Kind: captions
Language: en
for the vast majority of human existence
we've been nomadic and we've done these
kind of wider or tighter nomatic circles
depending on the geographic region but
they'd move so once humans figured out
how to stay in a place that's the
initial trigger to what would become
civilization I think you said Beauty and
blood went hand inand for the Aztec what
I meant by that is they were absolutely
comfortable with human sacrifice and you
know ripping people's hearts out this
they had this this just you know
grotesque violent bent but in the same
way they also absolutely loved flower
gardens and poetry and music and dance
the same Aztec King who would order the
hearts of a thousand people extracted
also would stand up at dinner parties to
recite his own poetry but they were
really just surgical about it they'd use
a thick obsidian knife where they could
just break the ribs right along the
sternum and then push the sternum down
Pull up and just while the person was
alive yep while the person was
alive the following is a conversation
with Ed Barnhart an archaeologist
specializing in ancient civilizations of
South America meso Amica and North
America this is Alex Freedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's Ed
Barnhart do you think there are lost
civilizations in the history of humans
on Earth which we don't know anything
about yes I do and in fact you know we
we have found some civilizations that we
had no idea about just in my lifetime I
mean we've got gockley Tey and we've got
the stuff that's going on in the
Amazon and there are some other less
startling things that we had no idea
existed and push our dates back and give
us whole new civilizations we had no
idea about so yeah it's happened and I
think it'll happen again do you think
there's a lost civilization in the
Amazon that uh the Amazon jungle has
eaten up or is hiding the evidence of
yes I do and I uh we're we're beginning
to find it there are these huge what we
call geoglyphs these Mound groups that
are in geometric patterns I think that
the average Joe when they hear the word
civilization they think of something
that looks like Rome and I don't think
we're ever going to find anything that
looks like Rome in the Amazon I think a
lot of things there I mean wherever you
are on the planet you use your natural
resources and in the Amazon there's not
a whole lot of stone what stone is there
is deep deep deep so a lot of their
things were built out of dirt and trees
and feathers and textiles but is it
possible that all that land that's not
covered by trees is actually hiding
stone for example some architecture some
things are just very difficult to find
for
archaeologists I think at the base of
the Andes where the Amazon connects to
the Andes there's a lot of potential
there cuz that's where the stone
actually starts poking up when you get
down into the Basin stone is meters and
meters under the ground except for a a
stray Cliff here and there where the
River Run dug deep and even then only in
the dry season cuz that River Rises like
over a 100 feet every year that's one of
the things having visited that area uh
just interacting with waterfalls and
seeing the water I was uh humbled by the
power of water to shape Landscapes and
probably erase history in the context
that we're talking about of
civilizations is water can just make
everything disappear over a period of
centuries and Millennia and so if there
something existed a very long time ago
thousands of years ago it it's it's very
possible it was just eaten up by
Nature absolutely in fact in my opinion
that's almost a certainty in a lot of
places yeah uh you know the Grand Canyon
was dug by water there's this wimpy
Little River in it right now and you
can't possibly imagine that it dug that
but it did the power of nature and
geology is really kind of magical and
when it comes to you know ancient
civilizations that could be from a long
time ago there's probably a lot that are
just under the ocean and just the wave
action have destroyed them and what they
haven't destroyed buried
deep under the ocean so you think
Atlantis ever
existed I don't think that Atlantis
existed I do think it was one of Plato's
many parables talking about you know
putting it in an interesting story as a
teaching device in his school if one did
exist or a shadow of it my money would
be on Acer aceri is what's left of a big
city that was on the island of Santorini
and when their volcano blew up it blew
up most of the city and shot chunks of
it so fast that 70 Mi away in cre there
are chunks of Santorini in their Cliff
so it blasted what was ever there but
what's left on the side of the crater
aceri is strangely Advanced for its age
and so if there's anything that's a
model for Atlantis as Plato explained it
it's at criteria
so acary the ancient Greek city so it
says the settlement was destroyed in the
thein eruption sometime in the 16th
century BCE and buried in volcanic ash
which preserved the remains of the
Fresco and many objects in artworks so
we don't know how advanced That
civilization was no but we can walk
around the ruins and see that it's got
streets it's got Plumbing it's got
little sconces for uh for torches h
night it was a vibrant City with uh with
a lot of especially in terms of
Hydraulic Engineering it's it's very
Advanced for being 3,500 years old so if
you check out here's an image of the uh
excavation sh what a project it's an
amazing place and you can tell that it's
just part of it because it it's pretty
close to where the crater began so the
city itself was probably much larger so
in this case the a lot of evidence but
like we said there could be there could
be civilizations that there is no there
is very little evidence of because of
the natural environment that destroys
all the evidence right and I think Acer
is actually a great example of that
because here we have the side that did
preserve that looks amazing but we know
there was more of the city that was
completely obliterated it was shot
chunks of that City are probably in the
walls of cre 70 Mi away and uh you know
Plato says that it it sunk it was on an
island and it sunk well that's exactly
what happened to aceri you think this is
what Plato was referring to if it does
exist at least the model of it I think
this is probably what he was talking
about and there could be other
civilizations of which Plato has never
written right that we have no record of
and um it's humbling to think that
entire
civilizations with all the dreams the
hope the technological innovation the
the wars the conflicts the the political
tensions all of that uh the social
interactions the hierarchies all that
the art can be just destroyed like that
and forgotten completely lost to ancient
history I reflect upon that often as an
archaeologist I think about the this
great country that I live in and love
and all the things we've achieved but
you know we're we're a baby historically
speaking we've been around 200 years
heck a lot of the Cities I study in uh
Central and South America they had a run
of you know 800 a th000 years and now
they're ruins but we're we're barely
getting started in terms of historical
civilizations so humans Homo sapiens
evolved uh but they didn't start
civilizations right away there's a long
period of time when they did not form
these complex societies so how did we
let's say 300,000 years ago in Africa
actually go from there to creating
civilizations I think that a lot
of human uh Evolution had to do with uh
the the pressures that their environment
put upon them and you know a lot of
things start changing right around
12,000 years ago and that's when you
know our last ice age really ended I
think there was a whole lot of things
that just pressured them into especially
finding new ways of subsistence here in
the Americas a huge thing that happened
was all the meapa went away when the
climate changed enough the the mammoths
died out and the Bison died out and
there was just uh they had to come up
with different ways of doing things we
were hunters and gatherers and we had
things we got from hunting and we got
things we got from Gathering and in the
Americas when the things that they were
using to hunting went away and they had
to make do with rabbits they you know
the the Gathering started to be a much
more important thing and I think that
led to figuring out hey we could
actually grow certain things and Gardens
turned into crops turned into intensive
crops and then people were allowed to
gather in bigger groups and survive in a
single area they didn't have to roam
around anymore and that's where we get
uh the first sent
communities which means they they stayed
in the same place all year long for the
vast majority of human existence we've
been nomadic and we've done these kind
of wider or tighter nomatic circles
depending on the geographic region where
they'd know okay you know in the
mountains we in the we'll be in the
summer in the mountains CU there's
berries and things and then in the
winter we'll be down here and we'll hunt
but they'd move so once humans figure
out how to stay in a place I think there
that's the initial trigger to what would
become civilization what do you think is
uh there's a lot of questions I want to
ask here what what do you think is the
motivation for societies is it the the
character or the stick so you said like
is it like when resources run out when
the old way of life is no longer feeding
everybody then you have to figure stuff
out or is it more the carrot of like
there's always this kind of human spirit
that wants to explore that wants to uh
maybe impress the rest of the village or
something like this with the the new
discovery they made and venturing out
and coming out with with different ideas
or of technological innovation let's
call it well you know I I have an
Explorer's heart so I'm kind of uh you
know bi I'm biased right you know I I do
think that that we have an inate desire
to see what's on the horizon yeah and to
impress other people with our
achievements things like that that I
we're we're social beings um that's that
that's really the edge that humans have
is our ability to work together so I I
think that it's much more the carrot
than the stick when things get ugly the
stick comes out but usually the carrot
does the job the really interesting
story is how the first people came to
the
Americas I mean to me that's pretty
gangster to go from Asia all the way
potentially during the Ice Age or maybe
at the end of the ice age or during that
whole period not knowing what the world
looks like going into the unknown can
you talk to that process how did the
first people come to the Americas well
first off I agree with you that was
pretty gangster I mean that's that's
that's a hard place to live I I listened
to some of your podcast is that guy uh
Jordan Jonas he cut the mustard but I I
wouldn't have made it Crossing there
well there you go like the fact that
those guys exist that somebody like
Jordan Jonas exist people that uh
survive and thrive in these harsh
conditions that that's an indication
that it's possible but yeah so when when
do you think and how did the first
people
come the traditional theories are still
somewhat valid or at least you know on
the table that when that land bridge
occurred that nomadic Hunters just
followed the game like they always had
and the game went across there cuz there
was no barrier and they followed them
across the thing that has changed is how
early that happened DNA has been a total
GameChanger for archaeology you know we
we get all these uh evolutionary tracks
that we could never see before when I
was a young archaeologist I had I would
have never dreamed we'd have the
information we have now and that
information a lot of it's coming out of
uh Texas A&M we see the traditional like
12,500 years ago that there was a
migration but now we're seeing one
that's almost certainly happening closer
to 30,000 years ago and
now the thing that seems like Madness
but might be true is that it could have
been as early as 60 a lot of the DNA
things are suggesting that the very
first migration could have come across
as early as 60 and when I was a younger
archaeologist it was heresy to go beyond
this
12,500 you were a wacko if you said that
but now it's really very clear that they
came over at least by 30,000 and the
Bridge opened and closed and opened and
closed that's during the Ice Age
right I mean that's crazy right that's
that is crazy yeah I mean you know they
didn't roll in and immediately make New
York but there were people and there
were definitely not people here before
that which is fascinating the uh the
when when the when the bridge
closed DNA mutated and so we have
specific kinds of Hao groups that are
here in the Americas that don't exist
otherwise and that same Hao group game
has been showing us more and more that
people came across Siberia that it's not
Africa it's not Western Europe those are
still you know they've become kind of
Fringe theories but they're not totally
eradicated I have
DNA is a developing science as well and
I think we all need to keep that in mind
that it's not like they just cracked the
code and now we know all the answers and
sometimes like in any science a
breakthrough puts us two two steps
backwards not forwards so I think you
know we don't need to have too much
faith in the models that are now being
created through DNA but they are
pointing in the direction of every body
came across from Siberia that all Native
American people are of Asiatic descent
do you think it was a gradual process if
it's like 30 to 60,000 years ago was it
just gradual movement of these nomatic
tribes as they follow the animals or was
it
like one explorer that pushed the the
tribe to just go go go go and go across
maybe across a 100 years travel all the
way uh across maybe into North America
into North North America where Canada is
now and then sort of like big leaps in
movement versus gradual
movement I think it was big leaps and
now this is just you know uh mostly
guess I'll I'll admit but I think that
it much in the way that a lot of our
evolutionary models talk about
punctuated equilibrium that there are
big moments of change and then it
settles out into a more uh slow and
steady pattern and then something big
will happen again I do think that uh the
early people went as far as they could
go and there were certain colonies that
just got isolated for thousands of years
one of the fascinating things that DNA
is showing us which actually blood types
were showing us way before that is that
the oldest people people in the Americas
are in South America the ones that are
uh that got separated early and didn't
mix their DNA like the people in the
Amazon most of those guys have uh O
blood type and their Hao Group D which
is the oldest one that entered the the
us and what are they doing down there if
uh I do believe they came across the
bearing straight I don't think it's very
we have no no real evidence to say they
they came in Mass
across uh Oceania so they made it
probably by boat along the coast all the
way to South America so there's some
kind of cultural engine that drove them
to explore so if you had to bet all your
money it happened like tens of thousands
of years ago but in a very rapid Pace
there's these explorers they went all
the way to South America and there
established their kind of more stable
existence and from there South America
meso America North America was kind of
gradually expanded into that area I
think the next waves came down and did
North America and Central America and
the very first wave made it all the way
down to South America and got isolated
there and then mixed in with the next
groups that came that's fascinating kind
of like there's a there's an interesting
correlate in uh uh in Europe where today
everybody feels like uh Celtic people
are from Ireland but actually Celtic
people started in Eastern Europe and it
was the entire area and when Rome kind
of swept everything and and Rome was now
the the ruler of the day it was only
that far edge of the Celtic World
Ireland that they were like ah we're
we're not not going to mess with those
guys on that island we'll leave them be
so now it looks like that's the heart of
Celtic tradition but actually it's The
Fringe so if it if it is 60,000 years
ago these are really early humans yeah
and there were consistent things that
have been coming out for decades about
uh very old carbon 14 dates in the
Amazon and in the Andes area that
everybody just dismissed is no you
didn't get it date of 40,000 years but I
think we're going to come back around to
start readdressing some of these based
on new evidence at hand and that's the
interesting thing is you know the early
humans spread throughout the world and
then like you said perhaps have gotten
isolated and then civilizations sprung
from there and they all have similar
elements even though they were
isolated that's really interesting
that's really interesting that there's
multiple cradles of civilization
just one like one good idea that those
ideas naturally come up those structures
naturally come
up and I I wonder whether you know the
similarities that all those cradles have
it could be uh you know a shared much
deeper past that they all have or it
could be a more kind of Star Trek thing
where uh you know Captain Kirk was
always talking about the uh the the
theory of parallel human development
that humans Across the Universe go
through certain stages of development
and that that could be the answer to it
which which one do you lean on which
which one do you lean towards I think
it's a case by casee thing well I think
if we look globally I'd lean much more
towards the human parallel development
but if I look just to the Americas and
we have a shorter time period where you
know the the things that become major
civilizations now now I'll say you know
up to 30,000 years ago which is still a
blip in the time of of
humans um I think that there were shared
things that those people came over with
from Asia and that as they got separated
that they had core values that then
turned into things like religion and uh
cultural Customs that we can see I I'm a
big proponent that there are uh
commonalities in all the cultures of the
Americas that lead back to and point to
a a single distant origin you've spoken
about the Lost cradle of civilization
South
America so uh South America is not often
talked about as one of the cradles of
civilization South America mes America
can you explain well we have very early
stuff in South America you're right I
mean you know especially as uh uh as an
American our country's so big and you
know the we are so far removed from
these places we don't even think about
it but more and more we're seeing things
that that predate the earliest stuff
that we like to talk about like Egypt
and
Mesopotamia um there are things it's all
on the Peruvian coast that we have these
cradles of civilization someday we might
start talking about the Amazon more and
more but right now what we've got are
things that date back into the 3000s
BCE along the coast of Peru and there
are big stone-built pyramids and
temples and they're they're amazingly
isolated even now that we've found them
uh some of them like Coral is one of the
most famous ones just north of Lima
we've known about it for a couple
decades now how old it is but every time
I visit there it's like I've visited the
moon there's absolutely nobody there not
for Miles I it's uh amazing how such an
such a discovery was made and yet still
nobody goes to see it it's not easy to
get to so you think there's a bunch of
locations like that some may not have
been discovered in the Peru area oh
there are so many Peru has tons that
desert gets really ugly quick and it
buries things completely there are so
many pyramids out there that are still
completely
untouched you know when people hear the
name pyramids they think of Egypt
immediately but Egypt has got about 140
pyramids and we have pretty much found
them all Peru has
thousands thousands of pyramids and now
they weren't built of uh a lot not all
of them were built of stone some of them
were Adobe bricks which have weathered
terribly so now they don't look they're
they're not exciting places to visit
today
you know what's funny too you you know
we started off talking about you know
whether I think there's A Lost
Civilization out there uh there are
definitely things that
are still to be discovered but there are
some things that were discovered a
hundred years ago and archaeologists or
back then they they called themselves
antiquarians just kind of passed over
Corral was one of these sites because
the the coast of Peru has some of those
pyramids that were made by the moch are
full of of gold and beautiful
Ceramics and you know things that you
can sell for big money but Corral was
found a long time ago but the
archaeologist was like ah no gold no
Ceramics forget about it this place is
no good we can't sell anything here and
then about the 1970s or 80s somebody
said hey no Ceramics is that older than
the invention of ceramics we better
go take another look at that place so
what's the dating on Corral Coral I
think starts at about 3200 BCE and it
lasts as a major civilization with a lot
of other cities around it uh until about
1,800
BC so what's the story behind like
looking at some of these images what's
the story about constructions like that
what was the idea that thing isn't that
amazing yeah oh that gosh I mean it
should be some sort of you know I'll be
a flaky archaeologist like you know this
is a this is a place where where rituals
took place that's so many things we say
are so just painfully vague and that's
about you know what we got and a place
like this I know the one we're looking
at here I've been here a couple of times
