The Basement: Ed Barnhart | Lost Cities, Botflies, and a Magic Number

0:00This episode is brought to you by TickTack. Lay something, get your game on because the TickTack lineup just got a new teammate. Dr. Pepper TickTack. This new double threat puts two of your favorite flavors into one box of mince. And when two iconic flavors come together, the result can only be iconic. Score big. Try Dr. Pepper TickTack today. Today I'm talking with Dr. Ed Bardhart. In 1995 he was a grad student in the jungles of Belize with the mail order map, a machete, and a camp full of colleagues who thought he was chasing nothing. Then his students started screaming his name at the top of the pyramid. He found a lost Maya city. He was 26. When I was 26 I found a lost city too. Eight landing city. I lost it right back at the crap table. Everybody asked Ed about that day. Today we're covering the parts nobody asked about. What happened when the city got handed to someone else? How around it to Kila, he wasn't there for. Got him a job of mapping Polenke and the beams of light he chased into the temples of Cambodia. And then he told me how he thinks the Inca got those Crisco walls to fit like that.

1:04Not aliens. Acid. Got to go with tripping balls. A kusco is just a Lucian sky with diamonds. I have a lot with boldness. Not that kind. A. That one I'm still turning over. After a conversation I'll come back and break it all down. Let's go down to the basement. Yeah. Dr. Ed Bardhart is here. Thank you for coming in today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Um Luke Caverns. Luke Reagan turned me on to your work and I've been obsessed ever since. I really really enjoy it. I love Luke. Luke has grown so much as a explorer too. He was just kind of a young guy with stars in his eyes when I first met him. But now he's he's my colleague. He's legit. He texted me a photo a couple of days ago of him in front of a tiger or something. Oh my gosh. Maybe I got I saw one of a flashlight on a lion at night.

2:07That's the picture. What in the world are you doing? It's an advisable get out of there. It's un advisable. I want to start with 1994. So you're a grad student. And uh before you go down, everyone knows your story about finding the lost city and we'll get to that. Did you order the map mail order? I did. I did. Tell me about that. What like where did you find that? It was a uh uh place that mostly sold USGS maps. But then it had all over the world. Every every country you could get their version of USGS maps. So uh I went to the Belize section and got a bunch of quads that were generally in the area I wanted to be. I actually bought like 10 wrong ones and then finally got the right one. You got 10 wrong ones? Yeah, I I I misunderstood where I was looking.

3:10It said program for Belize, but then it didn't include the southern part that I was in. Did they do they donated them to the project? Sure. The project used them. And so they assigned you that that area first? Yes, my professor basically said I don't know how he picked it. I guess he picked it because there's just one dirt road running through this huge area of you know hundreds of thousands of acres and near mile marker 10 going east they had found a site called uh Dos Hombreys and it was only like a kilometer off the the road. But he figured this west part is the one heading into Guatemala nobody's been out there. So he dropped us off at mile marker 11. And I mean the first day it was just me and this guy Charles Hargrove both grad students that was before the city. But he dropped us off at mile marker 11 and just said

4:11watch your compasses cut straight west I'll pick you up at three. And that went on for a month. Okay, so this is this is a bunch of land that was cleared by Coca-Cola right and they donated it back. Well, they wanted to clear it but they didn't because Coca-Cola got bad PR out of it. Sure. And so before they chopped the forest down they sold it to Belize for something like five cents an acre. Right. And so it became program for Belize so they sent the the country saved it from Coca-Cola which is nice. Yeah. So the protocol traditionally is straight lines directional to just straight line and you said no I'm I'm going to follow O'Logger roads. I mean it does make sense in most contexts when you're doing an initial survey you want to work the ground like it's a piece of graph paper you want to be on cardinal direction so you can map out better what you found. So a transect going west in most environments makes sense I did that all the time in Texas.

5:14But this one poor Charles and I you know we went west like he said and we went up one hill down another one up one hill down another one it was just ravine after ravine like seven hills before we finally hit that British logging road and once we hit the British logging road I was like hold on let's follow this and going north on it we started running into my buildings going south on it pretty soon we hit the road again and and it was all a hundred years overgrown but it would have been I did cut it out eventually we had a truck that could go five kilometers in. It makes so much sense that to follow those roads because the loggers probably did the same thing right they they were through the jungle and I said someone cleared roads here let's just work these right path of least resistance and you know the core of engineers always you know you do the topography map and you say well we're not going to put the road right over this right that would be terrible we'll go around it we'll follow the river paths and the river paths are the way the good places for

6:18old villages to be so once we started doing the road instead of the transect and I did my boss was not very happy that I abandoned the transects I was asking uh my compromise was great I'll do both she did well I will cut the train we will keep cutting the transect I did the both for two seasons and by the time I really had a map of it I was like luck Fred you know here's the western transect it hit one site here's my map of the road I hit five sites right I need to keep following this road this is this is doing the homework for me did um were people skeptical of your decision oh so skeptical there I was a relatively new grad student there they were already established folks that had been in the project for years and before I found the city I was a like open camp joke that I was just bringing students every day to just hack in the jungle uselessly

7:24that they were doing no archaeology I was just torturing students out in the jungle wow who's in your corner though was it so Charles is that doc Charles that you're talking about? uh well no Charles Hargrove was the first grad student but then doc Charles you didn't know this story doc Charles was wonderful my my students were into it they were into the adventure and we we did find buildings sure and I think I treated people with a general respect I have this you know chip on my shoulder about all of us are equal and it really bothers me when people act superior when they're not and the camp dynamic without naming any names you know that there was a group of grad students who called themselves the super elite they called themselves that they called themselves super elite they kind of named it after like my uh concepts but they were the they were the royalty of the camp and the students were scum and uh I mean in a good nature you know

8:25prodding kind of way but they had their own cups in the in the camp nobody could touch their cups everybody else had random cups that we all shared but then their cups were special and they got in line first for whatever the meal was and they had the access to the trucks so like if anybody wanted a beer or anything else from town you had to go through the super elite and uh those guys were it was difficult time so there was actually much more opposition and uh just laughter at what I was trying to do if you if you call yourself super elite you're not exactly so I really I I boat up against that I made an entire crazy like bar out in the road I had access to the truck so I would go and buy a bunch of beer and sell it to everybody for just the price I bought it and I had I had a uh bar out in the road after nine o'clock when the lights went out I called it the cinema bar and a but eventually it got just crazy there'd be like 30 people in the night out on

9:28the road and beer and rum and I had like a band on the weekends it was it it was crazy but and the super elite would come out there sometimes eventually I I lured some of them into the sure but I was just kind of this like rebel in the camp and I mean up until I found the city they were right I was did not know where the hell I was going I had a plan but I didn't know it would be there you've always been the like the clear headed heretic I mean I've watched you like uh it might have been the doha debates where you're talking to other archaeologists about Graham and all of that and you were the cool head in the room saying look if we're gonna win hearts and minds you can insult people we just need to make the case I thought it was I thought it was lovely you know I appreciate that um a few of them didn't agree with you no you know they really wanted somebody they wanted Graham of course on that thing or anybody that would even defend his point and no nobody from that those circles would show up no and so I kind of by default was the closest to

10:34that camp and they had to stir it up you know they wanted I mean it's entertainment they they want a good debate but that one guy going I've got a secret ed says that archaeology is in science like oh shit here we go here we go there it goes but yeah I I am who I am and I'm not scared to be that person in any context you're not um so take us to discovery day uh uh we sit I we need it was uh what's the right way to pronounce it because I know the media gets it wrong game day reveals the truth about your cookware and it's not pretty you're making links for the guys someone's bringing the cheese dip and you're searing everything on high heat because kickoff is in 20 minutes then it happens wings stick to the pan the dip gets burnt on the bottom and you end up scrubbing a scorched pan the night before the next conspiracy episode drops that's not cooking that's punishment here's the thing most cookware forces you to choose nonstick pans can

11:36handle high heat searing without degrading stainless steel gives you the sear you want but food locks onto the surface like it's been welded there this is where hex clad is changing the game that laser etched hexagon surface is genius though stainless steel ridges handle serious high heat searing your wings get a perfect crust every single time but the nonstick valleys food lifts clean no stuck cheese dip no overnight soaking sessions the best part it's built to last metal utensils dishwasher safe oven to 900 degrees lifetime warranty means you're set for life don't go into football season with cookware that makes game day meals harder than they need to be upgrade your kitchen with hex clad and make cooking hosting and cleanup easier all season long for limited time only our listeners get 10% off your order with our exclusive link just head to hexclad.com slash support our show and check them out at hexclad.com forward slash basement make sure you let them know you sent you the city yeah mash nah it's actually I'm saying it wrong mash mash no there's a

12:38lot of stuff otherwise it becomes spider monkey which they missed they got wrong right I think yeah there's so many my languages too this is I picked you could tech my ash is how they're monkey and I think that bots bots is spider monkey oh okay so what I've thought was interesting about your story is when you were down there you sent your students in the more promising direction yeah why well because they were given their heart and soul to the project and you know they made these students might this might be their only experience in archaeology their whole life I was already committed I know I'm gonna keep doing this I'll keep doing adventures why don't I give them a chance to have a life-changing experience so when you heard screaming in the jungle was that before the discovery well I heard daily screaming in the jungle so the students would be shocked by so many things those howler monkeys the yells so loud the first time that a student

13:42would find that that that would make at least a girl scream they like run off to go pee somewhere under a tree and then all of a sudden there's a huge scream above you don't think about that peeing in the jungle is not not gonna be great no it's not good it's not good you never want to take your pants off it's terrible you don't um I meant screaming when you thought someone was bitten by snake oh it was it was two guys up on top of that pyramid and so you found it first no they they found it they found it they were up on top I was with you you mentioned dodge balls so like we're just doing our survey we're we're cutting out the road but we are finally going uphill to the three hills that I wanted to get to so we get up to the first one on the west and I would stop along the road and say like okay one crew go north one group go south depending on how the road was going uh let's see if there's anything out here and if there's not we'll keep going if there

14:43is we'll we'll investigate that so to the south of the road we find this building that's like five meters tall it's like 15 feet tall which you know is is not huge but it's not a house right like okay that's weird we've never found something this big this is exciting mm-hmm let's we're gonna we're gonna put this right in the center of our graph paper and we're gonna I back then I called it leap frog mapping now I have a more technical term I call it relational mapping but we're hot we're tired let's just work the jungle like a piece of graph paper and north is north so you guys go straight north you guys we'll go south we came from the uh the east so we don't need to go there well and one more to the west so I had six people there and one of them was doc Charles and I promised Fred I would take care of jock Charles because he was this like 70s something retired

15:44doctor from Palestine Texas what's he doing there he just was you know so many people dream of doing archaeology and they're more practical than me so they go and they they're a doctor and they have their family and their comfortable life and once they retire they're like my dream is always archaeology I'm doing it now good for him doctorals was one of these guys he was great I loved him and he's on the expedition that finds all this stuff good for him yeah he was great but but my job was really hard the we would just sweat gallons of water out hurt ourselves machetes and doc Charles days before had gotten overheated and fell over in the jungle and passed out and it was scary yeah and he was dehydrated and uh he was usually pretty good about that stuff but he just wore himself out so when we came back my project director chewed me out about it and said Charles is not doing this anymore he's going he's gonna go to one of the excavations where he's

16:47just gonna dig in a pit he can't do that anymore and then Charles came to me like a night later and he said if I can't do this with you I'm leaving I don't want to do this other stupid stuff it was your survey I believe what you're doing I got to go and so I went to bat for him I went to Fred and said I will be Charles's partner I will be next to him the entire time anything that happens to him is my responsibility I will make sure the Charles is safe so he agreed to that so this day was you know day two or maybe even one of Charles coming back so me and Charles took the south side yeah and then there was north and then there was west west was the one but as Charles and I were walking south and finding buildings I heard that yell like Ed had come come here come here and I thought it was the snakes and I had the only anti venom kit in my backpack that in an epi pen and so I actually did when I told Fred I would not do and I bolted away from Charles I was like I gotta go just stay

17:52here stay here and I bolted through the jungle to go find them and when I got there they kept yelling where are you where are you I'm here I'm here when I got up there they were way up there it was at 18 meters tall 50 feet yeah yeah 50 60 feet that's big six feet yeah six story building yeah I mean just little guys up there and they they were standing on a pyramid I thought they would get it was we have this spooky thing that on the last days of projects are when things go terribly wrong like the worst things will happen in the last couple of days we had that kind of superstition working and I had it in my head the whole time damn it I hear it was so close and now I'm gonna walk out with just you know some some students bitten by snakes and the the super elite are just gonna roast me but no they were on top of a pyramid and we did it did you call for doc I did I went back and got doc and got him up there and then I went and found the guys that went north I think it was

18:57Jim at heart and Brent uh Brent I forget Brent's last name but anyway I was so excited to bring them back to the pyramid that I was not cutting in front of myself I was just kind of dipping and what weaving and I put my head under a big palm fron that had a wasps nest right here and I put my head directly into it and I dug into my hair and they just bit I mean more than a dozen stings on the top of my head Jim at heart still makes fun of me he said that I that I just I stood up I threw my machete in front of me and then I said ow hurt don't that those those are the three words that came out of my mouth I've seen your pictures and listen to your podcast and I just go nope nope nope nope there's a picture you covered in like army ants it's yeah we it happens to you all the time you really just got to have a literal thick skin to survive it but uh so we we get up there to

20:01the top of the pyramid everybody's there we're gonna have lunch there now the whole group's up on top of it and I asked Doc Charles who I I love yeah I said fuck I just got stuck like a dozen times in my head I think I'm gonna be okay and he just goes well and a phylactic shock sits in within a minute so if you're not dead you're probably fine what a what a cool old Texas doctor thing to say I he's one of my favorite characters in your stories um so you guys had a lot what what's for lunch up there what did you talk about lunch was the same thing it always was ham wrapped in tortillas like a little roll and Vienna sausage they had to Fred would buy these cans the can't a sausage and nobody wanted them but they were easy to store I mean it wouldn't spill in your bag and and so you have Vienna sausages and ham wraps and what's the conversation like uh gosh I mean it just thrilled we were sitting right next to a uh

21:07uh a cave in to the roof of the structure so we knew that we weren't just sitting like on the top of the super of the base we were up there then there was a temple on top with a with a corbal arch we were up here oh wow and there was a hole that had probably a tree had fallen out and ripped the roof off there so we could see in there and uh we we fooled around I think Jim Jim was the one that crawled down in there to see how deep it goes and like found still stuck on the walls and uh and where the doorways are that was that was an interesting thing we knew we came from the east uh but we did not know it was west and so when Jim crawled in there he was like all the doors faced that way that's that's where we got to go so we talked about where we would go and so and just then when we were having lunch is when the howler monkeys just descended on us there

