(Voyager) June 7, 2025: CALIFORNIA. What’s hiding beneath California? This Ice Age deep-dive reveals fossils, lost megafauna (large animals), ancient humans (Natives), and the land before cities.
Today, we journey back to a California few ever imagine, an ancient landscape buried beneath our cities, beaches, and freeways. Long before San Diego’s skyline rose or La Jolla’s cliffs drew surfers, this land was ruled by Columbian mammoths, saber-toothed cats, and early humans (pre-Clovis) who braved a world still shaped by ice. From submerged Kumeyaay village sites to fossil-filled tar pits and coastal cliffs hiding prehistoric secrets, this is the untold story of Ice Age California.
🔹 What San Diego, Los Angeles, and the Channel Islands such as Catalina looked like 20,000 years ago
🔹 The giants that once roamed the coast: mammoths, dire wolves, and saber-toothed cats
🔹 Human footprints on ancient shores — early seafarers, hunters, and toolmakers
🔹 How fossils found during construction projects and cliffside erosion are rewriting history
🔹 Why understanding the deep past matters in today’s changing world
Timecodes
0:00 Hidden beneath California
1:32 What California looked like 20,000 years ago
5:15 Giants of the Ice Age: mammoths, saber-tooth tigers, and more
9:15 Clues in unexpected places
12:24 Pioneers of the Ice Age: California’s first people
16:05 When the giants disappeared
19:36 Traces in today’s world
21:11 Outro and what comes next
Land of the Tongva became modern Los Angeles
ABOUT: In this episode, Armando from Voyager takes viewers deep beneath the surface of California — into a forgotten world shaped during the last Ice Age. From saber-toothed cats and Columbian mammoths to early human seafarers and ancient submerged villages, we uncover the astonishing history hidden under modern-day San Diego and beyond. This journey blends science, storytelling, and Indigenous memory to reveal a California most people never imagined. Whether into fossils, archeology, or just want to see California in a whole new light, this is a story that redefines the land beneath our feet.
YouTube: @voyagerhq • Instagram: voyagerclips • TikTok: voyagerhq • Website: voyagertraveltips.com. QUESTIONS: Have a question about Southern California or video topic requests? Drop it in the comments. #IceAgeCalifornia #PrehistoricCalifornia #CaliforniaHistory #AncientCalifornia #HiddenHistory.
Two massive sea creatures found in the world’s largest cave, located in Kentucky
Mammoth Cave tour, Kentucky, Deep South
Hidden beneath [landlocked] Kentucky's rolling hills lies Mammoth Cave, the world's largest known cave system.
Recently, scientists made a jaw-dropping discovery that has rocked the scientific community -- fossils of two massive prehistoric sea creatures (ancient sharks).
Enormous hidden ocean discovered under Mars, and it could contain life: Geophysicists have discovered a gigantic hidden ocean beneath Mars' surface, and they say it could harbor life. The massive underground reservoir, discovered using seismic data taken by NASA's InSight Lander, contains enough liquid to cover the entire planet with a mile of water. However, it is far too deep to access by any known means. Trapped inside a layer of fractured rock 7 to 13 miles (11.5 to 20 kms) beneath the Red Planet's outer crust, reaching the water would require a drilling operation that has yet-to-be achieved on Earth. More
(Popular Mechanics) In its ancient past, Mars likely contained many of the necessary ingredients for microbial life to flourish on its surface.
Now, a new discovery by NASA’s Perseverance rover shows a trifecta of compelling evidence — including the presence of water, organic compounds, and a chemical energy source — all on one rock located in the Jezero Crater.
One would think the word "organic" were life enough, but extraplanetary fossils found decades ago were not enough to overcome doubters in science. If Martian scientists bring us rock samples showing clear signs of earlier life on Mars, we still won't believe them. Life is earth-only. Just ask God (or read His bestseller). We are alone with Lord. Just Lord and us. That's it. No aliens!
Although this is the best clue yet that microbial life existed on Mars, there are still other explanations that could explain account for this geologic display without the existence of microbes.
“Is there life on Mars” is a question that has vexed astrobiologists and [Buddhist rockstar] David Bowie [who almost became a Vajrayana Buddhist monk rather than a human-alien hybrid pop singer] alike.
