This week we look at lightar, a revolution in archaeological research and discovery,
and we look at it from a field archaeologist, and that's doctor Richard Hansen,
the architect of the research and excavation of Elmador in Guatemala. Today we're
talking about some new research he has done using lightar and the discovery of the
Maya super Highways. These are some of the largest roads ever discovered using this
new revolutionary technology. And today we're going to hear not only the importance of
this, but what has now been described as the largest megalopolis in the Americas.
This is the large collection of cities discovered a couple of years ago that
range from a few thousand to up to sixty thousand unknown cities and ruins.
All this and more today on Earth Ancients for Saturday, April fifty, twenty
twenty three. This is Earth Ancients. I'm your host, Cliff Dunning.
This is Graham Hancock. You're listening to Earth Ancients with Cliff Dunning. We
didn't get to do our annual ches game with Graham last year, and that's
because he was out promoting the Ancient Apocalypse series on Netflix. But guess what
I have an exclusive with him at the Contact in the Desert. He's a
keynote there and we are going to do ninety plus minutes of what the heck's
going on with the archaeological community, their reaction to Ancient Apocalypse, and his
upcoming debate with a noted archaeologist, which I am not endorsing. I don't
like to see this because I think everybody should have their own opinion, and
I have talked to Ed Barnhart, our own in house archaeologists and other archaeologists
and anthropologists who feel that each side has a point of view. But you
have to understand, Graham is really threatening to a lot of archaeological communities,
to universities, to those tenured scientists who cannot think outside of the box.
And this is what makes his material and and and his books so important.
And it's coming to his work is coming to fruition, and a lot of
early theories and research is coming true. And this was what is uh,
It's really it's really wonderful about Graham. So look for that. It'll be
a key probably a single two hour interview with Graham on the making of Ancient
Apocalypse, the outcome, the results, and what he's dealing with right now
with the archaeological community, which is not for the most part. You know,
the Orthodoxy is not happy because they don't want anyone to question their history.
That's what hey, and this is what I'm all about. This is
what Earth Ancients is all about, which is questioning our history, digging under
the currents of Orthodox thinking, and it's pretty limited Orthodox thinking. Our history
books are very, very limited. So look forward to that. This program
today is on lightar and we have an expert with us, doctor Richard Hansen,
who is the director of the Miodor Basin project. He's excavating El Miodor.
But recently he released an article on some of the first analysis of this
lightar program that was conducted in twenty eighteen, and what he discovered was a
Mayan highway connecting all of these sixty thousand ruins, these cities into one homogeneous
culture. The ancient Maya. Now always wonderful to have Richard. We've had
them on a number of times and no one is better suited to describe not
only the light oar perspective, using this very advanced technology to in many cases
revolutionize excavating ancient sites, which is one of the key proponents of an archaeologist.
But we're going to learn today just what some of the new enhancements to
light art is revealing. And I'm happy to announce that one of the aspects
that is happening is coming to fruition is light our stability to do ground penetrating
scans. And why that is important is the fact that most of these ancient
cultures built on top of earlier people. And as we dig down, we're
learning that the dates are being pushed back by thousands and thousands of years for
cultures like the Maya. But also we learn and we find evidence of earlier
construction, earlier styles, architectural design, civil engineering, engineering as a whole
building that's building engineering. We find that the earlier construction is radically different and
as well here today, the pre Maya had its own language and hieroglyphics that
we just do not understand. We have not cracked it yet. And as
it turns out, the earliest Maya were the most creative, engineering artistic just
as a society, so much is established by these early people that current archaeology
believes had its rise around three thousand years ago. Now we know that this
is changing. We heard from doctor Paulette Steves on the dates that are coming
back for early palesticing cultures in the United States. This is slowly trickling down
to Mexico and South Central and South America, and I think that we're going
to start seeing some really really earlier dates as more research is done and more
testing and reevaluation is done to noted ruins and ruins that are coming to light
through archaeological research. So much of this interview today has to do with this
paper that doctor Hansen wrote with a team of other archaeologists. It was actually
it actually came out in December of last year, but it was picked up
by CNN in February of this year and it was released with a number of
very unusual photographs which I've published on the Facebook page. Rich is actually going
to send me some new photographs that include some of the closer surface scans that
light are conducted on some of the perimeter cities of this series of overall scans
that came to light and the area is known as Miador calcomul Chorist Basin,
which is in northern Guatemala. It includes nine hundred and sixty four settlements which
account for four hundred and seventeen interconnected Maya cities. These cities are some of
them are huge, and we're just beginning to get an understanding how old they
are. And as I reported over a year ago, some of the pyramidal
complexes are very unusual. They're probably extremely old, and in some cases they're
very odd multi sided pyramidal structures, pyramids themselves. Some of the platforms which
are these very long, they look like runways, go on for half a
mile or more. And the current orthodox he thinks that they were gathering places,
but they are consistent in a number of major cities, and this is
really questionable as to how the hell that's going on. But our focus today
is on these wonderful roads or highways as Hanson calls them, and the Maya
call them sockbes. And these are the white roads that are made from unique
cements, durable cements, durable mortar, and they're packed down in such a
manner that they are very very flat, but they repel water and they are
they're almost indestructible. In fact, we've had that Jim o'con here on the
program, who is a forensic engineer who has written a whole book based on
his research of the sockbeas, and he says, flat out there and engineering
marvel, and he believes that many of them have lasted for thousands of years
once they were constructed, so very little, if any maintenance is required.
Now as you hear this interview, I ask Richard a very pointed question.
Did the Maya have the wheel? He graciously says, we still don't know.
He says he's doubtful, but they don't know. I cannot believe that
the Maya, with their genius engineering, did not conceive of the will.
And I think that you know, if you go and you look at some
of these museums, especially the museums that are dedicated to the Maya, you
will see countless examples of toys with wheels. Well, if the toys have
wheels on them, why don't the actual adults of those societies have carts or
some type of chariots or something, if not just to move around physically,
but to move commerce, foods, waters, whatever, you know, to
sell. One of the most amazing things about this discovery we're gonna talk about
this today is the fact that there is over one hundred and ten miles of
causeways or these highways that run through this Miador basin. And if that's not
amazing enough, these super highways support a population of between ten and fifteen million
inhabitants. Now, ten to fifteen million people is a monster. That's bigger
than San Francisco. That's bigger than New York. I mean San Francisco here
where I am, I think the maximum is five million people. That's crowded.
Ten to fifteen million people, that is huge. And we're gonna hear
today how they were fed, how water was transported, how the commerce was
created, and how it was socially and civically established, how it was governed,
which is very, very critical. So really really fun interview with doctor
Hansen, and as always we love having around the program. I'm going to
give you a short refresher on lightar, which is really the foundation of our
talk today. Here is a review of just how important light are is,
how it works, how it detects ruins, and why it is the number
one tool for archaeological researchers. Have a listened. How well do we really
know our ancestors? How much do we really know about our ancient past?
These are questions at the beating heart of modern day exploration and archaeology, and
thanks to a game changing technological revolution in the field, we're quickly realizing that
actually there's so much that we're only just beginning to understand. As with so
many cutting edge technologies, lidar or light detection and ranging, began life as
a tool used in space exploration at one time, featuring in the Apollo program
in the early nineteen seventies as part of early efforts by NASA to map the
Moon. In short, it's a mapping technique whereby lays are directed at the
ground from the air via planes, helicopters or drones. The lasers hit the
ground and rebound back, with lidar tech able to precisely measure the different distances
at play and therefore construct an accurate three D map of the ground. Crucially,
though, while operating at different wavelengths, lidar can penetrate through things that
might have otherwise obscured the picture, things like leaves, tree canopies, and
dense vegetation, for example, which is why it's become such a vital and
groundbreaking method and the exploration of Earth. The stereotypical image of an explorer or
archaeologist is perhaps one of an intrepid adventurer slashing their way through thick undergrowth in
the middle of a distant jungle somewhere in search of an ancient, legendary trail
or a treasure laden lost city. But while a lot of hands on groundwork
similar to that is still carried out, times are certainly changing in the twenty
first century. The paper, maps, compasses and machetes of tradition do still
have a place, but nowadays with any journey into the wilderness, there's the
potential for it to be significantly more planned and deliberate. Thanks to lidar,
archaeologists can be so much more informed before they ever set foot onto an actual
site. Over the twenty tens, the technology really started to take off.
