I Came With Fire
"Stone Echoes of the Maya" with Luke Caverns
What's up everybody welcome back to I came with fire podcast. A couple familiar faces here Zach still here with us Red beard looks like you got some red in your beard kind of and then of course Luke Luke caverns is here again How are you brother? I'm doing well, man. I'm just Kind of a lot of things stirring in the pot lately Oh, yeah, a lot of new projects. I'm working on some. I can't speak about some I can Really trying to expand like what I'm doing on YouTube lately. So I'm my output's been kind of slow but But it's really gonna ramp up probably in April when I get back from my I'm going on an Olmec expedition in in March. So have you ever seen the Olmec heads before? Oh, you were yeah Yeah, yeah, so I'm doing so doing an Olmec expedition for like two and a half weeks And then when I come back I've got it like a a few new series for YouTube That kind of stuff like I can talk about so yeah I'm just super busy and I just my wife and I just moved into a new home So that's why my backdrop is like a complete mess right now I think you're so close to look like a little bit of a mess as like the anthropologist who's like just coming out of the jungle It's very Indiana Jones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so yeah, yeah, just Been going well, but kind of like so busy that I can't Possibly keep up with everything, you know, yeah, it's good though That is man. That's that's really exciting I'm really excited to hear about your adventures and everything that you're doing, but um first thing I want to say is did you were on episode 23, okay? That was your episode and then this is episode 46, right? So 23 plus 23 is 46 So just adding to the lore of Luke Caverns going to the jungle, right? We're gonna play a video because every 23 episodes. Oh my gosh shows up. This is this is kind of what this is like Go ahead, Zach. Ryan, how many years have I been saying you and I should go very picky a lot of years, do we? Wait a minute. Do you know where we are, Brian? This is a very special place They say once every hundred years in this spot, Donnie most rises from the mist. I think that's just a legend Well, that's because you're huh look. This is Luke Luke coming out of the mist of every 10 jungle. There he is It's coming out of South America Luke Caverns Imagine people just chanting your name while you rise from the mist Oh my god, actually it's Don most now Actually, it's Lucas Caverns now Oh my god, dude. All right, you can kill it, Zach That's it dude. So you have to come back every 23 episodes apparently because we have to keep up with this trend, so Yeah, yeah, yeah every 23 episode. Yeah, you guys in the name 23, isn't that like one of those weird numbers? They made that Jim Carrey movie 23, isn't that what that is? I think there's an neck or something. Yeah, I think it's a satanic number. Yeah, that's what That's not good there. Yeah. No, Luke isn't satanic. That's for sure. Nope. So yeah Well, maybe maybe on the the next episode we'll have to like recover Or we'll have to we'll have to cover our adventures on uh on the new battlefront that's coming out Yes, the old new Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's like the uh like 20 year old new game that's coming out Right perfect. It's perfect. Dude. It is. That's the perfect segue into what I was gonna ask But first I would say your your youtube series stone jungle is is really really good. I like it I like it too. You could tell that like you're just kind of doing your thing and recording So like everything you're talking about is super just organic. I like I like that you didn't like script it So that's really good Yeah, well, uh Yeah, most of it wasn't Like I had an idea, you know, I would sit there and kind of collect my thoughts while we were there But I would tell uh, I tell my buddy my cameraman Eli. I'd be like, okay turn You know turn the camera on and we'll we'll film this right now, but um But uh, yeah, you know a lot of things like Like when we were filming there, I didn't go walk through What we were about to film it just all was happening right then if that makes sense And I mean in the crazy episodes haven't even come out yet. There's um Like 19 episodes and I think i'm on episode five now or five or six have come out Um, and some of those are members only on youtube, but um, but the majority are going to be uh fully public and do the last one um The last one is is i'm hoping that it that it's going to be a big a big episode. It's uh You know, some people are like Some people are are critical in the comments. They're like, oh, you're not actually discovering a lost city The people have actually been there blah blah blah blah and i'm like, okay. Well, I was there for two weeks Did you think that every single day that I was there? I was gonna see ruins that no one's ever seen before, you know, um, but on the last day Of the expedition it actually happened and it was all on camera Um, holy crap. Yeah, so that's that's the last episode um And uh, it's the last episode and it happened by accident. So, so that expedition Was actually more of like sightseeing, but I knew that when we were there We were going to we were going to be at like a major Maya site in in southern mexico Um, I knew that we were going to be at a bunch of different major Maya sites that I needed to see for myself But I knew that while we were there we would venture out Like into the jungle a little bit and see things that you know, the vast majority of people have never seen and we were going to get it on camera I didn't expect that we would document a city that has no name That only some local people know about and really the only local people that know about it Are people who have like dug up the tombs out there and have like looted it for all of the like artifacts that are there um so other than that other than looters and Just some people who have heard about it. No one has ever seen the site and there's no name or anything Um, so I got that incredible Um, I there's a there's episode that hasn't come out yet where um Where I'm in a title at something like like I found a lost city in the jungle with using my drone or something like that Um, and I would and I flew my drone over Actually two cities that are like out in the sticks. Um, not in the jungle, but they're In this Maya farmland and it's not a documented site that has a name Um, it's like in this really primitive Um, like impoverished farmland way out in the sticks. Um, incantana rue and um Dude huge, you know, 50 foot tall pyramids with these long Plazas and everything and I'm flying my drone like in between all the structures that are completely covered up by You know grass and hillsides and everything and um, so I think that's going to be a big one So yeah, there's a whole lot of stuff to come with uh with jungle of stone Yeah, thank you guys for watching and enjoying and uh, yeah, I appreciate that. What would you name that city? What was the name? What would what would Luke name it? Um, I don't know man because it's so you can name it any if you if you discover a lost city Which like I couldn't name that one To to actually be able to name one. It's like You have to discover something that literally nobody knew about, you know, I mean and okay or that like, you know Some local people who are way out there that that don't have any influence at all Mm-hmm, you know, they probably know about it, but like Uh that nobody official has been out there to actually see it um And that side in particular, I don't think that I could name it because it's on somebody's private property Um, but if it's in like state park, which is what a whole lot of the jungle is like they just say this giant, you know Several hundred mile patch of jungle is state park. You know, but nobody actually goes out there because it's so dangerous but there's cities in there So, um, you can name if you find a city you get to name it whatever you want, but it has to be in Maya Um, so I really okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I would need to go You know through a Maya dictionary and name Figure out what I wanted to name the city. Um My professor, uh, dr. Barnhart He found a city when he was my age and um, he found it in north western Belize And um, and he found it with like a group of students. So he was an assistant professor and um And so he takes this, uh, group of students Well, um, okay, so this is later on But um He spends like several years out there. Um, but his first year there he and his partner discover a lost city And they come up to like the main temple and living inside Um, so in my appearance sometimes there's a temple on the top, you know Unlike Egyptian pyramids. There's really nothing at the top Uh, so in the Maya world, there's a temple at the top Um, and uh, so there were howler monkeys Living at the top of the temple and so uh, and they were very displeased that they like squatted up there to uh That that dr. Barnhart and his his buddy squatted up there to eat their lunch and everything And kind of right, you know survey the city and so he ended naming the city maasana, which means monkey house um, although yeah, yeah, so um Yeah, so I wouldn't I would give it some creative name, but I'd have to do uh, um I'd have to I'd have to give it some kind of name. Um, my uh, um My cameraman, he would probably if he found the city he would name it something like uh Oh gosh, what is it? He thought this was so funny. There was a Maya person who taught him something to say And like It was it was like it was like it was like it was like it was like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh Oh, it was something like that, but it's like it's like bend over and smell your dog But actually something like that that a Maya that some that a Maya person taught us while we were there Um or or well the guy that we were traveling with he's married to a Maya woman And so he knows like all this ridiculous stuff. Um that he can say in Maya So, uh Yeah, that's probably what he would name a city Um, but yeah, it's answer your question. I have no idea I don't know This all this talk of like naming it and like looking up names in Maya like how much of the Maya language do we actually know? Is it is the same same Maya language that they were speaking at the height of their empire? Okay, so imagine imagine this um All right, so Let's take like the romance languages of You know western European societies up. I don't know what all the romance languages are, but you know, what's even Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like Italian Spanish English French and like let's include latin Um, and then let's multiply that by like, um, I don't know Five, okay. So, um, you know, let's say let's say there's like 30 some on romance languages out there Um That's about how many Maya languages there were just just in the yucatanda and so there were about 30 Maya languages but We can all read and write Latin If that makes sense. That's how they're communicated. So So, okay, okay. No, no, okay say all the romance languages Exist Latin is is a dead language to us still but we can all read and write it and that's how we all communicate with each other So latin is our common written language. That's what the Maya world was like So, okay, if you were traveling from Palenque, which is deep in the jungles of Chiapas all the way up to say to loom, which is Uh, you know next to the Caribbean Um, you can't speak the language of them, but you can all write the same language and read it if that makes sense It's a weird thing So their hieroglyphs could be read by anybody, but you may not speak the same language as those people Um, which is yeah, it's really bizarre, isn't it? Um, that's pretty cool So we only know a few Maya languages like maybe just a handful so many of them are dead Um, yeah, but but from the hieroglyphs we get an idea that there was like upwards of maybe more than 27 different languages But no matter what city you go to, all the hieroglyphs are the same So it's kind of it's yeah, it's kind of an interesting thing Yeah that's it's like Watching jungle of stone one of the things I wrote down here that you said is that The jungle landscape of ruins is a pin cushion with no more room for pins to push in which I thought was like pretty profound And it made me think about just all of the different ruins that are over there And then you kind of compared it to medieval europe at its height And it made me wonder like obviously like the concept of like countries Um, it didn't exist the way it does now as it did back then. Maybe after like the piece of wistfalia They kind of you know part partitioned off places Was this one just like massive empire that had like cities city states Much like europe did or or was it something more equivalent to like maybe like a city Like new york city right where it's it's the one one big community With smaller communities like burrows right does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, so um So we'll be what would be interesting for me to research is where the term Uh, the maya empire comes from because it's just it's like not Um, and it's you I don't expect anybody to know this but uh, it's not like correct at all Because it's like a one ruler of life. No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Um, they Would it be more similar to like I guess like the native americans of like north america? where you just had a bunch of different like tribes with leaders and they just kind of Killed each other or coexisted based off kind of they felt that day Kind of so the tribes in north america as far as I know Uh like like modern day united states Um a lot of that is based on territory and maybe not so much cities, but i'm not an expert there um, so the maya world can be like directly uh Compared to the greek world. So greek city cities. No in ancient greece you've got like Athens and sparda and you know all these different other greek city states And so for the life of them literally for the life of them. They cannot be united They cannot work together at all. Um, and so the maya world is essentially exactly the same um, they uh their giant cities And each city is really its own Is really its own country if that makes sense. It's it's each city is its own kingdom With its own royal families with its own king and uh queens princesses princesses um And they have their own lineages So it's like Okay, so let's say studying A good way to A good equivalent to this is like if we're going to study ancient egypt the simplicity of studying the chronology or the historicity of ancient egypt is is Reflex in the nyle river so the nyle river is pretty straightforward up and down Um, and so, you know, you study ancient egypt from narma or the scorpion king Um, so you know, we all know like the movie scorpion king that was a that was a real person Um, and he existed in about 3150 b.c And so from 3150 b.c All the way until 30 b.c To the death of cleopatra, you can follow the history of ancient egypt and one solid, you know, or one straight line Um, but ancient greece is nothing like that if you study ancient greece You're looking at Tons of or assay tons, but you're looking at like, you know, a dozen different countries with a dozen different kingdoms with a dozen different You know forms of government all warring against each other. They cannot be united and eventually a Very powerful and united country comes in and whoops all their asses Um, which would be rome Um The exact same thing