Playing with reptilian monsters on earth
While the latter imagined some macabre collection of arachnids on the Red Planet [Spiders on Mars], NASA scientists are fixated on finding evidence that microbial life once flourished on the fourth rock from the Sun.
They are so fixated, in fact, that the space agency has spent more than $5 billion getting two immensely complicated robotic rovers — Curiosity and Perseverance — onto the Martian surface with this specific microbial mission in mind.
Now, one of those rovers might have discovered one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for Martian microbial life.
Movile Cave, Romania: Life erupts inside cave sealed for 5 million years
Located on an arrowhead-shaped, three-foot-long rock nicknamed “Cheyava Falls” in the Jezero Crater (the 28-mile-wide crater that Perseverance has called home for the past three years), this “piece of evidence” is actually a trifecta of data points that suggest the presence of past microbial life.
The rock in question features two vertical veins of calcium sulfate that likely formed from past water, and these stripes both flank a red band of rock filled with “leopard spots.”
NASA has discovered evidence of past water on Mars before, but it’s this narrow band of rock that brings new meaning to this discovery.
Using its SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) and PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry) instruments, Perseverance determined the existence of organic compounds within the rock.
What's in Area 51, Groom Lake, Dreamland?
Oh, and those “leopard spots?” Those likely indicate chemical reactions that could’ve supplied energy to ancient microbial Martians.
While each of these discoveries — the presence of water, organic compounds, and chemical reactions — would be notable even if discovered separately, NASA has never seen all three in one location, meaning the geological chemistry of Cheyava Falls is possibly our best clue yet that Mars once hosted life. More:
Cleo Abram, Huge If True, Oct. 2, 2023; Sheldon S., CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
The Ocean Is Deeper Than You Think. We Need Better Maps
(Cleo Abram) Why deep-sea maps are BAD (and how to fix that)... Our maps of the ocean are surprisingly bad! Google Maps makes it look like we know a lot, but we know less about the ocean floor than we do the surface of Mars.
And that’s a big problem, because we are using the ocean all the time: We’re laying internet cables across it, we fight wars in it, we search it during a crisis -- like the imploded OceanGate Titan submersible or the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370...
[Or that time US forces sabotaged the NordStream Oil Pipeline and tried to blame it on the Russians, creating one of the very worst environmental disasters in the ocean, not to mention a shortage of heating oil for Europe and skyrocketing prices and a war of revenge on the Russians].
After all, 71% of the surface of the Earth is water. Yet, we have a surprisingly limited view of what’s below the water.
But that’s also understandable. Because cartographically speaking, water sucks. For Mars or Earth’s surface, we can take pictures. But light doesn’t penetrate to the ocean floor, so we need other ways to see it. The good news is we’re developing that tech right now, and an international group called Seabed 2030 is working to piece together a better map.
There is a terrifying, incredible, alien world on our own planet, and we’re FINALLY using technology to see it more clearly.
In this episode of Huge If True, I dive deep -- with help from my friend and fellow video journalist @johnnyharris -- to show how we’re mapping the ocean, the surprising things we’ve discovered in the depths, and why this new technology could be huge if true.
Chapters
00:00 How bad are our ocean maps?
01:40 How deep is the ocean?
03:05 What is the deepest part of the ocean?
04:04 The craziest method to map the ocean
06:20 How does sonar work?
07:31 What did the first ocean maps look like?
09:30 How do we map the ocean now?
10:30 What is Seabed 2030?
11:40 How do we use underwater robots?
12:27 Concerns with mapping the deep ocean
13:11 Why deep ocean mapping is huge if true
Find Cleo Abram on TikTok for short, fun tech explainers: https://www.tiktok.com/@cleoabram, on Instagram for more personal stories: https://www.instagram.com/cleoabram, on Twitter for thoughts, threads, and curated news: https://twitter.com/cleoabram
BIO:
Cleo Abram is an Emmy-nominated independent video journalist. On her show, Huge If True, she explores complex technology topics with rigor and optimism, helping her audience understand the world around them and see positive futures they can help build. Before going independent, she was a video producer for Vox. She wrote and directed the Coding and Diamonds episodes of Vox’s Netflix show, Explained. She produced videos for Vox’s popular YouTube channel, was the host and senior producer of Vox’s first ever daily show, Answered, and was co-host and producer of Vox’s YouTube Originals show, Glad You Asked.
