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This week we look at lightar,
a revolution in archaeological research and discovery,

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and we look at it from a
field archaeologist, and that's doctor Richard Hansen,

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the architect of the research and excavation
of Elmador in Guatemala. Today we're

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talking about some new research he has
done using lightar and the discovery of the

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Maya super Highways. These are some
of the largest roads ever discovered using this

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new revolutionary technology. And today we're
going to hear not only the importance of

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this, but what has now been
described as the largest megalopolis in the Americas.

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This is the large collection of cities
discovered a couple of years ago that

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range from a few thousand to up
to sixty thousand unknown cities and ruins.

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All this and more today on Earth
Ancients for Saturday, April fifty, twenty

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twenty three. This is Earth Ancients. I'm your host, Cliff Dunning.

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This is Graham Hancock. You're listening
to Earth Ancients with Cliff Dunning. We

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didn't get to do our annual ches
game with Graham last year, and that's

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because he was out promoting the Ancient
Apocalypse series on Netflix. But guess what

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I have an exclusive with him at
the Contact in the Desert. He's a

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keynote there and we are going to
do ninety plus minutes of what the heck's

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going on with the archaeological community,
their reaction to Ancient Apocalypse, and his

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upcoming debate with a noted archaeologist,
which I am not endorsing. I don't

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like to see this because I think
everybody should have their own opinion, and

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I have talked to Ed Barnhart,
our own in house archaeologists and other archaeologists

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and anthropologists who feel that each side
has a point of view. But you

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have to understand, Graham is really
threatening to a lot of archaeological communities,

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to universities, to those tenured scientists
who cannot think outside of the box.

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And this is what makes his material
and and and his books so important.

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And it's coming to his work is
coming to fruition, and a lot of

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early theories and research is coming true. And this was what is uh,

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It's really it's really wonderful about Graham. So look for that. It'll be

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a key probably a single two hour
interview with Graham on the making of Ancient

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Apocalypse, the outcome, the results, and what he's dealing with right now

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with the archaeological community, which is
not for the most part. You know,

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the Orthodoxy is not happy because they
don't want anyone to question their history.

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That's what hey, and this is
what I'm all about. This is

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what Earth Ancients is all about,
which is questioning our history, digging under

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the currents of Orthodox thinking, and
it's pretty limited Orthodox thinking. Our history

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books are very, very limited.
So look forward to that. This program

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today is on lightar and we have
an expert with us, doctor Richard Hansen,

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who is the director of the Miodor
Basin project. He's excavating El Miodor.

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But recently he released an article on
some of the first analysis of this

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lightar program that was conducted in twenty
eighteen, and what he discovered was a

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Mayan highway connecting all of these sixty
thousand ruins, these cities into one homogeneous

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culture. The ancient Maya. Now
always wonderful to have Richard. We've had

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them on a number of times and
no one is better suited to describe not

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only the light oar perspective, using
this very advanced technology to in many cases

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revolutionize excavating ancient sites, which is
one of the key proponents of an archaeologist.

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But we're going to learn today just
what some of the new enhancements to

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light art is revealing. And I'm
happy to announce that one of the aspects

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that is happening is coming to fruition
is light our stability to do ground penetrating

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scans. And why that is important
is the fact that most of these ancient

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cultures built on top of earlier people. And as we dig down, we're

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learning that the dates are being pushed
back by thousands and thousands of years for

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cultures like the Maya. But also
we learn and we find evidence of earlier

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construction, earlier styles, architectural design, civil engineering, engineering as a whole

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building that's building engineering. We find
that the earlier construction is radically different and

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as well here today, the pre
Maya had its own language and hieroglyphics that

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we just do not understand. We
have not cracked it yet. And as

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it turns out, the earliest Maya
were the most creative, engineering artistic just

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as a society, so much is
established by these early people that current archaeology

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believes had its rise around three thousand
years ago. Now we know that this

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is changing. We heard from doctor
Paulette Steves on the dates that are coming

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back for early palesticing cultures in the
United States. This is slowly trickling down

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to Mexico and South Central and South
America, and I think that we're going

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to start seeing some really really earlier
dates as more research is done and more

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testing and reevaluation is done to noted
ruins and ruins that are coming to light

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through archaeological research. So much of
this interview today has to do with this

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paper that doctor Hansen wrote with a
team of other archaeologists. It was actually

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it actually came out in December of
last year, but it was picked up

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by CNN in February of this year
and it was released with a number of

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very unusual photographs which I've published on
the Facebook page. Rich is actually going

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to send me some new photographs that
include some of the closer surface scans that

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light are conducted on some of the
perimeter cities of this series of overall scans

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that came to light and the area
is known as Miador calcomul Chorist Basin,

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which is in northern Guatemala. It
includes nine hundred and sixty four settlements which

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account for four hundred and seventeen interconnected
Maya cities. These cities are some of

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them are huge, and we're just
beginning to get an understanding how old they

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are. And as I reported over
a year ago, some of the pyramidal

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complexes are very unusual. They're probably
extremely old, and in some cases they're

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very odd multi sided pyramidal structures,
pyramids themselves. Some of the platforms which

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are these very long, they look
like runways, go on for half a

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mile or more. And the current
orthodox he thinks that they were gathering places,

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but they are consistent in a number
of major cities, and this is

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really questionable as to how the hell
that's going on. But our focus today

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is on these wonderful roads or highways
as Hanson calls them, and the Maya

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call them sockbes. And these are
the white roads that are made from unique

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cements, durable cements, durable mortar, and they're packed down in such a

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manner that they are very very flat, but they repel water and they are

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they're almost indestructible. In fact,
we've had that Jim o'con here on the

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program, who is a forensic engineer
who has written a whole book based on

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his research of the sockbeas, and
he says, flat out there and engineering

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marvel, and he believes that many
of them have lasted for thousands of years

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once they were constructed, so very
little, if any maintenance is required.

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Now as you hear this interview,
I ask Richard a very pointed question.

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Did the Maya have the wheel?
He graciously says, we still don't know.

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He says he's doubtful, but they
don't know. I cannot believe that

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the Maya, with their genius engineering, did not conceive of the will.

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And I think that you know,
if you go and you look at some

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of these museums, especially the museums
that are dedicated to the Maya, you

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will see countless examples of toys with
wheels. Well, if the toys have

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wheels on them, why don't the
actual adults of those societies have carts or

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some type of chariots or something,
if not just to move around physically,

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but to move commerce, foods,
waters, whatever, you know, to

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sell. One of the most amazing
things about this discovery we're gonna talk about

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this today is the fact that there
is over one hundred and ten miles of

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causeways or these highways that run through
this Miador basin. And if that's not

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amazing enough, these super highways support
a population of between ten and fifteen million

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inhabitants. Now, ten to fifteen
million people is a monster. That's bigger

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than San Francisco. That's bigger than
New York. I mean San Francisco here

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where I am, I think the
maximum is five million people. That's crowded.

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Ten to fifteen million people, that
is huge. And we're gonna hear

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today how they were fed, how
water was transported, how the commerce was

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created, and how it was socially
and civically established, how it was governed,

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which is very, very critical.
So really really fun interview with doctor

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Hansen, and as always we love
having around the program. I'm going to

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give you a short refresher on lightar, which is really the foundation of our

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talk today. Here is a review
of just how important light are is,

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how it works, how it detects
ruins, and why it is the number

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one tool for archaeological researchers. Have
a listened. How well do we really

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know our ancestors? How much do
we really know about our ancient past?

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These are questions at the beating heart
of modern day exploration and archaeology, and

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thanks to a game changing technological revolution
in the field, we're quickly realizing that

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actually there's so much that we're only
just beginning to understand. As with so

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many cutting edge technologies, lidar or
light detection and ranging, began life as

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a tool used in space exploration at
one time, featuring in the Apollo program

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in the early nineteen seventies as part
of early efforts by NASA to map the

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Moon. In short, it's a
mapping technique whereby lays are directed at the

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ground from the air via planes,
helicopters or drones. The lasers hit the

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ground and rebound back, with lidar
tech able to precisely measure the different distances

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at play and therefore construct an accurate
three D map of the ground. Crucially,

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though, while operating at different wavelengths, lidar can penetrate through things that

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might have otherwise obscured the picture,
things like leaves, tree canopies, and

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dense vegetation, for example, which
is why it's become such a vital and

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groundbreaking method and the exploration of Earth. The stereotypical image of an explorer or

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archaeologist is perhaps one of an intrepid
adventurer slashing their way through thick undergrowth in

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the middle of a distant jungle somewhere
in search of an ancient, legendary trail

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or a treasure laden lost city.
But while a lot of hands on groundwork

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similar to that is still carried out, times are certainly changing in the twenty

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first century. The paper, maps, compasses and machetes of tradition do still

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have a place, but nowadays with
any journey into the wilderness, there's the

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potential for it to be significantly more
planned and deliberate. Thanks to lidar,

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archaeologists can be so much more informed
before they ever set foot onto an actual

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site. Over the twenty tens,
the technology really started to take off.

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So far it has been variously used
to gain a better understanding of multiple Mayan

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sites in modern day Mexico and scattered
ancient villages in the Amazon Rainforest. It's

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also notably helped us to gain a
clearer than ever picture of the famous Angor

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Watt Temple complex en Cambodia. In
all cases, lidar maps have been produced

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from above, and they've revealed to
archaeologists that the extent of these ancient locations

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is usually far greater than we had
previously thought. It's now known, for

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example, that angor Watt was once
but one part of an even vaster ancient

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settlement, much larger than previously predicted, with lidar images able to pick out

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the roads, waterways, and homes
that once crowded around the temple. Of

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course, the evidence for what lidar
is now picking up has always been there,

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and perhaps it would have been discovered
by traditional exploration on foot given enough

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time. But this technology is fast
tracking us to near instant results. It's

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said that lidar can achieve in just
a few hours what it would otherwise have

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taken years of traditional groundwork to figure
out, as the images are captured from

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above by machines. It's not as
though lidar is a dangerous pursuit either.

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It's exploration at a distance, yes, but it undoubtedly gets results. Still,

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there are some that remain doubtful as
to how heavily we should be relying

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on this technology, and to a
certain extent, it still won't replace classic

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on the ground exploration. What ldar
can do has produced high resolution images accurate

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to within around twenty centimeters. But
what it still can't do is determine exactly

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what it is that it's mapping.
For that, archaeologists still need to get

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up close on the ground in the
thicket and in the mud. LDAR is

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perhaps best used more like a contemporary
guide, then highlighting areas of interest that

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a site that might otherwise have been
easily overlooked simply because the jungle have become

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too overgrown or the landscape have been
too drastically altered. In modern times,

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the laser imaging means that now,
rather than blindly searching for things that may

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or may not be there, today's
explorer can confidently descend onto a location that

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they know will yield results. It's
one reason why it's said by some that

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we've recently entered into a new golden
age for exploration. Although on the one

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hand, it would seem that because
most of the Earth is at least accounted

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for on maps, there isn't a
great deal of our world left to discover.

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On the other led, our technology
is proving we've only just begun to

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scratch the surface of what's really there, and in just the first few years

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since its introduction into archaeological study,
it's genuinely forcing us to rewrite whole periods

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of human history. Now, one
thing that Audio did not describe is the

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great expense of the light our technology. It's now today you can use it

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on drones, so it's compact.
Most of the best light our scans are

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done with single engine planes. In
some cases where planes aren't appropriate, they

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strap it onto a helicopter. But
the technology is extremely expensive. It's in

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the hundreds of thousands of dollars for
a small area. If you get into

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a couple of miles square, it
gets into millions of dollars. And it's

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not just the scans itself. You
have to have a technician who can process

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the scans and then deliver it to
an output system which eventually delivers a scan

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image which can be studied in various
resolutions. So the technology is still very

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very much in its infancy, and
as I mentioned in the beginning of the

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program, the New Science, the
new versions of it are beginning to slowly

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pierce the surface of the planet,
the surface and allow archaeologists to kind of

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look under a few feet. Now, when it gets to the point where

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it can pierce the surface of the
ground several feet then you're going to have

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a super super tool that allows archaeologists
to pick and choose where to begin digging.

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And that's a real expensive undertaking when
you have to choose which building is

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going to be excavating, which ones
has to be left alone. If you

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know ahead of time that there is
a subsection, that there's a pyramid or

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a building underneath the main structure that's
on the surface, then you have gold.

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So my program today is uncovering the
Maya super Highways, and my guest

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is doctor Richard Hansen. Each year
Earth Ancients heads to Mexico for a private

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tour of some of the most intriguing
ruins from the Maya and other Mesoamerican cultures.

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This year, November tenth to the
seventeenth, we'll be heading to Vera

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Hamosa in southern Mexico to see the
site of the omec ruins at Lavina.

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This includes a visit to the world
famous outdoor museum where there are megalists of

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all sizes and shapes. We then
head to Palak in Chiapas and visit this

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jewel of the Maya Empire with doctor
Edwin Barnhart as our host. We'll be

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there for two days and then we
head out to Bottompeck, site of one

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of the largest murals left to us
from the Maya Classic period. For more

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00:21:37.480 --> 00:21:42.839
information and details on this tour,
go to earth Ancients dot com Forward slash

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00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:48.319
tours and we will see the entire
itinerary and more details. This is a

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00:21:48.440 --> 00:21:55.200
one of a kind tour with doctor
ed Barnhart and yours truly. For more

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00:21:55.200 --> 00:22:56.839
information, Earth Ancients dot com Forward
slash Tours. M H. It's always

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great to have doctor Richard Hanson on
the program with us. He is the

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director of the Elma Door Basin Project
and he is also intrically involved in research

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in the Guatemala area. As you
know, in twenty eighteen there was a

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major light survey done of the Guatemalan
biasphere which revealed over sixty thousand structures which

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are pyramids, buildings, platforms,
causeways, and what was amazing about this

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discovery was that it was holding a
population of roughly ten to fifteen million people.

