A purported 'vast underground city' in Egypt is tens of thousands of years older than the Giza pyramids, scientists have shockingly claimed. If true, it would turn Egyptian - and human - history on its head, though independent experts have called it 'outlandish' and 'crazy talk.'
Last week, researchers in Italy presented bombshell research which claimed to have discovered multi-thousand-foot tall wells and chambers underground beneath the Khafre Pyramid.
The Giza pyramids are believed to have been built around 4,500 years ago and considered a remarkable feat given their immense scale and the precision of their construction, which remains a mystery for the time period. However, researchers behind the new study claim that the hidden structures, spanning 4,000 feet, are approximately 38,000 years old — which predates the oldest known man-made structure of its kind by tens of thousands of years.
The team has based these claims on ancient Egyptian text that they interpreted as historical records of a pre-existing civilization that was destroyed during a cataclysmic. Professor Lawrence Conyers, a radar expert at the University of Denver who focuses on archaeology and was not involved in the study, told DailyMail.com: 'That is a really outlandish idea.'
He added that at that time in human history people 'were mostly living in caves' 38,000 years ago. 'People did not start living in what we now call cities until about 9,000 years ago,' he said. 'There were a few large villages before that but those only go back a few thousand years from that time.'
The iconic Pyramids of Giza are already one of the world's greatest enigmas. Last month the mystery deepened when a team of Italian scientists said they found a vast city stretching thousands of feet below the Egyptian structures. Using ground-penetrating radar, the scientists reportedly detected massive shafts and chambers hidden beneath the Khafre Pyramid. The controversial research, not yet peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal, has reignited a fringe theory that a now-lost civilization may have had a hand in building or inspiring the pyramids.
Alternate historians like Graham Hancock, a frequent guest on Joe Rogan's podcast, have long posited that a highly advanced prehistoric society was wiped out by a global cataclysm, possibly caused by a comet impact, around 12,800 years ago. According to this theory, the resulting floods and chaos erased most traces of this civilization, whose survivors passed down knowledge of astronomy, engineering, and sacred architecture to later cultures — including the ancient Egyptians.
Now, in a new twist, a prominent geologist says there's geological evidence that Egypt may indeed have experienced catastrophic flooding linked to that very comet event.
Dr James Kennett, a geologist at the University of California Santa Barbara and a major proponent of the comet-impact hypothesis, told DailyMail.com that a highly advanced Stone Age culture in North America — the Clovis people — mysteriously vanished at the same time the comet is believed to have struck Earth.
'There is evidence of a major population decline in North America beginning at 12,800 years ago,' he said. 'That lasted a few hundred years, and then they started to come back — but as a different culture.'
While Kennett can't confirm the same impact effects occurred in Egypt, he points to impact evidence found at Abu Hureyra in Syria, which is around 1,000 miles from Giza, as compelling. If debris struck that region, he said, it could have triggered massive flooding from the Mediterranean Sea and Nile River, potentially engulfing parts of ancient Egypt. The flood narrative echoes surprisingly well with ancient Egyptian mythology.
Andrew Collins, a researcher of prehistoric civilizations, notes that hieroglyphs on the walls of the Temple of Edfu — some 780 miles south of Giza — reference a devastating flood that wiped out a mysterious civilization referred to as the 'Eldest Ones.' According to Collins, the temple's inscriptions (known as the Edfu Building Texts) describe a 'sacred domain' in the Giza region that was destroyed by an 'enemy serpent' plunging the world into darkness and submerging the land under a great flood.
Collins believes the enemy serpent could be a metaphor for a comet due to ancient cultures using the creature to symbolize celestial events. The serpent in the Edfu Texts is described as a destructive force disrupting the primeval island, sometimes linked to a 'Great Leap' or a sudden, chaotic event like.
'[The text describes] them storing sacred objects in an underground structure called the Underworld of the Soul,' Collins told DailyMail.com. 'This I am sure relates to Giza's cave system and any structures it may contain.'
