– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

No matter how the planets move across

the sky, there will always be an

infinite number of extinctions.

Intelligent species will disappear

forever into the abyss of time. This

cycle has been true for millions of

years of evolution. Our days as all of

our direct ancestors and cousins are

numbered. The question is, will they,

the ones that will come after us,

remember us in our story, or will they

forget us and simply assume they are the

supreme masters of life on Earth?

In Eastern Europe, high up the

Carpathian Mountains, there is a large

plateau flanked by rocks of gigantic

sizes. The most striking found in the

middle was long ago named the Carpathian

sphinx. Its name derived from its

resemblance and similar facial size to

the famous Egyptian sphinx. Is there a

very old connection between the

Carpathian sphinx and the great sphinx

in Egypt? Is there a possibility that

the Carpathian sphinx is the result of a

vanished civilization?

While doing her masters in Boston in

documentary film,

Wana Guillo did an independent

investigation.

Unsatisfied by her scientific findings,

Wana decided to leave the United States.

She returned to Eastern Europe, to

Romania, to the country she had left as

a teenager more than 15 years ago.

[Music]

Wana wanted to explore firsthand and

examine all the possibilities on site.

The Carpathian Sphinx was calling Wana

to unravel its hidden story.

Wana decided she had to try and solve

its riddle.

Is there a possibility

that the Carpathian sphinx and the

Egyptian sphinx speak to us of a larger

forgotten story of our world history?

[Music]

All the art we create today is a legacy

of what those people and other groups of

early humans around the world developed

during the ice age. The art did not come

out of a vacuum.

The Egyptian Sphinx is seen as the

greatest statue ever made by the hand of

man. Built from sacred stone, it's

considered to be one of the biggest

ancient wonders. The sphinx has a body

shaped like a lion and its head shaped

as a king or a god.

John Anthony West, an American

journalist and independent Egyptologist,

while researching the documents on the

Sphinx became convinced that the statue

had been highly eroded by rain, not by

wind, which was the mainstream

assumption. This meant that the Sphinx

had to be much older than the

traditional established date. To prove

its antiquity, West needed an

open-minded expert from a renowned

academic medium. After a long search,

West found credentialed geologist, Dr.

Robert M. Shock, a recently tenured

professor at Boston University, who

holds a doctorate in geology and

geoysics from Yale, a topranking

university. Although young, Dr. Shock

was an expert in the analysis of rock

erosion.

What I found was that West had one very

extreme idea that the Sphinx was

thousands of years older than the

Egyptologists thought. So I thought it

was a long shot. I thought maybe West

was on to something I thought was very

improbable, but it was worth looking at

further. I'm a curious type of person.

Alongside West, Shock embarked on a trip

to Egypt to evaluate firsthand the

antiquity of the Egyptian Sphinx. Shock

realized that the Sphinx had been highly

eroded by rains,

just as West argued.

The rain erosion was easy to spot. The

rocks weathered by heavy rains had a

rounded and undulated profile

in sharp contrast to the hard profile of

wind weathering.

This is classic textbook example of what

happens to a limestone wall when you

have rains beating down on it for

thousands of years. It's clearly rain

precipitation causing these erosional

features.

One thing I think one has to realize is

that the Sphinx itself is in very bad

shape in the 20th century. It's

deteriorating very quickly. You can

literally stand in front of the Sphinx

and watch stones fall off of it. Yes,

it's a very serious problem the modern

weathering, but the weathering that I'm

looking at is the ancient weathering,

the weathering that we see under ancient

repairs. And that's a whole different

ballgame. That's a whole different um

set of evidence than the modern

weathering. And this work that goes back

um almost two decades now for myself

personally really set the stage for much

of what has come later. And I'm not

claiming any credit here. I'm giving

credit to the Sphinx. Um, and it's also

changed my life. Um, sometimes I think

usually I think for the better,

sometimes I wonder what I got myself

into. So, I really started on the Sphinx

work when I was very young. This is me

about 20 years ago. Um, and what it

really indicate doing, at least for some

people, and this was part of the

controversy and part of why we're here

now is talking about, you know, if you

push the day of the Sphinx back, does it

mean that we have to view history

differently? Um, do we have to rewrite

history? Things were happening in Egypt

at a much earlier period than

conventional archaeologists,

conventional historians

have ever admitted or suspected. Take a

look at this. You can see the rolling,

weathering, the precipitation induced

weathering. And here you see very nicely

all these joints which are various fault

joints and whatnot. You don't see this

same type of joints opening up in the

wind induced weathering.