in the pyramid behind it the rubble's
built in a way where the building won't
Rock apart this is a very uh earthquake
prone place but the building haven't
fallen because they make these uh net
baskets of rocks inside that all kind of
Wiggle around and don't allow the
building to fall down and inside these
we've also found a couple of things that
were uh babies that were human babies
that were buried in there and I don't
think there's a lot of people that see
that and go oh look at that they were
sacrificing babies these
monsters I think a lot of the things
that are interpreted as baby sacrifices
Coral's evidence being one of them I
think it's more about the the tragic
nature of infant mortality in the past
it was a lot more common there were
cultures that didn't even really
properly name their kid until they got
to five because chances were they were
going to die and so I think a lot of
these babies that we find in these
ceremonial contexts that are interpreted
as sacrifices I think they're putting
them in special places because they They
Mourn the death of their kids and it
just happened a lot more frequently
then one of the things you said that
really surprised me is that pyramids
were built in
Peru possibly hundreds of years before
they were built in Egypt is that true
absolutely absolutely in fact there's
crazy there's one that's now
pushing uh 6,000
BCE like that's thousands of years
before the stuff in Egypt and that one's
called Waka Prieta and it was not a it
was not an Egyptian pyramid it was but
it was a pyramid and it was thousands of
years
before what do you think is the
motivation to build a pyramid the fact
that it can uh withstand the elements uh
structurally that kind of thing is is it
uh yeah why why do humans build pyramids
and why do they build it
in all kinds of different locations in
the world well you know my my rude
answer is is is is pretty boring really
and a lot of people ask me why are there
pyramids all over the planet how is that
is that a coincidence I mean who yeah I
think that uh when people wanted to
build a big
building without rebar or cement you end
up building something with a fat base
that goes up to a skinny top and that
turns into a pyramid
uh you know any kid who's playing with
blocks on the floor builds a couple
towers and his brother knocks him down
and if he wants one that's going to stay
and be tall he ends up making something
with a fat base and a and a tiny top and
I think that uh you know building
something big and tall together is one
of those those human things like we
built that that will be here after we're
gone people remember who we were we are
all if there's any human commonality
it's it's fear of our own deaths and
that we were nothing and no one will
ever remember us I think that the first
big monuments like that were probably uh
a group of people saying we're going to
do something that people will remember
forever now that being said you remember
we were just talking about Waka Prieta
and this one that's almost 6,000 BC now
is the first one that one's a funny case
uh we just talked about all these lofty
goals but actually I'm pretty sure that
Waka peta's first pyramid was about
capping a smelly pile of trash I think
everybody piled up their trash in the
middle of town yeah and it's stunk it's
it's on the coast it's stunk like fish
and somebody said if we just bury this
thing with dirt it won't smell anymore
and then it was a big Mound where people
could get up and talk to everybody and
then said well it's squishy you know if
we if we cap it with Clay then it will
really not smell I really think that the
very first pyramids in Peru were about
trash
management talk about plating huh yeah
but then they probably saw it and they
were impressed and humbled by the sort
of the enormity of the construction and
then they're like oh we should maybe the
next guy thought maybe we should keep
building these kinds of things yeah yeah
in uh not not to jump ahead but in North
America you know where they also made
pyramids there's this interesting
evolution
where there were these piles of shells
along rivers and along the coastlines
people ate a lot of shells that was an
easy thing to collect and eat so these
piles of shells would be near
communities and they probably became
landmarks but eventually they started
burying their dead inside those too
probably again you know about stink and
about you know well we don't want the
dogs to eat them maybe we put them in
the middle of the shell pile but then
that all of of a sudden became this like
that's where my grandfather's body is
that's where great-grandfather's body is
and all of a sudden people started being
attached to place not just for the
resources but for the shared memories of
their ancestors so when the very first
pyramid was built in uh Ohio area by the
Adena people it was built out of dirt
but it's full of bodies and I think it's
an echo of a old thing where they used
to be putting bodies in Shell
Mounds so where and who were the first
civilizations in South America mzo
America well you know I think we're
still piecing that together coming back
to the first things we talked about I
think we're still missing a lot of stuff
uh especially in South America it just
keeps getting older and older part of
the reason it's hard to answer that
question is you know at what point do we
consider people a civilization or a
culture we have in the Americas this
long period of time that we call the the
the Paleo Indian time where they were
hunting megap and then when those went
away we get into this even longer period
of time called the archaic M where
they're just hunters and gatherers
sometimes somebody's coming up with a
cool different kind of Arrow Head they
go back and forth with different hunting
tools but really nothing changes for
thousands of of years and then finally
they start developing into these larger
groups which for the most part has to do
with
agriculture it used to be archaeology
that was just the end all be all
civilization starts with the invention
of agriculture and we can't have
sedentary communities until people learn
how to farm but that's been discounted
Peru was a big part of that that area of
Corral it's connected to another city on
a coast called aspero and aspero starts
about the same time but they're all
about fishing they have no farming and
coral who's up River from them is
farming but funny enough they're not
really farming food they're farming
cotton and they're making Nets and
they're trading the Nets with the people
on the coast for the
fish um so it's not as simple as it's
just agriculture anymore but it is I
think still rooted in
how can we feed more people than just
our family how can we together create a
food abundance so we're no longer know
scared about running out of food so is
it possible which is something you've
argued that Civilization started in the
Amazon in the
jungle I think so I think religion in
South America began in the Amazon I
think there were people there very old
there's actually
the earliest Pottery in all of the
Americas of all these places that we
have civilizations that grew up you know
where the oldest Pottery is the middle
of the Amazon so there's interesting
cultures developing in the Amazon so
religion you would say preceded
civilization in South America the uh the
coral and aspo that I was just talking
about it's weird what a dir of Art and
any evidence of religion we have we have
those pyramids and things that we call
temples but we don't really know what
went on in there and there's no hints of
uh religious
iconography uh ceremonies nothing like
that the first stuff that we get is
right when that culture ends about 1800
BCE this culture called uh shaveen
starts up and they their main Temple is
up in the Andes in this place of uh
least path of re least resistance
between the Amazon and the coast it's
about three days walk either way from
this this place where this Temple is
that's where we start seeing the very
first religious iconography and it's all
over the temples there are things that
are definitely from the coast but the
iconography are all Jaguars and snakes
and crocodiles and those don't come from
the coast all of those things are are
coming out of the Amazon I mean religion
is a really powerful idea religions are
one of the most powerful ideas they're
the strongest myths that tie people
together and to you it's possible that
this
powerful uh idea in South America
started in the Amazon I do I do think it
did
um and you're right I know ideas are
more powerful than weapons but
archaeology can't see them at all we can
see sometimes we can see ideas
manifesting in the things they they
create and lead to but there's an
interpretation problem are we right
about what idea created this that those
are things that archaeology just can't
get at that's one of the challenges of
archaeology and looking into ancient
history is you're trying to not just
understand what they were doing in terms
of architecture but understand what was
going on inside their mind that's really
what what I'm in it for trying to
understand these people and it's real
detective work and we know we're dealing
with a a totally flawed record we only
have what could preserve the test of
time you know if we look around this
room here if uh if 2,000 years of
weathering happened in this room what
would be left and what would we think
happened
here right right right but there's not
in this room but if you look at
thousands of rooms like it maybe you can
start to piece things together about the
different ideologies that ruled the
world uh the religions the different
ideas uh tell me about this Fang deity
one of your more controversial ideas is
that you believe that the Rel the
religions there's a thread that connects
the different civilizations the
societies of the andian
region and the religion that practice is
more monotheistic than is currently
believed in the mainstream that is
exactly what I think and it's I think
it's all about this Fang deity who
somewhere thousands of years ago crawled
his way out of the Amazon up into the
Andes and a religion took hold that
could have been kind of a combination of
ideas from the coast and the Amazon but
he is the one Creator deity in my
opinion through all of these cultures
and the people the Amazon still talk
about him there his name is Vias in some
groups but they say that his uh his
emissaries on Earth are the Jaguars and
that he is the creator deity why is the
current mainstream belief is that a lot
of the religions are not monotheistic
well there are Bonafide uh pantheons you
know Greece had one Egypt had one
Mesopotamia had one lots of the early
religions of the old world were
pantheons and I think that was part of
the problem the earliest
archaeologists walked in there with a
preconceived notion that ancient
cultures have pantheons and so they went
to the art looking for them and they
came up with things like the shark God
and the moon goddess and uh the Sun God
and all these things but when I look at
the art and I was trained by a person
right here in Austin Texas as an art
historian you follow
certain uh diagnostic traits through ART
to see the development over time and
when I look at it and use that
methodology there's a single face with
goggle eyes and fangs and claws on his
hands and feet and snakes coming off of
his head and off of his belt he's he's
got really identifiable traits he also
likes to sever people's heads off and
carry them around but he's the fanged
deity and he's there he shows up in
chven De hantar the capital of that
shaveen
culture and he keeps showing up through
every culture even thousands of miles
away throughout the next two Millennium
right up to the Inca the Ina have a
Creator deity they call
veroa but veroa is the Fang
deity he is when we do see him by the
time you get to Inca they do this kind
of like almost uh Islamic thing where
they say you you can't understand the
face of farak COA so when they do put
him in a
cosmogram they'll make him just a blob
like he's just unknowable but he's at
the very top I think we're
misunderstanding a lot of things that we
used to say were deities as just
supernatural
beings if we flip the mirror on
Christianity and take a look at it which
of course Christianity monotheistic
right it would be heresy to say
otherwise but who are all these other
characters who are all these angels and
demons and you know Jesus Christ and I
mean I don't even know who the holy
spirit is but he's some sort of
Supernatural being but it's that
monotheistic system has lots of things
that have Supernatural powers that are
not God that's where I think the Crux of
us
misunderstanding ancient andian artart
is so what what is the process of
analyzing art through time to try to
figure out what the important entities
are for the culture you just see what
shows up over and over and over and
over well certainly without the uh
Advent of
writing uh depictions in art have all
sorts of meanings encoded in them and
there are certain you know what we call
diagnostic elements
like we can we can pull apart the same
sort of thing in uh like in the Greek
pantheon you know you know by their
dress and what they're holding what the
different gods are you can tell Hades
from from Zeus by the different things
they're holding you know lightning bolts
or Trident or whatever it is so they all
have these
diagnostic elements to them so that's
how art history goes about analyzing art
over time once once we can put it in a
chronological sequence then we can say
okay here's here's a deity here in
shaveen culture Now we move forward 500
years now we're in moch and nazka
culture you know who were who where are
the deities here and what I see is that
same guy with not just one or two traits
but a whole package of them that shows
up again and again and again for
thousands of years in each one of these
cultures he's got circular eyes he's got
a fanged mouth he's got claws on his
hands and feet he's a he's a humanoid
but he also has uh snakes coming off of
his head like hair and snakes coming off
of his belt and then not so much in
shaveen but as it goes forward he starts
carting
around uh severed heads human severed
heads so they're like in the old
literature uh the moch will call him the
decapitator
deity but then they have these other
like oh here's the crab deity and here's
the fox deity but if you look at them
like the crab deity is just that guy's
face coming off of a crab and the fox
deity is that guy's face coming off of a
fox so I think in on that particular
instance I explain it similar to what
Zeus did you know how Zeus was able to
like you know turn into whatever animal
he wanted to get with the woman he
wanted and he showed up in all sorts of
forms but he was always Zeus I think
that the uh the Fang deity manifests
himself through people and animals
throughout the art and that there are
missing stories of Mythology that we
don't have anymore and across hundreds
of years thousands of years from shaveen
to moja to Inca as you're saying right
wari has them too Tia wanako that's that
that famous place Puma kou he's all over
there I wonder how those ideas spread in
morph of this Fang
deity I think people walked and przed
and places like shevine there's a later
one in Inca times called uh Patak kamak
that are pilgrimage places where people
come in to be healed if they're sick but
also just to pay homage to the powers
that be so uh shaveen was a place where
people from the Amazon and people from
the coast were all coming together in
fact we saw it in the archaeology there
there's these interesting labyrinths
under the pyramids with the Fang de all
over them that have like one Labyrinth
they'll have all Pottery the next
Labyrinth will have a bunch of animal
bones the next one will have a bunch of
things made out of stone so people are
showing up and giving this tribute and
they're learning and then they're going
back to their community so I think it
dispers firsted from certain pilgrimage
spots and became just like pilgrimage
spots do somebody goes back and they
build a temple to the Fang deity do we
know much about the relationship they
had with the Fang deity and like their
conception of the powers of the Fang
deity is it were they afraid of the Fang
Dei is and all knowing god is it uh
something that brings Joy and harvest or
is it something that you're supposed to
be afraid of and sacrifice animals and
humans to to keep it keep a bay I think
he had two sides of the coin like a lot
of the the Hindu gods are you know one
aspect is terrible the other aspect is
lovely um I think he had that same sorts
of qualities cuz we do see him as a
fierce Warrior taking people's heads off
and he is a Jaguar which in and of
itself implies a certain power and
ferocity but but then there are other
funny things about him like he is
definitely involved in a lot of healing
ceremonies and a lot of those healing
ceremonies are involved with uh sex acts
when it comes to the moch there's this
whole group of sexual Pottery where
priests are having sex with women or
men um and some of them show their faces
transforming into that Fang deity like
he is acting through them MH but the the
thing that most cracks me up that shows
his softer side is the Fang deity has a
little puppy he has a puppy that's like
just dancing around his feet and like
jumping up on him in various scenes they
see him again and again sometimes he's
in these these healing sex scenes in
fact I tracked that puppy from other
contexts to these sex scenes where the
uh where a priest was having sex with
somebody in a house Fang deity and
there's a puppy just scratching at the
door like hey you forgot me and then
finally one day I found one with the
puppy having sex with the woman instead
of the Fang deity I was like oh he
really is very involved in this what is
this weird puppy so he's yeah he likes
to take heads off but he also has a
puppy he adors this actually this is
awesomely makes sense now cuz I I saw
the opening of a paper you wrote 30
years ago on Shamanism and the moocha
civilization it reads the moocha of the
major focus of this paper sex puppies
and head hunting will be shown to be
related to ancient mocha
Shamanism uh so now I understand I was
like well the puppies puppies yeah it's
true uh and the head hunting that's the
decapitator and I've added rock and roll
to that list since actually which as
rock and roll or Know music is also a
big part of it they they oh interesting
they they call Spirits down there's this
whole spirit world there's the
ancestors and the the people that drink
San Pedro cactus juice kind of they
don't talk about the Fang deity anymore
I think Christianity in 500 years has
somewhat put him in the back you know it
was unpopular to have a pagan deity so
they don't talk about him much anymore
though he's still around they're in like
around troo they call him I
ipek but
um music play in the Amazon they play
flutes sometimes A Chorus of women sing
and that's supposed to bring the spirits
down into the ceremony there's a spirit
that's hurting the person that's sick
and then the the priest or the shaman or
the corander whatever you want to call
him has his own posi
of spirits that are going to help him
figure out what's going on so when the
music
starts that's bringing those Spirits in
and people don't see them unless they've
imbibed the San Pedro cactus juice which
is is this
hallucinogen which is in the Amazon side
it was iasa on the on the coast it was
San Pedro cactus MH but that's what
allows you to actually see that other
world yeah I I went to the Amazon
recently did iosa very high dose of it
bold
moo um when in
Rome well how far back does that go oh I
I think longer than anybody can remember
but I mean it's a natural plant that's
been there forever I think that it's
thousands and thousands of years that's
another thing uh shavin de juara was
talking about where I think the things
came the religion came from the
Amazon there's this wall on the back
side that faces the Amazon side so if
you're entering the city from the Amazon
path you see this wall first and it's a
bunch of faces that some of them are
human some of them are total Jaguar are
and some of them are
transforming in between but there's a
group of them that are Midway through
transformation and they show their
nostrils leaking out this snot that's
coming like down their face San Pedro
doesn't do that to you but aasa does
aasa traditionally theyd take a blow gun
and just shoot it up your nose or up
your ass but it would a lot of times up
your nose and when it shoots up your
nose the first thing that happens is
just this gush of snot comes out of you
and there are
Stone uh depictions of people
uncontrollably snotting on the back side
of this temple from know 3,000 years ago
so that you think could have been a big
component of the development of religion
and Shamanism I think that
hallucinogens opened the mind then like
they open the mind now do you think that
you know the Stone ape Theory uh do you
think that actually could have been an
actual Catalyst for the formation of uh
civilization in the Americas yes I do
though you know hallucinogens are not
part of every uh ancient tradition in
the world in fact strangely the majority
of plants that that are actually
psychotropic not just mood altering are
from here in the
Americas there there are very few uh
drugs that will make you hallucinate
outside of the Americas of course now
they're Global and you know they they
can be grown all over the place but
originally speaking very very few were
outside of the Americas so they were
part of the experience here in a way
that they just couldn't be in other
places I wonder to what degree they were
just part of a ritual and the creative
force behind sort of art versus like
literal
the method by which you come up with
