Art Starter: Graham Hancock

What lessons can we learn from Ancient civilisations that might have been forgotten by modern humans? That life is magical, that the universe is enchanted, that the earth is a precious garden of experience, and that it is an incredible opportunity for the soul to be born in a human body.

Your earlier work helped to bring the knowledge of the Mayan calendar to the western world. What do believe will happen in December 2012? I don't believe anything will happen on 21 December 2012. The Mayan calendar is cyclical and what it predicts for that date is not the end of the world, as some foolishly suppose, but the end of a great cycle of the human story and the beginning of the next. What I find interesting is that the start date of the current cycle of the calendar is in 3114 BC with the end date in 2012 (ie, a period of 5,126 years) and this period does span the time of emergence, dominance and decline of big, centralised, hierarchical states; big, centralised hierarchical religions; and big, centralised, hierarchical corporations. The existing world order based on these controlling hierarchies is undoubtedly in a terminal decay and something new – hopefully something better that honours individual sovereignty, that nurtures love rather than hatred, fear and suspicion, and that has reverence for the cosmos – is in the process of being birthed.

Your earlier work also took you to the possible location of the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Do you believe it exists and what would be the ramifications if uncovered? I think it is possible the Ark of the Covenant still exists, but I hope it is never uncovered. If it were to be reintroduced into the seething cauldron of the Middle East it would be exploited by fundamentalist Christians, fundamentalist Jews and fundamentalist Muslims who all share horrible end-times ideas in which the recovery of the Ark plays a key role.

Do you believe that tours like the Origins Of Consciousness are a good forum for discussing these ideas? Yes, an excellent forum. The new consciousness that is being born in the world is based around communities of ideas in which like-minded people can get together to reimagine reality. I hope the tour will act as a catalyst for new and better ways of thinking about the past and the future.