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Now I have rich on the program
today because he has followed up on

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that survey with his own analysis,
one of the really first solid analysis of

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this lightar scan. And in February
of this year, CNN did a article

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on it. The area that has
covered is considered the Miador calculmul Karst Basin.

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It's northern Guatemala and it's always a
pleasure to have Richard Hansen on the

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program. Rich How you doing.
It's great to see it. Good to

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see you, Cliff, Thank you
for the opportunity. How significant I mean,

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obviously you know one of the things
let me just back up for a

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minute. One of the things I
thought was fascinating you as a field researcher,

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and course you're excavating Elmador. One
of the things I thought was fascinating

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is that you said to me that
based on the size of this complex,

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these sixty thousand ruins, which are
multiple cities. We're going to talk about

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that in a minute, you said
that it would take approximately over a hundred

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years to correctly survey and begin just
begin excavating that site. Now, it's

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probably after looking at it, it's
probably held a lot longer than a hundred

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years, isn't it. It will
take a lot longer. But let me

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back up a minute. The study
that we were reciting was a study that

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was done after ours, and when
they found sixty thousand structures, but they're

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not all contemporaneous. There are different
periods of time when we and it was

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separate sites. They did a site
serving in one area and a site serving

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another area. And what we did
was we did a whole continuous area,

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so we saw all the relationship between
all these cities at the same time,

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and the architecture is consistent. We've
dated, We've worked in fifty six ancient

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cities out there in the Mire Door
Collic Mole car space and now, and

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we know the contemporaneity of the cities. We know when the causeways were built,

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we know when the dams were built, we know when the terraces were

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built. We have all the evidence
that we've been amassing over forty two years

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of working in this area to understand
the majesty in the complexity of the early

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Maya centuries before the time of Christ. So are you say you got into

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this uh some of these uh places
that were scanned and this twenty eighteen scan

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and did some carbon dating on them. Oh. Yeah, we've worked in

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fifty six ancient cities out there.
Oh you've already gotten into that place.

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You already got into there, We've
already done the excavations. We already done

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the exploration when he did mapping,
but I didn't do the lightar. I

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pioneered the lightar in guatemal in twenty
fifteen and again in two thousand and eighteen

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to complete the cars basin area.
This is the area that we've actually examined,

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this entire area. Here is the
area that we've been looking at,

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representing three thousand and five hundred square
kilometers of Christine Jungle. Wow. But

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man, it's hard to find cities
on your when you're on foot, you

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can't see, you know, five
people one way or the other. To

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find these ancient cities clustered in this
basin. And then we found is the

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nine hundred and sixty four ancient Maya
sites that form four hundred and seventeen ancient

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cities. Okay, Now, what
makes this article that CNN reported on in

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what your analysis comes up which is
fascinating is what you call a super highway.

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And I'm fascinated by the sockbies,
the Maya white roads. You estimate

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that the mileages were on one hundred
and ten miles of this network. That

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is amazing. That's right, one
hundred and ten miles and these causeways,

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these causeways are all pre classic.
Well, we have we have one hundred

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and seventy seven kilometers one hundred and
ten miles of pre classic causeways that are

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fifty yards wide and two to five
yards high. They're elevated, they're all

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constructed, and they were white.
And that's the word soci is white bay

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is road, white roads. The
reason for that may be a little more

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pragmatic because during the day it's one
hundred and twenty degrees in the heat of

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the day, but at night,
with starlight and with moonlight, those causeways,

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white causeways are moving arteries of traffic
and products and commodities that they could

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also move at night, which makes
the much more logical, much more sensible

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than trying to move all this stuff
on your back during the day. Remember,

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there are no wheel vehicles and no
beasts of bird. This was all

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human labor. Yeah, I want
to talk to you about the wheel here

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in a minute, because there's some
real contradictions when it comes to those places.

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Talk a little bit about the sockbes
rich what those are engineering feats,

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because I know they're composed of mud
and actually mayan cement, And then I

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guess a top layer of mortar or
something that is kind of a cap.

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But talk a little bit about the
construction of the White Roads to Sock Peak.

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So they, first of all,
these roads were carefully engineers. You

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pointed out, Cliff, these were. These were done by architects. I

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mean these they were professionally done.
And not only that, but we have

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evidence that they were sighting on certain
pyramids in the distance as a straight line.

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So they had straight line causeways and
then they would maybe go or swim

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over to another city, or they
had appendages to another city. I published

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a paper recently about how we we
point out they're called dendritic systems many and

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they're like fingers. There's the central
point and then you have all these causeways

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radiating out to subsidiary suburbs or other
cities. And in the case of Mirador,

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we have one hundred and ten miles
of major major causeways that were constructed

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in the pre Classic, beginning at
five hundred eighty BC, the earliest date

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we have for the construction of these, and they were they actually quarried stone

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out of quarries and put the shrubble
in the fill mixed with clay, and

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then they plastered over with a thick
layer of maya cement, that lime cement.

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So that's why they're white roads there. That lime cement just made them

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white. But they're forty yards wide, fifty yards wide. And in some

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of these causeways we would have never
found if it wasn't for the lightar,

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because you could fathom, and you're
in a jungle, who could fathom there'd

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be a road that big. The
boy from from the aerial perspective, from

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the lightar, we could see very
clearly all these massive causeways that linked all

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these cities together in an extraordinary complex
city. Here's one of the images we

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published in Ancient Messo America. You
can go to go to Cambridge Core Ancient

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Missile American, look up light or
you can find in that paper. But

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all of these white lines here are
all the causeways, the major causeways that

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link these together. And there's one
hundred and seventy seven kilometers of pre classic

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causeways and twelve kilometers of classic period
causeways. Many and excuse me, but

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00:31:30.240 --> 00:31:37.559
all those classic period causeways were intrat
site, meaning they were just connecting small

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little groups within a specific site.
The big, major or inter site causeways

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were all pre classic, constructed centrist
before the time of Christ. So you're

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taking uh surveys and you're taking sampling
of these causeways and data you're giving us

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pre classic, classic and so forth. Is that what you're saying or yeah,

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yeah, we have Actually I have
a scholar named Enrique Ernandez that's been

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working now for more than a decade
on causeways alone, escavating the causeways,

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get in the sequences of the causeways, trenching the causeways, to understand the

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00:32:19.240 --> 00:32:28.039
construction form in. He's got a
bachelor's thesis on this, he's working on

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00:32:28.119 --> 00:32:31.680
his master's right now, and we'll
get him into a PhD program on causeways.

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We know more about these causeways than
we would have ever imagined, and

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00:32:37.680 --> 00:32:43.160
now that we've got the light ar, we now know the extent and nature

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of these causeways. What's also fascinating
though, as its the border the Mirador

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Basin, cacolic Moal Basin, and
this is a an emmy. I don't

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know if you can see that very
clear. Here's the border with Mexico right

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through here. Right off of the
basin is in Guatemala and half the basins

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in Mexico. But the fact is
that none of those causeways go outside the

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natural borders of the basin. That's
very interesting. It contained, it was

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a contained state, an incipient state, if you will, that was forming

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in this area. They were building
eighty meter tall pyramids. They were building

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00:33:23.200 --> 00:33:34.599
massive compalaces of compounds and temples simultaneously, which is an extraordinary concentration of population

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number one and an extraordinary control of
labor number two. They were building massive

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00:33:40.079 --> 00:33:51.000
building programs that defy the abilities of
lesser polities, so that it required a

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state. It required a state to
execute an administer in control that volume of

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00:33:59.039 --> 00:34:05.039
architecture, that extent and vision of
unified state. Now, let's look at

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00:34:05.079 --> 00:34:09.800
the US. When did the US
enter the industrial age. We have the

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00:34:09.840 --> 00:34:15.480
Transcontinental Railroad. Yeah, yeah,
we have the freeway system that units us

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00:34:15.519 --> 00:34:20.039
all together. So products in Los
Angeles or San Francisco are in New York

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00:34:20.039 --> 00:34:23.320
City in three days, and vice
versa. And the Maya caught onto that

334
00:34:23.519 --> 00:34:31.079
at five hundred BC. They were
constructing enormous systems of communication that linked all

335
00:34:31.119 --> 00:34:38.360
these cities together in a vast,
vast complex society, centuries earlier than what

336
00:34:38.480 --> 00:34:43.000
we thought possible. Yeah, it's
what's what makes it amazing is that these

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00:34:43.039 --> 00:34:49.679
are very sophisticated people. I mean
the engineering prowess of this causeway is mind

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00:34:49.719 --> 00:34:54.840
blowing. I mean you actually report
that in some areas there is Why does

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00:34:54.880 --> 00:35:00.599
one hundred and thirty one feet or
forty meters is that? I mean,

340
00:35:00.960 --> 00:35:06.800
how many people do you estimate?
We're at its peak? We're traveling the

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00:35:06.880 --> 00:35:09.280
causeways? Is there any way to
know? Well, there had to be

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00:35:09.400 --> 00:35:16.679
millions in the basin to construct that
number of cities simultaneously. What's interesting is

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00:35:16.719 --> 00:35:22.280
not one person lives there today,
not one. It's just so overgrown I

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00:35:22.280 --> 00:35:24.840
guess, all abandoned and overgrown.
But what it tells us, also,

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00:35:25.199 --> 00:35:34.559
Cliff, is the fragility of civilization. Yeah, it's amazing. Who was

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00:35:34.599 --> 00:35:37.360
thinking are you in or are you
in Los Angeles or San Francisco? Where

347
00:35:37.360 --> 00:35:42.639
are you at in San Francisco?
San Francisco? Who's thinking in San Francisco

348
00:35:43.280 --> 00:35:49.519
of trees drawing all over your streets
and buildings and rubble and and puma is

349
00:35:49.559 --> 00:35:54.719
walking all over your buildings today and
all gone and abandoned nobody. Yeah,

350
00:35:55.000 --> 00:36:00.320
we're living in the apogee of complex
society. And same time they were thinking

351
00:36:00.360 --> 00:36:05.119
the same thing. They had no
idea what was going to happen to them.

352
00:36:05.599 --> 00:36:09.679
That rendered the whole area completely uninhabited. And that's what makes it fascinating

353
00:36:09.719 --> 00:36:16.159
from an anthropological perspective and fascinating from
a human story perspective. I think it's

354
00:36:16.159 --> 00:36:23.320
amazing that the earliest or the pre
Maya, which is Elmador, were really

355
00:36:23.679 --> 00:36:30.239
the technicians. I mean, there's
the largest pyramids in the Americas where you're

356
00:36:30.280 --> 00:36:36.440
located, and there's also these sockbes. What is your feeling now, and

357
00:36:36.480 --> 00:36:39.599
I haven't talked to you for about
a year, what do you feel is

358
00:36:39.639 --> 00:36:43.920
the true age of the Maya now? Then? When I say that,

359
00:36:45.400 --> 00:36:49.719
you are one of the only scholars
that has to and I don't see it

360
00:36:49.760 --> 00:36:54.199
out very much, but you believe
that the Maya were contemporaries of the Old

361
00:36:54.199 --> 00:37:00.199
Mech absolutely. In fact. In
fact, Cliff, last year we came

362
00:37:00.280 --> 00:37:06.039
up with an Olmec plaque in a
trash heap at Mirador. What does that

363
00:37:06.079 --> 00:37:10.800
mean? That means there were there
contemporaneous Oh, a plaque that says I

364
00:37:10.920 --> 00:37:15.360
work with the Old Yeah. And
what does the plaque say, Well,

365
00:37:15.360 --> 00:37:20.320
it just has an image of the
Olmic face, the omic symbol, and

366
00:37:20.400 --> 00:37:23.840
its completely intact. But it was
in a Most Oldmic artifacts are found in

367
00:37:24.239 --> 00:37:30.639
classic or pulse classic contexts, in
ceremonial contexts, but this was in a

368
00:37:30.679 --> 00:37:34.760
trash heat, meaning that there there's
more to the story there that we don't

369
00:37:34.760 --> 00:37:39.920
know because this wasn't in a ceremonial
complex. But it shows the contemporaneity of

370
00:37:39.960 --> 00:37:46.599
these occupations. We have solid evidence
now of major occupation at a thousand BC.

371
00:37:47.480 --> 00:37:51.880
So the Mexicans like to say the
Old Maker the mother culture of messo

372
00:37:51.920 --> 00:37:59.440
America, and we're proposing that the
Olmec are a sister culture because there were

373
00:37:59.440 --> 00:38:05.920
others, is like the Sapotec,
like the Maya, that we're emerging simultaneously

374
00:38:06.440 --> 00:38:15.360
with that massive growth and massive population
and massive agricultural systems to feed their populations.

375
00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:22.159
Yeah, and so you're saying that
the earliest Maya, let's just go

376
00:38:22.199 --> 00:38:28.119
aheaded for example and talk about Elma
or because that's your sweet spot. Is

377
00:38:28.360 --> 00:38:35.960
what a thousand BC at the earliest. And we have evidence, a consistent

378
00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:42.840
evidence of a presence of corn planning
said roving populations at twenty six hundred BC.