ideas that Define a civilization it's
like the degree to which they had a role
in the formation of civilizations it's
kind of fun to think about psychedelics
being like a critical role in the
formation of civilizations I think in
terms of South America they probably
really were um in North America where
we're in a more Northern climb here and
there are less of them not so much at
least in terms of psychedelics things
like uh know tobacco was always a big
part of it but a lot of the you know
there's there's more than one way to
meet to reach a hallucinatory state the
hard way is
starvation uh sleep deprivation and for
the the Maya for example would go sleep
deprivation starvation and then they'd
cut themselves very badly and that loss
of blood We Believe triggered
hallucinations and
nothing to do with
drugs I much prefer the drugs R it's the
it's the result not the uh the tools
aren't the thing that creates Insight
it's the the result so that getting to
you know it's hallucinogens are
poisoning us they're killing us that's
you know it's a it's a near-death State
and people of the Americas believed
sleeping was entering that other world
uh death you entered this other other
world and that when you took this Mighty
dose of poison it was helping you enter
that other world for a period of time
yeah as Tom Wade said in that one song I
like my town with a little Drop of
Poison so maybe that poison is a good uh
Catalyst for invention so who
were the early first sort of mother
cultures mother civilizations in South
America and like what what is if we look
Chron
logically is there a label we can put on
the first peoples that
emerged that picture is evolving I mean
forever it was just the shaveen people
that we've been talking about the ones
with all the first depictions of
religious art were the mother culture
and they certainly did transmit a lot of
stuff but then all of a sudden we find
uh Coral the next one that we've barely
even begun looking at but it's probably
older than Coral is saen culture I was
just poking around there last year and
just just from the bus on the highway I
could see like that's a pyramid out
there what oh there's another one and I
know how old the stuff we have studied
there is it's again 3,000 BC we're just
barely beginning to understand them
Coral frustrates me to no end the lack
of art there that's we've got you know
stones and bones and not even Ceramics
to go on and they didn't have the
courtesy to leave me a bunch of art I
can interpret so I don't know what those
people believed right so one of the ways
to understand what people believe is
looking at the art the stories told
through the art and then hopefully uh
deciphering if they were doing any kind
of writing that's our most fruitful
place to try to get at this elusive
ideas yeah and it sucks when they don't
have art if we just go back to the
Amazon you've mentioned that it's Poss
ible that there's a law civilization
that existed in the Amazon so it's
carried a lot of names law city of Z or
elderado do you think it's possible it
existed well city of Z and El Dorado are
in pretty different places the one El
Dorado the the ideas of where it is kind
of center around towards Colombia okay
and city of Z is named after a region of
Brazil called the shingu mhm and so
those those are
uh a an America worth of distance apart
you know the entire people don't really
think about it on the map but the entire
United States would fit inside the
Amazon that's how big that place is yeah
and these two are on either end but both
of them have evidence of civilizations
these big you know it's it's it's
lowland and it floods all the time so
what they did is they'd make these big
mounds and then they'd make huge C
causeways between Mounds so they could
walk through their cities while they
were seasonally inundated and a bunch of
that stuff has been found in the shingu
area like huge areas that would support
tens of thousands of people again you
know it's not stone-built
and it's been under the forest forever
so it's very torn up but it's there now
you know Brazil is big on uh cattle
farming more than ever now and a a thing
that I think is completed now was Brazil
and Bolivia partnered together and built
a highway all the way
across and opened up a whole bunch more
land which has found more of these what
we call like uh geometric Earthworks so
there's more and more evidence of these
civilizations it's not a it's not it
could be there it's there for sure by
the way the people who are trying to
protect the rainforest really hate the
highway one of the things I learned is
if you build a
Road uh loggers will come yep and they
will start cutting stuff down now from
an archaeology perspective if you cut
down trees you get to discover things
but from a sort of protective very
precious rainforest perspective it's
obviously the opposite way but it is
interesting I've seen where loggers cut
through the forest and then they uh and
when they leave the forest heals itself
very quickly so quickly and you know you
just think that across
decades you expand that to
centuries and it's like you could see
how a civilization can be completely
swallowed up by the
rainforest and it happened for sure in
the Amazon yeah you know there one of
the ways that we're trying to push the
frontier of where people were in the
Amazon cuz yes the uh the trees and just
the biomass
eaten so much evidence but they're
finding more and more of these places
that they call uh Terra Preta which is
Black Earth and they're huge swaths of
it so uh I guess the anthropology term
is anthropogenic
Landscapes and what they're saying is
that that really dark Earth couldn't
have just got that way through natural
Forest processes that sometime in the
distant past that for Forest wasn't
there and there was Major farming and
human activity to the point where they
totally turned the soil Black and it's
much more
enriched and uh when I when I took a
trip into the Amazon I took I went from
manous up the river the Black River a
couple of days and went and met some
different communities and I asked them
about this black Earth and they were
like yeah that's why we're here
sometimes we move our village but when
we move we look for the Tera pretta and
that's where we're going to put our
village because that's a place that all
of our Gardens work the other places
they don't one of the things you talked
about literally just asked you have to
ask the right question and uh the
stories all the all the secrets are
carried by the people and they will tell
you yeah there's so many of them you
know they a thing that excites the world
about archology right now is gockley Tee
and this you know 10,000 now Karan Tey
is 11,000 the whole area is called the
tosser we only found it a couple of
decades ago but it was just you know a
archaeologist rowing through the area
and ask his sheep H her hey you know you
guys know where anything ancient is oh
yeah let me let me show you this and
then all of a sudden We've Got A Lost
Civilization and the and the Shepherds
always knew where it was just nobody
asked him so speaking of go back tape uh
what do you think about the work of
Graham Hancock who also believes that uh
There's A Lost Civilization in the
Amazon well uh I've met Graham and
personally I like him he's a nice guy
got a nice sense of humor and I think
he's
smart um and and I also think he is a
very good researcher he and I are
working on the same set of facts the
differences are interpretations I do not
believe Graham's uh idea that a single
now lost ancient civilization seated the
rest of them I just don't see that on a
number of levels artifact WISE
Technology wise art historical
analysis so I think his research is
great um I think that he's he's very
well read in fact better read than a lot
of my colleagues but uh his conclusions
I disagree with and he and I have talked
about this and uh had a very civil and
normal conversation about it and agreed
to disag agree without spitting any
Venom at any point in the conversation
that would be a fun uh argument to be a
flying the wall for uh so he he believes
he's proposed it's possible that the
Amazon jungle is um sort of a man-made
Garden so it was planted there by
Advanced ancient civilization is there
any degree to which that could be
possible frankly I agree with him I mean
it's just like what I was just talking
about that the it's the conclusion part
that we differ from sure but the facts
that he's basing that on are that Tera
pretta are the huge geometric Earthworks
are the ever increasing evidence of them
they are now from you know the bottom of
Bolivia to uh Guyana they're everywhere
every time we open up the jungle we find
these big works so yes there was a vast
civilization that was there how advanced
they were
is uh is a question and also you know a
perspective thing
Graham really focuses in on what we
don't know and what could be what's the
just to educate me what's what's the key
idea that he's proposing that you
disagree with is it it was the level of
advancement the civilization was or how
large and centralized it was uh my main
point of disagreement is that his and
his ideas evolve like everybody's you
know no no scientist or researcher in
anything has an idea at the beginning of
their career and holds it till the day
they die his ideas are evolving but his
ideas remain a core of them are that
there was a very Advanced single ancient
civilization that was utterly destroyed
by climactic conditions and uh the
younger drier uh dest hypothesis is part
of that most recently he used to not say
that now he's into this meteor thing MH
but he believes that That civilization
was destroyed but that uh members of it
escaped this cataclysm and then spread
out all over the world to seed all of
the world
Civilizations for the next Revival
there's where I disagree with him I
think these were
independent civilizations that grew up
uh in their own ways that they were not
seated by some more advanced
civilization from the past and that they
all hold things in common because they
have this common ancestry of a you know
in his early books he suggested it the
it's Atlantis I don't think he suggests
that anymore but he still hangs on to
the single Advanced now completely lost
civilization and you know archaeology we
don't have you know we're all of our
ideas are theories very few of them are
facts and we're not you know we could
have the story wrong but one thing we're
real good at is finding stuff I mean we
find fish scales so I find it just too
big a pill to swallow that there was a
civilization that was that
technologically advanced and that large
that we can't even find a pot shirt
from
yeah and of course it is a compelling
story that there's a single civilization
from which all of this came
from because the alternative is you know
the idea that we came across the bearing
straight from Asia went all the way down
to South America and got isolated and
created all these marvelous
sophisticated civilizations and ideas
including religious ideas that look
similar to other you know everybody has
a flood myth right right so like there's
a lot of similarities everybody building
pyramids
yeah uh but there could be a lot of
other explanations and for uh even if
it's a simple compelling explanation
there has to be evidence for it right
and what would that evidence that's the
bottom line I mean everything's theories
were and and as responsible scientists
we're trying to disprove our theories we
are not supposed to be trying to prove
our theories that's that's one more foot
out of the science box that archaeology
often steps we're we're supposed to be
disproving what we think is happening
not proving it yeah you don't want to
lean into the
mystery too much I mean most of it's
such a it's such a weird discipline
because you're operating in a it's like
really in a dark room you're feeling
around a dark room so it's mostly
mystery I would say a lot of Sciences op
great in a mostly well lit room it's
like a dark
corner and you're kind of uh figuring
out a way to light it but in yeah in
archaeology it's most of it is a mystery
right yes it's job security I like that
part you know but I I do also try to
always remind myself that every Paradigm
shifting idea that humans has have ever
had began as heresy and lunacy you know
that guy was crazy up to the second he
was brilliant and so we got to keep our
minds open to the things that sound
outlandish because one of them
eventually is going to lead us to the
big paradigm shift and if we you know if
we're busy burning books of ideas that
we don't like that's where we close our
minds to the possibility of advancing
things I really love that and I really
appreciate that you're saying that um
one of the fascinating things about
just the Amazon to me is that there's
still a large number of uncontacted
tribes as to rewind back into ancient
history you can imagine all of these
tribes that existed in the Amazon that
were uh isolated very sort of distinct
from each other can you speak to this
your understanding of these uh tribes
and their history that are still here
today well a a lot of them are these you
know by uncontacted we mean we don't
know anything about these guys we know
roughly where they are but places like
Ecuador have very responsible policies
where no one's allowed to go contact
them so we have a dir of information if
they walk out of the Jungle and talk to
us that's one thing but we don't go out
there looking for them but they do seem
you know Frozen in time and I don't
think any of us have a good estimation
of how long they've been like that but
you know we were saying earlier that you
you know humans change based on
pressures of their environment you know
it's a mother necessity is often times
how we invent things or why we change
it's
pressure and one thing the Amazon is
once you you know figure out how not to
die in it it's a paradise of food food's
fallen from the sky all the time there
and if once you learn to adapt to that
environment you've got very little need
there's no pressure to make anything
else things are working so for the
modern humans that come across these
uncontacted tribes one of the things
they document and notice is the
propensity of these tribes for violence
so they get very aggressive in in
attacking whoever they come across and
not just foreigners they attack each
other the yanam mama are famous for just
having NeverEnding feuds with each other
what do you think is the philosophy
behind that
I don't you know I I'm a relatively
peaceful person but I've got you know
I've got the monster in me like
everybody
does and uh I I think that these you
know it's
cultural norms that become
institutionalized for the yanam Mamo
they really part of the P the right of
passage to be a man is to go kill or
maim somebody from an outer Village and
they go in there they they often time
times uh the the way they don't let uh
inbreeding set in and ruin everybody not
that they think of it scientifically but
they they typically go and steal women
from far off communities and that starts
a big fight uh another thing that starts
fights that when nobody even fought is
illness illness in the Amazon and all of
the ancient Americas wasn't seen as a
biological thing it was a spiritual
thing so if somebody in your village
gets sick the question is asked well
what spirit is menacing him and who
called it out on him and then the rumor
starts well I bet you it was Joe over
there in that other community still
pissed off for that time when we stole
his daughter yeah and we ought to go
over there and kill Joe and then he'll
get
better and so this this uh this round of
NeverEnding violence uh like Hatfields
and McCoys had that thing and the uh the
people of uh New Guinea also do that so
it's not you know there are certain
areas uh mostly wooded areas now that I
think about it where people just hide
out and they attack each other as a
cultural uh
institution it's such a tricky thing to
do to study an uncontacted tribe without
obviously contacting them to figure out
their language their philosophy of Mind
how they communicate the hierarchy they
operate under and yeah you know there
was a fascinating story in Peru I guess
it was probably like 8 years ago or
something but there was a a ranger from
one of the biology stations who just in
the buy and buy of uh protecting his
area met one of these uncontacted tribes
and befriended someone not the whole
tribe but he made some friends who would
meet him in the woods not in their
community and he started to learn their
language over a couple
years and so he was this kind of
important guy who actually could be the
first translator to talk to these people
and one day a couple of them just came
out of the woods and just plugged him
with arrows and just killed him and then
they went back in the woods like that's
the one guy who understands what we're
saying we should kill him and move our
village so those folks really lean into
the uh as you said the monster versus
the uh the puppy you know everybody's
got it I I I think I think uh you know
we
we need to listen to our better Angels
because if we don't we we we as a human
species can easily devolve into just
using violence and against others to get
what we want we it's a it's a daily
choice we make not to be Savages which
is a fascinating thing to remember we
kind of think in civilized society we've
moved past all that but it can uh it can
be
summoned like in uh uh 1984 the two
minutes of
hate with the right
words that primal thing can be summoned
and
directed uh and lead to a lot of
Destruction and you know our our sports
are really based on taking those kinds
of urges and channeling them positive
where somebody's not dead at the end of
it yep uh
so at which
point did what we now call the Maya
civilization
arise Ah that's a that's another
complicated one another group living
mostly in a jungle that we have barely
begun to explore you know the truth is a
lot of the questions in the Amazon and
and what we're talking about now is the
paten and the mountains there those
aren't places archaeologists want to
live they're horrible I mean I've been
there I don't want to live in a tent and
eat rations I want to live in a nice
town so a lot of the places where the
answers are we still really haven't
gotten there cuz it takes a special
person to be educated enough to know
what they're looking at and tough enough
to want to be there I've done my tour
Duty I'm now in a nice little podcast
studio um but seriously the the Maya the
first hint that we see people who are
culturally mayia very close to where the
time period for that chaven culture is
about 1,800 CE there's a culture that
some call the mkaya not Maya but uh
they're on the Pacific coast uh where
Guatemala and Mexico connect it's called
the
soconusco and those are the first people
that are really going to be culturally
Maya and they're interacting with the
culture that has traditionally been seen
as Mexico's Mother culture which is the
MCH they're kind of the same thing as we
were talking about in South America
where the the Maya the original Maya are
not there's not a whole lot to indicate
that they have a
religion um but thech have this religion
they develop and they start exporting it
and you see the Maya become more and
more involved in in the religion that's
being created by The olch Who are to the
north of them in the swamps of what we
call the ismos of tantek I have a lot of
questions to ask here about just a
natural stupid confusion I have so
first uh did the Maya or the AL come
first and are they distinct groups like
how do you maintain a distinct
civilization when you're so close
together I I just finished filming a
whole thing on the OLX and their
interaction with the Maya for the Great
Courses I'm thrilled for it to come out
next Spring right um I think they
co-evolved archaeology in this regard is
the worst enemy of this so we put these
names on cultures we we talk about how
they evolve from one to another we draw
these lines where they're aren't any we
make these time periods that a culture
magically transforms into somebody with
another name where I'm pretty sure they
didn't care about any of those names but
the the Maya and the MCH are two parts
of a larger interaction sphere that's
happening in meso America a very Dynamic
time thech are really bringing the
religion part but the other areas are
bringing technology ceramic technology
uh making hematite mirrors making uh
tools out of obsidian and other uh other
Stone types so you've
gotch in the Middle where where Mexico
gets skinny and it gets swampy down
there that's called the ismos of tanek
that's where thech are then you've got
the Maya to the east of them then you
have the valley of Waka where the people
called the zapex they're rising up and
then you have the valley of Mexico which
will eventually become the Aztecs but
not for Millennia all those areas are
interacting with each other can we just
also draw some more
lines yeah sure so what is meso Amica
and what is South
America uh and what you just said to omx
and the the Maya like can we just Linger
on the geography graphy that we're
talking about here in the what is this
like a th000
BC um yeah the time period we're talking
about where the the olme are there a
1,000 BC is a great uh midpoint of it
I'd say it starts about 1800 BCE and by
500 BCE thech are
gone and a whole new wave of
civilization and population increase
happen in terms of meso America looking
at your map here I i' say about halfway
through the Chihuahua Desert up there in
the top left that's that's about the
boundary
of uh meso America there's this big
desert where almost nobody lives and
once you get North enough you get into
the ancestral pleo people of what's now
America the the four corners area
they're not
