Lost Civilizations of the Amazon, Why They Burned Alexandria, & What Atlantis Really Is | #698

what's up guys today we are joined by a real life explorer archaeologist historian youtuber as well and possibly my long lost twin luke caverns is on the pod and we are talking about lost cities of gold ancient jaguar people the greatest city that's ever existed in my opinion new york city but in luke's opinion the city of alexandria and much more sit back relax and indulge why is it that we see all these massive structures in mexico and south why are there none of these in the northern parts that is a good question um well pyramids yeah yeah so one of the this is something i've thought about and i don't know that there's a i don't know that there is a perfect answer for it why don't you see any pyramids in california why don't you see any pyramids on the way and then all of a sudden they sprout up in where's the first um probably probably the most northern is going to be uh about right here at a place called teotihuacan there there are yeah so you've been there okay yeah so that's probably your first notable there may be some pyramids north of that but that's like your first that's your northern most stone pyramid but that said you know about right here in ohio if i'm pointing yeah but if i know what you're going to point out here yeah but you've got like the edina mounds and stuff that come from 500 500 bc but they're all they're all made out of earth right it's just and so yeah so so much here you have earth and earth and timber not as much uh not as much bed rock so you don't have as much stone to work with they just didn't have access to stone that's why we don't see it well there's plenty of stone on the west coast and that's true and like in the appalachian mountains man you've got so much granite and limestone that's poking out but but they're not using it not most of the time there actually is somewhere in the mississippian world there is one stone pyramid that i've seen it might be in ohio itself here in the southwest you have lots of stone and they're building like pueblos and you know the huge cities and stuff like that uh cliff dwellings you know so they're making stuff out of out of stone but not pyramids but in california you had the highest california oregon washington you had some of the highest densities of native americans in north america and they didn't build anything like why i don't i have no idea well this is something we need to understand yeah yeah there's nobody i mean i'm sure that people in your position have asked these questions tons of times it's like why all of a sudden does this modern technology and modern for the time right like pop up in these regions and kind of only in those regions i'll give you an idea why i think why so when you're in when you're in the maya world uh the jungle is straight up hell give me the mayan empire like so the maya world is going to be the yucatan peninsula about right through here like that southern mexico guatemala guatemala el salvador yes sir yeah that's right so the jungle out there sucks like we're just walking through it is hell um and it floods all the time there are you know the world some of the well definitely the america's most venomous snakes live in the highest concentrations right here of anywhere you're going to find them in america it's the fertile ant snakes and you've got eyelash vipers all kinds of other stuff um and so there's a lot that exists on the earth that can kill you and your children especially like kids just like that and uh and it floods all the time so to incentivize you to build structures yeah so so what they want to do is they want to build platforms and so you want to get up off of the forest floor and then other people are going to want that so you make the platform bigger and then it becomes bigger and then it becomes bigger but you you do it out of earth but the earth erodes so then you got to do it with something strong or you got to do it with stone so you're trying just to survive in this hellish jungle environment and they have a lot of stone bedrock which is why like in the amazon it's all clay so they don't have they don't have anything there well when you get halfway through the amazon you got more granite bedrock that's out here but a lot of here it's just clay swamps right and so um in the maya world that that is where we see the first stone pyramids pop up there's one in a place called coelho belize uh i was just in belize maybe a month ago or so and um it's just a little pyramid like maybe the size of this of this room and that that dates beyond a thousand bc um and then it kind of spreads out from there into uh the paten jungle in guatemala there's a site there called el mirador and knock bay and those sites go back to like yeah so that's coelho that's a little bitty site that most people don't know about um if you look up el mirador pyramid so these pyramids are absolutely massive um the biggest i think is this the newest one that they just discovered and they say it's like the biggest uh largest amount of rock so that one that's el mirador so get this that's just the little tiny top section of the pyramid the rest of it is covered up by the jungle oh wow and get this the bottom level yeah so that's el mirador the one that's looming over everything yep yep so that's roughly how big it is versus the pyramids in egypt holy shit now this graphic this graphic is extremely controversial um because it really depends on how large how you measure the pyramids because pyramids in egypt are straight up pyramids it's just it's a pyramid right but pyramids in mesoamerica it starts as a pyramid here and so like that photo that you saw is this top level of the pyramid but then it comes down and there's another flat level here with two more pyramids on it and it comes down another way and then it comes down they're height maxing in a way they're height and so there's this they have a vantage point where they're standing they're a little taller exactly exactly and there's a huge platform at the bottom and so that pyramid at el mirador is so large that you climb up it and you're like wow that's a really really big pyramid you just keep on going up and up and up and then when i came down it uh i came down the pyramid i reached the bottom and i walked for like five or ten minutes or so and then i hit another ramp going down and i had been still been on the pyramid that entire time there's a big old flat courtyard and so the bottom of the pyramids of el mirador actually span the entire central part of the city so when you get down when you get down the pyramid the actual base of that pyramid is the entire extends out far into the jungle and then people were living on that bottom pyramidal platform right and this pyramidal platform is with rock that they place there or it's existing bedrock that they know it's rock that it's rock that they brought in all of it and and at el mirador specifically el mirador is one of the oldest sites in the maya world and just like you see in so many other places it's a place where you can build a lot of things you can build a lot of things you can build a lot of things you can build a lot of places the farther you go back in time the more sophisticated the architecture becomes the stones like most of the maya world is just rubble that's about this big and it's packed in with this really sophisticated like superheated cement that they use to like bind the structure together and they have these really nice um they have this really nice like stone framing on the outside to make all the stones look square this is in later periods but in the earliest times 3 000 years ago uh at the site of el mirador in the middle of the jungle the most inaccessible place you could possibly be and they're so protected right because no one's traveling far out into the jungle so they're able to build up the city without being you know invaded by raiders and marauders and stuff like that so they quarry out these stones that are eight feet long couple feet wide couple feet tall and they stack them not like lincoln logs but they stack them in vertically so or i'm sorry horizontally laying down so they're like stacked in vertically so they're like stacked in vertically slid into the structure right so it makes the structure impenetrable like most maya uh pyramids when they're left in ruins a tree will grow like the its roots will grow into the pyramid and pull the blocks and pull the blocks apart well at that site the jungle grows on top of the pyramid but if you pull a tree down it actually just pulls the jungle off of the stones like a carpet laying on top of it because the stones are so big and packed together that that the foliage cannot possibly penetrate i don't know if it's a good idea to do that but i think it's a good idea to do that this is the same thing but when i i've seen a few different pyramids in mexico when i went to the ones near mexico city what is that site called well they're uh the big one is teotihuacan the teotihuacan which which is the one where you can go for the solstice and it looks like the uh fire is coming out of the the serpent's mouth at the bottom um oh chichen itza chichen itza okay so i saw both of those teotihuacan is the bigger one where it's not just one pyramid there's a huge one but there's all these other little pyramids it's a whole city that's right and the pyramid is a whole city pyramids look functional whereas like when you go to egypt the pyramids they kind of look like something to marvel at but you don't even know what the utility is exactly this felt like hey shit goes down here we got some shops they're like they're living on it they're using it yeah we're playing ball over here like it actually felt like a proper city it's public architecture yes yes and um what was interesting and this is kind of i imagine what you're speaking to i'm not exactly sure but uh they had showed like images of what it looked like before and they just looked like hills because the ground had kind of like consumed it and grown up over it and it really kind of makes you look at every hill in mesoamerica and you're like what the fuck is underneath that shit like how how much how much of the things that we're seeing as different types of elevation are actually maybe some small pyramids maybe a big thing i mean this was a massive see if you can get uh is it chichen itza or teotihuacan either one see if you can get teotihuacan before it was excavated yeah that's right it's there's a painting well there's an old black and white photo yeah that's what i saw there's a famous painting of it too yes this is what i saw yeah so it's just a massive hill yeah it's a mountain bro so like and when you're looking at it there are mountains in the distance right and like every i'm sure every tour guys give you a different thing and they were like they were making these mountains to honor the mountains they saw there i don't know if this is something they're just feeding me but i'm looking at every other mountain around like the whole look at that the whole uh they're building this now show it without any of that on it yeah yeah it's really cool wasn't it it's like wow yeah it's freaking awesome we're insane like it looks like star wars yeah well i mean yeah star wars is inspired by mesoamerica like completely the whole the whole thing is the very word star wars comes from the maya yeah wait really yeah yeah so um this is what's crazy so you remember remember the rebel base on yavin 4 no like in the jungle um yes yes yes yeah with a little uh oh the little guys are running around no that's that's the that's the rebel that's the that's the moon of indoor but the but the the base on yavin 4 is in it's in episode 4 or a new hope and um and it's basically we're like i don't even know before they go blow up the death star that's where they're all at but anyways there are maya pyramids at the site of t call that's what's in those shots well the the maya city of t call was the very center of this huge maya civil war but the maya the the key thing about the scientific part of their civilization is that they're all astronomers so the name through some of the their civil war becomes the star wars and it's based around the city of t call which the city of t call becomes the rebel base in star wars yeah so yeah it's pretty cool um but um i'm sorry what were you asking me we're just talking about like why this technology kind of uh exists in certain places and it doesn't and i guess yeah technology erupts because of necessity so you're saying it's inhabitable some of these areas were inhabitable to just be like living on the ground you got snakes everywhere we got to elevate a little bit and uh one of the things you were telling me about the size and the scale of their building projects that still sticks to me that's so crazy and correct me on this and maybe you can even just explain more they would build so much and excavate so many trees that they would actually change the weather yeah yeah yeah that was that that happened a lot here uh here in honduras there's a place called copan and at copan there is evidence that um so you can there's all kinds of ways that you can date like uh events and drought and if you can find pieces of timber you can date the timber and figure out like when they're not using timber anymore it's just a lot of relative dating methods finds edelman change in weather that's right that's right we know we're there yeah we got it still haven't told us yeah i know um so at the you could pull up uh this the um maya city called copan c-o-p-a-n it's in honduras and um at this site there is evidence that they were cutting down the trees in the use for their architecture so what they would do is i can't quite explain that you have to be like a chemist or scientists like really break down how they make um stucco but they're cutting down so many trees to make what's called stucco we use stucco in modern day um architecture as well but it's like plaster that you'll put over uh that they would put over the stone to give it this smooth white face like the romans would do this the greeks would do this sometimes and then they would paint over that but the stucco had to constantly be repaired and it requires a lot of wood and timber and there may also be this psychological aspect of like they maybe they want to separate themselves from that jungle environment so if you could have your whole area cleared of trees it was like a on a societal level right like you you were seen as something it's almost like you conquered the natural world right animals live in the jungle humans live in cities that's right that's right so you're elevated above it and so there's evidence there that if you were standing on the principal pyramid of copan and uh and you were looking off into the horizon 360 degrees you would not see a single tree that's how massive the city of copan and it's and in this surrounding environment really was and how many millions and millions of people live there well they change the weather patterns by um eliminating all the trees it stopped raining and so the entire civilization just has to just has to pick up and they all have to leave oh and um yeah and there's there were a lot of things that all came together and it was like the maya world around 800 a.d 900 a.d just completely collapsed and disappears for a couple years or for a couple hundred years and then reappears up in the north like in the yucatan where chichen itza is so they were all originally so like a lot of the tourist stuff is up here in the north northern yucatan this is some of the best preserved stuff because it's a little arid and hot but um the really the maya world began down here in these lowlands um or well i guess some of its mountainous some of its lowlands but this southern maya area in those um in those deep jungles and it all fell apart and they all had to move north and go and like all the cities throughout the whole like the maya civil war these hundreds of cities warring against each other millions of people were fighting each other millions of people at war and struggling all of them have to abandon their cities at the end of these civil wars because just the trade routes are falling apart and they've used up all their natural resources and drought and this volcano erupts in 800 a.d and cast this huge black plume uh you know over the maya world and completely buries one city in ash at least one city kind of like a pompeii so that's preserved yeah yeah there's several cities like that there is a uh yeah yeah it's really really cool um and but but yeah about 800 a.d that's the collapse of the classical period and then they all have to kind of rebuild and go north but right here you know when you're when you're asking about the the majority of construction and pyramids and stuff really actually the majority of that is just about right here throughout all of the americas i mean we have stone architecture in south america yeah but most of it right yeah but most of it is just in the center of the inca world you've got some stone architecture in the center of the inca world you've got a little bit there's a little bit that's further south some of it is kind of inca or on the peripheral of the inca world uh and then you've got tiwanaku in bolivia but throughout most of south america um it seems to be a lot like north america where they're building out of uh like they're building structures out of where does the technology go what are the theories on that like how does the society build all this unbelievable stuff to the point where like we're kind of confused how they're able to do it and then gone and what is some of the technology that you're most impressed by yeah it's gone oh gosh again these are all theory like this is not fact don't feel like you have to get everything right here like we're just he's not i'm not fact checking we're not doing it over here so but as far as where it goes and even where it comes from yeah it's very strange isn't it what do you think like you study this more than anybody you're watching these things you're looking at them you're walking around them we don't even know if we could do them today i don't know if we could do them today of course we could my buddy my buddy says this he's like uh my buddy benu yada who is a craftsman and and his his own regard is like you have to understand back in the day that's all they were doing is really just kind of finding food and then building shit right and there was a there was there was a steph curry of building shit right so there are people that all of their expertise were was was pointed in this one direction yeah so it's possible that they could do these amazing things but there has to be some conversation between you guys where you're like okay what where the fuck did it go is there remnants of it anywhere you know what's sad about um where we're kind of at now is if if you try to have that conversation with most archaeologists that they're they're sort of instantly repelled by it take me to a bar with a few archaeologists where you've had you know a few bud lights you guys are chilling nobody's listening nobody's recording you guys are sitting down and you're just going all right what do we think happened we're not going to write a paper on this what are our suspicions again you're not hanging your hat on this for your career what is your just you're going to tell me where what atlantis is later so sure you might as well do what do we think well let's go to across all of the americas as far as architecture obvious obvious like architectural technology that is most impressive to me is definitely centered around the navel of the inca realm that's where the inca emperors were and everything um you know it's so mind-blowing and the size of the architecture the the uh some archaeologists hate this but like the precision of the stone architecture you know it's why do they hate that the precision is what's impressive well they hate if you use they hate if you use the word precision right well i think we're in kind of like a i think we're in sort of like an anti uh i don't know looks like a guy who runs a daycare's teeth so that's who runs a daycare yeah who runs a daycare in minneapolis oh okay okay okay now i got it's a racist joke yeah it's a disgusting racial joke so this is the side of uh if you if you want to see the thing that i am impressed by the most look up um look up the temple of the sun or temple of the moon um at machu picchu I have a lot of questions about Machu Picchu. Yeah, let's do it. Are we going to get into Machu Picchu? I think the question you're asking, we should go to Machu Picchu to answer it. Okay. First, I saw your breakdown. You do a great breakdown on YouTube and you talk about the story of Bingham, who's this Yale professor. Nobody's in his fucking class. He's like single-digit students in the class and he's singularly obsessed with this and he goes out into the jungle and he keeps on asking questions and eventually the guy's like, you know, you got to check out this other thing and they're trekking, they're going across rivers and there are these like wooden bridges crossing these, you know, freezing cold, vast rivers and he's like on his hands and knees walking across them and they eventually come after days and days and days and they find Machu Picchu. And I've seen pictures of Machu Picchu. Maybe we can, there's an example, but I think you can look at like, there's this town that's, you know, what, 8,000 feet in the sky, meters? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like maybe 7,700 feet. Okay, so 7,700 feet. It's a four-day hike or five-day hike if you're going to do it as just a regular person. I think they have other ways now where you can kind of drive. You can take a bus up, yeah. Take a bus. And then even after taking the bus, I think it's still a hike, right? Just a little bit. Okay, fine. So here's the thing to me which I don't get about Machu Picchu. When, and I think part of the reason why I don't get it is because the elevation doesn't do much for me. When I saw the pyramids and when I saw Chichen Itza and Teotihuacan, I'm just looking at these things. I'm seeing heavy blocks stacked on top of each other. I'm looking straight up in the sky and I go, these things get really tall. It's the same thing when I look at a skyscraper, right? I grew up in New York with skyscrapers. I went to Chicago and I was like, oh shit, you guys got tall buildings too. This is impressive to look at. These structures don't seem that tall. Yeah, yeah. So like to me, it's not this like awe-inspiring moment that I had when I was in Egypt. So you've been to Machu Picchu? No, I haven't been to Machu Picchu. And the reason, I think part of the reason why I'm not compelled to go to Machu Picchu I'm like, okay, like they got some couple stories or something like that. But the pyramid is the most miraculous thing I've ever seen in my entire life. Outside of the birth of my children. That is the, outside of the birth of my first child. Wait, after you saw it once, you know, it's not. It's like a re-release. No, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a. Every life's a miracle. No, no, they're miracles. They are miracles. I'm just saying it's, you know, you saw it, you know? No, I mean. You saw it, Mark, Mark, you saw it. You know how the movie goes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, do you remember the second time? The second time you had sex? Yeah. Oh, really? I was 25. So, so help me understand why this is so miraculous. Is it getting the stone up to that elevation? Is it the way that the structures are built? Like, and I get, I understand that my take is the weird take here. Most people are just blown away by what they created. But am I approaching this with a. It's like, yeah, yeah. You're asking if you're seeing it the wrong way. Yeah, like I'm assuming. I'm assuming I'm wrong here. Can help me be. Well, I mean, I don't know if you're wrong, right? Like everybody kind of has their own interests. Nah, shit on him. I was telling him yesterday that I am sort of passingly interested in like the medieval world, but I can't figure out what is it that people are so obsessed with about, about the middle ages and knights with armor and all that stuff. I haven't figured that out. So I get what you're saying, right? It's just for some, you know, different strokes for different folks. But I'll tell you what's so amazing about myself. Machu Picchu. And I think maybe you and I were talking about this. So I saw Machu Picchu and the Great Pyramids for the first time, like seven days apart. And yeah, I was. You flew from Egypt to Peru from Peru, from Peru to Egypt. Yeah. And so it was it was a wild time. But I have actually never been as impressed with anything in person as I was. Machu Picchu. When I take me there, please, please. I want it. I want to go. I want you to inspire me to go. So Machu Picchu is very hard to describe. This view that you're seeing right here, like a lot of a lot of people's experience when they go to see the Great Pyramids. Some people are actually disappointed when they go to see it because they'll say something. They'll say something like, oh, I didn't realize that it was right next to modern day Cairo. And there's trash everywhere. And there's people trying to bug you and this, that and the other. And they'll be disappointed, whatever. Looking at Machu Picchu is in real life is even is. Better and more imposing than this photo right here. The the steepness of the mountains, like you, it's it's imperceptible. You can be standing on top of the mountain. You can't see the bottom. It's just like straight. Boy, it's hard. It's hard to describe. And it's not a it's not an easy journey to get to Machu Picchu. So by the time you arrive there, you feel like you've earned it. Like if if you and I wanted to go see the pyramids right now, you know, we go to JFK, we fly straight to Cairo. Boom. We're there within 30. 30 minutes. We can go see the pyramids. If you and I wanted to go to Machu Picchu, we'd have to fly LaGuardia or JFK to Miami, Miami to Lima, Lima to Cusco. We'd have to get a taxi out to a place that's three hours away called Ollantaytambo. And then we'd have to get on a train from there to go Aguadas Calientes. And then we have to get on a bus to go up the top of the mountain. And then you have to hike over the backside of Machu Picchu. And then you're there. Right. So it's like you've traveled this long way to get there. You're enduring a very privileged version of the journey that these people endure to get there. So, yeah, you really have to chew on that to experience it. Yeah, exactly. It's sort of one of those things where it builds up, you know? Yeah. And as far as the size of the architecture, why it's so imposing. Oh, wow. I didn't realize these walls are built right on the side of this cliff. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Approximately how many people lived there? So you see that mountain peak in the back? Yeah. On top of that, the city is still up there. The city still continues all the way up to the top of that mountain and around the sides of it. So those walls go around the sides of it. Oh, I thought it's just this area. Which mountain peak are you talking about? The one where the arrow is right now? Both of them. So that's Huayna Picchu. And then there's another structure on top of the little peak to the left of it. And you can walk from this thing that we're looking at, this plane, all the way up to that other. Yeah, I've walked the whole way. I've walked the whole thing, like four times. Oh, I thought it was just this plane here. No, no. It's the entire. So where he's standing, he's actually standing on the mountain of Machu Picchu. The city itself sits on the low end. And then that mountain on the back end is called Huayna Picchu. But the actual city itself of Machu Picchu wraps and consumes the entire mountain, both mountains. Holy shit. So do you see that kind of grassy knoll? If you're able to, you can go back to that frame that we were just on. Yeah, so you see that grassy knoll that's kind of back in the middle? Yep. So if you walk beyond that, it's just jungle. And there's a little muddy trail through there. And you can walk that trail all the way up to that back peak of Huayna Picchu. And throughout the entire time, there are structures in there just covered up and swallowed up by the jungle. And so you're really walking in the steps of Hiram Bingham when he's there for the first time and seeing these structures popping out of the forest. The thing for me that captivates me and why Machu Picchu is definitely the most imposing archaeological site that I've ever been to is, one, it gives you a sense of the sheer scale of this civilization and how powerful they really were to be centered in Cusco. And you start from Cusco and you take this taxi ride three hours out to Ollantay. And then you take this, you know, this train is moving, you know, like 50, 60 miles an hour through the mountains. And then you reach the Amazon. And then you're just looking around and you're like, this whole area was conquered by this one ancient civilization. Like this entire region that I'm in was owned by them. And everywhere you go, you see like ruins on the side of the mountains. And you see these terraces like lining the sides of the mountains. And you can see how they were feeding millions and millions of people. You get out. You get out into the Andean Amazon where this is. And you go up to the top of this mountain. And you're standing up there and you're like, okay, so at what point do people, and we got to remember, they had no pack animals. There's not horses. There's not oxen. So they're carrying all of this. They're carrying the weight of all of this. Okay, so the Egyptians may have had pack animals. Like we see, well, I mean, we know that they did. But whether or not they had them during the time of the pyramids. They also had a waterway, right? If you're going to excavate from some quarry miles away. Yeah, yeah. You can put the stones on the water and transport them there. And then it's only a short way to get them, you know, I mean, it's, in ancient times. It was probably right next door. Do you remember, you remember the temple that's right next to the Sphinx? Yeah. Okay, so that's the Valley Temple. When you're standing out in front of that Valley Temple, the Nile was actually right there. Yeah, yeah, I read about this. It was right there. So when they got the stones off, they just have to take them a few hundred feet to get them to where the pyramids are going to be. And how you get the stones up is a logistical nightmare. I don't actually understand how they could possibly do something like that. But we're looking at much of the equivalent things happening here. They have roads going up the side of the mountain where they're transporting stones up. So these stones are not quarried from the mountain itself. They're coming from. Well, most of them are. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they're definitely bringing a lot up into the mountain. Holy shit. So it's the sheer scale of the city at this altitude. It's the scale of the city at the altitude, how treacherous the actual mountainside is, that it was clearly made to be. a defended and beautiful but protected fortress And some of the architecture there is only rivaled in Egypt. Oh, wow. Yeah. Whoa. Some of the architecture there is only rivaled in Egypt in one or two places. Like, a lot of the architecture in Peru, in the Inca realm, is vastly superior to most of ancient Egypt. I mean, there are places like, like the pyramid itself is amazing, but a lot of it is carved out of soft limestone, right? But that inner chamber, that's that red rose granite, which is mind-blowing. That those lentils that sit up in the ceiling are like 80-ton stones. Yeah. Well, and they're made out of red granite. Well, here we have gray andesite, which is sometimes, depending on where it's quarried from— Just as dense? Just as dense, maybe a little bit more so. Wow. And they're using stones that are in equal size and weight to the lentils in the king's chamber of the Great Pyramid. And the way that they fit those stones together— Look at this. It's all done on purpose, because they know that Peru has been a seismic area for millions of years, probably. And the ancient Peruvians were very keenly aware of this. So there are sites out in Lima where they would use these little vertical bricks, and they would stack them up. And this site, I believe, is much older than most of the Inca realm. Sorry, seismic. What do you mean by that? Seismic is like an earthquake. Earthquake prone? Yeah, prone to earthquakes. Yeah, yeah. And so I think it's called Huacahayamarca in Lima. There's a site there where they use these little bricks, and they stack them up vertically, and they have little spacers between the bricks so that when an earthquake comes, the whole structure will just wiggle back and forth, and it won't fall. And so this is—yeah, that's Huacahayamarca. So you can see the stones are stacked vertically there. So this is telling us that— That these people were, one, very sophisticated, very familiar with their natural environment, and how to avoid catastrophe during it. So what it's doing is it's showing us that, you know, this isn't something that you figure out in one lifetime. This isn't something you figure out in three or four or five lifetimes. This is thousands of years of studying your natural environment and trying to figure it out. And so it shows us that, okay, a lot of this technology, this understanding of your natural world goes really far back in time. Now, Machu Picchu is essentially the precipice of all of these things brought together. It's all built up on this huge mountainside. Now, not all of the architecture is that incredibly precise, megalithic stone architecture. Some of it is like cruder rubble and mortar put together for— I don't know if anybody's living there who is actually a normal person, but maybe not for royalty. But for these sacred places that are— almost obviously astronomical observatories where they're studying the night sky and they're studying the sun and the moon, these places all have this huge megalithic architecture. Like one of the stones that's in—I think it might be the Temple of the Moon. I think I saw this. One of the stones. You could only fit a couple of those stones in the studio. Is this the one that has the 36 different— So that one would be in Cusco. Oh, okay. No, no, no. There was two. I remember in your video you were talking about there's one in Cusco, which is the most famous one that has like 16 different etchings. That's right. And then what's the other one that— I'm sorry. Yeah, that is the one I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know your shit. You do, though. You actually do. But you said that this was actually more impressive than the one in Cusco. That's right. The one in Cusco is the famous one. I think you can describe it. Yeah, so there's a stone in Cusco that's got— Twelve, is it? Maybe it's 12 different angles. Or 16 different angles. 14 different sides. 14 different sides. It's something like that. And that's the famous one because whenever you go to Cusco, you walk down the marketplace next to— It's the temple of— I'll think of it. Just put Cusco— Yeah, Cusco 12-sided stone. And that's the one that's the most famous. Everybody walks— Everybody's seen an image of this. Yeah, everybody walks up to it and takes a photo with it. Look at this. And the precision of this. Yeah, it's amazing. There you go. And you can get— So, yeah. It's that huge stone that's there on the left. So, what's interesting about this stone— So, this is the 12-angled or 12-sided stone or something like that. So, what's interesting is this stone has all of the hallmarks that people are so fascinated with this kind of architecture. One at the bottom left, you've got these nubs that sit on a lot of these stones. Oh, I've seen this. Yeah, yeah. What is the purpose of the nub? My guess is pivoting. So, you have this— So, you've got this big-ass stone. And if you can— Oh, this is so cool. If you can put the whole weight of the stone on one side— One little point. One tiny little thing, yeah. You can twist it around and move it and drag it. Have you ever seen that guy? I forget where he is, but he was doing these experiments on how to move the megalithic— Wally Wellington? Is that his name? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he found if you put a pebble underneath them on flat enough earth that you could completely rotate them 360 degrees. So, you don't need to lift the entire thing. You need to lift them enough where there's a leverage point. I don't know what you would call it in— Yeah, I just call it a pivot point. Or a pivot point. Yeah, yeah. So, that's really great. So, they use that as a pivot point so that they can rotate them. Oh, yeah, this is the guy. Yeah, Wally Wellington. So, you know, so a lot of people will look at this and they'll go, yeah, Wally Wellington's work is genius, but it doesn't fully explain how, let's say, the pyramids were built. Sure. He can't really explain, at least on his own, in his lifetime of doing this, he's not able to explain, you know, you can move these stones on a flat plane, but how do you get them up? Of course. But here's the difference. In ancient times, it wasn't just Wally Wellington. It was an entire industry of these people trying to figure these things out over the course of hundreds of years. So, if you had 50 Wally Wallingtons for 500 years, you would build the pyramids. Yes. For sure. This is what Ben Uyeda was saying, my buddy, about it. It's just like, yeah, when you have the smartest people have one singular focus. Like, right now, the smartest people are probably running fucking hedge funds, developing AI, you know, bombing everywhere. And instead, they're just worrying about how do we get this heavy shit over here. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so, and then the other thing that's interesting here is, do you see some of the places where the stone has chipped off? No. Like that little section right there? Yeah, where it's almost like a part of it was scraped away or it was brittle and it broke off. You can tell? So, what's really interesting is that this is gray andesite. Gray andesite doesn't just chip off. It's not like chert or something like that. It doesn't just chip away. So, one of the things that my mentor, Dr. Ed Barnhart, thinks, and there are other people who think this, maybe because of him. So, south of Peru, in Chile, in the Atacama Desert, there are these Inca and the empire that was before the Inca called the Wari. They were creating these roads that, like, go off into the desert, and then they just, like, fade off into the desert. And they end there. They're not, the roads don't pick up again further south. This is the desert that leads into the ocean? I'm not sure if the Atacama Desert leads into the ocean. It's in Chile, right? But it's definitely near the ocean. Yeah, the Atacama Desert might be northern Chile a little bit. I've never actually been there. Yeah, okay. But the roads that lead into the desert, and they don't pick up again further south, they just stop in the desert. So, they were doing something out there. Well, one of the things that's out there are these acid deposits, these natural acid deposits. And the Peruvians had, they had ceramics that you could hold. The acid inside of, like, the ceramic would not be eaten away by the acid. So, you could essentially harvest it. This is just a theory. And, like, at the site of Tiwanaku, which is in Bolivia, which is the place, it's this primordial place that existed long before the Inca Empire that the Inca were clearly inspired by, there are stories there that the acid from, like, birds' mouths and acid was used to melt the stone. Or shape it. Or soften the stone, yeah. And so, a lot of people will get this confused with, like, geopolymer, where you're, like, mixing concrete. But that's not what's happening here. What I think it is is that they are, you know, they've got some metal tools. I forget if it's copper, if it's bronze chisels. They've got some metal tools, but they're not that efficient. But you can smash apart the stones, right? You can get a rough shape. But if you want to get the exact shape, you soften the stones. And one of the other things that you can do is you can get this rough shape. And you can put, if you soften the top of one stone and the bottom of another. They'll start to blend into one another. You just place one stone on top of the other, and it'll flatten itself and become perfectly flat. And how you do the mechanics of that, gosh, I couldn't really begin to approach, but. How old is this? Well, nobody really knows. I mean, you know, we. Estimate. Yeah. We're talking about thousands of years? Well, what's cool is they're actually about to do a core sample. Beneath the site of Saqsaywaman in Cusco. And we're going to know for sure, without a doubt. Yeah. This is something that's been highly debated forever. You know, a lot of people say, well, this has to be antediluvian, 12,000 years old. 12,000 years old. People say that. My guess is. My guess is. At most, a couple thousand. Okay. So. You were telling me there's like a story, like lore amongst the people from anthologies written hundreds of years ago. Where if you asked them where the stones came from, they'd be like, the stones were always here. That's true, too. So there's evidence. of habitation at cuzco going back to um which cuzco is is the seat of the inco world i got you i got you i got you there you go so so cuzco is the seat of the of the inco world that sits at like 12 500 feet um incredibly like protected isolated natural environment um and so what it's a great place to live the ground's very fertile there's rolling hills it's just it's a nice very nice place the weather's great um and so there's evidence of people living there it's either 2000 or 4000 bc with some of the earliest evidence that they found of little like campsites and stuff of people living out there now there's this period before the inca empire called the kingdom of cuzco and um we don't really know exactly when it begins we know that i think they expand into an empire around 800 a.d according to their oral history that they told the spaniards right but the spaniards when they're walking around gosh why i always forget to mention the spaniards when they're walking around they're walking around i forget the name of this uh temple but there's a um i'm looking at the photo of her right now actually um which one which is the one with the with the the girl standing in front of that corner of the building um that 12 angle yeah uh for some reason i am forgetting the name of this building but it's this building right here that the spaniards are walking around in the 1500s talking to the to the inca and they're asking him how did you guys build these walls and uh gosh i can't i can't think of the name of this temple um what does that say palace of inca roca yeah yeah that's right so um so they're walking around this palace and the spaniards asked them how did you guys build these stones like what did you what did you do and they were told by the inca well this place was built by the gods this was this was here which would imply that the inca stumbled upon it maybe tried to continue building it yeah i'm not sure if it's the inca but isn't there some evidence of a lesser masonry done on top of certain structures that existed well and that's that's kind of um maybe you can formulate my sentence a little better yeah yeah so so so one of the things that you see a lot is that you'll see this lower level that's really sophisticated architecture the megalithic the megalithic stones and then on top of it you'll have this uh what people call like inca construction which is just rubble you know like packed together yeah rubble packed together sometimes with uh sometimes with like cement or a mortar between the stones to get the stones like stick together um that's not always the case it's kind of like uh that's a it's a tough argument for people to make because um if you go to machu picchu and you if you look at the the architecture of machu picchu and you think like well you know maybe the the inca came and found this and they built on top of it whatever whatever when you go around that entire city there's only there's actually only two buildings there that are made out of the megalithic stone the rest of it is in that is in that mortar um and so it's like this is like okay well did this pre-civilization come out here and just build these two buildings way way way out here up on top of this mountain maybe they did well then you know we have to come up with a theory of well why did they you know what is the actual purpose of that of course there's never actually a theory that's proposed it's just with some of this stuff it kind of sits in mystery nobody people like to talk about the mystery but don't actually want to come up with a reason to like expand on that right the mystery is really fun and yeah the mystery is fun and it sells right yes trying to trying to explain the mystery doesn't always sell yeah um which is sort of a big thing in my space what's up people world's fastest ad reads all right i'm going to new york city sesh comedy club april 3rd that is gonna be my show it's gonna be me a bunch of other comedians magicians musicians who knows it's gonna be awesome and i'll see you guys there and then i'm gonna be hitting the road throughout the year specifically at the end of the year playing leno texas chandler arizona pasadena california san diego and detroit i can't wait to see you guys there come out shake my hand take a pic and come enjoy some stand-up comedy fan duel is now available everywhere in the u.s so you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are including these places make this your most rewarding season ever with fan duel age and location restrictions apply product availability varies by market see fanduel.com for eligibility gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER there's tons of stuff that i will say about the ancient world i'll say oh you know i don't think it's that way i still think it's amazing like here here's a big thing um the evidence i love this stuff oh the evidence i love it all i love it all i love it all keep going this is great as disappointing as it is to most of the history ancient history space the evidence is overwhelming that the dynastic egyptians themselves built pyramids the dynastic egyptians themselves yeah these are the people that existed in egypt at the time yeah so let's let's the dynastic egyptians would be 3100 bc to the death of cleopatra in 30 bc that's the dynastic period and you would you would uh posit that the dynastic egyptians also built the pyramids down into sedan well no so that's that's the uh those are the nubians the cushites so the nubians and cushites had their own that there's no like exchange of information technology huge exchange the the they were influencing one another nubians were getting beat up so much by the egyptians for thousands of years the there's no gold in egypt all all of the uh all the gold comes from the cushite uh mines like it like down in the nubian world so so all the pharaohs would ride down there in these like yearlier annual raids they take all the gold of course they would do this in levant too like out mesopotamia and then they would do these raids where they gather up all the gold and the loot and bring it back to egypt so uh i think it's like maybe in the 900s or 800s bc maybe the 700s bc the nubians while egypt is like falling apart the nubians who are so familiar with egyptian culture which have basically they've been colonized by it for thousands of years they actually march forward take over egypt and then for five just a couple of years they're like oh my god they're like oh my god they're like oh my god you have nubian black pharaohs really ruling over egypt and they're more egyptian than the egyptians had been for hundreds of years why are they more egyptian yeah they just go back to the old ways uh the way egypt great again yeah yeah yeah so they made egypt great again yeah yeah so um what a story and eventually they're they're overthrown again but anyway why is there why is there not a lot of conversation about the pyramids in sudan aren't there more pyramids in sudan than there are in egypt yeah i think i think that might be right i think in sudan there should be around 200 or more pyramids and then in egypt you're looking at like 127 to 140 but some of them were completely quarried so they have this foundation of a pyramid but they don't actually know if that was like a pyramid got it so it's also probably british archaeology plus indiana jones yes yeah and then the biggest ones are in egypt so naturally they're going to get the credit for it yeah and when you say completely quarried meaning there was a pyramid structure that was there and then they took all the stones were removed to build whatever yeah yeah wow yeah but it's just kind of like lost in history you never hear much conversation about it yeah and whenever i talk to somebody sudanese and i bring up the parents yeah why don't we hear about the pyramids there's always this reaction it's like thank you can you talk about this please it'd be really nice i think a big thing is is how how stable sudan is like i was down i was down you can't evoke your history you can't evoke your past if you don't have enough stability to maintain go see it yeah yeah oh that's awesome you know they really should do um they really should do something because it's not it shouldn't be that hard like if you're in if you're down in south egypt i was down in abu symbol and uh which is the place where you have the four giant statues of pharaoh ramses carved into the mountains i'm unbelievable did you go see that no i didn't make it down to uh what is that area called uh where you see the majority of the pyramids in egypt um or the kings valley of the kings uh yeah valley of the kings which is in luxor luxor i didn't make it down to luxor yeah but really no i i was there for three years and i was there for three days or four days or something like that have you ever been to egypt no my mom went we should do an egypt trip dude that would be it i love yeah luxor is the place no i i believe it but like yeah what i would love to see is alexandria too but that's just for like you know ancient european remnants and like cool wait why'd your eyes light up that's my expertise in ancient egypt really i know more about alexandria than i do oh luke we're just getting cooking yeah yeah i love this stuff okay yeah yeah okay um but okay just wrapping up the thing about the pyramids yeah the evidence is so overwhelming of when the pyramids were built and we don't have i know you talked about pyramids a lot on this that that even graham hancock has come around and said that he knows it's a product of of the reign of kufu in the old kingdom so i mean people can go look into that and that and it's disappointing but it does not it does nothing not at all it does not minimize the insane achievement of the pyramids right how they were constructed still nobody knows right it's way easier to date something than to date something that's not it is to figure out explain how it was created why it was created and what it was used for and those are the real juicy bits there i mean it's a testament to the achievement that people are going it must have been something that happened in previous generations or like a period of time in history 12 000 20 000 years ago because there's no way people what would that be five thousand years ago four thousand years yeah four thousand five four thousand years could have could have done this um yeah why'd your eyes light up at alexandria what why do you marvel at alexandria um it's it's the height of the ancient world there there is no if you if you're a time traveler babbler explain alexandria in egypt to the people yeah so um listening watching so ancient ancient egyptians let's say during the time of the pyramids they are isolationists the reason that egypt becomes so powerful is because it's not connected to the rest of the ancient world um you have to cross these vast deserts to get there or you have to go through the swampy nile delta to be able to penetrate into ancient egypt um and so and then the nile itself is naturally um inundated so it brings this fertile topsoil like every year when it inundates and it creates the i think it was herodotus that had a great saying that he was he said uh god what is when the nile something the yeah he said he said uh he said something like like like egypt is a gift of the nile it's something like that where where essentially the nile river itself created ancient egypt all of the nile river itself created ancient egypt all of the nile river itself created ancient egypt all of the nile river itself created ancient egypt all of the nile river itself created ancient egypt all of the nile river itself created ancient egypt all of the nile river itself created ancient egypt all of the nile river itself created ancient egypt all of the nile the nile river itself created ancient egypt all of the nile during belgium rule was it in the congo i don't know and like they made these like these beautiful mansions during this like horrible colonial time and the the jungle has just consumed them really like trees growing through them and it's just relentless if you don't keep it back yeah yeah so like that is protection in of itself and you see why people went into the jungles yeah yeah can i ask you about alexandria yeah absolutely i was talking to a historian that says he doesn't think that the library of alexandria which held so much of the interest here we go here we go he was saying that perhaps it never burned down and that it actually just eroded from the elements intellectual decay invasion you know he's saying that it never burned down like he really said that that there's a part of it that burned down but perhaps the burning was more of a metaphorical burning yeah yeah well see that's kind of the thing is is you know you you could talk to an egyptologist who specializes in the 18th dynasty like as a lot of them do that's that's like the golden age of ancient egypt where you have all your iconic pharaohs that you know the names of other than ramses he's 19th dynasty but um and he may be like speaking off the cuff about alexandria and just kind of posing an idea that's popular among scholars but um it's surprising that any scholars say that it didn't burn down um because it's in the primary sources that it burned down like three or four times so who burned it down uh well it starts with um so we're getting into some roman stuff here and when it comes to the mediterranean world egypt and greece is my thing when you get