Ovi Black & Xavier Black Present · Humanity on Trial · 29 Languages

The 290,000-Year
Question

Modern humans have existed for 290,000 years. Civilization? Only 12,000. What were we doing for the other 278,000?

290,000years
Only 12,000 of Civilization
20
Arenas of Investigation
5
Book Prosecution
29
Languages
Join the Investigation Watch Episode 00 See the Evidence
Ovi Black — The Prosecutor
The Prosecutor
Ovi Black
The Competing Theories

Four Theories. One Wall. You Decide.

Every piece of evidence on the Investigation Wall supports or challenges one of four competing theories about humanity’s 290,000-year silence. Pin your evidence. Follow the red string. Find the truth.

Divine Creation

“Humanity was designed with purpose by a higher power”

Evidence pinned23
Challenges17
Current Jury Support
28%
🧬
Natural Evolution

“Gradual development through natural selection over millennia”

Evidence pinned31
Challenges19
Current Jury Support
35%
👁
Intervention

“Something or someone altered humanity’s trajectory”

Evidence pinned18
Challenges25
Current Jury Support
22%
Simulation

“We exist within a constructed or programmed reality”

Evidence pinned15
Challenges28
Current Jury Support
15%

As new episodes drop and new evidence is examined, these numbers shift. The Wall is alive. The investigation never stops.

Running Tally

Evidence Scoreboard

87
Total Pieces of Evidence Examined
Natural Evolution
31
Divine Creation
23
Intervention
18
Simulation
15
Natural Evolution (31)
Most Supported Theory
Simulation (28)
Most Challenged Theory
Updated every Wednesday with new evidence
Start Here

Episode 00: The Spine

Before the investigation begins, you need to understand the question. The Spine lays out the foundation — the orthodox timeline, steel-manned at full strength. The gap in the record. The scale of what's missing. And why 20 arenas of evidence across five seasons might finally change the answer. This is your briefing before the prosecution begins.

Drops
March 15, 2026
Format
YouTube
Status
In Production
The Gap in Human History

315,000 years ago, on a hillside in Morocco, a group of humans lived and died. We have their bones. Their skulls. The same brain volume as yours.

Orthodox archaeology says civilization began 12,000 years ago. Cities. Writing. Agriculture. Everything we call "progress." Before that? Silence. A quarter million years of nothing.

290,000 years of humans with the same brain, the same hands, the same capacity for thought. And we're told they did... nothing?

What if the gap isn't empty? What if the evidence didn't disappear because it never existed — but because it couldn't last? Stone survives. Wood, fiber, skin, and reed return to earth within centuries. And 20 million square kilometers of coastline now sits under ocean.

This Is Not a Documentary. It's an Open Investigation.

Ovi Black narrates the prosecution. Xavier Black hunts the evidence. You — the jury — help build the case. Every season: 12 episodes, 30-day open cases, and audience evidence episodes where YOUR submissions go on the Wall.

01
The Prosecution Presents
Ten standard episodes per season. Each one investigates the arenas tied to that book — evidence cited, sourced, and placed on the Wall. Xavier hunts it. Ovi presents it. Every claim steel-manned before it's tested.
02
The Jury Investigates
Two audience episodes per season feature YOUR evidence. Submit archaeological sites, research papers, oral traditions, or counterarguments. The best go on the Wall — with your name on the card. This is collective prosecution.
03
The Wall Builds
Five seasons. Sixty episodes. Twenty arenas. The evidence stacks across years. By the finale, the jury — you — delivers the verdict. The Wall is not one person's theory. It's a global investigation.
30
Days Per Case
Every episode opens a case. Every case has a clock. Thirty days to submit evidence, challenge the Wall, and contribute to the investigation. Twelve episodes per season. Two of them are yours — audience evidence episodes where the best submissions go on the Wall with your name on the card.
Submit
Bring a peer-reviewed paper, an archaeological site, a dataset. Submit via the form below or tag us on social with #290KEvidence. If it holds up, it goes on the Wall with your name on the card.
Challenge
If you think we're wrong — good. Show us. Steel-man your argument. Counterevidence that meets the standard goes on the Wall too. That's the investigation working.
Standard
The only rule is rigor. Cite your sources. Peer-reviewed, primary data, or verifiable artifacts. If the evidence changes, we change with it. No ego. Only truth.

The Investigation Wall

Twenty arenas of evidence. Distributed across five seasons. Each season aligns with one book. The Wall builds over years — and so does the case.