22:11were a bunch of them and they yelled and screamed at us so much I mean part of our conversation was drowned out by just screaming monkeys that's why I gave it the name Masha because it was their house monkey house why were they so upset are they territorial uh they are okay they are they're territorial with each other and with us weird talist things they they don't like it when you're around no so how deep was it when he went down there I mean because that's an Indiana Jones moment into the buildings yes well we were on the superstructure and then there was a hole there was like a talist of collapse that Jim could shuffle down but from the top to where he was standing inside the building was probably 12 feet 15 feet okay something like that but there was a nice little talist so we could get in and out of there so what did it look like in there um like did it find growing through the the front doors when you were inside you could see that there

23:14were uh more than three doors there were there were collapses on either side but we could see three doors and they're totally covered up by uh just a thousand years of mulch roots growing through you're always on the lookout in an environment like that for snakes or spiders of course it's easy to jump away from them in the jungle but when you're in a little building like that if you've been counter one you're pinned no artwork no no no fresco nothing no artwork in there gosh I wish but uh but most of that's gone that's very rare I've actually never found a really great work of art out there serving I've always wished I could find a stela at machinah I know now that there's been more work that uh they did find a carved stela and I walked right by it you know 30 times but that's the nature of the jungle yeah yeah I mean like from media you there could be the base of a building and if there's a big wall of like brambles you just don't see it so things big

24:16things can be hidden very close to you there um we're gonna get back to some of that exploration in a minute but I wanted to ask you about something I found iamdb as you listed as playing Han Solo the Empire Strikes Back Uncut in 2014 I love that is that you and what 15 seconds of empire did you it is not me oh that's too bad but you know I am I'm never asking them to take it down no you should never know that like yeah I am Han Solo that's right you are but but people were getting upset with me people would find that and go like this guy isn't even a really an archaeologist he's some actor looking plays Han Solo like I know I am really him and archaeologists that's where so I finally got curious enough to look it up it's actually a Empire Strikes Back fan cut movie yes so the entire thing is nothing but clips of fans playing out various scenes and at like minute 17 there's my ex-wife

25:23and her husband with my son and daughter and they're playing the scene where uh Luke's being put back together in half and like you know fuzzy nerf her that scene and Luke she kisses him and looks like this uh my son Edwin Barnhart is playing Han Solo oh so he's Han Solo it's it's like a nine year old boy playing Han Solo that's amazing for some reason it's the number it's not only on my iamdb thing it's the first entry everybody sees if they see nothing else they see that I am Han Solo you you guys star as fans to go check out the uncuts they're one of the only fan films that that star wars endorses they put it on you know about them sure it's so for those who don't know they're 15 second clips of just families acting out scenes but it could be paper art muppets just costumes and what did your son was he was he in a costume what did he do um I think they had a they had a little vest on him sure but it was really uh you know my ex-wife's husband who was such a super

26:29fan I'm a super fan too I love it and I mean I as a child yeah when we play the star wars games I'm Han Solo that was the first thing that's the first thing I'd say I'm Han Solo let's all be clear about that and so when iamdb named me Han Solo I'm never taking that now you never taking that now good for you uh yeah I sci-fi shows up in everything I read about you um 2009 for variety you covered battle star galactica oh yeah remember that I did love that and you said you were struggling with your attraction to starbox you're ever yeah did you ever get over that and my disappointment that there was no robot dog right that's that that's that's Gen X that's us where we watched the new bsg which was amazing and then you go that star book oh that's probably gonna be fine that's Katie sack off that that works for us why did she

27:32killed it she killed it I love that I love that series um why did they ask you to write about that that funny coincidence that happened um I you know I I lead tours around the Maya world and other places because archaeology doesn't pay a dime you never get anything you just spend money in archaeology so I lead tours and whoever shows up to the tours those are the people I lead and it just so happened that one of the writers for battle star galactica season one was in my group and so we're driving to Plank A in a van and they're just getting to know each other and you know what do you do what do you do and he said well I write this little show you know I his name is Bradley Thompson uh huh and Bradley's one of the writers for battle star galactica and I am immediately like oh my god I love that show yep and we've maintained a friendship all this time him and his group of friends have come on multiple adventures with me now but uh that's how I was connected to it in fact I went

28:40to Bradley and Peggy Seuss wedding in the old hall that was uh the dirty that where dirty dancing was filmed this this like log cabin thing above uh uh uh LA somewhere it's actually a little little town over there but anyway they were actually having they tricked everybody on the battle star galactica crew that it was just going to be like a party to announce their wedding but what they didn't know is that they were actually going to get married right there and uh Edward James almost commander edama was going to marry them and I loved that and I was I was actually there to see this thing I was the backup because I have one of those universal life church things I marry people all the time I do yeah that's fun I mostly might nieces and nephews but you know other people ask to but I was the backup there for some reason he couldn't do it I was going to do it but it was so

29:44much better that he did it it was this surprise that everybody got and after he after he married them then he went so say we all and it was the best thing I would not but I told my brother because I was uh in between I was divorced now I I'm married to my wonderful wife 17 years now uh but I was a free man then and I was like red who my brother's name is Fred I'm gonna hit on star book no did you she wasn't there oh she wasn't there sorry Katie if you're listening to that but she she wasn't there but I was prepared and actually I was dating Cassandra my wife at the time or we weren't even dating we were talking on the phone okay and so like I catfished her so hard I went to a Hollywood wedding that week I was also talking to Disney Imagineering guys about making a Disney thing which they just finally made they finally made this big my a temple but way back then but I was uh I was doing a 2012 lecture and then I went to a battle star galactica Hollywood wedding and then I went

30:47to Disney Imagineering I have never been that cool ever again in my life but it was like for my from my now wife she was like God this guy's cool he tells all that and just one of the people like never again it's good timing it is I mean speaking of B.S.G. I was at a dinner with with a friend and there's tons of celebrities around and I'm not gonna bother anybody but then I see a guy in a beard and I'm like I gotta go so I go and I interrupt this gentleman in the middle of me when I go Ronald Moore I'm a huge fan I'm sorry to do this I just want to let you know he's like I never get recognized and then I go back to the table my friends are like only you would bother a sci-fi writer my character that's where I'll be more amazing it is amazing people like him are are the actual you know indispensable elements of those shows the the movie stars of the people we know yes and see but Ron Moore that's the celeb to me me too I'm a huge space 9 fan too

31:50um so you close this is so refreshing let's just talk about nerd sci-fi stuff go no no no yeah I'm kidding I know I know I work Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek that's I am a trekky okay I'm a trekky no I love both I mean I wouldn't reject that but it's just such an uplifting message isn't it and you know you know captain procards hobby he's a geologist I love that as I thought that we could scan an entire planet and know where all the civilizations are and all the knowledge that they're able to collect just from space just thrills me I you know I have a very unpopular opinion about archaeology that is destructive and we should stop stop we I mean not period but we should always make that the last resort of what we're doing because we destroy things

32:51when we dig them and all the new remote sensing capabilities we have like LIDAR of course so thrilling so like reaching towards that Star Trek moment what I feel like you have to dig don't you don't you have to excavate somewhat I mean we do we do but we but I think we should so really recognize that we are destroying things uh when we dig them and then the rest of humanity's time only has that person's opinion about what happened maybe some photos some drawings maybe a couple artifacts but the context is gone and that's so important I mean think about nowadays we can take soil samples and get phytoliths out of things and know exactly what plants were in that trash pit we love to dig trash pit sure we've drugged so many trash pits seem safe too like it was already trash and we're not ruined anything it was a trash pit to begin with but trash pits are

33:54goldmine of information and how many thousands have we already dug and destroyed the evidence that if we did that today we'd have so much more information out of it that that's the caution I'm talking about that we just don't know what the archaeologists of tomorrow could glean from things that we think are worthless it's a great example I had a guest in here recently talking about the the scrolls found at Herculaneum that have basically turned into charcoal and they can read them now through 3d software but most of them were destroyed by archaeologists trying to unroll them and just crumbling until finally the government was like enough with the archaeologist you guys are you're just you're just hacking and slashing enough here's something most people don't realize when you drink caffeine your body doesn't actually use caffeine if we extend it to a compound called paracenthy that's a compound that actually gives you the lift the focus the energy caffeine is basically the middleman and your body has to do all the work to convert it but what if

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36:01for 15% off with code basement after you purchase to ask you heard about them please support the show and tell them we sent you oh god the you know the people that are the conservation people conservators to come in and protect things like that they think that archaeologists are just like a pack of apes yeah well sometimes they are sometimes they are and oftentimes you know archaeology like I said earlier it doesn't it doesn't make guns or butter it doesn't get much money you end up getting uh cruise of maybe one person who knows what they're doing and a bunch of people that are volunteers or students who are doing it for the first time and that's just why isn't it funding for this the public loves i mean it's you know in economics terms it makes neither guns nor butter people are excited about it but it does not turn a profit that's a shame um before I ask you this next question what's your nonprofit what's the website again my exploration center thanks for asking it's uh my exploration dot org and we're nonprofit 501 c3 everyone go donate today um the show donate

37:10as well so you quote Linda she Lee all the time in every interview think like a Maya but I've never heard you talk about what she was like as a person like what got well I wish she liked what she got excited because she's a rock star she's a rock star thanks for asking that question she was I mean just like a force of nature she was actually very abrasive and really and rough and physical because she was an artist wasn't she she was uh but she was also you know a Alabama raised girl who was big I think she's probably six foot tall wow and she eventually got cancer and got skinny but at at her heyday she was also just large in fact you can bleep out things right I'll tell you what the Maya called her yeah the Maya up in the highlands had a nickname for her and in Maya it translated big fucker woman she probably liked that she did love yeah she she told us like they they gave me a name

38:16that's amazing she thought it was great she she cursed like a sailor she was very physical like if you were having a joking conversation with her she would physically push you she would yeah she was she was like that and I mean smart so enthusiastic so passionate that was the infectious thing about her she was just so passionate about what she did and even like her arch enemies who were conservative archaeologists who thought that hieroglyphs were just nonsense she would just uh just revel in riling them up and laughing at them I mean she got the last laugh there didn't she well she did in terms of hieroglyphs yeah I mean that a lot of archaeologists some to this day think that they're either uh back then they thought they were just esoteric symbols that had to do with the calendar or even when she started to translate the stuff there was a crowd that said this is just propaganda this is just propaganda from these kings there's no way that

39:20that even happened these are not real histories these are just people telling lies to a grandise themselves but archaeology has proven that false too on a number of occasions all the wars that she was translating we now have the archaeological proof that they did happen there but there had to be some propaganda from the kings anyway right yeah but I think that's even that's a illogical argument I mean I'm actually more excited about propaganda than I am straight history yes like that gives us insight into their personality absolutely aspirations and and their methods of deceit I mean so much there's so much culturally packed into propaganda there really is I love that but Linda was a was a character and she was she on the one hand was a loving protector of all of her students champion to all of us but inside the classroom she was brutal she like nowadays totally

40:22politically incorrect but on more than one occasion in my class with Linda she asked me publicly if I was retarded like you can't say that like no I'm not retarded I'm trying I'm trying to learn Linda she was the 80s and 90s you said that yeah you said that all the time all those things the you know 10x sort of stuff so she would teach the classroom anger out in the field like Indy yeah well she she was not an archaeologist and she was not particularly you know athletic or she didn't do any digging but she'd come in and just to great artists she could come into a tunnel and just their sketch a very good picture of what the glyphs are and then come out and think about them yeah um she was she was dynamic she like you just wanted to be around her she created this community nowadays you know we we lump so much on to the name Linda Shealy that she broke the

41:23code of hieroglyphics Linda'd be the first to say don't say that about me I assembled the team of people that I learned from and they learned from me and we together did something that she was a big team builder the first time I went into her class her office when I was a student of hers she gave me the speech about like I'm not the person you're learning from I was being like a sequel yes I look so forward to learning from you Dr Shealy she'd be like you're not gonna learn from me if you're gonna make it in this field it's the students you're with that that you'll learn from you guys of the team those are the people go meet them look there's one sitting right outside waiting for me Matt Looper go say hi to Matt those it that you're in a team or you're nothing and you applied that through your career I've tried I've tried I'm a bit you know I am a bit of a rebel you and my you know my my wife who's my biggest fan in biggest critics says you know number one you're a control freak and number two she's a she's a elementary school teacher so she

42:28pins me with this label you're oppositional defiant okay like I love working with teams I hate bosses same same I'm like I'm like good with authority um so Linda passed away in 98 right just before you were going to Palenque that's right did she know what you were gonna do oh she did she did she uh she was instrumental in me getting the grant and I was so buckless I did not this is 98 so not everybody has a computer right but I needed a computer to do this and I did not have the money and that's and the grant that I got could not buy equipment so Linda and her husband David bought me the computer they they bought it my brother Fred built it and back in those days you know yet do you remember the days when you had to build your own computer didn't you thank Fred

43:30dissertation I believe I did I owe Fred a lot for your eyes as a prize he support but anyway Fred built the computer and David and Linda paid for it I think it was like two thousand dollars sure and then they rented it to me for a penny a month into perpetuity which was funny I don't know why they wanted to do that but they I I was actually renting it from the she-lease for a penny a month and you ended up naming some Eric something after it didn't you I did a big part of Polankay I you know I I Ken Bragg that I know Polankay's unknown parts like nobody else does and I was hunting I mean it was very emotional when Linda passed a big group of us in Polankay heard about it we we planted a savotry in the plaza which is now a huge beautiful tree it'll be there for centuries symbolizing her but I was really hunting for the right part of the ruins to name after Linda and

44:37I picked such a winner it's in this generation probably nobody will dig it but when they do it'll be one of the coolest parts of Polankay it's right outside the city center right across the O'Tooleum River from the cross group that's given us so much but it's a magnificent group of terraces with a big flat terrace with a bunch of tombs that are in that terrace but then another pyramid on top of it so it's like I feel like if there's any place that's Polankay's royal cemetery that's it that I named there's the shealy terraces and it's stuck it's stuck thank you Mexico for allowing that name to go through perhaps so how did you think that city was because I've heard you say that maybe populations are overestimated because of burial traditions yeah and and Polankay's not very big it's just not very big compared to you know the teacalls and caracoles

45:38of the Maya world my very unpopular and in my opinion inflated estimate is about 10,000 people that's that's pretty big city sure I mean you know I think like or was 5,000 so that's right so we have we have we have an unfair yardstick things are much taller over there in the old world than they are here in the new world yeah I know you don't like the like comparison comparisons which it's I'm getting there they're essential they're important but they can also be very culturally biased yes that's very true we'll talk about your textbook today as well and co-hocue super um so everybody fix your story back up at Polankay I want to take a quick break and come back with some stuff that nobody really asks you about and that's the stretch the two years after awesome I'm really enjoying this interview there I thanks for asking questions that are regular questions

