02x04 - Chapter IV

[bunniefuu]

[intriguing music playing]

[Graham] As you go into
the Temple of the Moon,

you're confronted
at the entrance by a serpent.

Carved into the rock wall,

its glistening body
seeming almost alive to your touch.

That's no easy task

because that means
that the rock was cut away,

leaving only
this high-relief serpent on the side.

[intriguing music continues]

As you go deeper into the tunnel,
more enigmatic shapes appear,

all sculpted from the living rock.

It has a unique atmosphere.

The motes of dust catching in the light
as it shines down

from the hole in the ceiling

onto a perfectly-leveled structure,
clearly the work of human beings.

The stone plinth, like the serpent,
is shaped from the rock itself,

lit from that crevasse above,

giving access both to sunlight
and to moonlight.

Known locally as the Temple of the Moon,
and also perhaps more authentically

as Amaru Markawasi,
the House of the Serpent,

this eerie, rock-cut shelter
certainly has a powerful presence.

It's believed the Inca used this space
for fertility rituals,

where the hopeful would leave offerings
to the goddess of the moon,

Mama Quilla, daughter of Viracocha.

[intriguing music continues]

The silence of the place,
the coldness, the stillness within it,

uh, all of this focused the mind
in a way that seems to me

to have been deliberately designed,
not accidentally achieved.

[intriguing music intensifies]

Whoever carved out this sacred chamber,
it seems it wasn't the same people

who built the more ostentatious
gold-plated temples

that the Inca were famous for.

It's as if the Incas who venerated it
built the outer walls to mark off

and thus respect something they found,
not something they created.

Are we looking at the work
of someone else,

an older culture that understood
how to mold stone in fantastical ways?

[intriguing music builds, ends]

[theme song playing]

[theme song ends]

- [thunder rumbling]
- [electronic warble]

[intriguing playing]

[Graham] I'm on a hillside
above Cusco in Peru,

investigating a possibly
very ancient technique for shaping stone

known as Hanan Pacha.

We have a multi-layered mystery,
and in order to solve that mystery,

we need to look at
the different styles of architecture

sometimes coexisting in the same street.

Anywhere else in the world,

these would be taken as evidence
of the handiwork of different cultures.

Midway between the Temple of the Moon
and the vast megaliths of Sacsayhuaman

is another of the Sacred Valley's
most important sites

that seems to use the same
more ancient stone-shaping technique.

Q'enqo.

[intriguing music builds]

Its Quechua name
translates to "labyrinth,"

and as I begin to explore, I can see why.

One undertakes a journey
to get into the heart of it,

a winding pathway
that leads you through it

and causes you to reflect inwardly.

[intriguing music continues]

Q'enqo is ultimately a place where
the individual finds him or herself alone,

surrounded by
the mysterious mystical atmosphere,

surrounded by silence.

[intriguing music subsides]

[mysterious music playing]

It's a complex network
of sculpted tunnels,

subterranean galleries,

and what appear to be altars
carved out of the bedrock.

And all seemingly leading
to a central amphitheater,

where Jesus Gamarra once again joins me
to share his expertise.

Were the Incas themselves responsible
for any of the workmanship

that we see at Q'enqo Chico?

[Jesus hesitates]

[in Spanish] No. No.

While there are small indicators
of Inca presence

like small stones and mud joints,

these are always respectfully built
over the Hanan Pacha forms.

It is revered with great affection,

and this is done by surrounding it

with very precise and respectful
constructions of pieces.

[intriguing music playing]

[Graham in English]
Ancient sculpted rock surrounded

by more rudimentary block work

like I saw outside the Temple of the Moon.

It's a juxtaposition of styles

that we find in many
of Peru's most sacred sites.

As at Machu Picchu,

the smoothly-sculpted
ceremonial Intihuatana stone...

which again appears to be surrounded
by later Inca construction,

perhaps to honor
and respect this spot as sacred.

