Ben Van Kerkwyk is a researcher and creator of UnchartedX, a website and YouTube channel looking into ancient mysteries, presenting new ideas about humanity’s past.
He has been travelling the world for decades, filming ancient sites and interviewing leading historians, which has taken him on a journey of suspicion surrounding established history. (The establishment must always be viewed with a sceptical eye. Just like “trusting the science” is a bad move, so is “trusting the history”.)
I believe there is a need for high quality content that addresses the new science and new discoveries that should affect how we view the past, and to examine the contradictions that are clearly evident on ancient sites, and in our orthodox version of history.
Ben Van Kirkwyk
For example, I’ve often thought that the official story of the Egyptian pyramids doesn’t make sense. And what about Easter Island? How and why were such gigantic heads (and bodies) constructed on an island in the middle of nowhere?

How are these things explained?
Or what about all the other many mysterious structures around the world, for which no reasonable explanation exists?
- Göbekli Tepe which is apparently the oldest place of worship, built before humans settled or figured out agriculture.
- Goseck Circle, which is a really big clock in Germany, predating the Egyptian pyramids and has some pretty advanced science included.
- Ggantija, like the Egyptian pyramids, is an engineering mystery. The conventional narrative – that it was built by primitive people – is laughable.
The list is endless.

Assuming that human history is linear, is simply ridiculous.
Humans were probably advanced
In other words, believing that humans were primitive (thousands of years ago) and became advanced (today), and that’s the end of it, doesn’t match up to observable reality.
As Ben points out, what is more plausible is the idea that, thousands of years ago, humans were indeed advanced (which is demonstrably true), and that some sort of cataclysmic event wiped them out, ending a cycle of technological development, and forcing the start of a new one. And the interesting part is that new evidence increasingly supports the idea that human history is much older than we might think, and that it is cyclical.
Our conversation
Ben joined me on my podcast in which he showed some photos from his Egyptian travels. I am entirely persuaded by his challenge that human history needs to be rewritten.