46:43so for everyone who's screaming about not getting the story of the discovery all of that go watch um Dr. Barnhart and Sean Ryan he's just had a couple of weeks ago you'll get the whole backstory I'm trying to cover some stuff that Sean didn't which is not easy but that's what I'm trying trying to do today so go watch that you were great on it thanks stories are super fun Sean's a great guy one of my favorite people in the world um you said something on a podcast that no one really followed up on is that after Polankay you so you mapped the site and you've got to hand it over to another university right oh I think you're confusing uh Masha with Polankay because I did have to hand over I mean Polankay was already the jewel of Mexico so so Masha right back to the government so what happened there well uh back to the theme of archaeology never has any money um my project director decided that he

47:46could get more project money into our project if he invited other professors from other universities to bring their grants in and he needed something for them to do so uh he gave them Masha nah is that a mosh is that emotional for you uh not now but at the time he really was I in in high-view that's exactly what needed to happen to me at the moment I was honestly a dick about it were you um I'm a little embarrassed of my behavior I was I was down right hostile to the people that showed up uh that's what I wanted to hear that's what I wanted to hear because that's the human answer because yeah I mean because you were there with the machete and did the hard work you in doc Ellen Orking and Leslie Shaw sorry I was jerk I was young I was passionate that's right you were just a kid you do probably what 26 at that time 27 yeah uh no I mean not even I mean I think

48:47gosh 1995 I was born 68 so yeah like 26 you're right you did the math yeah it's it's it's it's it's it's we're we're kind of assholes at that age I was fired up about it never the less I did when I left write them like a treasure map like here's what I've mapped here's a huge area that I know has even bigger buildings nobody's ever gone back there there's still another huge section of machinah that has big big buildings there's no team there now there's little there there's little bits there here and there but not really no is this funding again yeah yeah oh this is very frustrating and I said not only is it funding but I mean I'm very proud of machinah but machinah is a realm of the mill Maya city if I did have money and I got to pick a city that I would do it would not be machinah even though it's near and dear to my heart there's thousands of them right thousands

49:50of sites and what to pick and what gets money add in politics uh difficult and is it that expensive to put a team there well it depends on what you want to do if you want to dig uh like if we wanted to unearth one of those pyramids yeah it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars this this government waste so much money that's nothing guns or butter right now the congress is continuing to talk about that they want government oversight on the national science foundation and their mandate is if this research does not look like it will reasonably produce a profit in the future we're canceling it that's all of archaeology archaeology will never get a profit yeah we set up you know eventually it'll become a park and you get uh you know tickets as people come in but those don't even pay

50:53all the bills for the guards and the conservators and not even the archaeologists and the administrators eena which is the institution that takes care of all the mexican uh archaeological sites one in seven people in eena is an archaeologist most of them are administrators and maintenance folks could pressure be put on the government do you think it would work like if we called our congressman and our senators would that work maybe i mean it has in the past we've gotten you know we've gotten things protected but in terms of the actual money probably not probably not i mean it's just human nature it's and government nature like who gets more funding do you think the NSF or DARPA and and and and panning guns black budget which is bigger you you know the answer to that i do indeed yeah it's sad but and i'm you know a big fan of the humanities and there's a lot of us

51:54obviously you are too i think that you know especially when it comes to archaeology we don't know who we are unless we know our past we don't know what we're capable of until we know what we've really done but that's not everybody's opinion and that's not people that think in a very straight forward capitalist way just see no profit in what we're doing the public really wants it uh but we don't always get what we want that's why a lot of us do it for free you know i've been in this for 30 years now i tell students that want to get into it i say you know honestly i spent a decade paying for it yep i spent a decade breaking even and finally in like my third decade of archaeology i can pay the rent yeah that's that's that really bothers me maybe we'll get some donations from today i hope everybody does i told my wife before we married

52:56i said you know just check i'm in an arrested state of adolescence and i have very low earn potential that that wasn't on your dating profile in the catfisher i just be clear about this i also was not in my best when i met my wife um so after 1998 you got a call from mexico right yeah right just somewhere right around there it was when it dovetails right into what you were saying when that when when the project at pfb gave my sight away i was actually in Honduras and somebody saw a uh advertisement for uh for a field school run by these folks at mochnah because i was there digging the tombs of the founders in kapan with a crew from the ivy leagues and one of them says like didn't you say the sight you saw you found was called mochnah look there's a field school there and i was just gobs back what the heck uh and i went back to my

54:01project there that year i spent like eight or nine months in in latin america and sure enough he had given it away and i would say i allowed to do my survey one more time and then they were all just kind of well you've done such good work there and shouldn't you go further west you can just do the west stuff and we'll take care of this for you i was upset about that yeah i was rude about it um and then i went off to uh polankay to the polankay round table which was an annual conference where all of the big guys went and i had a target i was going to find Richard Hanson because Richard Hanson was running the el mirador project and that was the most exciting project going at the time huge pre-classic city bigger pyramids than even the classic period and he's out in the middle of nowhere there's so much more to find there i was like i'm just gonna do this again i'm gonna go find Richard and i'll tell him that i will be his surveyor for free if i can just use his camp as a base camp to go farther out that was my plan okay and i

55:06did meet Richard there and uh and he kept saying well if you think you have the conez the deal with five meter crocod or alligators then then yeah you can do it and i responded you know well i may not have that but i'm sure i can hire you know somebody named man well with a gun okay sure i'll hire i'll hire alligator killers will will be all right but oh so we were talking about that but then unbeknownst to me the project to polankay was talking they it was a big conference so the heads from mexico city were there and i don't know how much of it is today in mexico but back then the way you got business done is you you you drank with people all night and then there was kind of a plausible deniability if you didn't like what you said last night right you could say i was drunk right i was that that that deals off but in one of these weird deals that i was not there at all uh the head of mexico's archaeology in mexico city was giving our naldo consolas crews the

56:15business like you've been here as the project archaeologist for a decade and you've never even made a map you've never even made a map of this place we don't even know what this place looks like besides the city center and my friend chris pal who's there drinking with them to spoke up he said well my my friend ed's coming and he just found my a city he's really good mapper and the head of in our archaeology drunk on tequila goes larnalo higher that guy and our naldo said okay and that's how it happened like i i came in uh and chris and elfonso merreilles told me they would like to offer you the job to map polankay i was like well that's more like final some respect around here no i didn't think that at all it was gobsmacked like yet polankay's the best site in all of all of mexico and i'm invited that's ridiculous that's what happened so that took some of the sting out of moshnarr it did i immediately had a new plan and a new

57:18dissertation i was about to finish my dissertation on moshnarr but that went to the wayside and i started again in polankay three years in retrospect how did that team do down there in moshnarr did they do okay where you or did they miss them they've done okay um they've done okay i mean they found some cool pottery okay and one of the frustrations and again i'm you know i feel bad about being a jerk about it so i'm trying not to be a jerk about it anymore but uh wait i have to name anybody they spent they spent the first oh i just i just moved a little knob here i had that's just for headphones okay i'm not going to wire up i'm not the mic sir cable out i'm just like fidgety i just turned a knob by accident sorry sorry um so what was i saying they spent the first two or three seasons mapping moshnarr i made a map that was just taping compass and pacing of moshnarr in two weeks and at the end of the three years they were like

58:26wow your map was really good it's like well get on with some other shit would you yeah don't waste your time redoing i think i could have told you that my map was good so i was proud that that professional survey equipment came in and like you know not even a meter of difference between what my map was to their map did they find anything that surprised you uh well they found a carved stila which upset me it did what's it what's it's stila uh a stila is a monolithic stone with a carving of a king or somebody on it so they found one of those i found one well during the project and eight of us spent like four hours with wedged sticks and things slowly anchoring it up and finally flipping it over to find there was nothing on it yep but that one that one really taught me something like it took eight guys four hours to flip

59:26this stone over how the heck did the maya get it here like that was an effort that's it was a real life thing of just how hard that is i've seen some some drawings of what my uh my cities might have looked like do you think they did a lot of jungle clearing i mean i just i've like cities that's just lawn right uh i think a lot of those reconstruction drawings are overblown i do think that they're people we love ornamental plants we love you know we decorate everything we do with these plants and they live in the jungle right so why would they why would they take it all away here's a question that should freak you out a little how old are you actually not the number on your license the number your cells are running on because those are two completely different ages and your regular doctor has zero interest in telling you the real one i started wondering about this after my last annual physical 12 minutes later the verdict everything's normal

1:00:29cool but normal compared to what nobody ever tells you your actual biological age or whether it's aging faster or slower than the year on your birth certificate so i did what i always do i went looking for answers super power runs 150 plus biomarkers twice a year a baseline test and then a retest so you can literally watch your biological age move over time it maps your heart liver thyroid hormones metabolism vitamin and mineral levels even your gut microbiome the place where environmental toxins quietly build up without you knowing it the results are no joke 85% of members uncover early risk factors for disease 79% uncover heart disease risk 49% actually slow their pace of aging that's not a doctor's guess that's data go beyond your annual check up and finally understand what's really happening inside your body for limited time our listeners get $50 off to unlock their health membership at over to superpower dot com slash basement for $50 off your superpower membership

1:01:30and after you sign up they'll ask you how you heard about them tell me sent you there are some studies not many of them i wish there were more that actually have investigated that question there's uh there's a paper called garden cities of the maya that was uh they they scraped the plazas just like like three centimeters worth on the top of the plazas and took samples everywhere specifically for nitrates in the soil and found there were patches in front of temples just like you'd have you know landscaping sure there was landscaping and so these these studies in the the Chennai region know the puke region uh proved that up that there were they were using trees and i know from from my surveys and also from old things in t-call there's a weird uh concentration of fruiting trees that are in association with residential areas

1:02:36and in pelenka there were a lot of like cacao groves that were there associated with them and other there were other trees just growing there were some that were lemons which don't come from the side of the world i don't know who the hell planted those lemons but it was fun to find a lemon grove in the middle of pelenka but that the mide didn't plant those lemons no no but it did show that there was you know yeah agriculturally rich soil there that kind of uh anthropogenic soil that we use so effectively investigating the amazon you think they they did like uh burning to clear yeah i think they they did slashing burn just like they do now they are so like it is so ingrained in the mind of amaya that you must burn your field there was a a moment when we were in pelenka where uh back i guess it was 1998 or 1999 you remember those incredible fires that happened in mexico that had so much smoke that the smoke made it to new york city yep i was at the epicenter of that wow that was there was a lot of smoke a lot of fire it was crazy i remember that wow

1:03:42yeah we were it it's funny i had just given my group of speech we were just really starting the the survey and i was like been a hundred years no one's ever made a map somebody's always stop for some reason and i swear to you there will be no reason we will ever stop we will not stop and the next day we went out and the ruins were on fire and i was like we're not stopping and they were like you're a psycho stop it and we couldn't even like we couldn't the laser goes from the machine bounces off the prism and comes back we couldn't make the laser the laser go anymore the prism go anymore than like 30 feet away or the smoke was too thick and it wouldn't bounce back to the machine in retrospect again i was a young psychotic man i should have just gone home but i just given a speech that nothing would stop me and i was like i don't care if it's on fire came happened but anyway what was i getting with that the the United States was pissed off at Mexico because we they were sending all this fire their way and they blamed it for some stupid

1:04:47reason on the agricultural practice of slashing burnt and so the the law came down to Chiapas that the Maya couldn't burn anymore that they would give them some money to hire extra guys to do cutting but that the law was nobody could burn their fields anymore and the guys that were on the crew they were like honestly scared the head guy Pedro he looked gray he was just like if i can't burn we are dead we are all dead this is the end of Maya civilization we burn that's what we do was that the fire caused by by burning no of course not climate change stuff early on you know it no it was not their fault at all but you know that the fault in Mexico sorry Mexico is is to blame the Indians anything environmental right blame the Indians those weird indigenous people are the ones burning down all our forests i'm glad that you mentioned that

1:05:53that Maya farmer because when people think think of the Maya people we conjure up this image of an extinct civilization but there's millions of Maya people around now speaking 30 languages yeah i i'd say in Guatemala alone there's over 10 million Maya still living there wow even in the United States i mean i don't know exactly what the numbers are but there's more than a million Maya people living here i always tell people you know if if that nice guy at the 7-11 is five foot two yeah he's probably right i want to hear about plaza a that seems to show up all the time and i want to know what's a plaza a machina oh i don't think i ever named the plaza you might not of it's just it showed up in a couple of papers i guess i that's funny i probably Leslie Shaw and Eleanor King and their team named the main plaza i actually the other ones are small

1:06:55so that must be the first plaza with shocking Howard and Bowneys but i did not know that that was part of that must have happened after i gone i was gone but that was the 18 meter pyramid that we found first day that was the south end of what's probably now plaza a and so that after we finished lunch i said okay doing the same thing we're gonna go climb down here somebody's going north somebody's going south and let's just see what we find and everybody spread out and within minutes we knew that it was about a hundred meters across huge plaza and i think it was Jim who yelled ball court found a ball court there and another person yelled pyramid and another person yelled pyramid wow how did you date it i never did i never did i mean well yes i did uh to a certain extent i i guessed right you guess i was ours was not an excavation project it was a survey project so i didn't put a shovel on the ground nevertheless the nature of the pyramid that we found first in the

1:08:01second biggest one then there was a little guy they were long range buildings which in the classic period most of the pyramids are fairly square or just off square at their base and when you get up to the top there's a temple with three to max five doors so classic period is like what 700 to a thousand eighty no it's more like 400 to 800 okay and then we get into this terminal classic period that goes from like 800 to a thousand that's a period where all of a sudden the Maya when they when they abandon those cities in that classic or that uh disappearance of the Maya when they reassembled themselves especially up in Yucatan they start making these buildings that are much longer they're still up on uh pyramidal bases but the building on top now is long and it has more like seven to fourteen doors and we think it's it's indicating a much more uh communal way of governing

1:09:07rather than like the the age of despotic kings is done now we're going to get back to our more Maya communal roots and that these buildings that we call range buildings demonstrate that shared leadership new formation and so the buildings in Masha I could already see like as long as it is and all these doors this is probably terminal classic I read one of your papers on it and it and maybe you can talk about it a little bit is the period where we think maybe the abandon the kings in favor of the councils and I think your paper argued that the councils were there all the time anyway and uh the cargo theory I'd love to hear about that uh those are from my dissertation and I think from Polake yes thank you for reading that you're probably number 83 to everything right all 161 pages that's very nice of you um yeah I do think uh it's reflected in Maya archaeology