So far it has been variously used to gain a better understanding of multiple Mayan
sites in modern day Mexico and scattered ancient villages in the Amazon Rainforest. It's
also notably helped us to gain a clearer than ever picture of the famous Angor
Watt Temple complex en Cambodia. In all cases, lidar maps have been produced
from above, and they've revealed to archaeologists that the extent of these ancient locations
is usually far greater than we had previously thought. It's now known, for
example, that angor Watt was once but one part of an even vaster ancient
settlement, much larger than previously predicted, with lidar images able to pick out
the roads, waterways, and homes that once crowded around the temple. Of
course, the evidence for what lidar is now picking up has always been there,
and perhaps it would have been discovered by traditional exploration on foot given enough
time. But this technology is fast tracking us to near instant results. It's
said that lidar can achieve in just a few hours what it would otherwise have
taken years of traditional groundwork to figure out, as the images are captured from
above by machines. It's not as though lidar is a dangerous pursuit either.
It's exploration at a distance, yes, but it undoubtedly gets results. Still,
there are some that remain doubtful as to how heavily we should be relying
on this technology, and to a certain extent, it still won't replace classic
on the ground exploration. What ldar can do has produced high resolution images accurate
to within around twenty centimeters. But what it still can't do is determine exactly
what it is that it's mapping. For that, archaeologists still need to get
up close on the ground in the thicket and in the mud. LDAR is
perhaps best used more like a contemporary guide, then highlighting areas of interest that
a site that might otherwise have been easily overlooked simply because the jungle have become
too overgrown or the landscape have been too drastically altered. In modern times,
the laser imaging means that now, rather than blindly searching for things that may
or may not be there, today's explorer can confidently descend onto a location that
they know will yield results. It's one reason why it's said by some that
we've recently entered into a new golden age for exploration. Although on the one
hand, it would seem that because most of the Earth is at least accounted
for on maps, there isn't a great deal of our world left to discover.
On the other led, our technology is proving we've only just begun to
scratch the surface of what's really there, and in just the first few years
since its introduction into archaeological study, it's genuinely forcing us to rewrite whole periods
of human history. Now, one thing that Audio did not describe is the
great expense of the light our technology. It's now today you can use it
on drones, so it's compact. Most of the best light our scans are
done with single engine planes. In some cases where planes aren't appropriate, they
strap it onto a helicopter. But the technology is extremely expensive. It's in
the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a small area. If you get into
a couple of miles square, it gets into millions of dollars. And it's
not just the scans itself. You have to have a technician who can process
the scans and then deliver it to an output system which eventually delivers a scan
image which can be studied in various resolutions. So the technology is still very
very much in its infancy, and as I mentioned in the beginning of the
program, the New Science, the new versions of it are beginning to slowly
pierce the surface of the planet, the surface and allow archaeologists to kind of
look under a few feet. Now, when it gets to the point where
it can pierce the surface of the ground several feet then you're going to have
a super super tool that allows archaeologists to pick and choose where to begin digging.
And that's a real expensive undertaking when you have to choose which building is
going to be excavating, which ones has to be left alone. If you
know ahead of time that there is a subsection, that there's a pyramid or
a building underneath the main structure that's on the surface, then you have gold.
So my program today is uncovering the Maya super Highways, and my guest
is doctor Richard Hansen. Each year Earth Ancients heads to Mexico for a private
tour of some of the most intriguing ruins from the Maya and other Mesoamerican cultures.
This year, November tenth to the seventeenth, we'll be heading to Vera
Hamosa in southern Mexico to see the site of the omec ruins at Lavina.
This includes a visit to the world famous outdoor museum where there are megalists of
all sizes and shapes. We then head to Palak in Chiapas and visit this
jewel of the Maya Empire with doctor Edwin Barnhart as our host. We'll be
there for two days and then we head out to Bottompeck, site of one
of the largest murals left to us from the Maya Classic period. For more
information and details on this tour, go to earth Ancients dot com Forward slash
tours and we will see the entire itinerary and more details. This is a
one of a kind tour with doctor ed Barnhart and yours truly. For more
information, Earth Ancients dot com Forward slash Tours. M H. It's always
great to have doctor Richard Hanson on the program with us. He is the
director of the Elma Door Basin Project and he is also intrically involved in research
in the Guatemala area. As you know, in twenty eighteen there was a
major light survey done of the Guatemalan biasphere which revealed over sixty thousand structures which
are pyramids, buildings, platforms, causeways, and what was amazing about this
discovery was that it was holding a population of roughly ten to fifteen million people.
Now I have rich on the program today because he has followed up on
that survey with his own analysis, one of the really first solid analysis of
this lightar scan. And in February of this year, CNN did a article
on it. The area that has covered is considered the Miador calculmul Karst Basin.
It's northern Guatemala and it's always a pleasure to have Richard Hansen on the
program. Rich How you doing. It's great to see it. Good to
see you, Cliff, Thank you for the opportunity. How significant I mean,
obviously you know one of the things let me just back up for a
minute. One of the things I thought was fascinating you as a field researcher,
and course you're excavating Elmador. One of the things I thought was fascinating
is that you said to me that based on the size of this complex,
these sixty thousand ruins, which are multiple cities. We're going to talk about
that in a minute, you said that it would take approximately over a hundred
years to correctly survey and begin just begin excavating that site. Now, it's
probably after looking at it, it's probably held a lot longer than a hundred
years, isn't it. It will take a lot longer. But let me
back up a minute. The study that we were reciting was a study that
was done after ours, and when they found sixty thousand structures, but they're
not all contemporaneous. There are different periods of time when we and it was
separate sites. They did a site serving in one area and a site serving
another area. And what we did was we did a whole continuous area,
so we saw all the relationship between all these cities at the same time,
and the architecture is consistent. We've dated, We've worked in fifty six ancient
cities out there in the Mire Door Collic Mole car space and now, and
we know the contemporaneity of the cities. We know when the causeways were built,
we know when the dams were built, we know when the terraces were
built. We have all the evidence that we've been amassing over forty two years
of working in this area to understand the majesty in the complexity of the early
Maya centuries before the time of Christ. So are you say you got into
this uh some of these uh places that were scanned and this twenty eighteen scan
and did some carbon dating on them. Oh. Yeah, we've worked in
fifty six ancient cities out there. Oh you've already gotten into that place.
You already got into there, We've already done the excavations. We already done
the exploration when he did mapping, but I didn't do the lightar. I
pioneered the lightar in guatemal in twenty fifteen and again in two thousand and eighteen
to complete the cars basin area. This is the area that we've actually examined,
this entire area. Here is the area that we've been looking at,
representing three thousand and five hundred square kilometers of Christine Jungle. Wow. But
man, it's hard to find cities on your when you're on foot, you
can't see, you know, five people one way or the other. To
find these ancient cities clustered in this basin. And then we found is the
nine hundred and sixty four ancient Maya sites that form four hundred and seventeen ancient
cities. Okay, Now, what makes this article that CNN reported on in
what your analysis comes up which is fascinating is what you call a super highway.
And I'm fascinated by the sockbies, the Maya white roads. You estimate
that the mileages were on one hundred and ten miles of this network. That
is amazing. That's right, one hundred and ten miles and these causeways,
these causeways are all pre classic. Well, we have we have one hundred
and seventy seven kilometers one hundred and ten miles of pre classic causeways that are
fifty yards wide and two to five yards high. They're elevated, they're all
constructed, and they were white. And that's the word soci is white bay
is road, white roads. The reason for that may be a little more
pragmatic because during the day it's one hundred and twenty degrees in the heat of
the day, but at night, with starlight and with moonlight, those causeways,
white causeways are moving arteries of traffic and products and commodities that they could
also move at night, which makes the much more logical, much more sensible
than trying to move all this stuff on your back during the day. Remember,
there are no wheel vehicles and no beasts of bird. This was all
human labor. Yeah, I want to talk to you about the wheel here
in a minute, because there's some real contradictions when it comes to those places.