This is clear evidence to me as a

geologist that this erosional feature we

see was caused by rain beating down on

the rocks.

We have a anti-deluvian civilization

with all the trappings of later feronic

civilization like the Sphinx with the

characteristic Egyptian headcloth with a

characteristic use of the lion in the

guise of the king and then you have

nothing. You have nothing for how long?

A thousand years, 2,000 years and then

it starts up again. Where's the link?

What ties this anti-deluvian culture to

what came later? Culture evolves in a

linear fashion. To accept the theories

that you're reporting means that you've

got culture A,

culture B,

and in between nothing.

And it simply doesn't work that way.

What's actually at stake are the

implications, the the impact it has upon

accepted views of the evolution of

civilization.

Daniel Russo, a Peruvian specialist in

prehistory,

became convinced about the existence of

a worldwide civilization,

now forgotten, that became extinct after

a major natural disaster.

According to Russo,

this civilization had left its

fingerprints on all the continents,

especially at higher elevations in

various mountain ranges of the world.

Russo believed its people worship

mountains and sculpted the rocks as an

expression of their religion and

spirituality.

[Music]

In 1968

during the communist regime of Nikolai

Chescu,

Russo was able to come to the Carpathian

Mountains.

Intrigued by the possibility that in

this mountain range were the best

preserved marks of those forgotten

peoples. In his words, in the Carpathian

Mountains

was the door to the treasure of a lost

peoples.

Russo and his team examined the

surrounding area of the Carpathian

Sphinx and he became certain he had

found convincing proof of the vanished

peoples.

According to Russo,

the Carpathian Sphinx is a prehistoric

monument

sculpted in very remote times,

partially destroyed in the face, highly

weathered by rain and wind.

The legacy of the vanished peoples.

Upon his return to Peru, Russo published

a study on his worldwide findings

entitled The Fantastic History of a

Discovery.

He concluded that the Carpathian

Mountains were a central location of

high significance

and that the Carpathian Sphinx was one

of its most important monuments.

[Music]

The Carpathian Sphinx is centrally

positioned above 2200 m on the Bukaji

massive plateau at the intersection of

major paths.

The gigantic rock has a number of phases

best seen when the sunlight changes

during the day all oriented in cardinal

directions.

One face resembling a modern human is

oriented north.

Another face resembling an early human

is oriented west.

Why does one face target the north and

another one the west?

Why does one face point to the northern

sky and another one to the setting sun?

Who does this gigantic bearded rock face

represent?

The mysterious enigmatic rock faces can

only be seen from certain angles,

especially at sunrise, sunset, and full

moon. Will the sun or the moon indicate

a secret direction? Russo believes these

rock sculptures indicated sacred

treasure hidden in nearby caves pointing

to a spiritual legacy.

Where should one look to find the

answers?

I think when we look for this lost

civilization, there may have been lost

civilizations, but they were not

necessarily what we expect or what many

people expect. That is, they were not a

mirror image in the past of what we are

today.

Russo thought the highly eroded rock

sculptures were guardians of an ancient

wisdom. They were a magical work

produced by people whose understanding

of the world was much different from the

present.

was this ancient lost civilization

actually what we would now call

Neanderthalss. Um so going back tens of

thousands of years into the last ice

age.

Is there a possibility that the vanished

peoples Russo searched for could be the

vanished Neanderl peoples?

With the Neandertos, you know, when they

discovered them, they purposely made

them look, you know, more apish and and

how could that be a part of us, you

know, how could that be another kind of

human? I don't think it was, you know,

people weren't really ready to

understand. And I think you have to make

people ready to understand by

having it in the media and not in a

comical way. To not give this a chance

and to ignore it and to look at it and

go, I didn't come from that because the

Bible tells me so is is is

selling yourself short of your human

experience. Framing your world and

building a paradigm of existence and

what is reality based on. I think human

evolution is the utmost start is the

beginning of everything as far as

understanding ourselves where we are and

where we are going. There has to be like

monuments to Neanderthalss then you know

to our ances they're the they're the

immortal people they're in my mind

they're they're the thing that I think

is the closest to God you'll ever get

because they're the only existence you

have from a world that's being formed.