1:10:09it's reflected in the pantheon of the Maya gods and it's reflected today in the nature of the Maya that they are a very council kind of people they like a group of people to work out what the community is going to do they've always had councils the the cargo system and uh in the high lands of Chiapas is a system today that the Maya indigenous communities use where wealthy members of the community will take on a position within the government or a leadership but they will pay their own money they will pay for the festivals they will open up their homes they will be there for all of the emergency meetings they will do their part and it's cargo because it's a burden and so they take on that position for whatever the community it'll be like one to three years will be that position during that time they lose a lot of wealth but what they gain is prestige

1:11:10the community now sees them not as some rich guy out of touch with who we are he's a person who was successful in our community and gave back to our community and now that person can go on and they have prestige well at the same time in Rome we've got senators and councils and pre-counciles who are using the position to make money and gather power the Maya art are not like that yeah it happens to all of them all it all it's gonna happen us too so but why were the Maya different why were they so magnanimous oh because is it you know it's human nature we're unsure of when they're pantheon when their religion started but it is interesting to note that it is a pantheon of deities who have various roles and sometimes like they'll have one role in one season and one role in another but there's no clear head of the gods there's no Zeus now pseudosources will tell you that it's a Hanob coup or something like that

1:12:17and there's some basis for that right at contact but in the classic period the gods are a council the gods are a council and so if the gods are a council with no leader should be a council no leader there is no chief Maya god that's interesting does monotheism come in to their culture at some point or at least a more senior deity that's not the deity I was asking about no I don't I don't think so I think there was there there's a there's a there's a god called it's um in the classic period and he's probably kawil I mean post classic and he's kawil in the classic period who's a god of like royal magic and the the connection to their ancestors so oftentimes he's featured more than the other gods but that's because all the texts are written by kings who are identifying with that guy and he's validating their right to rulership but they never say he's the

1:13:23he's the Zeus um are you didn't lend a fine some some texts that were just documentation of administration things like that I just want to actually what I'm getting at is I just want to know what a Tuesday is like if you're a Maya at the height of the civilization you wake up in the morning what take us through the day I think that before the wars really took on that people were living a very safe secure and abundant life and like if we take polankay as the example you know I I'm at 2000 buildings there a lot of them are houses I think that those people they're in these little courtyard groups so I think like an extended family lived in a courtyard group and they got up and they cooked together I've lived with Maya families before in modern times that work much the same way a little compound and everybody at night and in the morning meets in

1:14:25the kitchen area and talks about things but then they would probably some of them would have craft industries like right there so you know mom and the daughters get to be weaving and the boys would be making pottery that they would then once a week they would go to polankay's market on a typical Tuesday they might say you know even if they're not going to sell stuff there they might go there they might you know go get some some food from their favorite restaurant or go get a haircut I mean there were there were public places the where the where polankay's parking lot is right now it's there because it's the closest place next to the ruins next to the temples in the middle that had no buildings polankay is very very dense and yet there was a parking lot size place right next to like maybe a hundred meters from the the palace that had to be the market so I think a lot of people gathered in there and I think they felt very safe because they had the

1:15:28you know the religious authority of their king who had the favor of the gods but they were also just a big huge area producing huge amounts of food in the case of polankay it was up on a terrace so there were some hundred meters above the plains so they could see people coming they had the mountain at their back I think they felt great about things until powerful people screwed up started fighting each other I think I think it was um the Maya were the first to have pressurized water there wasn't that discovered I doubt we could boast they were the first I mean I imagine somebody over there in the you know the Indus Valley or something or I just mean an in on on this side hmm they certainly did have pressurized water uh polankay was incredible like that they had six rivers running through the the city that came from the mountain springs and down to

1:16:28the plains to to the big river so they had moving water already which was essential but then they would put these pipes into the river especially the ones going up into the palace and we found some of those pipes and we can see that as they go up to toilets in the palace they constrict in size so it's big and then it gets it constricts and that's just a simple way to use gravity and pressure to push it up yes a simple I mean you know a lot of our most profound engineering is based on very simple things sure it's that's the foundation and this is one of those things how to make water pressure but the Maya figured it out how did the cities interact with each other did each one have a king or was there a hierarchy there was a hierarchy there was a kind of tiered

1:17:31system probably not unlike the feudal system in Europe where there were major cities that had kings and then they would have a kingdom like polankay for example the city center where the kings lived that was actually named lockham ha big water water gift and then the kingdom of polankay was called baknaul skull place or bone place of bones which probably meant ancestors not creepy stuff like I think it does but within the city within the kingdom of baknaul we know of at least five cities that were smaller and had kings or let me say mayors they a king is in a how a mayor of a little or town is a sahal and so they'd name themselves sahal they would have hyperglyphic panels and temples but the temples would instead name instead of naming that sahal or showing him they

1:18:33show the king of polankay so we could really see that there was a kingdom with subsidiary lords and then those kingdoms would abut each other some of them would intermarry and become a naven bigger nice kingdom right some of them would fight and so there was they were like the Greeks independent city states who had alliances and enemies it's a shame we don't know more about that because I will plug a colleague of mine's book the duke came out David Stewart's book the four heavens that just came out Dave's done an amazing job of really cross analyzing the texts and the genealogies of these cities and he's finding some amazing stuff that they they're really you know how europe got to that point where every king was related to every other king you know like really got to be weird and sensuous the the mya were doing the same thing they were they

1:19:35were intermarrying to each other and you could see where as time went on there was really just one or two families that were the royals for all of the cities and it's you know it sounds creepy to us and it's sensuous but they were really just trying to form alliances mm-hmm I'd love to read the Peloponnesian war version of what was going on down there I you know me too and I think it's amazing that we're coming up with it it is so beautiful to me that it was only the 1970s that we broke the code of mya hyperglyphic but now every day their stories and their words are coming back to us just like the Greeks it's a day that probably Edward Thompson thought would never come but here we are and every time we come up with a new text we now have a team of experts I mean within two days we've got the translation and we know what's happening it like oh this guy is the

1:20:37brother-in-law of that guy and it's all coming forward and it's it's a beautiful thing to see but it's not fully compiled yet right not compiled yet and we have so many you know barriers we have the propaganda thing we have them they're spread out across five countries we've got the money that's always that's always trouble you know you find a beautiful panel full of hyperglyphs and carvings of a king but that suckers two tons and it's out in the middle of the jungle right what are you gonna do about that and if you don't protect it looters will come with chain sauce and and destroy it so there's there's a scary thing about finding a beautiful piece of art right so you can't just grab a couple of photos and call it done you've got to protect that yeah I like years ago when I was a student in Copan before I went back to Boschna I went into Guatemala and I had a friend who told me where Steve Houston's project

1:21:44house was but they hide those things because they have the ceramics and all that stuff in the house and looters will come and beat you up so in Antigua Guatemala I'm walking down the street there's a white guy walking with a box and I just you know took a chance like one of the chances I mean everybody else is a my around here I bet you that Steve Houston so I went up and I was like are you Steve Houston and he looked scared because he had a box with a beautiful painted ceramic in it and he was trying to sneak his ass from his house to the lab without getting known and here's this guy meeting him in the street it freaked him out and that's I mean he was right I mean gosh and by a looter is the next thing gonna be a punch in your face and take that box out of your hand I didn't consider looters when we talk about those temples being empty maybe they weren't you know how you find empty pyramids in Egypt but they weren't empty they were just robbed there's a lot

1:22:47of things that got robbed in antiquity for sure and destroyed I mean after the days of any classic culture then you know the rough next move in yep we every Maya city has clear evidence of squatters like the the plazas will have crappy little just post holes where we know somebody just put a a thatch and pull house up but they they were living in there and they were taking stuff they're people just like us they were probably looking for antiques um your your podcast is super fun what what's the name of it so people can find your podcast uh archio ed archio ed that's that I always come up with these names that nobody can spell nobody can find it because I like how do you spell archio I do this to myself all the time I thought it was clever but well it's fun because if you want to learn more about specific like you'll be on a going a podcast and tell four-minute story but if we go to your podcast you could be ten you could do ten episodes on certain things

1:23:52I do that and I like to think of the podcast as my most casual thing I am really just talking off the cuff honestly like you and I are doing right now my youtube channel is where I put in you know some more professionally and polished things history information that people could use but the podcast is me just talking crap about my adventures um I love the the descriptions sound like a like a pulp novel um forest fires mangoes and skinny dipping more snakes more temples and a robbery at gunpoint I got by with a little help from my friends what happened at gunpoint yeah in polankay there were there were two like 20 something boys who were just walking there's a there's a myriad of trails out in the woods around polankay so you can get to it from any direction and the local folks really know those trails I got to know them but there were two boys it was me in this this English traveler named Elizabeth Koran who really just like she was just a traveler

1:24:58and I needed somebody for my project people had fallen through and for I bought her a pair of boots and she worked with me for a month but we were we were in some little group drawing and I had my machete boys and the expensive machine thank goodness closer to the parking lot I was having them cut some things we do tomorrow but Elizabeth and I are drawing and measuring things and I see these two boys moving fast through the woods and I was like oh Elizabeth get up those guys looked like they were trouble and they sure enough worth I mean I didn't even move three steps before they turned back around came into the little group we were in and one of them pulled out of 45 and just walked right up he had it pointed at me until it was on my forehead that's like oh what did he want money money it was a funny exchange they they were boys they were trying they were playing good cop bad cop the one with the gun was obviously bad cop I he yelled some things at me I said I

1:25:59don't speak Spanish hit me in the head with the gun he like just to lift me a couple of times that I was like listen you got to talk slow become and then I'll understand what you want in my bad Spanish at the time and it turned out they you know they wanted our money like sure like here's here's my money here's things in my bag they at one point he tried to take Elizabeth's ring off oh no and Elizabeth said in her broken Spanish no it's a gift for my mother don't take my ring and and good cop was like hey it's from her mom put it back and that's what I knew we were gonna die like yeah this guy's caring about Elizabeth's mom we're okay and so in the end of it they they they took my money which was I was a Friday so I had my huge amount of money in my pocket to pay my boys which was both of them got $35 a week I was gonna have what they disappointed yeah he got like 70 bucks off me and and not only that he took it all and then good cop

1:27:05count it any he gets a 50 pay so bill any hands it back to me it's like he said about a supa ciencia yeah that's for your patience like oh well this has been nice thanks guys it's some drop me again some time so it wasn't quite as dangerous as you'd think it was it wasn't like the real is getting me in the woods it was boys with a gun that they should not have yeah I mean uh you said I woke up every morning thinking I will be hurt today somehow yeah so besides gunpoint what else oh yeah what are the dangers that the gunpoint was unexpected yes yes that was not that was not one of the dangers the dangers are just like you know twist in your ankle and rocks or bugs or snakes or lots everything in the jungle has thorns on it so and a lot of it is like trigger loaded so you could cut with a machete here on a vine

1:28:05and it unravels one over here which comes hits you in the neck and now you've got a bunch of spines in your neck and that was the sort of thing every day we would get hurt just going through the jungle that's just how it was you would come out bloody it's funny people think oh it's so hot there you should dress in shorts and a t-shirt no way me and the Maya had full clothes on and those clothes would get ripped I mean my my jeans got ripped and you just get hurt all the time uh there was one that the boys that Maya just laughed at me forever about where uh again it was wasps and we we stirred up some wasps we all spread out but one of them got in my ear oh no and then I tried to pull it out of my ear but I just dug it way in my ear and it was like I was just like dancing around the jungle freaking out like uh uh uh try to get it out and like I get a stick and put it in my ear like they were just rolling on the ground going look at that idiot gringo he's really dying over there how did you get it out just smashed it

1:29:11I eventually just smashed it until it stopped buzzing and then back at at home I showered and just got a bunch of water in my ear until I saw the the wasp on the shower floor like ah that's done and just bugs everywhere my uh but I had my first wife at the time was there sometimes to visit but she didn't like it at all at to a point like when I'd come home she'd say like you've got I I got ticks and I gave them to my dog he gave you a dog tick I gave my dog ticks and she would be like that's it they'll go into the bathroom and and strip I'm not letting you in the house until I know that you're not covered in ticks but you might have been it I might have been didn't you have a student that had a bunch of botflies in her hair oh yeah I in I've covered for Belize I've covered botflies can you tell us about how those work

1:30:12oh god they're so gross oh yeah painful um some other like mosquitoes carry their eggs and they just find animals mostly you know but humans if they want them and they insert the egg into a person and then that grows into a worm yeah and the worm it's got like pinchers in the front where it just hangs on so you don't uh as it grows it'll grow for about six weeks and then it's around its body yeah and then it and then it flies out of you right if it goes to term you know for the normal like you know peckery it's on six weeks it's on its way but humans you know we'd squeeze them once they get big enough you can squeeze where they are because they've always got a little air hole right there and the tail will come out and flashed we did we had a again Jim Eckhart had one in his arm

1:31:16and there was a reporter from Toledo with us who came out to my weird little bar in the in the here bar in the street in the in on the dirt road and we were doing this thing not for their sake it was just something we did occasionally that we referred to as juicing Jim we would take a like snake bite extractor kit and put it over his uh his bot fly and then pump so that it would pull it up and the tail would come out and flash and everybody goes awww how gross and then it would stop and it sucked back in and you know Jim just go to sleep that's the way it was but this one girl I think that uh nice shampoo attracts them because the girls got it in their hair more than anybody and I was a dirty person I never got one here it's a good two gross I was too gross for even bot flies that's a statement isn't it? what did she do did she let them grow for six weeks?