This could explain
the curious mix of stonework we see

both in the walls of Cusco
and at Sacsayhuaman,

where what Jesus Gamarra identifies
as later blocks are added above and around

the possibly much older
smoothly-sculpted stones.

[intriguing music intensifies]

Regardless of when
these blocks were shaped,

the question remains how?

Could we be looking at the fingerprints
of a lost technology of prehistory?

[intriguing music continues]

Jesus' research colleague,
Jan Peter de Jong, thinks there are clues

back at Sacsayhuaman as to how
the rock was so expertly crafted.

Jan, you've just brought me
to this very narrow tunnel

with very shiny sides.
What's the name of this place?

They call it here the Chincana Chica.

[Graham] It means
"the place where one gets lost."

We're looking at natural bedrock here,

but clearly the tunnel
is the result of human workmanship.

Is that characteristic
of the oldest style of construction here,

that they work with the natural bedrock
and shape it?

Yes, one of the characteristics
of Hanan Pacha style

is that the stone is modified
with like a mold technology.

You can see that...

they have been working
with the stone as if it was soft.

[Graham] Yes.

[Jan] Because all kinds of things
were pressed into the rock.

[Graham] So when you say mold technology,
you mean softening of the stone

and then pressing down
the shape into the stone?

We think that the stones were soft
at the moment of construction.

[intriguing music continues]

[Graham] But how were they made soft?

Jan believes the walls of this tunnel
are the key to the mystery.

So inside of this tunnel, um,
we can see a lot of reflection.

I see it shining like a metallic sheen.

If you touch it, it's very smooth.

We think that it's been treated with heat,

and this heat caused
like a layer on the stone,

and that's why it's this shiny.

[fire crackling]

[Graham] Geologists call
this effect vitrification.

Any idea how much heat would be involved?

Vitrification, it means "turn to glass,"

and that means that we need,
like, 1,400 degrees Celsius.

Which is a colossal amount of heat.

Yes. Of course,
we don't know how they did it,

but we know that they did it.

[intriguing music continues]

[Graham] When you look at it closely,
you have to ask yourself,

"Is that heat source the explanation for
the peculiar melted-together appearance

of the gigantic megaliths
of Sacsayhuaman?"

[intriguing music builds]

The first thing skeptics would say is that
the very shiny effect inside the tunnel

is caused by people brushing against
the sides of the tunnel.

- Yeah.
- What's your reaction?

So a lot of people say,
"Yeah, of course. Yeah."

"It's been done by all the hands
going through this tunnel,

- touching it there."
- Mm-hmm.

But you can see it's also on the roof
and the whole wall of the tunnel.

So it won't be logical to say

they've been touching
all those places at the same time.

So what about the other argument
that it's caused by volcanic activity?

Uh, well,
we don't have any volcanoes here.

- Okay.
- [Jan] So it's not a logical explanation.

[intriguing music builds]

[Graham] For Jan,
the only viable explanation is

that we're looking at the results of
some kind of ancient scientific process,

one perfected by a civilization
that predates the Inca.

It has been done in the far past
by ancient people.

And we don't know
exactly which technology they used.

[Graham] When I look at Sacsayhuaman,

I think I'm looking at the fingerprints
of a lost technology,

of a lost science of stone-working,

a science that we are not masters of today

that we do not have
the technology to reproduce.

[intriguing music ends]

The exact nature of the technology
remains a mystery.

But Jesus Gamarra believes
the extreme heat

that allowed the rock
to be softened and molded as it was worked

also strengthened
and hardened it after it set.

[mysterious music playing]

When I look around, in a way,
although they're extremely ancient,

the stones have a very modern appearance.

How do you understand
what we see in front of our eyes?

[in Spanish] Only the parts
that have been worked by heat and mold

are preserved
without having been destroyed.

The rest of the stone appears rough.

There is the eroding effect of weathering.