Mesoamerican they have different lives
where does Modern Mexico end modern
Mexico ends right you know you see the
name Maya there with the white line
around it that's Guatemala so Guatemala
cuts off most of Mexico from Central
America got it but meso America only
goes about halfway through
Honduras and then it's really kind of a
No Man's Land uh uh Nicaragua Costa Rica
Panama they really uh they're neither
they're not meso America they're not
South America they're more South America
because they've got some gold there
but then basically you get on the other
side of Panama and you're you're fully
in South America with two distinct
groups too you've got the guys that are
on the Andes on the west coast and then
you have the
Amazon so the the the West the Andes is
and the Amazon are very distinct So when
you say when you refer to the andian
region is that referring to the Andes
and the Amazon or just the Andes just
the Andes the the and the and the coast
that to to the Pacific there that's
that's andian civilization so did the
Maya make it to the Andes the andian
region not that archaeology can prove
but it's almost certain that they
interacted with each other number one
it's just you know it's biased to think
that these people couldn't travel as
widely as people on the other side of
the planet did but there's all sorts of
hints like uh that first Ceramics I was
talking about that the Maya made they
show up strangely
uh sophisticated technologically already
and down in in Ecuador they had them for
a thousand years before so a lot of
people myself included think that the
idea of Ceramics actually came from
South America to the Maya did the Maya
get seated by the second wave across the
bearing straight or did that initial
wave of people that came and uh
populated South America were they the
ancestors of of the Maya like how how
did the migration happen here do we
understand that we're still piecing it
together I don't think you know I'd be
lying if I told you I had the answers
but we do have evidence of Maya stature
people there are small people generally
speaking people that grow up in the
forest are smaller and people that grow
up in the open Plains or taller probably
about you know just generations of
people that hit their head on a branch
or not
uh you're joking but you know there
could be something to that I think
there's some truth to it I mean the
pygmies are small and the people on the
plains in Africa are big the North
American Indians are tall and the Maya
are small it's there is there's
definitely a pattern of smaller people
in the
forests but anyway um there's a cave in
the Yucatan called lolon cave that has
uh handprints in the cave it's somebody
who put their hand on the cave and spit
charcoal around their hand like a
negative print y we can date that
charcoal and it comes from 10,000 years
ago wow and the hands are all small it's
you know typical Old Mexico I I walked
right up to these things and could put
my hand I didn't you know mess with them
but I put my hand next to these hands
and they're all smaller than my you know
northern European hand and so either it
was a bunch of kids who were in this
cave 10,000 years ago or it was people
of Maya stature who did
it so cool that you can date the
charcoal and it's so cool that 10,000
years ago there are people leaving and
and actually we have uh one that's I
think 2,000 years older now just a
couple years ago again in Yucatan in a
cave they found a woman they named NAA
now and she's like 12,000 years old so
uh the best guess maybe that you have is
it goes across the bearing straight to
South America possibly the Amazon
develop a lot of cool ideas in the
Amazon and start drifting back up into M
America was kind of a co-evolution the
the technology of Ceramics I think got
there through an interaction with see
the interesting thing is that the Maya
didn't really have religion didn't have
as a vibrant religious set of ideas and
they borrowed it from the
I've been doing a a deep dive on this
for thisch course that I just did and it
really does seem like um these other
cultures that have Jade and hematite and
obsidian the thech had none of that
stuff they were living in a swamp and
building things out of uh dirt but they
were importing those materials from
those areas carving them into all sorts
of religious
iconography and then exporting them back
to them and still the Fang deity show up
there no the Fang deity is nowhere in uh
in Central America and meso America
that's why there there's Jaguars there's
Jaguar iconography but it's not the same
thing this this whole Jaguar Transformer
deity does not exist there they do have
a
Pantheon so the Maya the Alx are the
interesting peoples of the regions what
was their uh I'd love to ask questions
about who were they so one question I'm
curious about what was their sense when
they looked up at the stars what was
their conception of the
cosmos uh that's a question I've spent
my entire career trying to answer I I
think that they saw it as proof of the
cyclical nature of
life and certainly they saw like every
ancient group did like are those the
gods why are those things so far away
but I think that the Maya especially
looked at it in a with a much more
mathematical mind than most did and so
they watched these things move every
night and if you do that even today you
notice that all the stars move in tandem
they're just this blanket they're like
they're they're like this curtain behind
me they're the stage upon which some
very important players are dancing and
that's the moon the sun and the planets
there's five planets we can see visibly
so they started watching like why are
just those seven moving differently than
the rest and those are the things that
they keyed on mathematically the the sun
of course was also involved in the
agricultural cycle so that was important
in and of itself but the the planets we
can see them coming up with
ideas definitely doing the math and
seeing that there is a repeated cycle
and then coming up with mythology around
them like Venus for them was associated
with
war and they had very ritualized times
to go to war that had something to do
with
Venus sometimes in the classic period
Maya it was the first appearance of
Venus as the morning star that was a
good time to go to to battle with your
neighbors and when it became the post
classic with like chichin being the
capital of the Yucatan
then it looks like if you watch Venus
day after day it goes slowly up every
day and then when it hits its highest
point as morning star in the in the
morning it goes down to the Earth like
three times as fast all of a sudden it
it just shoots down and hits the Earth
and so the the people of post classic
Maya civilization saw that as the gods
shooting a spear into the Earth and that
was a good time to attack your neighbors
that was like war time when the spear is
going to hit the Earth all right so this
is fascinating they just had at the
foundation a sense that life existence
at the various time scales is cyclical
yeah that's that's the starting point
and then you just look out there and if
you're extremely precise which is
fascinating how precise they were you
can just measure the uh the
Cycles yeah and they did it really well
now of course they they are the only
ones to develop a fully elaborated
writing system in all of the Americas
the South America had the keoo but it's
so different than our writing we're
still trying to figure out what the heck
it is we know there's math there too but
they had the ability to take a lifetime
worth of measurements and hand it to the
next Generation who would then do it
more and do it more that's how they
figured out kind of the Holy Grail of
ancient astronomy how good were they
was whether they could see the
procession of the equinoxes the fact
that we're just barely wobbling and
there's a 26,000 year period where the
stars as that backdrop will spin all the
way around and come back it's 26,000
years but the Maya were able to figure
out wait it's moving one degree every 72
years and did a calculation based on uh
on on where it should be in the ancient
past and they're using constant ations
they're showing us they know by saying
like this planet's in this constellation
right now and 33,000 years ago it would
be in this
constellation it's just fascinating that
they were able to figure this out I
would love to sort of understand the
details of the scientific
Community uh if you can call it that I
think we absolutely could and uh that's
actually one of the things that I'm I'm
hoping to move the needle on in my
generation with my career is to give
these cultures the the respect they
deserve as standing toe to- Toe with the
rest of our ancient civilizations we
respect there are things that should be
called science that are not being called
science at the moment their you know
their math is incredible their their
Hydraulic Engineering is incredible
their chemistry is incredible and so
I hope to talk about these things
differently as a way to get people to
recognize the achievements in a
different way yeah I mean unquestionably
incredible scientific work in the in the
astronomy sense uh especially here can
you speak to the all the sophisticated
aspects of the Mind calendar uh that
they've developed I know you got another
five hours let's go I should uh I should
no I'm kidding I should say that you
also gave me
uh the 2024 mind calendar yeah I do this
just to you know show the world that
that calendar system is Evergreen it can
go into the future or the past for
billions of years in the system they
made just like our system is so can you
speak to the three components here as
I'm reading the
tlin the hob and the Long Count what are
these fascinating components of the
calendar it's it's neat how obsessed
they they were really math nerds they it
wasn't good enough for them to just make
one cycle to describe time they had all
these cycles that that interlocked into
each other like like cogs in a machine
though they never thought of it like
that but uh the soul keen's their oldest
one and the one that still endures today
there are millions of Maya people that
are living their lives Based On A
260-day Count no weeks no months it's
just 13 numbers combined with 20day
names for a total of 260 days and then
it goes again mhm everybody in the
highlands knows what their birthday is
in that calendar knows what it means
about their
personality and the kind of jobs that
they're supposed to do each one of those
days has their own spirit and what's
supposed to happen in those days the
Maya collectively call them the mom the
grandmother grandfather
spirits and and and they talk to each
one of those days and they pray to them
they have there's now an association of
some 8,000 people that are called Aki
that are daykeepers who are keeping the
days and they're also like Community uh
psychologists almost people come to them
and say you know my life is mixed up
what's wrong here well uh let's ask the
mom like okay well it looks like you're
not doing this or that or you know what
you're an accountant you're not supposed
to be an accountant AR you're supposed
to be a you know a midwife what are you
doing you're you're living your life
wrong you're a you're you're a ke you
need to start being a ke person they
take extremely seriously the day on
which you're born what that means like
the the spirit that embodies that day
right like I'm I'm ke I'm 13 ke and it
says my it's funny how accurate a lot of
them are mine is basically is uh I'm a
I'm an
irresponsible husband and parent but
people like me so my family still
prospers like well God that's that's
horribly that's horribly accurate I mean
it's some of it is also the chicken or
the egg if you truly believe so if you
structure Society where this calendar is
truly sacred then it kind of like you
manifest a lot of the the spirit does
manifest itself in the life of the
people that is born on that spirit's day
absolutely it's interesting and and the
and the Maya really feel this in this
system so that's the core system this
200 160 day calendar was the very first
calendar they made thousands of years
ago and it's the one that's most
important today uh why 260 Days by the
way is there a reasoning behind it uh
from most Maya agree with this today and
you know who knows what the original
Architects thousands of years ago were
thinking but it's 9 months it's the
human gestation period so if you if you
conceived on the day 1 monkey chances
are your kids coming out on or near 13
monkey and uh I think it's beautiful I
mean if if that's right that means the
Maya and the people of meso America we
all share it together um when they
thought about we need we need a count of
time that's for us they didn't look up
into the heavens they looked like into
their bodies what's the first cycle that
we actually go through as humans and
they pick this 9 months thing it's it
really is our cycle and no other culture
on the planet looked inside themselves
to create their calendar like
that uh so that's the oldest one and the
sacred one that still carries through to
today uh what's the second one of the
hob the hob is the solar calendar the
one that everybody on the planet
eventually comes up with we know it
second though because when they start
talking about it they use all the
symbols and the numbers for from the
261 they say well we need a solar one
too let's just keep counting this
another 105 days and we'll get to
365 oh interesting they kind of carry
the same got it got it got it got it and
that's useful because for all the sort
of Agriculture all those kind of reasons
right though interestingly they never
put a leap year in the hob is also
called the vague gear cuz it's just
365 which means every year they're off a
quarter of a day and eventually it
starts really adding up yeah in fact
it's even caused modern modern problems
in this calendar here I just do the
straight math from a thousand years ago
and so I place the beginning of the
solar year differently than some Maya
groups do especially the guys in the
highlands of Eastern Guatemala they
write me nasty email saying I don't know
what time the year is but their
relatives changed it in the 1950s
because their agricultural cycle was so
far off they moved it 60 days back to
make it in the spring again but it
drifts which is strange cuz it's not a
very good thing for the the agricultural
cycle it's one of these Mysteries we
still don't have an explanation for uh
so that's the hob and then what's the
Long Count the long counts they're
really mysterious cool one because it's
a linear year count of days which are
not like them it's a it's a bunch of
Cycles like ours you know our weeks are
a cycle our months are a
cycle um but it's weird in that its
estimation of the year in the in the
Long Count system is only 360 days so
it's miserably off uh a solar year and
they count in base 20 so they count like
we count in tens we're decimal they
count in b 20
vesal and so it should be know there's
ones there's 20s there's 400s there's
8,000 there's 160,000 it's up it goes
just like our tens hundreds thousands 10
thousands but it's times 20 MH so that
third so they have days months of 20
days and then they have these years that
are should be by their math 400 but it's
only 360 and that throws the whole thing
out of whack going further up then they
have a 20-year period and a 400-year
period 400 years to their calendar but
it's only by that time it's only 396
years in our period in our
Reckoning so it's it's mysterious that
it's why did they tweak it at the year
to be only 360 days that's you know that
doesn't follow any astronomy that
doesn't that's not the human cycle yeah
but they're I mean it's interesting that
they build up towards thinking about
very long periods of time like Buck tun
is 144,000 days right or uh aune is 400
of the long counts years so it's kind of
like our Millennium you know we we think
it's a big deal when we hit a millennium
or uh or over a century that's they have
a 20-year period that they do a lot of
celebrations on called it katun and then
they have the 400 baktun which is the
big one that's like their Millennium and
13 of those B
Tunes uh occurred in the creation before
us they also think that we're in that
the world has had multiple Creations
they're not alone in that there's lots
of ancient civilizations who say that
but we're technically in the fourth
creation and they're they have a
creation story called The pople vu and
the popal Vu is clear as day that the
third creation ends with the help of
these Heroes called the hero Twins and
the fourth creation begins and so on the
Maya monuments we see them doing the
math through the long count and we can
calculate it back very exactly it
happened the fourth creation started on
August 11th
3,114
BC and it says it doesn't say it's day
one it says it's the last day of the
13th fune of the third
creation which leads us to believe that
a creation is only 13 btunes long right
so and this would be the fourth creation
the calendar starts the fourth creation
but if you do the math going from
3,14 BC and count 13 Bok Tunes forward
you get to
2012 and hence the uh the very popular
notion that 2012 whenever that was
December something December 21st 2012 be
the end of the world right so can you
explain this those were very fruitful
years for me I had so many lectures
around the country that was that's like
a like Garrett Morrison Saturday Night
Live the the the the apocalypse was very
very good to
me uh I mean but that that is pretty
interesting so that's that that would be
so technically we would be in what in
the fifth no yeah technically we'd be in
the fifth though my argument was that
actually if you look through all the
Corpus of my mathematics and calendars
they never say anything like that in
fact there's a handful of dates that
tell us uh that that the fourth creation
does continue farther on that that Bak
to T place should have 20 20 Bok Tunes
in it like their counting system would
dictate not
13 and there's there's a place in uh in
pen there's a place in the Dresden Codex
and one other place I'm forgetting that
uh that all talk about time after
2012 so how does that happen it's a
conflict is there supposed to be an
overlap of the of the of the the 1 so
it's like 13 is the core of it and it's
20 long they they love the number 13
it's all over the place it's a magic
number to them my explanation which I
admit is is not very solid but uh I
think
that the magical Deeds of the hero twins
in their creation story at the end of
the third uh the third creation hit the
magical reset button
mhm and that it just restarted time
right there because of their magic but
that was not to say that the natural Bak
tune cycle should be
13 and there are certain texts that uh
that go way forward in time or way
backward in time and whenever they want
to do that there there are higher
increments than just the Bak tune above
that there's the Pik tune then there's
the cabun then there's alaat tun and it
goes on and on and these are like you
know 160,000 years huge increments of
time whenever they want to do that and
they talk about a long period of time
they start putting 13s in all of those
increments those higher increments and I
think what they're saying is uh they're
making an esoteric statement about the
NeverEnding n nature of time that's
that's what I think they're they're
telling us in those texts that time goes
on
forever magically but there they still
had a conception that it didn't go on
forever before right that there was
other civilizations that came before and
there and there this is the fourth
creation this is the fourth creation and
the gods made everybody the the first
ones were made of mud and they melted
the second ones were made of sticks but
they were jerks to the animals um the
the third ones were like us but uh but
flawed and in some other way and then
we're finally made of uh of the blood of
the Gods and corn we're made out of corn
so we're we're perfect and as the as it
explains to us the the pop Vu does we
got it right this time there there is
there there's no reason to believe that
this creation has a set
duration well one of the weird things is
that the Aztecs who we talk to a lot at
cont
act they also had the concept of
multiple Creations before us but they
were real clear to the Spanish that they
weren't all the same time element uh
some of them were in the 300s of years
some of them were in the 700s of years
but they were not the same time period
so our our mathematical logic that if
the third creation was 13 this one must
be third creation is in or also be 13
it's in direct opposition to what the
Aztecs told us about the nature of
Creations they're different time periods
what do you think there was the myth of
the previous Creations did they have
some kind
of long multigenerational memory of
Prior
civilizations it may have had some echo
in the uh the flood myths right it's the
same the same kind of major myths
carried through long periods of time
there's a lot of different opinions
about it and you know there like if they
were all 13 if we have five Creations
like the Aztec said and they were all 13
they would come up to roughly
25,000 something years which is very
close to that processional cycle so some
people are like they designed it all to
be one completion of the procession of
the
equinoxes and I mean that that I don't
believe that one but that one sure
sounds good doesn't that's that's going
to get a lot of Internet
hits and one of the things I do
obviously uh wonder about is um why the
flood myth is part of like most
societies and most religions I think
that one's pretty easy it's the end of
the Ice Age when the bathtub filled back
up huh so it's just the Ice Age back
it's Seas filling back up
and they without really understanding