happened in the maya world the maya could not be united. They're the same people um speaking Uh, in some ways the same language like they can read and write the same, you know, they can read and write their their hieroglyphs Um, the same, but uh, but they just can't be united and so that You know the lack of union really becomes their downfall because Um, you know, you have three different periods of the maya world you have the pre classic classic and post classic And so pre classic is really the maya like kind of coming to grips and starting to grow Um, and there's war but it's not the kind of war that we're going to see during the classic period from about 200 ad to 800 ad And then by 800 ad the maya world Had was torn in half. It was split in half and half of the maya world is trying to like Um, dive into itself and embrace their full maya heritage that they're only going to be maya The other half likes to be influenced by teotibicon. Have you ever have you ever heard of that? Uh, so, you know, you're giant pyramids in mexico Pyramid of the sun the pyramid of the moon and then the temple of ketzel coatt Uh teotibicon is influencing the maya world And so half of the maya world likes that half of the other maya world doesn't and so that's a big divide and then even in those divides The cities on either side are still warring amongst each other. So it's just like It's an insane amount of conflict. They can never come together. So ultimately they have a collapse of society Um, due to a lot of different reasons, but a lot of it because of war and because of like economic strain So my as society collapses they all end up moving away from the classical period Areas that are deeper into the jungles of southern mexico and like northern guatamala where that thick jungle is That's where that's where I spend a lot of my time Um, and they move northern they move uh northern into the yucatan Up near merida like over to cancun and to loom And even there man, they can't uh, they can't stay united with each other. So eventually a an actual empire the Aztecs come through and put their ass And uh, and the Aztecs were about to conquer all of meso america and finish off the last remaining pockets of the maya Right when Cortez showed up. So, um, that's kind of that's kind of like how the actual that's kind of a sweeping history of how the maya world worked and and Sort of why it fell, you know In teotihuacan was an Aztec city, right? Uh, no, no So the so Aztecs lived there, but by the time the Aztecs so the Aztecs they come from Somewhere in uh, the american southwest, so, you know, I don't know maybe as far as as utah North up to utah, but in la vada, Arizona, new mexico West texas, you know, maybe somewhere in that area And that's really where the Aztecs come from, but they were very like, um, they were like mercenary It was like a mercenary tribe And uh, and they were vicious people that were constantly cast out of wherever they try to live So they go south south south south south south south south south out of the american southwest Through the chihuahuan desert and eventually they end up like, um They end up revolving around the mexican valley And so um, and so eventually they push their way into the mexican valley build a huge kingdom and um And they form like the triple alliance empire Um, and but while they're there They discover this lost city which they called the birthplace of the gods And and that city was teotihuacan and that city had already been abandoned for over a thousand years So they just looked like giant mountains in this, you know flat valley so And then the Aztecs built a they you know, they had some settlement there Um but teotihuacan We don't know we I mean, we don't know who who built teotihuacan We know that they existed and we know some of the things that we did because the maya talk about them But we don't really we don't even know the name of the teotihuacan people So now they just call them, uh, the teotihuacanos That's that's like, you know, the the academic, you know, name easy Yeah, yeah thousand years before that time like that's so long. It's insane and it for it to just be abandoned like Yeah, can you imagine just have you happen upon a city like that? You're like, this is it all right time to take over It just oh, I know man. It's it's it's nuts like the It makes me work like I wonder about like did they did they pack up and leave did they die out from like ones of the bandits where they conquered and just it was like Like so many things. Yeah, there's this um So around 800 ad There's this, uh, okay. Have you ever have you guys ever seen the book 1177 BC? You all ever seen that anywhere? Mm-hmm. It's uh some of your viewers may know of it Like if you go to your barns and if you go to Barnes and Noble or something like that a lot or do you guys have Barnes and Noble where you're at? I do like yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was just curious but uh like we have half-price books here, but I don't know that Half-price books exist everywhere else like sometimes books a million or something like that Yeah books and many Walden books a lot of these places. Yeah. Yeah, see we don't have Walden books in Texas at all We don't have books a million either. It's just Barnes and Noble and half-price So if you go in there and you go to your world history section, you go to ancient history You're going to see a book called 1177 BC. It's just it's like in every major bookstore Um, and it's like one of your staple ancient history books. It's a real short book um, but it's about the collapse of the bronze age and And it's it's just it's listing a number of factors That contributed to an age of civilization that just ended like it just it's just a society everywhere Collapsed the all of the economies collapsed and there was a dark age after that and It's really hard to um, you know, nobody knows quite why the bronze age injured Well, nobody knows why the classical period of Mesoamerica ended either There's a whole list of different um contributors. So like I was saying war, right? Um, but the Maya world falls apart around 800 ad because of war But we also see zapotec And taiotihuacan culture fall at the exact same time as well and they were not Wrapped up in the Maya civil wars Um, which funny enough, they're not civil wars. They were actually called star wars I don't know if you guys knew that that's uh a real battle for So that's yeah. Yeah, so so the term star wars Comes from the Maya. That was the name of their wars during during the seven during the eighth century ad Um, um, and and the rebel base in a new hope is this is the maya city of t call So you guys yeah, you can look that up like do you remember? Do you remember when the guy is like He's sitting up over the jungle and he's got the he's got the like the rebel Guy wearing the white hat. He's sitting up over the jungle and he's watching the ships fly out with the binoculars. Do you remember that? Um, isn't that so yavin for Yeah, he's in the jungles of central america and if you go back and watch that there are maya ruins right there So star wars comes from the maya and yavin for is just the city of t call which was the main city during the actual star wars So yeah Yeah, yeah, exactly. So Yeah, so so The wars that ended the classical maya period were called the star wars Um, and so in nobody we don't really know why they call them the star wars either. Um, it's kind of obvious Like why they use the name, but we don't really know What exactly that's being attributed to because of the maya they were all astronomers so this every city studied the stars all of their cities are astronomically aligned and so, um, you know, it's like, well, okay. Yeah, I can see that they would call it the star wars, but we don't really know why So, and so that's the name of their civil war, right? But they're also um, they're also cutting down too many trees around their cities uh to create um To create stucco that like lines and decorates their their buildings and made sure buildings look really nice Um, they're also poisoning their own reservoirs with uh, cinebar and maya blue paint and green paint and they're yeah, they're poisoning their own reservoirs and destroying their own water supplies Um Uh, they have they have allowed These like dynastic families these you know, these supreme rulers To rule over them for so long And all of the normal maya people are just like any other kingdom they kind of get pushed to the wayside and a lot of them are really poor Um, a lot of them start to resent the dynastic families And so towards the end of the towards the end of the eighth century So the the end of the 700's bc leading up to eight or 700 AD leading up to 800 AD We start to see the dynastic families depict themselves on hieroglyphs Um up to this point The only people you ever saw on hieroglyphs were not even the maya gods. It was the it was the dynastic families these Divine kings right and they always depicted themselves like stoically, you know, uh kind of like a pharaoh, you know what I mean a 2d depiction of a pharaoh like this and and they're essentially Exalting themselves right Well, then all of a sudden we see them depicting themselves kind of delegating with the people and talking to the people and written in the hieroglyphs Is that you know, they're kind of like he's they're trying to now appease the people that they have neglected for the past You know six centuries or something Yeah, so it's so it's it's leading You know, it's kind of eluding to like why would there be an uprising because the economy is hurting because there's so much war So you can kind of see that like the institutions that the maya world had are starting to fall apart and up to this point though People followed the dynastic families because they have the blessings of the maya god Well, maybe maybe the omen that was the final straw for the maya world was when um was when uh Mount chichon erupted and uh, and so Mount chichon is this giant giant volcano in chiappas about 30 miles west of polanque and so when it erupted the Impact and it erupted in 800 ad Um, and so the eruption was so large that it well, okay There was this there it erupted one time since then and we and it gives us an idea of how big the eruption was It erupted in in 1982 And the eruption was so huge that it changed the weather patterns Um, all around mexico and the plume Carried over meso america for like a week And there were even people on the opposite side of the globe like in Siberia That said that they could feel the reverberation like go through the earth And so it caused like tremors in Siberia um And then uh And I think it even caused like smog in new york city or it was something crazy like that So It erupted in 1982 and the only other time that it erupted was an 800 ad Um, exactly at the time of the maya collapse. So when it erupt people Yeah, you could bet the people at that time if it's like got massive overcast Changes the climate they're thinking it's like n times probably yeah They're thinking they're thinking it's the n times They have been living through they've been living through vicious wars for the last 60 years There they've been having drought the we've been having weather change leading up to that because they've they've destroyed their own ecosystems There's no Um, there's no trees anywhere Dust Bowl from like uh in america's right where we ate over so much that we just destroyed it Exactly exactly. So they destroyed their own, you know, um Environments and then all of a sudden Uh, they hear about, you know, you you have these runners these messengers So there's no horses uh during this time because the euro europeans brought horses over Um, and so you have these runners who are running, you know, they can run Dozens of miles a day and carry messages. Well, all of a sudden there's this big eruption in the west land, you know Um, and all of these cities are completely covered in ash right like kind of like pompey And you know in in italy that's all stinking out and so you have all these runners that are running and they're saying like the mountain Literally exploded and it destroyed these cities and melted these cities Like the gods are pissed off at us and all of a sudden this panic starts spreading throughout the maya world And then this black plume of smoke Covers the maya world and all of a sudden these people who already Didn't like their kings are now turning and looking at the king and being like The gods don't approve of you anymore, you know, like it's the final omen that they need To realize. Oh wow like everything is changing And so That's kind of the the theory as to why all of the cities regardless of So ultimately the pro maya cities that didn't want to able con influence They won the they won the star wars and then like the next year The the volcano erupts and All of the cities the winners and the losers abandoned their cities and moved north And it was just because the area was decimated like, you know, they had been living there for Thousands of years, but at a height for about a thousand years and at a huge height too like more population than you can possibly imagine Um I can't comprehend it man. Like, um, you know for for instance um We were at this we were at a major city called kalak mool um, and that was a pro maya city. Uh, it was the the The largest city of the maya snake kingdom. Um, and uh, and so We drove 50 minutes south And the entire time that we were driving you look 50 minutes south going like 40 miles an hour and the entire time you're looking out the window It's just pyramid pyramid pyramid pyramid pyramid pyramid pyramid pyramid pyramid pyramid pyramid pyramid and we end up having a ranger Like take us out into the jungle like like two hours deep walking into the jungle and he shows us this Small city out there that really nobody knows about Um But it really wasn't in another city. It was called mool That was that is how big the city was. I mean, uh, what city what city can you drive For 40 or for 50 minutes straight at 40 miles an hour And you don't make it through the there's I don't think there's a city in america where there's no I can't think of one Yeah, but that's how big the cities were that's how big the ancient cities were and so it's an If you could see it back then dude, you could walk all the way across the entire mya world without ever reaching Um without ever reaching like a remote area where you're just walking through trails for hours It wasn't like that. It was in less Inless population with pyramids and stone architecture Everywhere Everywhere like it's just that's that's absolutely insane and what's what's even crazier is just how little Everybody is taught. I know that I did everything I've learned About mezzo american cultures has come from the very little I got in like maybe ap history classes right in college And then on my own and then like listening to people like you talk about it It's a travesty that we don't know this and like it almost feels like there's a concerted effort sort of to stifle that history Would you say that's true or is this just like? Because there hasn't been enough people doing this for their that information to reach everybody yet or like what? um well, it's tough man like um Okay, so a lot of the Archaeologists in the maya world They don't love the idea Of gringos coming down there and making headlines, right? Okay, so there's incentive to stifle you there um They don't take white money That's just your biology Yeah, yeah, yeah, they don't take white money all