1:32:19well I mean you couldn't even get to them right unless you shaved her head and she had this beautiful long hair so I mean she never came back to the field but I would see her at night sitting alone in the in the cafeteria just drinking vodka she's so sourd on it so badly and there was a girl that had one in her hair and didn't know it and we went back to UT Austin and in the middle of class in the middle of anthropology class a bot fly flew out of her hair it's like oh god was that a bot fly? oh god she didn't know it she didn't know it was there the whole time no gross you know I did get a bot fly I got one in my arm and unlike the other guys I asked I like to ask the Maya things they always know what to do sure and some some uncle of one of the rangers told me he said it's a simple solution all you got to do take some tobacco from a cigarette

1:33:23get it wet on your tongue and then rub it into the the air hole that makes it drunk and then you can pull it out and I did it I rubbed the tobacco on it and I squeezed and when the tail came out I pulled it all the way out without it if you try to pull it out it'll break off yeah and then you're infected for sure right but I was able to pull one out with with tobacco it gets drunk yeah some some old Maya uncle told me it'll make him drunk and he'll release and you can pull it out and he was right I gotta ask the locals you always ask the locals they they know and they know where all the ruins are too yeah I was gonna ask you about that um you say that whenever you discover ruins it's there's a good chance the local people kind of already knew they were there was that truth mash-knife so look something quiet happened this week that most people missed

1:34:24a former CFTC chair the guy who used to regulate derivatives went on record and what he said should stop be cold congress banned a central bank digital currency the feds were it wasn't building one this guy said quote that does not mean we're not looking at how to create one project agora look it up meaning soon every account you own becomes a switch somebody else controls and they've been telling you why they're gonna want to flip it national debt just crossed 40 trillion dollars interest alone over a trillion a year bigger than Medicare and Medicaid combined there's one way out of that math and you already know what it is China's central bank has bought gold 21 months in a row jf morgan is telling clients gold hit six thousand dollars by year end this isn't a prediction anymore it's already happening that's why I trust golden crest metals physical golden silver you hold in your hand it can't be hacked can't be printed can't be turned off go to y files lovesgold calm and get the free 2026 info kit or text files to six three eight two five seven y files loves

1:35:29gold calm or text files to six three eight two five seven because when they click switch I was gonna won't cut it uh no that was a strange one and the the rangers were very surprised because the other sites and program for police have a lot of looters trenches and they had some idea of them but the when I brought the rangers to moshna they were all like nice job of exploring kid yeah none of us knew this was here at all and as proof there are no looters trenches at moshna I really did find one but not even the looters got to have I gotten to it yet I'm unaware hopefully not it's so far away from any community that you'd really it's unlikely because there's ruins right in their backyard right why would they go five kilometers into the jungle off of the nearest dirt road it's gonna take a while to get to that one how many cities could be there do you think in the maya area gosh I

1:36:34mean conservatively hundreds conservatively I mean you know some let the answer to that question depends on your definition of city which is the struggle and you know archaeology doesn't have a grand poo bar that tells us what the numbers are true you know I would I I just recently in on my youtube kind of throughout there like you know a hundred people is a village a thousand people is the city or a town yeah over a thousand people you're getting into city range yeah and so if we if that totally arbitrary out of my mouth assessment is right then the number is thousands wow that would if we're talking about a city you know if we we we benchmark it of you know it's got to have at least five thousand people then I'd put it down into the hundreds but still huge area about a year ago you said um lie dark not much was happening was mostly just for clicks I think what are you for

1:37:39but recently you said there has been some developments and I know they're really have been and Luke Luke was here talking about some cool stuff with the light art you know Luke is has has charm just way into he has some friends he's a charming fella that have a lot of this light art data and they've shared it with Luke and Luke with his eyes and experience has been using it to find pyramids here in the United States and a lot of them he's not the first guy to do it but Luke's been finding some amazing stuff and I'm actually looking forward to one of these days Luke is going to invite me to to go take a look at some of these things a lot of them are on private land it's a trick you know you don't just row up to them some you'll get shot around the middle of Alabama so we got to we got to do some some polyticking which that's where Luke needs me because I'm I'm good at talking good old boy if if yeah I had one one light art plan it it was funded wherever you send it yeah just get one

1:38:48mm just one just one like I gotta know what's there mm I'll give you a random new answer to okay I love it Cambodia Cambodia Cambodia there are you know you know Ankur what everybody knows you know the city of Ankur but there are huge cities out there that was the capital of an empire of millions of people I mean heck just Ankur had almost a million people right and so there are cities out there all over the place I've been told about them multiple times and I would love to know where they are I think Cambodia especially Cambodia is such a poor country there's besides again and again light art in Ankur we need to go out into the jungle there years and years ago when I was being doing the survey in in the Maya area a grand old man of archaeology Michael Coe he was from Yale at very very decorated career but Coe calls me for some reason he was

1:39:57also over in Cambodia doing things and he had returned there late in life and he said Ed you've got to get over there and do the surveys that you're doing in the Maya world because the field over there is dominated by just French people and Australian people and we need an American presence up there he was very you know patriotic in that regard but I was like Mike I mean aren't all of those places full of land mines still which they are they are that poor Cambodia is just full of landmines and people you know children with one leg it just sucks yeah and it's such a process there they are they estimate they have taken like 30% of the landmines out and there's 70% of them still out there waiting to kill a child don't get me started so terrible don't get me started so terrible but I was like Mike what about all the landmines he was like don't worry about it they've trained chickens who go ahead of you and they pick the landmines I was like I'm not gonna just have a

1:41:03just birch chickens birch chickens the enemy I was like my my wife doesn't even want me to be in Central America I think Cambodia is gonna be a hard sell Mike you won't kill a fear to land snake unless you have to you're not gonna harm a chicken oh god wouldn't that be just bizarre if it's weird like I need more chicken more chicken it's had a good day blew up 20 chickens how bizarre but the point that I was long windedly getting to was that oh we have known for a long time that there are a hell of a lot more anchors out there in Cambodia could it be as dense as as as my I think it could I think it could I mean just the ones we know and they've cleared the landmines there it's insane how many I bring people out there to Cambodia which is lovely the Buddhists are there I mean anybody who who's worried about going over there don't be the people there are so sweet I tell my people like please don't get angry you're gonna freak people out these are like the most passive nice people you'll ever meet in your life and anchor rod I think has been active

1:42:04and still active for a thousand years it's a living temple yes it's so neat I unlike the Maya area the people walk into those temples and it's their same religion still in fact every one of the temples in anchor have nuns and monks that are attending each one of them with their incense and they sit in there all day long there's a there's a staff of you know there must be three four hundred monks and and nuns who were just out there maintenanceing the temples of their current religion which I think is beautiful I do too it's continuity yeah is there a library there uh you mean like modern library no no I mean like how far back in history with monks scribbling the history like are the scroll stash somewhere there I don't know it's a jungle environment so I think a lot of the scrolls have gone away but they were scrolls and they do know like every one of those big complexes like anchor watt for example you if you picture it in your mind you've got that

1:43:06long cause way yeah that goes to the big temples right the bivis midway along that causeway are two big buildings that they refer to as libraries and that is a standard formation there must be you know a dozen different things within the city of anchor that have the moat the causeway the big temples and all along the causeway midway are the uh are the libraries that held all the scrolls and they have carvings on the wall still and they say I'm fascinated because they have a astronomical component that I haven't figured out yet maybe it doesn't maybe I'm not going to but they say that they are the they're a pair of libraries because one is to the waning moon and one is to the waxing moon very interesting so I have spent hours standing on those causeways like if it's here does it work what do my compass say here but oh maybe here I'll stand next to the naga no not that one I don't know I'm still trying to figure out why the heck they are called the temple the libraries

1:44:07of the laning and the waxing moon but must be astronomy it must be and we're going to talk we're going to talk astronomy math a little bit later if you don't mind because I'm fascinated by it my favorite subjects thank for asking really archaeo astronomy archaeo astronomy I love that me too it's kind of off topic but it just got me thinking about nomadal and how nobody really knows what that was you have any thoughts on that I don't have a whole lot of a study of that particular area I've been asked for I think once I might take that that show the proof is out there yeah they love to give me things that I don't know about to study and and at give my opinion so nomadal is very cool I I don't find it particularly mysterious though I mean they're in a regular time period I think the most mysterious thing is their lack of contact with the other major civilizations around them when huge temples are being built in Java and in Cambodia and Vietnam why are they so

1:45:11isolated they they are major constructions but not much evidence of them contacting or being dominated by those guys or China that was coming through at the same time yet strange because they have irrigation they have plumbing all that they had to get that knowledge somewhere so they must have communicated they must have but they I mean they seem isolationist yes they seem like intentionally isolated they're they're I hope I'm not thinking of the wrong site but the way they build their their buildings out of that columnar basalt that's a place look like a lot a lot cabin out of yeah igneous rocks so fascinating and I think that it's island is one of these weird places where volcanic lava went through water and cooled super fast into those hexagonal shaped columns yep and so I've never actually seen have you seen where the quarry is on that island

1:46:17nope it must be a huge quarry full of those because you can see it in the pictures they're not just columns like the Olmeck ones are are columns right they're just like cylinders yes but you can see the hexagonal patterns on the the logs in non-Madal so somewhere on that island is a quarry that that has those hexagonal things they you know there's one in there's one in northern Ireland there's there's a couple of them around the world where this geologically it's just flowing lava hitting water and super fast cooling into these cool hexagonal shapes yeah let's talk about Easter Island a little bit all right love those guys too yeah you're I love what you did there so you flew fixed wing drones over Easter Island nine day wind nine days right yep we just got nine days in we're dying to get back there well what I thought was kind of funny is in nine days you got you covered more

1:47:24area than you'd spent like 25 years with the machete yeah it's true gosh it's so you know they they just did lightar of polenta my map held up thank god they did find some pyramid they found a pyramid that I didn't see you your maps always seem to hold up I you know I'm I'm anal I'm an anal attentive person I if I'm gonna do something I'm gonna do it right into the best of my ability and yeah sort of is not good enough for me well Easter Island was I think you were talking about how some some families didn't even know what land they had anymore what was the problem there it's a trick it's I mean it's a crisis for the entire community of the you know the remaining Rappanui people which I think maybe this year they're climbing to 6000 people which is a ridiculously small amount yeah for the descendants that made those incredible statues the tragedies upon tragedies that happened to this community yeah such a such a human resilient story

1:48:27that they even still exist at its height was about what 30,000 I think that's what they say 20 30,000 and the island is tiny I mean at the you can't get distance is 12 miles you can't find it good luck finding it on Google Earth you need to know exactly where it is it's nowhere such a spec yeah and it's such an interesting thing but they we do know that they had I think it's like nine to 12 clans and that those clans each had their own territory and we can see it from the ahus and the moai where where the centers of those territories are what we don't know is where their borders are and neither do the Rappanui and they're not very they fight each other about it there's a few families of those 6000 they have names that are connected to those clans and they want to know where their ancestral land is a lot of them have their own opinions

1:49:27I know where that land is but they they don't know and that's one that's that's my goal in the mapping project or one of my goals I may fail in it I mean I'm trying to find a way to see if we do a settlement pattern survey map can we find things that mark the borders from one clan to another now geez I hope I don't start like some crazy clan war if that happens but there's it's funny the the island works just like it used to there in the ancient past we know there was a head clan the miru clan and they had the best land and the biggest land and then there were a number of scrappy clans same things happening on Rappanui today just the the the the the rich family are the Rappos okay and families like the pakarottis they don't they're they're they have their own popularity but they're not as rich as the Rappos and the people get pissed at the Rappos did you

1:50:30did you find like borders did you help solony of that no no no in fact I got to get back there because the the thing that really tripped me up is that I couldn't find the houses I found the rich houses near the plazas they're called harry panengas and they look like boats and they're built a stone but where are all the houses that everybody else was living in I find the stone chicken coops and I find the stone garden areas called manifies or sometimes they're spread out gardens where the houses I don't I did not know how to find them then I think now I do I looked back into the oldest records I read everything I could read and there was one smart guy that was a surveyor serving the land where the airport is now in the 1970s and he figured out a connection between those harry panengas that are the boat ones they have these patios of rounded stones called poro

1:51:40and poro are like good luck good mana for your house every house should have one what he was finding was that they were building perishable houses but still had the circular stone harry panengas and those are like under the grass so now I got to go back and walk that land find a couple of these and then use my my photogrammetry to say okay that's what that's where it is let's zoom in let's look at it what are the signatures once I know that then I can go to the rest of the photogrammetry and find them lighter lighter can't find these huh I don't think so because it's it's it's volcanic rock on volcanic rock when it and they're so low I mean both lighter is incredible it can find things that are like in a less than a meter but these are boulders about like river cobbles or stone the beach cobbles like this big and they've dug into

1:52:42the earth you know rains have just pushed them into the earth so they're like only this much out of the earth if they are so light are not going to find them for us got to do it on the ground got to do it on the ground luckily it's a tiny little patch of thing I swear if they just I I'm waiting to be invited back I am doing it for the rapinoe they are very distrusting of archaeologists from the mainland and there's been a couple of archaeologists from the United States who have rubbed them the wrong way I went out with the the director of Mao Hanuah which is their cultural association that now protects the ruins or you know the places of their ancestors and we we had some beers and he talked pretty openly about a couple of people who who he does not want to invite back on the island anymore but well you're generous and you gave them the data didn't you no charge of I gave him all the data he was funny in that conversation because we did that in July of 2019

1:53:45okay and then COVID hit oh that's right and and the island went into lockdown for four years nobody got on that island and in the interim that crazy politics I was talking about that are modern a bunch of people just whooped some rapoo people and the chief archaeologist was a rapoo and a lot of his staff were rapos and so when this all brought went down they ransacked the the archaeological office and all of the computers that had all of the GIS data and everything that I had given them was taken why why well because it's grew the rapos that's why that's it just vandalists like like you guys were misrunning it we're we're taking over none of your stuff you don't get it back but then he did recover one of the computers okay from I mean it's a tiny

1:54:46island I don't know who where they were hiding we know in this somebody's chicken coop or something but uh but he said we found one of the computers and we fired it up and it had your map on it but it didn't have your name or anything and we were like who the heck made this map this is a map of all of the the settlement stuff that nobody's ever done he said and then the computer crashed and we lost it and that was like six months ago no no no I realized that was you and at the time I was like well I mean this is great but something else political has happened and I'm just waiting I I'm relentlessly sending them requests and various things but I don't want to be too much of a pushy American so yeah oh my guys who are really the guys who make the map but Jeff uh Kreshik is is my guy and he is ready to go and ready to volunteer and use his stuff in his skills

1:55:48he's frustrated with me he he really wishes I would win the day me too well yeah I got it you know you kind of approach these things with respect though I can't just like demand do you know who I am I'm an important archaeologist you little rep who people should let me in here that's not how I roll so I mean I've got to be invited this has got to be the reponoee trusting me and inviting me and trust in these communities is a long road and you never get that way being pushy now it feels like there's got to be so much more than than than my heads right there's got it there's got to be more stuff there oh I mean there's there's the communities there's the people there's there's caves full of petroglyphs there's there's so much beautiful to focus on there's their astronomy they have astronomy towers there's their prowess as sailors someone how the heck did they get there right that's you know the the cattamaran that they made were technologically

1:56:52amazing inventions as the as humans progressed out into the Pacific and the South Pacific there was a technology point that they could not cross with their votes it can for a thousand years they were at one point and they couldn't go any farther and then an invention and an improvement on the size and functioning of cattamaran allowed them to get to Hawaii and to to Easter Island so I mean just that alone just their their prowess is sailors yeah you look at the map and it's just like how did they anyone even do this my phone rang last week and the caller ID said it was my bank area could match everything look right a calm voice said there was suspicious activity on my account and needed to verify my card number classic move 10 years ago I might have fallen for it instead I hung up and called the number on the back of my card it wasn't fake call obviously but it wasn't just got instinct that maybe suspicious cover on it ping-bait

