Hacking Ancient Consciousness with Andrew Collins

What if the earliest humans who gathered around a fire were doing more than cooking, keeping warm, or protecting themselves from predators? What if they were also developing ideas about death, animals, dreams, and a reality they could not directly see? These questions drive Ashley Grace's conversation with author and researcher Andrew Collins on The Biohacking Standards. The discussion moves between archaeology and spiritual speculation, returning repeatedly to one intriguing place: Qesem Cave, near Tel Aviv, Israel.

Collins believes that ancient humans may have sought contact with intelligences beyond themselves. He connects this idea to the relationships early communities had with the animals they hunted, to unusual objects found at prehistoric sites, and to later traditions of shamanism. His interpretation is provocative, but the distinction matters: artifacts can reveal what people made and used; they rarely tell us with certainty what those people believed. This episode is most rewarding when heard as an invitation to investigate that gap rather than as a final answer about humanity's spiritual origins.

From UFO Investigator to Ancient-Mysteries Researcher

Collins's interest in unusual experiences began long before his work on prehistoric cultures. As a child he was fascinated by dreams, astral projection, UFOs, and paranormal reports. At around ten years old, he was already borrowing Sigmund Freud's books from the library, even though he admits that much of what he read was beyond his understanding. Rather than abandon the subject, he followed his curiosity and began forming his own questions about the mind.

As a young adult, he became involved in UFO investigation, working on cases associated with the British UFO Research Association and the UFO Investigative Network. He met people who reported close encounters and alleged experiences aboard alien craft. Collins says that what interested him most was not simply the possibility of spacecraft, but the way witnesses described a profound change in their consciousness. Some interpreted their encounters as contact with a higher intelligence or a larger, shared awareness.

Those conversations became a bridge to his later interest in ancient history. If modern people interpret unusual experiences through the language of extraterrestrials, Collins wondered, might ancient people have described comparable experiences through the language of spirits, gods, or animals? The comparison does not establish that the experiences have a common external source. It does, however, offer a way to examine how cultures give meaning to events they find difficult to explain.

Why Qesem Cave Is Central to the Conversation

To explore what ancient humans may have believed about consciousness, Collins takes Ashley back roughly 400,000 years to Qesem Cave in what is now Israel. The site has attracted archaeological attention for its long history of occupation, evidence of fire use, and sophisticated stone-tool practices. Collins draws particularly on interpretations he associates with archaeologist Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University, whose research has explored prehistoric human relationships with animals and material culture.

The cave provides a compelling setting because it makes abstract questions concrete. Instead of discussing spirituality as an idea that appeared suddenly with written religions, Collins asks listeners to imagine people who lived amid hunting, tool production, food preparation, and repeated encounters with animal death. Their daily survival depended on close knowledge of the natural world. It is plausible that these relationships carried emotional and symbolic significance, but reconstructing a specific spiritual system from ancient objects remains difficult.

Collins proposes that some of the cave's occupants may have understood the animals they killed as possessing a continuing existence beyond physical death. He describes a possible relationship of reverence and reciprocity, in which hunters honored the beings that sustained them. That interpretation is central to his larger argument about early consciousness. It is not, however, the same as demonstrating that a particular group believed in an identifiable spirit world.

The Swan Wing Bone and the Question of Early Shamanism

The most memorable object in Collins's account is a modified swan wing bone. He describes it as a potential ritual implement and suggests that a prehistoric practitioner might have used it while entering an altered state of consciousness. In his telling, the bone offers a possible link between the physical remains of Qesem Cave and later traditions in which shamans communicate with animal spirits or travel imaginatively into another realm.

This is where the conversation becomes both exciting and methodologically challenging. The function of an ancient object cannot be established simply because it resembles items used in much later ceremonies. Archaeologists must consider its archaeological context, modifications, use-wear, dating, and alternative practical explanations. Collins characterizes the swan bone as exceptionally early evidence of shamanism.

