Ancient Apocalypse

Have you started watching Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse yet? It’s been heralded as “the most dangerous show on Netflix,” and for that and many other reasons I thought it was fantastic.

I’ve been familiar with a good amount of Hancock’s ideas for a couple of years now, but watching his documentary has inspired me to write a bit more about the Gobekli-Jaredite hypothesis—the theory that the “great tower” of the Jaredites was Gobekli Tepe (Ether 1:33), and they arrived in America around 10-12 thousand years ago.

There’s so much to write. I’ve got pages and pages of notes about this stuff. I hope to eventually write about it all if I can, but… life, you know?…. So today I’ll just jot down some thoughts that have been milling around in my head for the last couple of years.

The “ancient apocalypse” of 12.8 ka that Graham Hancock has been investigating is what we call “Noah’s Flood.” The civilization that existed before it are the descendants of Adam. How advanced this civilization was, I don’t know, but it makes sense that they had knowledge that other extant hunter gatherer tribes did not have.

So yes, I think there was this civilization of the seed of Adam, and there were other tribes that were not descended from Adam. This explains why Christ tells the brother of Jared that no man that He has created has ever seen Him (Ether 3:15), while D&C 107:53-55 tells us the Lord appeared to Adam, Enoch, and others before the Flood. This also explains why it was such a big deal for God to promise that a remnant of Noah’s seed would be found among all nations (Moses 7:52).

At least Noah and his family survived the destruction. The 12.8 ka cataclysm in North America explains why they had to build a boat and leave the land of their fathers. Noah’s descendants were remnants of this destroyed civilization, and they may have carried special knowledge with them—technological and spiritual knowledge.

This explains the voyage of Egyptus (or Zepta), the daughter of Ham finding Egypt underwater (Abraham 1:24). It also explains why the brother of Jared and his people knew of and revered Nimrod, “the mighty hunter” (Ether 2:1). These two were cousins, descendants of Noah, likely believers that they were superior to the hunter gatherers they encountered, for they knew agriculture and the true religion and priesthood. That’s why Pharaoh tried to pattern his rule after the patriarchal priesthood (Abraham 1:25-26), and why Nimrod seemingly introduced temple rituals and elevated himself to god status. This explains why the so-called ‘Tower of Babel’ is the first-mentioned temple built in the Bible—because Gobekli Tepe was probably the first temple built in the world, that we know of.

I say god status for Nimrod because there appears to be a bull deity at Gobekli Tepe, and Nimrod is known anciently as the bull. It’s right there, carved prominently on one of the central T-pillars in Enclosure D. This symbol may have been stolen by him from the true God, or perhaps this symbol started with him and morphed into later human understanding to become Adonai, the bull symbol aleph in the Semitic alphabet.

Regardless, the people at Gobekli Tepe for centuries after knew of Nimrod. They also knew of the great catastrophe from the snakes in the sky, and what the stars looked like when it happened. They knew the date. Snakes are a common theme—I’ll get back to it in a minute.

The Jaredites might have left Gobekli Tepe around 11.2-11.6 ka. This date corresponds with an alignment with Sirius, the Dog Star, the brightest star. Perhaps the star that the patriarchs, such as Methuselah, knew as Kolob, the dwelling place of God (Abraham 3:9). This explains why Jared’s son was named Jacom (“let the Lord rise up”), because the Lord’s star rose between the two T-pillars at the time (Ether 6:14).

This date also explains why the oversea voyage of the Jaredites was so treacherous, and why there were still “floods” going on (Ether 2:24-25, 3:2). Around 11.6 ka, the cold period known as the Younger Dryas came to an end with rapid increases in temperature, which brought about even more sea level rise and flooding as glaciers melted, etc.

This date also explains how the Jaredites enjoyed the use of elephants and horses for a time in the Americas—by then, those animals had not yet gone fully extinct, and were more in abundance (Ether 9:19). Around this same time, the Sonoran desert began to form, which explains the great dearth brought upon the Jaredites in the days of Heth 1, the 8th generation after Jared (Ether 9:30). This drought was the nail in the coffin for the elephants and other ‘ice age’ megafauna, and that’s why the Jaredites on their way south had so many animal carcasses to eat on their route (Ether 9:34).

The reason they were fleeing south was an infestation of poisonous snakes (Ether 9:30-33). I said we’d talk more about the snakes, so here we go.