1:57:56two days earlier that my info showed up in a breach that's probably where they got enough of my bio to sound legit in first place cover on isn't just a monitoring app though it's a protection service it watches the dark web and your accounts for exposure and if something does slip through anyway it actually covers the damage up to two million dollars for identity theft recovery up to one hundred thousand dollars if you lose money to a scam outright Americans lost nearly sixteen billion dollars to fraud last year alone this is exactly the gap it's built to close set up is dead simple connect your accounts get real-time alerts cover on handles the rest in the background I've got it running on my phone right now one scam can cost you everything protect yourself now the first 100 users get 20% off with code the y-files at coveron.com slash the y-files that's coveron.com slash the y-files link in the description and they have their whole oral tradition you know they know they they will tell you exactly how it happened to you it was uh what's his name their

1:59:02first king hotu matua is the first king who's who's priests had a vision that there was a new land that they could get to and he believed them enough to send a crew in these new boats out and it took them 30 days to get there they came back they brought people they landed on a beach uh that everybody knows anakana beach is where hotu matua landed and he had nine sons who established the clans and they have so much oral tradition that they're very humble about they always they always qualify like according to oral tradition but i mean like who's who are these moai we know who the moai is the the rapinoe can say in certain moai that sancester such and such he was famous for this he protected this clan and and we made him a moai that's i never considered that that every one

2:00:03of those statues has a story they're a person and when you put the eyes in their spirit can come through but when the eyes come out they're just a rock again okay that's what they tell me i mean right you know i i spend a lot of time listening to indigenous people not just because it's fascinating but you know i believe yeah that they know better than me they do they do um let's say quick break and come back and talk about math and the stars all right before we get into to math and stuff the last page of your dissertation page 161 you mentioned um and you thank your dog Loki and your cat Vlad did is that Vlad the appaler it was Vlad the impaler he was a black cat whose whose fangs were so long even when his mouth was closed you could see them hanging out and so so he earned it Vlad yeah i thought it was funny it came out of nowhere oh that's i totally forgot

2:01:03that so many different thank my dog they must we did um so when you were talking to Sean you said you could spend an hour on command on the command temples yeah i i don't know if we need to do an hour but i'd like to to hear more about them like starting with the hole in the roof the the oculus i think they're called yeah i had not heard that term but yes they it is a viewing point out the top of it yeah yeah i went there looking for archaeo astronomy because we had found so much evidence in the Maya area of this one particular phenomena called zenith passage that we don't get up here in the states if you're not in the tropics zenith passage does not occur so zenith passage passages so that it's simply it's the day that the sun goes directly over your head yeah and at noon you cast no shadow noticeable and they'll absolutely yep only happens around 15

2:02:07degrees or so latitude uh well it happens between 23 and a half north and 23 and a half south it is what defines the tropics you know the the concept of the tropics was around in antiquity yeah india knew it very well they put their astronomical capital right at 23 and a half degrees and my fairly solid i think theory is that they were judging it by zenith passage but what's fascinating about zenith passage is that it's latitude dependent it happens at different days depending on your latitude summer solstice june 21st everywhere on the planet even in the southern hemisphere it's winter solstice but it's still june 21st zenith passage changes by your latitude at 23 and a half degrees it is summer solstice right it's just one day right and you go farther north

2:03:07you'll always have a shadow all year long but south of 23 and a half degrees then you start the days start dividing you get two zeniths a year you go down like 20 miles all of a sudden using it the passages are five days apart you go further they're 10 20 and it gets to be months until the until the zero line until the equator and then it reverses towards 23 and a half but this gives you a fascinating insight into the communications between astronomers because you know in the my world we could clearly see the guys at chichinetsa knew that their zenith was different than the guys in kopan honduras and they would talk about it and they would sometimes align their buildings to not their zenith passage but somebody else has seen the passage why would they do that honoring geographically important places especially kopan

2:04:10there's a weird thing that happens at that latitude and across the my world at that latitude it's like 15.5 degrees I think that's what you were saying where the the year is divided by the zenith passages into 260 days and 105 days 365 total yeah but the my have this sacred calendar of 260 days so they all recognized that at that latitude their sacred calendar was defined by the two zenith passages north and south it was not so we see places perhaps even teotival con in their weird orientation of all the buildings it's just a fact that they're actually that orientation sees the setting sun rising and setting sun at the zenith passage day of kopan it's a theory that's interesting but so does edsnah there's a number of places I I found one in chichinetsa and the

2:05:12observatory there there's a window that points out it doesn't point at their zenith it points at the one down there at 15.5 could you so all this information we kind of ran out of ways to understand zenith passage right kind of innocently asked the question well let's look at what other ancient civilizations thought about zenith passage and I quickly discovered that most of the ancient civilizations that we consider the big ones are outside of the tropics so they never did that it was not a question it wasn't a tool in the astronomers kit right but Cambodia is at the same latitude as the Maya so I went over there thinking well let's see if we can find something not knowing anything and those holes in the roof yeah ours is zenith tubes and they that one hole on zenith day a beam of light like indiana jones just comes down and illuminates the central temple inside oh I've say I've documented it so many times now and the trick was that the first couple

2:06:18of times we went there I clearly showed that it would function like that that's not good enough to say that's why they did it they could have had a hole in a roof for all sorts of reasons sure maybe they want the rain to come in right I don't know you know there's a lot of reasons and all the Khmer temples are very cardinal direction oriented they're north-south east-west maybe a degree off in certain places but they're cardinal direction people so my trick of finding orientations in the Maya world was not working in not working okay in the Cambodian world but I found a site called cocair yes which somebody else a guy named uh uh iglio I think is his name I totally slaughtered that name sorry buddy um but he's an Italian astronomer who saw it performing but he saw it on paper that the orientation of cocair looks like it's totally looking at the day that the sun rises

2:07:20and seen its passage this a little counterintuitive like if you're looking at the day that it's straight up that's not it's not but all these ancient cultures are horizon based astronomers they make everything fit in by looking at the rising and settings so even though the day was the day with no shadow they would fit it into their astronomy by looking at when the sun where the sun rose that day and this complex only one complex in cocair is oriented to their day of zenith passage the rest of its cardinal directions but there's this weird place in the middle that they on purpose tweet and so I went down there and there's a huge pyramid there looking over a complex and I was able to record that the sun is indeed on zenith passage going right there it goes right over a temple that at noon the the beam comes down wow so what is it about cocair that it wasn't a temple in that community uh it's a big complex within that larger community and it's a it's a strange place it's the

2:08:25temporary capital of the fourth king of the comar civilization the first three kings are at anchor the fifth king returns to anchor but for some reason this king went out and made his own capital and he oriented one of the sections to look at zenith passage and I think that is the smoking gun that it is intentional I can link the holes in the roofs which they used to have a cap stone when the capstone was on there and the hole went through it the hole was only like you know six inches tops and that would concentrate the light in to make such a tight beam and it would only happen on those days of zenith even a day off it wouldn't have nothing so but they all the capstones have been knocked off because there was a jewel box up in the roof with a hole in it there's a there's a square box with a hole in it so the light can still come through there's also ones jewel boxes underneath the altars inside the pyramid actual jewels actual jewels so that they're

2:09:30they've done magic with the light then through well I I'm under about that like how would that function did that I mean if it shot a rainbow of light in there that would be fantastic that would be fantastic I don't I've tried to piece out how that would actually happen at the moment I don't I don't see that happening but gosh what a missed opportunity yeah but Hindu temples today they do they bury different kinds of precious gems in the foundations of the buildings it's just part of their establishment of a holy place so it's still happening today but the so there's jewel boxes underneath the altars inside those bk b hive looking temples there's a hole in the top jewel box with a hole in it and then it comes down and it hits exactly on the top of the linga which acts like a little nomen inside the temple because it has no shadow when the light comes down and then underneath the altar is another jewel box but those jewel boxes don't have the hole

2:10:34the hole is very intentional yes and unfortunately the looters knew that these things were here so they climb up on the top they knock the the capstone off and they get the jewel box and now they're littered around the temples I always find the the knocked off capstone and sometimes the jewel box what kind of jewels do they use? I think it sounds like emerald and rubies you know the stuff that you'd find in in India typically but different color ones sapphire sapphire is a big one in in Cambodia they have a lot of sapphire so blue green red like rainbow stuff yeah it would be even if it's just quartz it would be beautiful so now when they've knocked the capstones off now the hole in the top of the roof is like this big right so the things I'm recording happen a couple of days and like the light will come in this way one day and that way the other day but on the actual day it still comes directly down onto the linga yani complex and the the linga is is a phallus it's a it's a it's a

2:11:41phallic symbol but it points straight up so it's like a little nomen inside the temple when the light comes down at noon it casts no shadow and the French were so interested in the architecture that they never really thought about the astronomy right and so this astronomy is is there and clear when I first came in there were priests and and nuns who would attend these these uh shrines deep inside let the bayon as this huge one with 52 towers like that so the the light show inside is incredible but I go deep inside and talk to a nun be like are you ever sitting in here in this dark place and all of a sudden the whole chamber lights up it's like yeah that happens sometimes that's why you know it's gonna happen in 15 minutes and did you do that what and I see yeah I'll come back we'll talk about it here like I was running around there and I came back into this nun who's lived her whole life in there and she's standing there looking like

2:12:44just standing there in the light going who the hell are you right why did you know that like a time traveler that one of the last times I went over there it was so cute I love I mean I'm so honored that I've affected the way people are seeing these things I came into that same temple complex with the 52 different ones the bayon in anchor tom and it's about to happen again I've got a little group where you know it's so funny I've got 10 minutes twice a year to record this that's right and I don't know which one's gonna work and which one's not so every time I go I say I spread out everybody you take that tower you take that tower you take that tower let's see what happens because we've only got 10 minutes I can't run to all of them so I'm running around placing people in places and this little kid comes up and he's like do you want to see the coolest thing that could happen here it happens every day but at noon I can take a special picture of you with a beam of light coming down inside the temple and I did not tell this kid who I was at all I was like

2:13:49all right kid I'm having a journey and he had a cool little thing that he could do he took my iPhone and he like had just the right angle where somebody could stand there with the beam of light coming down and I was like when does this how did you know this would happen he was like oh it happens every day which was wrong right but uh but he was definitely I I paid him my five bucks I was like nice job kid thanks for the picture but it's like that's so beautiful I just like I just made this little kid money this little kids making money for his family on this funny little thing I found worth it totally worth it just beautiful like I felt like oh my gosh did what I do just help modern Camaro people I would love that and they're starting to do things there's guides that know and so I've come into the center temple of the bayon where guides are talking about it and they're all witnessing it together and they're bringing their tourists in to see it and I'm just standing there like fly on the wall like yeah I did that's cool yeah the second time I went into the second how I did it I went back into the central temple of the bayon where I had

2:14:52explained to the nuns and priests that it's gonna happen and then they were excited about it it seemed I came back in with my wife and my baby I had my little baby Alice was like a year and a half I just brought her with me to Cambodia that's normal right normal um but I came into the central temple and one of them was like it's him and I was like oh you remember me and one of them said get the guards oh it's like oh shit I'm in trouble but when the guards came in because I was like I'm not running I'm not doing anything wrong when the guards came in the nuns and priests asked them can we please take down this parasol because this is about to happen he's here again and if we take down the parasol it'll actually hit the statue it's blocking it and so the guards allowed them to take the parasol down so that the effect was even better wow and I was so happy I had a moment like oh my god I'm an intruder I'm gonna get arrested but then they just wanted to see it better they

2:15:54they totally understood what I was talking about and the the the psychological effect it has on them makes me feel like I am onto something you are this is hitting a chord with these folks in a real way um just going a different part of the world when everybody um looks at the kusko wall has the same thought that that's not possible with hammers and you have a theory that sounds crazy and it's not aliens about how those stones got stuck together what acid I think that they are melting them together hydrofluoric acid well you know I'm a little crazy to say hydrofluoric acid why why is that crazy uh because that's a dangerous substance yes I mean a super dangerous substance you would have to I mean I think we haven't looked for it yet but we should find like melted fingers I mean we should find people that were damaged by hydrofluoric acid if they're using it and I have no proof of that and uh but it conceptually it

2:16:58can be done what what turned you on to that idea I've thought it was acids for a long time like what did you see that made you think that there's a number of places in kusko and outside of kusko that the walls get rocked apart where you can see the stones on the inside and they're fused together especially there there's a there's a neat one in kusko called the the palace of inco rocker it's megalithic stones there's uh most of the stuff in kusko is made of the imperial style which are these small blocks which I also think are melted together but the ones the megalithic ones there's a section of it that is not the tourist section that was rocked apart by earthquakes and you can see one stone below one stone above and the stone below has like a muddy footprint in it it like curves up and wraps along the the stone above I can't explain it by chipping away at it

2:18:04why would they make a lip right why would it why would it be an indentation so it looks like the the weight of the upper stone squished into the lower stone and I've got lots of pictures of it I mean it's I've I've puzzled about it for a while and then in the imperial architecture there's a place uh in between the main plaza and the korakonsha which is the golden enclosure the big temple of the ancient that's still there there's a church over it but there's a wall that you walk down on one of these streets and there's a place on one of the blocks they do this pillowing they it's a it kind of pillows out of the wall each one of the blocks there's one that has a wipe on it like somebody took a rag and wiped a section clean and you just you don't wipe and a sight there's I do not know how that wipe occurred that's not the only place I've seen wipes but there's a really great one

2:19:04that's just like it's across the street from the JW Marriott it's like right out in front of everybody but I always bring people like somebody tell me how that happened you're you're the you're the first person that I've heard say this what acid would it be if it's the hydrofloor there's people have been saying their its acids for a while there's a lot of anecdotal things from the contact period uh there's a little bird that that pecs into uh cliffs using acidic plants that it barfs up onto them um people have been trying to explain it as acids for a long time but the problem is that no naturally occurring acid can do it my dad was a chemist yeah his whole life and so you know when I came back with this theory first I called my dad because he knows what and he read me the riot act there's no way there's no natural there's no natural uh acids I've looked into it there's a lot of acids that get created like the Atacama Desert is full of the acids that we make

2:20:06nitroglyss and glycerin out of that's why chili stole it from Bolivia Bolivia's got no coast because chili wanted to make dynamite right um and all those acids right south of kusko there's an evaporated lake that has very high concentrations of acid in fact that little valley blew up about 30 40 years ago a lightning strike hit it and ignited something and the acid caught on fire wow thing blew up it was you know big news in Peru so there these acids are here but no naturally occurring acid could do it so I've been working with uh a chemist in uh new England named uh Charlie Winn who's been great in fact Charlie's been the driving force I'm not you know I try not to get too far out of my lane so I have chemists who are who I'm consulting with just the other day he was having some some conversation with Claude that excited him