what happened they just carried the that
story everybody knows that everybody's
nice Coastal Village went underwater
yeah and they had to they had to seek
Higher Ground and then just like people
like talking about the weather everybody
was talking about the weather for many
generations as the sea level was going
up and then uh that that myth carried
why do we live here Grandpa well we used
to live over there but then the water
came
and then many grandpas later is just
kind of permeates every idea it becomes
mythology but Global mythology so that
one you know there's a lot of things I
don't have a reasonable explanation for
but the uh but the flood myth is almost
certainly the the rise in sea
level so the this idea that every day
represents uh carries a Spirit uh you
know there's Modern Day
astrology you know most most people kind
of consider astrology this um maybe a
bit unscientific woo woo type of um uh
set of beliefs but do you think there's
some wisdom that astrology
carries from your scholarship of the
Maya calendar you think if we carry that
to the astrological perspective on the
world do you think there's some wisdom
there I don't know you know that I I
have a woo woo part of me mhm I I I
would like to believe that stuff but I
don't think as a scientist it makes I
cannot come up with a
biological scientific reason why that
would be true and you know when you look
at it objectively I
mean really is everybody born with the
sign Scorpio a a a moody person that's
just uh that's just objectively not true
um but it is funny how often times these
these Maya uh horoscopes for lack of a
better word do hit the mark there was
some student who surveyed like 300
people with the app I made and asked
them about their Greek sign and their
Maya sign and his conclusion for his
term paper was that the Maya one was
working way better which that's that's
fascinating at least that's that's fun
but no I'm I'm I think I'm too much of a
scientists to believe that I I just
don't have a a any foundation in science
that would allow us to believe that the
uh the month in which we were born in a
cycle sets our personality and Destiny I
agree and yet there's so much mystery
all around us that uh what I do like is
the uh inbuilt humility to that
worldview um that there's this whole
you can call it a spiritual world but a
world that we don't quite understand and
then you can wander about what is the
wisdom that that world carries and then
you can construct all kinds of systems
to try to interpret that and then there
is where the human hubris can come in
and you know uh but it's good to be
humbled by how little we know I suppose
I do love the mysteries of the world and
I I I would I would love to find an
ancient civilization but I don't I I
don't want to solve the mysteries of the
world I think they're one of the things
that make world life worth living that's
true that's
true um you mentioned the uh Maya
writing system what are some interesting
aspects of their
language that they've used and the
written language that they used well you
know one of the things that confound me
as a guy who's spent you know better
portion of my life studying it I had the
honor of being uh the student of uh
Linda Sheely right here at the
University of Texas at Austin she got
the group together who broke the Maya
Code of hieroglyphics in the 1970s so I
learned from the best and and loved
every minute of it I miss Linda can you
speak to that code actually the Hier the
code and what it takes to break it oh
boy I mean what a what a thing we we had
kind of a a Rosetta Stone we had a page
out of Diego delanda's book a priest who
was conver hting the Maya in
Yucatan asked his informants about their
writing system and what every sound
meant and he was convinced they had a
alphabet like we do so he got this Maya
guy sat down in Spanish and he said okay
you're going to write all the symbols
right here in my book write write an ah
here write a be here write a say here
and that guy just wrote all of the
sounds that the priest told him to write
they were actually syllables they were
vowel consonant combinations they
weren't an alphabet but that turned into
are Rosetta Stone of sorts the big key
is that the Maya still speak that same
language there are millions of Maya
people who are speaking a version of
Maya now there's there's where I get
confused that we've got a single writing
system that is uh intelligible we've
broken the codes so we know that it's
basically the same writing system from
the top of the Yucatan into Guatemala
and El
Salvador but we have
33 Maya languages today that are
mutually
unintelligible and we we backwards
project the language uh of what they
spoke back then that the glyphs are in
to something called chol T which is a
combination of chti and chol two of
those
languages but it doesn't work for me at
all how did if there was one language
maybe two back then how did it flower
into 33 mutually unintelligible
languages in just 500 years
during uh culture a culturation and
horrible infectious diseases that killed
90% of the population how did that
happen so we're missing something huge
here I think it's more like Chinese
where Chinese
letters uh uh writing can be
read in multiple languages and still
understood I don't know exactly the
mechanics of how that would happen but
it just seems impossible that there are
more languages not less languages in the
Maya area after the last 500 years that
they've been through so you think that
there's some kind of process of either
rapidly generating dialects or there
always has been these dialects or I
should say their distinct
languages even though there's a common
writing system
there must have been a way that multiple
languages understood the same writing
system or maybe there was something like
like Latin you know how there was a
period in Europe where like most people
were illiterate and there was this this
priesthood who all understood Latin and
they wrote in Latin yeah may maybe the
the hieroglyphs represent a kind of
Latin in the ancient Maya world but we
don't really know and there's not clear
evidence to fill in the gaps of How It's
possible to have that
right but we did realize it was actually
a Russian scholar named Yori konor roof
who broke the code the Americans and the
Europeans were absolutely sure that the
language was uh that the written
language was a dead language but Yuri
not knowing any of that not being filled
with all of those thoughts from America
and Europe went about it in the way that
he was
taught uh in his in his grad school in
Moscow and just went to the dictionaries
and he looked at yucatech language that
they're speaking today and he applied it
to the symbol system and he knew that
there were certain sounds he used
Landa's alphabet and he found there was
the his two key examples were a picture
of a dog with a symbol over it and a
picture of a turkey with a symbol over
it and the
dog uh a dog in yukatek is so he saw two
symbols and he said this one's probably
T and this one's o and then the the
turkey was CS so it would be coup ending
in t and he showed how look you know
this is sus this is T those two things
that that should be are the same symbol
and that began this process of
unraveling the s that we're still
working on today that's fascinating just
that decoding process is
fascinating like how do you even figure
that out and there's probably still is
there still are you aware of any um
written languages that haven't been
decoded yet yeah yeah there's a number
of them there's uh Easter Island script
I was just talking to uh We've
apparently made a few advances there now
it's called wrongo wrango and we only
have about maybe 25 examples of text
but we're beginning to break that
there's also the the big one is
Haren Haren for a long time we used to
say there were there were five
independent scripts on the planet and
those were Chinese CA form which is
Mesopotamian
Egyptian Maya and then Haren which is
from Northern India that's the only one
that we've never cracked and now all the
epigraphers the people that's the term
for epigraphy is uh translating these
languages they're all ganging up on
heroen and want to kick it off the list
because we can't break it it had a a big
enough symbol set but no one's been able
to crack it and now they're saying it's
just an elaborate symbol set and doesn't
reflect the the spoken word that's uh
that's a that's a hypothesis but it's
which is would would explain why it's so
difficult break but you know we could
just be faced with a quitter generation
maybe somebody will pick up the Baton
Next Generation days with their the
other one that fascinates Me is from the
Americas it's the kipo the the Inca had
the kipo this knotted string records but
it was definitely encoding more than
just math we know the math I know lots I
I can do the math keepo and figure out
what they're totaling and things yeah
there's a Keo right thereo are recording
devices fashioned from strings ially
used by a number of cultures in the
region of Indian South America a keepu
usually consist of cotton or CET fiber
strings so there's a set of strings and
they're supposed to what to be saying
something there there's one long string
that the little ones dangle off of and
each one of the the dangling strings
have sets of knots on them and the knots
some of them are mathematical keepo and
those we can just do the math we can
prove that it's math MH um they also
encoded language in there they had had
entire libraries in Cusco where Spanish
conquistadors were brought through and
the caretakers of the libraries would
just they'd say uh pull that one down
read that one to me and he'd pull it out
and just read a history of something
that happened 200 years earlier so it
was definitely writing but in the
1570s one uh one head of the church
there had all of the people that could
read them called kipu kayaks ga GED up
had them read all of their Kos and
transcribe them into Spanish books and
then had the Kos burned and those people
murdered okay well there you go and so
we can't break the code still today but
we know it was absolutely a written
language though it wasn't written it was
weaved or knotted and there's still some
Keepers available that could be uh
there's I think now we've just crossed
the 1,000 mark M so we have a thousand
Kos there's enough to break the
code um and and I think this generation
might be the one that does it it's sad
that so few are have survived yeah I
mean a thousand is good but it's but see
there's Peru has barely scratched the
surface with archaeology there's so much
out there there's there was a priest I
read about named uh Diego
dorz who was one of the early people in
Peru through converting communities and
his Chronicle is real clear that he
wanted to teach this community of 3,000
people all the Spanish prayers the
important ones for them to be converted
into Christianity and he had the the
communities kipo kayaks not Kus for each
person that told them that read they
could read them out and memorize the
prayers and if they were caught without
their keoo in town they were flogged so
he had 3,000 of the same keoo made and
handed out to this community if we find
that community and find it
Cemetery there is a Rosetta Stone you
know it is probably the case that there
is somebody in Peru and maybe a large
community that knows this language that
understands and like you just have to
show up and ask them and it's it's like
they're like oh yeah yeah they there
there are some communities that are
using them there's a couple of them that
we had high for and then it was apparent
that they were just making up they
didn't actually know how to read it they
just knew it used to be read so they
like made a bunch of stuff about what it
says and they bring it out and they act
like they can read it but then when you
ask them the details they don't know
yeah but then on a much simpler level
there's uh llama herders who keep a
string in their pocket and they've
they've got uh the knots equaling how
many llamas they have and then they have
subcategories of information like this
one's sick
the we've lost these ones this one's
pregnant so they have these more simple
and more mathematical keos but they're
using them to effect as a as a record is
it possible through archaeology to know
what you know the social organization of
the Maya was like
what uh maybe if there was a hierarchy
maybe what the political structure was
if there was a leader different roles
you priests or like who had the power
who was powerless who had certain kinds
of roles is it possible to know that
actually because of hieroglyphs yeah we
know a whole lot there's you know basic
things that archaeology which is a very
blunt tool can figure out like this guy
lives in a rich house this guy lives in
a poor house but um the hieroglyphs tell
us specific stuff about uh who can rule
that it was
hereditary that uh that hereditary rule
was based on Royal Blood that could be
burned and connect to the ancestors that
lived up in the sky versus the one
that's lived in the Underworld it also
told us things about hierarchy like that
there were councils of Lords underneath
the king who each represented Clans who
had their own neighborhoods and that
there were revolving positions of uh
Authority there was uh the the site that
I mapped for my dissertation and spent
years in in the jungle there uh
pen had a Lord's title named Fire Lord
that was one of the like generals of
their army and we could tell that
position changed over time so there was
one guy named chak Zoots who was the
fire lord uh for the early part of a
reign of a king called the konob and
then by the time he carves this other
panel there's another guy in the
position of of a how which was the
fire lord and so he had got promoted it
was well he could have been killed I
mean the case of that but then we have
the interesting case of uh in the post
classic they shed the idea of Kings they
don't like kings anymore that's probably
a big part of why the classic
disappearance and the abandonment of all
those cities happened people just got
sick of
kings and so they turn into this more
Council system at
chichin but then when chich chinita
Falls there's a new city that's uh
that's architecture looks a lot like
chinita it's called mayapan but it has
uh what is called the league of
mayapan and it has a council of
representatives from the communities
from all around the ucatan and it is
basically a
democracy it's a it is a Maya democracy
that happens that individuals from all
around around the Yucatan are there they
each each family has their own Council
house at mayapan though they live back
at their place it's kind of like Amaya
Congress representative democracy it it
really was I mean and this happens in uh
I guess
1250 ad that this this Maya democracy
happens and we know the names of them we
know the families and of course they
were humans So eventually they screwed
it all up one family murdered another
family and the whole the whole city
burned yeah and of course it's probably
some fascinating corruption which is
hard to discover through uh part of it
was the Aztec screwing things up the
Aztecs came down with all sorts of like
we'll buy everything you're making and
then eventually they were like could we
maybe buy some humans yeah and then one
family was like no and the other family
was like I don't know they're making us
a lot of money so then you know they
they murdered each other and the water
supply got polluted and then the city
burned seems like slavery murder and
disease is a large component of the
story of
humans um you mentioned different
periods of the Maya the classic the
postclassic the preclassic the archaic
can you just speak to that so archaic is
before there was really a civilization
that was uh archaic is pretty much when
everybody's hunter gatherers so the
classic period was the Golden Age and
then the preclassic is is the
interesting uh time that we were talking
about and the post classic is when the
Democracy came about well Midway through
it yeah yeah reverted back to council
systems the Maya love to be part of
councils so yeah we have preclassic is
like the origins of civilization they're
starting to build cities they're
starting to create their calendar
they're starting to create these
wonderful works of art and the classic
period if you look at at 10 different
textbooks for the Maya you'll get 10
different dates that wiggle around in
there but basically that's the that's
the age of Kings to me that's when these
cities decide that they're going to
organize themselves
around uh Elite royal families that have
this magical blood that can contact
their ancestors that are directly in
contact with the gods the Maya never
contact their gods directly they contact
their ancestors who were up there who
act like liaison to the gods and so the
Maya Age of Kings has these dynasties
sprouting up where these people have you
know basically snowed the rest of the
people that they've got a special
quality of their blood and only their
offspring can do the same trick and talk
to the gods where everybody every jiah
can let their blood and burn it and
contact their ancestor but Jo Maya's dad
is just a corn farmer who Liv lives down
below and he's got no influence over the
gods but the rulers their their Spirits
go down briefly but then they go up into
the heavens and reside where the gods
are and can act as Liaisons so that's
the validation for this kingship that
happens for about 400 years I know we we
say 250 to 900 which is kind of the the
encompassing edges of it but it's
interesting that it's actually
specifically the ninth Bok tune of their
history the ninth Bach tune begins in
like
426 and it ends in like
829 so it's a 400e period of time and
before that there were no Kings and
after that there really aren't Kings
they're heads of
councils so it's I I call it the age of
Kings where everybody's following the
directives of basically a despot and for
a while that's great I mean cities build
up populations happening uh that's it's
I I see it as kind of a cult of
personality moment too strong
charismatic leaders inspire people to do
great things together but eventually
like happens all the time with power too
much power corrupts all of a sudden
there's this unwieldy huge Elite Class
that has to be treated Special by
everybody else and uh and they start
saying well I think we should fight with
those guys and you guys should go take
these things and people eventually get
sick of it and they walk away from these
cities and that's how we get the
mysterious Maya collapse where all these
cities are just gone that's one of the
great mysteries of uh the Maya
civilization is that over a very short
period of time what like 100 years it
seems to have declined very rapidly it
collapsed what do you think explains
that what happened I think it's a
failing of archaeology to properly see
what was happening I think that most of
those cities populations moved you know
no more than 20 to 40 kilometers out and
started their own farm and they lived in
perishable houses and all archaeology
signature sees is that nobody lives in
the city center anymore we don't see a
bunch of mass bodies there was no
there's no evidence of people getting
sick there are certain cities that
fought with each other at the end and we
see that signature plain as day we see
we know when a city was attacked and
burned mostly that didn't happen people
moved and migrated and it seems like
right there around like between
8900 a lot of the elites that were on
top in the most of it was in the
rainforests of northern Guatemala they
move they move in two directions some of
them move into to the highlands of
Guatemala and some of them move up into
the
Yucatan the city of chichin becomes the
next big capital in
Yucatan but the word itsa is actually a
word
describing the people who lived around
Lake
P10 in northern Guatemala and all of the
Maya are super clear about that that the
ETA came in as immigrants with these new
ideas and created chichin so the the
elites who were no longer welcome in
their cities just moved and set up shop
somewhere else so why was there a
decline what was maybe the Catalyst was
there specific kind of events that
started this was this an idea that kind
of transformed the society we are still
debating that we I don't think there is
a single reason I think humans are
complicated I think a lot of things led
to this one thing we can see
archaeologically is that every one of
the Cities became overpopulated they
were too popular and we think that they
pushed the limits of their capacity to
feed and House people mhm we see it in
lots of the Cities at the end of the
classic period that people are
seasonally
starving I remember uh really Stark
evidence in Copan Honduras Copan was
this beautiful city lineage of 17 Kings
but the last kings and the last Elite
burials that we dig from the city
center uh the teeth are the telling part
they get this thing when you when you're
growing up and you're not getting enough
food
seasonally it shows up in the enamel of
your teeth it's called a dental
hypoplasia and if somebody's seasonally
starving it gets these lines in their
teeth and that last generation of Maya
before they left C
even the rich people are seasonally
starving so there's a problem there for
sure but I also think it's a it's a
weird thing it was not an Empire it was
a group of independent city states like
Greece some of them were Allied some of
them were enemies there was a huge Civil
War that settled out about the end of
the classic period so if it was Europe
you know the victors would have taken
over the losers would have beat it and
gone wherever they went but when they
abandoned these cities that were
independent still they all left both the
guys that won and the guys that lost the
war so it couldn't be just as simple as