their money comes internally um, the problem is that's um I kind of got to watch what you say, but um Problem is that archaeology in mexico Is run by people who can make money in better ways? Um, okay, so archaeology is neglected You know noted, um if you find if you find a lost city and you you know, you go to the head of archaeology in mexico There will be people who care, but the people at the top who write checks don't care Um, you know, if they can't make it if they can't easily make a tourist attraction out of it that makes money Not they're not gonna do anything Um, then that's kind of just the way it is When there are billionaires from the us that would love to donate, you know 500 million dollars or something insane, you know, uh to go do something They don't care, you know, they they do not care about that um, so dude, there's just so much like um Uh, the deeper i've got into studying archaeology like when I first got into it I thought that maybe there was like this, um I thought that maybe there was like some kind of worldwide conspiracy to like stifle or or conceal information And the more i've gotten into it, the more I don't think it's worldwide I think that all of these people that are in positions of power Have some reason to keep their cards close to their chest and like manipulate the world around them for their own gain And usually that has to do with like so they can be the one only expert or something like yeah Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, there's just Yeah, there's an infinite amount of reasons like, you know, in ancient egypt we could dissect that And the reasons that ancient in the reason that egyptology is corrupt aren't going to be the same reasons that You know, mexican archaeology is corrupt, you know, so sure um, there's just so many reasons that somebody Who's in a position of power over other people would like manipulate their world? Um, you know if they have if they can they will, you know, yeah So it's intentionally stove piping information and then keeping out people who want to explore it for this history. Yeah Yeah, yeah, y'all want to you know, there's something the craziest thing that I saw when I was there I was at this city called balamku and uh And my professor dr. marner he told me to go there He was like, uh, he was like keep an eye on the temple that has an opening with the frescoes on the inside He was like it's gonna blow your mind. He's like don't look it up and there's not that many photos of it online anyways Um, but he was like he's like just go visit the site and and he's like there probably won't be very many people there So we show up on a saturday morning No, no, we show up on a saturday afternoon later in the afternoon It was like the second site we visited in that day Not a single person there and nobody had been there that day And so we go through the city and the city's got all different types of like architectural cultural styles from around the mya world like It's not something that like many people would understand, but it was really cool seeing all the different architectural styles in one city And so we get to the back Um of the city where the main pyramid is and you walk around the side of the pyramid and there's a you know, there's like this little This little portal that you walk inside and you go in and you shine your flashlight up and dude. It's it's a 20 foot high 40 foot long 3d stone stucco mural painted bright red with cinnabar with all the paint still preserved on it with the mya Kings of the city Like intertwined in this psychedelic dream Like trans with all of the mya gods like it was like their bodies or it was like stone that was moving I don't know how to explain it. Yeah, it is so Okay, so mya stonework or stucco work their frescoes Their 3d carvings are so Complicated to look at that you just have to like sit there and just stare at it to get what you're looking at And then once it may be you have to be on some sort of like hallucin, I know Yeah, of course, of course, I mean, yeah Of course there's something I'm telling yeah, I mean, I totally agree I mean, there's no way that you're making stuff like this if your brain hasn't been kind of showing you it You know what I mean? Just dt all day Dude, that's not the that's not the only thing In the middle of that beneath it is this giant 10 foot tall 10 foot wide black hole that goes straight into the ground And it was it was a pyramid that was built on top of a cave And this fresco 3d carving this 40 foot long 20 foot high carving was the gateway Into this underground cave where the tombs of these kings were held Okay, and there's a metal door That covered up like the portal when you go down inside there was like a chamber beneath it And so, you know, you would descend down there and they would take you know royal bodies down there and bury them down There and we asked the ranger who took us there because you know, it's it's like um It's just good It's good business to um Pay like a local guy to just walk it around, you know And so or it's good politics, you know to do that. It's just it's frowned upon if you don't Um, and we asked the guy we we asked the guy who worked at the site We said respect one one one it was the most unique thing I have I have ever seen in the mya world It's probably the most exciting thing that I think I've ever seen of all the giant pyramids and everything Just those murals the way that they looked and with the like the chamber and the tombs that that I knew were beneath it in the ground It was just the most exciting thing I've ever seen Um, and I asked the guy I said How like how often do people go down there? And he was like nobody goes down there and I said really and there was like a there's like a metal Great that you could you know, it's locked but you could pull it up I said when's the last time somebody went down there and he was like 25 years and so Yeah, yeah from 1999 1998 was the last time somebody ever been down there so You're talking about like the most unique incredible thing that I have ever seen That dr. Barnhart has ever seen in the mya world completely neglected, you know, and uh That I don't know man I mean how many different sites can you think that are like that in egypt and you know, so many other places that are that are just like Yeah, so like interesting because like kind of like what brand was talking about like, you know, when you when you go through school and stuff I'm gonna pull up a photo of you guys too. I Remember learning a whole bunch about egypt and thinking wow they were like so advanced and civilized and the pyramids are so cool Yeah, um, but like hearing what yours. It's just my ignorance. I didn't know so like hearing you talk about like you're just driving for like Everance like pyramid pyramid pyramid pyramid pyramid period. Yes, and obviously i'm not assuming they're all like great pyramid of giza size But like they're probably quite substantial for you to notice them as you're going across Oh, yeah, yeah, you only you only really see the the big ones, you know, and yeah, yeah, and so like i'm just kind of like It's just interesting to me because I guess The whole like I guess Aztecs or the Mayans and stuff. I just assumed they were a more Collective kind of like Native American esque type. I didn't see them as I guess So advanced or like an actual civilization if that makes sense. I just assumed they were kind of just walking around with It's like a flap on the front and oh my god. Yeah, just walking around the loincloths and like a spear and I guess I just That's how they were portrayed. I remember my history books. It's like a picture And it's like we're in like loincloths. Yeah, they're gonna ball through a hoop and you're like, oh, wow, oh Yeah Honestly, I know I was trying to look up a photo of the balamku fresco's and nothing really comes up Um, but I have photos on my camera that that I I'll send you guys just like yeah I'll put them in the reels when I put it up. Yeah, please. Yeah. Yeah What's I guess because this is impressive to me like learning about this. So I'm kind of curious about Uh, what do you think luke like what's uh, what is more impressive? Do you think like ancient egypt or like ancient mile like which one do you think at their height was I guess the more advanced civilization Um Man, it's tough dude because we know a lot about egypt, you know, like Just the you know a lot of it even with Like the loss of of alexandria The library of alexandria and people don't realize that was like three different times That that happened that and they would reassemble the library and it would burn down again Um, and they probably they probably made a mistake by building it right on the docks Uh, so like when you landed in alexandria, you walked up you had to walk Either through or by the library you had to like literally walk in the alleyways around it It's like the first thing someone's gonna burn Exactly. Well, well until they burn the ships, you know what I mean? It crawls up the harbor and burns the library and um But um, man, we have uh, so That kind of yeah, that's like that's a good question because it's like right up my alley So egypt and the mya world those are my two favorites um Because I guess before you go around to it, I guess I want to preface this because it's like When I everything I've seen or learned about egypt and I don't know like a whole like i'm not like an expert in it but like I don't think It even the height of egypt you're not driving for like 100 miles and it's like pyramid pyramid pyramid pyramid pyramid You know what I mean? Like that's not a thing you're talking about super density like egypt was very like Along the Nile and that's pretty much it like it wasn't like expanding It wasn't like yeah in the Nile's really different environments too. Yeah entirely different environments And yeah, they have like their great pyramids of giza, which are massive sure and like yeah, they're huge spectacle um And there could be a whole there could be a whole bunch underneath the sand that we just don't see or don't know It's definitely there's definitely a lot That it's just been like it's just hidden. So maybe it seems less than I guess On a side note, um, I don't want to sidetrack you You guys are familiar with with what the syrapium is or the syrapium In egypt, do you know what this is? No, no Okay, keep your thought okay rapping Um, um, the syrapium or the syrapium, but it's really syrapium um, so And so the syrapium Is traditionally thought to be like a krypt underground Um, that houses. I don't know maybe it's like more than a dozen. Maybe it's two dozen Um, traditionally thought to be apis bull sarcophagi and so you guys maybe have seen this before where you stand, you know You stand uh tall guy stands straight up and he reaches his arm as high as he can And he and his hand will reach the bottom of the lid And so yeah, and it's it's bigger than your armspan and they're made out of solid granite or diarite You know two of your hardest materials that you can find in egypt and the inner walls are Like perfectly smooth two feet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, maybe maybe a foot and a half or two feet thick Perfectly straight lines like perpendicular my degree like yeah, I mean just just Unfathomably heavy sarcophagi Um in these underground crips. Okay One top of it the top of it be um The top of it the temple that was kind of like the gateway where you would walk through the temple And then you would go down into the other underground crips um that had probably been quarried sometime in antiquity like You know, maybe during the christian or or the or the islamic eras It was called for its blocks and carried, you know somewhere else And so the the blocks that built the temples on top of the syrupium are probably somewhere in in like memphis or kyrow, you know um, and uh, and so In the by the 1800s. Um, so the syrupium was was super important. Sorry. There's like a lot of lore to this but the syrupium the syrupium was really important because um in allexandria um I think it was tolamy are you guys familiar with who tolamy is? Yeah, so so allexanders Yeah, and so um and he had his lineage that goes all the way down to uh, it's the final team of egypt So from 305 to 30 bc you have tolamy the first all the way down to cleopatra the seventh, which is our cleopatra That's the one everybody knows of um And so um during that time The second syrupium In alexandria is built in honor of the first one. Okay, and so that that's in the literature Um, and so by the 1800s people are looking for the second syrupium that's mentioned in all of the literature Because the first syrupium in allexandria is gone like do all of alexandria is gone You know, it's completely lost city and that is the coolest city in ancient egypt But we'll get we'll get more into that. That's my alexandria is my favorite city in all of egypt Um, and and all of it is gone like none of it is left Um other than the foundation of the syrupium and some other things Um, and some some roman buildings that came later are still there. Which is pretty cool Um, so in the literature You we know about the alexandria syrupium was built in honor of the syrupium. That was near Giza in memphis and maybe near sakara And but by the late 1800s when egyptology is really kicking off Nobody knows where it where it is But this guy, uh, I guess he was an archaeologist or like an explorer He's wandering around and he finds these stones in the sand So this is kind of like what you were saying about how much is still buried out there So he finds these stones in the sand He gets you know, he gets the funding to get a team to start digging up around it And he finds a stairway and he's got to pull all the sand out of this huge stairway Boom uncovers the uncovers the syrupium And uh, and it is the most enigmatic thing in all of egypt like all of the I mean, it's up there with the pyramids like if you just go look at how big the sarcophagi are It's it's as unexplainable as the pyramids. It really is um So Yeah, yeah, it's it's just uh, it's an amazing thing. So, uh, i'm sorry zak I don't even know if you remember what you were originally talking What i was kind of talking about is like It was brand new so when uh enough room When I was uh, you know I've written papers about egypt like all of history like i mean history class was real big on like egypt like all type of stuff And it's so but you don't hear a lot about minds But like you're talking about like their population density where i'm assuming they're like just a bunch of people everywhere Oh, yeah, you you Shoulder to shoulder like i'm assuming like times square during like new years like eve just people everywhere walk around I never thought of it that way. So I guess my question to you is uh We know so much about ancient egypt, but we don't know a lot about minds Or I guess maybe not enough people know about it but like which one to you was the i guess I don't say better civilization more impressive. Yeah, well, yeah, what do i Yeah, yeah, what do i find more impressive or more interesting? Um, so here's the thing so which one's bigger Yeah, yeah, so okay, so bigger mya world just more people. Okay more people Um more quantity of architecture, but not the same quality You know what i mean? And they also didn't have the quality of stones that egypt had Um, you know so so you have you have like real you have really not high quality limestone in the mya world And uh and the granite is so deep that it's not accessible