Stan Guch, a British psychologist and

researcher, developed in the 1970s an

original thesis based on a lifetime of

research, observation, and insights.

According to Gu, we modern humans are a

hybrid.

in part chromagnon, our direct ancestor,

and in part Neanderl. Gu's thesis has

been proven correct by genetic studies,

and we find ourselves today to be a

genetic combination of both Cro-Magnum

and Neanderl human species. We have

inherited about 20% of the Neanderl

genome into our current gene pool. And

every person in Eurasia and even North

Africa has between 2 to 4% of the

Neanderl genome preserved in us.

For Stan Guch Neanderthalss were their

own species. They had their own culture.

They had their own civilization. Even he

used terms like cities of dreams that

they built cities of dreams. They had a

dream culture. They had an advanced

sophisticated culture.

[Music]

Typically people had the concept of

Neanderthalss as being dark, brutish,

apelike if you would. and the

chromagnons, our ancestors were the

lightkinned

fair-haired individuals may be totally

opposite that in fact um the early

archaic homo sapiens were much darker

than the Neanderthalss that they came in

contact with in Europe. Gu predicted

this um long ago.

The Neandertols lived and flourished for

more than 300,000 years, much longer

than modern humans. They lived during

harsh climates and were physically well

adapted and acclimatized to the ice age,

being much fitter and more muscular than

humans today.

Recent discoveries show that Neandertols

had greater manual dexterity than modern

humans, which made them very well suited

for manual activities and labor such as

weaving, engraving, drawing, painting,

and sculpting.

The oldest construction work made by

humans, the Neanderls, was discovered in

Brunel Cave in France. Deep inside the

cave, a group of French spiliologists

found a construction built of concentric

circles weighing more than two tons.

These were used for ritual practices by

the Neanderl people more than 175,000

years ago, preceding any modern human

spiritual or artistic creation.

Neanderls wore jewelry and body paints.

They collected and kept crystals and

minerals for exchange. They had their

own language, lived in complex social

groups, and were at least on the same

cultural and mental levels as their

counterparts, our direct ancestors. They

had profound religious and artistic

systems,

and practiced holistic medicine largely

based on the healing powers of plants.

Hunting and producing weapons, things

like that, chromagnum was certainly

superior. But if you're talking about um

knowledge of herbs

uh then I would say Neanderthal was

superior. It depends what you're talking

about.

Gu points out that the cerebellum was

larger in Neanderthalss. He attributes

and I believe perhaps rightfully so

based on clinical evidence that the

cerebellum is really the seat of many

mental abilities, many mental processes

that we to this day have a very poor

understanding of. So for instance,

dreams may originate primarily in the

cerebellum.

um uh certain types of artistic

impulses, religious impulses, impulses

of the sacred um certain we could call

it loosely philosophical and psychical

impulses.

My view is that the antal and chromagnum

crossbreed in

central Europe some 30 35,000 40,000

years ago.

our culture, our um religious impulses,

many of our institutions,

um societal institutions are really a

combination of both Neanderthal

institutions or religious aspects, if

you want to call it that, and

Cro-Magnons. um that the Cromagnons

really

adopted or inherited or actually took

over many um Neanderthal concepts. Many

Neanderthal mental innovations for

instance maybe symbolism

um religious ceremonies

um many of what in a most deep-seated

way make up our culture, make up our

identity as we see it today. A lot of

our culture and our beliefs and our

disbeliefs come from the end. So we've

incorporated much of the Neanderl

material into our lives.

Nearby the Carpathian Sphinx, we find a

number of caves where Neanderl people

lived, practiced rituals, and hunted the

big game of the ice age.

A very high number of cave bear

skeletons have been found here in the

bear cave alongside Neanderl tools and

hearths.

Evidence of their gatherings and

extended stays.