2:21:07well is there is there fluorite there and have it as their mining there there's my uh the golden silver mining all over the place right they're famous for it the inca and cultures before them a byproduct that's coming out of the mines today that's an environmental disaster is hydrochloric acid yes it's a byproduct of the mining it's pouring out of all the mines it's actually an environmental disaster yeah fluorite is in huge quantity in Peru in fact the inca were making lots of jewelry out of fluorite and Charlie and I have been going back and forth and uh he were we're we're sure that hydrochloric acid and fluorite with uh you know there's a little it's more a little more complicated than that it's not just peanut butter and jelly but you could make small targeted places of hf yep with these two things it could be done it is it is possible now we got to prove it now Charlie I I've been arguing with him not arguing but begging him

2:22:09and his chemist friends like let's just do it let's just get some and a site and get it into the lab and burn it let's let's burn it up and and record it and their opinion is listen Ed we all know we can do that it's not a it's not an experiment that's a known what you've got to prove is that the residues of these acids are still in the seams of the walls in between if it if this is this really happened you can get a sample and we can do neutron activation and we can see exactly what chemicals and things are in between those cracks and if it was an acid we'll be able to see it because it'll seep into the stone so have we seen it yet because no I haven't gotten that far I I know I at one point Charlie hooked me up with a guy in Washington who said I'll send a student down with you we've got this machine that looks like a drill we drill in we get a sample

2:23:10of about the size of a wine cork and we can analyze it and we will do all this for you so I wrote to the heads of conservation in kusco and they hated it well you know they said it was kind of rude really I think and it that's not perusing this is one guy in a chair in in kusco who said you're ignorant this is stupid you can't touch the walls and it's clear that you have no understanding of you you've never read anything about proving in archaeology which is fattening unfair I've read a lot about you're moving in archaeology as you know so the guy just said I'm ignorant I have no idea what even studies wrote back saying like well if there are studies about this could you please share them that no response so I kind of got dead ended there there's always a lot of life happens so you know I'm in in Cambodia I'm doing all these other things I it's a it's a project I need to get back to what I really need to do which I screwed up to the

2:24:14beginning is all of these things are teams and partnerships here I am trying to be important gringo just writing a letter I just you know just I'm gonna come in and and take some cores out of your walls that that was not the right approach but when I get back to it what I need is a Peruvian archaeologist partner yeah and I need to let them take the lead and I just provide resources I'm not you know I'm not interested in being the guy that solved it I'm just interested in solving it so next time around I'm being background and I'm gonna support somebody from that country and maybe it'll happen I think the people in Olian Taitamba would be a lot cooler so I might just skip kusko all together go out to a more purely catch-woah community that's a good idea that's a big discovery it's all just hair brains game at the moment but you know this is this is what she Lee taught me she Lee she Lee I what I loved about her she shot from the hip

2:25:15people would argue but she would come up with out of the box things challenge people to prove her wrong and when she was wrong she would never be mad about it she would laugh and say now we've advanced the field together how else can I piss you off and motivate you to figure it stuff out that's the value of Graham Hancock who I don't agree with it's not a lot of his work but he he makes people talk you're absolutely right he is challenging us to prove him wrong and I like that and he's okay with that I think oh he's totally cool with that again they're they're pretty some of the conservative people in my community oh they are archaeologists are they don't like him it's off about him but you know personally I've said I don't remember shows I'll say it again I like Graham I think he's smart he has a good sense of humor he is very well researched that's the one that really pisses off my colleagues that got you trouble in the researcher oh you got in trouble I stand by it I mean I saw you know Graham and I when we first met in Plankay for his ancient apocalypse thing we sat for three hours kind of having

2:26:19a intellectual tit for tat and he'd bring up some research I'd bring up some research I'd bring him bring up my research I'd bring up his research I like you know I did I actually do read all your books I don't find I don't find it fair to criticize someone unless you've heard them out and and we were very clear I do not believe his primary theory that's okay it's okay we can still be friends and disagree that's isn't that what academic is supposed to do it is I mean speaking of Graham what's your theory on the on the Fang Deity oh well did is Graham on board with my Fang Deity theory that'll be zero probably not probably not but I thought it was cool um I think all too often we project our own ideas about religion uh as archaeologists you know we paint a model on things and we come up with false truths in the case of Peru we've forever been talking about this loose pantheon of gods but it's never smacked right to me and when you really look into

2:27:26what's religious art you see a face again and again and again it's a humanoid guy with goggly fangs claws on his hands and feet and snakes coming out of his belt they come out like this and out of his head and so diagnostic I mean this is a very specific character I thought the all the gods are equal in the pantheon I don't think there's a pantheon at all I think that there I think that Peru is monotheistic and that there's a single god the Fang Deity you can also call him uh Veracoccia you could also call him Pachakamak you could also call him I I Apec it goes through time but if you look at you know the art historical analysis and the way that Linda Shealey taught me to do it and it was in Linda Shealey's class long time ago that I first came up with this theory and she gave me an A plus plus and sent me to talk to the people in Peru who thought I was full of

2:28:29shit and I was you know 22 yeah why why wouldn't I be full of shit um but I've continued with this theory and I found nothing but strength in it you know Lucas it buss me every week to like when are you gonna write that book in you've been talking about the book for a couple of years I know I'm such a flake you know this this is my genre I'd like to talk to people I'm actually a terrible writer so we can see that that Fang Deity now can we oh he's everywhere I mean you mean in modern times I mean the Milky Way oh gosh do tell I wish I could fight him in the Milky Way there's the Milky Way has constellations in it but I don't know of any of them called Veracoccia or a god there's a fox there's a bag of coal for some reason there's a llama and her mama I mean all the cultures that see the Milky Way the actual plane of the ecliptic does the road to the afterlife oh that is very true and that's across the Americas too that's another paper I did

2:29:32way back oh when in chilly days uh the Milky Way is the path to the other world from the tip of chili to Alaska every group that's gonna talk to you about the Milky Way even today know that it is the path to the other world for the Maya it's the world tree it's the primordial as as it moves through the night sky it turns into different things it starts as the primordial c as it's laying down on the horizon and then as it tilts up it's the canoe that brings the hero twins father up into the sky to become the corn god and then as it finally erects it north south just at dawn on august 5th august 13th i'm sorry uh it becomes the world tree and the story plays out sheelie's great book uh Maya Cosmos talks about it from the hieroglyphs position and modern day people modern day people in the Maya world totally see it as that and

2:30:38everybody in this country all the indigenous people here see the Milky Way as the path of souls or the path to the other world and what's really fascinating is you know the the Milky Way scorally it goes it moves like the stars the planets are always you know they're they're gonna they're in our solar system yeah the stars move but it's that northwest position it locks in like one of those wheelhouses of a train it's you can't cross the Milky Way to the other world in every position it's when it locks in north south that's the opening of the road oh so if you die and it's not locked in what happens i think you have to wait in fact i i think that you know we haven't even talked about missuscipian civilization right here in North America that were pyramid builders cities of tens of thousands of people they have this interesting pattern in their burials where they have a charlhouse they prepare the bodies but then they put them in the

2:31:39mounds in groups they they they will hold them for an unknown period of time but when we see these like groups of people that are buried in the mounds they don't have any like pathology in their skeletons that say that they were wounded and you know they were people killed in a battle killed all at once they were obviously obviously died at different times but they're all interred at once i think they might be waiting for the Milky Way i think that they were grouping them together and doing the final ceremony that would send them on their way when the road opens up there's no way to prove that is there i could it's a brain theory no there's that my my colleague bill romaine has been doing some super work about orientations of things within missuscipian cities he's noticing even in big cahokia that there are just off north south alignments that are happening between major

2:32:39buildings and that's just what the Milky Way does and bill was the first one to enlighten me about this i hadn't really thought this in depth about it but since the Milky Way kind of curves you're never going to get a moment where it's pegged to the south and the north if it's pegged on the north it's off few degrees on the south if it's pegged to the south it's off a few degrees on the north and he's been finding example after example of after example of things oriented just off north south and that's just what the Olmeck huge platforms do they do it also they do it just off north south and they're these long kilometer long things that would you know i think they're mirroring the road this is again you know shealy taught me to be part of the lunatic fringe and publicly say things like this that no i can't substantiate them but it gets us thinking it does and it's one of the things i like about you is how you talk about if you have enough

2:33:42post holes you can make them line up with anything yeah it doesn't mean anything you know i'm jealously protective of the reputation of archaeo astronomy it was you know at the start of my career archaeo astronomers were crackpots oh yeah you're still a little wacky you're still a little kind of crackpots but now we have enough legitimacy where i get upset when i see a published article that's really just shooting blanks like that you know like well you can't I mean there's there fifty other options here don't don't don't shoot us down by publishing your responsible stuff well speak solid about this agree so speaking of what talk all the shit i want but i'm not you know i'm not publishing this conversation what's what's the puzzle with 360 day calendar that's that's bothering you what's that puzzle you try to solve 360 day you mean the 260 day or no don't don't the Maya to have a 360 day year oh okay i know i understand what you're talking

2:34:43about you're talking about the year within the long count yes yes uh yeah that is a weird one uh the Maya are very cyclical they have many different calendars uh you know we we oftentimes misstate that they had the most accurate calendar in the ancient world a better statement would be they have no still elaborate calendar in the ancient world because so many different cycles on a typical Maya Stila you'll have at least five independent calendar cycles that just were carved to tell you what day it is what and what are those five counting the oldest one is the 260 day calendar that's their sacred calendar still the most important today the second one we call the Hobb that's the solar calendar it's 365 days no leap year it it drifts it drifts um then they have uh the the lunar count and that's six uh it's grouped in six lunarations six from new to full and then within

2:35:46that it's either 29 or 30 days and so there's five or six glyphs that tell us uh which moon is it of the six how many days are we into it what's that moon's name and and another glyph we don't really understand um so there's there's three of them then they have a weird uh nine day cycle that's like a week we call it the nine lords of the night but that just revolves through two we we very little understanding of why the heck they're doing that nine cycle Venus Venus is nine day cycle is it i think so and what i don't know what's the and what's the last one that we can't figure um the long count the long count is the neatest one because it's if anything was linear counts of days for the maya it was the long count so this is how the apocalypse was very good for you yeah 2012 2012 you you were the biggest voice of the apocalypse for about a year's biggest but you know

2:36:47like Garrett Morris said the up 2012 was very very good to me right you're selling calendars which i think is cool um but i think mathematically they did not say that it was 2012 well that's why you were kind of a drag to a lot of people because you're like it's going to be fine uh you know it continues uh who knows what's going to happen in the future but i can clearly tell you that the maya did not say that in fact we know exactly how this started it was my old friend Mike co the same one that wanted me to go out and kill chickens and came out of here right and i and i asked co about it uh at some dinner party he wrote in the textbook that he had inherited from professors before him just simply called the maya he wrote in like the 1960s well if you do the math if it's if it reset at the 13th box tune which is part of the long count at 3,1112 and 14 BCE then if we go 13400 year periods into the future we get to 2012 and so you know if it

2:37:55if it reset at 13 and that's 13400 year periods as well well maybe we should brace ourselves for enapocalypse and Mike told me clearly he was like i was just trying to be funny like if i knew all this stuff was going to happen it goes back to that one guy said that goes back to co saying that and then it goes on a very you know wormhole kind of thing where uh Jose are guayus of the dream spell system gets involved there's a guy named like Tony sheer i think his name is a reporter from denver who's very into aztec stuff and he somehow mixes up the aztec stuff with uh with the maya stuff and predicts that the aztec's predicted that from the approach of cortes going forward that will hit 2012 as well so the two combined to some

2:38:56kind of mezzal american thing and then hose arguayus is a huge figure he's the one who creates the harmonic convergence you remember that time when hippies all around the planet gathered into archeological sites to try to uh uh do the harmonic convergence that was linked into all of this as well so what is the 360 puzzle that that you're working on so the long count has five basic positions of it it's got days months years 20 years 400 years that's bactunes 400 years so days one day sun they even call it keen they call it sun uh months they decided 20 days okay all pretty normal so far i mean i i we do 30 days because that's a lunar cycle right but they pick 20 because they're their counting system is a vagessimal system it's it's base 20 we're base 10

2:40:02decimal the my or vagessimal base 20 so 20 days that's just their counting system that's like us favoring 10 but then it's the next one up if you're in a 20 base system you should go 1 20 400 8,000 160,000 that should be your progression up in the positional system of numeration so the long count goes 1 20 360 and then 7,200 and 144,000 so it augments at the year called the tune and easily there's such good astronomers they weren't off by five days but why didn't they pick the 400 that is their mathematical system the easy answer is well they were just picking you know a 20 based number that was closest to the year right but for a primarily a

2:41:05grayian society that you know lives and dies on the changes of the seasons in the passage of the year that's a stinky system five days off every year i mean a farmer that's useless does useless could you have anything to do with procession it's possible the best theories that i know of are from my friend and colleague Christopher Powell who made a ridiculously long chart it wouldn't even fit on this table but he just went through it Chris is great about thinking like amaya so he just said they're all about synchronicities they're mathematically they're about uh highest common divisor lowest common multiple did i say that right um so he just started going through with the long count and the 584 days that's the that's venous the 780 that's Mars the 117 that's mercury and the and the 260 day sacred calendar and the 365 he just started playing out the

2:42:11days and he said as you go forward all of a sudden all of these synchronicities start lining up with the long count where none of that would happen if they picked 365 or 400 this system makes synchronicities between cycles happen like fireworks wow that's this is a good job for machine learning yeah i would actually um Chris could be out there asking clawed about his chart right now as far as i know um he's he's quit archaeology years ago he's a he's a a Spanish professor in a uh in a low income place in san francisco they these guys they they don't know what the heck this this guy with all these adventures we're doing there how cool would it be that the planets figured into the long count i love that i really did it Chris has infected my mind he he saw something that actually we learned was found in the 1930s as well but it's this number

2:43:12949 it is a magic number in the maya it is the foundation of the long count um 949 days as you plug that into math it starts popping out even increments of all the long count and i mean Chris has shown it i i can't talk math here too much or your your your people turn your podcasts not these people but but the freaky thing is about 949 is not only is it the mathematical foundation of the long count as Chris has clearly shown in his dissertation which is on my exploration.org his whole dissertation or masters actually for that one is there you can see this chart see what i'm talking about um 949 is 365 plus 584 which is the sun and venus and so that number is actually