Um, and so you know whereas in egypt you have cliff sides of granite that you can just start you know chopping away at and uh, you know but um so the mya world We kind of know how much writing that they had we we have an idea So during like the colonial period um the early spanish colonial period in mexico the Aztecs are ordering 480 000 copies of their form of paper a year so 480 000 copies a year and they had only been writing for like sometime within the last 150 years they had begun so the last 150 years before the spanish arrive in 15 21 so i guess that would be Like, uh, I don't know what 13 80 13 90 is when the spit is when the Aztecs begin Uh, and so sometime during that period they start writing and at the time of the spanish arrival They're printing 480 000 pieces of paper a year um The mya had been writing for the last 2000 years leading up to that point So or close to the last 2000 years and the omex were writing too before that um But in 15 74 something around there maybe like 15 60 something um A guy named Diego de landa uh demands that all the spanish troops enslaving all the local mya people go and assemble all of the known uh mya writing on paper And they assembled millions and millions and millions and millions and birds of opuses and everses and everses and everses And they they assembled it into Pires so a pyre is a large mound and it's pyres as an oral And they just burned it all up in the ash because they thought it was all, you know, pagan devil stuff But really it was it was everything it was like, you know What would you expect the library of alga's andrea to be it would be manuscripts it'd be blueprints it'd be mathematics history mathematics Oral history traditional history it'd be like legal documents it'd be everything that describe it'd be medicine Blueprints they're a strong It would be everything that encompassed their civilization gone so it kind of We can look at their architecture, but here's the thing and then i'll answer your question as to which one to find more interesting um So here's the thing We don't even know what we don't know because Up until the Dresden Codex, which was held in Dresden, Germany Which I think it's still in Dresden, Germany Um, and that's where it was deciphered to Um, the Dresden Codex until that was deciphered which which kind of unlocked the the code Of mia astronomy to us and and it kind of well, I mean not just kind of it made us realize like oh my god Look at how much they knew about the the stars and uh and astronomy We had absolutely no idea Why any of their temples faced the direction that they did So you're talking about tens of thousands of temples that we know of all facing random random directions And there's absolutely no way to know The alignments of the cities that you're standing in which is the whole purpose of the city There was no way astronomically aligned Yeah, there was there was no way to know that they were even astronomically aligned until you deciphered the Dresden Codex Okay, so then once they do that they go whoa Okay, okay, okay, so so they know constellations. They know stars and plans. They're tracking planets Okay, do you know why we didn't realize this because we're standing in the middle of a freaking jungle Let's cut down all of the trees around the the ruins like they would have so we can now see the stars They would have never known that until they deciphered the the Dresden Codex So like i'm saying that opened up. Oh, I don't think I have the I don't think I have the book with me, but there but just the Dresden Codex, which is I don't know several dozen pages, but you know, it's like fine print the whole thing There are textbooks that thick just because of the Dresden Codex that tell us amazing so much about Mya astronomy and their world as a whole like it just it's just like a super rosetta stone Yeah, it's like there was at a stone. It just it's a key that unlocks a whole world You know and that was one out of thousands of pyres that that were Maybe I don't know hundreds of thousands. So We don't even know what we don't know about the mya world Um people joke about like going back in time and killing Hitler. I go back and kill that guy and prevent this thing happening like dead ass Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I would do that and uh Yeah, if if I could kill like a whole handful of people man, it'd be If you all of your it'd be all of your big recent names, you know what I mean? I'd kill get learned stalling and and Mow all those guys. Yeah, but I would also go back into antiquity and I would kill Um, I definitely kill a Diego de landa before you could burn all of that Um, but I would also kill Which I don't know man like, you know, he already dies a pretty bloody death, but I would stop Julius Caesar from burning down alexandria Uh, and I would stop. Um, I would stop. Uh, I think it's decommission, which is the uh, one of the roman emperors Heber and down alexandria again Um, I would stop those guys because the fact that we don't have The fact that the library of alexandria doesn't exist today and we don't have those documents Those are the two biggest Those are the two biggest tragedies to history. Um, so honestly man, um So they're gonna give away my answer. Uh, my big project that i'm working on right now Uh is a new youtube series called alexandria And um, and it is it is literally every single Aspect of ancient alexandria that you could possibly think of like if you thought if you sat down and thought about all day Any weird strange question about it. It's gonna have a it's gonna have a an episode dedicated to it. Let's go. That's awesome I have assembled like um Every piece of literature on alexandria. I have all of it and I and i've i've uh, i've been assembling it for like months now, um, and uh So i'm going through it one by one and it's going to be a complete study of the history which is not very well studied at all um, and it's also going to be a study and investigation into um Into a lot of the mysteries around alexandria because it's it's kind of a it's like a we know where the city was But it's a lost city on none. Okay. So the monuments that we know existed in alexandria are some of the most important monuments that ever existed in the ancient world Um, let alone let alone egypt itself. So so the pharaoh's lighthouse Um, you know, the world's very first lighthouse that has a whole story and meaning behind it That's insanely profound and the blocks used to create it I'll get to that in a second. So but you have the pharaoh's lighthouse. Okay, you have the library of alexandria Right next to the library of alexandria. You have them usae on which not a lot of people know about it was a building right next to the library That was like a uh, a scientific university. It's the world's first university. So you have the library You go next i mean how many universities have a library attached to it So you have all of your source you have all of your sources right next to the place where you go study those sources alexandria created the world's first university and it brought in scientists and Geniuses from all over the mediterranean world and would pay these people to come live in alexandria and study and invent things so, um So you have the the pharaoh's lighthouse the library of alexandria the musae on of alexandria Um, you have kleopatra's palace, which is like one of the biggest things that that was ever created You have this uh cesareon, which is the temple that was dedicated to cesars sun Uh, you have the temple of cesare you have the um You have the hippodrome, which is like one of the biggest chariot racing stadiums anywhere in the anywhere in the in the ancient world You have the seconds to rapium Um, dude, I could go you have you have some some of the world's first catechomes are in alexandria Um, oh god the mausoleum of alexandria Uh like right alexandria alexandria was built at con at the the center of canopic way in soma road Which are the two main roads that he established he was buried at the center of it And uh, and so the mausoleum is one of the biggest was one of the biggest construction projects ever taken on in the world He's buried at the bottom of it along with every single other tolemi that came after him Um, cleopatra and mark antony their tombs are somewhere in alexandria Um, and and i'm and i'm forgetting a whole bunch of other sites as well and all of them Do I so here answers egypt? Probably egypt. Yeah It's um, you know, it's just because we know so much so that so the world is so rich You know what i mean? Like I wish that I could talk about like, you know, uh XYZ ab and c character that lived in the mia world, but we just don't know a lot of them You know, um, your most prominent one will probably be pakal and his tomb Um in palenque have we talked about that like the temple of inscriptions Oh, it's just it's essentially the first and really the only um Mya pyramid that's discovered that resembles Um, you know, what the traditional idea of what of what pyramids were in egypt where you know You go down a crypt and a tunnel system Uh, like these different shafts and stairways down the pyramid and there's a giant tomb at the bottom of it um And so yeah, yeah, I mean, um basically this guy like um Albert ruise or alberto ruise, um in the fifties. He's exploring the temple at the top of the The pyramid of inscriptions essentially he's at the temple in the top of it And they call it the the temple of inscriptions because at the top of it From you know, florida ceiling. It's just the history of the city of palenque in the dynastic kings who live there leading up to the man That is buried in the tomb, right? Um or the man that's buried in the pyramid But at this point people didn't realize that, um, well, okay So they knew people were buried in pyramids, but they thought that they were buried in a chamber inside the pyramid And it was just buried over on top of and then people would live on top of the pyramid You know, I mean so you're like in tuned inside of it and there's no way to get to you Well, this guy is looking at these limestone slab Uh floorboards and there's these holes and the holes go down And he sees that the wall that meets the limestone slab goes past the slab down into the pyramid He goes what the heck so he shines his light down in these holes and the hole goes down So they're like plug holes Well, he ends up putting something inside the plug holes and he lifts up the slabs And there's a staircase that descends straight into the pyramid And so um and so there it was purposely filled in though with rubble So they have to they spend like three years of backbreaking work to get all of the rubble out of the staircases And when they get down to the bottom of it, there's this thing that's never been seen before It's like this megalithic triangular stone slab That was fitted into a triangular doorway. So like it was impossible to move out of the way Well, I mean I don't know for ancient people it would have been really hard probably nothing was actually impossible But you know, it would have been really hard to move out of the way So they eventually move it out of the way and when they walk in It's the biggest sarcophagus ever seen on this side of the planet um, the only thing that would surpass it are Are the serapium sarcophagi in egypt, um, it's uh seven feet tall Six feet wide 11 feet long Uh, it's like 17 tons of solid limestone Um, it's just yeah, it's it's or maybe the base of it is 17 tons and the lid was five tons um And so they ask Like do what why why are there's so many similarities like that like what what is What just inspired ancient man on opposite sides of the world to do such similar things Well, okay, so Um, well, I mean, I mean obviously I don't know but there's um There's a lot of different, you know, of course. There's just so many different ideas So, you know, your typical like most popular theory is that there was like a prominent mother culture that inspired a lot of these different cultures, but Uh, it's just hard to prove that because you know ancient egypt Existed from 3100 bc until 30 bc at the most conservative estimate, you know, of course, there's people saying that Ancient egypt goes back, you know to 10 000 bc Um, but at the most conservative estimate, it's 3100 bc to 30 bc Um, and the maya world is about 200 to 400 bc Up until the arrival of the spanish, right? So you're so you're you're not only disconnected By entire hemispheres, you didn't even exist at the same time You know, there there's no like there there is no way for them to communicate with each other because When we think about it, we're like, oh, it's the ancient world. We think about it like vaguely well But but they didn't exist in the same Yeah, so do you think maybe it was uh Do you think maybe it was the the Egyptians just went across the ocean Egypt fell in and across the ocean started up so here's the thing in egyptian literature um The Egyptians They had mediterranean boats, but they really did not like going into the mediterranean They the Egyptians are Nile people that is it they don't go into the desert And like when we think about Egyptians, we think about them living in the desert They did not live in the desert. They lived literally on the Nile river You know that where it was where it was green kind of like that tropical like the floodplain area They lived literally on the river the people who lived off in the desert were dangerous You did you know the barbarians that lived off the desert Yeah, the right like literally the tuskin raiders out there. You did not want to mess with those people um And so The Egyptians were kind of like they were scared of the desert and they were scared of the mediterranean c So they weren't leaving they weren't then leaving the mediterranean on the other side of africa To sail across the ocean. They just didn't have the boats to do that Later on they start having bigger boats, but that's really when uh, that's really when massadonia Comes into greece and they bring their tri-reams like you know, you know the big ships that you see like in troy That land on the beaches of troy. So those tri-reams Those are introduced to egypt through the tallameic kingdom Um, so before then, I mean egypt is not really sailing all over the mediterranean. They are they were sailing um from from out of the nyle to lebanon In 2600 bc But you know, they they didn't have fleets that were To be sailing all around the nyle you needed to be able to engage in naval warfare and like decimate other armies in naval warfare And the egyptians just weren't doing that um So so no, I mean, yeah, there wasn't there wasn't any sailing across Um, okay. So so that is kind of like, um, I don't know The mother thing doesn't work Them come across doesn't work So we can say with some sense of certainty that that that just wasn't the case Unfortunately, like it's it's cool and you would think like it's just your first innate thought that like there's got to be a cultural connection there So the other idea or another idea Um, would be that it doesn't really matter Where you put ants on the earth they're gonna build ant mounds that look exactly the same You know, and human beings are humans. Yeah, we're all humans and we all have Similar ideas our brains aren't that different from each other So triangle shape is also like the strongest shape for like a building. Yeah. Yeah, it's a strong structure So when you have people who are living on the brink of annihilation And all in all of their life is just experimentation They're gonna start building structures that are like sound that are easy to build and a pyramid is not easy to build but I don't know where else you start. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, like I don't know how Um, it probably makes more sense to build if you're gonna make an artificial structure It makes more sense to build something that looks like something that you know, which is a giant hill or a mountain You know what I mean? Because okay. Yeah, that is that is naturally a strong structure So you go from there to eventually four walls like four walls is is a bizarre Where where does that come from? You know what I mean? Like that that comes from like like generations of experimentation with architecture. You know what I mean? How like if you told a caveman something like Like it's just so Unnatural a four walled building, right? So it kind of makes sense. There's some kind of progression there another idea Another idea man is that uh, okay, let's I'll put kind of put two things in there um Is either people All across the world see similar things when they experiment with psychedelics and they have similar Inspirations because you look at uh Aztec and zapotec murals that are like have you ever seen the uh, you ever seen the murals that are like this It's like the triangles that go like this You or I'm sorry not triangles, but squares that go like this And they're like a spiral spiral squares or sometimes it's not that sometimes. It's like a wave You know I'm talking about yes, okay You should go you should go look at Aztec and zapotec murals And then go look at greek murals and tell me it's not literally exactly the same pattern because it's the exact same pattern It's literally the exact same pattern So are you familiar with uh brian your rescues work? Yes, but I haven't dived into it yet because I know it's going to send me down a rabbit hole and I'm not It will right so like one of the things he talks about a lot That's the kind of overarching theme of the book is psychedelic use and like the Hellenistic world, right? and so You're you're making this comparison about the use of you know psychedelics and meso america and greece like it's Not that far off to say that that's why that those depictions are so similar, right? Yeah Well, and isn't it interesting while saying earlier about um About how like the city state system is so similar in both places like They're so similar and I should say I don't know anything about brian's work It's just kind of one of those things where if you're interested in Greece But you like meso america and you go you study it for long enough You will see some of these like hey the murals look exactly the same and the city state system is exactly the same too That's really right, you know, and then so how You know, well, okay, then you have a lot of traditional academics sort of like you're you're an idiot You're stupid pseudo scientific, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah or pseudo scientific pseudo-archaeologist Fate history science and I are blah blah blah blah like yeah, you know, I mean it's just the mystery of it all was intrinsically fascinating and um And so yeah, I need to dive into the immortality key Um, but I just know that it's gonna send me down a rabbit hole that I'll never come out of you know what I mean? and so um And and well another thing I like about his book is that it's actually accepted like that work is so thorough That it's actually accepted by academics like okay So if you go to Barnes and Noble and you go to your world history section The immortality key will be in the world history section, but Graham Hancock will be over in the right conspiracy Unknown mystery kind of stuff. So, you know, um a lot of the stuff that Graham Hancock says is true But a lot of it's just heavily disputed, but but it's also not like an anthropologist or an archaeologist or anything like that either Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, or are you talking about brian? No Graham Graham is Graham is not like a Scientist yeah, yeah. Well, what is brian? Yeah, I thought they're kind of similar aren't they? You know, that's a good question. Let's look that up. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's not so much a matter of like your Before you move off of this. I want to pull something up real quick Okay. Yeah, I think it's not so much a matter of the degree just kind of the substance and I think Graham Hancock is also like uh I mean he's like unambiguously Uh at war against the system. You know what I mean? So they're obviously So this is right here. This is brian graduated five-bit kappa from brown university of the history or excuse me a degree in latin greek and sanskrit Whoa, okay, he does have, you know, a history or back out that traditional background So look Is this ancient greece or ancient Aztec? I do Um put him to the test that's greek. That's greek. Okay And that's what that's a whole of the other one Let's see huge This will be a fun. Uh, this will be a fun thing to do like ancient Aztec Uh greek That's Aztec I was gonna say that's got to be Aztec. This are if you okay, third the third set of like designs down You know i'm talking about zach like that that that looks more Mesoamerican like the waves The first one was greek you got that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Well, what's interesting is so that very first swastika like look in design, uh, yeah, it is that exact pattern is that is that um Uh, bellback lebanon It which is a which is like a greek oroman inspired Right, uh, city in lebanon Um that swastika there is in the murals at lebanon the exact same thing So as soon as I saw that I thought like like greco roman. Yeah, um, but I mean dude, it it I mean it really is like Um, the only the only way that I knew that the only way I knew without a shadow doubt that the first one was greek Is the little wave design. Yeah, yeah that one that one is so greek Um, that's right. I noticed because I just quickly googled at google like ancient greek border burl murals and then I did ancient aztec border murals and I found like ones from like I like them. Yeah, and a lot of the greek ones have a lot more like, uh, angles Like waves. All the Aztec ones are very like straight Um, except for some very random stuff like some it looks like flowers sometimes check this out What i'm about to show you that is bellback Oh, yeah, yeah, that's the uh, that's the exact same thing It is literally that exact if he if he found out it's funny you could put up on the so how do you yeah? I just looked up. I just looked at bellback lebanon swastika And look at that and look at that You have you have greco greco roman. Um, oh it's all on the behind it Yeah, so clearly we just the three of us need to get together and do like ayahuasca together and then talk about it Hey if we were to see likes, uh, you know, when you when you say swastika It obviously like gives you the the 30s thing, but that's not but that's not the case that symbol existed That's a corrupted symbol. Yeah So so like for so just for everyone listening when I say swastika has nothing to do with germany But if we see that design and we were on ayahuasca, that's like whoa, you know what I mean? It's just uh, it's It's almost proof that people are seeing these similar things and putting them in stonework That's what i was going to say is it's almost like the aspect of the scientific method where we're reproducing outcomes because we're all seeing the same symbol Even though we're on Hallucidogens, you know Yeah How bizarre is that so so when I first saw that and that was on the first row of the mezal american I was like, oh, well greco roman and you're like, oh, you know, it's uh, you know as tech zapotec told tech or whatever And uh, and it's just like that's how indecipherable it is And so we were talking about earlier And and and I would be interested in in reading the immortality key And i'm really on the edge of like every time I go to barge nibble. I'm picking up that book and i'm just doing it Not yet, not yet, you know, I got so many other things i'm diving down I did my time But it's amazing That we were just talking about earlier The similar of the the similarity of the city states between mezal america and greeze And then all of a sudden we get to these patterns and how similar they are and then I didn't even well I actually I knew that but I Um didn't really know the extent of it that when I was like flipping through the immortality key I saw photos of of like uh mezal american, you know Something that it sent like a photo that had something to do with, you know mezal america and I thought That's interesting. And so now it's clicking. That's probably what it's about in the book I don't know some some kind of connection there, but um, yeah, man. It's a it's a fascinating world I don't know where we got off on that topic When you we were talking about hallucinogens like taking psychedelics and then you mentioned them all connected Well, yeah, you mentioned like the uh the greek, you know cultures and that's kind of like one of the main themes in his book It's like the Hellenistic cultures and and that psychedelic use Yeah, yeah, man The hellenistic world is is really um was really amazing. That's that's what alexandria existed in It's just it's just uh, it's just a time of like um, you know, it's like 300 years of kind of piece kind of but with but with uh, you know, um, well I say kind of piece but but roam is just absolutely whooping everybody's ass at this time Uh and ro and roam is like clawing its way to taking over the entire world during this time So everyone else is trying to relax and roam is just coming in and decimating everybody You know the blog yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, it's kind of funny like, um, so in greece, you know, you have You have the bronze age wars of like my seany Um, my seany and fessally and and let's say even troy and so you have the bronze age wars and And then you know, you know, you have you have, um, menoan creek culture Um, and so you have all these wars and then you have the dark ages and then greece kind of rebuilds um, and uh greece kind of rebuilds and then so you've got like the time of homer and And sparda and pericles Um out of athens and so you know, you have the uh, you have the greek world trying to repel Persia and xerxes, you know, and then the greek world They repel persia and then they turn in and start fighting each other and the pelican needs more Exactly exactly. You know your timeline stuff. Dude. That's that's awesome. I love history man. Yeah. Yeah, so so then they start fighting each other and then um, and then you know, so the greek city states Dude, they start declining just in the same way that meso america does and then so little Macedonia up here with the second just Crushes all of them and then and then all of a sudden He dies and then his like 23 year old son goes goes I'm gonna take over perilla And all of in all of the greek city states are like, uh that kid's gonna go out there and kill himself And then three or I don't know maybe like seven years later He's got his feet kicked up in babylon and he's taken over all of the known world And and little and little old rome over there is like, oh my god when he goes back to me When he goes back to massadon, he's gonna come after us So lucky enough for everybody else. Alexander dies and the Hellenistic world like splits up You know, Alexander's kingdom splits up and then everybody goes, okay, you know after the After the wars of Alexander's successors, everybody goes, okay. Okay. Well, let's kind of like Let's kind of chill out a little bit and let's focus on Let's focus on building our culture or whatever and then everybody like looks to the west and here comes rome If you've never stopped, dude He's just playing, you know It's just a maybe it's just it's just Well, it's funny, you know what I mean that like all that happens to the to the greek world and then you get to this Hellenistic period where it's like Nice and greek culture is spread everywhere and you know, they're building like dude There's a there's a did you know that there was a library war Did y'all know this dude? There's the library of Ephesus the library of Pergammon Uh the library of Alex Yeah, yeah, the library of alexandria and so they're all competing with each other to uh, dude, there's like oh my dude. It's like game of thrones of these um librarians who which are just these really wealthy dynastic families that are Pimps of the ancient world dude. That's just trying to like have a whole new show. Yeah Yeah, yeah And they're all trying to get the original copies of these famous books and trying to you know Collect the most knowledge this sat in the other and then egypt is eventually like, you know what? We're the ones producing the papyrus We're not even going to make papyrus for you guys and sell it for you anymore We're going to have all the papyrus and make all the you know and and have all the scrolls Yeah, we're right. There's there's 300 years of library wars at this time And all throughout that time of like these cultural wars It's like a cultural war, but it's kind of a time of prosperity like Hellenism That's what Hellenism was And then so dude like the Hellenistic world is is really thriving And then rome has just got to come and burn everyone's city to the ground jedi tennrad march literally dude like, you know Speaking of rome and like the military makes me wonder what what was the um, like the mai and mezzo american military like Because obviously like you think of like greek army you think of rome and army you think of like the phalanx with gree Right and like the rome and sort of Sort of they did they perfected the greek phalanx, you know, like did did the mai and have something like that Did they have siege weapons like you're going up against cultures. They've got pyramids, right? Like Yeah, how much do we know about their military? Not a whole lot, man. Um We know that it was like heavily strategic Um, but it's it's like straight up guerilla warfare, you know, so you're Excessing the jungle. Um, yeah, I mean you're attacking people at night. Um using, you know, uh, definitely using fire, you know, I mean you're you're it's it's um Uh, well, you know, i'm trying to think of like, um, it's like jihod wars basically, you know, and I mean it It's uh, it's like terrorism that that that was the form of that's like the former work you said, you know It's yeah, I mean it's you're using fear Um, it's like, you know, I mean it's not um, it wasn't noble warfare in the way that Washington crossing the Delaware on christmas Exactly. It's exactly like that Yeah, um, which was savage of him to do by the way Um, yeah, we're safe Yeah, yeah, so George Washington was absolute savage. Um, but yeah, it went a lot of ways. Yeah, it was a lot like that where um, you know what I mean you are So the Maya world has like all these knock these uh, these uh, these uh, sock bays that go all over the Maya world Which are these uh, 10 meter tall stone Highways that go all over the Maya world and they just cut straight through the jungles And so, you know, people had to walk everywhere So you have armies, you know walking down the road and at a certain, you know, strategic turn You have all of these people sitting up in the hills Or sitting up, you know, maybe that the The sock bay goes like between a little hill and all of a sudden, you know, they just descend and shoot arrows through it