[tense music playing]

[in English] What is your explanation
of what we're looking at here?

[in Spanish] There is a lot of mystery
that we can't explain

because these are parts
of a great historical past

that happened thousands of years ago.

[music continues]

[Graham in English] At certain points,
we have to just accept

that we are looking at
an impossible engineering task.

Impossible in our terms.

It requires of us to be more open-minded

in our view of the ancients
than we presently are.

[music intensifies]

According to local traditions
recorded by the Spanish conquistadors,

the advanced techniques
of working with stone

were part of a legacy of knowledge

passed down by the creator-god
of the Andes, Viracocha...

[menacing music playing]

...who would cause stones
to be consumed by fire,

making large blocks as light as feathers
that could be floated into place,

which sounds a lot like
the extreme heat theory.

[fire crackling]

That's why I'm interested
in Indigenous traditions

that do speak of the stones
being melted or molded together.

Let's keep our ears and eyes open
to such possibilities.

This evidence of
unexplainable technologies at work

can be found
throughout the highlands of ancient Peru.

[intriguing music playing]

But could there be proof
of ancient scientific achievements

on the other side of the Andes Mountains

that we've similarly overlooked
in the Amazon rainforest?

[suspenseful music playing]

[Graham] Just because those areas
are not attractive

for human beings to live in today

doesn't mean
that they weren't attractive in the past.

The investigations that are being done

are revealing evidence
that there are huge secrets in the Amazon.

[music continues]

We now know the evidence
for human habitation in ancient Amazonia

goes back at least 25,000 years.

That suddenly opens up
a much wider timeframe

in which to slot a lost civilization.

The possibilities
that we need to be investigating

for creating civilizations
become much deeper and much longer.

[tense music playing]

In fact, it seems the first Europeans
to navigate the entire Amazon in 1542...

[boat engine revving]

...may have caught a glimpse
of the descendants

of just such a civilization
when they passed near here.

The expedition was led
by adventurer Francisco de Orellana

and was chronicled
by a Dominican friar, Gaspar de Carvajal.

[intriguing music playing]

De Carvajal's journal didn't talk of

the endless, seemingly uninhabited forest
we see today.

The cleric described the Amazon basin
as teeming with cities

inhabited by highly-skilled peoples.

[intriguing music continues]

"One settlement," he wrote,
"stretched unbroken for around 13 miles."

That's the length of Manhattan Island.

[uptempo intriguing music playing]

But when European missionaries arrived
about a century later,

they saw no such cities.

So historians dismissed
De Carvajal's account as a fiction,

concocted to impress the Spanish crown
so they'd fund more such expeditions.

But as the endless jungle
starts to give up its secrets,

it's beginning to look like
those reports were true all along.

Recent discoveries in the Amazon suggest

that there was indeed
an ancient civilization here.

[uptempo intriguing music ends]

Using LiDAR to peer through the dense
jungle canopy in Bolivia in 2019...

archaeologists were amazed to see
vast man-made structures and roads.

[intriguing music playing]

As a result of new research, now we're
finding that there were huge settlements.

As we all know, there is a tradition
of lost cities in the Amazon.

Cities is the right word
to use to describe these settlements.

[intriguing music ends]

Based on the data and our knowledge
of existing Amazonian villages,

researchers have a good idea
of what one of those settlements

known as Cotoca might have looked like.

[majestic music playing]

The city was almost a mile wide,

an entire metropolis,
surrounded by canals and causeways.

Some led inwards to raised terraces,
perhaps for individual dwellings.

[birds chirping]

And at the heart of the city
lay a towering pyramid mound,

likely a ceremonial center.

[majestic music continues]

What's more,
this city appeared to be connected

to at least three similar settlements
by raised roads stretching for miles.

We don't know much
about the people who lived in this city.

What we do know,
hidden beneath the jungle canopy,

is that there are more cities. Many more.