2:44:12rooted in the sun and venus but it does all these magical divisions within the long count and then Chris went further because there's another count late in the period called the 819 count that back in the 70s we discovered was the maya way of incorporating Jupiter and Saturn into all of their data they weren't able to do that before yeah and it was developed to plenkae by conbalaman and pakal and then in 20 years it was in Honduras like a very well celebrated new cycle but Chris showed how the 949 system and the 819 system mirror each other that they used the structure of the long count system with 949 as its base to create the 819 system and they all meet just like the maya would do in a single number that is like 1,193,000 and something and back in the 90s

2:45:17me and chris are in his little apartment now it's billing line late at night and chris shows me this whole thing and says and that all culminates in this number and i was like you're crazy it was like the maya must have known this number i was like well we can never prove that that's it crazy i mean i see how it all works 25 years later somebody digs up a house in the ruins of shaltoon in northern guatamala it's an astronomer's house he's written calculations all over the walls there's chris's number no shit mm-hmm gives me chills talking about it like i was like holy shit is that true i had to go back and get his master's and go yeah the the ivy league guys who posted it didn't read chris's dissertation so they didn't see it but i called chris up and i was like chris you're number and he was like oh that's neat he knew chris amazing he kind of just

2:46:18gave up on the stuff he's it his thing is is ancient geometry and all the school stuff i'm talking about about the astronomy that was actually side studies that he was doing as geometry is his main stuff his stuff about my geometry is absolutely grounds breaking it's paradigm shifting it's amazing i i wish there was more out there i'm kind of his acolyte in this but now chris last time i talked to him he's like he's got another paper that stack of papers that's two foot tall on his on his desk and he's figured out geometry things we don't know about the Egyptians about renaissance hard about i mean so many things he's got to get him in here chris is amazing i mean if you i would love to see that you wish you should bring chris pal and he will blow your mind he is such chris chris has this way about him i used to always say like chris could look you in the eyes and go

2:47:18the moon is made of cheese and you'd be like god is it he's just like he's so like convincing but he's not full of shit he actually knows i mean he predicted a number like one million one hundred ninety three thousand four sixty or something twenty five years before we found it on a my wall i really thought that would never happen but there it is that's kind of the the thing that keeps me in archaeology just the what if that's out there and the craziest things when they did this moment you know that's it i'm going to be a lunatic for the rest of my life yep tell me about the textbook before america or is it before the america's before the america's thanks for asking you know right now it's conceptual but uh i think we have enough data now not just about south america and mezzo america but north america as well where we can tell the story of the history of

2:48:20civilizations before european contact and it's so important uh the the park that i'm really thrilled about is north america nobody here in this in this country realizes the great civilizations that were on this land before us nobody's heard of coca here nobody's heard of coca and nobody knows how you know i've been on a rant these days on my uh youtube channel i've just been doing pyramids of alabama pyramids of georgia next week is up pyramids of oculahoma i'm going to do pyramids of Wisconsin and just go through state by state and go here it is it's actually a public park go visit but we have we've swept it under the rug but there are civilizations here and especially in north america i think are our high school kids would benefit and our society would benefit if they just had some understanding that america wasn't some blank slate that was just waiting for europeans

2:49:21just like everywhere else on the planet there were major civilizations that rose and fell here yeah we're not we're taught about american indians but you know it always goes to buffalo and tp's and stuff and maybe you get a dance to talk about air coination a little bit you know it's a product somewhat that's a product of scholarship right by the time we as you know western civilization got interested in doing things like ethnologies we were two 300 years into the park quest and so those guys on their horses you know out there with their feather headdresses there they're living in a post apocalyptic world those are the people that have survived the downfall of a civilization this is you know those guys that that buffalo bill met that was like mad max yeah i they it was over but before that there were civilized cities independent city states that fought against each other and made alliances but with you know with engineering with houses that were like subdivision complexes and

2:50:28social hierarchies are there advanced yeah events is there a Julius Caesar and Alexander the great are those people in our history you think not yet in well let me let me correct myself for a minute not really in north america yet because we don't have a written language that's a tough one but at contact we have the names of some people who i think you know maybe not a Julius Caesar but we have we have important and noble leaders of entire kingdoms we have you know for one the big one that i just talked about was uh tescalusa you know it almost everybody on that's listening to this tescalusa i know that it's a town in alabama right no it's a mississippian king who beat the crap out of desoto on his way through that's right tricked him now tescalusa lost and he probably died burned in the town called mappila mm-hmm but uh he was a great king and before that he demolished the

2:51:32desoto demolished the civilization of a of another one in south carolina a beautiful queen called kofitakachi who welcomed him in saved him and his guys from the wilderness they were about starved death and she in an entourage show up with all sorts of food guide them into her city and he responds by uh taking her hostage put a big ring around her neck and walking her towards tescalusa yeah some of her loyal people uh save her and that's an interesting story it is an interesting story there's a i mean that's one you know for your for your curious audience just start looking into the desoto expedition of the 15 15 39 to 15 41 when he dies at the mississippi but he goes through kingdom after kingdom after kingdom that's what i want my textbook to be i haven't already i've got a i've got an outline it would cover north america part one

2:52:36mesal america part two south america part three and the trick would be with this the reason we can't do this yet is because we have you know at for lack of a better word guilt societal guilt we all are pretty aware that they're the infectious diseases killed billions of people yeah up on contact that's uh that's a horrible tragedy on our hands not our fault certainly not a modern people's fault nope but we have a hard time getting to the real conversation because that's a stumbling block what my textbook will do is never touch that i'll leave that to other people we'll just talk about like my textbook will end at like 1500 well it's chapter one a couple of decades before uh i start off i start off with south america and then end with north america but that's the one i really want to get by i'm making them like volumes so that uh a teacher could choose just north america

2:53:40but i'd love to see you know a a pre-american history course just to give people an appreciation that there was a continuation on the land we now sit and it wasn't the tribes that everybody thinks it was there's a deeper more beautiful more civilization wide thing there's the miscippings there's also the people of the american southwest the people that built choco canyon the ancestral pueblo and their people are still here we can talk to them the ho ho calm of arizona nobody knows about these guys but they built the largest aqueduct system ancient aqueduct system on the planet over 700 miles of very sophisticated irrigation systems there in arizona i think we're close by here you know you you know about the monsoons and you know it's like two weeks a year that you get a lot of rain yep and then it's dry as a bone yes the ho cal made a system 700 miles worth of these aqueducts or

2:54:44the uh what do you call them irrigation canal systems that would take that water and spread it across arizona they turned arizona like a thousand years ago arizona was green and it wasn't because it was a different climate it was because the ho ho calm managed the entire place that's more than Rome it's huge it's absolutely huge and and actually a lot of the systems that arizona uses today are on the foundations of the ho ho calms superior hydraulic why not it's still gravity and water and shouldn't we know about that we should shouldn't shouldn't our kids have an appreciation that there was this magnificent civilization here before us that did these great things and that they were you know on par with the Greeks we're so like you know we come from the Greeks and they came from the Egyptians and the Romans and you know we got this line and we tend to ignore that the beauty that these inventions have happened independently around

2:55:48the planet which to me means that we humans are more the same than we are like on a very genetic level whether our skin is black or red or yellow or whatever color we want to call it we're kind of pink actually we have a lot more in common but we're we're there there's a human independent spirit that has been replicated independently around the world and I think that's wonderful that's a reason a deeper connection that we should all see each other as brothers I agree um I've heard this number and I want to know if it's correct that 90% of the people died in a 50 year period here yeah is that true uh that's the conservative number conservative some people say more like 95 but the infectious diseases say 13 different infectious diseases hit the Americas in the first 50 years what and it's kind of proof that there was not substantial contact before

2:56:50right what did we lose uh millions of people I mean knowledge what went into the ground oh well I wish I knew that's my whole that's my whole career trying to dig this stuff back out but uh I think some things are just gonna be gone if you really think about the moment that you know these multiple infectious diseases come to the Americas a people who believe that illness is a uh a supernatural thing that it's a spiritual thing that your spirit is sick and spirit plants can help you not be sick but they don't know what an infectious disease is so they're using their spiritual methods that are not working at all and you get entire communities where you know a disease an epidemic disease comes in multiple come in who are the first people to get wiped out the old and the young yeah so you got no children the next generation the ones for teaching and you got

2:57:51no old people in a in a oral tradition society that doesn't hasn't developed writing yet that's the transmission and the transmission gets broken yeah the old people aren't there to tell you the young people aren't there to learn it the middle people are struggling to bury the dead and they're terrified to raise a family yes what who would bring a baby into this world right and and and and then all of their stuff that is you know we divide church and state supposedly that seems to be going badly at this but but they did not church state science religion they were all one thing so uh the disheartening thought when when a couple people get sick it's a it's a evil spirit or you know maybe a uh a witch doing something a sicking spirit on them when everybody gets sick that's the god that's the god that's the god and then terrible timing for these guys in brown

2:58:52robes to show up and go you know what your problem is that there's only one true god and you need more than and you've got to convert or you will all die they I mean from a people who already had a perspective that gods make you sick this was pro-positive that that Christianity's god existed and they converted and they were you know willingly converted and they were willingly rejected their old ways and at that moment the the loss of knowledge unfathomable I thought I heard you say might have been on Sean's show that these missionaries were baptizing people with infected water making it worse innocent innocent they they thought they were doing the right thing but but now we understand that how infectious diseases communicate and that was exactly the wrong thing to do speak to generations um your family celebrates the day of the dead you have an altar we do who's on

2:59:55there well you know as as they grow a growing amount of people there's uh I like it to be people that we that we know well tell me a lot of a lot of a lot of Americans don't even really know what the dead that is can you explain it because it's kind of I think it's beautiful I think it's you know we the same time of year we celebrate Halloween ghouls and ghosts and vampires that it's all very connected to the world of the dead our Halloween stuff it's based on all Saints day which was in Europe but there's also a tradition in Mesoamerica essentially what it is is just venerating our ancestors a holiday specifically to remember and love our past ancestors and you make this altar full of beautiful flowers and food you try to put out things like my my sister Cheryl's up there and I put a little thing of raspberry absolute vodka there which was terrible

3:00:56I hated that she should drink that terrible but she liked it but she it was that was a Cheryl thing so you know there you go Cheryl that's that's what you do you give them you put things that they loved in their life near them and you put kind of a little pyramid of uh of pictures up in frames everybody does them different they're very much like you know your family tradition I like to I'm very orderly so the oldest guys are on the top and the youngest ones are on the bottom how far back to is is your favorite go uh back to my great great grandfather I am I am Edwin Lawrence my dad was Edwin Lewis my grandfather was Edwin Lee Roy and his father was Edwin Lawrence again and my son is Edwin Lloyd that's beautiful but so I've got I've got one from the 1800s up there but I've got my mom my dad I've got my my wife's deceased folks as well she still has both of her parents thank goodness but uh that's what you do and it's just a beautiful

3:01:57way I I love that instead of talking about monsters and ghouls and candy with my kids we talk about stories of who these people are when we put up the altar it's a very you know it goes up on Halloween night and then it stays through the first and the second and then we'll take it down but uh when you like the incense and the smell of the flowers it's got to be marigolds those smells and smoke make a road like the Milky Way for the dead to come back and to commune with you and and that's what we do we talk about uh you know like my my dad passed away a year and a half ago now he's the newest member on our altar and I will spend the day talking about stories of my dad so my kids know who he is what what little object you have up there for dad oh I haven't even thought yet it's kind of I jeez I don't know that's a great question I do have a couple of like artifacts from

3:02:59him that that I got from his house so maybe I'll maybe I'll put like uh he's a he was a scientist chemist maybe I'll put his slide rule right in front of him that would be cool he loved that slide rule nobody even knows what a slide rule is now but when you were like a chemist your slide rule was everything but if he's if he's coming down he would he would really he'd like to see it there I think so there's something that just said you know we know we remember who you are have you seen the movie Coco of course that's the one that got it for my kids I mean what a beautiful thing that was it's a really beautiful tradition I wish we had more of it last question for you what do you want on the altar for you wow that's a good one hmm you know nothing that would have grandized me I wouldn't want something that was like a accolade of mine because I don't think I think those things are worthless I think that uh that that moment when you die and you see the flash before your eyes you don't see your trophies

3:04:04or bank account you see the people you loved and who loved you so I would try to make it something that my kids would remember that I loved them Dr. Ed Bardhart was here thank you so much it's a pleasure pleasure thank you bye everybody that was Dr. Ed Bardhart genuinely a great person we had a blast but let's break down our conversation starting with the city I pulled the publish report on Masha from the team that followed him the discovery paragraph credits or reconnaissance team Ed's paper gets one citation filed under Edward his name is Edwin he left them a treasure map anyway and apologize to them on the show now the number in the 90s Ed's friend Chris Powell worked out the number where the my calendar cycles line up I found the thesis it's right there 1,195,740 in 2012 a Boston University team published an astronomer's painted workshop at Jules Twin Guadamala

3:05:07in science on the north wall 1,195,740 Chris wrote it down more than a decade before anyone found the wall how does that not give you goosebumps then the acid Ed thinks the ink of fused the couscous stones with hydroflark acid he has no proof and says so no one has tested the scene the man in cousco who's desi led it on said no it's hypothesis with a chemist attached one chemist ahead of the alien theory Ed calls this guest's guesses and that's rare earth that'll all seen and it's on youtube at the archaeo ed podcast a r c h a e o and my exploration dot org everything I mentioned is linked below until next time be safe be kind and other you are oh

3:06:09I believe Olivia's an area 51 a secret code inside the Bible said I was I love my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as mirrors it something like I sure yeah within another conspiracy theory becomes the truth my friends and it never ends no it never ends I feel the crack at and got stuck inside my home with them chaos truck I've been only to a where do stand look you've read faith the moon landing alone on a film said I were the shadow people there the r well it is just for the smiling man I'm told and his name was called

3:07:13I can't believe I'm cancer with the fish and the fish on Thursday night with age 82 when the weather has the things all two to the night all ever wanted once to just kill the truth so the one above will speak all through the lights The mouth man's sight and van, the solar storm still come to a god-duh, the city under ground. Mysterious number of stations, planets are phoned to, brackets dark gay, and where the dark watchers found. When a simulation comes you worry though, the black nights are delighted, so soon to be so, I can't believe.

3:08:21I'm dancing with the fish, head-rofishing, Thursday night, Wednesday, J2 and one month on the night, we off to the night. Oh, ever wanted what to do to the truth, so one month on the feet all through the night. Head-rofishing, Thursday night, Wednesday, J2 and one month on the feet all through the night. Oh, ever wanted what to do to the truth, so one month on the feet all through the night. Oh, ever wanted what to do to the truth, so one month on the feet all through the night. Oh, ever wanted what to do to the truth, so one month on the feet all through the night. Because she is a camel, we can't walk the dance with the feeling is right on the way within time.

3:09:28Can you be anything? I'm getting up and down. I'm getting up and down. What the best build on?

3:10:33What the best build on?