and just You know what i mean? Two to bird forest just that's yeah. Yeah, it's it's all it's all about sabotaging and terrorizing your enemy and um And that that wasn't that's what we know about Maya warfare um Just from spanish accounts of having to deal with the Maya people Um, it makes sense. There were some so so the Maya And the toll techs Uh had started to form an alliance to fend off the Aztecs by the time the spanish game. So the Maya toll tech people of chichen nica Fended off Fended off the spanish Like pretty fiercely and uh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was like so Yeah, I think it was so bad that the The spanish had to flee at night And they tied up all of their dogs To trees and had like bells on them And so it would make a lot of noise at night to distract the Maya from the fact that the whole army was leaving You know what I mean? Oh shit some story like that. Yeah, so they were really That's wild scared of quite scared of the mezzal americans and um And I mean really the the biggest upper hand that the um That the spanish had was that they were immune to all of the diseases that they exposed mezzal americans too You know, so they were fighting people who were already ill um and had been ill for a while because um, you know columbus arrives in the bahamas in 1492 and then some of the first Trading vessels that go down to mexico are in the early 1500s Cortez arrives in 1521 um, and then you have Well, he takes on the Aztecs immediately, but then you had later expedition You had later expeditions throughout the 1500s and the 1600s to take on the Maya and so um And so, you know some of these So the last Maya kingdom fell Uh, it was called lake paten eta And that was on an island in in guatamala Like island in the middle of a lake Why did they survive because they were so you know secluded But they were really just refugees from the rest of the Maya world that found their way to this island And would like swim across the lake or you know go across on a little Wrath or something just to get there so they built up this fortified kingdom and um Yeah, yeah, I don't know where I got off on the rabbit hole about that, but that's yeah That that's kind of like an idea of what Maya warfare was was like very much guerrilla warfare You know staking out in the in the jungle and then attacking your enemy at their most vulnerable And then you know your hand-to-hand combat Um, they had shields, you know, they had like wooden shields, but it's not exactly the way we think of it It's a more agile shield, you know, whereas a roman shield will cover your whole body All right, these are more like smaller shields that may have also been weapons at the same time Um, and then they had swords, which is interesting, you know that they're like yeah that that the similar idea Ideas are there, but their swords are different. It's a solid wooden club With jagged razor sharp Um obsidian or like razors attached all the way around it so when you hit somebody with it Not only did the sword shatter the bone, you know what I mean? It's like hitting somebody with a club or a baseball bat, but it's like a baseball bat with Um razor sharp obsidian blades attached to it, you know, so you just it's just talking about it's just like Like disgusting carnage from that, you know, yeah, um another thing, you know, they're gonna have your your normal obsidian daggers Um, you're gonna have the uh, I think it's called the axolotl Um, and it was like a it was a and they had spears too, which is interesting But spears must have been around since like the ice age, you know that and they and they just permeated throughout all of the world Um, and they're probably the same with bows, you know, and uh, definitely the same with like daggers those had those have been around since before the ice age um But they had learned the the mezzal americans had learned to throw their spears with even more uh power and velocity By attaching this little wedge that you held in your hand and it Tucked the back end of the spear and you would hold it like this and then launch it forward. So you have this leverage Um that propels the spear forward, but the spear was all right Yeah, yeah at ladle. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why i was buying a lot of that's the little lizards. Oh, yeah, okay So the at ladle, um So in those spears were also smaller, you know, so it's easier to project it forward, but it's really just like a giant arrow coming at you Um, and so they uh, they would also have um They also have a honey bee bombs where they would capture honey bees and wasps and put them in like rotten fruit or And then you know they send it in Uh kind of like a like a slingshot catapult and so it just lands in the middle of You know, they're enemy Troop or or you know at least in our in our case they in what we know from the literary sources that they would land You know amidst the uh spanish soldiers and then all the bees disperse and go underneath their armor And you're trying to fight with with a hundred bee sting you so yeah Yeah, so that's kind of what warfare was like and if you want to include the Aztecs They had their death whistles and i'm sure you've heard of that before Oh, yeah, yes They sit up in the hills or often the often the forest Psychological warfare around you at night and they you know Blow into the death whistle, which sounds like a mountain lion, but it also sounds like a woman screaming and pain Um, and so yeah, you know psychological like jihad You know kind of warfare, you know, it takes like terrorism. Yeah. Yeah, so that's that's kind of, you know, it's not the same uh, noble wars that you see like in the old world, you know, sure Just curious. Yeah, because obviously like mankind is always wage war against one another, but don't really hear a lot about You know mezzo american cultures and and war, you know what I mean? so but you know one of the things though, uh listening to or again like watching like um jungle of stone you you mentioned Oriana like traveling up and down the rivers and like seeing all these cultures like Is it is it really just like his presence and the presence of these diseases that wiped them out that when the spanish returned and found them all gone? Or is there another sort of um academia reason why they think maybe that happened? Um, well, it's tough. It's tough to say with a lot of certainty. Um probably in Well, there's a lot of different reasons, but if we're talking about the amazon like Oriana going, you know up and down the amazon Um, yeah, yeah him exposing him and and you know, it wasn't just like he was on one boat It was like a giant fleet of people, you know what I mean? It was a full-on army going up and down the Nile um and uh god, I don't know I the it's been a year or so there's so since i've seen these numbers, but I want to say like it was Maybe a thousand Spaniards and something like 9,000 enslaved indigenous people. It was like a ridiculous convoy Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean the numbers are that big I could be somewhat wrong, but it's like a colossal amount of people that were on this expedition And so and so you can just imagine You have all these thousands of enslaved indigenous people that have been exposed to these, you know, european diseases um And how many of them escape the camps in the middle of the night and flee into local tribes and just Bring those diseases into into the local tribes and so, you know, Oriana says, you know, he saw all these giant cities and everything um and so you have, you know hundreds of years or you know over the next centuries all of these um Spanish accounts and legends of you know, all these huge cities these with these giant stone walls, you know Raising up out of the jungle um in these huge pyramids with with millions upon millions of people living there and they're getting bombarded by literal hoards of arrows um Everyday along the river. Um, and then in the european explorers arrive, you know, so that's That's the 1530s that he does that and then european explorers arrive Uh, I don't know as early as the late 1700s definitely the 1800s and definitely the early 1900s Um, there are tons of people exploring the amazon who were all like It was all alive. There was nothing here. Sure. No, it's all died Yeah, lydar lydar comes along and boom. I mean, what are we you know, what just just a month ago? They found um, yeah, was it a thousand structures 6,000 structures and equidore? Um, and dude that's just on the peripheral of the amazon. That's not even deep into the amazon That's so um, so now the estimates are at least 20 million people were living in the amazon uh, during the time that oriana arrived and disease leapt ahead of any of the armies and Literally decimated all of the civilization and and I think that that's a realistic enough um Explanation because it wasn't just one of these people come a couple hundred years later. They're like where they'll go Where were they? Yeah, yeah Well, and it wasn't just one disease. It was like it was like a wave or it was waves of about two dozen diseases That swept across all of the americas and um, and I find that pretty realistic because it's like the same Scenario across all of the ancient america's like even even alaskan um natives or uh your escamos are just Their cities their little igloo, you know village cities that are uh ice fishing, you know villages or whatever that are there By the time people arrived there in the 1800s The villa the ruins of the villages are there, but nobody's there You know what I mean? So it's just like poof. They all disappeared. Well, they all got sick and died, you know, yeah, and uh And so when they see these bad spirits like killing off all the people that are around them like oh damn I gotta get out of here So they go to the next to the nearest village to find refuge and they infect everyone they're incubating it You know and so it just it's just growing and growing and growing and it's multiple diseases Like, you know, I mean, there's just new convoys of europeans coming Every single year every month there's new people coming from europe that are bringing in Diseases that they got from asia and africa, you know So the traders that are along the mediterranean c are bringing you know from asia and africa are bringing things Which all of this comes from rats by the way Um all of these all of these diseases come from rats that lived Um that live along riversides. So rats, you know, it rats in water harbors disease And so the rats along the nile created the bubonic plague so like the blood the the Um, the bubonic plague of like the middle ages That started that started along the nile river and so You boss was a noted thing in like 1500 b.c Um, and so that started along the nile river It also started along the twin rivers, you know The uphrades and the teagress river And then we can imagine that it's also happening in the indus valley and everywhere else that People are living in these similar kind of areas with these rats And so those diseases start there and then they spread up into europe um, and then um So um, yeah, so all the europeans that are trading along the mediterranean Getting goods out of asa and africa are bringing diseases through the mediterranean across the atlantic and exposing them to people who didn't have These urbanized societies that harbor diseases And so their immune systems are not at all equipped to this so they die instantly Um, and then it and then it's just a multiple It's a just a ton of different diseases that swept across and so you know to be able to like for immunologist or whatever Uh, to be able to go back and study these diseases is like almost impossible Um, but they're able to I don't know They kind of piece it together through some literary literary sources that it's like just of north of 20 different diseases wiped out North central and from the america so I mean first of us that's freaking amazing but um for a group of people like them who you know had a massive priest class and you know gods and um put so much emphasis on You know religion, I guess like what? Can you paint like a picture of like how they would have like dealt tried to deal with this internally? Like recognizing holy shit all these people in our culture are dying Like what would they have done like obviously we just went through something right as a modern group of people And we see what like we did like what? Paying a picture would they have done to try and like turn the tide To to work against this and you know in their own ancient way um Well, I mean They probably thought of somewhere to have volcano up there and just thought gods are supposed to get like do they start? Yeah sacrificing people like yeah, yeah, well, I mean I mean, there's a few different accounts of what they did, right? So we know that they were um like in mass Fleeing the cities where where sickness is breaking out um, and when they're doing that they're just bringing the sickness to uh to other cities Well, also what's happening are the Spaniards that are there are going you know why you're all sick, right? You know why you're all dying, right? It's because you don't believe in Jesus And so you need to convert to Christianity and you will be healed And so to combat, you know this sickness they all became christian or they all became catholic, you know And so the catholic church needed new people To you know farm and go collect in mine gold and collect in mine You know good resources so they can send it back to spain because spain is at Spain is in the middle of all these different wars in europe and they need income Um, so they're you know, they're helping fund the vatican church as well. You know, that's a whole rabbit hole to go down um But but yeah, I mean a lot of them became christian to try to escape the disease And uh, I don't think it I don't think it worked very well because no Because the priests were baptizing all of the people in buckets of water So all of the sick people dunk their face with all their germs in a bucket and you have 6 000 people Literally literally I'm not making up that number 6 000 people dumping their each of their faces in one bucket And giving in each of them are getting the disease and they all die Um, and so they're so that that's kind of They didn't really have a lot of options, you know like yeah, they were facing they were facing the end of their world There's there isn't a way to survive. Um Gosh man, almost none of them survived. I mean they really didn't you know by the time By the time you get to your cowboy and indian, um You know stage of of of america like yeah, there's not a lot of native people Um, there's not a lot of native people Left in south america or central america to mexico. There's there's not a lot of native people left Um, and the only reason that that there were a lot left in north america Um, was just because it was populated, you know by by Um by europeans like a bit later and their civilizations were less progressed and less able to Uh surmount armies to attack, you know the europeans which also Um didn't make the europeans think that they had a lot of resources because they weren't super developed. Does that make sense? Yes Yeah, yeah, I mean so like when you you know when they're exploring the coastlines, you know from florida They're they're seeing people but they're not seeing much that looks like their own civilization Eventually they get down to mezzal america boom. You're seeing buildings now. That's a lot more attractive So