into the roman world that's a whole other realm uh but i believe that it first starts with um julius caesar is chasing his rival pompey uh across the mediterranean into he's pompey is fleeing from rome to alexandria and pompey you know in in rome uh basically the armies were made up by like really rich guys who would take up like a portion of the roman empire right so you have like these unofficial mini emperors or like no marks that sort of run and uh so these two rivals as they do chasing each other they're at war with each other julius caesar's chasing pompey down uh into the mediterranean and i believe that when pompey is trying to flee the city of alexandria his uh military boats were um were brought up to the port that was connected to the library and so caesar ordered for the docks to be burned to burn the boat so that pompey's guys couldn't flee and that so essentially when you landed in alexandria um your boat would be boarded by city officials ptolemaic soldiers um or sometimes at certain points they were roman soldiers because the this was like the beginning of the fall of ancient egypt but eventually the people of ptolemaic rule which is uh the the greek dynasty that's ruling over egypt after alexander conquers alexander dies his best friend ptolemy becomes pharaoh of egypt and then his line all the way down to cleopatra for the next 300 years rules over egypt from the city of alexandria so the ptolemaic power starts dwindling so they reach out to rome and start hiring essentially like roman uh military backing and that's kind of the foot into the door for the romans to start conquering egypt from the inside that's the beginning of the end for egypt um but but essentially your your boat would be boarded by city officials and they would essentially scour your boat or just ask you be like okay what writing do you do you have with you what documents did you bring they'd look over your documents if it was something valuable that that they didn't have they would bring that into the library they would copy it down they would give you the copy and then they would keep the original wow yeah and um so you have the original source material of everybody that passes through yeah that city and so this is this is something that uh i'd love to see wes huff talk about this but there's something that's here that's called i've heard it informally referred to as the library wars but you had like the library of alexandria the library of babylon the library of pergamum i believe uh up on the turkish coast i believe that's where that city is and so you had all these uh cities essentially warring against yeah exactly warring against each other um trying to get original source material in the oldest the oldest documents and so in the city of alexandria you had so much knowledge of the ancient world all in one place i mean there uh when i was uh when i was chatting with uh when i was on joe's show yeah we were going through something that was written by i believe it was written by one of the ptolemies it was a second century bc document that was being referenced by like a first century 80 document but we found out on the second century that alexander the great was written by alexander the great um from his most trusted advisor toller mcgrady and he was the first person to write that book and he was the first person to write that and so he was the first person to write that book and he was the first person to write that book and he was the first person to write that book and he was the first person to write that book and he Ptolemy himself, who becomes the first Ptolemaic pharaoh of Egypt. He wrote this whole biography of his own life and an account of Alexander's life, and that did not survive the period of Alexandria. But it's referenced by other authors later on. So we know that it used to exist. And there's all kinds of. Why this obsession with Alexandria? Why was Alexander obsessed? Why did he want to bring his dynasty? And why was it so important to him that this existed there? What is special about this place? So for Alexander, I don't actually know if Alexandria itself in Egypt was as important to him as it would be to later people. Because there's a joke that if you study classics, which is the Greco-Roman Egyptian world, there's a joke where they'll say, name 10 classical cities and you can say Alexandria. Because there's 10 Alexandrians. So anywhere he goes. And so anywhere he goes, he builds a lot of Alexandrians. But the one that stuck was Egypt. So Alexander, there's this great story of when he's conquering the Persian realm, so he's 23 years old or 25 years old, he leaves Macedonia right here. Persia's beating up on the Greeks for. Let me see. He's, you know, I guess around like 325 BC or 323 BC, he sets out somewhere around there. Or maybe, no, it's earlier than that. 331 is when he arrives. He's in Egypt or something like that. Anyway, so this crazy 23-year-old, 25-year-old kid takes on the Persian Empire, marches through in these three very important battles, pushes the Persians back. Eventually, he wants to march to Babylon, but he shouldn't do that until he turns west and goes and captures Egypt. Because Egypt is known as the breadbasket of the Mediterranean because all the grain and the food to feed, at many points, to feed most of the eastern Mediterranean came out of Egypt. It's coming right out of Egypt. So if you secure the food and the grain, then you can actually do this military campaign. Then you can turn around and go stomp Babylon. And so he goes and captures Egypt, and he eventually goes to Memphis. He must have seen the pyramids, although. Maybe that was in Ptolemy's account, what Alexander walking around the pyramids and looking at him. Maybe that was in Ptolemy's account. But eventually, Alexander wants to go to the northern port because the book that exists in the back of the Greek mind, all Greeks, their sacred biblical text essentially is Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey, the story of Troy, right? And so in that book, in the Odyssey, which maybe we'll even see a scene of this in this new movie, when Odysseus is essentially being like kicked around the eastern Mediterranean, he lands on an island or a little port town on the northern coast of Egypt. And I think as the story goes, I forget exactly how it goes in the Odyssey, but he asked the people, you know, where am I? And they say, you're on Pharos. And so maybe that means you're in, maybe that means this is Pharos. Maybe that means this is the Pharaoh's island, but it's called Pharos. So Alexander, being this huge fan of that great story, and just a kid, he's 23 or 25, and he's like, I'm going to go find Pharos. So he goes to northern Egypt. Now, the Egyptians, they don't like the water. There are not really that many Egyptian cities that are on this northern coast of the Mediterranean. They like to be pushed further back. This is another thing about, we think of the Egyptians as like riding these camels through the desert or whatever. The Egyptians did not want anything to do with hanging around in the Mediterranean or being in the desert. This isn't even ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt is just the river and like a mile on each side of the river where it's green and tropical. That's where the Egyptians lived. They didn't like the desert because that's where the roaming barbarians hung out. And, you know, if you wandered out in the desert, you were going to get killed. So you needed to live. I love this. literally on the nile on the nile that was your whole world and this is most civilizations this is yes it's a lot of civilizations to develop and you're going to be in near your life exactly yeah exactly okay yeah and so but it is the perception is kind of odd this is like uh they had rigid borders yeah yeah control agency but alexander he comes from a civilization of sea people because ancient greece we look at greece as this little peninsula that sticks out right but yes it's actually the coastlines and the isles yeah so ancient greece is is not this it's this it's all these little islands right here and like some of the coastal areas um and so that was the greek world and so so greeks really like water and they like defensive positions with water right so when he's in northern egypt he sees uh i think it's i think it's the the lake of marios or something like that um but there's this little band that basically connects to uh the mediterranean and fortified by a lake behind it so it's this little band of uh of land and he looks at it he's like this is where a city needs to be because you can have a natural border yeah yeah exactly and so he hops off of his horse and he's looking for like chalk or something but he doesn't have any chalk to lay it to make a city layout so uh he goes and grabs some grain out of a saddlebag throws the grain in the dirt and then alexander himself by his own hand laid out the initial like core city plan and he had an architect i forget that they get the architect's name but he had an architect like jump down with him and they lay it out so that so that the breeze will like sweep through the city and he says i want the roads to be a hundred feet wide or you know something equivalent to that he wants this to be a grand city so he lays it all out and then as soon as he as soon as he lays it all out this flock of seabirds like swoop down and they eat all that they devour all the grain in front of him and and you know ancient people were very uh superstitious superstitious and so he thought that that was a bad omen he was like maybe i shouldn't maybe i shouldn't build this city here or whatever and one of his guys like reassured him no no this means that this city is going to feed many nations or it's going to feed many people so so alexander gets back on his horse leaves his architect and a group of people behind they start construction on the city isn't history fun where you can make it up after yeah exactly i mean what a story right and uh yeah exactly so um so alexander he has to leave he's got to go to a place in in the western desert called siwa where he's going to be essentially like proclaim the son of amon ra and he's going to be proclaimed pharaoh he never goes back to alexandria he you know he he goes and conquers babylon then he tries to push into india and he eventually dies in babylon at like 32 or 33 but alexandria lives on without him ptolemy his best friend they divide up alexander's massive empire like think about this dude do they bring his body back to alexandria uh ptolemy went and stole it so i think i think that's a good thing i think that's a good thing i think that's a good thing his body was going to go back to macedonia so they were going to take his body from uh wherever babylon is if it's in iraq or iran iraq uh so they're going to take his body back they got to go up through you know anatolia modern day turkey and so uh ptolemy sends out an expedition and they go and capture his body and then they bring his body and what is the significance of that people would pay homage to the body like yeah exactly exactly yeah yeah you're able to so think about think about this from ptolemy's standpoint all of a sudden dude who's best friends with this king think about think about this for a second like a political move you're saying it's kind of yeah yeah so and and just like a just from a life perspective like imagine this guy's life okay you grow up you're lucky enough to be this you're to be best friends with the son of this minor uh greek kingdom you know and and but you're kind of an outsider in ancient greece like the macedonians are in are there are in northern greece and they're kind of discriminated against by the athenians and the spartans they're getting bullied their whole life yeah they're getting bullied by them nothing's changed so so you're this shout out the macedonians so not only not only do you live in this like sort of greek kingdom uh and you're kind of discriminated against by the rest of the greek world but you're you're not like a peasant but i mean you're you're just friends with this like minor prince right and then so the prince's father is killed and then he's elevated to he's elevated to the king and the prince's father conquered a lot of greece like got them on the side of the macedonians like changed a lot politically philip the second philip the second and then you see your and then you see your you're like you know uh you see your 20 something year old friend be like i'm gonna go to war against the persians we're gonna go to war against him and so you're right there with this dude the whole time and you watch this guy take over the the the biggest empire that the world has ever seen and you're right there with your buddy the entire time you go see him become crowned pharaoh in out of the western deserts of egypt this is what steve whitcoff is hoping for right now and uh and and told me his main fascination along with alexander something they bonded over was their fascination of ancient egypt because egypt was by 300 bc egypt has fallen off like the pyramids are more than 2 000 years old i mean it's just it's this deep deep deep deep primordial time that nobody remembers or really understands anymore so you're fascinated by it and then you march out here and you conquer babylon and you move into turkey blah blah blah but then he dies all of a sudden you've gone from this like minor noble in this obscure little kingdom up here to the kingdom now you now uh alexander has left you in charge of egypt and all of a sudden you have to be the pharaoh of egypt itself kind of crazy so told me but told me the the officials that live in egypt and the civilians there they know that's right you need the body that's why you need the body okay yeah so there's a lot of political moves that you've got to pull here now this is the thing that makes alexandria so amazing ptolemy and his son and his grandson those are the known as the as the great ptolemies um all the ones after that it becomes game of thrones like it's a vicious really a show should like be made about it but um so the first three ptolemies they have to convince the egyptians that they are worthy of being pharaoh right and then you outsiders that have been placed here by this you know uh masterful like a engineer of war and conquering but he's no longer alive and that was your connectivity to power so that power is gone why should we trust you not to mention wasn't the entire greek world very sort of hierarchical and it was all secession based off of like dynasty and from what i'm understanding like ptolemy was seen as like what do you mean by that mark like it was just like your your dad was the king so you're the king then your son will be king right and it's just all passed through bloodline and ptolemy was one of the first people that was very meritocratic where like alexander loved him was like you're a beast and even though you come from like a fine sort of military family i'm going to elevate you to this high political status purely based off your merit which was never done yeah i mean is that roughly the story um greece is very diverse like as far as as far as the way that their politics go you know in athens the idea of people governing themselves was born in um i don't know it was when they got the tyrant out i think it was in the 600s bc or the 500s bc so they had like they had kings and then they had tyrants which is like a political king but not like a you know not the same thing and then and then they formed the athenian democracy and then some other places follow suit with this idea of democracy and people ruling over themselves but the macedonians held on to this traditional sort of medieval um you know i guess this is this is pre-medieval right but um you know they they sort of had a little bit of a mud line succession succession and then sparta had kings even though it's different they would have like two kings so the greek world is like super divided this is why there was never really much of a greek empire because the greeks could never like fully come together that was kind of my understanding from even talking to people, I was, I now listen, I'm talking to people when I'm in Turkey. Yeah. So obviously they're going to be biased. There's, you know, some historical beef, but what the guide that I had was telling me is that like Greek was the dominant, was just a dominant culture. Like wherever it existed, that became the language and people wanted to embody it for whatever reason. So our idea of a Greek empire, isn't like there are all these interconnected States that were maybe as, as, uh, interwoven as like Rome was, but kind of like different nation States that all spoke a language and shared a culture. Like cultures permeating across. Yes. Like culture was the valuable thing. So even if you were living in Turkey at the time, you still, even my understanding was, and I could be completely wrong with this, but like, even when Constantinople falls and Istanbul is there, they're still speaking Greek. Oh, maybe they are. That's, that's, that's, that's, uh, that's much later. This is, what is it? 50. 15. No, no. The fall. When is, when is the Ottoman empire takeover? 1500? I can't say. I don't know. I don't know either. But we diverted you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so. And this guy went from like a lowly dude to now being a pharaoh. So he's got, so he's got to come up with these public projects to, well, one, you want the regular people to be happy with you. If you're a ruler and all the citizens hate you. And you're an outsider. Yeah. You're going to, you're going to get, you're going to have a revolution. Yeah. There's going to be a revolt of some kind and you don't want to do that. It's not like you can, you can't really just rule people with an iron fist forever. They will rise up and cut your head off. Um, so Ptolemy and Ptolemy was, was, was actually inspired by Alexander. He actually wanted to be a good ruler. Um, so, so he had this, you know, this genuine, um, he had this like a genuine nature about him as a ruler. Now, certainly still a ruler did bad things, whatever all the ancient rulers did. But, um, so he has to create these projects in Alexandria, which is now the new capital. The capital has moved from, you know, the religious capital was Luxor. The economic capital was Cairo or Memphis. Well, he's moved all of it now to Alexandria. All of it is out there. There's still a lot of stuff going on down in the South. Ptolemies are still building temples down there, but mainly the heart of, of Egypt is at Alexandria. And Alexandria is a really, really advantageous place because when Alexander took over so much of, of this world, he can, a lot of those ports became connected to Alexandria and Alexandria became the center of trading across the Mediterranean and out into the Indian ocean. So they're filthy, filthy rich. So essentially, um, the Ptolemies take all this money and they, uh, start these two primary projects. One, the lighthouse of Alexandria, if you guys are familiar with this, the second one, the library of Alexandria is going to be the center of knowledge, uh, of, of all of the ancient world. Um, and there were other projects, uh, that they started, but those are, those are the two primary ones. I feel like there's, there's one right now that I'm just blanking out on. Now, what's really interesting here is Ptolemy gathers his architects, like the probably, probably native Egyptian architects. And we have a lot of evidence that scholars in the library of Alexandria were going and studying the pyramids and studying the obelisks. They were studying ancient Egypt during ancient Egypt, right? And so the Greek Alexandria scholars are very fascinated by these marvels that are just sitting quietly out in the deserts for thousands of years, right? Like they w they want to go study the geometry and how they were created and things like that. Um, you know, the, the idea that the earth is, uh, the earth is a sphere was discovered in, in Alexandria by Eratosthenes, uh, I believe. Um, and so, um, what's really interesting is for the first time, perhaps since the pyramids were built, I can't think of other examples. For the first time, since the pyramids were built, megalithic architecture using red Aswan granite down from Aswan, same granite that's used in the, in the, uh, the valley temple next to the Sphinx, the same granite that's used in the king's chamber is employed again in architecture on the same scale. So the ancient sources tell us, and the, the library of, or I'm sorry, the lighthouse of Alexandria was built so well that it fell the year before it was built. It fell the year before it was built. It fell the year before Columbus arrived in, uh, in the Americas. I'm pretty sure it's very, very, very close. So how long is that? Uh, it's set for, it must've stood for, um, 1600 years or so, or 1700 years or something like that. Um, but there were, there were, there were, uh, travelers throughout antiquity, like, uh, let's say the late ancient times, medieval dark ages are traveling, traveling to Egypt and seeing it. And they see it like slowly decay, but they describe the materials that were used to build it. And they granite stones that were used to build, uh, the lighthouse. And we have some dimensions of it. And the blocks are just sitting in the water today. If you go to Alexandria, um, like, uh, another friend who's a historian, uh, who's a Roman historian, he and I went and looked and there's these massive stones sitting, sitting out there. And they say that the library was made out, it was this huge stone building made out of like, you know, the, the greatest marble and granite that, that could be quarried or that could be, um, you know, gathered. And, uh, and the lighthouse, the lighthouse itself was within just a few feet of being the same height of the great pyramid. So it's the Ptolemies showing the people of Egypt were going back. Oh, wow. And that's how you get the people hyped. Yeah. It's like, this is going to be the heyday and we'll run it right back. And the entire world is going to come here the same way they came a thousand years, 2000 years ago. And it was the single greatest city ever built in the ancient world. Arguably, um, Rome at no point would have ever, at no point would have ever had the kind of real. No, no. I mean, Rome had a lot of great public monuments, but if you walk outside of your apartment building, you immediately step in horseshit. You're walking around in the mud. Um, and, uh, and Rome was extremely dirty, like busy place. It honestly would have been magnificent to like most people. Um, but if you were an Alexandrian and you went and visited Rome, you'd be like, man, this place is a fricking dump. And what happened to the lighthouse? The lighthouse, uh, I believe that in like 1490 or 1491, it's very, very close to that, to that year. There was an earthquake and the whole thing came down. Well, maybe there were earthquakes over time, but at some point there was a, there was a, uh, a decision made to quarry and level the entire thing and turn it into, it's now like a, it's now like a castle. It's a, it's like a port castle now. I forget exactly what it's called. Yeah. You may be able to find. Yeah. So that's a, so that's what it was turned into today. Oh, it was built on an Island. Yeah. So it was built on the Island of Pharos. Oh, great. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, so you're getting all that stone from a quarry somewhere into the water. You're getting it from Aswan, which is like Southern Egypt. Yeah. It's about 700 some miles away. Bringing it up the Nile, bringing it across the water, right? Because there's a, what is the distance? A kilometer or something like that? Well, you have to bring it. Yeah. Yeah. You would have to bring it all the way up the Nile, up into the Delta, following the rivers out of the Delta. Into the Mediterranean? Into the Mediterranean and kind of sail around the city, pull up to the Island and then unload the blocks. And the idea was the first thing a ship is going to see as they approach the greatest city in modern civilization at the time. Yeah. Is this massive megalithic structure on an Island. Yeah. It's awe inspiring. You're like, how could you do this? It's the world's first lighthouse, right? It's just, it's just this beacon that you could see that showed you where this calm water port was. And the, and the, uh, I believe it was a giant bronze mirror with like a statue of Poseidon in it. And I think it would, I think it would spin, but it would constantly, it would stay constantly burning. And, uh, and so, yeah, at night you would see this, you'd see this torch off in the distance. And so you pull up, um, yeah. And then, so once you land, once you, once you, um, made port, then you would make port on the backside of Alexandria's library. So you'd see this huge public library in front of, in front of you. Yeah. And then they would come in and they take all of your valuable knowledge, right? Like they're probably not taking like petty documents, but they're taking all your important documents and copying them down. And then you would walk into the city. Uh, I think you had, it was called Soma road and Canopic way. And so when you entered into the city, if you didn't come in from a side gate or whatever, whatever, but if you entered in the primary way that the city was designed, especially for like political figures, you would see this huge public library in front of you. And then you the first time, you know, some, some King or something, uh, is brought in from, from say Cyprus, like a, like a sipper cut, say a Cyprus King is brought into Alexandria on a Royal visit. He's going to, he's going to be given the Royal tour. He's going to go underneath the lighthouse and he's going to look at this, you know, massive tower that doesn't look like anything else. That's the other thing you got to think there isn't anything else like that in their world. Yeah. You know, I mean, there, there is amazing architecture, but that is something completely different. This massive tower with this burning flame on top of it. Exactly. So he's going to come in this port a little bit, let's say up to the, uh, where you see that, that, uh, that doc kind of coming down the middle that might, of course they draw these in all different types of ways, but the doc that he's on right now, uh, to the, to the right, far to the right, uh, up a little bit, up in the center of the image. Yeah. So that might be the main doc that diagrams of Alexandria are drawn in so many different ways, but, um, you would be, you would walk down it. You may or may not enter the library, but you might walk around it. And then you would be on. soma road or canopic way but it's the main two it's the main two streets that go down the center of the city now on your right side you would have let's say theoretically on your right side you would have the library of alexandria right next to that would be a place called the museon which was um so the library is a library but the museon is a university so that's where um that's where all of your um like all of your scholars would be getting other people who want to study they get together they run experiments they're teaching things and then connected to that would be like lecture hall after lecture hall after lecture hall there's a place in modern day if you go if you go to if you go to egypt you can go to alexandria and see a portion of the library still there it's called comeldica how do you spell it k-o-m-e-l-d-i-k-k-a and you can see some of the lecture halls from these are from later periods but these would have connected to the overall campus of alexandria so you'd walk down you'd walk down these uh these alleyways that are covered up so you see these little pillars that are standing yeah there were huge um sort of half or like a half circular awnings that would stone awnings and wood awnings that would sit over that so so everywhere you would go would be fully shaded this was not out in the open there was a whole roof over this that would allow natural light in so you can walk around the whole city and and the the campus itself kind of looked like it was a large part of the center the central city um but in alexandria itself you'd see scholars like coming and going and people learning why was there such a priority put on the scholarly activities why was education so sought after or rewarded and did this exist in other parts of uh or other major cities during antiquity oh yeah yeah yeah this this is just this is just the culmination of centuries of this beginning uh it really begins with the pre-socratic fault uh philosophers in um in in the early 20th century and then it really begins with the pre-socratic philosophers in um in the early 20th century and then it really begins with the pre-socratic in um in the early 20th century and then it really begins with the pre-socratic philosophers in um in the early 20th century and then it really begins with the pre-socratic philosophers in um in the early 20th century ancient greece so like athens ancient greece so like athens ancient greece so like athens uh so pre-socratic means all the scholars uh so pre-socratic means all the scholars uh so pre-socratic means all the scholars before before before socrates socrates wasn't really a scholar socrates socrates wasn't really a scholar socrates socrates wasn't really a scholar he was more like a hobo uh that was super he was more like a hobo uh that was super he was more like a hobo uh that was super you know really smart and thoughtful guy you know really smart and thoughtful guy you know really smart and thoughtful guy um but um it's this idea of um but um it's this idea of pondering your own existence and pondering reality and thinking about like how does a man master himself and what is the purpose of my existence and what is the reality of nature itself what is nature what is my nature this all started in athens pretty much yeah and um and really explodes uh during about 450 bc there's um there's this classical athenian period that's that's that's framed by two wars you've got the persian wars and then you've got the peloponnesian wars the persian wars is actually the first persian wars where like uh leonidas is standing um this is the uh sparta yeah yeah yeah this is uh at thermopylae yeah the standard at thermopylae that's the persian 300 where the greeks yeah where the greeks repel the persians and then that causes this explosion of greek identity and thought and imagination and uh philosophy there's so much the birth of comedy itself happens right after that the first stand-up comics in the world are are in athens in the theater of athens in greece um and it was and it was such a separation from the ancient world that existed before that it was the only time where you had these people who were not ruled over by a king they're ruled over by politicians who are elected or maybe they assassinate all their political rivals and they become elected but um they could everyone you would announce when there would be a show everyone would announce when there would be a show and they would announce when they would announce when they would announce when they would announce when there'd be some you know you'd go watch plays like all day long some of them would be an actual theatrical play some of them would be like a comedy stand-up thing this was big in alexandria they would have they would have comics like stand up and just rip on the emperor of rome like all day long and people get together and just say the most heinous jokes about the emperor of rome and the word would get back to the emperor and he'd come down and just slaughter like 20 000 people yeah because of because of you know so so in but cancel culture bro yeah we're doing all right in athens you could stand out in the in the theater and you could wear them you'd like everybody would wear a mask and a robe so you wouldn't like quite know who is saying what and uh and so you could stand out there and you could make jokes criticizing your own politicians to their face as they're sitting in the crowd and have the whole crowd erupt and it was like it was just a it's just this revolutionary way of thought in the ancient world that happens in greece and it spreads through there so alexandria is like the most powerful wealthy culmination of all of that where you have you know it's it's gone from just like naturalistic philosophy of what is nature itself to categorizing philosophy to coming up with different genres of study and they're organized and then you know it becomes like similar to a modern day yeah university and so alexandria is like if if you can have a university on this scale where this many people are literate and this intelligent you can have a university where this many people are literate and this intelligent so there's an intimidation factor that comes with it it's it's everything all in one right and um and so alexandria is is kind of the culmination of all of that so it's it's kind of like the culmination of all of that so it's it's it's kind of the culmination of all of that so it's it's kind of the culmination of all of that so it's kind of the culmination of all of the great things of all of the great things of all of the great things of the ancient world all arriving in one of the ancient world all arriving in one of the ancient world all arriving in one place and one you know one of the place and one you know one of the place and one you know one of the biggest things biggest things biggest things was that nearly the entire city was was that nearly the entire city was was that nearly the entire city was built out of stone built out of stone built out of stone itself that was not a thing like if you go itself that was not a thing like if you go itself that was not a thing like if you go and you look at the all the great and you look at the all the great and you look at the all the great temples that are in egypt temples that are in egypt temples that are in egypt more grand than just a poor village more grand than just a poor village more grand than just a poor village like all the normal people are building like all the normal people are building like all the normal people are building houses leaning up against these solid houses leaning up against these solid houses leaning up against these solid walls of the temple walls of the temple walls of the temple but in alexandria the average quality but in alexandria the average quality but in alexandria the average quality of life is so much higher and everyone's of life is so much higher and everyone's of life is so much higher and everyone's apartment buildings are all made out of apartment buildings are all made out of apartment buildings are all made out of stone like it like there's there's this stone like it like there's there's this stone like it like there's there's this famous saying that in rome famous saying that in rome famous saying that in rome there's no single time in roman history there's no single time in roman history there's no single time in roman history where where where a part of the city wasn't burning down a part of the city wasn't burning down a part of the city wasn't burning down because all of the apartment buildings because all of the apartment buildings because all of the apartment buildings even during the height let's say during even during the height let's say during even during the height let's say during the period of the five good emperors the period of the five good emperors the period of the five good emperors ends with marcus aurelius gladiator um ends with marcus aurelius gladiator um That's the height of ancient Rome. A lot of people say, and it began with the emperor Trajan. A lot of people say that the period of those five emperors is the happiest time in all of humanity. It's when the Roman Empire was the most stable. Okay, even then, the vast majority of the architecture in Rome was made out of wood. And the buildings were constantly just burned down. It was so common that Augustus, Rome's first emperor, had to create the world's first fire brigade to be watching out for fires to go put them out. Alexandria didn't have to deal with this because the whole city was made out of stone. All right, guys, let's take a break for a second, all right? We're all trying to feel healthy, right? Drinking more water, getting the steps in, taking our vitamins. But here's what most people miss. You got to look out for your liver, right? You're drinking every single day. Probably, okay? Drinking every single day, it's going to decimate that liver of yours. 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Promo code free. flagrant promo code flagrant visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information we thank blue chew for sponsoring this podcast all right before we get back with luke um are y'all watching the uh march madness at all absolutely yep who you got i guessed it last year let the record show you did not guess shit yeah no you didn't i said who i said who would win i said florida yeah you know it's a sin to lie right we can pull up the tapes if only i said this on a recorded platform if only there's no way you guessed it you did not guess it yes no you didn't it was the championship game oh you guessed it at the end who can't why does it matter when you guess well because it's a 50 chance yeah oh okay heaven forbid i have a little bit of sauce going on my side you guys don't want to win any money or to succeed in any way get out of here where's ucf at miles center florida go knights no they're not in that nah they were kansas they you think kansas got it i don't even think kansas is in it anymore you know who i think got it bro if you think arizona i'm gonna grab those chops together i think i think arizona got it bro i'm not gonna lie to you what makes you think that i don't know it's more of a gut like i just have a gut instinct that's telling me arizona got it what do you think yep kansas you think kansas has got it okay can we scroll down a little back draw it looks like cal she's saying arizona michigan duke houston purdue illinois uh okay so st john's isn't that a new york team yeah st john's is in there but i mean you're not going to show them any love at all no i think arizona got it no that's what i meant by kansas i meant st john's you mean our kansas yeah got it okay what does cal she have hold on what does cal she have st john's at three percent all right let me i mean i kind of got delusional new york yeah i gotta rock with it should be zero percent but you guys are mentally ill enough to be like no we got no i gotta rock with st john's where's florida well let's go down it's somewhere in there i don't even know if you guys got a whole state lost iowa by one point by a point sucker where's iowa i hit my ball that ball was less than one percent chance nah i mean they were the favorites when they played ucf right is that what you meant where's ucf at mark whack mark don't know shit about basketball i do yeah i know stuff bam out of bio 83 points oh you should go for st john you catholic is that a catholic school yeah saint do you know who st john was yeah yeah yeah who st john he's an apostle he wrote one of the gospels that's a different one no the saint of you don't even know john i don't know what i was talking about look st john's pulling it off i don't care if cal she hasn't met three percent new york oh it's down to two percent luke the second we started talking about it went down a percent you need him to go discover the trophies for st john's because they're lost anyway you bailed out i know thank you no good deed bro no good deed my guy are we being silly yo are we being silly oh man it's just so hard to joke for you got it okay man just so hard to think of jokes ow st john's got it all right can we get back with luke bro we got we got more yes all right let's get back with luke fan duel is now available everywhere in the u.s so you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are including these places make this your most rewarding season ever with fan duel age and location restrictions apply product availability varies by market see fanduel.com for eligibility gambling problem call so what was the demise of this like amazing city so um well one it begins with with um egypt losing their independence to the roman empire so the romans come on come over and they recognize the greatness of alexandria and they're like hey you need to be you got to choose up or it's over for you yeah well it kind of um the later ptolemies like let's say ptolemy four so you've got told me one two and three those are the this is the game of thrones yeah yeah and so so so game of thrones starts to begin and these ptolemies do not care about learning the ways of the old gods of egypt they only care about being rich greek kings and princes yeah extrapolating the resources or extracting the resources from the local poor indigenous people and you know it's like uh the british in africa it's the same sort of thing yeah they're just plundering the spoils exactly and so at the very end cleopatra is born and she's the first ptolemy since the earliest times who is in awe of what this ancient world was that she was born into and how is she so aware of it well it's probably just an intrinsic curiosity uh we have there there is a surviving record of her family going on like a family vacation through egypt when she's just a little girl and we know that one of the places that she would have been taken to was the serapium or the giant like bull box sarcophagi or underground you may have seen them they're like only one of them could fit in this room it's crazy so they had these apis bulls that they would worship and they would supposedly bury them in these giant diorite granite boxes whatever it's just a marvel and so uh her family would have been taken there would have been taken to see the pyramids and she definitely would have heard the indigenous egyptian language being spoken and you know it's kind of like one of those people who grow up in in a disaffected household where they just innately know this isn't the way it has to be and they change all of that so her act of rebellion is to lean into the history exactly and lean into who these people are and then does she become even though she's an outsider ethnically does she become the embodiment of this old time she does yeah yeah she she's she's loved by the by the by the people she's pretty vicious like she gets rid of her siblings and everything what do you mean get rid she kills them all um give us the cleopatra are you guys familiar with the cleopatra lore like i know this is a baddie all right give us the the whole even that's contested yeah well um you know i'm no cleopatra expert because usually a roman historian would be more of a cleopatra expert because she's such a core figure of the roman world she's not really a core figure of the egyptian world not not not in the same way that that like a a pure egyptian pharaoh would have been 1800 years before she was alive right um but essentially the you know she's born into this long lineage this 300 year long dynasty of greek rulers uh ruling over the egyptian people from alexandria so alexandria has has really greatly expanded it's extremely wealthy um but what's the makeup is it mainly greeks or it's mainly that's a great question yeah the city what does it look like the city of alexandria was broken up into uh ethnic neighborhoods so you had uh you had greek people you had egyptians spanish harlem uh you had a jewish neighborhood um yeah yeah and um and you may have had a neighborhood for um you may have had a neighborhood for for like sub-saharan africans but like a small one i forget exactly but i know those are the big three greek egyptian and like just semitic people are living there um and uh so cleopatra is born at the very end of this dynasty although nobody knows this at the time that this will be the end of the dynasty but it's a very long history and it's a um but through hooker by crook she essentially rises her way to power she there she arrived she's in this situation where she has to like she can't actually be pharaoh herself she's got a politically like dynastically marry her 13 year old brother you know and it's probably just like they're probably not actually having sex whatever but you know um he's like 13 years old he ends up suspiciously being drowned in this i think it's an attack uh on this boat it's it's something like that but anyways she becomes she becomes her brother so she can be in charge yeah exactly so okay so she becomes she becomes pharaoh of egypt and but egypt is in this very precarious situation now where all of these incompetent all of her incompetent grandfathers who let power slip and slip and slip away actually uh one of the things that's the that is the worst um travesty of the of the slip of um alexandrian ptolemaic rule was ptolemy the 10th um he had bankrupted egypt's economy by like wasting all all of the money and so he had to go down into alexander's mausoleum alexander had this huge monument that that set across the street from the library of alexandria and he had this huge monument and you know you'd see this you'd see the statue of alexander and then it was under the ground that alexander is buried in the solid gold sarcophagus surrounded by the burials of all of the other ptolemaic kings that are around him and ptolemy the 10th goes in and pulls alexander out of his coffin puts him in a crystal or alabaster sarcophagus the gold melts down the gold and he has to use that to pay off debt wow and uh so yeah nasty work yeah it's tragedy it is symbolic though that like alexandria by the very end is getting destroyed and the way that they're trying to pay for it is by destroying the founder oh you know what i mean like there's like a poetry yeah it's crazy so so they put him in an alabaster sarcophagus and then a few generations later they put him in a ptolemaic a couple generations later uh or a couple generations later ptolemy the 12th who i believe is cleopatra's father um is born he dies away. Ptolemy XIII is Cleopatra's brother. They have to get married. He suspiciously dies by drowning in the river. All of a sudden, Cleopatra is alone in the palace and she is the ruler. And so her political move from here to allow Egypt to not become swallowed up by the Mediterranean growing in wealth and rising up around Egypt, she really only has one move because all of her incompetent grandfathers have, there is no Egyptian military anymore. Not like a unified, strong military. There's no Ptolemaic military made out of like Greeks living in Egypt. Now they're contracting soldiers from Rome. So they're paying soldiers from Rome. So all of a sudden, who really runs Egypt, right? So Cleopatra, she sees that there's a civil war that's going on in, that's going on in Rome. And one of the things that she can do, this is like a highly simplistic explanation. Roman historians don't attack me over this. But one of the things that she can do is pull Julius Caesar into Egypt. And so there's this fight over who is going to essentially have the most control in Rome. And Julius Caesar is so popular and has such a great following that he's almost able to sway the Roman people to move the capital of Rome itself from Rome down to Alexandria. Oh, yeah. If he marries Cleopatra. And so essentially, Julius Caesar has this like personality complex where he's conquered so much land. He's acquired such a vast amount of wealth. He goes on a vacation down the Nile with Cleopatra. And this is probably the first time in his life, he's always been treated like a king. He's never been treated like a god. The only god that Julius Caesar knows is Cleopatra. Because Cleopatra is god to the Egyptians. Oh, man. So all of a sudden, all of a sudden, he's being worshipped as not only am I this super rich warlord, I kind of like this idea of me being a god, you know? And so think about what that does to his personality. So he starts going back to Rome. And he's like, you know, if we had this capital down in Egypt, we could rebuild the economy of Egypt. And we'd have all of our food that all the Roman people already eat that comes from Egypt is ours. Why do we need to take it across? Why do we need to take it across the Mediterranean? Let's just move down there. So all the politicians in Rome are like, oh, we can't let this happen. Obviously, you know, we can't let this happen. So they stabbed Julius Caesar to death. Over that? Yeah, well, that, of course, this is an oversimplistic version. This is a lifetime of resentment. Also, huge move, though. You don't want to move the whole capital down to Alexandria. Yeah, yeah. So, so anyways, that kind of throws things. So what does Cleopatra do when that. I believe she's in Rome at the time, and she has to flee back to Egypt. Doesn't she leave with Mark Anthony after that? I think Mark Anthony. I don't know if he. You gotta taste it. No, no, no. Mark Anthony, I think he's gotta. You gotta taste it. I think he hangs around in. So he and Cleopatra would have made eyes at each other. They would have known each other. And there's this huge idea that maybe Julius Caesar and Cleopatra never actually loved each other, but this is a dynastic, like, this is a money move here. But if you can imagine, Julius Caesar's much older, Cleopatra's much younger, Mark Anthony is much younger. They're all hanging out in the same rooms. Mark Anthony and Cleopatra making eyes at each other. And they're like, well, you know, if this guy wasn't here, maybe we'd. You know, you can tell the attraction may have been there. And by their behavior later on in life, you can tell that they actually loved each other. It was a real romance. But Mark Anthony's gotta stay behind in Rome. He and Augustus, long story short, they get together. They take out all the guys who stabbed Julius Caesar in the back, literally. And then Mark Anthony and Augustus, they start feuding with each other over, okay, well, now it's this. It's this reverse of. Julius Caesar versus Pompey. Well, Pompey dies. Julius Caesar takes hold. Julius Caesar's gone. These two guys come up. They take everyone out. Now it's them butting heads. So Mark Anthony eventually has to go to Alexandria. He's got this marriage. He has two kids with Cleopatra. But eventually, this dog, Augustus, is gonna come down, and this guy's gonna be Rome's first emperor. Augustus is just a crazy, amazing story. But I'm not. Well, I'm not really a Roman historian, but it's this. Just think about, like. We're not really a history book. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. So you're in the perfect place. Yeah, yeah. But essentially, think about this young kid who is kind of growing up in the shadow of Julius Caesar, who sees this wild Game of Thrones being played in Rome, where politics is literally life and death. Like, if you're on the wrong side of the political spectrum, you will be assassinated. And you're so smart, and you're so cunning, and the right things happen in your life, and you make the right choices, and you don't have this, like, arrogant bravado that Julius Caesar has, and you're able to. You're, like, calculating every move of all your political rivals, and then you win. And you win big. And you're the greatest emperor that Rome ever had. When Alexander came down to Egypt, he was going to bring. He was going to bring Cleopatra and Mark Antony? Yeah, he's going to bring Cleopatra and Mark Antony back to essentially show them off in a parade in Rome. And the idea is that he presented it in such a way where it's like, oh, we're going to show the unification of our two lands. But really, he was going to have them assassinated, and he was going to parade them around Rome and show. You mean Augustus or. He was going to have Cleopatra and Mark Antony assassinated. Gotcha, gotcha. And at least that's what Cleopatra and Mark Antony suspected. And so ultimately, Cleopatra and Mark Antony, they commit suicide because they know what's going to happen to them. And so they have this Romeo-Juliet story. Get the fuck out of here. Yeah. So all of a sudden. And the way they kill themselves is crazy. How? Yeah. It's contested whether or not it really happened. Well, give me the fun version. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the romantic story is that Mark Antony is told. I believe he's told that Cleopatra has committed suicide, and he's so heartbroken by that that he runs a sword through his stomach. But then his messengers go tell Cleopatra that he stabbed himself. So Cleopatra sends her messengers to drag him to her quarters. And so she's sitting on. He gets pulled up onto her bed, and she's like, basically holding him as he's dying in her arms, like bleeding all over her bed. You can just imagine this. And she's so distraught, and she knows what's going to happen. She can't run. She has no. She can't do anything. And so the story is she has an asp, which is like a very venomous Egyptian snake brought and bites her on the wrist, and then she dies. That's probably not how she actually killed herself, but they killed themselves in the presence of each other and died together, like Romeo and Juliet. By a viper, like chewing on your neck. In Augustus, and this. When is Romeo and Juliet? This is like. Romeo and Juliet's like 1,500 years later. 1,500 years later. Yeah, yeah. Romeo and Juliet's like Renaissance era. But is this kind of. Maybe it is. The inspiration for that love story. It could be. Yeah. That's why Cleopatra's only depicted like with snakes and stuff. Like statues of her. It's like her like. Shakespeare's a hack. And so Augustus knew this whole time that if I praise myself too much for the things that I've accomplished, if I rule with too much of an iron fist, I'm going to get my head cut off someday. I'm going to get assassinated. So what he does, he kind of is a classy guy. He knew that he was. At a certain point, he knew he was emperor of Rome, but he would never actually call himself that. I think he would call him like first citizen or like the first citizen of Rome or something like that. But classy enough. When you're strong, appear weak. When you're weak, appear strong. Yeah. He allowed Cleopatra and Mark Antony to be buried in Egypt and honored. And he gave the Egyptian people, I believe, a year to mourn the dead pharaoh. And then a year later, he becomes crowned pharaoh of Egypt. But really, he's like the emperor of Rome now. And so he returns back. And essentially, for the rest of his life, he plays his cards. You know, one of the deadliest careers throughout all of history is to be the emperor of Rome. Of course. I think it's. What is it? It's like a 40-something percent fatality rate. Does he die of old age? Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. So he is Caesar Augustus. Caesar Augustus. Yeah. But Octavian. That's his name. Octavian. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. Whoa. Yeah. It's a crazy story. And so that's kind of the thing that's amazing about Alexandria. It's just. So when he's in Alexandria. What a politician. That's some fucking next level stuff. Yeah. Every single move could get you killed. And you're plotting that for the entirety of your life. So he's got this Stella that's erected. And I think it's called. What does that mean? A Stella is like a billboard, sort of. Maybe it's the size of this wall right here. It's written in stone. It's meant to be read for all of eternity. And he's got this Stella that basically says something along the lines of things I did. And that's sort of what it translates to in Latin. And it lists out all of his accomplishments. And he essentially says that when I came to Rome. He's saying it in an elegant way, but he's saying when I was born here as a Roman citizen, I founded a city of mud brick. I leave it a city of marble. And so he is the one that started erecting Rome. Because before that was brick and timber. And it was a really janky, muddy, just trashy town. It was a big town. he started erecting the white marble stone monuments that you see in rome he was inspired to do that by alexandria yeah because when he arrived in alexandria you have to imagine his thought process was like how can there be a city greater than ours yeah how can there be so alexandria inspires what is it called the palladium the roman palladium what is that area when you go visit rome right now where you see all of the basically the remnants of these old marble structures that are there um the roman well there's there's a pantheon there's a roman pantheon which is which is a uh but the palladium may be a region of the city but i'm really not look that up for us joey yeah if i'm not mistaken yeah rome is the most amazing city i've ever been to yeah and like new york is the greatest city in history i'm a little bit biased but if there wasn't new york it's it's rome like you go you go indulge in rome and then you go to paris and you're just like oh you guys are just knocking off rome yeah yeah all this existed but rome forum sorry the roman forum okay yeah yeah of course um but to that extent rome was really i have to look at alexandria and be like oh shit well and alexandria was a knockoff of athens yes so it all it all sort of starts in athens but then you know athens athens itself is is revolutionary in many ways but you know they're also so inspired by the the bronze age greeks like you can kind of follow these webs as it goes back you know and doesn't alexander get get back against the persians like that's one of the things i think alexander it's like so interesting to me is like i don't know if it's on purpose or if it's incidental but like cyrus goes through or maybe it's xerxes and basically goes through and burns down all of athens during like the greco-persian wars and then years later alexander the great like sort of kind of unites these like greek city-states becomes like this great like greek leader and then goes to persopolis and then burns it down himself like kind of like an epic and then he goes to persopolis and then burns it down himself like kind of like an epic to the persians that burn down greece yeah uh i think it was um yeah the the persians i forget it may have it may have been cyrus the great uh invades greece and then burns down a massive temple uh on the acropolis of athens and then the athenians uh they they made the decision to never rebuild it to leave it there and it's top as a reminder as a reminder to everybody what what would happen if they allowed invaders to come in again yeah so the the athenians are these like the aristocrats of that greek empire at the time yeah yeah each one is their own little nation state but is this like the elites of the elites is that kind of how they see themselves it's it's yeah it is it's it's the uh it is the height of all of of the greek world at least the classical greek world at what time in history is this uh 450 bc just like approximately wow and so one of the reasons for that is um they you know the the the the the the the the the the you know the athenians and the greeks in general have like a very young memory uh there there's an egyptian saying that there are no old greeks because the greeks can't remember their their ancient past whereas the egyptians have this continuous legacy going all the way back to 3000 bc but the greeks fall apart at the end of the bronze age that um there's a massive time uh like let's say 1150 bc okay um so there's this huge bronze age collapse the greeks are hit the hardest you have these you have these massive civilizations that are going to be destroyed and they're going to like uh okay agamemnon and the movie troy waging the war so those are the mycenaeans that's this massive greek bronze age empire and it all collapses and falls apart the greeks fall into this bronze age they hardly remember their ancient past anymore and so throughout greece as it rises again each little place has their own new philosophy and the uh the athenians rise i think that they have kings at first and then they have like political tyrants but then the people overthrow the political tyrants and they create a new uh form of government a democracy now this is an all-out democracy so this is literally straight up just like individual votes right or let's say men who own property or free men or something like that but it's like individual votes um and so you have this whole new philosophy and that is why uh you know that that revolutionary thought that came from the ancient world that people could be free and rule over themselves was so profound that we still erect our capital buildings in that in honor of that yeah in a in athenian style yeah it's all athenian and how were they able to have the security safety and food in order to focus on like um a human being's right to you know sovereignty and thought and like like what created that kind of okay so this is yeah so this is this is what we're learning right throughout history everything every single civilization that you touch on they have security they have borders and they have food so this is a long time this is the dark side of the athenian world um they had a lot of slaves a lot of slaves but the slave wasn't it wasn't based it really wasn't based on like race or anything like that um a lot of it was based on on uh the subservient or captured culture so if you could uh if you could go capture this culture of people and you could essentially pull them in and they would become like your your slave right so like but with the athenians warmongers like where was their muscle where they yeah yeah so they they they participated in a lot of wars they made a if i remember correctly they made an incredible amount of money um repelling the persians during the persian war of the early 400s bc um they were able to recruit they were finally able to convince the spartans to go all in against against the against the persians and long story short as a result of the success of athens accumulated so much of the power and the wealth of of greece by taking those taxes that's what it was so they they took a huge amount of taxes because of how much money athens spent to be able to repel the persians and so as a result of that all the money just this gravitational pull all the money just got sucked into athens so they put up these massive walls they build this huge port i think the port's called the port of piraeus um and then they have all these slaves or people they brought in from around from around the way now these aren't slaves they're not slaves that are like what we may imagine like colonial america to be like this is more like the working class that exists subservient to the political class so a regular free athenian male would wake up and would tell his slaves and maybe the word slave didn't actually exist it's a different it's a different uh it's a greek word but essentially you just had your workmen but they were obligated by the very institution itself to work for you right and maybe they can be punished or killed if they didn't or they tried to escape but um but they would work for you and they would work for you they tend your to your fields they would harvest your crops like on the outside of the city walls or they may take care of like official uh business that your family has been involved in your job was to go up to the acropolis and participate in politics and that was that was literally your job was to be a politician and to be actively involved in the way that the city itself is being run and give your opinion and give your thoughts and go to war when the time came so you would you would need to buy your own armor you need to have it smithed out you need to make your you know make your own uh swords and shields and everything and so you were obligated this i don't believe that the slaves were ever obligated to actually bear arms and go to war you were a political man it was your job to be invested in what was actually good for the city itself and then defend the city and what about people who ran restaurants farms like security policing like there must have been jobs to maintain infrastructure in a city yeah yeah absolutely um that gets a little bit more complicated i mean we don't um we only catch glimpses of that from like primary sources we know that all that existed but it was probably a mixture of like uh free men and and slaves uh providing you know those services like you may have you may have a free man who owns a restaurant there there were there were restaurants there was fast food in in rome for sure yeah um it but in uh in athens itself you would have uh what was called the agora which was the marketplace that existed in the center and you'd have people at their little markets selling stuff so now though are those free men or women that are selling everything probably not we don't really know i mean it was probably a mixture right and there were definitely free people who didn't have slaves so then what happens well maybe there's an exception made for them so all of the variation that exists in our modern world certainly existed back then so rather than i guess my explanation is rather than it being one thing i the other it's probably all of it you know probably there were free people who really couldn't be involved in politics because i got to work you know and people are like hey man you should come up and what okay well who's gonna man my stand oh you should get a you know go get a certain how am i gonna do that i can't afford to go do that and then they're just you know this person is trapped in the working world they can't participate in the high aristocratic society of so is this what happens with society once ai and robots become functional god i don't know just get like in indentured servants type vibe essentially you have indentured servants and you have a obligation to take part in government society or whatever it is and like these indentured servants like or these robots or whatever fighting each other in a war doesn't really make any sense i mean that's just like who runs out of robots first and then eventually it's people but yeah yeah yeah yeah but i i don't know you know i just don't know that we'll ever come to a you know athens Athens was a very unique place with so much personality in this like explosion of revolutionary thought um and people that were really really um you know they would they would could you imagine our society today paying people to go watch professional football games because that's what happened in in athens it would pay people to pay you to go watch sports they pay you to be because they wanted you to be a part of the community like the city itself knew that okay so so this is the this is one of the different like uh we are very roman in the way that we like to decorate our homes and fill our homes with a lot of like you know gorgeous decor this that and the other we want the inside of our house to be pretty we want the outside of our house to be pretty but athenians and most greeks were not that way you would go through a greek town and you may not be impressed by any of the of the um of the homes that are there because the athenians didn't really like care about that it was more so about when you went downtown what are the public spaces yeah you went to the agora there was a big there was a big long building that was like a colonnaded sort of that typical greek column style building two two uh two stories deep it had this uh open space at the bottom open space at the top and then like uh cubbies almost rooms in the back where little markets would be and people would hang out underneath that colonnaded area area and it's funny um there was a group of philosophers there that would always gather in one of the corners and like that that little gang of philosophers grew so big and they would gather in one of the corners and people didn't really want to be around them so uh and that building's called the stoa so those people hung out there so much that the athenians started calling them the stoics and that's where the that's where the term stoic philosophy came from not because they named themselves that or that's the name of their philosophy but the philosophers who believed what we call stoic philosophy hung out in the stoa so marcus aurelius was just ripping off the stoics oh he was obsessed with ancient greece yeah yeah so much of it goes back to greece and um and so the greeks knew that the uh so like the athenians were like the athenians were like the athenians were like the athenians were like the athenians were like the athenians were like the athenians were like the greatest political uh leaders of all time uh he's basically known as like the greatest athenian and uh and he is going to use i believe he's gonna he wants to build a new temple on the acropolis of athens which is the parthenon if you guys have ever been to athens or i'm sure you've seen a photo of the pictures yeah um and he wants to he wants to build this and he's essentially giving the speech and he's like he's like all right guys i got this new project that i want to build i want to build this this huge temple it's going to be the glory of athens and the fact that we you know we kicked persia's ass and you know we basically saved ancient greece you know along with the spartans but basically it was us yeah um and i want this i want this temple to be built and i'm going to raise some of the taxes to be able to do this for the city do you guys want to do this and the athenians are like are like uh i don't know if we want to spend the money really you're going to raise our taxes i don't know if i should do that and then and then pericles goes all right well i'm gonna do it and then i'm gonna put a plaque on there that says built and paid for by pericles and then i'm gonna put a plaque on there that says and then all the athenians go no fuck no we're gonna you know and then so they like hand over their money so they're all invested in the public architecture public architecture and so um you know it was all about the community you would wake up as an athenian high trust society you get right out of your house to go to go into town immediately the first thing you do in the morning is go to the agora and you hung out in town all day long and you basically just slept at home and so it wasn't about your personal it was about your personal glory in what other people think about you in the acts that you did but not the things that you own so i don't know that we can have a society quite like that again how did how did they keep the spartans at bay if you have this dominant military force why don't they just take over all of greece the the spartans yeah like why wouldn't they take over athens why wouldn't they take over macedonia yeah so so this is this is a period called the peloponnesian uh war and this is sort of that this is sort of the the the of the classical period this this height of of of ancient greece and um actually the athenians didn't keep the spartans at bay the the the the peloponnesian war was between sparta and athens and sparta won and uh there was a i believe there was a greek traveler named maven polybius um in the second century a.d or maybe it's maybe it's before that but he essentially has something where he writes maybe it was thucydides that wrote this i think it was thucydides uh he was an athenian that was living during the peloponnesian war and writing about it while he was alive and he said that if you visited the city of athens you would think that it was twice as powerful as it was if you visited sparta you would think it was half as powerful as it was and um and uh so so sparta what's interesting is they had no stone public architecture it was all wood and um all like wood and perishable materials they didn't care about like the you know the big grand public architecture but their um their philosophy and their way of waging war i i i actually basically know nothing about the peloponnesian war but i know that ultimately the athenian basically their empire was stretched way too thin they tried to send an expedition off to conquer some cities on the island of syracuse which a lot of uh a lot of southern italy was occupied by greeks at the time and there were a lot of greeks living on syracuse and so athens sends out an expedition to syracuse it goes horribly because sparta is somewhere right in here sparta basically i think there's there's a massive military defeat where they just destroy this entire athenian fleet send their economy even send athens economy even further down and then athens they the spartans don't go into athens and raid it but they essentially tell the athenians to like back off you know like you're not going to take over all of greece and uh and then so that's not the downfall of athens but it certainly is the frame to like this high level of athens and syracuse and then so that's not the downfall of athens but it certainly is the frame to like this high level of athens and syracuse and then so that's not the height of the of athenian power that had never been seen before in the world it never would be seen again until the founding of the united states there would not be anything similar to it until the united states was created what do you mean not the roman empire no no it's just yeah the roman empire is just not similar to ancient greece in any way other than than the way it looks like you don't you don't have uh you did not have the political freedom like one of the big things was oh that's what you mean you mean the political structure of athens was created by syracuse and syracuse was created by syracuse and syracuse was yeah the political freedom and the philosophy behind the the very existence of the people itself right it's not similar um we're we're probably much more similar to the greeks even though you know we have a we have a constitutional republic and the greeks were like an absolute democracy um we we carry so much of the same kind of like primal nature of the greeks this this fight for independence this fight to be to to be your own people who rule over each other that aren't going to have uh to have freedom of speech to be able to represent yourself you know even though we're actually way more free than they were but yeah but this idea of self-determination yeah and it was born there but were the founding fathers like astute observers and consumers of greek philosophy yeah so are we crediting the french a little bit too much in their inspiration well i think the founding fathers are heavily influenced by the french right because that's what i'm saying yeah yeah yeah from my you know understanding of history it seems like these ideas are coming from the french yeah yeah but do these ideas really emanate through athens then to the french and then to yeah that's a that's a good question i mean there is the there is neoclassical france which i don't know too too too much about um but i think that perhaps maybe gosh maybe my american bias is totally showing but uh i like this idea of us being inspired by the greeks oh yeah i mean that's there's there is no doubt um you know if you go to thomas jefferson's house i was i was standing in his library it's like fan of france yeah yeah big fan of france but big fan of ancient egypt and greece and a huge fan and he's got books on ancient egypt and greece uh the bed that he died in his um his clock that sat above him was like two egyptian obelisks and so yeah you see all this like a greek and egyptian architecture all throughout the united states and everybody does this whole like illuminati thing and you know we're worshiping some sort of satanic stuff but is it just hey these were the dominant cultures of antiquity and this is the inspiration yeah and by by aligning yourself with those things you are aspiring to be something that is higher and older than you are right like you're aspiring to almost like it like an unachievable you know goal yeah but by doing that you might get close yeah you might get close yeah and so that and so i think a lot of the founding fathers were really inspired by antiquity obviously they're culturally inspired by the contemporary french yeah but um am i wrong in saying that the united states might be like a uh much more successful uh attempt at like this absolute freedom and you know maybe i'm wrong i don't know much about about the french revolution and and uh neither do i but yeah i guess i don't know enough to comment if they achieved it or or if we have but i'm sure the perception within the united states of america and there might be you know propaganda that's that's holding that up yeah but no of course yeah um now we didn't get it right for a long time yeah yeah you know but uh the goal always is to be held to that standard yeah for sure can i ask you another great story yes sir this is not pertaining to europe but this is my favorite story that you told me when we did the pod okay and this is the aztecs going back to mexico oh my gosh okay yeah wandering through as warriors and they stumble across a land and then they ultimately take over the land through potentially a betrayal can you tell me if we about Atlantis also. we have time so um i want to make sure you have time because you have a flight but we're good yeah we're good right now yeah we're good yeah um so um so the red wedding um all right so i'm trying to think of like how i can how i can start this what year roughly are we looking yeah so um cortez invades mexico in 1519 um without the permission of the spanish crown and uh he marches his way over the course of several months to when he lands he lands among the maya people and he writes that the maya people are like short and sickly and they're kind of ill well they're being affected by spanish or european influenza uh from in the decades prior when the spanish were out in like the bahamas and jamaica and the caribbean islands well some of the traders and people who are naturally curious are poking around on the shorelines of mexico interacting with the native people but they don't realize they're getting them all sick and so that disease is starting to move into the maya world well from let's call it 1492 ish maybe the year 1500 more accurately over the next 19 years of 1519 a lot of people are getting sick in mexico so cortez arrives and he starts noticing these sickly people and he's essentially saying what aliens would say he's saying like take me to your leader you know he wants to know like where's the head honcho of all this world so he finds his way uh to um to know stitlan and uh and while the spaniards are there this is modern day mexico city right modern day mexico city yeah so at this point in time when he's there has the city already been cultivated like it is originally just these like island chain has it now been built up oh yeah what is this hey could we look up um uh to know stitlan aztec city reconstruction and you'll see it's it's a miracle what they did with this place so amazing that the spaniards the soldiers who are say walking alongside cortez as he's riding his horse you know and they're looking up at him at him and when once they've left to know she long for the first time yeah if you zoom in on that and they look up at cortez and they're like they're like they're like can you believe what we've seen i feel like this was all a dream i can't actually believe it's a dream i can't believe it's a dream i can't believe it's a dream i can't believe that we found this they are 400 europe there are there are 400 europeans in all of the americas at this point and they're all together yeah in this city yeah right they went and found some alien planet yeah it's just it's how many millions of people here you think millions yeah i mean that we don't there's not really much of an estimate but i mean it's rare i think that they say that the there were there were there were 10 million aztecs or something like that but maybe that was 10 million people that were under aztec control right because there's 400 europeans yeah yeah what they did was wrong but it's kind of cool yeah i mean it's ballsy right so a million millions of them 400 this is 300 right this is yeah okay but what is bad what they did it's horrible this is reverse 300 it is yes it worked okay this is 300 this is 300 is 300 men stopping a million people yeah uh and from from invading their land but this is 300 people invading a million people balls because and again i don't know technologically where things are at spain and you know 1492 but are they reaching the shores height of the world spain 1492 yes but are they reaching a more sophisticated civilization do they feel intellectually intimidated when they're looking upon this city or are they going these are still people that will be subservient to us at the end of the day we found them i think i think that's more i think that's more got it so they're marveling at what they're seeing but they're not intellectually intimidated they're like we got guns like they don't even have that i think i think that that's probably fair okay um and also when you say like where did they get the balls well one of the things is you know we people look at uh people look at the entire colonial world as being you know this inherits like a great crime that was done you know to to many many different cultures um but the reality of the people who committed those crimes was they either do that or they die in the slums back home like they there are not there are not rich wealthy people being born in spain who are like man i'm gonna go be a boat captain and learn how to do the hardest job imaginable and then i'm gonna go lead an army to conquer these people and probably die this is crypto yeah this yeah this is this is this is people who grew up in the slums that don't really have any opportunity here's my way out this is my way to this is my way to have some wealth and they didn't realize when they set out that they were starting in unt you can't change the course of what you're about to do you can't turn around you're going to be militarily obligated to do this this is apparent in the whole like burn the ships philosophy you know they burn the ship so they couldn't retreat right this is what you're gonna do and and if that meant killing thousands of people and slaughtering a whole civilization to take every everything that they had and take it back home to enrich yourself you didn't have a choice right you didn't have and and you probably didn't even know that that was going to happen when you set out to do this so colonization is something like