Mean

in the Carpathian Mountains, a few

hundred kilometers from the Carpathian

Sphinx, The oldest cave bear ritual

arrangement has been discovered deep

inside a cave gallery.

Absolute

respective.

Carry out new excavations, not looking

for just the same old same old, but also

looking for new evidence with a new

view, with a new frame of mind. In

northern Spain, in ElCast cave were

discovered very old paintings, drawings,

and engraved signs made by prehistoric

humans. At first, these were assumed to

have been made by modern humans, but on

further analysis were revealed to have

been made by Neanderl artists more than

67,000 years ago. Neanderls were the

originators of their own cave art and

symbolic expression in Gibralar. Deep

inside Gorm's cave, Neanderl artists

sculpted unknown symbols on the floor.

These are enigmatic,

complex signs made out of 200 to 300

strokes, sequential and ordered. It is

believed to be some type of symbolic

mapping tool for the cave inhabitants.

[Music]

We're in Romania here. We're in the

Carpathian Mountains. Something that is

not very far from where we are currently

located is a incredible structure, a

rock formation up in the high peaks

known as the Carpathian Sphinx. I find

this absolutely amazing.

Yes. Everyone looks at one side of the

Sphinx and sees a face there. Looks like

a modern face. But if we walk around to

the other side, look what we have. This

is a face.

We have an entropoid looking face.

Exactly. But looks like a Neanderthal.

A Neanderthal face with a big eye

socket. Low forehead.

The You can see the mouth and the nose

here. And notice, and I think this is

very telling, very important, the way

it's facing. This face is looking toward

the west. And we're here in the evening.

The sun is setting. Look how the sun is

lined up.

Direct line to the eye.

Direct line to the eye. This Neanderthal

type face is looking toward the west,

looking toward the setting sun. Now,

it's been speculated that Neanderthalss

were a more nocturnal species. If that's

the case, what sun would they be

interested in? The setting sun, the sun

that sets as they come out for their

nocturnal activities, their ceremonies,

their rituals. So they would not be

looking toward the east as many modern

cultures do but toward the west the

setting sun which would be significant

and important to them because

essentially that would start their day

that would start their ceremonies and we

here we have a Neanderthalike face

looking toward the setting sun. Yeah.

Looking at this

face as a geologist,

looking at the types of rocks, you've

got several different layers of rock.

You've got more fine sandstones. You've

got conglomerates. You've got

rocks that are set within the rock.

That's all natural.

Yes. Like that one

like these pink rocks and these darker

blackish rocks. And then then you have

what looks like a little hat on top of

it, which is a slightly different rock,

different lithology again. So you've got

very complex interplay of different rock

types. And that's all natural.

Then you have them shaped into this

face, this profile, and that's where I

start to wonder, is that totally natural

erosional features

or

Is there the possibility

that it started to look like a face

because of natural erosional features?

Is it possible that maybe people came,

they pecked away at it, they modified it

a little bit to look more like a face?

We know from other places that does

happen. Now, when I've walked around

this, looked at it closely, it's so

badly eroded

that it's I would say virtually

impossible to tell if there's at this

point if there's any kind of

artificiality to it. There could have

been. I can't say for certain, but I

think more importantly, in a way, it

doesn't matter because you've got this

profile, you've got this structure. It's

clearly recognizable as a face, as a

human profile. When you walk around to

the other side, you've got another

clearly recognizable profile. They're

oriented

in important directions. this one toward

the north, the other face that looks

more Neanderthal toward the west. That's

significant in both cases. So whether

they're natural or whether they're

artificial or some combination of both,

I can see that they were incredibly

important. They would have attracted

attention in ancient times just as they

do now. Many sacred sites around the

world are natural and they're maybe even

considered more sacred because they are

natural. They're from nature. They're

from the gods.

Exactly. So it looks like a miracle has

happened.

That's right. That's right. That's

right.

Natural rock in the shape of a face or

an animal.

Exactly. So this

without any uh human touch human touch

any artificiality. So, in some ways, one

could argue that if this is fully

natural, it's even more spectacular,

even more important because it's an

indication of something that could be

considered from the God's sacred

divinity.