north america kind of gets neglected. So the disease does spread out there. It does kill, you know, 90 plus percent of people by the time that Our ancestors get there even though I didn't have anybody that that was in you know Well, no, I mean I did kind of but um, you know, I guess by our ancestors, um, the cowboys arrive, you know, um It's kind of more like you have the remnants of the native americans who lived here um that are at war with people who are establishing the colonies, you know, um, and so then Um a lot of those natives are now, you know, let's say we're in like the early 1800s or mid 1800s during the gold rush So now manifest destiny we're, you know, sweeping over all of uh, you know, modern what is modern day united states Um a lot of the natives that are alive at that time They have immunity, you know, they're there by at this point. They're okay So now they're just clashing with, you know, the colonists or you know, uh Uh like the frontiersmen and so that's uh, so they're only option at that point Go ahead like better immunity than uh, I guess The native americans probably had better immunity than like the central americans and south americans just because they came like their ancient They came from asia like, you know, technically they came across like that land bridge or whatever Yeah, I don't think they came too far down or maybe intertwined with the central americans to some extent Yeah, yeah, well that that in that and uh, and they're just the people who happen to survive like like Okay, so so so north america North north america disease reached it european disease reached it eventually about Over the course of about a hundred years it kind of crept up because when you're looking at mexico as it connects to texas Most of it is chihuahua and desert except for a little patch Of green that attaches to texas and then goes through texas over to like louisiana Up into your green, you know, south eastern united states where a whole lot of people lived So when do these reach there and then you also have disodo that that does his expeditions through there So they were exposed to disease and when they were exposed they were all wiped out Like night, you know more than 90% of them were wiped out but um They didn't pose the kind of threat where they needed like um Where europeans felt like they needed to commit like complete genocide on the population to get rid of the threat if that makes sense Um, yeah And I mean they did that later on to north americans but but north americans just Were given the chance to survive longer and so they did and so there were small pockets That survived all the disease and eventually, you know, their children's children's children's children's children's children's Were immune to these diseases had the same immunity now as europeans now It's just a battle for territory if that makes sense so then you know You get the you get the stories of like the apaches and the command cheese and and just these little surviving tribes You know that we think of as these big tribes they were nothing they were just they were just the remnants And they were fierce people too, you know, so that's why they get that That's why they get this idea like being savages. Well, yeah, dude They literally just went through the end of the world. They only left are the tough are the tough ones and so um And so, you know, I mean there were other peaceful tribes maybe they weren't so much peaceful as they were just scared Um, but um But then you know you get to your age of like well now either these natives are going to become white Essentially, you know, they're going to become culturally white and assimilate into european society Or they're going to ambush, you know, uh frontiersmen camps and steal their horses and guns And now you have our our iconic, you know, the last stand for the the last stand for the west You know what I mean? Uh, at least for natives to control their land Um, and so that's kind of They're that's kind of from beginning to end. That's kind of their reaction to you know, um I guess colonization. I mean I that that world that word is so like radicalized nowadays But that that was their reaction to colonization, you know Um more so I don't know colonization is like this it's funny like people people attribute colonization to uh the To western europeans colonizing the america's Um, but they they use calling calling Nizers or whatever as this like drained slur but like Uh, I think you just mean conquerors like literally anyone else literally anyone else that's ever existed What's the difference between what they did and what alizander the great did? You know, there's there's no difference at all. It's just conquest That's that that is the way of the world. Um, right? I don't know that that didn't have anything to do with what I was saying But I just I used the word colonizer at colonizer or colonization I don't normally use that because it's so trivialized nowadays Right. Um, that would be like technically the right word to fit the time period, you know Yeah, no, it's what you're saying reminds me of a quote. Um, by uh, it's from core mcmccarthy's book blood meridian It says war has always been here before man was war waited for him the ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner Yeah, and that's literally every civilization every group of humans ever whether it's resources women Whatever have always fought one another. It's like that movie Remember what it is. This is like the ancient Sumerian word for war was a need for more cows like Human sees what human wants human does what he needs to do to get it You know, it's like war happens in in the primate world too. I mean we are primes But you know, that's what that's what I was just about to say. That's what I was just about to say Yeah, yeah, like large primates they gather together in like Um, communities and they literally plan assaults and assassinations, you know, I like it You know, it's hard word If people believe, you know, um, if people believe in like the traditional theory of evolution Which is probably wrong in some ways, you know, whatever, but um Before homo sapiens even existed all of the prehistoric hominids were waging war on each other Assassinating one and one another Colonizing each other's not just like orcas do it. They like work together to like fight each other and get food Yeah, yeah, you can make the argument that That attacking the other, you know, pod of orcas and taking over their hunting lands is a form of colonization because now you've Radicated them and move into it. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, and they like strategize like There's a there's that uh, it's not them against another like group of orcas But it's them trying to get like one seal off a thing of ice and it's like all these orcas going together So smart wave. Yeah, yeah, knock the one seal in so they can eat them. Yeah, like That they strategize that figure that out like Yeah, it's it. Yeah, I mean, I I totally agree It's just that is just the way of the world and it's just it's amazing that people don't realize like um Like go to her We we're just we're we're now at a place where Society and life is just so good that like the That people can't even acknowledge People can't even acknowledge the harsh reality of what it means to be a human You know, I mean right now now people now people um There's a great title of a chapter in the book called emperor of rome and it's about like, you know, roman society gets so Large and so grandiose and and for the people living in rome. It's so peaceful that um people start to like lose a sense of reality and at the end of the One of uh one of the chapters at the end of the book is is called i think i'm becoming a god And it's so that's what people in first world countries think of today. They think oh my god Do they think that they're like a theory? That that kind of don't the the rules of of nature and Don't really apply to them. They're kind of above the They're kind of above nature and they can look down their nose on the rest of the world like they they think they're becoming a god and you know, it's like the the the ego and the ignorance of First world culture is what will bring about the end of it, you know, just like it just like it always has, you know Um, so it well, it's kind of like it's kind of like the Hellenistic world, you know, like it is the ideal. It's the Um, it's the ideal sort of civilization where they're not really warring against each other There's some bad stuff going on, you know, there's assassination and poisoning and this that and the other but it's not like this Vicious waging war and collapsing empires against each other But what happens the next guy who hasn't yet reached his Hellenistic peak is about to come in and whoop your ass Because you forgot to keep your edge that gave you what you have You know, I said this a few times. It's like the line from uh dark night rises when bane is talking to batman He says victory has defeated you Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah, it's happening to americans as well Like because like what you're talking about this like ego and like seeing yourself as like a god, so to speak Yeah, it's western but like america is like the hyperversion of that because like Having spent enough time around like europeans or other like that you could argue like obviously japan is in the east But like for all intents and purposes japan is a very western culture, too Yeah, what you're describing is how you know the japanese and like europeans talk about america And they share the same attributes in some way, but like the united states is that like cubed You know what I mean? Like it's it's crazy how much that is like i just and then Like if we're saying like america is like the room of our time like everything we do influences everybody else Like these things spill over and people critique us as a culture because our culture infiltrates their culture And these are the things they can plane about about the united states and you know, it's It's a lot of those long parallels between like ancient 100 At the fall of ancient roman like where the us is today like yeah when ancient roman was about to fall They were like worried about like a lot of like more sexual stuff like gender identity Like they were going down that route and then all of a sudden Ambassadors yeah, it's it's like so much what's going on now. It's good. They're like what where it's like a strong men create um Good times good times good times good times create A man we can make pretty hard times hard times pretty strong men. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it just sets cycle over and so Yeah, yeah. Well, and the the phrase for um like the rise and fall of civilization. It's like uh Dawn to decadence to debauchery, you know and and then and that's kind of uh, that's kind of How I mean that's kind of how civilizations work and I mean people talk about people talk about all the time that um Uh that you know the us kind of reflects the rise and fall of roman which it does Um, but but roman, I mean like like we were talking about earlier Um, it's not the it's really not the only example of that. I mean, there's just there's just it's like every civilization and and in rome was You know at one point that they were the people coming in And conquering Hellenistic society that had taken up in the world and then got comfortable and then rome came and then rome did the same thing and what's interesting is What's interesting is the um the greek world um like the gresco egyptian gresco asian world that Hellenistic uh empire um Who did they beat up on the most? It was ancient at least the like the atruscans and the other battalions Um and you can call them the roman's but that kind of comes a little a little bit later Um, but they're beating up on italy and they're beating up on sisily and syracus all the time And then so who come you know who comes for them eventually? It's rome, you know rome like the culmination of of italyan society eventually comes for the Hellenistic greek world And then and then who are the greeks? Literally massacring their whole civil the whole period of their civilization are the barbarians or the or the barbers You know the galls or whoever it wants to be who was it that sacked rome the barbarians. You know, so it's just it's just like um, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of parallels there like, uh, you know a lot of the I guess without getting too modern a lot of the places that the us shouldn't be involved in Uh, and a lot of places that we go in and disrupt and and topple Are a that is going to be the reason that we fall, you know those are going to be the people who come for us in the end Yeah No doubt. Yeah, but I think it just goes back to your thought earlier about how we're all just humans And these these cycles are created and they are the way they are because human behavior While does change over time doesn't necessarily change completely human beings just do new things with new tools and new times You know, it's just the same shit over and over and over again It's why they're the future whether ancient Aztecs the ancient Egyptians were drawing the same designs on their walls Probably yeah, I'd ever talk to each other. They just fall in the same cycle because it makes sense Yeah, so yeah, so that's that's kind of um I guess bringing it back everything. That's I think that I think that it's it's a mix of Being intrinsically human also with like Consuming similar substances and um and and and also man like, you know I really would not be surprised if there's a whole Field of science out there that Tesla kind of um eludes to and he was like say if he's like if you want to make more discovery In 10 years than you would in 10 decades or something like that You should focus on what is it like like waves and and uh, gosh, I forget what the quote is But he's like I've heard what you're talking about Like waves and vibrations and things like that And he thought he thought that his mind was a um God, what is it? Um He thought that his mind was was basically receiving signals from the universe, you know And so there's a thought out there that like, um, I think he was Yeah, yeah, there's there's a thought out there that we Are all connected Through like like our brains are receivers, you know, like they're like they're like radios kind of and uh and they're sending signals back and forth And we're all connected on a plane that we can't comprehend Well, so there's a there's a precedence for this and we've talked about it on a few other episodes, right? So like the the concept of the muse and getting into that sort of headspace where The the creative aspect of you is coming from somewhere else and you're the conduit It's coming through and I referenced this before to jimmy Yeah, jimmy hendrix talks about it when he gets in that place. He called it the electric church Right and it's where like the muse flowed through him and it became the music though It could be And then zach and i've talked to us about this before too. I mean but but to bring that into it, right? Uh jack or jack parsons. We've talked about him on the podcast quite a few times He was into all these different crazy rituals with allister krowley who's a famous satanist and then elrond huberd Who is the founder of scientology? And he 100 said that he was receiving information and downloading it Which is why he was able to do a lot of the physics that he did to earn himself the title of the