Season 1 — Book 1: The Question · 12 Episodes · Launches March 2026
ARENA 01
The Architecture of Awareness
Consciousness infrastructure, cognitive hardware, 300K years
FIRST CASE
ARENA 02
The Invention of Time
When humans began tracking past, future, and cycles
SEASON 1
ARENA 03
The Discovery of Death
Burial, ritual, awareness of mortality
SEASON 1
ARENA 04
The Birth of Story
Narrative capability, oral tradition origins
SEASON 1
ARENA 05
The Art Explosion
Symbolic representation, cave art, the Fibre Age
SEASON 1
ARENA 06
The Language Threshold
Symbolic communication, the drowned world
SEASON 1
Season 2 — Book 2: The Others · 12 Episodes
ARENA 07
The Bicameral Mind
Jaynes, voice of the gods, internal vs. external command
SEASON 2
ARENA 08
Hands Across the Water
Maritime technology, ocean crossings, navigation
SEASON 2
ARENA 09
The Bone Record
Genetics, DNA, population bottlenecks
SEASON 2
ARENA 10
The Others
Alien theories steel-manned and tested
SEASON 2
Season 3 — Book 3: The Code · 12 Episodes
ARENA 11
The Code
Religion as coordination technology
SEASON 3
ARENA 12
Tools of Thought
Cognitive archaeology, mind technology
SEASON 3
ARENA 13
Networks
Trade routes, ancient connectivity, exchange systems
SEASON 3
ARENA 14
Songs of the Earth
Oral traditions encoding real geographic and climatic data
SEASON 3
Season 4 — Book 4: The Flood · 12 Episodes
ARENA 15
Fire and Time
Younger Dryas, catastrophe theory, Hancock assessed
SEASON 4
ARENA 16
Climate Engines
Ice ages, migration, environmental adaptation
SEASON 4
ARENA 17
Stone and Stars
Megalithic astronomy, ancient mathematics
SEASON 4
ARENA 18
The Strongest Case Against
Opposition evidence presented at full strength
SEASON 4
Season 5 — Book 5: The Answer · 12 Episodes · The Verdict
ARENA 19
The Synthesis
Cross-domain convergence, all threads unified
SEASON 5
ARENA 20
The Verdict
The Wall speaks for itself. The jury delivers.
SERIES FINALE

Master Glossary & Intelligence Feed

Every term. Every researcher. Every keyword we're tracking. The investigation runs on precision.