spoils go to the
Victor um it's such a wide area not
everybody was starving like the people
in the copon valley so I I personally
think it was cindric timed it is
interesting to note that that ninth
period that ninth 400-year period it
ends right then and I think a lot of
people I you know I can't prove it
archaeologically but I think a lot of
people said we're coming to the end of a
great cycle and we need to renew we need
to change what we're doing when you talk
to the Maya today like at the end of
this uh 2012 thing if you actually talk
to Maya say you know what happens at the
end of a big cycle here they say Cycles
are a time of renewal and trans
formation that it is all of our
obligation to change our lives at the
end of cycles that change is coming we
can either be part of it or we can get
steamrolled by
it the Aztecs did this neat thing called
the new fire ceremony every 52 years
which was the biggest their calendar
would go they'd burn down perfectly good
temples and they'd burn down their
houses sometimes and they would just
everybody in in society would perform
what they called the new fire ceremony
and they would renew the world so I
think my personal theory is that the
Maya decided at the end of the ninth Bok
tune that it was time to renew the world
I think this Theory makes sense because
they really internalized the calendar I
mean it was a really big part of their
culture the sense of the cyclical nature
of civilization that's what I think I
think that uh that they created that
calendar to to P perceive the cycle and
to harmonize with it
yeah uh you mentioned the Aztec what was
the origin of the Aztec where did these
where do these people come from at what
time and how you know almost every one
of the cultures we're talking about now
we have two different versions of the
answer to that question we have the
archaeology version and we have the
Aztecs themselves the Aztecs have this
wonderful ation story where they say
that they came from a place well to the
north called
ason and that they had this migration
that went through kind of a hero's
journey where they go to this Snake
Mountain place and they encounter uh the
birth of the war god that they'll
worship after this and how they stepped
into the valley of Mexico as the last
the Lost Brothers of every one in the
valley of Mexico they said that they all
came from the North near Aon as a place
a cave with seven different passages
called uh chikim mostak and that all the
people who spoke the language nadle came
from the cave and most of them went
early to the valley of Mexico and in the
Aztec uh story they were just the Lost
tribe they were the last Brothers to
come in and but then they show up late
game and they become mercenaries they
just start working for communities in
the valley of Mexico and this takes
place in the
1300s so about 200 years before Cortez
shows up the Aztecs show up to the
valley of Mexico and they make
themselves this uh indispensable group
of mercenaries they do the Dirty Work
the all the all the
civilized uh communities around Lake Tes
coko which is in the middle of the which
is now Mexico City it's all dried up but
uh those guys were too civilized to
fight with each other but they could
hire the Aztecs to do their dirty stuff
so the Aztec did that and really changed
the politics and the
game of the valley of Mexico the dirty
stuff there so there the muscle yeah
they'd go in and and they they'd kill
whoever you wanted killed and take you
now you're the king of this area so one
of these kings that they were working
for really liked them and decided I'm
going to make the Aztecs part of
our ancestry I'm going to give them my
daughter to marry the head of the
Aztecs and the Aztec sacrificed her and
that really pissed that guy off so he
took like his whole Army and ran the
Aztecs out for a while they say they
live in this horrible desert section
eating lizards but then one of their
priests say we're going to walk around
the lake and my Visions say that where
we see an eagle sitting on a cactus with
a snake in its mouth is where we will
build our capital and they see that but
it's out on an island in the
lake and they he said well I don't know
that's that's the place so they build up
an island they go to that Island and
then they just start piling up Lake mug
until they make a whole city there in
the middle of the island they make or
the lake they make an Island City MH and
all of this occurs in about a 100 years
so they show up about
1300 the capital of tinos Tian as they
called it uh is really established and
from there they quickly take over the
entire Valley they make uh what they
call the Triple Alliance which is the
two other big communities of the lake
are now their allies but they're not
really allies the the Aztecs were brutal
they were just those guys agreed to shut
up and let the Aztecs run the
show and then the Aztec spread like a
wildfire all the way down into the Maya
area everywhere they go they rename
everybody's towns and make them pay
tribute pretty shortl lasting
civilization uh spread extremely quickly
uh famous what what what what are some
defining qualities that explain that I
think they were very much like they they
had an attitude like a till of the Hun
they just had no problem ripping your
skin off everybody else had become too
comfortable and too civilized and the
azcs were just mercenary they told
everybody you know we can either rip
your heart out or you can work for us
and if you work for us you'll be just
fine they'd go to every town they'd go
to the first thing they do is they'd
show up with a bunch of uh Merchants
there was a merchant class who were also
military they were really the the the
people who assessed where they were
going to attack next they'd go in with a
bunch of Aztec products and say we'd
like to trade with you but all the time
they were assessing their military
prowess what uh what products they had
that they could take and then soon after
the poach tekka were there would come
the military with the reconnaissance
so the the astec had a huge warrior
class as you're saying so what what was
there just can you uh Linger on their
whole relationship with war and violence
they they worshiped a war deity their
main Temple was uh the Temple of Mayor
it had two temples up on top one was to
talak the Rain God who liked a lot of
sacrifice himself but then the other one
was we see laosi he was that translates
the hummingbird on the left but he's the
war God I love that he's a hummingbird
maybe you know he's fast and he comes
from the magical side or something but
uh then then right next to the temple on
either side were the two temples of the
Warriors one was the eagle Warrior Clan
the other one was the Jaguar Warrior
Clan and they they were symbolically in
competition with each other though a
unified Force I guess you know probably
an analogy between like the Navy and the
Air Force you know they were had a
good-natured competition of who was
better but they were the same Force so
those were their symbolic Warriors
dressed up in all of their
finery and they would they they would
come at people uh with these two forces
and it was very
unlike anything that had happened before
in meso America again I think I could
draw a parallel to what happened in
Europe
you know the famous uh Henry V moment in
aun cor where you know his kind of uh
rag tag Army wipes out half of France's
aristocracy with the
Longbow like up until that moment Europe
had a
very uh Wars for the elite classes kind
of attitude and then after France lost
half their aristocracy then I was like
maybe we should be hiring from The
Villages the same sort of thing happened
with the Aztec that there was a meso
America really didn't have huge standing
armies but the Aztec put this Army
together and they intimidated people
they didn't actually have to use it a
lot it was very it was used to great
effect in the in the valley of Mexico
and for the rest of meso America it was
mostly The Fear Factor but there also
seemed to be um you know a
celebration of um violence I think you
said uh that beauty and blood went hand
inand for the
Aztec maybe like the Roman Empire was it
they just had maybe a different
relationship with what
violence where that stood in uh the
purpose of life purpose of existence is
that fair to say I would hypothesize so
I mean that you know I think it's one of
the wonderful things about studying
these ancient cultures you know knowing
what our human capacity
is and the Aztec when I when I said that
statement I what I what I meant by that
is they were absolutely comfortable with
human sacrifice and you know ripping
people's hearts out this they had this
this just you know grotesque violent
bent but in the same way they also
absolutely loved flower gardens and
poetry and music and dance the same same
Aztec King who would order the hearts of
a thousand people extracted also would
stand up at dinner parties to recite his
own poetry or the Poetry of famous
Statesmen that had come before him and
they spent money on things like flower
gardens there all of the causeways
leading to the Aztec capital had
beautiful flower gardens and they had a
museum and they had an aquarium and a
zoo and they had an opera and they had a
ballet yeah and and these things
existed together there was not in the
Aztec mind any conflict between
witnessing someone's heart getting
ripped out one moment in the evening
we'd go to the ballet um how does that
contrast the relationship with war and
violence with uh with the other
civilizations of meso America and South
America Maybe the Maya what was their
relationship like with war the Maya were
certainly influenced by the Aztec at the
end so we get a we get a skewed
perspective from the contact period
accounts because the Maya were much more
violent and sacrifice oriented in their
postclassic rendition but in the classic
period it was mostly the priests and the
king who were doing the sacrificing of
themselves that we know that the Maya
Kings would cut their penises and then
bleed that blood onto paper and uh the
paper would burn and become the smoke
through which they they'd uh commune
with their ancestors but they'd actually
tie this paper onto their penis cut it
and then dance so the blood
splattered uh but it was them cutting
themselves it was different than killing
a bunch of other people for it it was a
Autos sacrifice we call it still very
maob but very different than deciding a
whole bunch of other people should die
it was a self sacrifice thing can you
speak to sacrifice a bit more animal
sacrifice Human Sacrifice what what role
did that play in um for the Maya for the
Aztec for the different cultures
here was that religious in nature it was
absolutely religious in nature and the
Aztecs were of the opinion that uh that
the war god demanded
people were captured and sacrificed and
it had to be valuable people there was a
lot of uh before they made that big
standing army they had just ritual
battles that they would have and they'
take
captives uh in fact all around meso
America they wanted captives so that
they could bring them back and sacrifice
them for the
gods and the Aztecs deciding to
specifically follow the war god did this
more than than anybody they did it so
much and so successfully that they
didn't have any ene enemies nearby so
they decided this one poor sucker group
uh not that far away called the Tash
Collins that they were never going to uh
make peace with them so that they could
go close by every year and just have a
little symbolic war with the Tash
Collins and haul them back for a
sacrifice Cortez met those guys and he
was like here are people who hate their
guts I'll just use these guys so you
know we say oh Cortez took over the
Aztec world it was it was Cortez and
20,000 super pissed off Tes Collins and
they actually sacrifice what so they
would be kind of these ritual battles or
is it chopping off people's heads and uh
like is there is there some interesting
rituals around the sacrifice it's mostly
heart extraction sometimes heads but
they bring them up on top of the Temple
so everybody can see it and they had a
specific Stone where they would bend
them over so their rib cage would come
out and they they'd use uh like a thick
obsidian knife and they had a really
just uh like tried andrue way to do it
they'd stab it in in a certain place
close and then they' push down on the
sternum as they ripped up on the rib
cage and they just so they just make a
place where they could just rip it right
out with their hand yeah with their hand
but they were really just surgical about
it they'd use a thick obsidian knife
where they could just break the ribs
right along the sternum and then push
the sternum down Pull up and just while
the person was alive yep while the
person was alive and the Aztecs had this
idea like there was a there was a
horrible drought that went on that
almost ruined the entire Valley and they
came to this conclusion that it's
because we haven't been killing enough
people right we've got to bump this up
and then when they did and they decided
they they really took it out on The
Clash Collins it rained again so it was
proof positive that they should just
keep doing
that and they ate people as well they
really did as part of the sacrifice or
is this after the sacrifice then they
would eat them and this was part of the
drought and the famine thing that
started but then it was just kind of the
thing to do when uh when Cortez got
there they were still having
certain special feasts that involved
humans and and it really upset the
Spanish that they would be like uh
tricked into eating human like hey you
likeing dinner that was a human so the
idea was it actually
uh having having a taste for human flesh
or is it just you know these kinds
of ideas of like if you eat a person's
heart that you can get their spirit and
their strengthen in the case of the
Aztecs it seemed like they just liked it
this guy sahagun who was a very
responsible uh chronicler that was
pretty specific that like uh there was a
distribution thing yeah like the uh the
the elites got butts the butts were the
best part so the the butt cheeks those
are the best parts to eat and then like
it went down the chain until some people
just got like fingers and toes literally
bought taste for the ASC yeah boy all
right they really they really did they
really did in fact that's what caused
the uh have you heard of the no T day
the sad night the night that the Aztecs
really go nuts on the Spanish and kick
them out it's all triggered by this this
one guy um Pedro de Alvarado who's left
in charge by Cortez as Cortez goes to
the coast and tries to uh talk to the
new Force talk him into being for him
which he does but Pedro Alvarado's left
back in town in charge and they're doing
another one of these huge Aztec buffets
and uh parties to honor them and it
happens the guy says you know hey do you
like dinner like oh yeah it's a nice
dinner well it's humans you're eating
humans see I told you they were good and
Alvarado just freaks out and he has the
the guards close the doors and he
murders everyone in the in the party
women children nobody has weapons he
just murders everyone and that's what
spazzes the the Aztecs out to eventually
murder monuma who was their captive and
then try to murder all of them and it
was all it was all Pedro Alvarado's
fault for freaking out about eating
humans just a little practical joke yeah
it was just they thought it was funny he
did not that's fascinating I didn't
realize so I kind of assume that some
level of cannibalism would have to do
with you know eating the heart to uh to
gain the spirit of the person or
something like this but and and certain
like you know deer hunting rituals
things for sure but the Aztecs no they
just liked eating humans it was part of
the Fear Factor too I mean they could
walk into a new town and be like you
guys could either send us you know a
number of kol feathers every month or we
could eat you so that's psychological
warfare and actual Warfare it worked and
that's how they spread quickly MH and
they were just about to take over the
Maya when the Spanish came and messed
everything up they they were they had
the Maya surrounded and they were about
to take over the whole Yucatan so you
think without the Spanish there would be
this Aztec empire that would last for a
very long time well I think there would
have been an Aztec empire I think they
would have finished dominating everybody
but they did it through hate and
everybody hated the Aztecs did they so
it wouldn't have lasted forever they did
not they were not ruling justly they
were ruling by force and that that can
only go on so long before Revolution
happens the in Empire I think that would
have gone on forever cuz they were
really Community oriented once the Inca
took over like no one in the Inca Empire
starved they built architecture everyone
was safe it was it was a society that
could have lasted a long time what was
the origin of the Inca
Empire well it was Bloody at first like
most of them are but once uh on once
they started taking over that what they
did is they empire built they everybody
else had just raided their neighbors to
get the resources but everybody they
raided they turned them into the Inca
Empire and they created this uh
incredible uh meah system where you took
turns working and they created the road
system so they could get groups of
workers back and forth so a a town of
let's say 5,000
people uh the Inca would roll up with an
army of 100 200,000 people and say you
know would you guys like to be part of
the Empire or would you like us to
escort you to the edge of the Empire and
if your mayor here agrees then he can
have a town he can have a house in Cusco
but then the very next month a big work
crew would show up and they'd start
building agricultural Terraces and
storage units and every month with the
agricultural uh excess they would have
big parties and everybody would eat so
people lived well in the Inca Empire it
was a rough beginning but everybody who
agreed to be part of it immediately had
access to a whole bunch of resources and
security they never had so they started
in uh South America and Peru and Cusco
Cusco was like the center of it Cusco in
their language
ketua it means Naval or belly button and
it's up in the the mountains but there's
four quarters that they called their
empire tiwan tinu
the land of four quarters and the center
of those four quarters was Cusco it
sprung to life what in like 12 1200 a
ADC yeah we we backwards project what it
was but it was
probably mid 1200s when the first Sapa
Inca the first ruler came in but it was
the I think it's the ninth one is Patak
cout who really started being an Empire
Builder
and part of that I mean what really
defined the Empire you said roads they
build a massive Road Network roads and
uh in the same way that the the Roman
strategy of building roads and
infrastructure and then every place they
took over they'd create certain key
pieces of Roman architecture that kind
of made that City Roman and they'd
rename it
something the Inca did the same thing
they had certain certain
signature Inca architecture that they
would build in as the administrative
part they'd send uh they'd send the kipu
kayak the the the guys who would weave
the or not the
kipus asant and they they would go
through and say what everybody did okay
you know you're a good farmer you're
going to farm you are a good Weaver
you're going to weave all the men here
are going to take a turn at being part
of the army and and they and they sent
independent K kayaks to that every
Community had like five or six that were
not allowed to work with each other and
they all had to independently send their
Kus back to Cusco and if there were
accounting discrepancies they were
called to Cusco to figure out who was
lying about what so there's like a super
sophisticated recordkeeping system yeah
and that was the kipo and the Spanish
recorded what they could and then burned
them all but that's an interesting
development for for an Empire CU that
allows you to really expand and uh have
some kind of management some some level
of control yeah they couldn't at the end
they were at least 10 million people and
there was just no way to do that without
some sort of sophisticated recordkeeping
system if the Inca had to face Aztec who
wins Inca Inca I mean the Aztecs were
psychotic but the Ina had just reserves
for Miles right and they had that
essential hearts in mind
right and there was only one thing that
everybody got pissed off about when they
joined the Inca empire for some
reason everything was owned communally
except the llamas the llamas were the
Kings and so that was one thing that
like some of them would stay in town
just to be work llamas but you know you
don't own your llama anymore and and
people are really attached to their
llamas to this day yeah they are like
family members so it' be like everybody
walked in and said everybody's family
dog is now mine it like really upset
people on an emotional level well the I
mean so
llama's got domesticated at some point
probably ear I me what I don't even know
when but early on it's uh we we have
rock art that progresses to make it see
like a progression from people depicted
hunting them to people depicted standing
next to pregnant ones yeah so it was
still in that Archaic Period at least
that they became friends uh yeah but if
you roll in and you own them that's uh
yeah that pissed everybody off the for
some reason the Inca owned everybody's
llama instantly and he would take
anything he wanted a lot of them would
just get carted away that day just sent
to Cusco they'd also take their mummies
that was a weird thing everybody Mourns
they're dead but the Inca just like
ceased to accept it they would just the