379
00:38:44.000 --> 00:38:47.599
We have numerous numerous locations we come
put that same day date and the

380
00:38:47.639 --> 00:38:52.199
pollen and isotope, and the finalists
tell us that they were planning corn,

381
00:38:52.599 --> 00:38:59.159
but they weren't building anything other than
perishable, superimperishable buildings, small huts with

382
00:38:59.320 --> 00:39:04.760
palm fat truths. But at a
thousand BC, they'd be in building platforms,

383
00:39:05.320 --> 00:39:12.519
stone elevated permanent, sedentary populations.
And by eight hundred BC we've got

384
00:39:12.559 --> 00:39:16.760
pyramids being formed, and by five
hundred, four hundred BC, they're they're

385
00:39:16.760 --> 00:39:23.159
building structures thirty meters high, and
by three hundred BC they're eighty meters highs.

386
00:39:23.719 --> 00:39:30.519
They're monsters, they're they're huge,
and for some curious reason and Takeshi

387
00:39:30.599 --> 00:39:35.079
Inomata, the University of Arizona's found
the same thing in Tabasco. For some

388
00:39:35.199 --> 00:39:42.239
reason, the earliest manifestations of complex
societies throughout the world are always monumental.

389
00:39:43.559 --> 00:39:47.639
For example, the big pyramids of
Egypt, they're not late in their society.

390
00:39:47.719 --> 00:39:53.760
Those among the earliest manifestations that are
complexity. So there's an emphasis on

391
00:39:53.880 --> 00:40:00.880
monumentality that seems to attract and be
wired in the human mind, makes these

392
00:40:00.119 --> 00:40:09.159
magnificent and extraordinary investments in monumentality,
and in that implies some kind of a

393
00:40:09.239 --> 00:40:20.199
way to to to convey a message
to us fascinating. Hey, I'm gonna

394
00:40:20.199 --> 00:40:22.599
throw you some anomalous curves here for
a second, and let's see what happens.

395
00:40:22.960 --> 00:40:29.719
You're gonna put you'll put me in
my place. Michael Cole was was

396
00:40:30.519 --> 00:40:36.039
had a great deal of problematic issues. When someone asked him what about diffusion?

397
00:40:36.159 --> 00:40:45.039
What about other cultural exchanges UH from
the Southeast Asian UH communities into into

398
00:40:45.079 --> 00:40:49.519
the Americas. It wasn't until he
retired that he says, there's a great

399
00:40:49.559 --> 00:40:57.119
deal of similarities between the Camere pyramids
and the Maya pyramids. But what do

400
00:40:57.199 --> 00:41:01.440
you say. Do you say the
Maya are purely self contained in their development,

401
00:41:02.000 --> 00:41:07.760
or do you do you have any
sense of any other cultures? Perhaps

402
00:41:07.480 --> 00:41:10.960
handing over, for lack of a
better term, a blueprint on how to

403
00:41:12.039 --> 00:41:16.960
construct one of these eighty meter plus
pyramids. Well, Michael CoA is absolutely

404
00:41:17.039 --> 00:41:22.480
right. There are some fascinating structures
of the Camere of societies that can be

405
00:41:22.800 --> 00:41:29.880
easily placed in a Maya city.
The problem is the contemporary eighty the Camere

406
00:41:30.079 --> 00:41:35.599
much later than most of the big
Maya stuff that we're looking at. It's

407
00:41:35.679 --> 00:41:39.639
interesting that one of the most common
forms of architecture in the ancient world,

408
00:41:39.960 --> 00:41:45.239
no matter where you go, China
and Mesopotamia, Egypt, South America,

409
00:41:45.519 --> 00:41:52.320
North America, even in Kahokia in
the United States, we have parambal structures.

410
00:41:52.599 --> 00:41:59.360
There were wired to build monumentality in
a way to get elevation is through

411
00:41:59.360 --> 00:42:05.960
a pyramid. So but the issue
is that in comparison to Egyptian pyramids,

412
00:42:06.000 --> 00:42:10.960
which are strictly funerary, these pyramids
are functional. There were functional cathedrals,

413
00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:15.960
if you will, that will allowed
access to the summit, for rituals,

414
00:42:16.119 --> 00:42:23.559
for observation, for pronouncements, for
royal weddings, for celebrations of royal events,

415
00:42:24.119 --> 00:42:29.840
um, celebration of period ending events. These were all part of the

416
00:42:29.880 --> 00:42:36.199
construction of these of these big um
of these big buildings. And I guess

417
00:42:36.239 --> 00:42:40.400
one for the lack of a better
model, we can look at Catholic cathedrals

418
00:42:40.519 --> 00:42:45.519
throughout Europe and throughout in Latin America. All every little town has got their

419
00:42:45.599 --> 00:42:51.679
big, fancy Catholic Catholic cathedral,
and these are the same the same general

420
00:42:51.719 --> 00:42:57.039
idea, you know, to invest
in the gods, to invest in something

421
00:42:57.079 --> 00:43:02.760
that unites a society and makes the
society almo genius fascinating. All right,

422
00:43:02.840 --> 00:43:10.000
here's another a novelly for you.
Super highway. And you've used the term

423
00:43:10.039 --> 00:43:14.320
many many times. When we think
of a highway, we think of vehicles,

424
00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:21.239
we think of a movement with the
wheel. I've been to a number

425
00:43:21.239 --> 00:43:28.440
of museums that have Maya artifacts and
seen toys with wheels. Yeah, why

426
00:43:28.480 --> 00:43:35.960
do we not see wheels or suggest
wheels on these highways, on these roads?

427
00:43:36.840 --> 00:43:40.840
That's been a problem that's fascinating scholars
for decades. We don't know.

428
00:43:42.800 --> 00:43:45.519
I mean, all you have to
do is roll a rock down the pyramid

429
00:43:45.559 --> 00:43:50.000
and you get the idea. I'm
sure the Maya may have had the concept.

430
00:43:50.039 --> 00:43:52.800
But understand a couple of things here. One of them may have been

431
00:43:52.840 --> 00:44:00.320
the pragmatic use of causeways. When
you go to Pompeii or Herculaneum or the

432
00:44:00.400 --> 00:44:07.159
Appian Way in Italy, you find
ruts that deep in stone from the chariot

433
00:44:07.199 --> 00:44:12.639
wheels, and these causeways are only
their roads are two meters wide, right

434
00:44:12.920 --> 00:44:19.480
right, looks eight feet wide.
The stock line sumit is much softer than

435
00:44:19.559 --> 00:44:29.880
stone. So it would have been
a formidable maintenance project to have to run

436
00:44:29.920 --> 00:44:34.960
a vehicle up and down those those
causeways. Um it wouldn't. They wouldn't

437
00:44:34.960 --> 00:44:39.199
the stucka wouldn't have lasted very long
at all. But for some reason,

438
00:44:39.360 --> 00:44:45.920
we have no evidence whatsoever they used
the wheel, and and they everything that

439
00:44:46.000 --> 00:44:52.159
you see in a Maya city was
brought in by what we call the tump

440
00:44:52.239 --> 00:44:57.599
line economy. A tump line is
a line across the forehead of the basket

441
00:44:57.639 --> 00:45:00.360
on your back, and that line
attaches to that basket. And they have

442
00:45:00.480 --> 00:45:08.159
moved everything with that kind of economy, including stuff like basalt and obsidian and

443
00:45:08.440 --> 00:45:14.280
granite from three and four hundred miles
away. They're bringing that material in.

444
00:45:14.880 --> 00:45:21.360
We have evidence of where they're bringing
obsidian from as far as a thousand miles

445
00:45:21.400 --> 00:45:25.760
away from the highlands of Mexico.
So they were all doing that with a

446
00:45:25.840 --> 00:45:30.480
tumpline economy, meaning that it was
human labor. And the fact they did

447
00:45:30.519 --> 00:45:37.360
not have the wheel is absolutely fascinating. They were One of the reasons the

448
00:45:37.400 --> 00:45:45.440
Spanish has such such interesting success was
the use of gunpowder and guns, cannon,

449
00:45:45.880 --> 00:45:52.079
horses, and the wheel. So
it's an interesting insight into whether it

450
00:45:52.119 --> 00:45:59.639
was a cultural phenomenon or whether it
was a practicality. I don't know,

451
00:46:00.079 --> 00:46:04.639
I honestly don't know, you've been
digging around for decades and you would think

452
00:46:05.519 --> 00:46:09.239
that you would find a wheel or
a chariot or a cart or something,

453
00:46:09.719 --> 00:46:15.400
but you haven't. And nobody.
Yeah, no paintings, there's no images,

454
00:46:15.440 --> 00:46:22.400
there's no art depicting any of that
kind of technology incorporated in Maya society.

455
00:46:22.519 --> 00:46:28.519
Yeah, but as a MIAs rich, isn't that peculiar? Yeah it

456
00:46:28.679 --> 00:46:30.239
is. I guess you can't say
anything about it. You've already explained it.

457
00:46:30.239 --> 00:46:37.920
It's like it makes it fascinating.
And because of the peculiarity, for

458
00:46:37.960 --> 00:46:43.079
example, there are it's a it's
a maybe a cultural thing. You know,

459
00:46:43.280 --> 00:46:46.800
we have our cultural norms too.
For example, are our women put

460
00:46:47.159 --> 00:46:52.039
black stuff on their eyelashes and red
stuff on their lips? You know,

461
00:46:52.400 --> 00:46:58.159
that's a cultural thing. But a
hundred years from now or five hundred years

462
00:46:58.159 --> 00:47:01.519
and I may look at look at
that as barbaric, you know, or

463
00:47:01.559 --> 00:47:08.280
primitive. Yeah, you know,
very strange. Let's talk about the causeways

464
00:47:08.320 --> 00:47:14.199
a little a little more. I
had a forensic engineer, a guy named

465
00:47:14.280 --> 00:47:21.800
Jim O'Cahan who wrote a book on
Mayen building, and he spoke about the

466
00:47:22.000 --> 00:47:29.280
design of the sockbes and in some
places and you were actually right about this.

467
00:47:29.360 --> 00:47:34.760
They were between ten and fifteen feet
tall. And they did this because

468
00:47:34.800 --> 00:47:39.159
they wanted to pass through swamps and
water ways and things like that. They

469
00:47:39.199 --> 00:47:45.639
really figured these out pretty well,
didn't they. They were actually they engineered

470
00:47:45.639 --> 00:47:50.320
it. Not. There wasn't a
haphazard kind of design theme, was it

471
00:47:50.360 --> 00:47:54.000
for exactly right, Cliff, These
were all carefully engineered and designed from the

472
00:47:54.079 --> 00:47:59.440
get go ten to fifteen feet high, and not only in the lowland areas.

473
00:47:59.440 --> 00:48:04.400
When they got the uplanders, they
also elevated the causeways, so meaning

474
00:48:04.440 --> 00:48:07.880
that wherever you were, anybody can
see anything that was moving back and forth

475
00:48:07.920 --> 00:48:13.079
on those causeways. They were elevated
and visible to everybody surrounding the surrounding the

476
00:48:13.119 --> 00:48:19.320
causeway. So it was it was
a way to keep everybody informed. It

477
00:48:19.400 --> 00:48:23.360
was a way to be aware of
military presence. It was a way to

478
00:48:23.400 --> 00:48:30.199
be aware of royal processions and royal
parades and ceremonial activities. It was a

479
00:48:30.239 --> 00:48:38.960
way that they could could move products
and unite societies, unite all these cities

480
00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:44.639
in a trends in a in a
complex web of economic, social and political

481
00:48:44.679 --> 00:48:50.199
interactions. Yeah, talk a little
bit about the importance of the of the

482
00:48:50.320 --> 00:48:53.719
roads the highways as a social economic
You just hinted on it just now,

483
00:48:53.760 --> 00:49:00.639
but it really would be a place
for socializing. Do we see like little

484
00:49:00.719 --> 00:49:06.639
stops here in their little buildings that
people must Yes, they're right there are

485
00:49:06.679 --> 00:49:08.559
there are little places of little buildings
on the side where they could get a

486
00:49:09.599 --> 00:49:15.159
you know, a jar of water, or whether they could get some tamalies

487
00:49:15.480 --> 00:49:22.360
make for to say, tamales ortis, I mean these guys are these guys

488
00:49:22.400 --> 00:49:25.239
have the same vices and virtues that
we all do. They were looking for

489
00:49:25.360 --> 00:49:29.679
the opportunity to make a buck too, So I think that they would have

490
00:49:29.679 --> 00:49:34.440
had some nice tasty tamali is available. It would have had corn available,

491
00:49:34.719 --> 00:49:38.639
They would have had chili's available.
They would have had a wide variety of

492
00:49:38.679 --> 00:49:45.280
products that being available for transport in
in commodities. The other advantage of the

493
00:49:45.320 --> 00:49:52.559
causeways though, if since the rainfall
in in in tropical forest is somewhat sporadic,

494
00:49:52.719 --> 00:49:57.559
you will get a ton of rain
in one area and dry and in

495
00:49:57.800 --> 00:50:02.039
twenty mile twenty kilometers away. It's
own drive. Because it's sporadic, it's

496
00:50:02.119 --> 00:50:08.360
eve apple transporation, which means that
the jungle creates its own rainfall patterns.