Exactly. If this is completely natural,

I'm a lot more impressed

and moved.

Exactly.

Um, than if it was sculpted by the hand

of man. What this is is sort of a

scooped out area.

It's almost a round

Yeah, it's a round sort of basin area.

If you put your hand in it, it's filled

with rain water now and sediment. It's

actually quite deep.

That is I mean that is deep. And I'm not

really touching the end.

Yeah, it's quite deep.

Sediments that

Yeah, it's just sediment that's

collected in modern times. But what what

I think we have here is really a

depression or basin area that would have

been perfect for ritualistic purposes

for different ceremonial purposes. It

may have started out as a natural

depression, but I believe it was

probably enhanced by people rubbing it,

scratching it. You see in more recent

ancient sites from only a few thousand

years ago, say at temple complexes in

Egypt, in Turkey, places where people

will rub the rock, they'll scrape it and

it makes depressions. They're trying to

get the sacredness, the power from that

sacred site. This may have been formed

initially the same way formed this

depression. This now serves for

ceremonial purposes. How many people

would you need?

Oh, many to create something like this.

A lot. If you're scraping like that over

a very long period of time,

thousands and thousands

of generations potentially if they're

doing it by hand and rubbing it or

scraping away it. But once you have it,

you've got this depression, this basin

that could be used for any number of

ceremonial purposes. Maybe it was filled

with water and used for some kind of

cleansing ritual. Maybe it was used for

some kind of sanctified or holy water.

We still have those concepts today.

Either cleansing rituals as you go into

a sacred place or holy water that brings

the power of the

sacred site and lets you maybe ingest it

or sprinkle it on yourself. Baptism. We

still use water from a basin from a

depression.

Maybe it was used to collect some kind

of sacrifice for the gods. Maybe it was

filled with liquid. Maybe um some kind

of drink. Maybe it was used to collect

blood if there were sacrifices of

animals. We saw a little bit higher that

basin area that may have been used for

ceremonial purposes. To me, this is very

similar. This is not exactly a basin.

Um, possibly it was at one point if this

is eroded back in more recent times. You

can see there's some breakage there. But

what looks like is an area that

eroded out. You can put your hand

because I really I I really can't I'm

not reaching the end.

No, it goes way back.

Probably up to

at least back to there.

And what it looks to me like is an a

place where people may have been

scraping at it. um removing material.

It's a slightly different

rock here in the general matrix. It

would have attracted attention. You see

sort of a orangish reddish color, but

like you see at other sacred sites of

more recent origin. It may have been a

place where people scratched it to try

to get a little bit of powder, a little

bit of the essentially power, the sacred

power of this spot.

[Music]

[Music]

Another feature that is on the plateau

that really struck me is what we can

call the bearded head or the bearded

man's head. It's a huge structure, very

powerful, very moving in my mind. And I

suspect that whether it's natural or

artificial or some combination of both,

this is something that may have survived

from a very long time ago

um geologically

and may have moved people and been

recognized by people specifically

Neanderthalss

um before the end of the last ice age

that they would have recognized this as

looking like a face as a bearded face

just like we do now. Um, it almost looks

to me like what some people's image of

God is, you know, a Judeo-Christian

bearded male figure. Um, interesting

that you find it up in the mountains and

you approach it and it seems to be in my

mind a sacred ritualistic setting.

I'm told that the name that's been given

to it is the metin. That's a name that

goes back, we don't know exactly how

long, but it's called the met, which

loosely translates as the church. And

this suggests right away that there's

something special about this area. What

is the met? It's this incredible

limestone formation, huge formation,

incredibly symmetrical.

And it appears to me as if it were a

stage or a podium, but of enormous scale

at a scale I think of giants. It's a

huge scale. And it's symmetrically

arranged. It itself is symmetrical. And

it sits in a little valley area that

forms in my mind a natural amphitheater.

This I can't help but think would form a

perfect stage for ceremonies, for ritual

practices, for initiation, for other

types of sacred and religious practices.