Talk a little bit about the sockbes rich what those are engineering feats,
because I know they're composed of mud and actually mayan cement, And then I
guess a top layer of mortar or something that is kind of a cap.
But talk a little bit about the construction of the White Roads to Sock Peak.
So they, first of all, these roads were carefully engineers. You
pointed out, Cliff, these were. These were done by architects. I
mean these they were professionally done. And not only that, but we have
evidence that they were sighting on certain pyramids in the distance as a straight line.
So they had straight line causeways and then they would maybe go or swim
over to another city, or they had appendages to another city. I published
a paper recently about how we we point out they're called dendritic systems many and
they're like fingers. There's the central point and then you have all these causeways
radiating out to subsidiary suburbs or other cities. And in the case of Mirador,
we have one hundred and ten miles of major major causeways that were constructed
in the pre Classic, beginning at five hundred eighty BC, the earliest date
we have for the construction of these, and they were they actually quarried stone
out of quarries and put the shrubble in the fill mixed with clay, and
then they plastered over with a thick layer of maya cement, that lime cement.
So that's why they're white roads there. That lime cement just made them
white. But they're forty yards wide, fifty yards wide. And in some
of these causeways we would have never found if it wasn't for the lightar,
because you could fathom, and you're in a jungle, who could fathom there'd
be a road that big. The boy from from the aerial perspective, from
the lightar, we could see very clearly all these massive causeways that linked all
these cities together in an extraordinary complex city. Here's one of the images we
published in Ancient Messo America. You can go to go to Cambridge Core Ancient
Missile American, look up light or you can find in that paper. But
all of these white lines here are all the causeways, the major causeways that
link these together. And there's one hundred and seventy seven kilometers of pre classic
causeways and twelve kilometers of classic period causeways. Many and excuse me, but
all those classic period causeways were intrat site, meaning they were just connecting small
little groups within a specific site. The big, major or inter site causeways
were all pre classic, constructed centrist before the time of Christ. So you're
taking uh surveys and you're taking sampling of these causeways and data you're giving us
pre classic, classic and so forth. Is that what you're saying or yeah,
yeah, we have Actually I have a scholar named Enrique Ernandez that's been
working now for more than a decade on causeways alone, escavating the causeways,
get in the sequences of the causeways, trenching the causeways, to understand the
construction form in. He's got a bachelor's thesis on this, he's working on
his master's right now, and we'll get him into a PhD program on causeways.
We know more about these causeways than we would have ever imagined, and
now that we've got the light ar, we now know the extent and nature
of these causeways. What's also fascinating though, as its the border the Mirador
Basin, cacolic Moal Basin, and this is a an emmy. I don't
know if you can see that very clear. Here's the border with Mexico right
through here. Right off of the basin is in Guatemala and half the basins
in Mexico. But the fact is that none of those causeways go outside the
natural borders of the basin. That's very interesting. It contained, it was
a contained state, an incipient state, if you will, that was forming
in this area. They were building eighty meter tall pyramids. They were building
massive compalaces of compounds and temples simultaneously, which is an extraordinary concentration of population
number one and an extraordinary control of labor number two. They were building massive
building programs that defy the abilities of lesser polities, so that it required a
state. It required a state to execute an administer in control that volume of
architecture, that extent and vision of unified state. Now, let's look at
the US. When did the US enter the industrial age. We have the
Transcontinental Railroad. Yeah, yeah, we have the freeway system that units us
all together. So products in Los Angeles or San Francisco are in New York
City in three days, and vice versa. And the Maya caught onto that
at five hundred BC. They were constructing enormous systems of communication that linked all
these cities together in a vast, vast complex society, centuries earlier than what
we thought possible. Yeah, it's what's what makes it amazing is that these
are very sophisticated people. I mean the engineering prowess of this causeway is mind
blowing. I mean you actually report that in some areas there is Why does
one hundred and thirty one feet or forty meters is that? I mean,
how many people do you estimate? We're at its peak? We're traveling the
causeways? Is there any way to know? Well, there had to be
millions in the basin to construct that number of cities simultaneously. What's interesting is
not one person lives there today, not one. It's just so overgrown I
guess, all abandoned and overgrown. But what it tells us, also,
Cliff, is the fragility of civilization. Yeah, it's amazing. Who was
thinking are you in or are you in Los Angeles or San Francisco? Where
are you at in San Francisco? San Francisco? Who's thinking in San Francisco
of trees drawing all over your streets and buildings and rubble and and puma is
walking all over your buildings today and all gone and abandoned nobody. Yeah,
we're living in the apogee of complex society. And same time they were thinking
the same thing. They had no idea what was going to happen to them.
That rendered the whole area completely uninhabited. And that's what makes it fascinating
from an anthropological perspective and fascinating from a human story perspective. I think it's
amazing that the earliest or the pre Maya, which is Elmador, were really
the technicians. I mean, there's the largest pyramids in the Americas where you're
located, and there's also these sockbes. What is your feeling now, and
I haven't talked to you for about a year, what do you feel is
the true age of the Maya now? Then? When I say that,
you are one of the only scholars that has to and I don't see it
out very much, but you believe that the Maya were contemporaries of the Old
Mech absolutely. In fact. In fact, Cliff, last year we came
up with an Olmec plaque in a trash heap at Mirador. What does that
mean? That means there were there contemporaneous Oh, a plaque that says I
work with the Old Yeah. And what does the plaque say, Well,
it just has an image of the Olmic face, the omic symbol, and
its completely intact. But it was in a Most Oldmic artifacts are found in
classic or pulse classic contexts, in ceremonial contexts, but this was in a
trash heat, meaning that there there's more to the story there that we don't
know because this wasn't in a ceremonial complex. But it shows the contemporaneity of
these occupations. We have solid evidence now of major occupation at a thousand BC.
So the Mexicans like to say the Old Maker the mother culture of messo
America, and we're proposing that the Olmec are a sister culture because there were
others, is like the Sapotec, like the Maya, that we're emerging simultaneously
with that massive growth and massive population and massive agricultural systems to feed their populations.
Yeah, and so you're saying that the earliest Maya, let's just go
aheaded for example and talk about Elma or because that's your sweet spot. Is
what a thousand BC at the earliest. And we have evidence, a consistent
evidence of a presence of corn planning said roving populations at twenty six hundred BC.
We have numerous numerous locations we come put that same day date and the
pollen and isotope, and the finalists tell us that they were planning corn,
but they weren't building anything other than perishable, superimperishable buildings, small huts with
palm fat truths. But at a thousand BC, they'd be in building platforms,
stone elevated permanent, sedentary populations. And by eight hundred BC we've got
pyramids being formed, and by five hundred, four hundred BC, they're they're
building structures thirty meters high, and by three hundred BC they're eighty meters highs.
They're monsters, they're they're huge, and for some curious reason and Takeshi
Inomata, the University of Arizona's found the same thing in Tabasco. For some
reason, the earliest manifestations of complex societies throughout the world are always monumental.
For example, the big pyramids of Egypt, they're not late in their society.
Those among the earliest manifestations that are complexity. So there's an emphasis on
monumentality that seems to attract and be wired in the human mind, makes these
magnificent and extraordinary investments in monumentality, and in that implies some kind of a
way to to to convey a message to us fascinating. Hey, I'm gonna
throw you some anomalous curves here for a second, and let's see what happens.
You're gonna put you'll put me in my place. Michael Cole was was
had a great deal of problematic issues. When someone asked him what about diffusion?
What about other cultural exchanges UH from the Southeast Asian UH communities into into
the Americas. It wasn't until he retired that he says, there's a great
deal of similarities between the Camere pyramids and the Maya pyramids. But what do
you say. Do you say the Maya are purely self contained in their development,
or do you do you have any sense of any other cultures? Perhaps
handing over, for lack of a better term, a blueprint on how to
construct one of these eighty meter plus pyramids. Well, Michael CoA is absolutely
right. There are some fascinating structures of the Camere of societies that can be
easily placed in a Maya city. The problem is the contemporary eighty the Camere
much later than most of the big Maya stuff that we're looking at. It's
interesting that one of the most common forms of architecture in the ancient world,
no matter where you go, China and Mesopotamia, Egypt, South America,
North America, even in Kahokia in the United States, we have parambal structures.
