In a world where we believe most ancient mysteries have been solved, a mind-blowing conversation between Joe Rogan and researcher Graham Hancock on The Joe Rogan Experience upends our assumptions.

Hancock shares the story of a “forbidden” original world map—one global elites allegedly tried to bury—that hints at hidden continents, distorted histories, and a lost civilization with technological prowess rivaling our own.

The mainstream archaeological narrative credits the Polynesian Expansion, about 3,000 to 3,500 years ago, as humanity’s first great oceanic adventure.

The Polynesians were extraordinary navigators, settling remote islands like Easter Island—an achievement that required crossing thousands of miles with precision. Yet, Hancock challenges this timeline, arguing that DNA evidence from the Amazon and the existence of ancient maps point to a much older, global seafaring culture during the Ice Age.

Why do archaeologists dismiss the possibility of earlier ocean voyages, especially when the Egyptians had boats 4,500 years ago? Hancock posits that the real resistance is to the idea of a civilization in the Ice Age with advanced navigation and mapping skills.

The most compelling evidence, he says, comes from ancient maps—some drawn between the 1300s and 1700s—that appear to be based on much older source material.

One of the most famous is the Piri Reis map, created by Turkish admiral Piri Reis in 1513. Though only a fragment survives, it shows the coasts of South America, North America, and Africa. In his own handwriting, Piri Reis claimed to have based his map on more than a hundred older sources, some rescued from the Library of Alexandria before its destruction.

These maps, Hancock argues, are “extremely hard to explain”—they include precise relative latitudes and longitudes, a feat that supposedly wasn’t possible until the invention of the marine chronometer in the late 18th century.

Longitude is especially tricky; it requires knowing the time at your starting point and local noon at your current location. Keeping time accurately at sea was impossible until the late 1700s, yet these ancient maps seem to incorporate that knowledge, suggesting an unknown advanced civilization mapped the world during the last Ice Age.

The Pinkerton world map, drawn in 1818, is another example. It lacks Antarctica, which wasn’t officially discovered until 1819. Yet, older maps repeatedly show Antarctica in the correct location and as it would have appeared during the Ice Age—larger and mostly ice-free. This raises the question: Who could have mapped Antarctica before it was buried under ice?

Hancock also discusses the Bimini Road, a mysterious underwater structure in the Grand Bahama Banks. The Piri Reis map shows a large island with a road of megaliths exactly where the Bimini Road is now submerged. The last time this area was above water was thousands of years ago, suggesting someone mapped it long before modern history.

While mainstream archaeology dismisses these anomalies as coincidence or natural formations, Hancock insists the evidence points to a forgotten epoch—a time when a global seafaring culture explored and mapped the world with technology and knowledge that defy our current understanding. The implication: our ancestors may have been far more advanced, and the true history of our planet is deeper, older, and more mysterious than we’ve ever imagined.