497
00:50:08.800 --> 00:50:15.320
But if one area of the basin
didn't have corn for lack of water,

498
00:50:15.360 --> 00:50:20.480
but they had corn in other parts
of the basin, the causeways facilitated the

499
00:50:20.559 --> 00:50:28.000
transport of corn to these other areas, and that provided unique advantages for administrative

500
00:50:28.039 --> 00:50:32.119
governments because it showed the how the
government could provide and how the government could

501
00:50:32.199 --> 00:50:39.679
unite populations. It allowed allegiance and
loyalty from the other cities to centralize government,

502
00:50:40.159 --> 00:50:46.679
and it allowed them to be able
to interact socially in economically, one

503
00:50:46.719 --> 00:50:52.079
with another, which made them a
unified polity. And look at the United

504
00:50:52.119 --> 00:50:58.920
States. We're different states, but
we're united because of our economies, because

505
00:50:58.960 --> 00:51:05.920
of our big because of our social
and political interactions. So they were doing

506
00:51:05.960 --> 00:51:09.920
the same thing on a little smaller
scale of course Mirador Basin. But the

507
00:51:09.960 --> 00:51:14.559
fact that it had occurred here such
an early period of time is fascinating.

508
00:51:15.159 --> 00:51:17.559
You know, when I first started
in nineteen seventy nine and working in this

509
00:51:17.679 --> 00:51:25.000
area, the pre Classic Maya were
hunters and gatherers because for forty years the

510
00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:30.000
only pyramid they had from the pre
Classic period was a pyramid at Washaktun.

511
00:51:30.119 --> 00:51:35.039
It was eight meters high, and
since there were no others, they thought,

512
00:51:35.039 --> 00:51:38.119
well, there it is. You
know, that's the pinnacle of their

513
00:51:38.159 --> 00:51:44.559
complexity. They must have been primitive
and simple populations like we see in modern

514
00:51:44.679 --> 00:51:50.639
day Amazon or modern day Congo today, hunters and gatherers living in the exact

515
00:51:50.719 --> 00:51:54.199
same environment that the ancient Maya were, and they're still hunters and gathers.

516
00:51:54.719 --> 00:52:00.559
So what is it that propels of
society living in the same environment to become

517
00:52:00.599 --> 00:52:04.880
one of the greatest civilizations in the
world and another one to remain as a

518
00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:08.960
hunter and gathering society. And that's
been a fascinating story, and that's what

519
00:52:09.039 --> 00:52:14.960
we're trying to understand. From the
anthropological perspective of all this kind of research.

520
00:52:15.360 --> 00:52:19.360
You'd be nice if you could pull
out another codis there or you're located

521
00:52:19.400 --> 00:52:23.079
in the you know, especially finding
one of those burials and all of a

522
00:52:23.119 --> 00:52:28.719
sudden it's like, uh, well
look what we found here? A fifth

523
00:52:28.760 --> 00:52:32.519
codis Yeah, a codex. A
codex would be there's only four in the

524
00:52:32.559 --> 00:52:37.119
world. Yeah, only four in
the world. The Spanish destroyed what they

525
00:52:37.159 --> 00:52:42.480
could. We are aware of.
Another was found in nineteen eighty three by

526
00:52:42.480 --> 00:52:47.840
a looter at a psite Colla Lamuerta. This was a from I got this

527
00:52:47.920 --> 00:52:52.840
some informants. They they described the
book. It was a codex book and

528
00:52:52.920 --> 00:52:57.559
them in a classic period book.
The four that we have are from both

529
00:52:57.639 --> 00:53:00.840
classic periods. You found this book
and they put it in his knapsack and

530
00:53:00.960 --> 00:53:07.400
was trudging back to the village of
Carmelita. And he got to an ancient

531
00:53:07.440 --> 00:53:09.920
city called teen Tal and by then
the whole thing had turned to dusk,

532
00:53:09.960 --> 00:53:17.199
so he dumped it out and went
on his way. How terrible. Oh,

533
00:53:19.320 --> 00:53:24.480
I just I just to this day, I cringe at the at the

534
00:53:24.639 --> 00:53:30.199
And the problem is that that building
where we found where would have been found.

535
00:53:30.800 --> 00:53:34.760
We got to that building about six
months later, So if we'd have

536
00:53:34.800 --> 00:53:38.400
got there first, we'd have had
the chance to recover a classic period codex

537
00:53:38.920 --> 00:53:43.599
that is now lost forever. And
we don't know if I mean, it's

538
00:53:44.239 --> 00:53:49.039
that humid and moist tropical for us
where he gets six to ten feet of

539
00:53:49.159 --> 00:53:52.039
rain a year. Yeah, you
know, how can these things survive?

540
00:53:52.480 --> 00:53:59.320
Yeah? And that this was found
is it's just it's just it's just heart

541
00:53:59.360 --> 00:54:02.679
wrenching. Its heart wrenching. That's
that's that's not a good story. With

542
00:54:02.719 --> 00:54:07.840
a bad ending. Talk a little
bit about how the causeways were integrated into

543
00:54:07.880 --> 00:54:13.519
the city. Do they actually as
an example at Almador, do the causeways

544
00:54:13.559 --> 00:54:20.079
actually connect with the civic area?
Oh do they do? They stop on

545
00:54:20.119 --> 00:54:22.360
the outer perimeter. Oh no,
then you have to just walk in.

546
00:54:22.880 --> 00:54:28.360
Great question, Cliff. There's two
types of causeways. There's the intrast site

547
00:54:28.760 --> 00:54:34.440
causeways which are within the civic centers, and there's the inter site which go

548
00:54:34.559 --> 00:54:40.519
from different cities to different cities.
Um and let's that's called the interstate or

549
00:54:40.599 --> 00:54:45.880
intrat state if you will, And
we have called interstate freeways, right,

550
00:54:45.960 --> 00:54:52.119
okay, in an inter site causeway
joins all the different cities. But an

551
00:54:52.239 --> 00:54:57.239
intra site causeways what's found within them? And we have many, many examples

552
00:54:57.280 --> 00:55:01.079
of those big pre classic causeways that
are thinking suburbs, but they only go

553
00:55:01.119 --> 00:55:05.960
to the suburb. They don't go
beyond. They go to the suburbs.

554
00:55:05.960 --> 00:55:08.719
So it links all the suburbs to
the hub. It's like a like a

555
00:55:08.800 --> 00:55:16.079
wheel with spokes going out in these
suburbs are linked politically, economically, and

556
00:55:16.159 --> 00:55:22.360
socially by those causeways to the city
center and the hub. And in the

557
00:55:22.400 --> 00:55:28.079
case of Mirador, it's one hundred
and thirty two square kilometers of monumental architecture,

558
00:55:28.119 --> 00:55:35.559
meaning buildings higher than forty five feet
right, and that's one of the

559
00:55:35.639 --> 00:55:42.320
largest ancient cities in the world.
Actually, it's extraordinariness size complexity in all

560
00:55:42.400 --> 00:55:46.960
these causeways that link all these suburbs
together, and then you have the inter

561
00:55:47.119 --> 00:55:52.880
site causeways that go out and extend
radiate out to the different cities. So

562
00:55:53.000 --> 00:56:01.159
it's the intrasite or microcosms of the
mackerel scale that we have going on in

563
00:56:01.159 --> 00:56:07.719
that basin at that time, and
it's a wonderful insight into human behavior.

564
00:56:07.760 --> 00:56:13.199
It's a story of the humans.
It's a page of the human story that

565
00:56:13.280 --> 00:56:19.800
we have never seen before. And
that's our objective is to get that story

566
00:56:19.840 --> 00:56:25.880
out so people can appreciate and understand
the majesty and the complexity of the humans,

567
00:56:27.119 --> 00:56:32.760
the human spirit. We're gonna take
a short break to give our sponsors

568
00:56:32.760 --> 00:56:38.039
a chance to identify themselves, and
we will be right back with doctor Richard

569
00:56:38.159 --> 00:57:23.559
Hansen and his explanation on these Mayan
highways. We'll be right back. My

570
00:57:23.599 --> 00:57:30.159
guest today is archaeologist doctor Richard Hansen, who is giving us some insight into

571
00:57:30.159 --> 00:57:36.880
the research project that he did following
the lightar scan of the Guatemalan bias fhere

572
00:57:36.920 --> 00:57:43.519
in the discovery of sixty thousand unknown
ruins from the Maya culture. Today we're

573
00:57:43.599 --> 00:57:51.360
learning exactly what he discovered in these
Mayan highways that intersect in this area of

574
00:57:51.400 --> 00:57:58.079
the Guatemalan bias fhere and some of
the details that they discovered in their interpretations.

575
00:58:00.760 --> 00:58:05.239
So you know with what we know, I mean, you're you're talking

576
00:58:05.280 --> 00:58:08.760
about the human spirit and the social
economic How do we know? I mean,

577
00:58:08.800 --> 00:58:14.639
obviously, if these cities in this
area supported ten to fifteen million people,

578
00:58:16.440 --> 00:58:20.280
where were the crops and how are
they bringing them in? I mean,

579
00:58:20.519 --> 00:58:25.360
commerce must have been huge at its
peak, right exactly right. Being

580
00:58:25.360 --> 00:58:30.159
touched on another fascinating subject, Cliff, and that is how do you feed

581
00:58:30.199 --> 00:58:36.199
that kind of population? The reason
for the question is, and we see

582
00:58:36.199 --> 00:58:39.679
all these cities concentrated here, all
of these are cities in this region.

583
00:58:40.000 --> 00:58:45.800
Why aren't there any here and why
aren't there any over here? Well?

584
00:58:45.800 --> 00:58:51.480
And why aren't they building on the
Here's another map this down here, this

585
00:58:51.639 --> 00:58:55.159
beautiful lake down here called Lake Potenisa. By the way, those of you

586
00:58:55.239 --> 00:58:59.679
listening, Jim showing a whole bunch
of photos. I will have these on

587
00:58:59.719 --> 00:59:02.960
the Facebook page and on the website, so don't don't despair. Yeah,

588
00:59:04.360 --> 00:59:08.119
I didn't realize this was going to
be live and live live show, but

589
00:59:09.280 --> 00:59:14.440
these you'll have the images. But
the question is why didn't they build these

590
00:59:14.440 --> 00:59:16.960
cities on the edge of the lakes, from the edges of rivers. All

591
00:59:17.039 --> 00:59:22.760
other complex societies of the world,
like the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, the

592
00:59:22.079 --> 00:59:28.840
Harappans, the Chinese were building on
the riverine systems. Here were the most

593
00:59:28.920 --> 00:59:31.920
distant location from a lake or a
river that you can get in in the

594
00:59:31.960 --> 00:59:40.920
milolins. Why the secret to their
success were the swamps, these grass land

595
00:59:42.079 --> 00:59:50.000
marshes perennially wet marshes that were full
of grass and water and mud. But

596
00:59:50.199 --> 00:59:54.599
that mud, that organic mud,
was so rich that they were transporting the

597
00:59:54.679 --> 01:00:02.280
mud into elaborate terrace systems. We
have thousands of kilometers of terra systems in

598
01:00:02.320 --> 01:00:07.719
the meredoor basin. Were they constructing
that and hauling that mud up and filling

599
01:00:07.760 --> 01:00:16.480
it and building these incredible terraces with
organic mud. Now today they use what

600
01:00:16.519 --> 01:00:22.239
they call a milpa ala mlpa,
the milpas where they go out and they

601
01:00:22.239 --> 01:00:25.880
cut a patch of jungle and they
farm a couple of years of crops,

602
01:00:25.920 --> 01:00:31.400
and then the rain and the weeds
take over. They have to abandon it

603
01:00:31.760 --> 01:00:36.159
and they have to move to another
and cut more jungle and plant again.

604
01:00:37.119 --> 01:00:42.000
The ancient Maya weren't doing that.
They've planted the same piece of ground for

605
01:00:42.079 --> 01:00:46.039
a thousand years. By renovating their
field with just another little layer of that

606
01:00:46.119 --> 01:00:53.639
rich organic mud from those swamps and
in it completely allowed them to plant corns,

607
01:00:53.719 --> 01:01:00.159
squash, beans, cotton, and
cacao. That allowed them to to

608
01:01:00.079 --> 01:01:06.440
create the agricultural base. Now you
and I are talking today because somebody's out

609
01:01:06.480 --> 01:01:10.159
there busting their rearand so that you
and I can eat. Yeah, because

610
01:01:10.159 --> 01:01:13.840
if you and I ween, you
and I are looking for a golfer or

611
01:01:13.880 --> 01:01:16.800
a grasshopper or a rabbit to eat
tomorrow, we wouldn't be doing this interview,

612
01:01:17.960 --> 01:01:24.280
right. So it's agriculture that leads
to complexity. It's agriculture that provides

613
01:01:24.280 --> 01:01:30.920
the economic stimulation to all the other
luxuries luxuries that you have, and the

614
01:01:30.039 --> 01:01:37.360
agricultural base that gives the population and
the chance to expand and grow is crucial

615
01:01:37.400 --> 01:01:43.880
to any complex society. You destroy
your agriculture and you destroy your civilization.

616
01:01:45.280 --> 01:01:47.440
Let me ask you about this,
uh, this mud that you're talking about

617
01:01:49.360 --> 01:01:55.320
in the Amazon, they have found
the dirt to be engineered in some manner.

618
01:01:55.400 --> 01:02:00.119
They don't know how. It's very, very old, but it's so

619
01:02:00.360 --> 01:02:07.480
rich and so fertile that it can
grow through constant replannings and growing and replannings.