There were wired to build monumentality in a way to get elevation is through
a pyramid. So but the issue is that in comparison to Egyptian pyramids,
which are strictly funerary, these pyramids are functional. There were functional cathedrals,
if you will, that will allowed access to the summit, for rituals,
for observation, for pronouncements, for royal weddings, for celebrations of royal events,
um, celebration of period ending events. These were all part of the
construction of these of these big um of these big buildings. And I guess
one for the lack of a better model, we can look at Catholic cathedrals
throughout Europe and throughout in Latin America. All every little town has got their
big, fancy Catholic Catholic cathedral, and these are the same the same general
idea, you know, to invest in the gods, to invest in something
that unites a society and makes the society almo genius fascinating. All right,
here's another a novelly for you. Super highway. And you've used the term
many many times. When we think of a highway, we think of vehicles,
we think of a movement with the wheel. I've been to a number
of museums that have Maya artifacts and seen toys with wheels. Yeah, why
do we not see wheels or suggest wheels on these highways, on these roads?
That's been a problem that's fascinating scholars for decades. We don't know.
I mean, all you have to do is roll a rock down the pyramid
and you get the idea. I'm sure the Maya may have had the concept.
But understand a couple of things here. One of them may have been
the pragmatic use of causeways. When you go to Pompeii or Herculaneum or the
Appian Way in Italy, you find ruts that deep in stone from the chariot
wheels, and these causeways are only their roads are two meters wide, right
right, looks eight feet wide. The stock line sumit is much softer than
stone. So it would have been a formidable maintenance project to have to run
a vehicle up and down those those causeways. Um it wouldn't. They wouldn't
the stucka wouldn't have lasted very long at all. But for some reason,
we have no evidence whatsoever they used the wheel, and and they everything that
you see in a Maya city was brought in by what we call the tump
line economy. A tump line is a line across the forehead of the basket
on your back, and that line attaches to that basket. And they have
moved everything with that kind of economy, including stuff like basalt and obsidian and
granite from three and four hundred miles away. They're bringing that material in.
We have evidence of where they're bringing obsidian from as far as a thousand miles
away from the highlands of Mexico. So they were all doing that with a
tumpline economy, meaning that it was human labor. And the fact they did
not have the wheel is absolutely fascinating. They were One of the reasons the
Spanish has such such interesting success was the use of gunpowder and guns, cannon,
horses, and the wheel. So it's an interesting insight into whether it
was a cultural phenomenon or whether it was a practicality. I don't know,
I honestly don't know, you've been digging around for decades and you would think
that you would find a wheel or a chariot or a cart or something,
but you haven't. And nobody. Yeah, no paintings, there's no images,
there's no art depicting any of that kind of technology incorporated in Maya society.
Yeah, but as a MIAs rich, isn't that peculiar? Yeah it
is. I guess you can't say anything about it. You've already explained it.
It's like it makes it fascinating. And because of the peculiarity, for
example, there are it's a it's a maybe a cultural thing. You know,
we have our cultural norms too. For example, are our women put
black stuff on their eyelashes and red stuff on their lips? You know,
that's a cultural thing. But a hundred years from now or five hundred years
and I may look at look at that as barbaric, you know, or
primitive. Yeah, you know, very strange. Let's talk about the causeways
a little a little more. I had a forensic engineer, a guy named
Jim O'Cahan who wrote a book on Mayen building, and he spoke about the
design of the sockbes and in some places and you were actually right about this.
They were between ten and fifteen feet tall. And they did this because
they wanted to pass through swamps and water ways and things like that. They
really figured these out pretty well, didn't they. They were actually they engineered
it. Not. There wasn't a haphazard kind of design theme, was it
for exactly right, Cliff, These were all carefully engineered and designed from the
get go ten to fifteen feet high, and not only in the lowland areas.
When they got the uplanders, they also elevated the causeways, so meaning
that wherever you were, anybody can see anything that was moving back and forth
on those causeways. They were elevated and visible to everybody surrounding the surrounding the
causeway. So it was it was a way to keep everybody informed. It
was a way to be aware of military presence. It was a way to
be aware of royal processions and royal parades and ceremonial activities. It was a
way that they could could move products and unite societies, unite all these cities
in a trends in a in a complex web of economic, social and political
interactions. Yeah, talk a little bit about the importance of the of the
roads the highways as a social economic You just hinted on it just now,
but it really would be a place for socializing. Do we see like little
stops here in their little buildings that people must Yes, they're right there are
there are little places of little buildings on the side where they could get a
you know, a jar of water, or whether they could get some tamalies
make for to say, tamales ortis, I mean these guys are these guys
have the same vices and virtues that we all do. They were looking for
the opportunity to make a buck too, So I think that they would have
had some nice tasty tamali is available. It would have had corn available,
They would have had chili's available. They would have had a wide variety of
products that being available for transport in in commodities. The other advantage of the
causeways though, if since the rainfall in in in tropical forest is somewhat sporadic,
you will get a ton of rain in one area and dry and in
twenty mile twenty kilometers away. It's own drive. Because it's sporadic, it's
eve apple transporation, which means that the jungle creates its own rainfall patterns.
But if one area of the basin didn't have corn for lack of water,
but they had corn in other parts of the basin, the causeways facilitated the
transport of corn to these other areas, and that provided unique advantages for administrative
governments because it showed the how the government could provide and how the government could
unite populations. It allowed allegiance and loyalty from the other cities to centralize government,
and it allowed them to be able to interact socially in economically, one
with another, which made them a unified polity. And look at the United
States. We're different states, but we're united because of our economies, because
of our big because of our social and political interactions. So they were doing
the same thing on a little smaller scale of course Mirador Basin. But the
fact that it had occurred here such an early period of time is fascinating.
You know, when I first started in nineteen seventy nine and working in this
area, the pre Classic Maya were hunters and gatherers because for forty years the
only pyramid they had from the pre Classic period was a pyramid at Washaktun.
It was eight meters high, and since there were no others, they thought,
well, there it is. You know, that's the pinnacle of their
complexity. They must have been primitive and simple populations like we see in modern
day Amazon or modern day Congo today, hunters and gatherers living in the exact
same environment that the ancient Maya were, and they're still hunters and gathers.
So what is it that propels of society living in the same environment to become
one of the greatest civilizations in the world and another one to remain as a
hunter and gathering society. And that's been a fascinating story, and that's what
we're trying to understand. From the anthropological perspective of all this kind of research.
You'd be nice if you could pull out another codis there or you're located
in the you know, especially finding one of those burials and all of a
sudden it's like, uh, well look what we found here? A fifth
codis Yeah, a codex. A codex would be there's only four in the
world. Yeah, only four in the world. The Spanish destroyed what they
could. We are aware of. Another was found in nineteen eighty three by
a looter at a psite Colla Lamuerta. This was a from I got this
some informants. They they described the book. It was a codex book and
them in a classic period book. The four that we have are from both
classic periods. You found this book and they put it in his knapsack and
was trudging back to the village of Carmelita. And he got to an ancient
city called teen Tal and by then the whole thing had turned to dusk,
so he dumped it out and went on his way. How terrible. Oh,
I just I just to this day, I cringe at the at the
And the problem is that that building where we found where would have been found.
We got to that building about six months later, So if we'd have
got there first, we'd have had the chance to recover a classic period codex
that is now lost forever. And we don't know if I mean, it's
that humid and moist tropical for us where he gets six to ten feet of
rain a year. Yeah, you know, how can these things survive?
Yeah? And that this was found is it's just it's just it's just heart
wrenching. Its heart wrenching. That's that's that's not a good story. With
a bad ending. Talk a little bit about how the causeways were integrated into
the city. Do they actually as an example at Almador, do the causeways
actually connect with the civic area? Oh do they do? They stop on
the outer perimeter. Oh no, then you have to just walk in.