Additional reading and watching: To see recent seafloor visualizations (NOAA): https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/maps/ocean-...
- To learn more about the high-stakes race to map the Earth's oceans: The Deepest Map, by Laura Trethewey https://www.harpercollins.com/product...
- To see how amazing our Mars maps are (Murray Lab): https://murray-lab.caltech.edu/CTX/V0...
- Livestream of ocean research (my favorite):
/ @evnautilus
- Deep Ocean: 10 Hours of Relaxing Oceanscapes, BBC Earth:
• Deep Ocean: 10 Hours of Relaxing Ocea...
- The Ocean is Way Deeper Than You Think, RealLifeLore:
• The Ocean is Way Deeper Than You Think
- What’s Hiding at the Most Solitary Place on Earth? The Deep Sea, Kurzgesagt:
• What’s Hiding at the Most Solitary Pl...
- The Unspeakable Horrors of the Deep Sea, Casual Geographic:
• The Unspeakable Horrors of the Deep S...
- Why no aquarium has a great white shark, Vox:
• Why no aquarium has a great white shark
- This Incredible Animation Shows How Deep The Ocean Really Is, Insider:
• This Incredible Animation Shows How D...
- How Much of the Seafloor Is Left to Explore? NOAA: https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/world-...
- How Deep is the Ocean? NOAA: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/o...
- About Seabed 2030: https://seabed2030.org/our-mission/
Vox: https://www.vox.com/authors/cleo-abram
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10108242/
Gear I use:
Camera: Sony A7SIII
Lens: Sony 16–35 mm F2.8 GM and 35mm prime
Audio: Sennheiser SK AVX
Music: Musicbed
Follow along for more episodes of Huge If True: https://www.youtube.com/cleoabram?sub...
—
Welcome to the joke down low:
Why did the fish blush?
Because it saw the ocean’s bottom.
Use the word “blush” in a comment so I know you’re a real one :)
Get an exclusive Surfshark deal! Enter promo code CLEO for an extra 3 months free at https://surfshark.deals/CLEO Subscribe to support optimistic tech content on Huge If True: / cleoabram Check out @johnnyharris for independent journalism that will help you better understand the world: / johnnyharris
(Johnny Harris) Sept. 14, 2022. For 200 years map makers drew California as an island. Accident? What did they know? The path to find out why led J. Harris on a wild journey. SOURCES: docs.google.com/document...
ABOUT: Johnny Harris is a filmmaker and journalist currently is based in Washington, DC, reporting on interesting trends and stories domestically and worldwide. He holds a BA in international relations from Brigham Young University and an MA in international peace and conflict resolution from American University.
California is an island, upper and lower, Alta and Baja, with the Sea of Cortes/z (Gulf of California or Vermillion Sea) behind it, extending up into the Salton Sea or the remnant that remains of it (Wisdom Quarterly).
Our peninsula sure looks like a former island.
It used to be "common knowledge" to explorers and cartographers (travelers and map makers) that the unique land of California was an island. It makes sense!
That's how it got the great abundance and diversity it now enjoys. For instance, the State of California has more plant and animal species than all of the other states in the U.S. combined, by far. There's no comparison. We have the world's tallest tree (hidden up north so people will stop climbing it and trampling the woods around it).
Map shows Gulf of California, Mexico, extending up all the way to wrap around the island.
.
Who controls low orbit satellites?
The Salton Sea can hardly be explained as an accident that just happened to linger this long. It's enormous! It's far easier to imagine it's the remnant sea that once wrapped around the Island when water levels were higher. There's a lot of earthquake activity around here that could have changed things, pushed up the plate we're on.
A wide waterway, like the American River in the state capitol, Sacramento, might have been considered part of the Pacific Ocean. More likely, the shape of the state was not as it is today.
In the view of Mexico, particularly under the Spanish Empire, Alta California ("Upper California") extended far beyond its present borders. And there was no need to survey it as it was home to indigenous people, just as Mexico was. But European Spain sure thought it should be mapped, missioned (the first "concentration camps"), and enslaved, with the local population put to work in the service of the Church and Empire.
Check the latest environmental numbers. Responding to the global threat of climate change has become an urgent part of daily life. Here is a live snap-shot showing key information about the environmental health of the planet (NEWS.com.au).
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