620
01:02:07.159 --> 01:02:13.400
Did the Maya engineer their soil or
are you they did? They did

621
01:02:13.440 --> 01:02:16.840
that because they imported that in mud
from those grassland marshes. But keep in

622
01:02:16.920 --> 01:02:22.199
mind, Cliff, that the Amazon
and the Nile are similar. That the

623
01:02:22.320 --> 01:02:29.320
rivers overflow their banks and they carry
nutrients to all parts of that area during

624
01:02:29.360 --> 01:02:34.199
certain times of the year. So
all those nutrients, that's essentially the same

625
01:02:34.239 --> 01:02:38.920
thing as transporting mud like the Maya
were doing and renovating their field with a

626
01:02:38.960 --> 01:02:44.320
thin layer of mud. But that
was the secret to the success. It

627
01:02:44.400 --> 01:02:50.320
was also the secret to their collapse
because when we dig down on those swamps

628
01:02:50.320 --> 01:02:54.400
today, we find that rich organic
layer under two to three three yards of

629
01:02:54.519 --> 01:03:01.800
sterile clay buried under sterile clay.
So and you can't raise anything in that

630
01:03:01.880 --> 01:03:07.000
sterile clay. I mean, it's
just is inundated in the in the in

631
01:03:07.039 --> 01:03:10.719
the rainy season, and it's hard
to cement in the summer in the dry

632
01:03:10.760 --> 01:03:16.599
season. So are you suggesting they
just ran out of good, uh plantable

633
01:03:17.519 --> 01:03:22.159
soil. That was the demand they
did as they deforested their forest for the

634
01:03:22.199 --> 01:03:28.800
production of lime cement. We cut
the trees down, get all the trees

635
01:03:28.840 --> 01:03:31.480
down. We did all the experimental
work for six years. I sent a

636
01:03:31.519 --> 01:03:37.960
team from Berkeley all over messo America
to document how much wood does it take

637
01:03:37.400 --> 01:03:43.360
and how much limestone does it take
to make how much lime cement? Found

638
01:03:43.400 --> 01:03:49.639
it took five to six tons of
greenwood five to six tons of limestone to

639
01:03:49.719 --> 01:03:53.559
make one ton of lime. And
then we start doing the math and discovered

640
01:03:53.559 --> 01:03:59.199
that in one building at Miradora,
for example, required the complete deforestation of

641
01:03:59.400 --> 01:04:05.679
about five hundred acres of every single
living tree. And it was not If

642
01:04:05.719 --> 01:04:10.079
they had had a little bit of
rationality in their use, they would have

643
01:04:10.079 --> 01:04:15.400
never gotten trouble. But they had
a conspicuous consumption of those resources. Some

644
01:04:15.440 --> 01:04:19.880
of those floors are are are half
a yard thick? Why do you need

645
01:04:19.920 --> 01:04:29.159
a floor that thick? The answer
is because you can. That same mentality

646
01:04:29.159 --> 01:04:33.320
occurs today We're thirty one trillion dollars
in debt in the US and why Cliff,

647
01:04:35.800 --> 01:04:41.320
because we can? Yeah, we're
not smart. I read that today.

648
01:04:41.360 --> 01:04:45.639
They just posted the FEDS the dead. That's right, pretty amazing.

649
01:04:46.400 --> 01:04:51.360
You fix Inglorans with education, How
do you fix stupidity? It's bad.

650
01:04:54.719 --> 01:04:57.400
Let me ask you, what do
you believe? I mean, based on

651
01:04:57.880 --> 01:05:03.960
your discovery of their their agricultural crops? Were they primarily these maya? Were

652
01:05:03.960 --> 01:05:13.000
they primarily vegetarians? Or were they
With the light ar we discovered a whole

653
01:05:13.039 --> 01:05:15.159
system. We would have never found
these fat men for the light ar.

654
01:05:15.679 --> 01:05:24.559
We discovered a whole series of pins, construction pens for animals. Were animals?

655
01:05:24.599 --> 01:05:28.440
We had no idea they were First
of all, their forty yards wide,

656
01:05:28.840 --> 01:05:31.159
the thirty yards long, and in
tropical jungle would how would you even

657
01:05:31.159 --> 01:05:35.519
detected those? But with the lightyard, it just jumped right out at us.

658
01:05:35.559 --> 01:05:41.119
So I sent a team from University
of California, Davis and bringing Young

659
01:05:41.199 --> 01:05:45.480
University to explore and excavate in those
pins, and they came up with the

660
01:05:45.559 --> 01:05:54.760
conclusion that they were used for dogs
and turtles, um for production of meat

661
01:05:54.840 --> 01:06:00.519
on an industrial scale. Oh my
god? Really, Yeah, so yeah,

662
01:06:00.559 --> 01:06:03.559
they had We have we have evidence
of a lot of dogs. The

663
01:06:03.719 --> 01:06:09.800
lot of dogs. They had a
lot of white tailed deer that are semi

664
01:06:09.880 --> 01:06:16.639
domesticated um and uh. And they
of course they had corns, corn and

665
01:06:16.760 --> 01:06:23.599
squash and beans, so it gave
him a fairly balanced diet. And because

666
01:06:23.599 --> 01:06:28.480
of the limestone, they had good
teeth, good bone structure. The calcium

667
01:06:28.480 --> 01:06:32.880
in the in the lime water was
exceptional, so they had a pretty good

668
01:06:32.920 --> 01:06:38.840
standard of living. And we even
know from the hieroglyphic texts some of these

669
01:06:38.880 --> 01:06:43.039
Maya kings, for example, lived
in the case of Pakala's eighty three years

670
01:06:43.079 --> 01:06:46.199
of age or in a case of
yash Chilan, we have the record of

671
01:06:46.199 --> 01:06:51.239
a king that lived almost ninety six
years of age, so there's there's a

672
01:06:53.000 --> 01:06:57.440
tremendous longativity. They're based on their
diet. The thing that's probably harsh on

673
01:06:57.519 --> 01:07:01.400
them was the labor. But they
had good diets and they ate fairly well.

674
01:07:02.039 --> 01:07:08.280
We also know from from what we
call vitalists. Vitalist is. A

675
01:07:09.239 --> 01:07:14.039
vitalith is is a silicate structure in
the cell that every living plant absorbs.

676
01:07:14.559 --> 01:07:19.960
Every living plant absorbs silicate material micro
on a microscopic level to the cell,

677
01:07:20.440 --> 01:07:25.360
and it has the shape of the
cell. So when the plant disappears or

678
01:07:25.480 --> 01:07:30.480
is gone or dies, we can
still find the vitalists in the ground,

679
01:07:30.519 --> 01:07:34.039
and microscopically, we can determine where
they were raising corn, where they were

680
01:07:34.119 --> 01:07:40.360
raising beans, where they're raising cotton, where they're raising chocolate, where they're

681
01:07:40.440 --> 01:07:46.679
raising squash, and we can find
that still archaeologically. It makes it,

682
01:07:46.960 --> 01:07:53.920
you know, excavation is it is
not like it used to be before.

683
01:07:53.960 --> 01:07:59.440
They were just excavating to expose material. Now we're escavating to recover the microscopic

684
01:07:59.599 --> 01:08:03.079
evidence. Who was thinking twenty years
ago of DNA, for example, today

685
01:08:03.159 --> 01:08:08.559
I'm at Harvard. Today I'm at
Harvard because we're examining ancient DNA from the

686
01:08:08.599 --> 01:08:15.039
mire door basis, and in who
was discovering who was thinking about finalists and

687
01:08:15.199 --> 01:08:17.920
twenty years ago, thirty or forty
years ago, who was thinking about carbon

688
01:08:18.000 --> 01:08:24.840
fourteen, who was thinking about isotope
data? And who knows what technologies will

689
01:08:24.880 --> 01:08:30.199
have in fifty years. That made
all this material even more fascinating with much

690
01:08:30.239 --> 01:08:33.920
more insight into the human story.
And that's the whole reason that we do

691
01:08:34.119 --> 01:08:40.279
archaeology is to tell that human story, to make us appreciate our legacy as

692
01:08:40.439 --> 01:08:46.239
human beings and to appreciate the cultures
that generated these incredible, incredible cultural remains.

693
01:08:46.560 --> 01:08:51.840
Yeah, I'm speaking with doctor Jim
our excuse Jim Richard Hansen, who's

694
01:08:51.880 --> 01:08:57.960
in Harvard today, and he has
done some fascinating work. By the way,

695
01:08:58.079 --> 01:09:02.960
I will be posting this our icle
that he and his team presented and

696
01:09:03.159 --> 01:09:12.039
was released to CNN for you to
look at with great detail. It's fascinating.

697
01:09:12.720 --> 01:09:18.560
Talk a little bit about what you
call the tiered settlement hierarchy. Uh,

698
01:09:19.600 --> 01:09:24.079
I kind of a little bit of
that, and I'm wondering if this

699
01:09:24.159 --> 01:09:30.560
kind of also feeds into this,
uh, this highway that you've Yeah,

700
01:09:30.640 --> 01:09:34.760
yeah, what we did we first
of all, there's more than six tiers.

701
01:09:34.760 --> 01:09:39.920
But what we found is are there
cities all over out there that were

702
01:09:40.640 --> 01:09:45.520
very in size and scale. So
what we did is we took one square

703
01:09:45.560 --> 01:09:50.079
kilometer and put it in the in
all these different cities in an area that

704
01:09:50.119 --> 01:09:56.560
we thought was the Dencist occupation or
the Dencist concentration, the city the city

705
01:09:56.640 --> 01:10:00.960
centers, if you will, and
then quantified the amount of volume in the

706
01:10:01.039 --> 01:10:05.920
buildings in that square kilometer that means
you could do it on any ancient city

707
01:10:05.920 --> 01:10:11.880
you wanted in the Maya world.
You could apply the same model and determine

708
01:10:11.960 --> 01:10:15.119
where your tier would fall, where
your site would fall in that tier of

709
01:10:15.199 --> 01:10:19.039
buildings. And we discovered, for
example, that we had Tier one,

710
01:10:19.119 --> 01:10:25.840
which was El Mirador, with more
than four or four point five million cubic

711
01:10:25.920 --> 01:10:32.239
meters of fill in that one square
kilometer area with the size of one hundred

712
01:10:32.239 --> 01:10:36.199
and thirty two square kilometers, And
then we went to other sites. It

713
01:10:36.239 --> 01:10:41.479
was a lot less and a lot
less, and finally ended up with cities

714
01:10:41.880 --> 01:10:47.039
in Tier six that still had pyramids
sixty to eighty feet high, but they

715
01:10:47.159 --> 01:10:51.319
only had one pyramid like that in
which smaller sites. So we were able

716
01:10:51.319 --> 01:10:57.800
to categorize that these are ceremonial centers. We have sites with no big pyramids

717
01:10:57.840 --> 01:11:00.159
that would be seven, Tier seven, an eight or nine or ten?

718
01:11:00.640 --> 01:11:05.199
Did somebody could add to it?
Let me ask you real quickly in your

719
01:11:05.279 --> 01:11:12.319
research, do you think that they
designed these purposefully or did they each have

720
01:11:12.399 --> 01:11:17.720
their own evolution where they were built
with maybe a local king who wanted to

721
01:11:17.760 --> 01:11:21.720
have his own population, so forth
and so forth. I mean, how

722
01:11:21.720 --> 01:11:27.520
did you think they evolved these hierarchy, these tiers. Yeah, it's a

723
01:11:27.560 --> 01:11:31.079
great question. I think initially probably
may have been separate city states that were

724
01:11:31.159 --> 01:11:39.159
quickly imogenized and unified under a state
system, a centralized government system. And

725
01:11:39.479 --> 01:11:45.359
Mirador maybe the census the largest site
out there, it may have been the

726
01:11:45.439 --> 01:11:50.359
capital. The word of caution here, though, is when we look at

727
01:11:50.399 --> 01:11:55.880
ancient Greece. When you look at
ancient Greece, you see Athens was a

728
01:11:56.000 --> 01:12:00.560
huge ancient city, but the power
wasn't an Athens. It was in where

729
01:12:01.119 --> 01:12:06.439
Sparta, That's where the power was. So you have to kind of look

730
01:12:06.479 --> 01:12:13.119
at that with a little bit of
skepticism just based on a size alone.

731
01:12:13.880 --> 01:12:17.960
However, the investment of labor,
the fact that we have seventeen causeways emanating

732
01:12:18.039 --> 01:12:26.079
out of Il Mirador suggests that this
was probably the supercenter capital of the area

733
01:12:26.159 --> 01:12:30.399
during the pre Classic period. Elmiador, El Mirador. Yeah, because it's

734
01:12:30.439 --> 01:12:34.279
so big, that's so big,
and such an investment of labor, such

735
01:12:34.600 --> 01:12:40.880
contemporaneous buildings, these aren't We're talking
about buildings that are contemporaneous, not buildings

736
01:12:40.920 --> 01:12:44.359
that are built a thousand years later, Like many of the Maya sites have

737
01:12:44.399 --> 01:12:47.319
a whole bunch of buildings. But
there's a thousand years difference between the construction

738
01:12:47.359 --> 01:12:53.640
of the buildings. These are all
buildings that are contemporaneous, and the fact

739
01:12:53.720 --> 01:13:00.000
that you would have that investment of
labor in contemporaneous architecture is suggests that Number

740
01:13:00.039 --> 01:13:05.359
one, you had to be able
to feed and water and entertain that volume

741
01:13:05.399 --> 01:13:09.800
of labor. You had to be
able to control it. You had what

742
01:13:09.880 --> 01:13:15.800
if a guy said, I'm not
gonna haul that Rock's decision, I'm not

743
01:13:15.840 --> 01:13:21.960
going to haul that rock. Had
to be a way to exert the state

744
01:13:23.159 --> 01:13:28.720
control over that kind of rebellion,
And by golly, they did it.