The question is fascinating. Why do humans preserve certain objects? When does a useful item become a symbol? And how far back can we trace ritual behavior? The swan wing bone becomes a starting point for discussing those questions rather than a definitive answer to them. For listeners interested in the origins of religion, the distinction between a suggestive artifact and proof of a complex belief system is an important part of the story.

Animal Spirits, Symbolic Tools, and a Parallel World

Collins also discusses objects he describes as stone tools associated with mammoth or elephant bone. He interprets some as having symbolic rather than straightforward practical significance, potentially reflecting respect for hunted animals. He connects these objects to a broader picture of early humans who may have imagined a parallel world in which animals continued to exist and could be approached through dreams or altered states.

In many historically documented shamanic traditions, relationships with animals, spirits, and ancestors are woven into ritual life. Collins uses those parallels to suggest how prehistoric people might have understood their surroundings. The comparison is imaginative and potentially useful, but modern or historically recent traditions cannot simply be projected backward hundreds of thousands of years. Similar-looking objects or practices may have very different meanings across cultures and eras.

Still, the emotional premise is accessible. Hunting is not only a technical activity; it is a direct encounter with dependence, risk, and mortality. A community that relied on animals for food and materials might also have developed stories or practices expressing gratitude, fear, or obligation. Collins sees the beginning of a spiritual relationship in that possibility. Ashley's questions help keep the discussion anchored in what such a relationship might have meant to people living in a radically different world.

Did Outside Intelligence Inspire Human Innovation?

The conversation then takes a larger leap. Collins suggests that connecting with a parallel realm might have opened ancient humans to genuine external intelligences and, perhaps, to ideas that accelerated their development. He points to the sophisticated toolmaking associated with Qesem Cave and argues that its inhabitants advanced rapidly compared with some neighboring populations. For him, unusual innovation invites questions about where inspiration originates.

He illustrates the idea with the opening of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which a mysterious monolith precedes a dramatic shift in how early humans use tools. Collins is not suggesting that the film is evidence. He uses it as a metaphor for a moment when new knowledge seems to arrive from beyond an individual's existing understanding. The image is memorable precisely because it dramatizes the mystery of creativity.

Yet innovation does not require an extraterrestrial or supernatural explanation. Social learning, accumulated experience, environmental pressures, experimentation, and cultural transmission can all contribute to technological change. The archaeological record may show increasingly sophisticated behavior without revealing a single moment of inspiration. Collins's suggestion belongs to the realm of interpretation; the material evidence of tools and occupation belongs to archaeology. Keeping both in view makes the discussion more illuminating.

Does Andrew Collins Believe Ancient Aliens Visited Earth?

Ashley also asks about physical extraterrestrial visitation. Collins's position is more nuanced than a simple claim that aliens landed and taught early humans everything they knew. He says he does not necessarily believe that fully physical visitors arrived in spacecraft to provide humanity with its knowledge, although he remains open to the possibility that Earth has been visited.

He also recounts a story about Carl Sagan and alleged views Sagan expressed before his work with NASA. Because this anecdote is relayed through Collins and an unnamed colleague, it should not be treated as independently established evidence of Sagan's position or of a subsequent effort to silence him. It is best understood as part of the guest's account of how his thinking developed.

Collins's interest is ultimately broader than spacecraft. He is drawn to the recurring human sense that intelligence, meaning, or consciousness might extend beyond the individual. Whether ancient stories of gods and spirits, modern UFO accounts, and contemporary experiences of altered awareness share anything beyond recurring themes remains an open question. The episode is valuable for showing how one researcher connects these traditions, while leaving listeners free to evaluate the connections.

Psychics, Intuition, and the Limits of Historical Evidence

Another distinctive part of Collins's approach is his willingness to consult psychics and highly intuitive people. He distinguishes them from stage performers and says he has found their impressions useful in developing questions about the past. In the conversation, he associates such work with subjects including Göbekli Tepe, Denisovans, the Garden of Eden, the Watchers, the Nephilim, and the Anunnaki.

Collins says he believes some intuitive impressions have later aligned with archaeological discoveries. Those assertions would need to be assessed case by case, using dated records of the original claims and independent evidence of what was subsequently discovered. Without that documentation, they cannot be presented as verified predictions. The productive way to approach his method is to distinguish a source of inspiration from a method of proof.