father of american rocketry And obviously died under these crazy mysterious circumstances and all this other shit, you know So I think what you're saying is true that there is sort of a um, maybe a uh, I don't want to call it like a I guess you could call it a consciousness You know that exists that you can tap into Um, but you have to like really be able to get your mind into those frequencies and those waves Like you're talking about like what tesla was saying to be able to to download that info Which is why I really want to have fucking dianna posoka on here to talk about this because she really really hits hits on it and her her two looks encounters in american cosmic but Do you think it'd be kind of like a hive mind in a way? Or like it's like a same mind. I think it's almost like to use to talk about like libraries It's like a it's like a universal library of info that you can Tap into it's not because like hive mind is like it makes me think of like crowds and the way people behave You know like this is like something you have to get into the mind space for and like I said It's it's it's the ancient concept of the muse taking over your body And you're just the conduit for this force and it's making you paint or write Like even Beethoven talked about it like making him write music, you know, it's not him. It's something else Yeah, I will say I'll say this and I think this like maybe my closing thought um, I think um I think in my life as I don't know as potentially vain as it is to say um When I was a kid Gosh, am I having deja vu? I feel like I feel like I touched on this the last time we spoke Yeah, you're your destiny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah when when I was a kid That was sometimes like my only prayer as a kid that I would live a life that was like a movie and um and And as I've sat down this path of like, I don't know just making videos about ancient history And I think I expressed the sentiment last time that it's a lot more personal to me than just making youtube videos It's like a journey that I'm that I'm going on and it's like this deep intrinsic like thing in my soul that might That like this ancient world like calls to me. I don't know. It's just it's a strange thing um Everything That has unfolded all the people I've met and all the connections that I've made um I don't know as weird as it is to say it's how weird bro I predicted all of it. I knew all of it would happen Every single thing that's happened even some of the things that are going on right now that I can't talk about The way a lot of it has has unraveled and the people that I've met have been exposed to Um, I predicted all of it and I knew that all of it would happen And it's kind of a weird thing because I I'll like tell my wife like Months before you know and not in just the way not in a kind of way I was like oh, I know this is gonna happen It would just be I'd talk I'd be talking to her and be like and I think that this could happen and you know And I was kind of like predicting it all of me, but it was almost it was almost like I It was almost like and you hear other people talk about this and and I and I kind of believe it was that I believed it so much That the world had to move out of my way Because my will was stronger than the will of everyone else around me And there was no other way that things were going to turn out because you know what I mean Does that make any kind of sense? It was like I believe so much the world had to get out of my way I think it was because life like that. I wouldn't say my whole life has that but there's definitely been times where I'm like No, I'm just going to do this and get it done and nothing's going to stop it and it just falls into place Isn't that crazy? I used to joke that I had like the I used to call it the best worst luck because like horrible things would happen But then it would like rebound to be like the best possible outcome And it's like in that moment you're like man, that's really sucks But then like you think about it You're like actually never mind like if I had not done that that worst thing had it happen And this amazing thing wouldn't have happened. It's like you're paying a cosmic debt to get something better on the other end. Yeah Yeah, but did Luke like for what you're talking about, man It's it's you're not this is this again There's a precedent for it through other people that are history like think of like like general patent Like command literally thought he was a reincarnated roman general And just some of the things he wrote about and talked about like it sounds exactly like what you're saying Like I am going to be this person. I'm going to do this like he just knew That this was his destiny. He saw himself commanding armies in world war two and he saw him's new Just like this is I've done this before I've lived this before this is my destiny I'm going to be victorious and that just this again this like Consciousness tapped into that you know Kind of guided him into those things to where and it gave him sort of that reassurance and that that may be that reassurance like Is what keeps you going to know that this is just going to happen and not give up on like the It's like the avatar state you guys are watching avatar loss airbender. Yeah Yeah, well, it's younger. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's Only the avatar can do this but like he can like Get thoughts or feelings or interactions from his previous to general like avatars So maybe it's like the general path thing where like he can connect to his previous thing and get Yeah Yeah, yeah, well, it's also, you know, I When I say that also in the back of my mind, I'm like, I'm like, okay. Well, also it could just be that I have like brainwashed myself into believing that so when I come into situations a good thing People see how confident you are about something and and then they trust you because most people aren't that confident and then they go they go Okay, well, he thinks he can do it. So and I don't think I can do it. So let's let him do it And then you just get your way, you know what I mean? And so patent being an actual like psycho But but a brilliant general and like one of our best generals, but just a psycho You know, I'm sure that a lot of people are like, okay, okay, you go right along. You know, you go right along I think, you know, I've eventually somebody I think eventually he was like stopped or forced out of the military or something. I don't know his his history that well, but um but Yeah, I think it's like You know nowadays if I were to you know Say I were to get on like a like a public forum nowadays and talk about that a lot of people will go Well, I get what you're saying about how you feel like it's this Deeper cosmic meaning, but really it's probably just your belief in yourself that gives you the motivation to keep going and other people Believe it too because you believe in yourself so much so people move out of your way and you get your way but All of the genius people all throughout ancient history that achieved so much All believed that there was a cosmic significance to things and in when I Dude when I sit here and I'm staring It would be exactly exactly when I when I sit here and I'm Thinking about the fact that I'm on this podcast talking to you guys And I'm looking at the wall and I'm realizing that I am actually A living being and I'm not just this microphone um, it's really hard for me to Imagine that I am here by an accident. It's a lot easier to believe that everything Exists on purpose, right, you know and that you know, you know what I mean Is it more likely than I am an accident and I am just I am just one of the luckiest thing Charminisms that's ever existed or is it more likely that I was always going to exist. You know what I mean? Well, the I think it's being born as one in 400 trillion I think that it's a combination of of both Luke because energy Um never dies, right? It's always there So to say like and you could this is almost like a pseudo religious conversation now because you could talk about like, um, You know reincarnation so to speak, right? And if your molecules and your energy because that's all we are is pretty much just water and electricity Has always been here on this planet in the universe Then like of course you've lived this before and of course that you're manifesting your you know You're destiny and living it and all this other stuff, but Um, what are the best things I've heard and I heard this recently to talk about like people like thinking and like thinking your Reality into existence Is they obviously you're familiar with the the concept of you are what you think, you know And yeah, how do you think? So when you pray you're praying for something you want, right? And in everything in life there is like a duality to it kind of was was Zach was talking about like going through something shitty and getting Something better is like paying a cosmic debt when you worry about stuff You're thinking about it in the same way that you do if you're praying for something you want or praying for something better And so those thoughts essentially when you worry about negative shit You're kind of praying for it in that way because you're still tapping into the same Yeah, you have wavelength that you are when you're praying for it. So I don't think there's a separation there between You thinking what you want or you thinking of it's like that quote right you you meet your destiny on the road to avoid it Right because you're worrying about it and in turn you're manifesting it and whether that's because you're going to take the steps to get there either way or what I think that the way that you feel Luke specifically is is A positive way and because of that, I don't think it's just your thoughts I think that there's something else there Especially when you talk about like some of the stuff we talked about like your grandfather Some of the other things you have going, you know, like I do I think that there is a is an aspect of like predetermination even though that kind of goes against the concept of free will But then also there's that aspect of total randomness that you're in it because we're all just kind of colliding Here in life in general like what the like what zak was saying like the odds of the three of us Meeting at some point whether it's over the internet or zak and i meeting it in a east african country, right? To make this happen. It's kind of fucking crazy. You know, yeah. Yeah. Well, when you guys get you're in person's studio I want to be one of the uh, I want to be like one of the uh Made-in guests like the one of the first guests. That'd be exact with that zak with that liner within uh within 23 episodes for now Does that line up? either way Yeah, that was zak when zak moves here. We'll have in person and we'll get you here bro It doesn't have to be in order we can just film it and then you put it out and and like right right but no Yes, absolutely dude. I wanted to what we'll have you here and you'll be in person You can be like one of the made-in like you said, dude. Yeah, absolutely. It's easy. We'll be back in person And halo Okay, rickles split-screen where one person gets cardboard boxes and shit. Yeah, yeah, fucking screen looking Luke Screen. Yeah. Yeah. Um You were talking about like mad can't be uh created nor destroyed. It's like always there And I just like recycles right Brandon There reminded me of the thing I read like a couple months ago. I just realized to back up But it's talking about uh the mother trees And there is like a study going on where they believe that like uh like the seed of the tree And then it makes a new tree Uh, they've noticed that there's like a lot of similarities with how those trees grow And compared to like their ancestor trees. So it's like uh It's almost kind of like genetic trees, but These have been going off for like ever and it's like the whole like matter being created destroyed So like the tree makes a new tree and it keeps going off But it's like technically the same tree. It's still the original tree just constantly Like making a sourdough bread starter. You just constantly use the same sourdough starter. It's the same. Yeah, yeah But like the studies were talking about how like these trees They remember memories from like Thousands of years ago from those trees because like they can like study the stumps and stuff I don't know how exactly they're doing as trees, but Uh, I remember reading about it. Yeah, I remember reading about though, and they were like showing how Like these trees are having like in a way memories of their ancestral trees Like in how they grow how they do stuff. Yeah Yeah, dude. That's all we are bro. We're like fucking electric water computers And we just store everything like that at that. That's what I think man. Trust knows We don't have the answers man. We don't have the answers. You know god That's what I think god made us all and you know, he knows what he was doing And uh, it's just me. That's just my thoughts. But next time you're on luke. I want to hear more about this My infertile crescent. We didn't get the chance to talk about it. That that really uh Interested me this whole thing interesting dude. You're one of the most interesting people we talked to And i'm very down even though we did the whole donnie most thing At the beginning for you to come back before the next 23rd episode You know and hear more about it. But yeah, thank you so much again for coming on. It is always a pleasure This is these are my favorite conversations to have because I mean, I know you know, like I have a passion for history and just learning and learning about it from people that also have a passion Which is obviously who you are bro. So thank you so much for coming down again. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you guys. Yeah. Yeah, um, I I don't take um, I don't take like podcast requests from from everybody, but um Uh, you guys on the on the first podcast you caught me at a good time and I really enjoy talking to you guys and And you have like, um, I don't know Um, it's okay when people want to just like They don't know anything about that my world at all And don't have like a whole lot of interest in it, but they just want to I don't know pick my brain for a couple hours or whatever But yeah, how can you guys there's like a feedback? You know what I mean? There's there's You guys care about the world that I exist in as well. You know what I mean, it's it's it's It's interesting to you as I came with fire, you know references. So, um Yeah, so I'll always come back and I'd like to be a regular guest, you know, it'd be it'd be Absolutely, you know, um, and definitely when you guys get the in-person studio I would it'd be fun to it'd be fun to come out of california and hang out with you guys and Uh, you know go out to dinner, you know, whatever. Yeah. Yeah, I'll pick you up your port in the raptor Yeah, yeah Well, uh, we'll have to have like a saturday night like, you know, bros sitting in the living room with a bowl of fucking ice cream Just playing video games and talking shit, you know, uh, yes. I would have I haven't done I haven't done that specific thing in so long. I would love to be a land party deal deal bro deal. Yes But hey, thank you guys so much again and uh, and we'll definitely come back on Hell, yeah Well, uh, thank you everybody for tuning in again to I came with fire podcast and um zach It's nice to see you see you back too and um, you just have a good night