Great question, Cliff. There's two types of causeways. There's the intrast site
causeways which are within the civic centers, and there's the inter site which go
from different cities to different cities. Um and let's that's called the interstate or
intrat state if you will, And we have called interstate freeways, right,
okay, in an inter site causeway joins all the different cities. But an
intra site causeways what's found within them? And we have many, many examples
of those big pre classic causeways that are thinking suburbs, but they only go
to the suburb. They don't go beyond. They go to the suburbs.
So it links all the suburbs to the hub. It's like a like a
wheel with spokes going out in these suburbs are linked politically, economically, and
socially by those causeways to the city center and the hub. And in the
case of Mirador, it's one hundred and thirty two square kilometers of monumental architecture,
meaning buildings higher than forty five feet right, and that's one of the
largest ancient cities in the world. Actually, it's extraordinariness size complexity in all
these causeways that link all these suburbs together, and then you have the inter
site causeways that go out and extend radiate out to the different cities. So
it's the intrasite or microcosms of the mackerel scale that we have going on in
that basin at that time, and it's a wonderful insight into human behavior.
It's a story of the humans. It's a page of the human story that
we have never seen before. And that's our objective is to get that story
out so people can appreciate and understand the majesty and the complexity of the humans,
the human spirit. We're gonna take a short break to give our sponsors
a chance to identify themselves, and we will be right back with doctor Richard
Hansen and his explanation on these Mayan highways. We'll be right back. My
guest today is archaeologist doctor Richard Hansen, who is giving us some insight into
the research project that he did following the lightar scan of the Guatemalan bias fhere
in the discovery of sixty thousand unknown ruins from the Maya culture. Today we're
learning exactly what he discovered in these Mayan highways that intersect in this area of
the Guatemalan bias fhere and some of the details that they discovered in their interpretations.
So you know with what we know, I mean, you're you're talking
about the human spirit and the social economic How do we know? I mean,
obviously, if these cities in this area supported ten to fifteen million people,
where were the crops and how are they bringing them in? I mean,
commerce must have been huge at its peak, right exactly right. Being
touched on another fascinating subject, Cliff, and that is how do you feed
that kind of population? The reason for the question is, and we see
all these cities concentrated here, all of these are cities in this region.
Why aren't there any here and why aren't there any over here? Well?
And why aren't they building on the Here's another map this down here, this
beautiful lake down here called Lake Potenisa. By the way, those of you
listening, Jim showing a whole bunch of photos. I will have these on
the Facebook page and on the website, so don't don't despair. Yeah,
I didn't realize this was going to be live and live live show, but
these you'll have the images. But the question is why didn't they build these
cities on the edge of the lakes, from the edges of rivers. All
other complex societies of the world, like the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, the
Harappans, the Chinese were building on the riverine systems. Here were the most
distant location from a lake or a river that you can get in in the
milolins. Why the secret to their success were the swamps, these grass land
marshes perennially wet marshes that were full of grass and water and mud. But
that mud, that organic mud, was so rich that they were transporting the
mud into elaborate terrace systems. We have thousands of kilometers of terra systems in
the meredoor basin. Were they constructing that and hauling that mud up and filling
it and building these incredible terraces with organic mud. Now today they use what
they call a milpa ala mlpa, the milpas where they go out and they
cut a patch of jungle and they farm a couple of years of crops,
and then the rain and the weeds take over. They have to abandon it
and they have to move to another and cut more jungle and plant again.
The ancient Maya weren't doing that. They've planted the same piece of ground for
a thousand years. By renovating their field with just another little layer of that
rich organic mud from those swamps and in it completely allowed them to plant corns,
squash, beans, cotton, and cacao. That allowed them to to
create the agricultural base. Now you and I are talking today because somebody's out
there busting their rearand so that you and I can eat. Yeah, because
if you and I ween, you and I are looking for a golfer or
a grasshopper or a rabbit to eat tomorrow, we wouldn't be doing this interview,
right. So it's agriculture that leads to complexity. It's agriculture that provides
the economic stimulation to all the other luxuries luxuries that you have, and the
agricultural base that gives the population and the chance to expand and grow is crucial
to any complex society. You destroy your agriculture and you destroy your civilization.
Let me ask you about this, uh, this mud that you're talking about
in the Amazon, they have found the dirt to be engineered in some manner.
They don't know how. It's very, very old, but it's so
rich and so fertile that it can grow through constant replannings and growing and replannings.
Did the Maya engineer their soil or are you they did? They did
that because they imported that in mud from those grassland marshes. But keep in
mind, Cliff, that the Amazon and the Nile are similar. That the
rivers overflow their banks and they carry nutrients to all parts of that area during
certain times of the year. So all those nutrients, that's essentially the same
thing as transporting mud like the Maya were doing and renovating their field with a
thin layer of mud. But that was the secret to the success. It
was also the secret to their collapse because when we dig down on those swamps
today, we find that rich organic layer under two to three three yards of
sterile clay buried under sterile clay. So and you can't raise anything in that
sterile clay. I mean, it's just is inundated in the in the in
the rainy season, and it's hard to cement in the summer in the dry
season. So are you suggesting they just ran out of good, uh plantable
soil. That was the demand they did as they deforested their forest for the
production of lime cement. We cut the trees down, get all the trees
down. We did all the experimental work for six years. I sent a
team from Berkeley all over messo America to document how much wood does it take
and how much limestone does it take to make how much lime cement? Found
it took five to six tons of greenwood five to six tons of limestone to
make one ton of lime. And then we start doing the math and discovered
that in one building at Miradora, for example, required the complete deforestation of
about five hundred acres of every single living tree. And it was not If
they had had a little bit of rationality in their use, they would have
never gotten trouble. But they had a conspicuous consumption of those resources. Some
of those floors are are are half a yard thick? Why do you need
a floor that thick? The answer is because you can. That same mentality
occurs today We're thirty one trillion dollars in debt in the US and why Cliff,
because we can? Yeah, we're not smart. I read that today.
They just posted the FEDS the dead. That's right, pretty amazing.
You fix Inglorans with education, How do you fix stupidity? It's bad.
Let me ask you, what do you believe? I mean, based on
your discovery of their their agricultural crops? Were they primarily these maya? Were
they primarily vegetarians? Or were they With the light ar we discovered a whole
system. We would have never found these fat men for the light ar.
We discovered a whole series of pins, construction pens for animals. Were animals?
We had no idea they were First of all, their forty yards wide,
the thirty yards long, and in tropical jungle would how would you even
detected those? But with the lightyard, it just jumped right out at us.
So I sent a team from University of California, Davis and bringing Young
University to explore and excavate in those pins, and they came up with the
conclusion that they were used for dogs and turtles, um for production of meat
on an industrial scale. Oh my god? Really, Yeah, so yeah,
they had We have we have evidence of a lot of dogs. The
lot of dogs. They had a lot of white tailed deer that are semi
domesticated um and uh. And they of course they had corns, corn and
squash and beans, so it gave him a fairly balanced diet. And because
of the limestone, they had good teeth, good bone structure. The calcium
in the in the lime water was exceptional, so they had a pretty good
standard of living. And we even know from the hieroglyphic texts some of these
Maya kings, for example, lived in the case of Pakala's eighty three years
of age or in a case of yash Chilan, we have the record of
a king that lived almost ninety six years of age, so there's there's a
tremendous longativity. They're based on their diet. The thing that's probably harsh on
them was the labor. But they had good diets and they ate fairly well.
We also know from from what we call vitalists. Vitalist is. A
vitalith is is a silicate structure in the cell that every living plant absorbs.
Every living plant absorbs silicate material micro on a microscopic level to the cell,
and it has the shape of the cell. So when the plant disappears or
is gone or dies, we can still find the vitalists in the ground,
and microscopically, we can determine where they were raising corn, where they were
raising beans, where they're raising cotton, where they're raising chocolate, where they're
raising squash, and we can find that still archaeologically. It makes it,
you know, excavation is it is not like it used to be before.