[adventurous music playing]

[news anchor] Archaeologists have
pieced together evidence

revealing what they call
a lost valley of ancient cities

hidden in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

[Graham] In the western Amazon,
archaeologists have recently uncovered

what appears to be
a large cluster of settlements

connected by roads,
dating back 2,500 years,

much like the geoglyphs I saw in Brazil.

Creating large cities,
creating the geoglyphs of Acre State,

this was not considered to be
within the potential

of the hunter-gatherer inhabitants
of the Amazon,

and yet it clearly was.

[dramatic music playing]

More and more of these ancient settlements
continue to be discovered,

suggesting a widespread
Amazonian civilization,

one that may have been home
to as many as 20 million people.

What we are learning now
is that the story of the Amazon

is not as it had been told.

[boat engine revving]

Perhaps de Carvajal did witness
large settlements in 1542.

But if so, why didn't the Europeans
who voyaged down the river

over a century later
see any evidence of them?

[somber music playing]

There's a rather grim explanation.

When the Spanish and the Portuguese
came into the Americas,

they brought with them
a whole host of diseases

to which European peoples
had some natural immunity,

but to which the peoples
of the Amazon did not.

Any population here
would have been devastated,

while the rainforest
quickly reclaimed their settlements.

But we find more echoes
of that civilization

in a myth of the Western Amazon
from the Tucano people.

The Tucano have an origin story
about how their ancestors

were first brought to that area
as part of a civilizing mission

in a... in a serpent canoe that travels
the length of the Amazon system.

So the legend goes,

this anaconda canoe
was helmed by a spirit being

and set down a cargo of human migrants.

[menacing music playing]

[water sloshing]

Soon after, the divine daughter
of the sun came to Earth,

bearing the gifts of fire and tools

as well as knowledge of arts and crafts.

[majestic music playing]

She and her supernatural associates
prepared the land for humans to thrive

before returning
to their otherworldly abodes.

This sounds to me so much like
the civilizing hero stories

that are told all around the world

that I feel it's very much
part of the... of the same pattern.

These themes keep on cropping up.

[intriguing music playing]

A spirit being who arrived by boat,

much like Quetzalcoatl did in Aztec lore.

Or Hotu Matu'a when he landed on Rapa Nui.

Or Viracocha, who appeared
from the waters of Lake Titicaca

after a time of chaos.

Could this daughter of the sun

and her mission to encourage people
to settle the Amazon

be related to the same lost civilization
I've been looking for?

[intriguing music builds, ends]

[tense music playing]

In the Peruvian Andes,

Viracocha supposedly worked miracles
in stone.

[fire crackling]

But here in the Amazon,
where large outcrops of rock are rare,

structures made from less durable material

such as wood and earth
clearly predominate.

[tense music intensifies, fades]

What's less clear is how they succeeded

in making this
seemingly inhospitable place their home.

[suspenseful music playing]

How did they sustain huge populations

on what we've long considered to be
infertile soils?

[music continues]

If we don't get to grips with
the ability of the Amazonian peoples

to feed populations of millions,

then we're not ever going
to get to grips with the...

the truth about
the human story as a whole.

One explanation can be found in the heart
of the Brazilian Amazon, near Manaus.

Emerging from the very ground
of the Amazon itself,

a long buried secret
has recently been brought to light.

Evidence of an ancient science
that helps to explain

how the rainforest supported
large urban populations.

[birds screeching]

Angela Araujo is an archaeologist

who specializes in humankind's
historical relationship with plants.

Recently, she's been focusing her studies
on a mysterious phenomenon.

Typically, rainforest soils
are not particularly fertile

or suitable for agriculture.

[music builds, ends]

But around settlements,
ancient and modern,

scientists have found
something astonishing,

self-regenerating patches of soil

they call "terra preta"
or Amazonian dark earth.

We have here a soil which is dark in color
by comparison with the surrounding soils.

