazon rain forest, he reveals that ancient "New World" cultures share a legacy of advanced scientific knowledge and sophisticated spiritual beliefs with supposedly unconnected "Old World" cultures. Have archaeologists focused for too long only on the "Old World" in their search for the origins of civilization while failing to consider the revolutionary possibility that those origins might in fact be found in the "New World"? 

America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization is the culmination of everything that millions of people have loved in Hancock's body of work over the past decades, namely a mind-dilating exploration of the mysteries of the past, amazing archaeological discoveries, and profound implications for how we lead our lives today.  

©2019 Graham Hancock (P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.

Fun to Think About

I first heard of Graham Hancock on the Joe Rogan podcast. I decided to give this book a try, but find it hard to set aside reading time. I've been listening to this audio book to and from work everyday, and find it fascinating. The wording is beautiful, and the author himself reads the book. His voice has good inflection, but not overly dramatic. He has a good balance of facts mixed with unproven, yet logical, ideas. Some of the proposed ideas seem a bit out there, but 100 years ago, most of what we currently know would seem unbelievable. The facts are clearly separated from the opinions. Weather or not you agree with everything he says, the ideas are still fun to think about since they're on the edge of being proven. The author has taken a subject that can be incredibly boring, and found a way to retain my interest for hours. This book has sparked an interest in Archaeology I never had before. There is so much in this field, and the history of the Americas, that is unknown.

🙃

After listening to him on JRE and going back and listening to magicians & fingerprints of the gods , I am a huge fan of grahams work. He has a beautiful writing style that matches exactly the way he speaks . He opened my eyes to the devastation that took place in my home state of Washington and Informed my opinion on the landscape around me . Driving through , and camping in eastern Washington has taken on new meaning for my family and I . I am so glad I can help support his work in any way by purchasing this audio book .

Great book

I'm a big fan of Graham Hancock's work, but if you're not familiar with his work then I definitely recommend reading Fingerprints and/or Magicians of the God's before America Before.

I want to love this book

I'm sort of a, "Joe Rogan Experience Bro" who never would've heard of Graham Hancock without the J.R.E.. I loved listening to Graham talk about this book on Joe's podcast, so I figured I'd love the audiobook. I left out the last star because, at least for me, the way it's written is hard to follow. I felt like a D student who's parents paid for his Harvard acceptance, and now I'm sitting in class getting lectured like, "oh no, please slow down." But if you're a history buff and not a dummy like me, this book is absolutely fascinating.

Brace yourself

This book shakes the current understanding of who we are to the core. It's absolutely perspective changing.

Entertaining but more incredible than credible!

The author provides food for thought. However, my impression after listening for many hours is thus. This author makes a living by sensationalizing possible historic events. Initially his proposition is an intriguing hypothesis. The America's were inhabited by humans as far back as 110,000 years ago. However, to make his point he argues only in support of his hypothesis. In doing so he cherry picks his facts and amplifies possibilities into probabilities and probabilities into must have happened that way.
In the end I would say that his book was interesting but, having now heard him out, I do not place much faith in his theory that man or some hominid like creatures inhabited the Americas 110.000 years ago. Yeah, its possible because that would have been a hiatus in an earlier period of glaciation but there is simply no evidence to indicate that hominids had even left Africa at that time.

And as far as his claims and continual banging on the idea that the ancients possessed some high form of geometry 15,000 years back is ludicrous. Any fool could quickly figure out how to use two objects one fixed and one movable to determine the absolute annual extremes of the sun, moon or celestial movement. And even hunters would understand that they derived a benefit from knowing the approaching seasons which would allow them to anticipate animal and fish migrations. Given that man's brain size has been pretty much what it is now for 150,000 years, there is no reason to believe that we lacked the ability to reason even when we were stone age hunters. It is after all man's high ability to solve problems that sets us apart from the other animals. There is no reason to marvel at the likelihood that mankind might decide to provide some permanent method to determine the summer and winter solstices. Certainly learning how to use fire was a far more impressive feat of technology than would be marking the rising and setting of the sun.

ancient cultures in North America! A must read!

Graham Hancock is a amazing explorer, reporter, scientist, philosopher, evidence finder, entrepreneur, facts connector, and story teller.

Graham uses science based facts, research, know mathematical, astronomical and Discovery evidence to lay out all the evidence which connect all of our ancient cultures and are even or own today to a most ancient culture that potentially died out in the last ice age era, around 12800 years in the past.

He is a master at connecting all of the facts based off of research and discovery throughout known knowledge from all excavation notes throughout history and personal exploration at the sites himself including hundreds of dives all around the world. He is able to connect all of the facts and inner twine all of the legends around the world and everything else in between.

Very compelling and wonderful writter. A must read if you love history, ancient cultures or anything history.

must read Fingerprints of the Gods, Magicians of the Gods, and all of the other books that came before this to get a good feel about it. but if you don't you can still understand what is going on and he kind of recap so it is totally okay if you don't. but all his other books are highly recommended especially the two before this one.

pseudoscience gross

There are some really cool theories and ideas that I really liked. But it got increasingly more and more crazy until he decides modern science is just a mean club that didn't want new ideas..
but those new ideas we got there was a lost civilization in Antarctica which was unfrozen until really recently, actually was in the Americas 100,000 years ago but an asteroid liked them.

Except he's claiming this lost civilization that could harness nuclear energy and had psychic powers got wiped out, but only after planting sleeper cells of their religion and technology in every civilization on earth.

it's a stretch to put it lightly, and any theories and ideas he put forth which sounded reasonable I now immediately doubt because of all the crazy stuff.

The author actually brings up this criticism and reads an entire letter about how he's discrediting real research into these theories because of association with all the crazy stuff. I completely agree and his only rebuttal is they must be narrow minded. not the preponderance of evidence

Book Review

I've found the thought provoking chapters 21 onward to be the most worthy of attention. Since it correlates multiple sources in to a single source. Moreover, Mr. Hancock's voice with its calm demeanor, make the audio book a delight to listen to. Pleasant, clear and precise, a true British linguist with extensive knowledge on multiple complex subjects. A tremendous attention was given to the mounts of America in a very exhaustive manner, though the intent was to prove a point. I found it too complex for most average readers, a scholar in the other hand, would definitely appreciate the thought process.

All in all, I enjoyed this book and will in fact read his other books, because they offer a fresh disconnected perspective in the egotistically driven world of sciense & history. A world that focuses more in limited ideologies than in factual organization and collaboration.

Thank you!!!

Perfectly executed.

This book was brilliantly written and surprisingly easy to comprehend. The fact that Hancock read it himself was also quite appealing to me. His view on the world is unique and much more open-minded compared many in his field and has opened my eyes to many different topics that I would not have considered if I had not listened.
I will definitely be reading more of his books after this. (I 110% recomend this read/listen.)