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Joe Rogan · 2025-11-25

Joe Rogan Experience #2417 - Ben van Kerkwyk

UnchartedX's Ben van Kerkwyk and Joe Rogan dig into Egypt's buried labyrinth, the Sphinx's age, and megalithic mysteries from Peru to Japan.

Joe Rogan Experience #2417 - Ben van Kerkwyk
The guest

Ben van Kerkwyk: Australian-born tech entrepreneur turned YouTuber behind the channel UnchartedX, which investigates ancient megalithic sites and the lost-civilization hypothesis. A leading figure in the alternative-history community alongside Graham Hancock and Jimmy Corsetti.

What this episode covers

Ben and Joe pick up a previous conversation to explore unsolved mysteries of ancient civilizations. They focus on the great lost labyrinth of Hawara in Egypt, recently relocated by subsurface scans that reportedly show a 40-meter Tic-Tac-shaped metallic object in an underground atrium, plus alleged tunnels and a Hall of Records beneath the Sphinx, and decades of suppressed expeditions and gatekeeping by figures like Zahi Hawass. The discussion broadens into evidence for a far older human timeline: rainfall erosion on the Sphinx and Giza, geodetic and precessional numbers (43,200; 432; 108) encoded in the Great Pyramid, and Ben's recent five-week trip to Peru and Bolivia. There he describes distinct layers of stonework at Tiwanaku, Puma Punku, Ollantaytambo and Cusco that he argues predate the Inca by tens of thousands of years. They close on global megalithic similarities (Japan, India's Barabar Caves, China's Yangshan quarry) and the legend of the Shamir, a stone-cutting worm said to have built Solomon's Temple.

Recommended on this episode

MediaRecommended

Mystery of the Sphinx

Boris Said / John Anthony West

“Wonderful documentary”
“Wonderful documentary, Charlton Heston.”— Ben van Kerkwyk
BookRecommendedISBN verified

Everything You Know Is Wrong

Lloyd Pye

“Fun lecture”
“Uh have you read Lloyd Pye's work? No... Everything you think you know is wrong. Fun lecture. Rest in peace, Lloyd.”— Joe Rogan

Also referenced (named, not recommended)

MediaReferenced

Mystery of the Sphinx

Boris Said / John Anthony West

“So, you know, John Anthony West, I'm sure you've seen the Mysteries of the Sphinx, right? Super famous doc.”— Joe Rogan
BookReferenced

Hamlet's Mill

Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend

“this is Hamlet's Mill what's what's in the book Hamlet's Mill that that essentially shows you that this a lot of the sacred geometry”— Ben van Kerkwyk
BookReferenced

Heaven's Mirror

Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval

“as reported by Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock in their book um Heaven's Mirror and also I found it in uh the Arabic publications”— Ben van Kerkwyk
BookReferenced

The Cradle of American Man

Arthur Posnansky

“published his works in 1945. I have a copy of his books um The Cradle of American Man, it's called. He spent 50 years uh investigating this site.”— Ben van Kerkwyk

Big reveals from this episode

  • Space-based scans reportedly confirm a massive multi-level underground structure 60-70m deep at Hawara, the lost Egyptian labyrinth.
  • Ben describes an unidentified ~40m Tic-Tac-shaped metallic object found freestanding in the labyrinth's central atrium.
  • Claims the original Mataha expedition labyrinth report was squashed and the team threatened with national-security sanctions.
  • Long-lost VHS footage of Zahi Hawass entering a sealed tunnel under the Sphinx surfaced this year on YouTube.
  • Months after promising Boris Said a documentary, Hawass announced, then never spoke again of, three tunnels beneath Giza.
  • The tunnel where Hawass once stood under the Sphinx has since been completely backfilled.
  • The Younger Dryas wiped out roughly 75% of South America's megafaunal species.
  • A submerged temple, terraces and a 2,600-ft containing wall were found beneath Lake Titicaca in 2000.

Worth remembering

  • Studies of limestone tombstone erosion suggest 2 feet of weathering would take over 100,000 years even in a rainy climate.
  • Robert Schoch argues the Sphinx enclosure's vertical channels are the result of thousands of years of rainfall, not wind and sand.
  • A study found an extinct Nile branch (the Ahramat), up to a mile wide, on whose shores all the pyramid valley temples were built.
  • The Great Pyramid's height times 43,200 gives Earth's polar radius; its perimeter times 43,200 gives the equatorial circumference.
  • The same ratio (108) links both the Moon's and the Sun's diameter to their distance from Earth.
  • At the equator Earth's circumference is ~21km greater than across the poles due to centrifugal bulge.
  • Arthur Posnansky spent 50 years at Tiwanaku and dated it to ~15,000 BC using astro-archaeological methods.
  • Early Inca kings built megalithic courtyards; later kings used crude cobblestones, suggesting they reused, not built, the megalithic sites.
  • India's Barabar Caves are mirror-finished granite chambers flat to within a thousandth of an inch.
  • Legend says Solomon's Temple was cut not with tools but with the Shamir, a stone-disintegrating worm wrapped in wool and kept in lead.