745
01:13:28.840 --> 01:13:33.680
They the evidence is there. They
built these huge, complex uh and intricate

746
01:13:33.760 --> 01:13:39.880
cities that were linked by these causeways, and it gave them the jump start

747
01:13:39.920 --> 01:13:44.359
over the rest of the Maya world. They were constructing eighty meter high pyramids

748
01:13:44.359 --> 01:13:46.680
at Miradora, and the rest of
the Maya world we're living in little huts.

749
01:13:48.039 --> 01:13:51.840
And that's it. That's the crazy
part about this pre Maya period.

750
01:13:51.880 --> 01:13:58.039
This we don't have a we don't
haven't deciphered their language. You know here

751
01:13:58.079 --> 01:14:02.000
these guys are we can read the
tea. We both know that's a couple

752
01:14:02.039 --> 01:14:05.479
of syllable here and there, but
not really no, no, no,

753
01:14:05.479 --> 01:14:10.159
no, it's it's it's way part
than the neck cliff. What we can't

754
01:14:10.199 --> 01:14:13.359
read is the pre classic text.
That's what I meant to say. Excuse

755
01:14:13.359 --> 01:14:15.960
me, yeah, yeah, we
can't read the pre classic text. We

756
01:14:15.960 --> 01:14:19.960
can read the classic period texts,
you cannot read the pre classic Uh.

757
01:14:20.159 --> 01:14:24.720
As we conclude here, I have
a question that you bring up in this

758
01:14:24.800 --> 01:14:28.880
paper. There's been a number of
books on Maya kings. In fact,

759
01:14:28.920 --> 01:14:34.800
you had a TV special on the
king at male miodor h. You talk

760
01:14:34.840 --> 01:14:45.720
about the unified king, uh,
theory of this complex of these uh various

761
01:14:45.920 --> 01:14:51.399
cities within this huge complex. What
is the unified king? I mean,

762
01:14:51.680 --> 01:14:58.920
you're thinking that there was one Caesar
for the for their Rome, that controlled

763
01:14:58.920 --> 01:15:02.920
the whole world of the Maya within
that, within that Guatemala area. Obviously

764
01:15:03.159 --> 01:15:09.359
the good question. One of the
things that's fascinating about the pre Classic late

765
01:15:09.359 --> 01:15:15.279
pre Classic Maya between three INTERBC and
the our and our beginning of our period

766
01:15:15.359 --> 01:15:21.039
of time, our era, is
that the ceramics, the pottery is more

767
01:15:21.199 --> 01:15:27.680
unified at this period of time than
any other period of Maya history. The

768
01:15:27.760 --> 01:15:30.479
ceramics are the same from the tip
of the Yucatan all the way to Honduras

769
01:15:30.800 --> 01:15:34.560
and all the way to Tabasco,
and all the way to from Belize all

770
01:15:34.560 --> 01:15:40.399
the way to Tabasco. It's the
same slips, the same paste, the

771
01:15:40.479 --> 01:15:45.199
same forms, the same shapes.
Wow, it's unified. We never have

772
01:15:45.279 --> 01:15:49.560
another period of Maya history when that
happens, even in the great Classic periods

773
01:15:49.640 --> 01:15:56.239
that they call Classic because they thought
that was the pinnacle of complexity in the

774
01:15:56.279 --> 01:16:00.840
Maya. We don't have that kind
of that kind of uniform and all their

775
01:16:00.920 --> 01:16:05.600
pottery. So this suggests that there
could have been a maybe a state level

776
01:16:05.760 --> 01:16:13.880
impetus behind that exportation. Another example
of that is the development of traw what

777
01:16:13.920 --> 01:16:18.600
we call triadic architecture, big pyramids
with three summits on the top, not

778
01:16:18.720 --> 01:16:24.600
just one, there's three and it
mirrored. Or we have thirty seven of

779
01:16:24.640 --> 01:16:29.119
those big buildings with three summits at
the top, and we have hundreds of

780
01:16:29.119 --> 01:16:33.279
those throughout the basin. So it's
but it appears suddenly about three hundred BC,

781
01:16:33.920 --> 01:16:42.279
indicating an ideology that was homogeneous.
An ideology was a prime mover,

782
01:16:42.840 --> 01:16:47.239
whether it be socio economic or political, ideology, but it unified the society

783
01:16:47.760 --> 01:16:54.720
into making these monumental constructions that are
all the same shape and form. Now,

784
01:16:54.800 --> 01:16:59.119
the argument that ideology is a prime
mover is very evident in go Bickley

785
01:16:59.199 --> 01:17:04.439
Tepi, in in or in Turkey. This is what twelve thousand BC.

786
01:17:05.199 --> 01:17:11.600
Yeah, I mean over in the
US they're stabbing mammoths with spears, and

787
01:17:11.640 --> 01:17:17.479
in go Bakeley Teppi they're building incredible
complex temples with the elaborate stones and and

788
01:17:17.600 --> 01:17:23.000
this is long before the development of
agriculture, right, So it shows the

789
01:17:23.159 --> 01:17:31.560
unifying capability of ideology as a prime
mover of complexity. Amazing. Uh,

790
01:17:31.800 --> 01:17:36.159
we go ask you a question based
on that comment you just made. Are

791
01:17:36.199 --> 01:17:44.640
you saying that the pottery found in
Guatemala at that time period and I'm thinking,

792
01:17:45.039 --> 01:17:49.279
what are we talking about five hundred
BC? Tho you're saying. If

793
01:17:49.560 --> 01:17:56.399
you're saying there's contempt, there's a
similar pottery found in places like what chichenitza

794
01:17:56.560 --> 01:18:01.239
Ushmal none of those levels, and
they if they get them twenty meters down,

795
01:18:01.319 --> 01:18:04.800
they find that same pottery. Oh, if they if they're doing an

796
01:18:04.840 --> 01:18:11.079
excavation of a site, they go
down. Yeah, that's amazing. So

797
01:18:11.079 --> 01:18:21.479
so there would be one theme or
one uh, design that was contemporary to

798
01:18:21.520 --> 01:18:29.520
that whole period. Yeah, that's
for example, the cult bottle. Would

799
01:18:29.520 --> 01:18:33.479
you recognize the cult bottle in Cambodia? Would you recognize it in Zimbabwe?

800
01:18:33.880 --> 01:18:40.319
Would you recognize it in Brazil?
Would you recognize it in Canada? Of

801
01:18:40.319 --> 01:18:45.039
course? You see, it's the
same concept, the same concept. Well,

802
01:18:45.119 --> 01:18:49.119
let me throw another one at you. So, uh, wasn't just

803
01:18:49.279 --> 01:18:57.359
used the term brand it's we're branding. H Is there evidence of a specific

804
01:18:57.560 --> 01:19:05.039
ruler like a pacal that is universally
thought of as the headman of the maya

805
01:19:05.119 --> 01:19:09.920
at that time? Great question.
We have all kinds of city states in

806
01:19:09.960 --> 01:19:14.840
the Classic period, sure, but
we we have a problem in the pre

807
01:19:14.920 --> 01:19:24.239
Classic because we've never found that Pakal
or that howsau Chankwel that we know existed

808
01:19:24.279 --> 01:19:30.279
at Dikal or in Palinke, and
we never found those guys. We have

809
01:19:30.319 --> 01:19:38.159
a record in the Classic period painted
on Kodak style pottery of nineteen kings that

810
01:19:38.199 --> 01:19:43.720
are recorded in pottery, but none
of those kings and the names correlate to

811
01:19:43.800 --> 01:19:47.640
anybody that we know in the Classic
period. And Simon Martin, one of

812
01:19:47.640 --> 01:19:55.479
the epigraphers suggested that it might be
a retrospective history. And Stanley Gunter,

813
01:19:55.680 --> 01:20:00.560
one of our great epigraphers on a
world scale. He studies all kinds of

814
01:20:00.800 --> 01:20:06.199
ancient texts as as as managed to
pigeonhole these dates, these kings starting at

815
01:20:06.199 --> 01:20:12.119
three ninety two BC and all the
way to twenty years after the time of

816
01:20:12.199 --> 01:20:16.159
Christ, and they fit. They
match the dates that work, and he's

817
01:20:16.199 --> 01:20:20.159
got the dates that would match the
names and the dates. We don't know

818
01:20:20.159 --> 01:20:25.640
where those kings are buried. Um, they're not sticking. The guy that

819
01:20:25.760 --> 01:20:34.239
built the pyramid in a latrine somewhere
is a monster pyramid for the The guy

820
01:20:34.279 --> 01:20:39.520
that built that. The guy that
built that is not in some little buvel.

821
01:20:40.520 --> 01:20:45.039
They made sure they took care of
these individuals, and we will sooner

822
01:20:45.159 --> 01:20:47.720
or later. If we don't find
them, somebody else will and discover the

823
01:20:47.760 --> 01:20:53.720
pattern of burials that occurred in the
Quick Classic, because we don't. If

824
01:20:53.760 --> 01:21:00.159
they were Classic period burials, we'd
we'd find them by the dozens. We

825
01:21:00.199 --> 01:21:03.159
have you to find one of those
big pre Classic kings, and all we

826
01:21:03.279 --> 01:21:08.880
need is one of those burials,
one of those tombs to know that the

827
01:21:09.039 --> 01:21:14.479
list is not mythological but real.
Oh so you because you haven't found evidence

828
01:21:14.520 --> 01:21:16.119
here, you're kind of going,
well, we really don't know. We

829
01:21:16.199 --> 01:21:20.079
don't know. We've got to be
skeptical until we actually find the guy.

830
01:21:21.279 --> 01:21:28.399
But you know, and you look
at Egyptian history, look at King Tut,

831
01:21:28.439 --> 01:21:31.359
look at the majesty of King Tut's
burial. When you understand who King

832
01:21:31.399 --> 01:21:35.479
Tut was, he was a low
weight. He was a flyweight on the

833
01:21:35.520 --> 01:21:41.039
scale of kings. Yeah, he
was a nobody on the scale of kings.

834
01:21:41.560 --> 01:21:47.279
Imagine what the ramses and tombs must
have looked like. Yeah, and

835
01:21:47.359 --> 01:21:50.520
we're looking at the same thing here, we're looking at the same thing here.

836
01:21:50.880 --> 01:21:57.840
Whoever built those big and orchestrated all
those huge causeway systems and all those

837
01:21:57.880 --> 01:22:04.520
elaborate political and economics systems and those
huge pyramids is out there somewhere, and

838
01:22:04.760 --> 01:22:09.199
somebody's going to find it someday and
help us fill in that gap of the

839
01:22:09.239 --> 01:22:12.960
story that we don't yet have available. Yeah, like I said, another

840
01:22:13.000 --> 01:22:15.680
codex would be great, that would
help. Hey, Rich, really great

841
01:22:15.720 --> 01:22:18.439
speaking with you as always. Let
me ask you a couple of last questions

842
01:22:18.439 --> 01:22:24.960
here. What is your season in
el Mia door, what is the excavation

843
01:22:25.079 --> 01:22:30.920
dates. We normally go in the
rainy season, which is what months from

844
01:22:30.119 --> 01:22:34.880
May and June to September. And
that's when you had the serious teams out

845
01:22:34.880 --> 01:22:40.520
there, okay, because we need
the water. We have no lakes or

846
01:22:40.640 --> 01:22:45.880
rivers, and it would cost us
hundreds of thousands of dollars to move mules

847
01:22:45.920 --> 01:22:49.760
hauling the water for all the mortars
and the consolidation that we're doing on the

848
01:22:49.760 --> 01:22:55.159
big architecture. So we need do
we let the rain come to us and

849
01:22:55.199 --> 01:22:58.079
it makes it a lot more easier
to maintain. We have up to four

850
01:22:58.159 --> 01:23:01.880
hundred workers were keying out there,
so it makes us so it's possible to

851
01:23:01.880 --> 01:23:09.119
to to do that kind of that
kind of research. So your season is

852
01:23:09.159 --> 01:23:12.319
actually just for like four months and
that's it. Yeah, well yeah,

853
01:23:12.520 --> 01:23:15.640
and this year we're gonna be going
back in October, November and December two.

854
01:23:16.199 --> 01:23:23.000
Okay. Interesting And then, uh, who who is it the decision

855
01:23:23.239 --> 01:23:30.159
of the analysis of lightar on at
your site that determines what's next on the

856
01:23:30.239 --> 01:23:34.680
excavation. We for example, because
of the lighter we found causeways that we

857
01:23:34.720 --> 01:23:40.560
didn't have any idea even existed.
Is this recent? Oh yeah, like

858
01:23:40.560 --> 01:23:45.520
like in the last twelve months.
Yeah, oh really, that must be

859
01:23:45.720 --> 01:23:48.560
kind of fun but also depressing because
you're going, damn it. We found

860
01:23:48.600 --> 01:23:55.880
another causeway where lead We mapped the
city with Tolten station technology that's accurate to

861
01:23:55.920 --> 01:24:00.399
the millimeter, and I'm how how
accurate we were. But I'm also impressed

862
01:24:00.399 --> 01:24:05.880
with what we missed that we can
detect with lightar. And the lightar allowed

863
01:24:05.960 --> 01:24:12.640
us, which is the light penetration
of the laser penetrates the canopy and reflects

864
01:24:12.640 --> 01:24:16.319
back to the airplane, giving us
the precise location. And we can get

865
01:24:16.640 --> 01:24:21.479
up to five to ten to fifteen
points per square meter, which bounces back

866
01:24:21.560 --> 01:24:27.399
up and it gives us a remarkable
resolution of that jungle floor. So we

867
01:24:27.439 --> 01:24:32.159
can see all every pyramid, every
platform, every damn every canal, every

868
01:24:32.359 --> 01:24:36.760
terrace. We have all of that
material now available. But there's causeways that

869
01:24:36.800 --> 01:24:43.119
we just found we had no idea
even existed, and they're huge causeways.