mummies were still there okay he's dead
but look he still got clothes he's at
the party let's put a beer in front of
him they just like they just kept people
as mummies and so the ancestral mummies
of every town part of the being absorbed
into the the empire was okay your most
important mummies are now going to have
their own beautiful t house in Cusco but
they would physically bring those
mummies to Cusco to make now Cusco the
spiritual heart of their
their belief system I mean I can see how
that would piss people off but it's also
a pretty powerful way to say like the
ancestors that you idolize that you
respect are now in the capital they've
been elevated we didn't steal them we
have given them a new place of honor and
you're welcome to come visit them all
the time and they did they have these
festivals where everyone from all
corners of the Ina world would come to
Cusco and uh which of the civilizations
mummified people is it is it the Incas
for sure mummified people and even did
some of that kind of uh like Egyptian
esque taking out of organs and preparing
the body they put Like Straw inside the
cavity and mummify them but the Maya
didn't do it at all the Maya in fact on
purpose would flood tombs with water so
that the skin would float off the SK
skeletons faster and then they get back
in there it was jungly so I think the
bugs probably had part of it too MH but
then they would get back in there to get
the bones they'd open it back up and
take the bones out and paint them with
red Cinnabar the one that I was in in
copon we had evidence that they had gone
in there four different times and the
last couple times they only took the
skull out and repainted it and then put
it back in articulated in the on the
skeleton but they they didn't mummify
they on purpose would like grossly float
the bodies so so they could get the skin
off faster and get to the bones but
would they keep the bones yeah they'd
keep the bones and they'd pull the bones
out occasionally and do rituals to them
or commune with them and then put them
back in so there there's still a deep
connection to the ancestors to the
physical manifestation of the ancestors
then y whether mummified or bone and and
to this day like if if you do an
excavation here in the United States
Native American people don't like it
they don't like their graves which is
fine enough I wouldn't want somebody
digging up my grandma either but the
Maya they love it they love it every
Maya person if we find uh grave they're
like yeah look at that bones cool can I
touch yeah great they they're not
spooked about it at all they think it's
exciting I one time has uh helped out a
a physical Anthropologist in town and in
copon to get a osteology collection
together of various animals so if we got
bones from a uh an excavation we could
see what kind of animal it was based on
the
collection and this family said uh well
we our family dog died last year and
buried him in the backyard you could go
dig him up and so we were like okay yeah
I mean we do need a dog we'll go take up
your dog and and they were like but the
kids really want to help you so their
kids came came out and this was like
their puppy and it died you know less
than a year ago when we got to it like
one of them just like grabbed up a bone
and he was like wasy CTO like little
bitty bones yay like what a weird
attitude that's your dead dog there but
they just they have a different
relationship with the dead in some sense
that's a beautiful attitude right I yeah
why um pretend like we're not mortal and
there's not this is just the process of
it it's kind of as you say it now kind
of would be cool that's what day of the
dead is all about and I love Day of the
Dead uh you know Halloween's This creepy
thing where they're all monsters but Day
of the Dead is this beautiful time where
we remember our ancestors I convinced my
kids after the movie Coco came out now
we have an altar with all of our great
grandparents on the Altar and we talk
about who they were and how they lived
and we put things on the altar that
mattered in their life and we remember
them on that day and it turned some that
was a weird eat too much candy and wear
a monster mask thing into something
beautiful where we discuss where we came
from I have to ask about the giant
stones that Inca has been able to
somehow move and fit together perfectly
do do you understand is it understood
how they were able to do that so
well
no um you know the moving of it I think
that we have reasonable theories you
know there there are ways to Pivot large
weights uh there's a there's a great guy
uh named w-e Wallington a retired
contractor here in the US who built
Stonehenge in his backyard in Minnesota
singlehandedly showing how you can move
Big Stone so I you know I think Wally's
already figured out how to move them
it's the it's the perfectly fit so
carefully fit together that you couldn't
even put a dime in between the stones
that's the one that I think still has
people baffled the the common
archaeological wisdom that you'd find
out of a textbook is that they just kept
pecking away at it with hammerstones and
setting them and resetting them until
they were perfect which has to be
that is there is no way that
they just were that meticulous I mean
everybody's got a Hammerstone I I
personally think it's acids I think they
melted them um together and there are
weird places when you really look at
closely to these Stones which I've done
a number of times I'm going back next
month to uh Machi Picchu and especially
Cusco I walk around in the alleys where
these 500 you know to a thousand year
old walls are still there and uh you see
I see things like the the crystals in
the
andesite are uh almost stitched together
along the seams like there's the the
andesite around it is melted and the
crystals haven't and there are other
places where there are weird wipes on
the wall like it's just melted like
somebody like took a rag and wiped it
while it was soft lots of talk about
soft Stones turning hard to I I haven't
been able to prove it this is one of
these you know end of my archaeological
career chapters I'm either going to
prove myself wrong or prove it but I
think they used acids my dad's a chemist
and he told me a long time ago that
there's no way there's no naturally
occurring acids but my current theory
actually I got the idea initially from
the show Breaking Bad I don't know if
you ever saw that show but there's a
point in which they're trying to
dissolve a body yeah and they're using
Hydrochloric acid and it goes right
through the ceiling that hydrofluoric
acid is so fascinating it you know it it
won't go through plastic and you can
also bring it in iner parts and then
combine it um the the Ina made tons of
jewelry out of fluorite fluorite is big
in the Andes and they also mined a lot
of things for gold and silver and the by
product of that mining is sulfuric acid
you put sulfuric acid and fluorite
together and it's hydrofluoric acid and
that will burn through andesite or
anything and if you learned how to do it
you know
judiciously and you didn't care whether
you know servants lost an arm or two
then you could actually use them to fuse
these together and I I think they're
fused together I I asked the city of
Cusco if I could take some core samples
and they said go away Gringo don't touch
our walls so this actually this next
this next time I'm going to go try to
talk to the more Keta authorities in a
place called oan Tio and maybe I can
convince them but right now they just
think I'm a I'm a weird ass Gringo who
wants to put holes in their
walls it's a fascinating
Theory and so the
how could you get to the the bottom of
that so getting core samples to see if
there's some kind of Trace chemists I'm
working with say that if there was
hydrofluoric acid in between these that
a core sample right along a seam they
they can separate out the elements in
there and detect whether there was
actually elements of hydrofluoric acid I
wanted to go straight to burning rocks
but they were like no I mean we already
know that's true I mean yeah we can burn
some rocks but it would happen that's
just chemistry we got to we got to prove
that it would happen in the walls so go
get us samples and that was before covid
and all sorts of you know you know how
it is you probably are the same guy
where you've got a a thousand ideas and
you know the ones that that are fruitful
you run with and the other ones you'll
get back to that'll be fascinating if
true and I I hope you do show that it's
true or either one yeah I'll I'll try to
disprove it disprove it yeah I wonder if
we discount how
much amazing stuff a collection of
humans can do because it just feels like
if a large number of humans are e are
just working a little bit chipping away
as stuff at scale they can do miraculous
thing so the question is how can a large
number of humans be motivated to do a
thing um CU I I just when we think about
like stonehengers some very challenging
architectural constru struction we we
don't think about a large number of
humans working together well you know
that large number of humans uh are
motivated to work together by a small
number of Administrators who are Dynamic
and convincing in some way or another
right one of my favorite quotes is and
I'm probably going to misquote it here
but I think it's Margaret me who said
never underestimate the power of small
groups working together and the truth is
that those are the the only people that
have ever changed the world that small
dedicated groups of people are what
changed the world yeah and they Inspire
big groups of people to embrace their
Vision yeah yeah I think we sometimes
underestimate how much humans can do uh
across time and we are way less capable
than we used to be I mean the average
human had all sorts of skills that at
least I personally do not you know I I
I'm wearing a shirt but I I can't make a
shirt
that's for somebody else to
do you've also lectured
about uh which I really enjoyed about
North America uh and also helped teach
me that there was a lot more complex
societies going on here uh for a long
period of time so maybe can we start at
the beginning who were the early humans
in North America well we go through that
paleo Indian and Archaic Period for
thousands of years you know as we
started this conversation probably you
know 30,000 years is a conservative now
humans first enter the
Americas but the first cultures we get
here are mound builders around the
Mississippi and to the East and then
also a totally separate group in the
what we call the American southwest now
the Four Corners who will develop
into mostly the people we call the peblo
people who are still there today like
zouri and Hopi people so we've got these
two clusters that the very first major
community in North America is in the
most unlikely place it's in Northern
Louisiana people think I'm crazy when I
say this but there is a pyramid in
Northern Louisiana a big one at a site
called poverty point that is uh 35 100
years old so it's the same age as the
pyramids in Egypt and it is a giant
thing just poking out of the bayus of
Louisiana and uh people don't believe me
when I say it but it's there the mound
builders what was that Society like in
comparison to everything else we've been
talking about in Mesoamerican they
evolved over thousands of years we call
them mound builders this is something I
you know object to I think we should
have a better we do the the last uh
version of them we call the
mississippians now but generally
speaking we call all these guys mound
builders but what they built were
pyramids they look like Mounds now and
they didn't build them out of stone
that's you know that's kind of our just
inherent Western bias something that's
built out of stone is is sophisticated
and something that's built out of dirt
is
rudimentary but in their full living
form they did have cores dirt but then
they also had uh kind of clay caps so
they had Terraces they had whole
complexes of buildings up on top there
were kings that lived up there there's
uh the the biggest of the Mississippian
cities is called Cahokia and it's right
outside of uh St
Louis and it was huge it had a
population of 20,000 people and pyramids
all over the place a huge palisade Wall
all around it it was absolutely gigantic
a thriving metropolis and we in America
have kind of a collective Amnesia like
we we never hear about these massive
civilizations kokia was the the big
first city but then it spread from the
Mississippi all the way to the Atlantic
there were hundreds and hundreds of
these big cities that had you know 5 to
10,000 people each
were they their own thing or was there
some kind of thread connecting all of
them they had a unified religion and
culture they were again not an Empire so
there were Waring city states there were
kind of uh territories that were owned
by big Kings and then the cities around
them were kind of the subsidiary Lords
and kings and then one one Kingdom could
either Ally with a neighbor or have a
fight mhm so they were were kind of uh
countries I think for yeah we could
safely say there were different
countries within this Patchwork that was
Eastern United States and you it's so
weird that we don't know this because it
was clearly documented by the by the
Spanish it this I'm not talking about
just archaeology we find them in
archaeology now but Hernando doto landed
in Florida and went for three years from
he went up into the Carolinas and over
down into Alabama and Louisiana and he's
the first one to see the Mississippi up
there but for three years he went
through city after city after City
unfortunately decimating them eating all
their corn giving them
diseases but uh I mean the documentation
clearly there he met collectively
millions of people in a very sophistic
ated and uniformed civilization so it
was
disease and uh stealing of resources but
was there like explicit murdering going
on unfortunately yeah he was a murderer
and a psycho and a liar he uh he he
snowed them that he was some kind of
deity actually learned a trick from the
Inca who he he was with pizaro in his
first run and got went back to Spain was
rich had a wife a cat
then he got bored and he decided to have
a reign of terror on Northern America
for 3 years but he had people uh burned
at the stake he had his dogs ripped them
apart he was very very brutal he he
ruled that area through fear and had
absolutely no respect for anybody he
made promises and broke them all the
time he he was really he was a brutal
man so this whole period when uh
Christopher Columbus came how did
that change everything well you know
there's a there's a great uh
anthropological uh body of literature
it's it's called the Colombian Exchange
based on Columbus but it's you know all
this trade back and forth between the
new world and the old world and the the
old world got just wonderful stuff all
of a sudden their diet didn't suck all
these vegetables came in the the new
world got uh herd animals it got pigs
and cows and goats that it didn't have
but it also got 13 infectious
diseases uh Europe had had wave after
wave and kind of had her immunity on a
lot of things but it didn't actually go
away it just couldn't spread like a
wildfire through the community so when
they arrived to the Americas all of a
sudden these just a pile of horrible
diseases hit people I think in the first
20 30 years there were people who like
had contracted multiple deadly diseases
at once and died of them but the numbers
you know it's it's a it's a shameful
part of history and it wasn't something
that Europe perpetrated on them they
medical science at that time was still
the four humors theory that people were
made of yellow bi black bile blood and
Flem and we did things like well you've
got to bleed him he'll feel better then
so we had no idea what an infectious
disease was but the reality was that
this horde of diseases hit everyone and
the numbers are now saying in the first
50 years that it 90% of everybody was
dead and that the the number of people
has increased as well as far as the our
estimates we're thinking it's some where
around 150 million
people and 90% of them died and with
them all their knowledge just I mean
imagine the moment where you know who
dies when things get bad it's The Young
and the old so all the knowledge Keepers
die suddenly the children die this next
Generation that's half taught and now
completely demoralized thinking that
this is a spiritual attack that they're
Gods hate them that the only way out of
it is to uh to accept this new
Christianity but they you know they
don't want to have bring kids into this
world where everybody's dying and even
if they do they can't teach them what
the old people were going to teach them
because the old people are gone and
didn't finish the transmission so in a
in a single terrible moment in human
history you know the generation loses
all their knowledge so a lot of the
things that these people knew just
blipped
out but with that also just the the
wisdom
of the entire
civilizations so much of what they knew
was just lost at that moment we have the
Maya who had those hieroglyphs and that
we've learned a lot from that yeah but
not a significant integration of that
wisdom into so it wasn't uh when the EUR
Europeans came it wasn't like the
cultures were integrated it was um a
story of domination of a rer ESS in the
in North America there's a a new term in
the literature that I like we call it
the uh the Mississippian shatter Zone
that Mississippian civilization was
millions of people but they got spread
out all over the place over the next
centuries and now we have this shatter
Zone where we have oh ruins and the
people that were actually from those
ruins are somewhere else on a
reservation far away and you know that
I'm just about to talk to a a Cherokee
man who listened to some of the things I
had to say and says all those Hooch
chunk things you were saying from that
Hooch chunk culture my grandparents talk
about this sort of thing too can I can I
talk to you by phone and tell you about
these things so we we've got this
shatter Zone where you know we're going
to try to put the piece the puzzle back
together especially in terms of
Mississippi and religion I really think
we're making Headway in this generation
and exciting to be part of piecing this
old religion and its mythology back
together just as uh since a lot of
people kind of refer to Christopher
Columbus as the person who discovered
America um I read that the Vikings
reached North America uh much earlier in
um
CE and uh why do you think they didn't
expand and
colonize cuz they got their ass
kicked Okay so it's the truth it is
absolutely true that the Vikings were
here there's a there's a great uh site
in Nova Scotia called lenso Meadows
which definitely has what's left of a
Viking Colony it was leaf faric and his
father Eric the Red who they got kind of
kicked out of Europe because they
apparently couldn't stop murdering
people and so they went to Greenland and
then kind of Island hopped over to
Canada but I think the culture that was
in that area was name the
Dorset but they would have nothing to do
with the Vikings they they attacked the
Viking settlement every day and did not
give them an inch until they decided it
was just worthless and they left it you
know the Vikings attacked Ireland and
they just found a bunch of you know
monasteries full of gold with a bunch of
guys going we're men of God we don't
fight and Vikings were like this is
great that's great this will be easy
then we'll just loot all these Easter
eggs but the n Native Americans in
Canada were like not having it they
kicked their ass in fact Leaf Ericson's
brother Thor died there the the natives
killed him he was supposed to be in
charge of expanding the settlement but
they they just killed him so a lot of
the Native American cultures were also I
mean they're sophisticated Waring
cultures also yes they fought especially
the the mississippians boy they were
tough and so were uh you know the the
five Nation s the Mohawk the
Huron those the ones that that kicked
the Vikings ass up there they were
probably uh Algonquin speakers but they
were connected like you know just above
the the Great Lakes but they were all a
very tough people when you think about
the Spaniards and the the Portuguese and
the the over 100 million people that
were
killed um do you see that as a tragedy
of history or is it just the way of
history I think that the
epidemics I I consider it a tragedy that
did not have to happen then that was not
you know that was not a fair fight
nobody knew what to do about it there
was just a a a tragic Perfect Storm of
events it was not you know that I think
that the Spanish and the Portuguese get
unfairly maligned in what's been called
the the black legend that they just
marched into America and murdered
everyone that's not the fact
that it was the diseases that murdered
everyone in fact there was a a really
poignant uh story I read of a a Spanish
priest in the Amazon in the in the
Brazilian northern part of the Amazon
where he made this Utopian
community and he was bringing people in
that were getting sick and he he wrote
you know I'm baptizing everyone you know
I have baptized 10,000 people a day and
yet God's still killing them why why is
he doing this to them they're doing
everything that I ask them to do they
are submitting to the will of God but
this guy doesn't realize that the same
bowl of holy water that he's baptizing
them in he's just wiping the disease on
everybody's faces he's accelerating it
when he doesn't even realize he thinks
he's saving them but he's actually
killing
them yeah that's a tra that's a tragedy
you know that's not just like spoils go
to the Victor stuff that's just straight
up tragedy yeah yeah but that one is
hard to know what to do with like Black