Göbekli Tepe
Monumental stone circles, SE Turkey, ~11,600 BP. Pre-agricultural. Upends the timeline of civilization.
Book 1Book 2Book 5
Karahan Tepe
Sister site to GT, more sophisticated chambers. Expanding the PPN monumental complex.
Book 1Book 5
Taş Tepeler
12+ PPN monumental sites network across SE Turkey. GT was not alone.
Book 1
Blombos Cave
South Africa, ~100K BP. Ochre processing, shell beads, abstract engravings. Early symbolic thought.
Book 1Book 5
Sulawesi Cave Art
Indonesia, ~51,200 BP. Oldest known narrative art. Rewrites the geography of early cognition.
Book 1Book 5
Jebel Irhoud
Morocco, ~315K BP. Oldest known H. sapiens fossils. The starting point of the 290K-year question.
Book 1Book 5
Doggerland
Submerged North Sea landmass. An entire populated landscape now underwater.
Book 1Book 4
Sundaland
Submerged SE Asia continental shelf. Massive land area lost to post-glacial flooding.
Book 1Book 4
Casarabe Culture
LiDAR-revealed Amazonian urbanism. Complex settlement hidden under canopy for centuries.
Book 1
Aguada Fénix
Massive Maya platform, no evidence of hierarchy. Communal construction without kings.
Book 1
Pumapunku
Precision stone engineering at Tiwanaku, demonstrated by archaeology. No aliens required.
Book 2
Cosquer Cave
Painted cave with entrance 37m below modern sea level. Art from the Ice Age shoreline.
Book 4
Atlit Yam
Submerged Neolithic village off Israel. Complete settlement preserved underwater for 9,000 years.
Book 4
Persian Gulf Oasis
Potential pre-Sumerian inhabited land, now submerged. Where was civilization before Sumer?
Book 1Book 4
Pinnacle Point
South Africa, ~71K BP. Microlithic technology, heat-treated tools. Advanced engineering in deep time.
Book 1Book 5
Sapient Paradox
Why did modern humans wait 290K years? THE central question of the entire investigation.
Book 1Book 5
Preservation Bias
Organic materials decompose; stone survives. Why the archaeological gap looks empty but probably wasn't.
Book 1Book 4
Agriculture Flip
Monuments forced farming, not the reverse. GT proves ritual preceded agriculture.
Book 1
Theology-as-OS
Religion as operating system with kernel, governance, and enforcement layers. The deepest infrastructure of civilization.
Book 3Book 5
Bicameral Mind
Jaynes: early humans heard internal commands as divine voices. Consciousness as a recent upgrade.
Book 3Book 5
Big Gods Hypothesis
Moralizing deities evolved to enable large-scale cooperation. Gods as social technology.
Book 3
Younger Dryas Impact
Cosmic event ~12,850 BP triggering a 1,200-year cold period. Climate catastrophe at civilization's doorstep.
Book 4
Meltwater Pulse 1A
Rapid 20–25m sea level rise ~14,600 BP. Coastlines and settlements erased in centuries.
Book 4
Tasmanian Effect
Small isolated populations lose technological complexity. Innovation requires networks.
Book 5
Secular Cycles
Turchin's 300-year growth/crisis/collapse model. History as a predictable waveform.
Book 4
Fibre Age
Most human culture was organic and decomposed. The invisible majority of the human record.
Book 1
Geomythology
Geological events preserved in oral traditions. Flood stories as data, not fantasy.
Book 4
Manufactured Deity
Gods deliberately constructed through ritual, architecture, and enforcement. Divinity as engineering.
Book 3Book 5
Dunbar's Number
~150 person cognitive limit triggering the need for Big Gods. Beyond this, you need surveillance from the sky.
Book 3
Diffusionism
Single-source theory of civilization spread. Hancock's core weakness — convergence explains more.
Book 2
Colin Renfrew
Named the Sapient Paradox. The question that launched this investigation.
Book 1
Klaus Schmidt
Discovered Göbekli Tepe (1994). Changed everything we thought we knew about early civilization.
Book 1
Julian Jaynes
Bicameral mind theory. Radical hypothesis: consciousness is younger than civilization.
Book 3Book 5
Iain McGilchrist
Hemispheric asymmetry, left-brain takeover. The Master and his Emissary.
Book 3Book 5
Ara Norenzayan
Big Gods hypothesis. How moralizing religions scaled human cooperation.
Book 3
Peter Turchin
Cliodynamics, secular cycles. History as science, collapse as math.
Book 4
David Graeber
Dawn of Everything, political plasticity. Humans experimented with governance for millennia.
Book 1Book 5
David Reich
Paleogenomics, admixture evidence. DNA as the ultimate cold case forensics.
Book 5
Patrick Nunn
Aboriginal sea-level memory research. Oral traditions accurate over 7,000+ years.
Book 4
Lynne Kelly
Memory Code, mnemonic technologies. How preliterate cultures stored encyclopedic knowledge.
Book 4
Graham Hancock
Fair assessment: real questions, wrong answers. A catalyst, not a guide.
Book 2
Michael Heiser
Demolished Sitchin philologically. The linguistic kill shot against ancient astronaut theory.
Book 2
Baruch Spinoza
God = Nature. Immanent divine. The philosopher who saw divinity in everything and was excommunicated for it.
Book 5
Joseph Tainter
Diminishing returns, collapse theory. Civilizations don't fall — they become too expensive to maintain.
Book 4
Jean-Jacques Hublin
Jebel Irhoud redating. Pushed H. sapiens origins to 315K years — the starting gun for the paradox.
Book 1Book 5

Real-time keyword monitoring across X/Twitter. The investigation never sleeps.

Tier 1 — Daily Monitoring
sapient paradox Göbekli Tepe Karahan Tepe LiDAR archaeology Doggerland Sundaland Younger Dryas Big Gods bicameral mind ancient aliens debunked civilizational collapse Aboriginal oral tradition submerged archaeology pre-pottery neolithic meltwater pulse songlines
Tier 2 — 3x/Week
ancient DNA paleogenomics Sapiens Dawn of Everything ice age Spinoza experimental archaeology indigenous knowledge deep history
Tier 3 — Weekly Triggers
Graham Hancock Joe Rogan archaeology Netflix ancient apocalypse pseudoarchaeology religion evolved human uniqueness decolonize

By the Numbers

The scope of this investigation spans disciplines, continents, and hundreds of millennia. These are the coordinates.