The great destruction of 12.8 ka included many ice age megafloods. This explains why Enoch warned the people that if they did not repent they would “perish in the floods”–emphasis on the plural, floods (Moses 7:38). But apparently these floods were caused by one or more impactors slamming into the North American ice sheet. They, as Graham Hancock suggests, might have been pieces of a comet, which the ancients apparently saw as serpents in the sky. To them, the cataclysm was brought by a serpent.

This explains why there are serpents all over Gobekli Tepe. It may even explain the serpent theme at Karahan Tepe. It’s also symbolic. Eve was beguiled by the serpent (Moses 4:19), hence the snake became a symbol for the devil, and perhaps for those who entered into secret oaths with him, such as Cain (Moses 5:29-31). Perhaps Karahan Tepe was a place where these secret oaths were administered, among the snakelike phalli and the creepy snake-man head peering out of the wall, and freaky hooded figures etched into the stone.

This explains why Akish’s wife knew of ancient secret covenants that had propelled men to power in the days their ancestors were living around the great tower (Ether 8:8-10)—she was talking about Karahan Tepe people. Perhaps this secret brotherhood had infiltrated operations at Gobekli Tepe and made the people of the great tower ripe for destruction. That seems to be a pattern in the Book of Mormon.

But the secret snake cult may explain why the Lord, weeping, expressed that His own pre-flood children had chosen Satan, the serpent, as their father instead of Him, and had been killing each other (Moses 7:28-40)—the very act upon which secret combinations were created for (Moses 5:31). And perhaps that’s why a serpent from the sky was sent to destroy them—a classic case of “give them a taste of their own medicine.”

But it wasn’t the only case. Other than possibly at the great tower itself, the Jaredites are cursed with another destruction-by-snakes event after Heth 1 embraced the secret plans of old (Ether 9:26-28).

The whole snake thing makes sense in light of secret societies started by the devil himself. And that would also help explain the Serpent Mound in Ohio, aligned to the skies of 12.8 ka—perhaps a monument to their serpentine ‘god’, Satan (Moses 1:19, 5:13). They may have gotten what they asked for–a serpent from the sky.

But you’ll recall that Ancient Apocalypse features ancient sites all over the world that were likely built in response to this cataclysm. Some of these places may have been built by descendants of Noah, who seemed to have more advanced building techniques. Perhaps this smattering of sites around the world is in part a direct result of the scattering of the people at the great tower (Ether 1:33). This may explain how mythologies from all parts share common themes and symbols. This may explain why bee shamans were a thing in Africa as well as in America (and of course, among the Jaredites) around the time of 11.6 ka.

The brother of Jared shows signs of being a shaman, which is absolutely consistent with a religious leader in 9600 BC. But we also know that the Jaredites famously took bees with them on their journey (Ether 2:3). It appears that a bee cult may have been present at Gobekli Tepe as well, and may have played a part in the site’s demise. The brother of Jared may have been a bee shaman, which explains how the practice persists to this day in the Americas.

All that to say that the Jaredites were not the only party that left the great tower—there were many others, some of them also led by bee shamans into the wilderness. This may explain the phenomenon of pyramids in Egypt, Mexico, Indonesia, etc. They were reconstructions of Gobekli Tepe, the original great tower. They were also giant replicas of a beehive. Moroni wrote on The Book of Mormon title page that the book of Ether was included on the plates “to show unto the remnant of the house of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers.”. This brings me to believe that there are more Jaredite-like stories to be told about other regions of the globe, and that there are other Lehi-like stories to be told as well. The great tower refugees laid the foundations of various civilizations, and the Jerusalem refugees spread the Israelite bloodline around the world (3 Nephi 16:1-4). Remember the promise that Noah’s seed would be found among all the nations of the earth?

There’s so much more I could write, but I better call it a night before this website gets the honor of being called the most dangerous blog on the internet.

Haha jk. I see what amount of traffic I get here.

The above is, of course, ‘just a theory.’ You’ll notice I have no sources listed to back this up. Those will come in more focused blog posts, as I intend to delve deeper into all of it. So keep an eye out for those. This is just a taste of the thoughts swirling in my mind after watching the Netflix series. Go watch it yourself. Form your own opinions. Tell me why I’m wrong, etc. Let’s start the discussion.

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Sources and Notes

Featured image is from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22807484/

Ancient Apocalypse as the most dangerous show on Netflix: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient-apocalypse-is-the-most-dangerous-show-on-netflix