In fact, maybe at night it would be even

more dramatic if there were huge

bonfires on the met. If um various trees

like evergreen trees were thrown onto

bonfires and then sparked up like

fireworks, if there was drumming, if

there was singing,

music,

voices. So, I think this could be a very

powerful setting for ceremonial

purposes. All of the pieces in my mind

come together here to suggest that this

is a central location. The river, the

ancient name for the river which

effectively originates at the Met is

sometimes interpreted or translated as

divine river or the heavenly river. So

here we have more illusions to the

divine, to the sacred, but there's still

more. On one side of the valley, the

rock formations, the rock peak is

referred to as the origin peak or the

beginning peak. This suggests to me a

religious connotation of the origins of

the universe, the cosmos, of people. How

did things originate sort of in a

Judeo-Christian sense, Genesis? How did

life itself and the universe, the cosmos

originate? On the other side of the

valley, the formations are known as the

goddesses.

Clear

reference to divinity,

especially if we're talking about

Neanderthalss and they put a lot of

emphasis on women and goddesses. So

we've got the goddesses, we've got the

origins, we've got the Met, we've got

the heavenly or divine river. And then

if we keep going further north beyond

the Met to the highest peak, we have the

peak of the human being, which suggests

to me the origins of life, the origins

of humanity. processions would be

carried on going up the river valley

from the south up toward the Met. As you

ascend up the river valley toward the

plateau, you find the Met as a very

central location. There's nothing else

like this in the vicinity. There's

nothing like this in the area. There's

nothing like this potentially in all of

Europe. So perhaps this was a focal

point, a gathering place for ancient

Neanderthal people from a very broad

geographic region. I could see this very

much as a gathering place for sacred

rituals, for ceremonies. In fact, as

I've looked at the maps, as I've looked

at the geology and the topography, the

geography of this region, you don't have

anything like this anywhere else. You

don't have a place that's at high

altitude where from below it looks like

huge mountain peaks. In fact, we're in

the Carpathian Mountains. But then when

you get up to the top, it's like a

fortress and it opens up into this

plateau.

And in the middle of the fortress, there

is

structures like this

natural or artificial features.

Here it is. So this would be a gathering

point. I see it very much as a gathering

point, a ceremonial point. And I wonder

as I think about how widespread

the populations were that would gather

here periodically because there's no

other area that's as well suited as this

for I believe hundreds of kilometers. So

if we're talking about Neanderthal

culture and consistent rituals over a

large geographic area, consistent

beliefs, shared beliefs, shared

religious ceremonies, periodically they

would gather all together to exchange

stories, to participate in ceremonies

that would bond different communities

together. I think this is the perfect

spot for that. We know that there's a

strong Neanderthal presence here. We

have a number of caves. Caves that occur

along the river valley as you ascend up

toward the meta and up toward the

plateau. These caves to this day

preserve evidence of Neanderthal

presence, evidence of Neanderthal

rituals.

What's the behavior of ice age? What was

the behavior of ice age bears?

Right. And also

would it be natural for

would they would so many of them come

here to

to die?

Yeah. Yeah.

And they just all decided to come here

when they would were about to die.

It's also possible that perhaps they

were used in rituals.

That's what I'm thinking. You'd be using

tame bears.

Yes. And if this was this place was used

for performance,

it would make a lot of sense.

Yeah. that uh they would have the

dancing bears. Beautiful.

Really incredible space.

It's amazing

experience.

I don't know. For me, it creates an

experience that is extraordinary,

very moving, but it's hard to find the

right words.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not easily

put in language.

[Music]

See, I'm wondering how they physically

following the river at this point.

Cuz the path would be 20 m down,

right?

And the river is

And the river is going through that

pass.

Yeah. And here

it would be almost the same.

But see what I'm saying? Where would

they be walking unless they're walking

right in the river?

That's what I would think that they

would be walking in the river. People

could have been coming from many even

hundreds of kilometers or more away

gathering a certain time. Maybe this was

something that happened every few years.

Maybe it was even major ceremonies that

occurred once in a generation and it was

a pilgrimage. And we can very much

imagine and I think it's more than just

imagination. And we can reconstruct

start to reconstruct how such

pilgrimages occurred and what practices

would have been carried out along the

way. Maybe initiations were carried out

along these the passage getting up to

the plateau.