this this establishment of the global uh market was something that was always going to happen and it was always going to be indescribably horrific yeah still wrong yeah yeah yeah we're not justifying yeah but had it not been europeans it would have been somebody else right right 100 percent without a doubt it all would have happened and so when you become a historian you really start studying it you eventually you stop seeing now there are there are cases where there are legitimately bad guys like this this is the bad guy in the story but most of history is actually way more complicated than that where you realize the two people are pitted against each other and they neither had a choice right um okay so they're there so so they conquer the city of tinochtitlan over the course of a couple of years and then you have spanish going through the city and they're um they are taking an account of you know how the aztecs came to be and they hear this story that is essentially this red wedding and so it paints this picture of how the aztecs came to power so the aztecs were not from mesoamerica mesoamerica class mesoamerica is this el salvador honduras up to here uh somewhere in north mexico maybe even south southern new mexico like just a where i was on that expedition a little bit a couple weeks ago that may have been the northern tip of mesoamerica but it's just this it's just this way of life it's kind of like the eastern mediterranean they're all inspired by each other and they all share the same trade routes and everything like you can kind of look at it all as one civilization broken up by many different cultures and kingdoms and stuff so that's sort of what mesoamerica is and but the aztecs probably came from somewhere in the american southwest they're colonizers too absolutely absolutely yeah i understand your framing now you're like they have done this somebody else is going to do this and this is the history of the world and it doesn't mean it's okay it just is it's the history of particularly the americas nobody the americas colonize each other over and over and over and over and over and over again like just for for for at least 13 000 years that's what was going on the the first ones were the clovis culture that came in and they pushed all the pre-clovis people out and just like took over the americas and then you've got fulsome culture and it goes on and on and on and on and on forever and you can just see cultures just disappearing and being swallowed up by other cultures i mean it's just that's what was going on and um and uh so the aztecs somewhere around the 1100s now i understand why white people love history right because you're like yeah we're not that bad we're just the latest i still gotta answer your question so um well as a very side note the reason that europeans are conquerors and explorers and raiders and everything is because this is a very inhospitable place and it's really really hard to survive in africa this is where people sprouted out of the damn ground you don't have to do anything to live here you can just live yeah this is where we're right here this is where we're supposed to live uh no i'm sorry right here is where we're supposed to tanzania tanzania and kenya yeah the serengeti this is where humans are supposed to be but they left they went all the way up here up here is a very inhospitable place place to live and i think that's where we're supposed to be and so it really benefits you if you start becoming a marauder and a raider and you start stealing from other people and and going on these you know huge like raiding expeditions and yeah you know stealing shit and so that's how europeans survive for a long time so it breeds this kind of like idea and way of life of like we're gonna set off on this thing and go on this huge adventure and slaughter all these people and take all their stuff and bring it back for our glory like that that's the way of life there it was the way of life for a lot of other people too but really particularly europe um and many different many similar situations no choice but being white devils i get it yeah it was put upon us yeah and it was cold it's so cold yeah and uh so in the america the most dangerous thing in the america the most dangerous thing in the america the most dangerous thing in the america the most dangerous thing in the situations the aztecs are up here living in the middle of damn desert and they get pushed out their culture apparently was not very compatible with the people that they were living in they were living with and they weren't very compatible when they came into mesoamerica either the mesoamericans were not they were warlike but they weren't warlike and vicious in the same way that the aztecs were so the aztecs get pushed out according to their history they get pushed out at the lowest they live somewhere up here at the highest they live somewhere up here but somewhere in this area is where the aztecs so basically southern the united states northern mexico yes sir yeah so then they get pushed out and they come down and they find this really nice area in the valley of mexico and they start almost like uh almost like vultures they're like circling around the valley of mexico and they're trying to find a place that they're going to settle down but all the all of the cultures of the valley of mexico are you can never say they're peaceful right but more way more peaceful um like they're all up for war but not it's not their main problem yeah yeah and um so they're all pushing they're they're pushing the aztecs asking no no no you you guys don't belong here we don't want we don't want your kind here you know you guys are too vicious you're too savage you're too barbarian go back to america yeah exactly go back to america and so um so one of the kingdoms here decides well you know what we can use these guys they're kind of like savage barbaric people but i think we can find a use for them so they call the aztecs and they're like we're going to kill them and they're going to kill the aztecs in and this is the kingdom of cow wakon and so they're living in in the mexican valley amongst all these other pre-aztec cultures and they eventually tell the aztecs okay we're going to give you a place to live that you can settle on and in return you you you're going to unite as an army and you'll come whenever we call on you right so they're gonna be mercenaries for for the kingdom of cow wakon so they say shit that's the egyptians paying for the roman uh fire yeah yeah yeah yeah you know what i'm gonna tell you something crazy you're you're that's very very observant um so they tell uh they've been they they give the aztecs a little plot of land that they can live on and it's this little rocky outcropping out in the middle of lake tinochtitlan which is uh you know when we were looking at the city of tinochtitlan it's surrounded by water originally that was just a tiny little rock outcropping just like a piece of crap land that they couldn't imagine anybody could live on it so they send the aztecs there well the aztecs are looking for this prophecy and the prophecy says that they'll know where their promised land is you know proverbially uh when they see a serpent and then an eagle come down and clutch the serpent and fly away with it that's why we have that's why we have that imagery of of the serpent and the eagle so when they get out there there's this snake on the rocks a eagle comes down picks up the snake and flies off and so the aztecs go okay this is it you know like this is what the god's telling us that we have to make it work here so over the course of the next uh couple hundred maybe 150 200 years um they're working as mercenaries for the kingdom of cowacan and cowacan lives on the coastline while the aztecs are in this crappy land in the center and so they're acting as mercenaries for cowacan and cowacan is marking off all these other kingdoms around the lake of tinochtitlan they're fighting them and pulling them into the kingdom of cowacan sacking them killing all their lords and stalling your own lords pulling them in so the aztecs help cowacan do all of this and during this time the aztecs are being paid very well they're now building their town and so it's now sprawling out into this metropolis that's a lesser version of the photos that we've seen and then um how are they getting rid of the water or how are they elevating the yeah well they must be quarrying stones in and building up like the land that's actually you know you're in this rocky outcropping so you're so you're building up the sides of it because it's below sea level right yeah what's below the the level of the lake yeah in a lake bed yeah yeah in a lake bed in a lake bed so they're so they're bringing in stone so you gotta that's why when you go to mexico city you see a lot of the buildings are actually like tilting yeah have you seen that yeah yeah it's just because they're built on this lake bed yeah yeah and they're all they're all like sinking yeah now in ancient times they were repairing all that constantly so the city would have just been perfectly flat and level the whole you know um and have the aztecs not fallen it would have stayed that way um but this is all man-made the whole i mean the whole city from the very center uh where the center of the city is there where you see like the royal palisades and everything that was where that little rocky outcropping was and they just brought up the land itself from inside the water and then expanded the city on top of that and so you would traverse the city on like man-made sidewalks and little ravines where you could sail boats between buildings like a venice if you will very similar so you could imagine they're being paid royally for their mercenary work more and more and more and more and more and um eventually i i don't know about what year this would be maybe about the year 1350 so maybe 200 years supposedly after the aztecs arrived um the aztec priest goes into his inner sanctum and you know takes like an absurd amount of peyote or whatever and he goes to meet the god huitztipotli which is the war god war god tells him it's now time to have our prince marry the princess of cowakan and form the dynasties into one and so that's the that's the aztecs now they've helped cowakan conquer everybody it's the aztecs going to them and saying we want to marry our princess to you and become one kingdom so it kind of brings them up so they go give the proposition to the kingdom of cowakan and you can just imagine the king there is like well if they're proposing this that means they're probably willing to go to war with us if we say no we don't want to fight with these guys because yeah we don't want to fight with them because we just built them up and they they are our army now so the so the king of cowakan is like and they're proposing a possibility where i remain king sounds great so i guess like i don't have a choice you know you can just imagine like that that's what was going through a very reasonable offering by the way yeah and so um and so like the king of cowakan accepts and um they propose plan out this wedding where the print they're going to have the wedding in the sitter no i'm sorry they have the wedding in cowakan so the prince and the king of the aztecs come into cowakan they do this they do this huge wedding um and then they bring the princess back and they're now they're going to have this celebration over over the um so they've had the wedding in cowakan now they're going to do a celebration of the of the merging of the two two families so there's going to be a parade that comes you can just imagine it would come down this bridge that crossed from the mainland from the city of cowakan to chinoise chitlon so there's going to be this big royal parade coming into chinoise chitlon the priest goes back into the sanctum to meet with huispoli and huispoli says we're going to ambush the kingdom of cowakan when they come into the city gates you are going the prince is going to flay which is to skin the princess take all of her skin off yeah it was going to kill her like rip her heart out sacrifice her to wheat's to poli flay her which is uh you know you would flare and by doing that you would bring honor to the flayed god i forget his name but there was a god of flaying people of cutting their skin off yeah and so the they they kill the princess they cut her heart out sacrifice her i say cut her heart out but you know however they really sacrifice people whether mel gibson was right or not um but uh they they sacrifice her they flare cut all of her skin off and then the prince slips himself into her skin puts on her skin puts on her head and then when they bring in the royal procession of of uh cowakan the they they are going to bring the princess out and the prince comes out wearing her skin and essentially just causes mass hysteria and then caitlyn jenner takes over wow and then uh and then the aztec warriors just come out of nowhere ambush the aztec people that don't know that's gonna happen what are they thinking are they like damn you want to marry this ugly they're like don't do it prince you deserve better like that's crazy okay and so uh so they after they basically horrify um you know i think that there was an element of shock right do you think well well of course of course but i think that i think that shock and fear made the sacrifice more uh fervent exactly right um so so that fear if you could cause like a mass amount of chaos and really scare somebody and just petrify them and then you sacrifice them well that means more to the gods right and so all these aztec warriors come in and they just ambush the cowakan it's crazy slaughter all of them they capture they capture the king and the whole royal procession and then it doesn't say but you can imagine they march them to the top of the pyramid and sacrifice them to wheat's depot lee and then move the army across the bridge and invade the city of cowakan basically burn the whole thing to the ground capture everyone sacrifice a lot of them i'm sure and then all of a sudden the aztecs are sitting out fortified in the in this massive city in the middle of this lake with this huge moat around it and they just conquered the whole mexican valley holy over the course of like 200 years or so how crazy is that yeah yeah holy they all sit around at dinner after that the wedding they're just like oh yeah they're dabbing each other up he's taking the skin off that bro you killed it there's some guy who's probably like dude i made that up about the eagle and the snake guys just take a break for a second you wouldn't hire a barber to fly your plane you wouldn't hire your electrician to do your taxes because when something serious happens you want the experts and that's where morgan and morgan comes in if you ever injured by the negligence of another morgan and morgan is america's largest injury law firm they have over 100 offices nationwide and more than 1 000 lawyers with over 30 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see fanduel.com for eligibility gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER throughout all of that as as scary as that sounds when the spaniards arrived and they would go into the marketplaces of chinoche titlan and you know the spaniards are pulling out their steel swords and just slicing people up i mean you you know you can with those with those blades i mean you could just you can cut somebody in half you can cut their head off you can cut their arm off like so easily and it was the brutality of how swiftly and mercilessly and without a thought the spaniards would slaughter people and then just leave their bodies to rot in the streets that actually happened in the spaniards in the spaniards in the spaniards in the spaniards in the spaniards in the spaniards in the spaniards in the spaniards in the spaniards horrified the aztecs because the aztecs at least saw the value in your soul they actually really saw the value in your soul so even if they hated you i'm killing you without a sacrifice yeah for no reason yeah for no reason at all yeah yeah so so the spaniards would just like you know just slice this person's head off slice this guy's arm and leg off just leaving people like you know rolling around in pain on the sides of the street so there's an aztec dude in some chick's skin looking at the spaniards like these people are demonic someone taking their money then throwing it away yeah that's the joker for no reason yeah whereas like if robber would be like yeah you take the money well you know that's that's really like an astute observation there there was not there was not currency in any of the americas it was uh you know they had different things that they valued whereas in the old world we have we have all kinds of different forms of currency but uh in the americas it was really about trade or it was really about money and it was really about money and it was really about money and what you could offer or like the esoteric value the spiritual significance of things and so they really saw value in people's souls like that wasn't something to just be thrown away even if it was your enemy you needed to sacrifice him to your god so that in return the god would bless you right and wasting that is really just like taking somebody's like you kill somebody for their money and then you throw their money on the street and then it's like that guy's it's totally antithetical to your whole existence so the aztecs were actually horrified by how mercilessly they were mercilessly the spaniards could just you know like march through thousands of people and slaughter them without a second thought and then the spaniards betray the aztecs right like yeah yeah yeah like montezuma right yeah yeah so nobody um nobody really knows what exactly happened but the spaniards are held up in the palace with montezuma and one way or another montezuma dies while he's in the palace with the spaniards alone alone with him yeah yeah yeah so there's all different kinds of ways to do it and there's a lot of ways to do it and there's a lot of ways to do it and there's a lot of ways that that people think it happened probably the spaniards um probably spaniards just killed him right often in montezuma's who uh he he was the emperor of the aztec world and that's the montezuma's revenge when like you drink the water in mexico and you get sick that's what i call montezuma's but it's actually what's the name of the people that the aztecs conquered the the ones you just said it's cowacan's revenge facts it is cowacan's revenge right like that's how the spaniards come in and take out the aztecs in a betrayal yeah it's not the same thing it's not as dramatic but it's like yeah come to the temple we'll talk and then was it a fresh water lake yeah okay so they had access to water oh yeah yeah yeah yeah wow all the sites across mesoamerica are built on you know it's all built right next to water i mean when we were on that expedition in the gila man it was just so obvious it's that it's that southern tip of new mexico that i was talking about might be the northern end of the gila it's just so obvious it's that it's of mesoamerica of ancient mesoamerica yeah um and so when we were there man it was just so obvious like how crucial not only being near water but being right on it was because you think how much water you drink all the time you know i mean you got to be right there on it and so those waterways kind of determine uh if you go to rei and you're checking out usually on the on like behind the counter there will be an inverted map of the of the united states and it'll the the country will be on the right side of the map and it'll be on the left side of the map and it'll be on the right side of the map and it'll be on the left side of the map and it'll be on the right side of the map and it'll be on the left side of the map and it'll be on the right side of the map and it'll be on the right side of the map and it'll be on the left side of the map and it'll be on the right side of the map and it'll be on the left side of the map and it'll be on the right side of the map and it'll be on the left side of the map and it'll be on the right side of the map and it'll be on the left side of the map and it'll be on the right side of the map and it'll be on the left side of the map and oh how many lost cities of gold are there still today undiscovered well the uh the lidar team i'm working with they may have may have found one this morning yeah luke is holding back bro he hit us up with a picture of his lidar team somewhere where i can't say that discovered some wild stuff yeah so not willing to share so so i'm working with uh i'm working with a team run by uh daniel windham uh out of georgia uh it's a company called basemap and we're doing several lidar projects in the southeast uh u.s um and then we're going to be doing one later this year maybe in august or september down on the amazon yeah uh but this morning he sent me a new image of a lidar scan that they had done um down on the amazon just like running the drone straight over this uh straight over this uh huge piece of land and these huge circular geometric earthworks connected to each other as but as far as it looked like roads dude it looked like roadways they're massive highways yeah yeah and those highways went all through the amazon um i mean all through the amazon um but as far as how many are there dozens i mean dozens dude there's no there's no one el dorado the whole story of el dorado is a bunch of different spaniards hearing a bunch of different stories about a bunch of different places that had a lot of gold and then getting confused and it all kind of melds into el dorado but el dorado was half of the continent of south america itself you know so everywhere you go if you find a city that's got gold artifacts in it if you could excavate the whole thing you'd be like whoa this is el dorado because anybody found a bunch of gold like the count of monte cristo stuff has that ever happened where it like fundamentally changed somebody's life now i'm not talking about a gold mine i'm talking about like lost or buried treasure um well okay so there's a lot of stuff when it comes to finding like spanish shipwrecks that have changed people's lives uh but as far as ancient sites i think that's a good question i think that's a good question i think that's a good question there are maybe times early on where people would find ancient sites and you would buy the property and excavate it and you could sell the all the artifacts um but as far as i don't know about like enriching one person's life because he found a bunch of stuff and was able to sell it or whatever but as far as finding sites that are filthy rich with gold oh hell yeah yeah northern peru out in the deserts had tons of them man there was so much gold there that the kings there would wear gauntlets of gold with like fabric woven in them and you could just wear these like golden gloves and your whole body would be covered in gloves yeah your whole body would be i mean it's crazy stuff so they're you're saying that there are modern people that existed within our parents lifetime that found these massive gold absolutely yeah wow yeah they find them all the time like treasure hunter people who for decades have been looking eventually stumble across it and they are rich uh well i mean maybe yeah yeah possibly it's probably rarer because i think that the the local government will come in and grab confiscate that stuff we're gonna do it with the university and you have to turn stuff over with it that happens a lot yeah yeah yeah that's whack that happens a lot that's whack no that don't count i'm talking about gold bro artifacts you got to give to the museums but the raw the raw gold is the raw gold yeah but how much raw gold are you finally if you're gonna go into someone's tomb it's all gonna be decorative gold yeah yeah it's all gonna be decorative gold or like blocks of gold or blocks you know that kind of that kind of thing bring it over here bring it over here boolean that's fair game boolean don't you think boolean if it's art or something like that then you give it to the museum yeah but boolean what are we talking about i don't know just gold gold like gold or almost oh if you got or or i could be if you got a satchel if you got that that's gold boolean that right there that's a boolean that's free game but if you got a satchel gold that's if you got even coins aren't art excuse me if it's art you gotta give it to the museum if it's any other form if it's just like uh yeah yeah because they got it from somewhere yeah finders keepers nah what if you're related to if i'm related to you then i'm pissed talk to me oh we just discovered a tomb and there's millions of dollars of gold and i go oh whose tomb was it and they go oh it's some guy and i go tombs don't count well who gets the tomb so if it's another race it's fine tombs don't count no no i'm related to the guy that's getting raided i'm gonna be like that's my tomb that's my great great great grandfathers that belongs to me i'm kind of like even a little bit now on that you guys i'm kind of even a little nah on that art is different if you make art that should be preserved there's a story to be told we can understand these cultures etc but just raw gold boy boolean bro you know there's a big there's a big controversy about this in the united states where you know it's it's a it's a federal crime i'm gonna solve it for you right now if if uh if you find a native american uh like arrowhead on the ground yeah and it's on uh public land and you pick that thing up and put it in your pocket that's a felony you should give that back you should give that to the museum everything you should give back yeah everything you should give that back now i will say there's nothing we have land but we don't have to study that right like we don't have to like because obviously those arrowheads weren't really effective so there's nothing we're going to learn we could study about what not to do right that'd be helpful we'd be like let's never make arrowheads like that when people have bullet heads right that's something we could learn but in terms of giving it to a museum i believe that i support that but if right next to the arrowhead there is a little patch of booleans what are we gonna do for that like am i gonna give that to the museum oh here's booleans like get out of here you give it to the people what people the natives which natives bro which is they got it from someone else yeah i gotta find some quokka cons yeah if there's no more quokka the aztecs took them out as a few of them if there was a few then they get it if you can prove quokka con if you can 23 and me improve quokka con you get it anything the aztecs got that's fair game quokka cons still a lot i mean there are probably people who have their blood yeah probably i don't even think leprechauns get to keep their gold if we're really gonna go that far back like our leprechauns our leprechauns i remember they are how much gold is in ireland that's what i'm saying where the hell did they get all this yeah where'd they get the boolean is the real question not much yeah i don't know i don't think there's much they had to get it from like uh gosh i think all i think all that gold comes from africa i'm pretty sure that's not good black irish finally somebody's i think it comes from or maybe like uh like uh iran iraq area why they have no gold up here i don't know well i mean i'm if ancient people