290K
Years of Human History
Before Civilization
20
Arenas of
Investigation
20M
Sq Km of Coastline
Submerged Since Ice Age
5
Books in the
Life Is Divine Series

Three Voices. One Question.

Ovi Black & Xavier Black — The Prosecution Team
Ovi Black
The Prosecutor
The voice of the Investigation Wall. Warm but precise. Curious but relentless. Ovi narrates the prosecution, presents the evidence, cross-references across all 20 arenas, and addresses the jury — you. She sees patterns others miss. Draw your own conclusions about who she is.
Xavier Black
The Investigator
Boots on the ground. Xavier hunts the evidence — archaeological sites, archives, oral tradition keepers, expert interviews. Combat-tested rigor meets academic depth. He goes where the evidence leads, brings it back to the Wall, and lets Ovi build the case. The question found him. He's not letting go until it answers.
The Jury
You
This isn't a lecture series. You're the jury. Submit evidence. Challenge the Wall. Your contributions appear on the evidence board with your name on the card. By the finale, you don't just watch the verdict — you deliver it. The investigation is collective. The prosecution is yours.

Life is Divine

One argument in five movements. A prosecution, not a theory.

Book 1
The Question
What we were told & why it's wrong
Book 2
The Others
Aliens, Atlantis & the theft of human credit
Book 3
The Code
How humanity manufactured God
Book 4
The Flood
What we lost & how we remember
Book 5 — The Verdict
The Answer
The forgotten self

Own the Investigation

The Wall isn't just digital. Bring the investigation home. The same 32-foot timeline. The same evidence cards. Your wall. Your investigation.

The Map
Investigation Wall Map
$49
A 32" × 24" timeline poster spanning 290,000 years. Every arena marked. Every evidence thread traced. Museum-quality print on archival stock.
  • 32" × 24" archival-quality print
  • 290,000-year investigation timeline
  • All 20 arenas mapped with evidence threads
  • Ships immediately
Pre-Order the Map
The Complete Package
Founder's Bundle
$299
Everything. The map ships now. All 5 eBooks and audiobooks as they release. Plus the premium 5-book hardcover boxed set when the series completes (Q4 2029). Lock in the full investigation at the pre-sale price.
  • Investigation Wall Map — ships now
  • All 5 eBooks (as released)
  • All 5 Audiobooks (as released)
  • Premium hardcover boxed set (Q4 2029)
  • Name on the Founders Wall
Claim Your Bundle
The Evidence
290,000-Year Timeline — The Gap Visualized

The Silence. 220,000 years. What happened?

A Global Investigation

29 Languages. 5 Billion People. One Question.

Ice Age vs Today — Global Migration Map

This investigation will be conducted in 29 languages, reaching over 5 billion people in their native tongue. We are inviting every researcher, historian, scientist, philosopher, and curious mind on Earth to participate. Bring your evidence. Challenge our theories. Defend your own.

For or Against. Agree or Disagree. The only requirement: follow the Laws of Civility.

English Español 中文 हिंदी العربية Português Русский 日本語 Français +20 more languages
Ovi's Enforcement

The Laws of Civility

Law I
Respect the person, challenge the idea. Attack arguments, never humans.
Law II
Evidence-based discourse. Bring receipts, not emotions.
Law III
Good faith engagement. Assume intelligence, seek understanding.
Law IV
Embrace disagreement. We want opposing views. Ovi moderates civility, not conformity.

You don't have to agree with us. You just have to think with us.

This is humanity investigating humanity. All 8 billion of us.

Get Involved

Build Your Own Investigation Wall

Don’t just watch — investigate. Download free evidence kits and build a physical Investigation Wall at home, in your classroom, or with your team.

🔍
Solo Investigator

Free evidence packs delivered as episodes release. Build your wall week by week. Track your own theory. Follow the evidence wherever it leads.

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👥
Jury Panel

Group kits for book clubs, classrooms, and corporate teams. Debate the evidence together. Build consensus or expose divisions. Your group decides.

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🏆
Certified Facilitator

Licensed curriculum and certification program for educators, workshop leaders, and thought facilitators. Launching 2027.

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Four Simple Steps

How to Build Your Wall

01
Choose Your Surface

Corkboard, wall space, or a digital board. Any surface where you can pin and connect evidence.

02
Download Evidence Kits

Free weekly PDF packs released with each episode. Print, cut, and prepare your evidence cards.

03
Pin Under Your Theory

Each piece of evidence supports or challenges a theory. Pin it where you think it belongs.

04
Connect with Red String

Draw the connections. Link contradictions. Find the patterns that others miss.