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

The overall experience of one going into

this cave would be

sort of similar for a Neanderl.

Oh, I think it would be very similar.

Would have had incredible experience

here.

Especially if they had the better night

vision.

I was going to say that better night

vision. And also um what were they using

for illumination?

Even with really good vision, they had

to have some kind of illumination.

What's What's the What are the acoustics

in here?

Oh, well.

That's pretty good.

So, this place could be used for some

sort of

musical rituals.

Yeah. Worked well. You've got good

acoust acoustics potentially. You've got

sort of a natural chimney. You've got

water that you could channel through.

You probably keep a fairly um you know

temperature wise fairly close tolerances

year round naturally.

Mhm. Yeah.

It's

a perfect place to live.

It creates very interesting shapes. All

of a sudden,

things start to emerge.

Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Just one

candle.

All of a sudden, for me, I don't know,

for you, everything looks a lot more

organic and alive.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. Because I think

the harsh headlamps and flashlights,

they they they sort of flatten

everything. You don't see the texture to

it. It washes things out.

And imagine

now a ceremony here. And

yeah. Yeah.

Musical performance.

Oh yeah.

With things like pine trees and whatnot.

If you brought in the pine branches, you

know how if you light them, they just

all of a sudden for a short period of

time, you have a It's like fireworks.

Exactly.

And I could see them doing things like

that for dramatic effect. And at certain

times, you know, during a ceremony, I

bet a lot of the hearts and a lot of the

fire remains that are found had nothing

to do with war. Was probably

ritualistic. I mean, they didn't they

were used to the climate.

Stunning.

It's really those are really stunning.

Yeah.

What a beautiful environment.

Yeah. This is really interesting how it

works.

A few candles and a few crystals and

suddenly you have an extraordinary

extraordinary

unexpected experience.

Yeah.

Away from modern life and time.

What do you think about this setting

with all the

and about 15 candles and

Yeah, it's beautiful.

I mean this is this is the first church

or sanctuary or

cathedral whatever you want to call it

very much. Yeah. It has the

the feel of a cathedral.

Yeah. I mean I think the modern

artificial churches and cathedrals and

that they're trying to imitate this

not vice versa.

Yes. It makes me really feel religion

but not

in a veryity deep and personal sense.

Yeah.

Yeah. Not like an organized religion but

a real deep feeling

of sanctity and spirituality. I would

say

it could have been some sort of um

ritual or pilgrimage that would come

here.

Right. Right.

Sort of a returning.

Yeah. Yeah,

returning to the beginning.

Yeah, maybe certain times of year or

maybe there may even be times that even

bigger groups got together on a more

lengthy cycle, you know, cyclical maybe,

you know, based on a lunar cycle of the

what is it? The 19-year return or

something like that, which would

essentially be a generational thing. You

might have a huge

sort of congregation of different

people,

hundreds or if not more,

possibly thousands of people.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which would have been

that you can visualize it would have

been really amazing.

And so you have this dichotomy between

religion and intuition with

Neanderthal's

reason and logic with Cromagnos

and Stan Gush says that it was sort of

monumental when the two met

also you had two different world views

coming together.

Neither really understood the other. So

Neanderthalss didn't really understand

these new Cromagnons that were invading

their territory. The Cromagnons didn't

really understand what the Neanderthalss

were doing with all these weird rituals

and ceremonies and dancing and singing

that was foreign to them. They tried to

figure it out what they called magic.

Exactly. And they probably How would you

um see these rituals? They would have to

spy probably at night.

Night. Yeah.

Try to figure out what's going on

from a distance.

It must have been very mysterious, very

scary to the chromagnons to see these

people doing all these things. You know,

when you don't understand something, you

fear it. In many cases, much of our

culture

and our beliefs

and our beliefs,

our religious practices,

that's an inheritance from Neanderthal.

We in a cultural sense carry on many the

Angal traditions.

[Music]

The Egyptian sphinx is part of a larger

complex just like the Carpathian sphinx

is part of a larger complex. So in both

cases, I believe we're talking sacred

ceremonial sites that held incredible

importance to their respective people,

to their respective populations.