were were mining it we're even looking for it yeah i know that there are silver mines in greece but i'm really not 100 sure now we're talking about this i'll answer your yes what are you white are you so uh i had thought for a long time just listening to like family legends and stuff that that uh um that i would be like italian or that i would have a little bit of native american in me which i do but it's it's not it doesn't actually come up it doesn't actually come up on a dna test so i went got a dna test done um and my family got them too so so we really know uh i am 40 scottish 38 uh english four percent welsh four percent french and then uh something something else in there that's it but what's really but what's really interesting scott's the greatest which is crazy because people say that you look like someone else who's also scottish who you think people say we look similar yeah honestly sitting here during this whole podcast it's been delightful you guys are lucky bro you guys can't do this every week this is crazy yeah it's insane but uh but so people have said we look similar oh hell yeah no way when i was on i've been trying not to touch it as much um but um you study latinos you make fun of latinos yeah we're both observing the culture that's right um but no no uh so like when i was on when i was on camp when i was on rogan people were always like uh people were always like like they'd be like i really enjoy listening to andrew scholl's little brother talk about him damn why they got to age max me little brother how old are you uh 28 oh you're young and dead yeah so finishing what i was saying uh so um you can also you it's really it's really it's really it's really it's really cool you can see the dna that you would have during the middle ages like the medieval period you can and you can see what you would have during the roman period and then like ancient you know like hunter-gatherer dna so it was really interesting was like my skin tans so easily i don't tan like a like a technically i'm a scottish highlander but i don't tan like a scottish highlander so somewhere somewhere in me i'm with i'm yeah go on yeah yeah talk your shit or our shit so what i found out yeah well the city of london founded by the romans in my londonium two thousand years ago londonia that's exactly right come on two thousand years ago come on my dna was 53 or 57 insular celt which would be like king arthur's like the knights of the round table like those illegal immigration the italians come they build the city of london and today 20 like 20 percent of the people living in the uk have upwards of 40 percent pakistan 40 40 percent roman roman roman and so so so what i so when people always say i look italian it's actually the ancient roman really far back in my dna i've always felt that way too yeah so that's that's what i have always have i not told you guys this you've never said you're italian i've never said i've never said i'm italian we're like the original colonizers we are the the ogs yeah that's right but we did we did like create a little bit of civilization but who the scots or the italians you know how badass well i'm talking about the romans how badass were the scots though even the romans couldn't handle that dude so i live in uh so i live in north carolina north carolina this is this was really cool that so north carolina exactly where you're going scots irish people leave during the 1700s come to north carolina and they they find like in the piedmont where it leads up to the appalachian mountains looks so similar to the islands the scottish highlands i know turns out it's the same damn mountain range of course it is the appalachian mountains and the scottish highlands are the same are the same mountains you didn't know that and and and today there are more scottish descendants living in north carolina than there are in scotland wow yeah i could just shock me you guys don't know that when they film scottish tv shows they film them in yeah why don't you know more why don't you know more what food did the scottish invent that's very popular in north carolina do you know this one i don't do you know this one nope do you know this one of course i do barbecue is it really yeah i was gonna say fried chicken we also didn't invent that no you didn't we didn't invent technically we didn't invent fried chicken how good is braveheart that's not what i thought you were gonna say my mom took me when i was a kid and she was depressed a week she cried in the movie theater and then didn't talk to our family for two days wow swear to god why not what's your family have to do i know she was going through it bro she was going through it that movie that was some serious shit my family doesn't like the english to this day yeah they ride for the bonnie prince charles they're like they're you know what's crazy probably the most most of our english dna is from scotts who like uh when the english are moving forward and then what we did what exactly exactly yeah so today it's categorized as english dna But there's a significant amount of that Anglo-Scottish DNA. It's actually Scottish. And they tried to build that wall to keep us out. That's right. They tried to build two. That's right. Didn't stop it. That's right. And then the English tried to pull an Aztec move. They tried to pull a little Aztec move to the Quokka Khans. They're like, we'll marry you, and then we'll be one nation together. And they just couldn't pull off murdering all of us. And they just had to blend the flags. That's right. And that's why the UK flag is the Scottish flag and the English flag together. We need to go back. You can't get us out of here. We need to go back to the red lion on the yellow banner. Like Robert the Bruce. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. What do you got for us? Because where's your ancestor from? Yeah. West Africa. Who's the Puerto Rican Braveheart? Monsa Musa. Yes. Maybe that's your dude. Monsa Musa. You might be related to him. From Mali. From the Malian Empire, right? Definitely, yeah. Why is nobody looking for Monsa Musa's gold? If he had all the gold and he's traveling all over Africa. There's got to be some. I probably stole that shit. Really? Come on now. We were in Scotland. How are you going to steal a guy's grills? He and I were barbarians. Yo, Johnny Dang is digging through the sand right now looking for it. That's racist, bro. They found Monsa Musa. They're like, where's his gold? He's like. Why don't we know more about Monsa Musa, Mark? We know about Monsa Musa. Why don't we know more? He was smart. Clearly. The guy was the richest guy in history. He developed a big intellectual capital Alexandra type beat. Really? Timbuktu. Yeah. Is Timbuktu Monsa Musa? I thought Timbuktu was Nepal. Huh? I thought Timbuktu was. You're thinking Kathmandu. Kathmandu. Kathmandu. That one. Oh, so Timbuktu is his creation. That's his brainchild. I'm going to think. Maybe he was born there. I don't know. Okay. No. I think he was born in Bamako or some shit. Low key, we need it. I'm sorry that I don't know more about. You got to go to Africa next, yo. What do you mean Africa? He's bit. Let me show you the map. Like real Africa. That's Africa. Nah, real Africa. That's where civilization started. Have you ever done a DNA test? Do you know where your folks come from? Yeah. I have Nigerian, Congo, and then a few other things. I got a little white in me. It's like 8%. You want a little more white? You're 8% white? That's a lot. That's a lot. Hey, relax. Relax. That's a lot. Do you know what it is? It's probably like Spain or something. No, it's probably a slave bastard. Whoa, whoa, dude. Come on. Why are you going to bring that up, dude? What the hell? Probably. No. Why you got to do this to the mood? We're having fun talking about colonization and the eradication of culture. You want me to bring that up? That's insane. You want me to lie? Think about the Quokka Khans, what they went through. Have you guys ever talked about death this much on a podcast? Oh, it's our favorite thing, dude. The last patron. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is very true. Okay, okay, okay, okay. We need to know about Atlantis, bro. All right, let's do it. Let me just tell you something. I love this. I love hearing stories about ancient cultures and learning about history specifically through story. Yeah. Like, learning the facts of history is interesting, but learning history through story, I don't care if it's, like, real or not. Oh, my God. It's almost like that's what people did before books. Yeah. Right? You just sat around, and, like, they told you what happened, and it just got a little bit more sexy. And I think we kind of got to get rid of the textbook shit. Like, I don't want to learn the dates. I want to learn the story and how it informs the dates. Yeah. I totally agree, man. I totally agree. Oh, this is so lovely. I think that the best historians are able to not make it so sterile. That's kind of the problem. Again, I'm not saying we shouldn't learn history, but, like, you can learn history through the oldest medium of digesting. And retaining information, which is story. Like, our brains are, like, hardwired. Yeah, but then it's a game of telephone. And then by the time you get the information. What do you think history is? Yeah, but if you put it down on books, then it's more accurate. You think FDR was really paralyzed? Come on, bro. Like, are you going to believe that? I do think he was. Nah. Yeah. Nah. You're just buying the propaganda. Yeah. Mark? No. He had a boner. He couldn't stand up. Definitely. Definitely. My man was horny. If you know what I'm saying. Come on. There's different things in history that we just accept. We just accept as reality. And that's not the case. Give me any time in history, and then Mark will tell you how it's not the case. They're going to go off. I have one other crazy one about the were-jaguar. Tell me about the were-jaguar. But after Atlantis. Okay. After Atlantis. All right. All right. So. Before you start, I need you to give us what the idea of Atlantis is. Let's not. Oh, God. Just give us the idea of Atlantis in most people's heads. There's a hotel in the Bahamas. That's the Atlantis. Mark, please. Take my word. In most people's minds, there was an island chain. Well, some people think it was the Azores. That this ancient lost empire civilization existed on, and it was like a city of concentric circles. You guys have probably seen this. Who said this? This is like Plato or some shit. This is Plato. It was an Athenian. But he didn't see it. He heard from a guy. So this is secondhand. Yeah. We're definitely getting into that. And you want word of mouth shit. Word of mouth is fine. The entirety of our friendship is word of mouth. Where else do words come from? That's a very Scottish idea. The Scottish Celts didn't believe in writing down their custom. They believed in this fire. Well, you know, write down, I fucked three sheep to get, like, you don't want that, right? You just be like, a girl from Wales came. Yeah, exactly. But you know what was interesting is that, is that, uh, this, the Celts, who really the Scottish people come from, they were actually literate in all of the ancient languages. That's what I tell people. And they could read and write in all of them. I tell people this all the time. But they chose not to write in their own language. It was our choice. That's right. Yeah. Doesn't that seem. They could write all the languages. We knew every single language. That's right. That's right. It's a fact. We knew all the languages. You didn't know this? That's not true. How is it not true? That's like him being like, I speak Chinese. I'm like, prove it. You're like, I just choose not to speak it. Bro, I do speak it. And you know it. And you've heard me speak it. You heard me speak it. Well, I don't know Chinese either. So I don't know if what you're saying is Chinese. One of my favorite accounts right now. I can't believe I haven't sent you this. And then we're going to get to Atlantis. But there's a guy. And he's got to be a polygod or something because he's so good at it. But what he does is, and I wish I had his fucking name. Maybe, Joe, you can look it up for me because I would love to credit him. He goes up to people in the street. I think he's in Paris or something like that. He goes up to different tourists. Is this the Asian dude? No, he's a white guy. But he goes up to the street. And he speaks. He speaks fake their language. And he goes, where are you guys from? Where are you guys from? And they're like, oh, we're from Japan. And he goes, okay, okay, okay. Tell me this. Tell me what I'm saying. And then he speaks the most perfect fake Japanese you've ever seen in your life. He'll do it with Chinese people. But it's gibberish. It's gibberish. But it's so close that they think his accent's bad. So they're like really trying to figure it out. And they're going, oh, no. But it sounds so good. He's this like skinny white guy. He almost kind of looks Russian-y. Oh, you got to see it. I just die laughing at this guy. That's so funny. Atlantis, okay. Yeah, so most people think it's this lost ancient empire. And I should say what most people think about it isn't actually like really in line with what Plato said. It's just like it evolves into our modern day mythology, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So most people think maybe it was out here or maybe it was somewhere here in Africa and that the Atlanteans built all of the major ancient structures you see around the world, like the stuff down in Cusco and some stuff that you see out in Asia or whatever, whatever. Now, what Atlantis really was, it was – I was going to make a joke. Do it. Do it. Do it. So what Atlantis – Just make it. Make it. No, no, no. We can cut it. Oh, I was just going to say nothing. But this is great. No, I'm just kidding. Did you piss a lot of people off? No, it just sounded funny. But yeah, I didn't want to like – Insult the Atlantis conspiracy theorist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyways, no, it wasn't actually nothing. I mean, you know, so Plato, his writings, you have to – you really kind of need to be a historian to sort of interpret what Plato is saying or the context with which he's saying it is so important. So Plato is an Athenian that lives in the late 400s, early 300s BC. I believe that's right. He was one of these young kids that was influenced by – or younger people that was influenced by the teachings of Socrates. But Socrates did not write down his teachings. He just spoke to people in the marketplace. One of his closest students was Plato. Well, Socrates was eventually put to death. I forget the year. Maybe it was like 401 BC or something like that. But he – or maybe it was 399 BC. He's put to death by the court of Athens for corrupting the youth and essentially suggesting that perhaps the Greek gods don't exist because he's so deep down the rabbit hole of intellectual thought that he's thought himself into being an agnostic, right? So Jordan Peterson. Sort of, yeah, yeah. And so he is – he's put to death. And Plato spends the rest of his academic career. and writing his philosophies down and teaching people. essentially telling people the stories and the philosophical points that Socrates was making throughout Socrates' life. So all of Plato's written philosophy is not like Aristotle, where if you were to read the Nicomachean Ethics, that's just like Aristotle's writings of how to be a good person, right? How to treat other people. It's Aristotle speaking directly to you. It's just you and Aristotle. But Plato creates these plays almost, almost like a scene where you've got Socrates and you've got these other characters and they're interacting with Socrates and the characters ask Socrates questions and Socrates answers them. Well, some of those lessons are Plato's ideas, his own, putting them in Socrates' mouth. And some of them are ideas that Socrates gave Plato and Plato puts it back in Socrates' mouth. So in Plato's writings, they talk about this lost city of Atlantis at various different times. And so essentially the chain of custody of the story is that Solon, an Athenian lawmaker in the 600s BC or early 500s BC, he's an Athenian lawmaker that basically goes on this vacation for, I think, a decade and he eventually goes to Egypt. And when he's in Egypt, he's taken to the, I think that Sais was the capital at the time, because it was the Sait Empire or the Sait Kingdom. And so he's taken to the city of Sais where he meets a priest. And the priest essentially tells him about this, about when Athens was at war with this ancient civilization called Atlantis at one point in time. The whole story is told to Solon, supposedly in the 600s in Egypt. Solon goes back from Egypt. He goes back up to Athens. He lives the rest of his life. He tells that story to some people. And over the course of much more than 100 years, almost 200 years, the story supposedly comes all the way down to Plato. And then Plato is the first one to write that down inside a philosophical story that's telling like a bigger, you know, a bigger tale that's more relevant to the Athenians. And so people take that story and basically what the story is, is there was this ancient civilization that exists in a certain place. Just insert all the descriptions that he adds. Or of Atlantis. And that Atlantis rises and that it's at war with Athens and that Athens eventually defeated Atlantis, you know, some 9,000 years ago, according to what Solon says that the Egyptians told him. 9,000 years before, which would be 9,600 BC. And then this massive, like, cataclysmic wave washed over the city of Atlantis and sunk it into the depths of the sea. Right? And so the moral of the story is. That this civilization was so powerful and so wealthy and so successful that it essentially spoiled itself and it lost all of the original foundations of what had made it great, which allowed Athens to conquer the city and then eventually the gods destroyed it. It's about greed, really. It's about greed, yeah. And so he is telling, the reason that Plato is telling that story is to be a reminder to the Athenian people who you should strive, who you should strive to be, right? Now, people have, people sort of, most people sort of ignore why Plato is telling this story and then they just focus on Atlantis. And so that has led us on this huge rabbit hole hunt. Now, here's the thing is, some people, just because they're so caught up in the story of Atlantis, they sort of take Plato as like some kind of biblical figure, right? Where you have to hang on every word and every precise description of what he's saying about this place. The story that he is relaying, right? But in reality, no classical Greek author would ever do that because Greeks are notoriously the worst historians in the entire ancient world because there are no old Greeks. The Greeks lost their memory. The Egyptians know that the Greeks don't know anything about their ancient past. So whenever the Greeks in classical periods are writing down about their past, they never are. That's why there's so much Greek mythology. So they're always, they're always making up some kind of story. Everything is lore. Yeah. And so even by. That's what you want. And that's why we love them. Because it's the most interesting. And so even by 450 BC, where all that power is kind of culminating and they're really coming together, they're really writing a lot. They have modern historians like Thucydides that's writing down the Peloponnesian War. And he tells it in a, like as honest as he can be, the best historian of his contemporary time. And he was a good historian of his contemporary time. But it was. It was really difficult for the Greeks to reach back in time because it was such a hazy, like they don't really understand their distant past. So Plato's existing here in 450 BC. And he's relaying a message from Solon who lived in the 600s. Even people who lived in the 600s are semi-mythical legendary people to people in the 400s because the Greeks don't really have a historical chronology that they can follow very well. It's all kind of oral tradition and not so much of it was written down. So you wouldn't even take a Greek. You wouldn't take a Greek who's writing about his world just 150 or 200 years earlier seriously because everything else that they write about that was happening in the 600s is wildly inaccurate according to what we found in the archaeological data. Now, does that mean that the entire story of Atlantis is bullshit? Well, no. I think that there are kernels of reality that are things that actually happened in the Greek world that exist in legend. And they still remember. And kind of know about. But maybe, you know, these are stories you grow up hearing about. But things that really did happen. Like for centuries, archaeologists questioned whether or not the city of Troy that was in Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey was even a real city, let alone did the Trojan War even happen. Well, then I think it's Schliemann finds the city of Troy right here near the gates to the Black Sea. And then they find the city of Troy and they realize that it was real. And this whole time the Greeks were able to, like, hold on to the story of the end. The Bronze Age. That war was probably about 1150. And then shortly after that, Bronze Age collapses. That's a cataclysmic collapse. All the civilizations fall apart. They abandon the cities and everyone goes back to being nomadic, like, farmers. Right? So they lose their whole cultural memory. But maybe some of those grand stories survive. Clearly the Trojan War, there was a grand event that survived and eventually it was written down by Homer or whoever Homer really was. Now, the first thing. The first thing that I think that Plato was drawing on when he wrote about Atlantis was there was a city called Heliki that was on the Greek coast, just a bit north of Athens, I believe. And in 373 BC, there was an earthquake somewhere in the Aegean and it cast this huge wave over the city and sunk the entire city. And so just like, you know, in one day, all these people are drowned. That had happened about 13 years approximately before. The story of Atlantis appears in Athens and Plato was talking about it. So there's this story of this flood that's sitting in the back of his mind. But even more so than that, the Greeks definitely would have remembered a much, much, much, much more dramatic cataclysmic event that happened further back in time for them. And it was the first civilization of ancient Greece. So right here in the mainland and across these islands, this is classical. Classical ancient Greece. But really, it started here on this little island called Crete. And there was a civilization there called the Minoans. We don't know much about the Minoans. They existed before the time of the Trojan War, long before that. But on this island right here, this island is called the Island of 100 Cities. And there's all these big, super rich, like, palisade cities that dot the entire island. And the cities will be, like, three to four. Stories tall, these huge labyrinthian palaces. It's the kind of architecture that you did not see in ancient Egypt. You didn't see it anywhere. It's the kind of public architecture that was possibly never recreated until Roman public architecture, like the Roman forums. You know, these big, multi-level buildings for people to be walking around in. They had marble private toilets up on their fourth floors. They had, like, indoor plumbing. They had aqueducts that rained. It ran throughout the cities and brought fresh water into the cities. I mean, the most sophisticated ancient culture of the Bronze Age, by far, if one of those, if an average person living on Crete traveled to Egypt, he'd be walking around Egypt thinking this place was a fucking dump. And this place right here, the center of the Mediterranean, obviously, the center of all the trade routes, they were a seafaring empire, and they were filthy, filthy, filthy rich. From about the years. Let's say 2000 BC, maybe. Well, definitely before that, because they were interacting with the Egyptians during the time that the Egyptians were building the pyramids. These guys are here. But let's say from the earliest times, maybe like 2500 BC, at the very, very, very earliest times, all the way to, let's say, like 1450 BC, 1400 BC. So they've got this, maybe a 600, 800 year period where they're just the kings of the Eastern Mediterranean. Well, they had this little island north of that, and in ancient times, the island is called Thera. In modern day times, it's called Santorini. I don't know if you guys have ever been. So there are ruins on Santorini. It's a city called Acrotiri. And Acrotiri was one of the most elaborate and wealthy cities throughout all of the Minoan world. It was kind of like Pompeii. Pompeii was a vacation retreat for the rich people of Rome to go and gamble and have sex and party. And if you lived in Pompeii, you were super wealthy, right? Well, Acrotiri was very, very similar to that. It was the wealthiest people of Minoan society are living there. Well, about the year 1600 BC, the fourth largest volcanic eruption in the history of the entire planet erupted out of the island of Santorini and blackened the skies of the Aegean Sea and the nearby Mediterranean for days at a time. Yeah. What expelled out of the volcano was so significant that there might even be records from the same time in Egypt of phenomena happening in Egypt that was affecting their weather. And some people even theorize that the effects, because we found the pumice from the volcano in Egypt, and some people wonder if the plagues of Exodus were not caused by the eruption of Santorini. And so it was such a powerful event. It was such a powerful event. It was a cataclysmic eruption. It instantly buried the city of Acrotiri in like dozens of feet of volcanic material and ash that hardened over time. And then it blackened the sky over the main island of Crete for days at a time. Now, a lot of people thought that the whole city of Crete, when they first found the first palace at Knossos, and then they started excavating all, you know, these dozens of other palaces, they would find this thin burn layer that was in the middle of the island of Crete. And they would find this thin burn layer that came from 1600 BC, about when the volcano erupted. And it was kind of an anomaly because nobody understood, like, why is it such a thin burn layer? Why is it not just a cataclysmic, like, raining down on the island? Because all 100 cities burned down at the exact same time across the entire island. The whole island, like, fell apart. Well, nobody really understood why. But there's a theory that's proposed that I think is kind of interesting, that when it blackened the city, every single person on the island had to pull out their torches and their candles. And so while it's absolute chaos, it's hard to get food, you can't go to the market, you don't know what's happening. I mean, the sun isn't even coming back up anymore. The smoke is, like, coming down over the cities and everything. It's absolute chaos. People burn down their own cities because just the chaos. So there's this thin burn layer over the entire island. So all the cities burned down at exactly the same time in the midst of all this chaos. Then it's not like Minoan culture disappears, but over the next 100 years, it slips into control of the Mycenaeans, which is