Mysteriously and strangely,
it contains bacteria,

which constantly reproduce
and renew themselves

and renew the fertility of the soil.
It's a kind of magical earth.

And this super-powered soil
has been found all across the Amazon

wherever there's evidence of humans.

I'm meeting Angela near
a recently-discovered ancient settlement

to see this dark earth for myself.

When did you first become specifically
interested in Amazonian dark earth?

[in Portuguese] Nowadays,
we also use this soil

for agriculture in the region.

And all of a sudden,
I came across an interaction

between the past and these populations.

I wanted to understand why and how

these populations were connected
to such dark soil.

[Graham in English] Researchers have found
that mixed in with the organic elements

of every patch of dark earth,
no matter how old,

are tiny ceramic shards,

undeniable evidence
that human populations have been involved

in generating this special soil.

And studies have found samples
dating back at least 7,000 years.

[intriguing music playing]

How large were those populations?

[in Portuguese] I can't say for sure,
but there are records that suggest

there were at least
around three million people

living in the region
of the Alto Rio n*gro alone.

[in English] Do you think
that the ancients deliberately,

cleverly invented this soil?

Or did they discover
its special properties by accident?

[in Portuguese] Personally,
I don't believe it was intentional.

I believe what happened was that,
with so many people inhabiting the area,

a lot of decomposing waste was produced
bringing about these benefits.

[Graham in English]
But it's a chicken and egg argument.

I can't help seeing a paradox here.

On the one hand, we're saying

that there were very large populations
in the Amazon

and that as an accidental product
of their presence,

they created black earth.

But on the other hand,
we're saying that natural Amazon soils

are not fertile enough
to support large populations.

Doesn't it seem likely that
what made the large populations possible

was the black earth itself?

[in Portuguese] I believe it's possible

that they realized
the area was productive,

but their intention wasn't,

"I will dump waste to fertilize the land
and improve crop production."

[tense music playing]

[Graham in English]
The research continues.

But to me,
the reason this feels so intentional

is that terra preta can be found
throughout the Amazon,

inevitably close by
prehistoric settlements.

We need to be more open-minded

in our view of the capacity
of the ancients than we presently are.

We need to regard them
as masters of their environment

who made that environment work for them
over thousands and thousands of years.

[intriguing music playing]

And given the immensity of the jungle,

who knows how many more patches
of terra preta may lie undiscovered

that could push the origins
of this miracle soil

even further back into the past.

The proposition I present here,

hotly contested by many archaeologists,

is that the settlement and expansion
of human populations in the Amazon

was a planned affair.

[dramatic music playing]

But building and maintaining
those vast settlements

would have demanded
massive amounts of natural resources.

Not just food crops,
but something we might imagine

could never have been scarce
in the Amazon itself.

Timber.

[majestic music playing]

The Amazon is truly
a wonder of natural diversity.

Today, there are
around 390 billion trees here,

made up of some 16,000 species.

What if I told you
that most of this immense jungle

is the end result
of an intentional campaign

undertaken by humans
thousands of years ago?

What if I told you
the Amazon might have been planted?

[intriguing music playing]

[intriguing music ends]

Researchers have confirmed
that during the Ice Age,

the Amazon wasn't dense jungle,
but grassland broken up by trees.

They assumed the warming planet nurtured
the sprawling rainforest we see today.

But recently, archaeobotanists uncovered
something unexpected.

Half of the forest is made up of
just 1.4% of known Amazonian tree species,

the very same species, as it turns out,
that happen to be useful to humans.

[birds chirping]

Was this the result of a long-term project
set in motion thousands of years ago,

a project that would eventually blossom

into a widespread
Indigenous Amazonian civilization?

And there's something else.

As with terra preta,
most of these useful trees are found

close by the newly-discovered
ancient cities of the Amazon.

Instead of the hostile, dangerous jungle
that we Westerners tend to see,

they were turning it into
a homeland for millions,

making the Amazon a garden,
making it a place that served human needs.

[intriguing music playing]

[Pärssinen] In the 20th century,

it was thought that the hinterlands
of Amazonia was totally virgin.

That humans had not touched it.

And now we know
that many of the trees that we have here,

Brazil nut, many palms,
are semi-cultivated

and even cultivated and domesticated,

so that our understanding
of the forest has changed.

[intriguing music ends]

[Graham] This is truly
a scientific project

that's been underway in the Amazon
for a very long time.

[intriguing music playing]

How long, exactly?

What's really intriguing

is that the oldest date
for tree cultivation so far

found in the Amazon
is some 10,800 years ago.

That's around the end of the Ice Age,

exactly the time
that we see similar leaps forward

in human civilization
and innovation all across the globe.

[dramatic music playing]

This causes us to ask
what else remains to be found

in that vast expanse
of the Amazon rainforest

that really wasn't supposed to be there
and yet clearly is there.

[music intensifies]

As we saw with
the advanced stonework of ancient Peru,

these sophisticated agricultural projects
and settlements in the Amazon

begun thousands of years ago

seem to demonstrate
scientific achievements

that are, to say the least,
unexpected so long ago.

[music continues]

We have to completely reframe
our understanding of the Amazon.

We have to see it as a product
of human intelligence, human initiative,

human ingenuity, and human intention.

The most astounding example
of Amazonian technology

may also point to an unexpected source
for all this advanced knowledge.

[blade whirring]

[bass drum playing]

[Graham] I've returned
to the Peruvian Amazon to learn more.

This is Iquitos,
a port city located at a junction

where the great river
is fed by several tributaries.

The port might be young,

but this region has,
for thousands of years,

been a center
for a profound cultural practice,

the use of ayahuasca.

[bass drum stops]

[suspenseful music playing]

Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna
is an Indigenous anthropologist

and leading expert
on this ancient plant-based medicine.

[insects chirping]

[Dr. Luna] I have witnessed
many people taking ayahuasca,

and I'm astonished,
you know, by what they experience,

sometimes extraordinary journeys
into other realms,

sometimes simply looking into themselves,

finding ways of solving
their own problems.

[Graham] What do you see happening?

Important changes
taking place in their lives?

Many people write to me, you know,

and that those experiences
were completely life-changing,

changed completely their perspective,
you know.

[intriguing music playing]

[Graham] The use of ayahuasca
has recently become popular

in our contemporary society.

But for Indigenous people of the Amazon,
the brew has long held a sacred power.

[Dr. Luna] Many Indigenous people say,
you know,

they take ayahuasca in order
to understand the rules of society,

you know, become better human beings.

[uptempo intriguing music playing]

[Graham] The preparation of ayahuasca

is the realm
of the shaman healers or curanderos.

Like Don Francisco Montes Shuna
from the Kapanawa people,

who must blow smoke
from an ancient species of tobacco

known as mapacho to purify the ritual.

[in Spanish] In the Capanahua language,
my name is Shamorin Kyashi Piary.

Shamorin Kyashi Piary means
"The Angel of the Jungle."

[uptempo intriguing music continues]

[uptempo intriguing music ends]

I come from a line of healers.

I feel the connection to all my ancestors,

my grandmother, my great-grandmother,
the whole family.

We are connected and feel the connections
with everything to do with Amazonia.

[tense music playing]

[Graham in English]
As research progresses,

the evidence is building
that ayahuasca can have health benefits.

When brewed, the vine alone
has powerful healing properties

thanks to a molecule it contains
known to science as harmine.

[Dr. Luna] There have been studies
suggesting neurogenesis.

[Graham] Mm-hmm.

[Dr. Luna] You know, that the harmine
will be producing new neurons,

even new beta cells for the pancreas.

[Graham] Mm-hmm.

And perhaps new cells
also for the ligaments and so on.

[intriguing music playing]

[Graham] The harmine in the vine
might be a medical miracle,

but it doesn't produce a visionary state.

That only happens when it's combined
with the leaves of certain other plants

Indigenous to the Amazon
like this one called chaliponga,

which contains the psychoactive chemical
at the heart of ayahuasca,

DMT, short for dimethyltryptamine.

[intriguing music builds, subsides]

DMT is considered
one of the most potent psychedelics.

But scientific studies
have now confirmed it is non-addictive

and can have therapeutic properties

when administered
in controlled doses and circumstances.

[wood cracking]

We're discovering that when accompanied
by talking therapy as well,

it can be extremely helpful
in bringing to an end

long-term intractable conditions.

But there's just one problem.

DMT isn't orally active

because enzymes in the gut
normally destroy it on contact.

[intriguing music playing]

It's precisely here

that the shamanistic science
of the Amazon comes in

with a remarkable solution.

[Dr. Luna] So what happens is
that the harmine in the vine

will block the destruction
of DMT in the gut,

so that the DMT
will cross the blood-brain barrier,

go into receptors in the brain.

That is what produces the visions,
you know, the DMT.

[Graham] The result?

Out of the tens of thousands
of plant species of the Amazon,

only the combination of the ayahuasca vine
with the leaves of a plant containing DMT

will produce
the highly-prized visionary effects.

[intriguing music builds, subsides]

We have two plants,
which are not psychoactive on their own,

but are psychoactive when cooked together

to create the ayahuasca brew.

To do that by trial and error

could involve centuries
or millennia of experimentation.

[mysterious music playing]

I think we have a mystery here.
How did they come to this discovery?

Right there
looks to me like a scientific project.

It is, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it is based on experience.
It's based on observation.

It's based on experimentation,
constant experimentation and so on.

- Over thousands of years?
- Yes, exactly.

[Francisco in Spanish] This tradition
goes back thousands of years.

I mean, we can't say.
Two thousand, three thousand years...

[Graham in English] We're getting evidence
of science in the Amazon,

the knowledge that Indigenous shamans
have accumulated and passed down

over generations, over thousands of years,
of plants and the properties of plants

and how they may be mixed together
to produce desired effects.

- [menacing music playing]
- [wind howling]

[Graham] During an ayahuasca ceremony,
the shaman summons the visions

by singing an ikaro, a power song.

[Francisco singing]

[Graham] But the shaman
is simply the ceremonial leader.

The plant itself
is considered the teacher.

[Francisco in Spanish]
When you take ayahuasca,

you need to prepare a question.

She will provide an answer.

- [suspenseful music playing]
- [insects chirping]

[Graham in English] The power
of psychedelics to achieve a deeper wisdom

isn't limited to the Amazon.

We see it in many of the world's

most ancient
and deeply respected cultures.

It's clear now
that what we call psychedelics today

were embraced
all around the ancient world.

[mysterious music playing]

In Ancient Greece, Socrates and Plato
wrote of intellectual breakthroughs

following the ritual taking
of a hallucinogenic brew.

Hieroglyphs from Egypt suggest
they ingested petals

from the psychoactive blue water lily
to communicate with the divine.

And in the Vedic sacrifices
of ancient India,

priests seeking to connect with the gods

drank a visionary concoction
known as soma.

The fact that these altered states
of consciousness have been embraced

throughout prehistory and history

tell us that they're very important
to the human experience.

I actually think that it's impossible
to understand the ancient world

unless we take psychedelics into account.

[music continues]

[Graham] What's your own view
on how old ayahuasca might be?

[Dr. Luna] They've been experimented with
for thousands of years.

- It could be much older.
- Yeah.

- It feels ancient to me.
- [Dr. Luna] Yeah.

This is an extraordinary mystery.

[music intensifies]

[Graham] I believe the complex science
of ayahuasca goes back

much further than anyone thinks.

And there's evidence to prove it.

[mysterious music builds, ends]

[closing theme playing]

[closing theme ends]