They were just excavating to expose material. Now we're escavating to recover the microscopic
evidence. Who was thinking twenty years ago of DNA, for example, today
I'm at Harvard. Today I'm at Harvard because we're examining ancient DNA from the
mire door basis, and in who was discovering who was thinking about finalists and
twenty years ago, thirty or forty years ago, who was thinking about carbon
fourteen, who was thinking about isotope data? And who knows what technologies will
have in fifty years. That made all this material even more fascinating with much
more insight into the human story. And that's the whole reason that we do
archaeology is to tell that human story, to make us appreciate our legacy as
human beings and to appreciate the cultures that generated these incredible, incredible cultural remains.
Yeah, I'm speaking with doctor Jim our excuse Jim Richard Hansen, who's
in Harvard today, and he has done some fascinating work. By the way,
I will be posting this our icle that he and his team presented and
was released to CNN for you to look at with great detail. It's fascinating.
Talk a little bit about what you call the tiered settlement hierarchy. Uh,
I kind of a little bit of that, and I'm wondering if this
kind of also feeds into this, uh, this highway that you've Yeah,
yeah, what we did we first of all, there's more than six tiers.
But what we found is are there cities all over out there that were
very in size and scale. So what we did is we took one square
kilometer and put it in the in all these different cities in an area that
we thought was the Dencist occupation or the Dencist concentration, the city the city
centers, if you will, and then quantified the amount of volume in the
buildings in that square kilometer that means you could do it on any ancient city
you wanted in the Maya world. You could apply the same model and determine
where your tier would fall, where your site would fall in that tier of
buildings. And we discovered, for example, that we had Tier one,
which was El Mirador, with more than four or four point five million cubic
meters of fill in that one square kilometer area with the size of one hundred
and thirty two square kilometers, And then we went to other sites. It
was a lot less and a lot less, and finally ended up with cities
in Tier six that still had pyramids sixty to eighty feet high, but they
only had one pyramid like that in which smaller sites. So we were able
to categorize that these are ceremonial centers. We have sites with no big pyramids
that would be seven, Tier seven, an eight or nine or ten?
Did somebody could add to it? Let me ask you real quickly in your
research, do you think that they designed these purposefully or did they each have
their own evolution where they were built with maybe a local king who wanted to
have his own population, so forth and so forth. I mean, how
did you think they evolved these hierarchy, these tiers. Yeah, it's a
great question. I think initially probably may have been separate city states that were
quickly imogenized and unified under a state system, a centralized government system. And
Mirador maybe the census the largest site out there, it may have been the
capital. The word of caution here, though, is when we look at
ancient Greece. When you look at ancient Greece, you see Athens was a
huge ancient city, but the power wasn't an Athens. It was in where
Sparta, That's where the power was. So you have to kind of look
at that with a little bit of skepticism just based on a size alone.
However, the investment of labor, the fact that we have seventeen causeways emanating
out of Il Mirador suggests that this was probably the supercenter capital of the area
during the pre Classic period. Elmiador, El Mirador. Yeah, because it's
so big, that's so big, and such an investment of labor, such
contemporaneous buildings, these aren't We're talking about buildings that are contemporaneous, not buildings
that are built a thousand years later, Like many of the Maya sites have
a whole bunch of buildings. But there's a thousand years difference between the construction
of the buildings. These are all buildings that are contemporaneous, and the fact
that you would have that investment of labor in contemporaneous architecture is suggests that Number
one, you had to be able to feed and water and entertain that volume
of labor. You had to be able to control it. You had what
if a guy said, I'm not gonna haul that Rock's decision, I'm not
going to haul that rock. Had to be a way to exert the state
control over that kind of rebellion, And by golly, they did it.
They the evidence is there. They built these huge, complex uh and intricate
cities that were linked by these causeways, and it gave them the jump start
over the rest of the Maya world. They were constructing eighty meter high pyramids
at Miradora, and the rest of the Maya world we're living in little huts.
And that's it. That's the crazy part about this pre Maya period.
This we don't have a we don't haven't deciphered their language. You know here
these guys are we can read the tea. We both know that's a couple
of syllable here and there, but not really no, no, no,
no, it's it's it's way part than the neck cliff. What we can't
read is the pre classic text. That's what I meant to say. Excuse
me, yeah, yeah, we can't read the pre classic text. We
can read the classic period texts, you cannot read the pre classic Uh.
As we conclude here, I have a question that you bring up in this
paper. There's been a number of books on Maya kings. In fact,
you had a TV special on the king at male miodor h. You talk
about the unified king, uh, theory of this complex of these uh various
cities within this huge complex. What is the unified king? I mean,
you're thinking that there was one Caesar for the for their Rome, that controlled
the whole world of the Maya within that, within that Guatemala area. Obviously
the good question. One of the things that's fascinating about the pre Classic late
pre Classic Maya between three INTERBC and the our and our beginning of our period
of time, our era, is that the ceramics, the pottery is more
unified at this period of time than any other period of Maya history. The
ceramics are the same from the tip of the Yucatan all the way to Honduras
and all the way to Tabasco, and all the way to from Belize all
the way to Tabasco. It's the same slips, the same paste, the
same forms, the same shapes. Wow, it's unified. We never have
another period of Maya history when that happens, even in the great Classic periods
that they call Classic because they thought that was the pinnacle of complexity in the
Maya. We don't have that kind of that kind of uniform and all their
pottery. So this suggests that there could have been a maybe a state level
impetus behind that exportation. Another example of that is the development of traw what
we call triadic architecture, big pyramids with three summits on the top, not
just one, there's three and it mirrored. Or we have thirty seven of
those big buildings with three summits at the top, and we have hundreds of
those throughout the basin. So it's but it appears suddenly about three hundred BC,
indicating an ideology that was homogeneous. An ideology was a prime mover,
whether it be socio economic or political, ideology, but it unified the society
into making these monumental constructions that are all the same shape and form. Now,
the argument that ideology is a prime mover is very evident in go Bickley
Tepi, in in or in Turkey. This is what twelve thousand BC.
Yeah, I mean over in the US they're stabbing mammoths with spears, and
in go Bakeley Teppi they're building incredible complex temples with the elaborate stones and and
this is long before the development of agriculture, right, So it shows the
unifying capability of ideology as a prime mover of complexity. Amazing. Uh,
we go ask you a question based on that comment you just made. Are
you saying that the pottery found in Guatemala at that time period and I'm thinking,
what are we talking about five hundred BC? Tho you're saying. If
you're saying there's contempt, there's a similar pottery found in places like what chichenitza
Ushmal none of those levels, and they if they get them twenty meters down,
they find that same pottery. Oh, if they if they're doing an
excavation of a site, they go down. Yeah, that's amazing. So
so there would be one theme or one uh, design that was contemporary to
that whole period. Yeah, that's for example, the cult bottle. Would
you recognize the cult bottle in Cambodia? Would you recognize it in Zimbabwe?
Would you recognize it in Brazil? Would you recognize it in Canada? Of
course? You see, it's the same concept, the same concept. Well,
let me throw another one at you. So, uh, wasn't just
used the term brand it's we're branding. H Is there evidence of a specific
ruler like a pacal that is universally thought of as the headman of the maya
at that time? Great question. We have all kinds of city states in
the Classic period, sure, but we we have a problem in the pre
Classic because we've never found that Pakal or that howsau Chankwel that we know existed
at Dikal or in Palinke, and we never found those guys. We have
a record in the Classic period painted on Kodak style pottery of nineteen kings that
are recorded in pottery, but none of those kings and the names correlate to
anybody that we know in the Classic period. And Simon Martin, one of
the epigraphers suggested that it might be a retrospective history. And Stanley Gunter,
one of our great epigraphers on a world scale. He studies all kinds of
ancient texts as as as managed to pigeonhole these dates, these kings starting at
three ninety two BC and all the way to twenty years after the time of
Christ, and they fit. They match the dates that work, and he's
got the dates that would match the names and the dates. We don't know
where those kings are buried. Um, they're not sticking. The guy that
built the pyramid in a latrine somewhere is a monster pyramid for the The guy
that built that. The guy that built that is not in some little buvel.