870
01:24:43.840 --> 01:24:47.319
Yeah, and so we've got to
go yet and explore those, make sure

871
01:24:47.319 --> 01:24:54.479
we date them and understand their construction, so that we can fill in the

872
01:24:54.840 --> 01:25:00.600
little gaps of our knowledge about these
complex societies that were emerged century before the

873
01:25:00.600 --> 01:25:03.439
time of Christ. In that area. I got a picture that I'll post

874
01:25:03.520 --> 01:25:08.560
on the Facebook page of you as
sitting next to one of these light ar

875
01:25:08.640 --> 01:25:15.000
machines hooked into a small plane.
Is it still expensive to do a light

876
01:25:15.119 --> 01:25:17.279
ar campaign? Is it in that
millions of dollars or has it come down

877
01:25:17.279 --> 01:25:21.039
at all? Right? No,
it's millions of dollars. They're they're starting

878
01:25:21.079 --> 01:25:26.640
to use drones now, which makes
it a little really use those. Some

879
01:25:26.720 --> 01:25:30.119
nice drone work being done, but
on a large scale, you're better off

880
01:25:30.159 --> 01:25:35.680
at the airplane. Okay, use
an airplane because just go back and forth

881
01:25:35.720 --> 01:25:40.840
and back and forth and back and
forth and back and forth over you know,

882
01:25:41.560 --> 01:25:45.159
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of square
kilometers of jungle. Wow. Well,

883
01:25:45.600 --> 01:25:49.560
the airplane makes it more logical and
more feasible. And actually this next

884
01:25:49.640 --> 01:25:55.359
month we've got the permits now to
finish just a few little patches on the

885
01:25:55.479 --> 01:26:00.079
very edge of the basin that we've
missed, that we didn't complete, and

886
01:26:00.159 --> 01:26:06.119
that will make the largest continuous area
of the Maya that we have, and

887
01:26:06.199 --> 01:26:11.039
that's seven hundred square miles, is
that correct? Yeah? Yeah, a

888
01:26:11.079 --> 01:26:16.560
little probably a little more than that
now, okay, And is there in

889
01:26:16.680 --> 01:26:24.319
your mind any way, or any
modification to that technology light our technology that

890
01:26:24.439 --> 01:26:30.680
you'd like to see, and perhaps
ground penetrating beyond the canopy of trees and

891
01:26:30.760 --> 01:26:34.800
bushes that you would like to see. That is a possible modification. Well,

892
01:26:35.399 --> 01:26:40.239
that we're getting higher and higher resolutions
all the time. When we shot

893
01:26:40.279 --> 01:26:45.479
ours, we were getting five hundred
and sixty thousand points per second. Okay,

894
01:26:45.920 --> 01:26:49.000
so we flew at one hundred and
fifty eight hours shooting five hundred and

895
01:26:49.000 --> 01:26:56.560
sixty thousand points per second, and
that's a volume of data that's unbelievable.

896
01:26:56.640 --> 01:27:00.000
So you're getting. What you're saying
to the listener is that you're getting really

897
01:27:00.239 --> 01:27:06.319
good resolution of buildings, of not
only causeways, but perhaps even substructures and

898
01:27:06.439 --> 01:27:12.119
things like that. Well, we're
that's we're getting the ground surface as it

899
01:27:12.199 --> 01:27:16.600
is now. In the future,
I predict they'll have ground penetrating systems,

900
01:27:17.039 --> 01:27:21.000
but to let us see below the
surface of the ground what's going on and

901
01:27:21.079 --> 01:27:26.000
that may be coming down the pike. That would save tens of millions of

902
01:27:26.000 --> 01:27:29.560
dollars. Wow, Hey, Rich, really great, heavy on the program.

903
01:27:29.840 --> 01:27:34.000
Give us your website, How can
people learn more about you and other

904
01:27:34.079 --> 01:27:39.239
details about reference? All right,
if anybody's interested in the lighter I go

905
01:27:39.279 --> 01:27:45.119
to Cambridge Core slash Ancient messo America
slash LIGHTAR and that will give you.

906
01:27:45.479 --> 01:27:50.000
That will give you that paper that
was published in in Ancient messo America.

907
01:27:50.199 --> 01:27:55.720
You can also look at the Institute
of Maya Studies at the Miami i MS.

908
01:27:56.199 --> 01:28:00.039
They just did a summary of that
paper and there and they have that

909
01:28:00.119 --> 01:28:03.840
out and now it's out now and
you can become a member of the IMS.

910
01:28:04.319 --> 01:28:10.439
We also have www. Dot mirdoor
Basin dot com which can take you

911
01:28:10.520 --> 01:28:15.319
to all of the all the publications
that we've got and the information that's now

912
01:28:15.359 --> 01:28:21.199
available on a big scale. Or
Fairs Foundation dot org, r e s

913
01:28:21.439 --> 01:28:29.600
dash Foundation dot org is the is
the actual ngel, that pioneer that launches

914
01:28:29.640 --> 01:28:32.800
the whole thing, makes the whole
thing feasible. We're grateful to our sponsors.

915
01:28:33.319 --> 01:28:36.000
I mean, the real heroes and
all this are the people that put

916
01:28:36.079 --> 01:28:39.960
up the major money to make all
this kind of thing happen. Now we're

917
01:28:40.000 --> 01:28:44.000
talking about millions and millions and millions
of dollars here, and I have to

918
01:28:44.039 --> 01:28:47.399
give credit to every one of those
sponsors that believed in the conservation model,

919
01:28:47.800 --> 01:28:53.359
that believes in the importance of the
Maya that believes that we can save vast

920
01:28:53.359 --> 01:29:00.239
tracks of jungle based on economic justification
of the conservation. And it's a ely

921
01:29:00.279 --> 01:29:04.680
threatened area. There's no doubt that
this area is may not exist in ten

922
01:29:04.760 --> 01:29:09.800
years. But talk a little bit
about that for a second. Would you

923
01:29:09.840 --> 01:29:14.720
about the burning that's going on.
Oh yeah, it is coming up close

924
01:29:14.720 --> 01:29:18.079
to you, right, you know
how Yeah, one of these images I'll

925
01:29:18.119 --> 01:29:21.399
be sending you. You can see
these, Uh, you can see all

926
01:29:21.560 --> 01:29:27.039
this is the mere door basin here, but all that there's the border with

927
01:29:27.119 --> 01:29:30.840
Mexico. Half the basins in Mexico. So everything in red is burned,

928
01:29:30.880 --> 01:29:35.039
shut, burned to the ground.
Wow, cattle pasture. So as a

929
01:29:35.079 --> 01:29:42.520
result, it's severely threatened because of
organized crime is laundering, laundering illegal money

930
01:29:43.239 --> 01:29:48.119
with cattle, and so they have
cattle, have to have pastures. So

931
01:29:48.279 --> 01:29:56.039
illegal drugs means that they're growing what
uh, they're growing wheat, cannabis.

932
01:29:55.720 --> 01:30:00.920
No, no, no, they're
they're cutting down forest and putting cattle on

933
01:30:00.359 --> 01:30:10.439
the pastors. But let's see,
and how this works is they'll they'll go

934
01:30:10.479 --> 01:30:13.920
to a poor starving peasant and they'll
say, yeah, I'll give you a

935
01:30:13.960 --> 01:30:16.239
few dollars, we go out and
cut that jungle. Of course, the

936
01:30:16.279 --> 01:30:19.680
starving peasant accepts the money. He
goes out and cuts the jungle, burns

937
01:30:19.680 --> 01:30:24.199
it to the ground. And then
here comes the organized crime with the pistol

938
01:30:24.199 --> 01:30:27.680
and says, okay, get out, and he puts his cattle out there.

939
01:30:28.359 --> 01:30:31.319
So he'll buy a five hundred head
of cattle, right, But he's

940
01:30:31.319 --> 01:30:34.399
got a document, he's got he's
got a paper. The city sold ten

941
01:30:34.479 --> 01:30:42.119
thousand head of cattle. So all
that money goes legitimately into banks with no

942
01:30:42.239 --> 01:30:46.640
questions asked. No, boy,
So you're dealing with that all the time.

943
01:30:46.680 --> 01:30:50.000
We're dealing with that all the time. So as a result, our

944
01:30:50.119 --> 01:30:56.279
concern, our emphasis is the conservation
and protection of the area. I might

945
01:30:56.359 --> 01:31:02.159
point out a couple of years ago
I went, seeing the threat that this

946
01:31:02.239 --> 01:31:09.079
area faced, I commit with some
government officials at Guatemala, and we went

947
01:31:09.119 --> 01:31:15.600
to the US Congress together with thirteen
of the leading guatemal and congressmen, to

948
01:31:15.840 --> 01:31:21.239
lobby for the funding for the security
and conservation of that area. And we

949
01:31:21.399 --> 01:31:27.720
got it. We actually managed to
procure it, except that when the organized

950
01:31:27.760 --> 01:31:31.960
crime found out that we were this
was for the security and conservation of this

951
01:31:32.079 --> 01:31:39.560
area. They launched a campaign against
us that was horrible. They launched we

952
01:31:39.560 --> 01:31:44.159
were the colonialists, the imperialists.
We were trying to take away there,

953
01:31:44.159 --> 01:31:47.039
trying to usurp their authority. We're
trying to make a Disneyland out of this

954
01:31:47.159 --> 01:31:51.159
area. We're trying to make their
people starved to death. We're trying to

955
01:31:51.680 --> 01:31:58.159
make their children starved to death.
They brought in every angle they could to

956
01:31:58.239 --> 01:32:02.560
attack that legislation, and finally the
money was never sent to Guatemala. It

957
01:32:02.640 --> 01:32:09.520
was sent to Africa. In an
area of pandemic, in an area of

958
01:32:09.640 --> 01:32:15.000
starvation, in an area of extreme
poverty, and an area of covid had

959
01:32:15.000 --> 01:32:19.119
everybody locked in their houses. We
had one hundred and forty four million dollars

960
01:32:19.159 --> 01:32:24.000
for the security and conservation of the
area, and it didn't get there.

961
01:32:24.600 --> 01:32:29.039
Oh my god, I remember this
or a congressman associated with that, Yeah,

962
01:32:29.079 --> 01:32:32.560
I can't remember his name. But
everyone there is bipartisan. We had

963
01:32:32.800 --> 01:32:39.840
you doll a democrat as a democrat. We had inhop a republican, we

964
01:32:39.880 --> 01:32:43.479
had Rich a republican, both of
the It was one of the things that

965
01:32:43.640 --> 01:32:47.279
united to both sides of the aisle. This area is worth saving. This

966
01:32:47.439 --> 01:32:51.840
area is worth the conservation. And
we don't need to log it. We

967
01:32:51.920 --> 01:32:56.000
don't need to drill it for oil, we don't need to loot it,

968
01:32:56.239 --> 01:33:00.720
we don't need to pouch it.
We can save it because of the number

969
01:33:00.119 --> 01:33:06.359
and the quantity of ancient cities that
the world's gonna want to see and we

970
01:33:06.520 --> 01:33:13.399
think that's worth saving. Wow,
so the money never got there, No,

971
01:33:14.399 --> 01:33:18.960
So what what you must be working
with the local government to u to

972
01:33:20.439 --> 01:33:27.439
reduce the amount of burning that's burning
today is burning as we're speaking right now.

973
01:33:28.439 --> 01:33:32.279
So what's keeping the fires from coming
close to the ruins or are they

974
01:33:32.399 --> 01:33:35.960
engulfing the ruins? Not yet,
but they're gonna be there. And if

975
01:33:35.960 --> 01:33:40.279
we don't, if we don't find
the means to make it, we saw

976
01:33:40.439 --> 01:33:45.039
we suggest. This is our suggestion, and we're not trying to impose anything.

977
01:33:45.560 --> 01:33:53.399
We're just suggesting that the Guatemalans make
a roadless wilderness sanctuary, a cultural

978
01:33:53.439 --> 01:34:00.760
and natural sanctuary without roads, without
airstrips, because organized crime needs air strips

979
01:34:00.800 --> 01:34:06.520
and they need roads. And by
making a rollless wilderness sanctuary, we then

980
01:34:06.640 --> 01:34:14.199
involved the communities that surround this basin
in the economic model, they become participants

981
01:34:14.199 --> 01:34:16.359
in the model. When you go
to the great city of Tikal, for

982
01:34:16.399 --> 01:34:20.359
example, nobody spends a diamond.
Those villages on the way to Tikal.