Death
it's I mean infections they don't
operate on normal human terms right they
just they just go through entire
populations back to wild
ideas all right just my
style um I mean we didn't really talk
about how life originated on Earth or
how uh how humans have
evolved and we did talk about that there
could be just a lot of stuff in ancient
history we haven't even uncovered
yet uh do you think it's possible that
other intelligent civilizations from
outside of Earth aliens ever visited you
had me right into the ever visited thing
that one I'm not entirely sure about I'm
not sure whether we have any we
certainly have no archaeological proof
that I would uh cite or contemplate as
the evidence of
such but you know uh you the guys that
that discovered DNA Watson and Crick uh
Watson uh who actually habitually used
hallucinogens to to uh invigorate his
thinking he said that he thought that
DNA on this planet was way too complex
to have developed over the time period
that it had at its dispos Al and that
his guess was that our DNA was somehow
seated from outside of our planet and
you know take that for what it is but
the guy who we respect on many other
levels also said
that um so that's interesting but in
terms of you
know aliens visiting us I I don't know
it does smack of a kind of human huus
that we think were important enough for
some Advanced species to give a
about us statistically speaking the
universe is way too big we can't be the
only sensient beings there's got to be
somebody else out there whether they
care about us that's a question I've
been on Ancient Aliens a number of times
I show up and you know I'm an educator I
mean refusing to be part of the
conversation is an immediate fail in my
book um but there was one time where
they asked me at the end you know do you
have anything else uh do you want to say
and I saidwell you know yeah y'all's
premise is that aliens came down a long
time ago and they gave Humanity these
wonderful Gifts of you know science and
medicine engineering all these things
today we also have a lot of uh stories
of the aliens coming down but now all
they're doing is mutilating cows and
sodomizing rednecks MH like whatever we
did we were super pissed them off
apparently
the quality of the gifts has decreased
rapidly um what it's it's interesting
thought you've
mentioned what archaeologically would
you have to see to be like this might be
an
alien a technology that doesn't belong
there first and foremost I mean you know
we got to it it if we just run with the
premise that somebody was capable of
making a
vehicle that could get them from
somewhere far away to
here that was almost certainly
mechanical now I you know I love the
aliens thing where you know
biomechanical is something that that
certainly could be and that would you
know that that would uh disintegrate we
wouldn't see that at all but I would
expect some kind of uh technology that
that showed up out of the blue and
changed things that would be something
um but but I would think you know
mechanical or you know a substance
that's not from here but of course we
would only see the the results of that
mechanical you mean like literally a
mechanical thing right some sort of
thing like that it the typical thing
people say is like you know how did they
move these giant Stones right but you
know just just look at that on the face
for a second aliens come from across the
universe to meet humans and the thing
they tell them is how to move rocks are
you kidding me I mean you know
like give them give them antibiotics or
a combustion engine or something you're
going to they they came across the
universe and they showed them how to
move big rocks I mean that doesn't make
any
sense that just doesn't make any
sense what do you think Earth will look
like 10,000 years from
now that's a interesting
question I think it will be a lot more
automated or or it'll be a small wering
pile I mean there is a possibility we
could end ourselves there's always that
possibility that we've really opened
Pandora's Box in some
regards I I did listen to one of your
podcast guests with the uh what would
happen in the case of nuclear war yeah
that was chilling her opinion was
certainly we would burn everything to a
crisp within minutes apparently so we we
have that capacity that's scary that's a
possible future for us but I'm an
Optimist i' you know I'd like to think
that guys like you are going to make
friendly robots who make my job
better but a thousand 10,000 years is a
long time and uh technology is improving
and becoming more advanced rapidly and
uh the rate of that Improvement is
increasing ever more so that that's the
part that frightens me actually I don't
does that frighten you yes it's
terrifying you know I I I I heard
somebody say I forget who it was but you
know uh systems of any kind human
systems biological systems can be put on
a graph that's change over time and any
graph that the change is way faster than
the time and the and the the line starts
going straight up that is a system in
crisis and almost any biological system
that has that has to change over that
little a time you would any any other
thing you'd describe it as a crisis when
you apply that chart to Technologies
change it's a crisis from that
perspective absolutely but I also have a
faith in human
Ingenuity that we humans like to
create a really difficult situation and
then come up with ways to uh get out of
that difficult situation and in so doing
innovate and create create a lot of
awesome stuff and sometimes cause a lot
of suffering but on the whole on average
uh make a better world but yeah if it
you know like with nuclear weapons the
bad stuff might actually lead to the
death of everybody I guess there's
always that that chance but I am an
optimist I you know I think you're an
optimist too I I think uh exactly as you
just said I think that the greatest
capacity of humans is our ability to
innovate and we are never more
Innovative than when we're under
distress I think that a lot of the
developments of humans over the last
thousands of years have been about you
know we didn't we didn't change the
world when we were comfortable it was
when we were in crisis mother necessity
is the mother of invention and I think
we'll be all right I think that uh this
impending uh climate crisis is real and
happening I actually personally think
that uh I'm gonna I'm gonna answer a
question that you didn't even ask me
great um I think we're wasting our time
thinking that we can reverse this we're
uh delusional I'm all for electric cars
and uh you know uh being good stewards
of the environment but we are wasting
our time not technologically adapting to
what's about to happen we're spending
too much time pretending in know the
average American thinks if we all just
drive electric cars we'll be okay that's
that's not going to happen we
need to start making technologies that
desalinized water that know a host of
things that uh that we need to use our
technological P capacity to accept it
and adapt instead of poana thinking we
can make it go away yeah yeah I kind of
accept that the world will change and uh
a lot of big problems will
arise and just develop technology that
addresses them I think you have some
some guys that have their finger on the
pulse there we need to start thinking
about how we're going to survive this
not that we're going to make it go away
and not just survive
thrive um again we're pretty Innovative
in that regard but if some catastrophic
thing happens or we just leave this
planet what
uh what do you think would be found
by a a before mentioned alien
civilizations when they visit the
Anthropologist the grad student
anthropologists that visit Earth and
study how much of what we now have and
love and think of as human civilization
will be lost do you think well you know
time moves on and things that are
perishable perish so you know you didn't
put a time element in there but I would
say that you know everything that can
perish will and whoever shows up here
will be stuck with only the things that
didn't perish so we'll have you know
buildings plaques but they won't have
any books they won't have any you know
Billboards they they'll have the
incomplete record I haveh I I one time
did a did a talk in Sue
Falls and I said you know I I drove in
here and there was a big obelisk in
front of the town and Everywhere I Go I
see the names Lewis and Clark and a
thousand years from now if I was an
archaeologist investigating this place I
would think that it was founded by the
Egyptians and their kings were named
Lewis and Clark but the truth is you
know Lewis and Clark stayed one night
here but it's just a big deal so I would
be so wrong about what I thought about
your town based on what preserved it's
so beautiful as a thought experiment
like what would archaeologists be really
wrong about and what would they could
possibly be right about Washington DC
was clearly made by a combination of the
Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans
because that's what all the architecture
is yeah and would they be able to
reconstruct the important Empires the
the the powerful
Empires and the the Waring
Empires for that matter have me and my
colleagues done that at all I I'm almost
certain that the Maya would just gut
laugh at what I think I know what they
were I wonder do you you ever think
about like what we just as a human
civilization are wrong about the most
like mainstream
archaeology just like a suspicion what
what could we get completely
wrong um well one way to get something
wrong is totally like lost civiliz like
an obviously gigantic civilization that
was there along with the Maya or
something like this in the 10,000 years
ago there's certainly that there could
be things that were either wiped away or
still hiding under the oceans that would
completely change the way we think about
things and everybody knew they existed
and everybody interacted with them it
was I think I think that's our
estimation of their motivations that
were probably most wrong on ah my uh my
teacher Sheely a long time ago said you
know I i' would come up with all sorts
of theories I was always thinking about
stuff and she looked at me and she said
if you don't stop thinking like a
Western European and start trying to put
yourself in the mindset of these people
you will never understand any of it
which I've always taken to heart I mean
I really do when I approach these things
I try to step out of my cultural
assumptions try to think like they would
think is the best I could and it's very
different I mean this whole you know the
May are are cyclical you know this the
the whole sacrifice we're so you know
obsessed with that but you know know
that was an austere actual sacrifice on
their part they weren't just you know
hey let's all get together and kill that
guy that's pissing us off I mean they
were like you know giving the best of
them it was it was a different mentality
this was not brutal this was a you know
Bonafide sacrifice on their part a
loss plus the whole mystery of of the
puppy that eventually starts having sex
with his I tell you that one I'm going
to unweave that one one of these days
one of these days now this that puppy
appeared on the on Pottery all over
Pottery he's he's he's everywhere I got
to write this book I this next year is
the year I'm going to write my Fang
deity book and I will have a whole
chapter dedicated to the puppy the
mystery solved I mean it could just be
the birth of uh memes of humor I don't
know I mean again humor you don't know
what the nature of their humor of what
their jokes are oh that's a neat one too
then that's so human yeah the I'll tell
you a little like Side Story here that
uh when I worked with the Maya people in
pen I spent three years making this map
of the city and Hiking Through the
Jungle every day and they would talk to
each other in their own language uh it
was cell tall was the group I was
working with but I noticed after a while
they were they were big Jokers they
loved to make jokes and they would laugh
at jokes but then they would also one of
them would say something and the other
ones would go go hoooo and I eventually
asked you know what is that why do you
guys always make that whoohoo noise and
I said that's cuz he made a really smart
pun it was like he said three different
things at once it was a turn of phrase
that was smart and they didn't make
laughs at that it was their they had a
noise for when somebody said something
just super clever yeah so there's also
that like you know just clever turn of
speech yeah wi and I think about that
when I'm a a a hieroglyphic translator
like here's a beautiful thing that's
going to be like a poem or a political
statement like and I'm just plotting
looking in a dictionary of what that
word means there's probably double
triple on Tundras all through this text
and the real meaning is the subtext and
I'm you know I'm thinking they're
talking about corn and they're talking
about the nature of Life yeah it could
be satire it could be you know as it was
in the Soviet Union when there's a dict
or maybe there's a overpowering king
you're not allowed to actually speak uh
you have to hide the thing you're you're
actually trying to say uh in the subtext
so and all of that there was a a funny
uh Maya ceramic that had the Ceramics
are neat because they don't the the The
Monuments can be kind of broken records
I'm the king I was born this time I beat
these people up I married this woman I
died but the Ceramics will tell us like
things out of Mythology stories and
there was this one with a rabbit looking
at the merchant God and nobody could
translate the text and finally this uh
Eastern European actually a Ukrainian
guy translated it and the rabbit saying
to uh to the merchant
God bend over and smell my
ass and like oh man we were expecting
this wonderful piece of Mythology but no
it translates bend over and smell my ass
that's great
that's human as we mentioned previously
human nature does not change uh you you
mentioned pank mapping it it's just out
of curiosity like what is that process
like that seems
fascinating oh it was uh it was a great
adventure I loved it but it was it was
difficult I I woke up every morning
thinking I will be hurt today somehow I
don't know how I don't know how badly
where on my body it will occur but it's
going to happen because it was the
jungle so in the jungle what's what's
the process like like what what what do
you have to do to to map it well it was
tricky too because it was also a a
national forest so the Forestry
Department didn't want us to cut down
anything more than we had to so we'd
basically just cut tunnels through the
foliage and I would uh we'd map
everything twice the first thing we do
is I'd go
in uh find a building draw it on a piece
of graph paper and I'd say like you know
you guys go north you guys go east west
find other buildings and when you find
them pce back to this one and so I'd
start making a map and I'd make the
whole uh one piece of graph paper was
enough to then we'd bring the machine in
we'd bring the laser theodoly and get
really accurate information but on that
piece of paper I would write like don't
bring the machine this way there's a
treeall or stand on top of this building
and you'll see four different buildings
at once from this one nice and all of
this is in dense jungle right and the
deeper we got off the road the deeper it
was sometimes it would clear out but
certain places if it was low it would be
such thick vegetation and yeah it would
grow back so fast sometimes we would cut
just uh uh tunnels through tall grass
and we'd come back like 5 days later and
they were gone yeah like we did we
couldn't even find where our Trails were
they would grow back that fast but you
see the building so you could see right
and that was the fun part I mean
sometimes it would just be like a little
neighborhood with little low buildings
no bigger than this table but sometimes
you know just five more meters in and
I'm standing under a pyramid that nobody
had ever mapped like wow I've just found
another one and some days you know on
good days we'd find three pyramids and I
I I felt uh that's that's such a more
exciting job than the typical
excavations my buddies were all just you
know in a hole for the whole week in the
middle of the city and where I'm dancing
around through the jungle I could find
you know 10 buildings today I might find
a pyramid today who knows what's that
feel like to find like a pyramid or
buildings that you're one of the only
humans that are not from That
civilization to ever see this thing
what's that what's that feel like I it's
it's great I love that feeling I I am
you know I'm an explorer at heart um so
finding something like that you know
when I was uh when I was 25 years old I
I found a whole Maya City mhm
uh got to name it its name is Mna it's
off in the basian jungle and that was
just just outrageous I mean it it almost
that one almost depressed me I was my my
entire like I had this great life
ambition that I would find a lost city
MH and then I did it at 25 and I was
like God now what do I do I thought that
was supposed to take me my whole life I
actually uh I wrote a bunch of letters
to NASA trying to get them to let me be
the first uh archaeologist on Mars I
never got a single reply back I'm sure
I'm on NASA's list is some
weirdo um how' you find a Mayan city I
uh I used a topography map of the area
and I played the game if I was a Maya
where would my favorite place to live in
this big area be I I looked for the
biggest mountain because they call all
of their pyramids tun Wheats Stone
mountains I knew they loved mountains
and when I found that mountain there
were two others right next to it that
made a triangle and they love those
Triads and there were rivers in between
them and I thought that's it that's
where I would build the city and I hiked
out there over two seasons with students
the other grad students were like he's
just having his students just wander in
the jungle all day but I came back with
the city so given that you've looked
into the deep past of uh Humanity what
gives you hope about our future maybe
our deep future of this human
civilization that's a good one I and I
do have hope I do have hope I I believe
in the spirit of humankind i i as a
person who have studied history I kind
of feel like history does kind of a sine
wave there's highs and there's lows but
no matter how low we go we get up again
and and we climb
and I think that Humanity will continue
that we will rise to the challenges now
some of the challenges may be created by
ourselves as well but we will adapt and
overcome that's that's what we do yeah
humans find away right that's that's
like uh that's the thing you see with
with history even when the empires
collapse they uh the humans that come
out of that they pick themselves up and
find another way
they build a new and the people I study
believe in the cyclical nature of life
that you really can't life can't
continue without death being part of the
cycle we get our lows we get our Highs
but the cycle continues forever I should
mention that you have a lot of great
lectures uh on the Great Courses but you
have also an amazing podcast RKO Ed if
people want to listen to it this is a
tough question but what uh would you
recommend what episodes should they
listen to what's the ENT that is a tough
question what what is the what is the
sampling you know it's like asking a
chef like what's the best stuff on the
menu well Different Strokes for
different folks you know I do two
different things on that podcast
sometimes I just teach about cultures
that you've never heard about or I I
love I I start off by saying it's my
podcast and I'll talk about whatever the
heck I want to talk about sometimes I
talk about really uh specific things
like a tool type or an animal type but
my favorite ones have become when I just
tell my stories of my Adventures I've
got a lot of weird adventure stories and
uh it's it it's been fun and they've
been very well received I've got you
know I can put my humor in there and I
can talk about you know the the things
that went right the things that went
wrong the adventures that I had are all
part of part of this Aro Ed thing it's
and archo Ed's kind of a double on
Tandra it's me I'm just Ed but it's also
education you know what I'm really
trying to do with this too it's
specifically the Americas I want to be
part of The Reawakening that there were
these great civilizations here
especially North America I I think that
we have a group Amnesia that there was
no great civilizations here before
Europe showed up that's simply not true
I think it should be part of our history
books in fact I have a a program called
before the
Americas that uh would introduce as part
of American History the part before
European contact and I think that kids
in the K through 12 levels should grow
up not being told this fallacy that no
one was here before we showed up in
1492 and one of these days I'm going to
find a funer to help us put together
before the Americas and we're going to
make it part of the curriculum for every
kid in the US to know the full history
of this country that's a great project
Ed thank you so much thank you for
talking today thank you for all the
fascinating ideas that you put out into
the world and uh I can't wait to hear
your new course thank you so much Lex it
was a real pleasure thanks for listening
to this conversation with ad Barnhart to
support this podcast please check out
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let me leave you with some words from
Joseph
Campbell life is but a mask worn on the
face of death and is death then but
another mask how many can say asks the
Aztec poet that there is or is not a
truth
Beyond thank you for listening and hope
to see you next time