They made sure they took care of these individuals, and we will sooner
or later. If we don't find them, somebody else will and discover the
pattern of burials that occurred in the Quick Classic, because we don't. If
they were Classic period burials, we'd we'd find them by the dozens. We
have you to find one of those big pre Classic kings, and all we
need is one of those burials, one of those tombs to know that the
list is not mythological but real. Oh so you because you haven't found evidence
here, you're kind of going, well, we really don't know. We
don't know. We've got to be skeptical until we actually find the guy.
But you know, and you look at Egyptian history, look at King Tut,
look at the majesty of King Tut's burial. When you understand who King
Tut was, he was a low weight. He was a flyweight on the
scale of kings. Yeah, he was a nobody on the scale of kings.
Imagine what the ramses and tombs must have looked like. Yeah, and
we're looking at the same thing here, we're looking at the same thing here.
Whoever built those big and orchestrated all those huge causeway systems and all those
elaborate political and economics systems and those huge pyramids is out there somewhere, and
somebody's going to find it someday and help us fill in that gap of the
story that we don't yet have available. Yeah, like I said, another
codex would be great, that would help. Hey, Rich, really great
speaking with you as always. Let me ask you a couple of last questions
here. What is your season in el Mia door, what is the excavation
dates. We normally go in the rainy season, which is what months from
May and June to September. And that's when you had the serious teams out
there, okay, because we need the water. We have no lakes or
rivers, and it would cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars to move mules
hauling the water for all the mortars and the consolidation that we're doing on the
big architecture. So we need do we let the rain come to us and
it makes it a lot more easier to maintain. We have up to four
hundred workers were keying out there, so it makes us so it's possible to
to to do that kind of that kind of research. So your season is
actually just for like four months and that's it. Yeah, well yeah,
and this year we're gonna be going back in October, November and December two.
Okay. Interesting And then, uh, who who is it the decision
of the analysis of lightar on at your site that determines what's next on the
excavation. We for example, because of the lighter we found causeways that we
didn't have any idea even existed. Is this recent? Oh yeah, like
like in the last twelve months. Yeah, oh really, that must be
kind of fun but also depressing because you're going, damn it. We found
another causeway where lead We mapped the city with Tolten station technology that's accurate to
the millimeter, and I'm how how accurate we were. But I'm also impressed
with what we missed that we can detect with lightar. And the lightar allowed
us, which is the light penetration of the laser penetrates the canopy and reflects
back to the airplane, giving us the precise location. And we can get
up to five to ten to fifteen points per square meter, which bounces back
up and it gives us a remarkable resolution of that jungle floor. So we
can see all every pyramid, every platform, every damn every canal, every
terrace. We have all of that material now available. But there's causeways that
we just found we had no idea even existed, and they're huge causeways.
Yeah, and so we've got to go yet and explore those, make sure
we date them and understand their construction, so that we can fill in the
little gaps of our knowledge about these complex societies that were emerged century before the
time of Christ. In that area. I got a picture that I'll post
on the Facebook page of you as sitting next to one of these light ar
machines hooked into a small plane. Is it still expensive to do a light
ar campaign? Is it in that millions of dollars or has it come down
at all? Right? No, it's millions of dollars. They're they're starting
to use drones now, which makes it a little really use those. Some
nice drone work being done, but on a large scale, you're better off
at the airplane. Okay, use an airplane because just go back and forth
and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth over you know,
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of square kilometers of jungle. Wow. Well,
the airplane makes it more logical and more feasible. And actually this next
month we've got the permits now to finish just a few little patches on the
very edge of the basin that we've missed, that we didn't complete, and
that will make the largest continuous area of the Maya that we have, and
that's seven hundred square miles, is that correct? Yeah? Yeah, a
little probably a little more than that now, okay, And is there in
your mind any way, or any modification to that technology light our technology that
you'd like to see, and perhaps ground penetrating beyond the canopy of trees and
bushes that you would like to see. That is a possible modification. Well,
that we're getting higher and higher resolutions all the time. When we shot
ours, we were getting five hundred and sixty thousand points per second. Okay,
so we flew at one hundred and fifty eight hours shooting five hundred and
sixty thousand points per second, and that's a volume of data that's unbelievable.
So you're getting. What you're saying to the listener is that you're getting really
good resolution of buildings, of not only causeways, but perhaps even substructures and
things like that. Well, we're that's we're getting the ground surface as it
is now. In the future, I predict they'll have ground penetrating systems,
but to let us see below the surface of the ground what's going on and
that may be coming down the pike. That would save tens of millions of
dollars. Wow, Hey, Rich, really great, heavy on the program.
Give us your website, How can people learn more about you and other
details about reference? All right, if anybody's interested in the lighter I go
to Cambridge Core slash Ancient messo America slash LIGHTAR and that will give you.
That will give you that paper that was published in in Ancient messo America.
You can also look at the Institute of Maya Studies at the Miami i MS.
They just did a summary of that paper and there and they have that
out and now it's out now and you can become a member of the IMS.
We also have www. Dot mirdoor Basin dot com which can take you
to all of the all the publications that we've got and the information that's now
available on a big scale. Or Fairs Foundation dot org, r e s
dash Foundation dot org is the is the actual ngel, that pioneer that launches
the whole thing, makes the whole thing feasible. We're grateful to our sponsors.
I mean, the real heroes and all this are the people that put
up the major money to make all this kind of thing happen. Now we're
talking about millions and millions and millions of dollars here, and I have to
give credit to every one of those sponsors that believed in the conservation model,
that believes in the importance of the Maya that believes that we can save vast
tracks of jungle based on economic justification of the conservation. And it's a ely
threatened area. There's no doubt that this area is may not exist in ten
years. But talk a little bit about that for a second. Would you
about the burning that's going on. Oh yeah, it is coming up close
to you, right, you know how Yeah, one of these images I'll
be sending you. You can see these, Uh, you can see all
this is the mere door basin here, but all that there's the border with
Mexico. Half the basins in Mexico. So everything in red is burned,
shut, burned to the ground. Wow, cattle pasture. So as a
result, it's severely threatened because of organized crime is laundering, laundering illegal money
with cattle, and so they have cattle, have to have pastures. So
illegal drugs means that they're growing what uh, they're growing wheat, cannabis.
No, no, no, they're they're cutting down forest and putting cattle on
the pastors. But let's see, and how this works is they'll they'll go
to a poor starving peasant and they'll say, yeah, I'll give you a
few dollars, we go out and cut that jungle. Of course, the
starving peasant accepts the money. He goes out and cuts the jungle, burns
it to the ground. And then here comes the organized crime with the pistol
and says, okay, get out, and he puts his cattle out there.
So he'll buy a five hundred head of cattle, right, But he's
got a document, he's got he's got a paper. The city sold ten
thousand head of cattle. So all that money goes legitimately into banks with no
questions asked. No, boy, So you're dealing with that all the time.
We're dealing with that all the time. So as a result, our
concern, our emphasis is the conservation and protection of the area. I might
point out a couple of years ago I went, seeing the threat that this
area faced, I commit with some government officials at Guatemala, and we went
to the US Congress together with thirteen of the leading guatemal and congressmen, to
lobby for the funding for the security and conservation of that area. And we
got it. We actually managed to procure it, except that when the organized
crime found out that we were this was for the security and conservation of this
area. They launched a campaign against us that was horrible. They launched we
were the colonialists, the imperialists. We were trying to take away there,
trying to usurp their authority. We're trying to make a Disneyland out of this
area. We're trying to make their people starved to death. We're trying to
make their children starved to death. They brought in every angle they could to
attack that legislation, and finally the money was never sent to Guatemala. It
was sent to Africa. In an area of pandemic, in an area of
starvation, in an area of extreme poverty, and an area of covid had
everybody locked in their houses. We had one hundred and forty four million dollars
for the security and conservation of the area, and it didn't get there.