983
01:34:21.199 --> 01:34:26.359
Nobody. And if you put a
road from the from the town of Florida's

984
01:34:26.399 --> 01:34:30.960
Tamirador, I promise you nobody would
spend the diamond those communities. But if

985
01:34:31.000 --> 01:34:35.199
you make a rollless wilderness sanctuary,
we have to involve the community. We

986
01:34:35.239 --> 01:34:40.920
need to hire their guides and their
cooks and their mules. And if they

987
01:34:40.960 --> 01:34:45.000
put a miniature train in, you
have all those facilities, the maintenance,

988
01:34:45.239 --> 01:34:47.960
the protection, the security, all
that's in place. And for the first

989
01:34:48.000 --> 01:34:53.840
time in history, we are involving
the local communities in the economic model.

990
01:34:54.840 --> 01:35:00.680
What's our definition of roadless no roads? I know that. How do people

991
01:35:00.680 --> 01:35:03.600
get in and out of the sites? Well, that's a great question.

992
01:35:04.119 --> 01:35:08.560
We've and we spend a lot of
money to understand how to do that.

993
01:35:10.079 --> 01:35:15.239
We put a lot of money into
understanding what's the best way to get people

994
01:35:15.239 --> 01:35:23.159
in with no roads? Okay,
waiting belows. We checked air strips,

995
01:35:23.239 --> 01:35:28.199
we checked the bicycle routes, we
checked hot air balloons, bicycle. Yeah,

996
01:35:28.319 --> 01:35:31.319
Well, we investigated all that but
the only thing that worked without any

997
01:35:31.359 --> 01:35:38.760
disadvantages was a miniature train. Oh
right, I remember, small miniature train,

998
01:35:39.359 --> 01:35:42.880
right, but right on the ancient
causeways. The causeways are elevated,

999
01:35:43.079 --> 01:35:46.119
they were built three thousand years ago. You can put it on those causeways

1000
01:35:46.119 --> 01:35:48.960
to go around the big trees.
Because it's a miniature train, not the

1001
01:35:49.000 --> 01:35:54.680
big, huge train like Mexico's building, but a miniature train that can carry

1002
01:35:54.720 --> 01:35:58.960
up to one hundred passengers at a
time. And this allows access. You're

1003
01:35:59.000 --> 01:36:03.000
looking at it all this credible art
and architecture all the way in on these

1004
01:36:03.039 --> 01:36:09.560
miniature trains, and that involves the
communities. It has high it has it

1005
01:36:09.680 --> 01:36:15.880
controlled and restricted access so you don't
have massive tourism overpowering and you have and

1006
01:36:15.960 --> 01:36:20.079
it allows it's compatible with the environment. This is not the Maya train.

1007
01:36:20.119 --> 01:36:25.920
They're doing it because that thing's a
monster. That's a monster. Okay,

1008
01:36:25.920 --> 01:36:31.119
So this must be uh an small
enclosed train of some rails about this far

1009
01:36:31.159 --> 01:36:40.359
apart right. Oh okay, that's
a miniature train. Wow. And what's

1010
01:36:40.399 --> 01:36:45.319
the pain? Which is cheap and
easy and clean and quiet. Where's that

1011
01:36:45.439 --> 01:36:49.039
city right now? What's the likelihood
of that happening? Well? It depends

1012
01:36:49.039 --> 01:36:53.520
on the entrepreneur that wants to do
it. I just suggest it. Oh,

1013
01:36:53.560 --> 01:36:56.199
I hear you promoted. I'm not
gonna build it. I'm not gonna

1014
01:36:56.239 --> 01:37:00.039
be a participant in it. I'm
just suggesting that that some entrepreneur can make

1015
01:37:00.039 --> 01:37:05.079
a fortune. You're talking about the
Elon Musk train to tell me a door.

1016
01:37:05.640 --> 01:37:10.239
That's right, gonna make a guy
like that with us a little vision.

1017
01:37:11.199 --> 01:37:13.760
You know, he's got the vision. And we need people like that

1018
01:37:13.840 --> 01:37:16.159
in the world that have a vision, people that like that, that have

1019
01:37:16.199 --> 01:37:21.840
the idea that we can make.
We can we can improve prosperity for poor

1020
01:37:21.920 --> 01:37:28.640
countries, and we can improve the
conservation for poor countries and have a win

1021
01:37:28.680 --> 01:37:32.560
and win for everybody. Wow.
Rich, Really a pleasure to speak with

1022
01:37:32.600 --> 01:37:39.279
you again. As always, very
informative and I can see why you're so

1023
01:37:39.319 --> 01:37:45.720
passionate. The work you're doing is
exciting and it's life giving and I appreciate

1024
01:37:45.840 --> 01:37:50.439
everything you do. So good to
have you. Thank you, and we'll

1025
01:37:50.439 --> 01:37:54.600
talk to you again. Thank you, Cliff. It's always a pleasure with

1026
01:37:54.640 --> 01:37:58.000
you, and anytime we will get
on again. Open see you with Mirador.

1027
01:37:58.760 --> 01:38:15.439
I gotta get out there all right. Thanks man. Hey guys.

1028
01:38:15.239 --> 01:38:23.640
After three years of restrictions COVID based
problems, Contact in the Desert is back.

1029
01:38:24.119 --> 01:38:28.439
It's back in Indian Wales, California. It's a suburb of Palm Springs,

1030
01:38:28.840 --> 01:38:33.359
and it is an amazing world class
conference. From June second through the

1031
01:38:33.399 --> 01:38:38.680
fourth. You can hear people like
Graham Hancock, AV Lowe, Linda Molton

1032
01:38:38.760 --> 01:38:44.920
Howe, and over one hundred and
twenty five experts, scientists and research investigators

1033
01:38:44.960 --> 01:38:49.359
that will provide you with the latest
information on a variety of topics. This

1034
01:38:49.439 --> 01:38:54.880
is a chance to see your favorite
author, meet with him personally, and

1035
01:38:55.000 --> 01:39:00.960
spend a weekend hearing the latest from
the greatest. For more formation, go

1036
01:39:00.079 --> 01:39:04.600
to Contact in the Desert dot com
and get all the details. Be sure

1037
01:39:04.600 --> 01:39:09.439
to stop by and see me.
We'll be there recording interviewing and I'd love

1038
01:39:09.479 --> 01:39:14.000
to hear from you. Contact in
the Desert June second to the fourth for

1039
01:39:14.119 --> 01:39:29.720
more information Contact in the Desert dot
com. I get reports from people,

1040
01:39:29.800 --> 01:39:38.399
I get emails and posts that Earth
Ancients is pseudoscience and you're just you know,

1041
01:39:38.479 --> 01:39:41.039
you're guessing at half the stuff.
Well, no, we are not

1042
01:39:41.239 --> 01:39:45.800
pseudo science. That is the pinnacle. Doctor Richard Hansen's work. That's what

1043
01:39:45.840 --> 01:39:51.399
you call a mover and shaker.
That's the pinnacle of research analysis, archaeological

1044
01:39:51.439 --> 01:39:59.600
research using science, scanning, light, art technology, and train analysis of

1045
01:39:59.800 --> 01:40:06.600
the results. So that is orthodox
archaeology for those of you who think otherwise,

1046
01:40:06.720 --> 01:40:13.479
And I hope you enjoy that.
I was reminded about Hanson's paper by

1047
01:40:13.560 --> 01:40:17.439
our own doctor Ed Barnhard and had
a chance to look at it. The

1048
01:40:17.479 --> 01:40:25.319
actual paper itself will be on Earth
Ancients Facebook page, both international and the

1049
01:40:25.359 --> 01:40:31.640
group page. And then there's the
Maya Society International Maya Society paper which is

1050
01:40:32.399 --> 01:40:42.720
taken just the core portion of the
Highway analysis or the Sockby analysis and created

1051
01:40:42.800 --> 01:40:46.680
a portion of their newsletter. I'll
have both of those available to you,

1052
01:40:46.760 --> 01:40:54.760
as well as a small gallery of
photos that rich just sent me which will

1053
01:40:54.800 --> 01:41:00.720
be available for download. And you
can also see quite amazingly how many cities

1054
01:41:00.760 --> 01:41:05.640
that are in this area that they've
discovered using lighter and the extent of this

1055
01:41:05.800 --> 01:41:12.880
massive highway. It's just huge.
And you know, riches transparent. You

1056
01:41:12.880 --> 01:41:15.520
know, he has nothing to hide. When I asked him about the roads,

1057
01:41:16.640 --> 01:41:19.680
he's like saying, we don't really
know. It doesn't really you know,

1058
01:41:20.680 --> 01:41:24.439
he didn't say I agree with you
that there you know, they should

1059
01:41:24.479 --> 01:41:28.640
be the will, but they just
haven't found any you know, he's down

1060
01:41:28.680 --> 01:41:34.439
out, he's out there excavating the
largest city in that area, Elmdador,

1061
01:41:35.199 --> 01:41:42.119
and to date they haven't found any
evidence of beasts of burden, grays,

1062
01:41:42.359 --> 01:41:47.319
cows, arcs or whatever. You
heard that they did discover these pins for

1063
01:41:47.960 --> 01:41:54.000
pigs and other animals. Jesus Christ
ten to fifteen million people. There's a

1064
01:41:54.079 --> 01:42:03.760
lot of people to feed, so
they must have had their agricultural and food

1065
01:42:03.840 --> 01:42:10.159
lot system down to a t because
they weren't there there for a few hundred

1066
01:42:10.199 --> 01:42:14.399
years. They were there for thousands
of years, which is it's quite amazing

1067
01:42:14.439 --> 01:42:19.199
to consider. So you've got to
see these photographs of these light lighter scans

1068
01:42:19.279 --> 01:42:30.359
of these highways because they are significant
and the analysis is quite unique, and

1069
01:42:30.119 --> 01:42:36.560
it's really you know, engineering might
that put these where they are in some

1070
01:42:36.600 --> 01:42:43.560
of the most these jungles, and
also the swamps and the waterways that they

1071
01:42:43.600 --> 01:42:47.399
had to intersect with. So it's
really impressive when you see these these roads

1072
01:42:47.399 --> 01:42:54.600
crossing through swamps and being raised up
to as much as fifteen feet. I'm

1073
01:42:54.640 --> 01:43:01.359
also amazed that there's over one hundred
miles of these roads in this area,

1074
01:43:01.479 --> 01:43:05.520
so fascinating. We're going to learn
more and more and more. And Hey,

1075
01:43:05.560 --> 01:43:11.560
how exciting to learn that at some
point they'll be able to do ground

1076
01:43:11.560 --> 01:43:15.640
penetrate radar with light our technology.
So real fun to have him on the

1077
01:43:15.680 --> 01:43:20.560
program. Hey, that reminds me. We are having our own tour with

1078
01:43:20.680 --> 01:43:29.560
doctor Edwin Barnhard November tenth to the
seventeenth. We meet in Verajamosa and from

1079
01:43:29.600 --> 01:43:34.760
there we go to Livin, to
the site of the major city of the

1080
01:43:34.840 --> 01:43:40.479
Olmec. We're there for a day
and then we bust to Polanki And I've

1081
01:43:40.479 --> 01:43:45.319
been talking about polank for months now. I have not been there in the

1082
01:43:45.399 --> 01:43:47.920
years i've been to Mexico, and
I gotta tell you, I'm excited about

1083
01:43:47.960 --> 01:43:53.640
going because it is a monstrous place, but it's also one of the best

1084
01:43:53.720 --> 01:44:00.119
examples of refined architecture in temples,
pyramids and other buildings in that part of

1085
01:44:00.119 --> 01:44:05.399
the world. Our host is going
to be doctor ed the whole time,

1086
01:44:06.399 --> 01:44:09.960
so we'll see one one day,
we'll see the basics, and then the

1087
01:44:09.960 --> 01:44:14.520
second day we're going to see the
material that most people don't see which is

1088
01:44:14.560 --> 01:44:17.680
some of the ruins that have not
been excavated yet. After that, we

1089
01:44:17.920 --> 01:44:24.760
go to three or four other locations, including Bomber and Pack, which has

1090
01:44:24.800 --> 01:44:30.680
some of the most gorgeous murals that
have been discovered. And it's just going

1091
01:44:30.720 --> 01:44:34.079
to be a blast. For more
information, go to earth Ancients dot com,

1092
01:44:34.119 --> 01:44:40.640
Forward slash Tours. We're about half
full right now, and that means

1093
01:44:40.640 --> 01:44:43.520
that we're probably going to sell out. We're only going to take a maximum

1094
01:44:43.560 --> 01:44:48.560
of thirty people, so get your
deposit in and it's a it's a seven

1095
01:44:48.640 --> 01:44:56.159
day excursion with an expert, and
you can't you can't find that kind of

1096
01:44:56.199 --> 01:45:00.520
a tour. That's the best way
to go is with somebody who has not

1097
01:45:00.600 --> 01:45:04.760
only excavated a site, but surveyed. He surveyed ed, surveyed that entire

1098
01:45:04.920 --> 01:45:11.920
place about twenty plus years ago.
So amazing, fantastic and really really,

1099
01:45:11.960 --> 01:45:16.000
really going to be a fun tour. More information Earth Ancients dot com,

1100
01:45:16.039 --> 01:45:23.520
Forward slash Tours. All right,
that's it for today's program. I want

1101
01:45:23.520 --> 01:45:27.880
to thank my guest doctor Richard Hansen. He was coming to us from Harvard.

1102
01:45:28.760 --> 01:45:32.239
As always, the team of Ruth
Thomas, Mark Foster and everyone who

1103
01:45:32.319 --> 01:45:38.479
makes this thing happen. Thank you, my friends, I really appreciate it.

1104
01:45:38.840 --> 01:45:41.159
All right, take care of you
well, and we will talk to

1105
01:45:41.199 --> 01:45:41.960
you next time.