The Basement: Hugh Newman | Giant Skeletons, Sumerian Myths, and Megaliths
episodePreviously titled “635: Basement #007: Hugh Newman | Giant Skeletons, Sumerian Myths, and Megaliths” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 2, 2026
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What is the significance of the Megalithomania Conference?
Control. Compliance. Confidence. That's what the American Express Corporate Program helps deliver. Customize rewards, centralize company spending, and count on world-class customer care. With corporate cards from American Express, your company can be covered. Explore more at AmericanExpress.com slash corporate. Terms apply. Today I'm talking with Hugh Newman. He's an author, explorer, and the founder of the Megalithomania Conference, which just hit its 20th year. And Hugh doesn't sit behind a desk and theorize. He goes out to these sites and gets his hands dirty. He co-discovered a winter solstice alignment at Karahantepe, one of the oldest engineered sites on Earth. We're talking 11,400 years old. And what he's finding there pushes back the timeline on everything we thought we knew about early civilization.
How does Hugh Newman approach ancient sites?
pushes back the timeline again. At this point, they should just leave a blank page and say, we'll get back to you. In this conversation, we get into Gobekli Tepe, underground cities, standardized units of measure that shouldn't exist yet, and a sneaky visit to some caves under the Giza Plateau that are now bricked up forever. Q also made a case that the Sphinx might not be a lion. It might be a leopard. And he's got the evidence to back it up. Oh, we also get into everyone's favorite subject, giants. Everyone except the Smithsonian. That's true. And we get into that. This one covers a lot of ground. And honestly, the math alone is worth the ride. Yes, math. Let's go down to the basement. Hugh, welcome to The Basement.
Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. How do you go to creating the conference? It's still running, right? Yeah, for sure. Actually, this is our 20th anniversary. Oh my goodness. So we're having a bit of a celebration this year. So this is the Mega Lithomania Conference. So this is what we've been doing since May 2006. I founded this with John Martineau, who's also my publisher of the Wooden Books, and Gareth Mills. I pretty much run it myself with my own team now. And it was really set up. And it's quite intriguing when you look at what's going on online nowadays. It was set up as... forum like public forum to have the alternative historical information and researchers with the academics all on the same stage but in a kind in a very kind way right connecting with each other not a debunking
no debate no no it was just a respectful way so we could have a multi-disciplinary look at megaliths ancient sites the ancient mysteries and and have it as an open forum so that so and we we now have top archaeologists and top historians and anthropologists coming along Next to people who are talking about what they deem as fringe or outrageous stuff.
What discoveries are being made at Gobekli Tepe?
And it's actually quite fun. And so they've actually, a lot of the academics know each other. So one or two of them came along and they had such a good time. They actually recommended it. So it's easy to guess. Yeah. really cool academics to come along like how was that was he cool and it's like no it's great no no and they're very and there's no we don't it's not like online you know the whole flint dibble graham hancock thing there's all this big nasty kind of back and forth yeah and we just don't have that we're very very nice very polite very respectful and and it's and it works brilliantly and we've stuck to that focus every year for the last 20 years. I'm glad you said multidiscipline because what I like about your research is you bring in acoustic engineers, electromagnetic research, all that stuff.
I think that's missing in archaeology. I think you're right. Yeah, this is one of the things that kind of bothers me a little bit and a lot of other researchers is that Archaeologists do brilliant work, don't get me wrong. They are very well trained in preserving, digging up, analyzing these sites, dating it, and everything else. But when it comes to things like astronomy, acoustics, or mythology, or symbolism, even subtle energies and things like this, it's not something they're interested in or trained in. And I think this is where the problem lies in interpreting these sites and having a voice about these sites.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the significance of the Megalithomania Conference?
0:00–0:42
2
How does Hugh Newman approach ancient sites?
0:42–2:40
3
What discoveries are being made at Gobekli Tepe?
2:40–12:00
4
What are the implications of multidisciplinary research in archaeology?
12:00–1:20:56
5
What measurement systems were used by ancient builders?
1:20:56–1:21:53
6
How does ancient metrology relate to myths and stories?
1:21:53–1:22:54
7
What evidence supports the existence of giants in history?
1:22:54–1:24:14
8
How do ancient structures correlate with astronomical events?
1:24:14–2:45:20
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