Oh my god, I remember this or a congressman associated with that, Yeah,
I can't remember his name. But everyone there is bipartisan. We had
you doll a democrat as a democrat. We had inhop a republican, we
had Rich a republican, both of the It was one of the things that
united to both sides of the aisle. This area is worth saving. This
area is worth the conservation. And we don't need to log it. We
don't need to drill it for oil, we don't need to loot it,
we don't need to pouch it. We can save it because of the number
and the quantity of ancient cities that the world's gonna want to see and we
think that's worth saving. Wow, so the money never got there, No,
So what what you must be working with the local government to u to
reduce the amount of burning that's burning today is burning as we're speaking right now.
So what's keeping the fires from coming close to the ruins or are they
engulfing the ruins? Not yet, but they're gonna be there. And if
we don't, if we don't find the means to make it, we saw
we suggest. This is our suggestion, and we're not trying to impose anything.
We're just suggesting that the Guatemalans make a roadless wilderness sanctuary, a cultural
and natural sanctuary without roads, without airstrips, because organized crime needs air strips
and they need roads. And by making a rollless wilderness sanctuary, we then
involved the communities that surround this basin in the economic model, they become participants
in the model. When you go to the great city of Tikal, for
example, nobody spends a diamond. Those villages on the way to Tikal.
Nobody. And if you put a road from the from the town of Florida's
Tamirador, I promise you nobody would spend the diamond those communities. But if
you make a rollless wilderness sanctuary, we have to involve the community. We
need to hire their guides and their cooks and their mules. And if they
put a miniature train in, you have all those facilities, the maintenance,
the protection, the security, all that's in place. And for the first
time in history, we are involving the local communities in the economic model.
What's our definition of roadless no roads? I know that. How do people
get in and out of the sites? Well, that's a great question.
We've and we spend a lot of money to understand how to do that.
We put a lot of money into understanding what's the best way to get people
in with no roads? Okay, waiting belows. We checked air strips,
we checked the bicycle routes, we checked hot air balloons, bicycle. Yeah,
Well, we investigated all that but the only thing that worked without any
disadvantages was a miniature train. Oh right, I remember, small miniature train,
right, but right on the ancient causeways. The causeways are elevated,
they were built three thousand years ago. You can put it on those causeways
to go around the big trees. Because it's a miniature train, not the
big, huge train like Mexico's building, but a miniature train that can carry
up to one hundred passengers at a time. And this allows access. You're
looking at it all this credible art and architecture all the way in on these
miniature trains, and that involves the communities. It has high it has it
controlled and restricted access so you don't have massive tourism overpowering and you have and
it allows it's compatible with the environment. This is not the Maya train.
They're doing it because that thing's a monster. That's a monster. Okay,
So this must be uh an small enclosed train of some rails about this far
apart right. Oh okay, that's a miniature train. Wow. And what's
the pain? Which is cheap and easy and clean and quiet. Where's that
city right now? What's the likelihood of that happening? Well? It depends
on the entrepreneur that wants to do it. I just suggest it. Oh,
I hear you promoted. I'm not gonna build it. I'm not gonna
be a participant in it. I'm just suggesting that that some entrepreneur can make
a fortune. You're talking about the Elon Musk train to tell me a door.
That's right, gonna make a guy like that with us a little vision.
You know, he's got the vision. And we need people like that
in the world that have a vision, people that like that, that have
the idea that we can make. We can we can improve prosperity for poor
countries, and we can improve the conservation for poor countries and have a win
and win for everybody. Wow. Rich, Really a pleasure to speak with
you again. As always, very informative and I can see why you're so
passionate. The work you're doing is exciting and it's life giving and I appreciate
everything you do. So good to have you. Thank you, and we'll
talk to you again. Thank you, Cliff. It's always a pleasure with
you, and anytime we will get on again. Open see you with Mirador.
I gotta get out there all right. Thanks man. Hey guys.
After three years of restrictions COVID based problems, Contact in the Desert is back.
It's back in Indian Wales, California. It's a suburb of Palm Springs,
and it is an amazing world class conference. From June second through the
fourth. You can hear people like Graham Hancock, AV Lowe, Linda Molton
Howe, and over one hundred and twenty five experts, scientists and research investigators
that will provide you with the latest information on a variety of topics. This
is a chance to see your favorite author, meet with him personally, and
spend a weekend hearing the latest from the greatest. For more formation, go
to Contact in the Desert dot com and get all the details. Be sure
to stop by and see me. We'll be there recording interviewing and I'd love
to hear from you. Contact in the Desert June second to the fourth for
more information Contact in the Desert dot com. I get reports from people,
I get emails and posts that Earth Ancients is pseudoscience and you're just you know,
you're guessing at half the stuff. Well, no, we are not
pseudo science. That is the pinnacle. Doctor Richard Hansen's work. That's what
you call a mover and shaker. That's the pinnacle of research analysis, archaeological
research using science, scanning, light, art technology, and train analysis of
the results. So that is orthodox archaeology for those of you who think otherwise,
And I hope you enjoy that. I was reminded about Hanson's paper by
our own doctor Ed Barnhard and had a chance to look at it. The
actual paper itself will be on Earth Ancients Facebook page, both international and the
group page. And then there's the Maya Society International Maya Society paper which is
taken just the core portion of the Highway analysis or the Sockby analysis and created
a portion of their newsletter. I'll have both of those available to you,
as well as a small gallery of photos that rich just sent me which will
be available for download. And you can also see quite amazingly how many cities
that are in this area that they've discovered using lighter and the extent of this
massive highway. It's just huge. And you know, riches transparent. You
know, he has nothing to hide. When I asked him about the roads,
he's like saying, we don't really know. It doesn't really you know,
he didn't say I agree with you that there you know, they should
be the will, but they just haven't found any you know, he's down
out, he's out there excavating the largest city in that area, Elmdador,
and to date they haven't found any evidence of beasts of burden, grays,
cows, arcs or whatever. You heard that they did discover these pins for
pigs and other animals. Jesus Christ ten to fifteen million people. There's a
lot of people to feed, so they must have had their agricultural and food
lot system down to a t because they weren't there there for a few hundred
years. They were there for thousands of years, which is it's quite amazing
to consider. So you've got to see these photographs of these light lighter scans
of these highways because they are significant and the analysis is quite unique, and
it's really you know, engineering might that put these where they are in some
of the most these jungles, and also the swamps and the waterways that they
had to intersect with. So it's really impressive when you see these these roads
crossing through swamps and being raised up to as much as fifteen feet. I'm
also amazed that there's over one hundred miles of these roads in this area,
so fascinating. We're going to learn more and more and more. And Hey,
how exciting to learn that at some point they'll be able to do ground
penetrate radar with light our technology. So real fun to have him on the
program. Hey, that reminds me. We are having our own tour with
doctor Edwin Barnhard November tenth to the seventeenth. We meet in Verajamosa and from
there we go to Livin, to the site of the major city of the
Olmec. We're there for a day and then we bust to Polanki And I've
been talking about polank for months now. I have not been there in the
years i've been to Mexico, and I gotta tell you, I'm excited about
going because it is a monstrous place, but it's also one of the best
examples of refined architecture in temples, pyramids and other buildings in that part of
the world. Our host is going to be doctor ed the whole time,
so we'll see one one day, we'll see the basics, and then the
second day we're going to see the material that most people don't see which is
some of the ruins that have not been excavated yet. After that, we
go to three or four other locations, including Bomber and Pack, which has
some of the most gorgeous murals that have been discovered. And it's just going
to be a blast. For more information, go to earth Ancients dot com,
Forward slash Tours. We're about half full right now, and that means
that we're probably going to sell out. We're only going to take a maximum
of thirty people, so get your deposit in and it's a it's a seven
day excursion with an expert, and you can't you can't find that kind of
a tour. That's the best way to go is with somebody who has not
only excavated a site, but surveyed. He surveyed ed, surveyed that entire
place about twenty plus years ago. So amazing, fantastic and really really,
really going to be a fun tour. More information Earth Ancients dot com,
Forward slash Tours. All right, that's it for today's program. I want
to thank my guest doctor Richard Hansen. He was coming to us from Harvard.
As always, the team of Ruth Thomas, Mark Foster and everyone who
makes this thing happen. Thank you, my friends, I really appreciate it.
All right, take care of you well, and we will talk to
you next time.