These New Discoveries About Ancient America Will BLOW Your Mind

Where are the ancient ruins of North America, the evidence of thousands of years of civilization? In Europe, the evidence is impossible to miss. I've seen it myself. Castles littered throughout Germany, medieval walls and towns, churches from the Middle Ages. In Italy, ancient Roman temples, roads, amphitheaters in the middle of modern cities. Go to the British Isles and the links to antiquity are world-renowned. Return to the United States, however, and the historical attractions are all post-European arrival. Dating from the AD 1600s or more recently, places like Plymouth Plantation, the Old North Church, Lexington and Concord, Mount Vernon, Gettysburg. Where is the evidence for civilization before the pilgrims? It turns out that ruins do exist in North America and they tell dramatic stories. My name is Nathaniel Jensen. I'm the research biologist with Answers in Genesis and this is the Lost History of North America. In the thousands of years before the pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, what happened in North America? Growing up, I learned a detailed sequence of events for European history. Peoples, places, empires, timelines, names. Like the Minoans and ancient Greeks thousands of years ago in the Mediterranean. Heroes like Alexander the Great. I learned about the ancient Roman Empire who conquered the Greeks and ruled the centuries around the time of Christ with emperors like Julius Caesar and Constantine. I learned about the fall of the Roman Empire several centuries after Christ and the rise of the Franks along with other Germanic invaders. I learned the sequence of English and French monarchs, King Alfred and Henry VIII and Louis XIV. But for pre-European North America, I learned nothing. I learned about the people encountered by Europeans at contact the 80s, 1600s and later. Chickasaw and Choctaw, Creek and Cherokee, Lakota and Crow, Shoshone and Hopi and many more. I learned about their cultures, their diets, their homes, their dress, their weapons. But I never learned their backstory. No connections to historical ruins, empires, timelines or names of heroes. Until now. Recent breakthroughs in genetics have uncovered new answers and opened up new tools confirming the validity of the oral and written records of the peoples themselves. Together with archaeology and linguistics, a detailed narrative that spans millennia has emerged. What I'm about to show you is a summary of the results of a multi-year, multi-disciplinary deep dive into the data. You might wonder, how do we know that your conclusions are true? You can find the detailed evidentiary justification and documentation in my new book, They Had Names. When Europeans arrived on the western shores of the Atlantic, North America was a busy place. I never realized just how diverse the map was until later in life. What happened before the 80s, 1620s to produce the map at contact? Going back thousands of years, the earliest North Americans built geometric mounds, circles and squares. These simple shapes may not seem like much until you discover that they were built to mark astronomical phenomena. I don't know the names of the builders, the names of the nations to which they belonged, or what connections they had, if any, to peoples at contact. That's because in the centuries after Christ, North America was invaded. Relatives of the Huns in Central Asia, as confirmed by modern genetics, descended on the Americas and effectively wiped out the males who were here before. The earliest North Americans and their cultures disappeared. Several centuries later, around 8900, when several lesser-known Central Asian groups were migrating towards Europe, modern genetics tells us that another group headed east across the Bering Strait towards Alaska. This time, we know the names of the invaders. Arriving in the bitter cold were the Algic peoples, the ancestors of nations like the Cheyenne, Blackfeet, Delaware, Illinois, Shawnee, Menominee, Potawatomi, Miami, and others. Often known as the Algonquians, they were among the most successful North American native groups. There was a third invasion, this time from Mexico. Around and east of the Mississippi, platform mounds dot the landscape. The Natchez built them. The Natchez came from Mexico. Around the same time that the Algonquians arrived in Alaska, the Natchez began to erect an empire beginning near modern St. Louis and setting up an epic future clash whose reverberations would be felt for centuries to come. The clash almost didn't happen. When the Algic first arrived in Alaska, they found that people were already there. Likely the ancestors of modern peoples in the Eskimo Aleut language family. The Algics defeated them and may have sent some of the Eskimo Aleut peoples fleeing east. The Algics then went south to the western part of modern Canada. There, they experienced a very different fate. The Algics' own history refrains from giving details. Around 50 to 100 years passed with little description in their records except a time of much evil. The leaders of the nation are not named. The perpetrators of the evil, whether the Algics themselves or their enemies, possibly members of the Salish language family, are never identified. But the Algonquians survived. They eventually arrived on the Great Plains where they encountered enemies again. It wasn't the Lakota Sioux, the nation of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. In the 81200s, the famous Siouan tribes of the Great Plains weren't there. In the late 8800s, over three centuries earlier, the ancestors of the Lakota were near what is now modern Washington, D.C. Over the next several centuries, they would migrate west and eventually play a key role in the epic clash at the Mississippi. Who then did the Algics fight on the Great Plains? One group they labeled the North Walkers. A couple of centuries prior, in the north, they would have engaged members of the Ayak Athabaskan language family. Members of this family eventually migrated south from Canada into the American southwest. These migrants were the ancestors of the Navajo and Apache. Since this migration was prior to the European introduction of horses, they would have gone south by walking. Apparently, the path of these North Walkers ran right into the band of Algics. The Algics eventually tired of war and they went east, right into the buzzsaw of the Natchez. By the 81200s, the Natchez empire was reaching its peak. The Algics recognized this in their own histories, describing the Natchez as the ones who possessed the east. Rather than fight, the Algics sought a diplomatic approach to entering lands east of the Mississippi. The Natchez responded by massacring them. I've been to Cahokia, the former Natchez capital. It's well worth a visit. The architecture sends a message, a clear message of power. The central precinct of Cahokia was once surrounded by a high palisade, a literal inner circle to the city. Inside the precinct, standing in the central plaza, the visitor is surrounded by platform mounds, constant reminders of who's above everyone else and who's down below among the riffraff. Monk's Mound, the largest mound, commands the most attention. It occupied even my peripheral vision when I faced it, making it unambiguous to all who drew near who was in charge. Cahokia also has a mound with sacrificial victims. Apparently, the Algics weren't the first massacre for these aggressive rulers. But once again, the Algic survived. They regrouped, found allies from the north, likely the ancestors of the Lakota, Osage, Kopaw, Omaha, and other Siouans, and defeated the Natchez. Thanks to the Algic historical records, we even know the name of the Algic hero. At the time of European contact, indigenous Americans used a naming style that was descriptive and memorable. Names like Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, Man Afraid of His Horses. Apparently, this practice was centuries old. When the Algonquians were tragically slaughtered, they were led by a man named Strong Ally. The fortunes of the Algic nation turned when Sharp One, Stirring, and Breaking Open were in charge. The final blow against the Natchez was struck by a hero fittingly named the Crusher. After the Algic sent the Natchez packing, the Algic spread out through the woodlands east of the Mississippi. The Shawnee went south to Florida and back again. The Ojibwe went northeast to the Atlantic and back to the Great Lakes. The Delaware, Mohegans, and others, including the Massachusett and Narragansett, kept going east where they hailed the newly arrived Europeans in the 80s, 1620s. Which means that if the Crusher had not been successful, the Pilgrims would have landed on the shores of Cape Cod and encountered not the Massachusett or Narragansett, but somebody else. For more on this narrative and others like it, including the dramatic abandonment of the cliff dwellers of the American Southwest, check out my new book, They Had Names, tracing the history of the North American indigenous people.