Intuition can prompt a researcher to ask a new question, just as a dream or a chance observation can inspire a scientific hypothesis. Establishing whether the answer is correct requires evidence that others can inspect and challenge. This is especially important in ancient history, where the available record is fragmentary and compelling stories can easily outrun what the artifacts actually support.

What Does This Mean for Consciousness and Biohacking?

The Biohacking Standards approaches health and human potential through a broad lens, and Ashley is particularly interested in spiritual consciousness as part of that conversation. Andrew's work stretches the discussion across an enormous timescale. Instead of asking only how modern people can sharpen attention or support longevity, the episode asks how humans came to understand awareness, imagination, and their place in the natural world.

That question has relevance even for listeners who do not accept Collins's speculative conclusions. The human capacity to create symbols, share stories, practice rituals, and contemplate death shapes culture and identity. Modern neuroscience investigates the relationship between brain activity and conscious experience, while archaeology studies the material traces of human behavior. Neither field can simply read the thoughts of people who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago.

The episode therefore works best as a conversation between disciplines and perspectives rather than a claim that ancient archaeology has solved consciousness. It encourages curiosity about what our ancestors experienced while reminding us that curiosity is strongest when paired with a willingness to say, 'We do not yet know.'

Frequently Asked Questions About Qesem Cave and Ancient Shamanism

Where is Qesem Cave?

Qesem Cave is located near Tel Aviv in Israel. Archaeologists have studied the site for evidence of prehistoric occupation, fire use, animal processing, and stone-tool technology. It is an important site for examining behavior during a much earlier period of human history.

Is the swan wing bone proven to be the earliest evidence of shamanism?

No definitive conclusion is established by the supplied episode article. Andrew Collins presents the bone as an unusually early possible ritual object and interprets it as evidence of shamanic practice. Its precise function and the broader claim about the earliest shamanism require careful archaeological evaluation.

What did early humans believe about animal spirits?

Their exact beliefs are unknown. Collins proposes that some prehistoric communities may have honored hunted animals and imagined their spirits continuing in a parallel existence. Archaeological finds may inspire that interpretation, but they do not directly record a prehistoric person's thoughts.

What is the connection between shamanism and altered states of consciousness?

In many documented traditions, shamanic practices involve rituals, dreams, trance, and relationships with spirits. Collins suggests that some of these themes could have very ancient roots. Establishing continuity across hundreds of thousands of years is much harder than identifying similarities.

Does Andrew Collins say extraterrestrials taught humans to make tools?

Not in that simple form. He remains open to physical visitation but emphasizes a broader possibility of contact with external intelligence. The episode presents that possibility as his view, not an archaeological finding.

Why is Qesem Cave important to the study of human consciousness?

It provides a rich setting for discussing technology, animal relationships, and possible symbolic behavior in deep prehistory. It cannot, by itself, establish a theory of consciousness, but it raises questions about how early people may have understood their world.

A Better Question Than 'Did Ancient Shamans Contact Another World?'

The strongest moment in this conversation is not a definitive claim about aliens, spirits, or a prehistoric ritual. It is the realization that the human search for meaning may be far older than our written records. A modified bone, a carefully worked tool, or a hearth can make the distant past feel unexpectedly close. These objects remind us that ancient people were not simply anonymous figures on an evolutionary timeline; they were communities responding creatively to the conditions of their lives.

Andrew Collins invites us to imagine that they may also have been reaching toward a consciousness beyond themselves. Archaeology invites us to ask what the physical evidence can genuinely support. Holding those perspectives apart does not diminish the mystery. It gives us a more honest and interesting way to explore it.

Listen to Ashley Grace's full conversation with Andrew Collins on The Biohacking Standards for a wide-ranging discussion of Qesem Cave, ancient shamanism, UFO investigations, symbolic behavior, and the origins of human ideas about consciousness. Subscribe for more interviews exploring the intersection of ancient wisdom, emerging questions, and human potential.