[Music]

[Music]

They and other ancient, you know,

certain other ancient peoples, but we'll

focus on Neanderthalss for now, were

much more sophisticated

in

ways that we don't even have a good

language to describe.

I mean you have traditions around the

world of a golden age

which I think is not referring to

materialistic golden age.

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

to judge

a culture like the Neanderthalss by the

gigante remains, physical remains.

It's It's sort of insane.

[Laughter]

Looking at the universe with its cosmic

rhythms, untold beauty, and great

dangers, they understood themselves as

part of something bigger than they

themselves were. They knew their place

in the order of things.

We need to recover that sense of the

world

in waking up to the new paradigm. We

recover something long lost, something

very old in ourselves.

It's as if you're approaching an

incredible cathedral, an incredibly holy

spot. And as you approach it, you come

to various points where you prepare

yourself for the ultimate

adventure, the ultimate religious

experience at the highest peaks.

So this entire complex

which in many ways is symbolized by the

Carpathian sphinx is a huge religious

ceremonial ritualistic complex that must

have been incredibly important to the

Neanderthal people for generations and

generations, probably thousands and

thousands of generations over

tens of thousands of years. Really

important to me to be able to come here

and experience firsthand the caves, to

experience firsthand the plateau, to

experience firsthand the Carpathian

Sphinx. To me, in fact, in some ways, we

can think of the Carpathian Sphinx as

being a symbol for a lost world,

literally a lost people, a lost culture.

The mountain is a lost cathedral and the

Carpathian Sphinx is the lost altar.

[Music]

[Music]

A lost culture,

a lost people.

People who understood that they were

part of something bigger than

themselves.

People who left us clues, mysteries, and

riddles. And the greatest riddle of all,

the Carpathian Sphinx, the forgotten

Sphinx.

Up the mountain of forgotten dreams

where Neanderl communities flourished

for thousands of generations.

The Carpathian Sphinx speaks to us of a

larger forgotten story of our world

history. We need to recover that sense

of the past and those forgotten stories

for they have the power to inform and

enrich our lives today.

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

Yeah.

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

Where

are

you?

away.

[Music]

Glor.

[Music]

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
mountains /ˈmaʊntɪnz/ A1	noun - a large natural elevation of the earth's surface rising abruptly from the surrounding level
sphinx /sfɪŋks/ B2	noun - a mythical creature with the head of a human or animal and the body of a lion
history /ˈhɪstəri/ A2	noun - the study of past events
erosion /ɪˈroʊʒən/ B2	noun - the process by which the surface of the earth is worn away by the action of water, glaciers, winds, waves, etc.
weathering /ˈwɛðərɪŋ/ B2	noun - the disintegration or alteration of rock at or near the earth's surface through physical, chemical, and biological processes
civilization /ˌsɪvələˈzeɪʃən/ B1	noun - the stage of human social and cultural development and organization that is considered most advanced
vanished /ˈvænɪʃt/ B2	adjective - having disappeared or ceased to exist verb - to disappear suddenly and completely
ancient /ˈeɪnʃənt/ A2	adjective - belonging to the very distant past and no longer in existence
legacy /ˈleɡəsi/ B2	noun - something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past
sculpted /ˈskʌlptɪd/ B2	adjective - shaped by carving, modeling, or other means verb - to create or represent (something) by carving, casting, or other shaping techniques
sacred /ˈseɪkrɪd/ B1	adjective - connected with God (or the gods) or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration
rituals /ˈrɪtʃuəl/ B1	noun - a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order
symbolic /sɪmˈbɒlɪk/ B2	adjective - serving as a symbol
Neanderthal /niˈændərˌtɔl/ C1	noun - an extinct species of human that was widely distributed in ice-age Europe between c.120,000–35,000 years ago, with a receding forehead and prominent brow ridges. adjective - relating to or characteristic of Neanderthals.
plateau /ˈplætəʊ/ B2	noun - an area of relatively level high ground
caves /keɪvz/ A1	noun - a hollow in the earth, especially one into a hill or mountain, or one at the coast
flourished /ˈflʌrɪʃt/ B2	verb - to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, especially as the result of a particularly favorable environment
earth /ɜːrθ/ A1	noun - the planet on which we live; the world