In 2020, Michael Tellinger and Johan Heine announced the discovery of a vast 200,000-year-old stone city in southern Africa, approximately 93 miles west of Maputo Port in Mozambique and thought to have been built by an ancient advanced civilization.  The ruins consist of stone circles, most of which are buried and were detected through aerial and satellite imagery.  Interestingly, the ruins are situated near numerous gold mines.

 

How do we know the ruins are 200,000 years old?  Tellinger and Heine examined the city’s dolerite walls and calculated the rate of erosion.  Prior to this staggering find, historians believed the oldest known advanced civilization was that of the ancient Sumerians, which emerged approximately 6,000 years ago.  Examination of the hardest walls revealed inscriptions, including an inscription of the Egyptian Ankh symbol.  Could it be that the ancient Egyptians inherited this iconic symbol from a lost southern African civilization?

 

The discovery of a 200,000-year-old city in a gold mining area fits in very well with theories – advanced by bestselling author Zecharia Sitchin and others – that ancient extraterrestrials known as the Annunaki were mining gold in southern Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, and cloned the human race to serve as slaves to work the mines.

 

But let’s step back and take a deep breath.

 

Most serious critics are simply not buying the story of a 200,000-year-old city.  To begin with, Johan Heine is not a scientist – he is a fireman and an airplane pilot.  Michael Tellinger's life story is much more interesting.  A former actor and recording artist, Tellinger is also the founder of South Africa’s Ubuntu Party and the political movement known as contributionism, which may be described as socialism on steroids.  He is a fan of Zecharia Sitchin and his wild pseudo-archaeological theories on extraterrestrials, the Annunaki, and the ancient cloning of humans.  Tellinger’s books are very much in line with these theories.  On a more basic level, critics seriously question the accuracy of dolerite erosion dating, as well as Tellinger’s qualifications to practice it.

 

In short, while the idea of an advanced civilization that flourished 200,000 years ago is tantalizing, we are still a long way from credibly proving it.