like Agamemnon, the guys who waged war on Troy. They came in and wiped out the people, the Minoans who were living in the islands, who were living in the islands and that were living on the main island. Just wiped them out, basically consumed their whole culture. They rebuilt the palace of Knossos, but that's it. All other 99 some odd buildings or some odd cities stayed burned down. And the Mycenaeans built up new ones. Now, these guys had ruled over the whole Greek world for the last 800 years, okay? Their principal, I don't want to call it a deity, but like their cultural monster, the thing that you would use to identify them. Whereas like some later Greek cultures, it might be like Medusa or something like that. For them, it was the Minotaur, the bull-headed man or just a bull's head. So, what's really interesting is when Plato is talking about the city of Athens crushing Atlantis and then Atlantis gets destroyed in this huge cataclysm, this big wave, whatever, whatever. One of the things that's analogous to that and that is kind of in the back of the Athenian mind, their mythology, is this myth of Theseus or Theseus and the myth of the Minotaur. But they don't, but the Athenians may not even know who the Minoans ever were because this is such an ancient civilization that's been buried for so long and in ruins. But one of their core mythologies is Theseus, this Athenian, rising up and going off to this distant land and killing the Minotaur, right? But then along with that, you have Athens rising up and going and swapping into the Minoan area. So, Athens during the Bronze Age was a Mycenaean city who went into the land of the Minotaur and conquered them. And one of the modern comparisons that you get for Atlantis that a lot of people will make is some people will go, well, you know, I don't think that Atlantis had like space age technology that's more advanced than us, but I think that they were probably maybe like on par with the Roman Empire. That's what, you know, but it's like a global Roman Empire. Well, after the Minoans fell, the old Roman Empire, the old Roman Empire, the old civilization that would ever reach the illustrious level of the Minoans again was the Roman Empire some 1,000 or 1,500, 1,600 years later. And so, what I think that Plato is drawing on is this story that sits somewhere deep in the subconsciousness of the Greek world of the greatest richest empire that the ancient world ever saw, like the average person, far more wealthy than an Egyptian. They didn't have the same kind of huge temples, whatever, whatever, but the way of life far superior to an Egyptian or anybody else. These guys controlled all the trade routes of the Mediterranean, especially of the Greek world. And then the fourth largest volcanic eruption in world history basically brought down the end of their civilization. In fact, I ran the numbers on it. I might get the categorization of the energy expelled, but the bombs that we dropped on Japan were 15, can be measured as 15 kilo tons of energy that was expelled from the bomb. This volcano was 30 million kilo tons of energy. That's how, that's how, yeah, that's how cataclysmic something like this, something like this was. So, you can imagine that something like that sits permanently in the back of the minds of a Greek person. And so, I think in Plato's Atlantis, you have these kernels of truth. You have, you have the, this, this was actually Europe's first ancient civilization, Crete. So, they, so, the, the Minoans of Crete. So, the Greeks definitely remember it. They definitely remember the dramatic events that led to them being destroyed. They remember the Mycenaeans, which had colonized Athens. The, the Athenians, like, core principal mythological figures, Theseus, who was an Athenian, but also, also a Mycenaean as well, who went into the land of the Minotaur and killed the Minotaur, basically. And so, yeah, I think, I think that that is what Plato was drawing on. And that's a, that's a, like, you know, it's a, it's an actual, like, robust archaeological idea rather than, like, you know, sometimes I just, I, sometimes I get tired of, like, talking about the mystery with no actual theories, you know what I mean? And so, that's sort of, if I have to put a theory as to what I think it is. Does anybody other, does anybody else share this viewpoint on it? There are, there are archaeologists who, who agree, and then there are archaeologists who, like, completely, out and out, completely disagree. Because they say, because they say, well, oh, and you know, you know what's really interesting is, well, they say how, how Atlantis was, like, a circular sort of island or whatever. Well, Santorini, even before it erupted, was a circular island. Like, it was a circular island with, with water in the middle. You can look up the way, like, it's, it's geologic or geographic formation, but it was a circular island. But there's all kinds of different discrepancies, right? Like, where it says that Atlantis was beyond the Hercules. Well, this is supposed to be the pillar of Hercules, the Strait of Gibraltar. It's supposed to be out here. And the geology that they describe there isn't the same as what it would be on Crete. And then they say that Atlantis had elephants or whatever. Now, one of the things that's really interesting is that there is a miniature African elephant that used to exist on, on Crete. A pygmy elephant or something like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, I maybe didn't live on Crete at the same time as the Minoans. Oh, this is Santorini? But there were bones of these mini elephants on the found down inside the caves that definitely the Minoans would have known about. So there's all these little clues that, like, it's the Athenians having this really fuzzy memory of the ancient past of the Greek world. And he's, like, explaining it in such a way where Athenians will listen to him and what he's saying, right? But there are kernels of truth in there. And I think that it's at least the city of Heliki and the Minoan civilization falling apart. And maybe it's other things. But I think that it's played out in a way that I think is really interesting. And I think Plato drawing on different things that he was aware of growing up and telling this story that is particularly relevant to the Athenians. This, who, the Athenians at this point are, have now become the new Minoans. They, they rule, they rule the seas. They rule all the trade routes. They're just like the Minoans. And so Plato is telling a new story that they'll listen to, right? So it's, so it's partly. It's all a little, like, the pieces of truth. It's like, there was a battle. - Yeah. - Where the Athenians did defeat this really wealthy culture. - Yeah. - By proxy. they did and then there was this cataclysm that did destroy the culture it wasn't a flood but there was a flood nearby but this one technically wasn't a flood it was a volcano that also caused the plagues well well and when santorini erupted it did push a tsunami down into crete it did it did mess up some of these cities on the north side of the island but most of the destruction was is that is that small burn layer that they think was from people accidentally lighting their own towns on fire wow yeah fuck and then plato writes a story about greed and not being too greedy and then ironically people create these like entire internet profiles trying to find atlantis yeah purely for the purely for money yeah oh i haven't taken their whole career yeah yeah yeah so um so yeah that's uh i'm i'm um later this year i'm doing an expedition to uh crete i'm gonna write a i'm gonna write a book called uh called uh lost cities of the minotaur and uh it's gonna be it's gonna be the theory like kind of getting into it and explaining like if we're gonna come up with an actual archaeological explanation this could be it yeah margaret's been to crete yeah have you really yeah yeah i went to hania really yeah it was amazing it's unbelievable do you see kenosis like the palace or anything no it's one of the most interesting places of all time because like even within semi-modern history it was controlled by everyone yeah it was like the greeks had it the north africans had it the nazis had it jews had it yeah like there's like i didn't know the oldest synagogues in greece i'm pretty sure in creek because there was an exile where they told all the jews to go over there and so there's like a muslim section christian section jewish section the food is amazing the turks owned it for a period of time and it's like maybe the best we've ever had because it's this influx of like greek food turkish food it's got like this insane freshness and they also have an ideology where they're like really proud like the cretans are like we're not greek yeah we're crazy yeah yeah like loki like they're like yeah we're greek but like no we don't like i asked we had dinner and every time we had dinner i was like where's the farthest piece of food on the plate and they'd be like ah the goat cheese i was like how far like other side of the island i was like nothing's from the mainland like no why would we drink wine from athens it's like we have the best wine in the world it makes no sense really they were so proud they're almost like texans it's also the highest gun ownership and maybe like all of them yeah they all have like you're you know invaded like a hundred different times in history yeah self-defense is probably pretty important yeah yeah people call them like the texas of southern europe i did not know this that's what people say yeah it's good for your book my boy yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean i'll write the forward as a resource exactly brother i don't want you to miss your flight we could talk for hours we will do it again sometimes this is so fun this is so awesome thank you so much plenty of times you do yeah yeah yeah is there anything else you want to go over before we get out of here i don't know i mean the wear jaguar thing oh yeah finish on this one one way to set this up is that at a certain point in central american history there were people that were born with a very specific disability or a birth malformation you could say and they were deified because of it and raised to a high status within the culture because of this disability because it looked like something else oh no way is that a fair way to set it up maybe it's sensationalizing yeah no no it's right that's right yeah so um the first time that europeans is this going where i think it's going i don't know is it the captain the ship is it going that way oh my god is it going that way no no okay no so uh so phew uh dastardly dog no no no no so um so let's say i'm gonna give this example and then we'll go back in ancient greece if a kid was born with uh with a birth defect you would walk them to the top of a mountain and you'd lay them on the mountain people will say that like threw them off the mountain no they just they would just lay the child on top of the mountain and it's called exposure you would expose the kid to the elements given back to the gods because you can't afford to take care of someone who's lame right like someone who has a birth defect that's not going to be able to be like a participating part of society that's going to hold you back can't do that also the greeks and which permeates into the rest of the the european world we care about aesthetics you you know like you you would like your kid to be born fully anatomically normal and healthy and uh and so they really prioritize that but when the spaniards arrived in the aztec capital uh moctezuma's palace um when they got up into his palace they they saw that his palace was filled with people of all the different kinds of deformities and strange like people who were so deformed that they were almost like creatures almost like they had been bred to be that way like they were really really strange people and uh and this surprised the spaniards that these were like venerated people that moctezuma wanted to hang out with he saw them as being blessed by the gods that there was something there's something unique and important about them they they saw this with uh with like dwarves like dwarves would uh doors would have high status because they would look as people who were touched by the gods that maybe they were clairvoyant of some kind or you know there's something special and different about them so the native americans have this inverted view of deformities and things like that well in the olmec world this is my personal theory i don't know that there's a single other scholar on the planet of like the 12 of us that there are for the olmec world that would agree with this um but uh in the olmec world you see there are no gods there's no pantheon of gods all we see is ancestor worship and then we see some people who have the anatomical features of a jaguar sometimes it's only their teeth sometimes they're like fully a jaguar like they they're they're a person with jaguar claws and they've got fangs and their nose has changed into a jaguar and they've got like cat eyes and everything and so throughout the olmec world you can see this thing that has been dubbed like a werewolf the were jaguar and it's these what i think it is when i interpret it as a jaguar it's a werewolf and it's a werewolf and it's a werewolf you look at the olmec heads we could pull up an olmec head if we get if we're here um so you look at the olmec heads they they interpret these as being kings or rulers you never ever ever see an olmec head who is also a were jaguar so and there's there's about 17 of these basalt heads but there's thousands of examples of if we can look up where jaguar uh it's w-e-r-e and then jaguar you'd put an olmex or something um so there are thousands oh wow there's a lot of drawings here let's do if you put the word jade behind it so this will bring up there we go so any one of these will do so there are thousands and thousands and thousands of these examples of these artifacts of people who are were jaguars um and you can tell that there are people with the anatomical features of a large cat um is this is this asians reaching mesoamerica well well mesoamericans mesoamericans they are they are asian you know they're asiatic getting back general and all the jade though is like coming from this kingdom yeah yeah well actually uh all of all of the olmec gold actually came from that maya city i was telling you about with those giant pyramids that that began at the beginning of their time at el mirador in the middle of the jungle that was how el mirador got so rich was the jade quarries that were nearby and they were selling them to the olmecs and so they were using that money the maya were using that money to build up their civilization now what's what's really interesting about the olmec realm and what got me thinking about this idea of people being born with deformities and this may be having something to do with that it could we look up olmec baby statues so there are all these statues of olmec babies that you can tell are not anatomically normal children they're children that are i don't know if they're uh yeah um the one that's on the right at the bottom yeah with the blue background if we can zoom into that one so a lot of these babies are born with like little cleft lips and they're real fat and chubby they look like babies that have like downs or they have something you know there's something wrong with them uh or as western people would say um and so uh but you see things like that that are thousands of these baby statues like these babies are being revered why would we have baby statues well just my theory uh and one of the only actually one of the only skeletons that we have ever found of the olmec world is a baby uh we we hardly ever find adult skeletons but what i wonder is if when children were born with deformities they were revered and they were seen as being touched by the gods and they were honored with these little statues like maybe their parents would have them and maybe a lot of children well we know in general that a lot of that a lot of children died in ancient times uh infant mortality was extremely high yeah five out of the out of seven of marcus aurelius's children died i'm pretty sure uh in in childhood but the all of these babies look like they may have some kind of that look like they may have some kind of condition now what i wonder is when you look at olmec artifacts um can we can we look up uh maybe look up laventa l-a and then l-a-v-e-n-t-a but there's this scene here of like a maybe a couple dozen people who all have were-jaguar features about them. And you'll see in lots of other scenes where you just see these massive groups of people who have these, yeah, so you see that, yeah, that right there, that gathering of people. So this is like a, this is really, really cool. These are statuettes that are a screenshot in time. So those big pillars standing next to them, those are known as stelae and they had carvings on them. Well, we found those stelae in the jungles or like in the ruins of the city of La Venta. And then they found this cache here. And what this cache is showing is these were-jaguar people walking in front of a stelae in like a, in a procession, some kind of ancient ritual. It's like a screenshot of their world, but we don't, obviously we don't know the context or understand what's going on here. But the point I'm getting across is that the Olmec heads themselves, which always depict normal looking men, are vastly, vastly outnumbered by the amount of artifacts that depict people with, were-jaguar features. And so what I start wondering here is, well, my first thought was, okay, this is a whole different class of people. You clearly have kings that never look like were-jaguars and you have all of these were-jaguar people who are, they're like priests or something. They're like involved in the shamanic realm. And so I started wondering, are they, are there people being born with deformities in their world? Is this some kind of, is this some kind of, is this some kind of deformity that they like revered and that gave you the right to be a part of the priestly class? So I started looking into, to mid 1900s Veracruz, Mexico, which is the heart of the Olmec world. And in the 1970s, there was one medical survey done that showed that a disproportionate amount of indigenous kids had what's known as ectodermal dysplasia compared to, these were kids that were in small villages in Veracruz. Not living actually in the city of Veracruz. And what ectodermal dysplasia is, it is a disability that does not come with a learning disability. So you're still fully there, but it's a complete dental disability where you don't grow any teeth in your gums other than two fangs right here. Look up ectodermal dysplasia fangs. Do that. So look at that. So kids would be born like this without a learning disability. And it would look like they had the teeth of a jaguar. Of some kind. And so what I wonder is, were the Olmecs not trying to genetically like breed people who looked like this? And if you were born with ectodermal dysplasia, that gave you higher status. It gave you higher status and you were born with some kind of intrinsic power. Wow. The thing on top of this is, there are all these things called were jaguar altars. If we can look up altar for Olmec, we have all these were jaguar altars that we know that pre, were jaguar priests would like sit on top of it. But the depiction, so you could go to, so that one right there, if you can possibly zoom in on that. So that is a were jaguar priest with an elongated skull underneath that hat. He's carrying a baby and he's emerging from a portal, which is actually a cave. These caves are in Guerrero, Mexico. That baby, when you stand over him, I've been to this site many, many times. That baby, when you stand over, he's got these downturned lips like a cat. He's got fangs coming out of his mouth and so does the man carrying him. And what I think this depicts is a sacred procession that is symbolizing the priest who would actually be sitting on top of this monument, like this powerful priest. The image below him is a screenshot of his sacred procession that he went through as a child being carried in and out of the caves of Guerrero, Mexico. And it's like the procession that when he was born as a were jaguar, he was taken on. And essentially imbued with the power of the were jaguar and came back out. And so from, this is all just my theory. And I think that we see examples of, like in ancient Egypt, how we see that the pharaohs were warring against the priests because the priests would become super powerful. You see the same thing in the Olmec realm. You'll see Olmec heads. Lots of archaeologists can determine the way that something is buried, if it's buried immediately because the stratigraphic layers are all messed up. They don't form naturally. They form like immediately. And geologists can tell that. Archaeologists can tell that. And so a lot of the Olmec heads were buried instantly. And the tops of some of the heads and the backs of them and sometimes the faces have claw marks on them. Like intentional claw marks that are chiseled in. But each claw mark is a space of your hand away from each other. So it's like an aesthetic figure of a jaguar slicing this Olmec king's face open or the top of his head or the emblem that's in the top of his helmet open. And what I think it was is there were periods where the were jaguars or priestly class would probably overcome and assassinate and kill the kings, bury their heads under the ground, cut it up as a statement to everybody that the were jaguar is predominant. And then there's these warring classes back and forth with each other. How long ago would this be? This is over 3,000 years ago. And this is America's first civilization. The Olmecs. Yeah. And so the Olmecs rise and fall before anything else is realized. So they rise and they fall. And then about the time they fall is when the Maya start taking off and then the Zapotecs start taking off. So, oh yeah, so that's Matthew Sterling next to the main head at La Venta. You see all those markings on the top of his head? Yeah, yeah. So my thought is they would push that head down into the ground and carve up the top of it and maybe leave it exposed as a statement that the were jaguars had taken over. Wow. But later on in Olmec civilization, like their last capitalization, the capital city of Tres Zapotes, the were jaguars gone. So the Olmec heads, the kingdom or whatever it is, the non-were jaguar class wins out. They expelled the were jaguar people. They ultimately win. And then so what's crazy about the Olmecs is they are just like the Minoans, which is probably why I'm interested in the Minoans. They are the most powerful civilization of their region. They rise and fall before really anything else is going on. And we don't know, the reason that we call them Minoans, the Minoans, I'll tell you the origins of both their names is because we named them after maybe or at least what Greek mythology tells us about the ancient lost kings of Crete or one of them, his name was Minos, which may have just been the title of what it meant to be a king on Crete. So when Sir Arthur Evans finds the city, finds the palace of Knossos, he just calls them rather than, after Minos, he calls them the Minoans. The Olmecs are people who live right here. But when the Spaniards were going through Mexico, 3,000 years after the Olmecs were around, they're probably what, the Olmecs are so old that the Aztecs probably never even knew the Olmecs had existed. But the Spaniards are asking, they're learning everything about Mexico and the Aztecs tell them that the people who live in this land that farm rubber are the rubber people. But that translates in Nahua and the Aztec people to be the Olmecs. So they just name the ancient people after the name of the modern people. But the Olmecs had risen and fallen before the Maya had really, really gotten started. And so we don't know the name of the Olmecs. We don't know what language they spoke. We don't know what they call themselves. We don't know their history. All we can do is look at the artifact record and try to put puzzle pieces together. Fuck. Yeah. It's just so crazy the idea of going back in time, seeing the shamanic ritual with this were-jaguar priest. He's standing there, standing on top of this altar. He has ectodermal dysplasia, these two teeth coming out. It's like in the middle of the night. It's like rainy. You can hear the forest over you. And he's standing on top of this giant sculpture of himself as a baby getting brought out of a portal by the priest before him. And he's basically telling the people like, yo, we're going to kill the kings. He's got these fangs and you're just like, what the fuck? Imagine, man. Like what an insane thing to go back in time to see. No less complicated, nuanced or intelligent than any of the other ancient civilizations that we've known about. This is, you know, when you imagine all those conversations that Greek and Roman politicians must have been having with each other when both their lives are on the line politically, same thing's happening in the Olmec world. It's just we don't have a record of it. But must have been, you know, these aren't primitive people to be able to erect. So those megalithic heads come from a hundred kilometers as the bird flies or as the crow flies. And they have to be transported, they think possibly through the Gulf Coast a little bit down into the Coets-Calcos River over swamps and down through valleys and stuff. And they've never been able to figure out like how big the boats had to be to transport them. There was this nautical engineer that worked with Maya Exploration Center, which is the center that I'm a part of. And he created this like algorithm thing where you could put in the hypothetical size of your Olmec head and the hypothetical size of the raft that it would be sitting on. And if you put in the hypothetical size of say, if you created a raft that was too long to be able to go down the narrow stretches of the river that they would be moving these heads down and you put a five ton head on that raft, it would flip the raft and sink it. But the smallest head is six tons and the largest head is 50 tons. Oh my God. 50? Yeah, so it's just, yes 50 and so you have all these mysteries that are so similar to egypt but most people don't talk about it or know anything about it you never hear anything about the old crafted stone sculpture that's 50 tons yeah made 3 000 years ago yeah it's really remarkable yeah yeah well and and some of the main ones are are i think um i think they're about three yeah yeah they're about uh 3 500 years old 3 200 years old yeah luke's really really crazy this is mind-blowing thank you so much for being here and just doing this this was awesome yeah man we gotta do it again sometime we definitely will this is great luke caverns everybody make sure you go check him out on youtube you can explode some big shit in the amazon soon i hope you find whatever it is you're looking for i'll come back and then we'll do love it hell yeah peace vanduul is now available everywhere in the u.s man so you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are including these places make this your most rewarding season ever with vanduul age and location restrictions apply product availability varies by market see vanduul.com for eligibility gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER